- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 September 2000 03.52 BST
The announcement follows the arrest of three Serbs in the enclave of Gracanica, south of Pristina, and comes just three days ahead of Yugoslav presidential and parliamentary elections.
The men were seized along with a range of weapons, timing devices and plastic explosives in an operation led by British and Swedish troops.
The head of the UN mission in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, said two of the three men arrested were believed to be serving or former members of a Yugoslav special forces unit based in the southern Serbian town of Nis.
K-For officials were unable to say what the group had been planning but Mr Kouchner described the plan as "an obvious attempt to destabilise Kosovo".
The commander of British troops in the province, Brigadier Robert Fry, said the group had been monitored before their arrest. "Prior to their detention I had intelligence that I found compelling evidence to link them to the VJ [Yugoslav army] and to the special forces organisation in Nis," he said.
After being held briefly in a British military base, the group is now in custody in a UN-run prison in Pristina.
Photographs of weapons at the scene of the arrest were put on display by K-For. One shows a Jordanian identity card. K-For officials said they found other UN and K-For identity material, which they said could have been used to create aliases.
Brig Fry said it was clear the group was attempting to make and detonate a bomb for use in Kosovo, but in spite of the evidence found at the scene he could not speculate on the precise target.
He said he believed the group had been in the province for at least several weeks and that they had been run and controlled from inside Serbia.
Mr Kouchner said the apparent bomb plot was linked to Sunday's Yugoslav presidential elections. He also claimed it was part of an attempt to derail local elections being organised by the UN in the province next month.
