The prisoners included Vlastimir Aleksic and Dragan Javanovic who were charged with genocide and Dariga Peica who was charged with war crimes, UNMIK spokeswoman Claire Trevena said.

Ms. Trevena said the prisoners were all in one room and there were police officers in the hallway and outside the building. There is an internal investigation, she added.

UNMIK Regional Administrator, Mr. William Nash, has called a meeting with the police commissioner of the region to review the security, she said.

Ms. Trevena said UNMIK police are also investigating an apparent armed robbery in which masked men stopped a team of customs officers and took away "a substantial amount of money".

A Roma family of three, deported from the German province of Lower Saxony on Thursday, told UNHCR upon arrival at Pristina airport they feared for their safety in Kosovo, UNHCR spokesman, Ron Redmond, said. The family, which claims to have lived in Germany since 1992 and had nowhere to go in Kosovo, was temporarily accommodated in a UNHCR transit centre in Pristina.

"UNHCR opposes forcible returns to Kosovo of all ethnic minority members who could face danger upon return," Mr. Redmond said.

The deportation comes one day after three Roma were killed and one wounded by a booby trap planted at their house in a village south of Pristina, an attack which highlights the volatile situation of Kosovo's remaining Roma population, Mr. Redmond said.

On Thursday, UNHCR had sent a letter to the Lower Saxony Interior Minister on Thursday in an attempt to prevent the deportation of the Roma. In previous contacts with UNHCR officials, the German authorities have repeatedly said they would refrain from sending back minority members against their will, but sporadic deportations of minority members continue, he said.

In April, the head of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Dr. Bernard Kouchner, sent an open letter to European States, asking them to suspend any return of ethnic minorities because of the ongoing insecurity in the territory.

Mr. Redmond said a member of Kosovo's Gorani community was also deported from Lower Saxony on Thursday. The man, whose entire family was left behind in Germany, also expressed concern about his safety. Kosovo's tiny Gorani community is concentrated in the Dragas area near Prizren.

In a statement issued after today's meeting, the IAC said each of the acts of violence is under investigation and that no effort would be spared until the perpetrators are brought to justice."

The statement said although this violence came in a period of relative calm in Kosovo, it serves as "a dark reminder" that intolerance against minority communities, vigilante justice, and now perhaps political intimidation, continue to undermine Kosovo's peace and threaten its future.

"The IAC finds this vision intolerable and unacceptable," the statement continued.

Three of those murdered on Wednesday were members of one Roma family. A young Kosovo Albanian couple was murdered in an ambush while driving outside Peja. A 15-year-old boy was shot and killed in Magura village near Lipjan. In addition, there have been attacks on political activists.

A special unit has been established under the head of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Dr. Bernard Kouchner, to look into political violence and try to find ways to contain it, UNMIK spokeswoman Claire Trevena told correspondents today in Pristina.

"We are extremely concerned about political violence now and as we approach the elections," she said. "These elections and the campaign should be free of crime and carried out in a peaceful manner."

Giving details on two of the incidents, UNMIK police said three members of a Roma family were killed last night, apparently by an improvised explosive device set up outside their house in the village of Mali Alas, some 30 kilometres south-west of Pristina. A fourth member of the family was slightly injured.

In the second incident, a 15-year-old Albanian boy was shot dead in an attack in the village of Magura, seven kilometres west of Lipljan, in which a second man was also wounded. The boy, reported to have been shot four times in the chest, died of his wounds at the scene of the attack.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the international peacekeeping force, KFOR said it had arrested four suspects in connection with the shooting of a representative of the Kosovo Democratic League (LDK) last night in the Poljance area.

Ms. Vjosa Dobruna, a Kosovar co-head of the Department, which expects to play the central role in overseeing the implementation of the regulation, said experts have hailed the draft regulation as "one of the best draft regulations." "We hope to sign it very soon, " she said.

Robert Pulver, the UNMIK co-head, said the department was aware that women and children were being brought across international boundaries, including the boundaries of Kosovo, for exploitation. "And there needs to be specific legislation to address the situation and to hold criminally responsible perpetrators of that sort of crime, " he said.

Mr. Pulver said the department is working to establish a foundation for a future democratic Kosovo and the department has also been active in providing advice in the process to promote the values of human rights, equal opportunities and democratic governance.

The newly established department has already established three bureaus -- on human rights, equal opportunity and democratic governance -- and two offices on media and non-governmental organizations development and support, said Ms Dobruna.

The two co-heads were briefing the media on the work of the department, which is one of the 20 departments of the new Joint Interim Administrative Structure.

Mr. Ivanovic's participation follows the Committee's facilitating of the first organized return of 29 Serbs to the territory last week, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) said in a press release issued in Pristina.

Mr. Ivanovic joins Dragan Velic of the Serb National Council in Gracanica who has been working with UNMIK, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and KFOR, the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, in the JCR.

William Nash, UNMIK's regional administrator for Mitrovica, where the largest group of the estimated 100,000 Serbs who remain in Kosovo live, expressed the hope that Mr. Ivanovic's participation would bring renewed energy to the programme of returning all people to their homes throughout Kosovo.

"The return of the Serbs is one of the main questions in need of resolution," said Mr. Ivanovic after the meeting. "We are pushing very hard to a good resolution."

While security is a factor in whether people can return to Kosovo, other serious concerns raised include the state of the houses and whether water or electricity are provided. Mr. Ivanovic named three sites which he would like Serbs, now living in Serbia, to visit in order to assess whether they can return there. The Committee is also looking at the return of people to villages in Gnjilane area and in the regions around Pristina and Prizren. The exact locations are kept confidential because of concern about security.