Former American diplomat says KLA never managed to have a unified army structure

Byrne's assessment came during the answers to Wessel's lawyer, Ben Emmerson.

As for Wessel's role, he said his post was like the foreign minister who had to communicate with internationals and was part of a group working in the diaspora.

I just realized he was part of this group. The group of people you work in the diaspora, mainly in Switzerland. Xhavit Haliti was one of many other target persons who the LPK leadership had decided to return to the region in order to seize these opportunities in some form to create certain leadership, political leadership. Regional police guidance. So basically this was our” analysis, he said.

Byrnes said that of those who, according to him, were disobedient, tried to create a consistent army that could be controlled and represented.

“We believed and tried to get these disobedient people out of this militia to create a consistent army, exactly an army that was able to be controlled but also represented by them in front of the international community”, he said.

While for the KLA as a whole, it confirmed that there is essentially a group of disobedient persons led by the commanders of the areas who had very little control by the General Staff.

“Yes. But I'm going to add something that is actually my analysis that I may have enriched with information I've received after the war by people who knew more than I knew, people in the area who knew more than I knew. I'm referring to these as the militia areas. They had different relations with the UCK headquarters of the 64x1>, Byrnes said.

He said these relations depended on the resources the areas had, reports the “Justice Trust”.

These relations depended on resources, especially I have been told, and even some of my colleagues have been told that the commanders of areas like Ramush Haradinaj, Remi in the Llap area that they had their own resources. They had self - financing coming from donors. I don't know who these guys were from, but they had guns in the Llap area. Especially, Remi and his deputy, Nuredin Ibishi, told us that they bought weapons from a colonel in Nis. Some of the other areas did not have the same opportunities. Whether because of their geographic location or they had no donor funding. So the wealthy areas were more independent and more breakaway from the General Staff”, he said.

He claimed that the dual function felt there was this group in which Wessel was also involved had been sent to Kosovo to establish a central command structure that was never achieved and depended more on areas.

I would say that by March 1999, at least this thing went to work”, the witness said.

Byrnes for Kadri Wessel: There was a mystery person, we were told he was respected in the ranks of the KLA.