-Caveat Lector- Line March 24 1999 KOSOVO CRISIS Line The KLA Drugs money linked to the Kosovo rebels FROM ROGER BOYES AND ESKE WRIGHT IN BONN THE Kosovo Liberation Army, which has won the support of the West for its guerrilla struggle against the heavy armour of the Serbs, is a Marxist-led force funded by dubious sources, including drug money. That is the judgment of senior police officers across Europe. An investigation by The Times has established that police forces in three Western European countries, together with Europol, the European police authority, are separately investigating growing evidence that drug money is funding the KLA's leap from obscurity to power. The financing of the Kosovo guerrilla war poses critical questions and it sorely tests claims to an "ethical" foreign policy. Should the West back a guerrilla army that appears to be partly financed by organised crime? Could the KLA's need for funds be fuelling the heroin trade across Europe? The KLA has become an essential component of the Kosovo peace agreement; without it, there would be no equal negotiating partner for the Belgrade Government. In military terms, it is in no sense equal to the Serb forces. But it has grown from a theoretical notion to an often successful, very mobile and very visible guerrilla grouping in a remarkably short time. Much of the money funding the KLA is believed to come from legitimate sources - raised by the People's Movement of Kosovo, which is the political wing of the resistance movement. There are about 500,000 Kosovan Albanians in Western Europe who send money back home because it funds healthcare for their cousins. However, some of this cash is believed to be siphoned off for the military. As well as diverting charit-able donations from exiled Kosovans, some of the KLA money is thought to come from drug dealing. Sweden is investigating suspicions of a KLA drug connection. "We have intelligence leading us to believe that there could be a connection between drug money and the Kosovo Liberation Army," said Walter Kege, head of the drug enforcement unit in the Swedish police intelligence service. Supporting intelligence has come from other states. "We have yet to find direct evidence, but our experience tells us that the channels for trading hard drugs are also used for weapons," said one Swiss police commander. An official in the Bavarian Interior Ministry also told The Times of a recent fundraising meeting involving some 200 Kosovans in southern Germany. "At the end of the session they raised DM100,000 [about £40,000]." This represents a huge sum for ordinary Kosovans and fuels speculation that apparently legitimate fundraising activities are used to launder dirty money. One Western intelligence report quoted by Berliner Zeitung says that DM900 million has reached Kosovo since the guerrillas began operations and half the sum is said to be illegal drug money. In particular, European countries are investigating the Albanian connection: whether Kosovan Albanians living primarily in Germany and Switzerland are creaming off the profits from inner-city heroin dealing and sending the cash to the KLA. Albania - which plays a key role in channelling money to the Kosovans - is at the hub of Europe's drug trade. An intelligence report which was prepared by Germany's Federal Criminal Agency concluded: "Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries." Europol, which is based in The Hague, is preparing a report for European interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and Albanian drug gangs. Police in the Czech Republic recently tracked down a Kosovo Albanian drug dealer named Doboshi who had escaped from a Norwegian prison where he was serving 12 years for heroin trading. A raid on Doboshi's apartment turned up documents linking him with arms purchases for the KLA. Police sources in Germany have made plain their suspicions: the sudden ascendancy of Kosovan Albanians in the heroin trade in Switzerland, Germany and Scandinavia coincides with the sudden growth of the KLA from a ragamuffin peasants' army two years ago to a 30,000-strong force equipped with grenade launchers, anti-tank weapons and AK47s. 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