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Many Kosovar Albanians already believe that Washington is

on their side. "One of our main struggles is to convince

them that we really don't support independence," explains

Richard Huckaby, director of an office of the U.S.

Information Agency in Kosovo.  But "they just don't get

it. . . . I have tried really hard to lower their expecta-

tions."43

Serbs, too, believe that Washington backs the ethnic

Albanians.  As the Washington Post reported in March,

The Serbs also have directed their ire at

Americans, whom they regard as in league with

the Albanians.  At a café owned by ethnic

Albanians in the town of Pec, west of Pristina,

a hand grenade splattered the walls with shrapnel

recently.  When [Serb] police officers came to

investigate, they suggested with a smirk that the

bill for the damage be sent to [U.S. Secretary

of State Madeleine K.] Albright.44

Moreover, in June the administration added to the

perception that it supports ethnic Albanian aspirations for

independence when it demanded that Belgrade withdraw its

state security forces from Kosovo before resuming political

negotiations.  White House spokesman Mike McCurry, for

example, stated that Yugoslavia "must immediately withdraw

security units involved in civilian repression, without

linkage to . . . the 'stopping of [KLA] terrorist activi-

ties.'"45 Similarly, Defense Department spokesman Kenneth

Bacon said, "We don't think that there should be any link-

age between an immediate withdrawal of forces by the

Yugoslavs, on the one hand, and stopping terrorist activi-

ties, on the other.  There ought to be complete withdrawal

of military forces so that negotiations can begin."46   The

European Union, former U.S. senator Bob Dole, and others

continue to voice the same opinion.47

Yet in demanding that Belgrade withdraw its state

security forces from Kosovo before resuming negotiations,

the administration was insisting on something Yugoslavia

could not possibly agree to do; to effectively hand over

one of its territories to an insurgency movement.  In con-

trast, the administration was not simultaneously demanding

that the KLA stop their attacks or pressuring Albania to

end its complicity in providing weapons and sanctuary to

Kosovo's guerrilla forces.  That apparent one-sidedness led

many ethnic Albanians to further conclude that the Clinton

administration--despite its official statements to the con-

trary--backed their goal of independence.