UN Rights Chief urges probe of Kosovo massacre
Email"These killings are particularly reprehensible because they are evidence that despite expressions of international concern and official assurances that civilians would be respected, atrocities are continuing in Kosovo," the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement from the U.N. office in Geneva.
Belgrade has denied responsibility for the weekend killings at two sites in Kosovo -- which residents in the area blamed on Serb security forces -- and said its military operation is over.
Robinson said the independent inquiry should include international forensic specialists and look into "violent deaths resulting from armed actions and into reported massacres".
"The unacceptable human rights situation in Kosovo requires urgent preventive action," she said.
At least 800 people have died in seven months of insurgency which has left around 300,000 people homeless.
The former Irish president also called for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to raise the number of U.N. human rights monitors allowed in the troubled southern Serb province to 10 from the current two.
She said that she had discussed a "strong U.N. presence" in Kosovo with Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic in New York a week ago. He had agreed that a memorandum of understanding to allow such the increase in monitor numbers should be finalised.
"The time has come to conclude this agreement... The time has also come to address at the political level the unacceptable suffering of the people driven from their homes in Kosovo," Robinson said.
"The women, children and elderly men shot through the head and mutilated over the weekend in the Drenica area had apparently been trying to escape the violence and intimidation associated with the continuing operations by the security forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," she added.
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