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October 14, 1999
Web posted at: 12:44 p.m. EDT (1644 GMT)

In this story: 'Revenge is not the answer' RELATED STORIES, SITES

PEC, Kosovo (CNN) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrapped up a two-day trip to Kosovo Thursday, calling the reconstruction efforts he saw "a miracle" after the devastation of recent months.

"What I have seen gives me a great deal of encouragement," Annan said after touring Pec, a southern city devastated by an 18-month Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians. "... It was not more than a few months ago that I saw the refugees in Albania, in Macedonia, so to come in and to see what was happening was almost like a miracle of return and rebirth."

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Tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians fled the province to escape the Serb crackdown, and returned when NATO's 78-day war against Yugoslavia forced President Slobodan Milosevic to back down.

The return of the ethnic Albanians has caused many Serbs to flee revenge attacks, compromising the United Nations' commitment to and promise of a multiethnic Kosovo.

But Annan stressed that the United Nations was not in Kosovo to ready it for independence.

"The mandate makes it clear that we should administer this territory as an autonomous region but within the boundaries of the former Yugoslav Republic," he said. " ... I know there is the desire and clamor on the part of many people for independence, but that is ... not my mandate. A multiethnic Kosovo is our mandate."

Annan said that the region's leaders must put a stop to ethnic violence by getting the "message across that revenge is not the answer."

On Wednesday, Annan traveled to the Serbian town of Gracanica, where he visited one of the most revered monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Annan also commented on the death of U.N. staffer Valentin Krumov, who was killed on a Pristina street on Monday. Krumov, on his first day at work in Kosovo, was beaten and shot to death when he answered a passerby, who had asked for the time, in the Serbian language.

"He came in search of peace, he came to help reconcile and he gets killed for speaking a language," Annan said. "How do you explain that?"

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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