PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro - Ramush Haradinaj's past finally caught up with him on Tuesday when the hero of the Kosovo Albanian separatist struggle resigned as prime minister to face the UN war crimes court at The Hague.
Serbian authorities have long accused the guerrilla commander turned prime minister of widespread atrocities during the 1998-1999 war in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, which he sees as the seat of a new Kosovo Albanian "nation".
But Haradinaj has dismissed the allegations as nothing more than Serbian lies and propaganda, despite outstanding war crimes charges against him in a Serbian court and a new, as yet unveiled, indictment from The Hague.
"I want to tell you that I am innocent of all the crimes of which I am accused," the hardline Kosovo Albanian nationalist said in a statement released after he announced his resignation on Tuesday.
He said he would "cooperate with international justice" for the sake of Kosovo's future, but warned that the international community had blundered by treating "freedom fighters and aggressors in the same way".
"Everything that has been prepared against me is the result of the inventions of Belgrade and the horse-trading that some quarters have engaged in with Belgrade to ensure the transfer of Serb criminals (to The Hague)," he said.
Haradinaj is also wanted by Belgrade on 108 counts of alleged war crimes against Serb civilians during the war in the southern Serbian province, which is now under UN and NATO administration.
The former rebel leader swapped his camouflage fatigues for a suit and tie shortly after a NATO bombing campaign forced Serbian forces to withdraw from the province in 1999.
His followers have an almost fanatical devotion to the man they see as a hero of the struggle against Serbian oppression, but his Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) polical party had struggled to gain widespread support amid allegations of his involvement in organised crime.
Former comrade-in-arms Hashim Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosovo had the upper hand over Haradinaj until general elections last October, when the AAK was asked to form a coalition government with the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), headed by pacifist President Ibrahim Rugova.
When he was nominated for prime minister, European Union foreign affairs chief Javier Solana said a former rebel leader under investigation for war crimes may not be the "most appropriate" man to lead Kosovo.
Haradinaj became involved in politics in 1990 while working as a joiner, nightclub bouncer and martial arts trainer in Switzerland. He had moved there a year earlier after the Yugoslav regime in Belgrade stripped Kosovo and its ethnic Albanian majority of their autonomy.
In 1998 he came back to join the armed insurrection, and took command of Kosovo Liberation Army's (KLA) Dukagjin zone, which controlled the frontier with Albania. During the fighting he lost two of his three brothers, but won a reputation for military prowess.
After the war the demilitarised KLA was transformed into the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), a civil defence militia, and Haradinaj became its second-in-command, leaving his brother Daut to control his old zone.
In May 2000 he was injured in a scuffle with a Russian peacekeeper who was attempting to seize illegal weapons from his car at a checkpoint. Then in July came the incident which could have cost him his life, and made a mockery of his polished image.
Returning from a party in the early hours of the morning, Haradinaj, Daut and members of Daut's KPC unit drove up to the home of the Musaj clan, longstanding family rivals.
What happened next is not clear, but UN police described it as "an exchange of fire" and both Ramush and Daut were injured by a grenade. Ramush was treated in a US Army hospital in Germany before returning to Kosovo a chastened man.
03/08/2005 14:42 GMT