AN archivist from Preston is to travel to Kosovo in a bid to salvage what is left of the war-torn province's records.

Bruce Jackson, who is Lancashire County Council's archivist, will make the 10-day trip in November to help preserve as many records as possible - and log exactly what has gone missing during clashes between Serbs and Ethnic Albanians and the NATO bombing campaign.

Bruce was invited to Kosovo by the International Council for Archives (ICA).

He said: "The trip will be interesting to say the least because we need a fair amount of support on the ground.

"It's not like a guy going into a museum to establish what artifacts are missing - we'll be looking at documents and need to be able to understand them. "I'll be travelling with a Polish archivist and he can speak the languages needed in the area."

"There have been lots of allegations of deliberate damage to the archives by both sides.

"The Serbians and the Croatians both want to prove that they have been in the province the longest - the nearest British equivalent is the situation in Northern Ireland."

Despite the friction in the area between the communities, Bruce is not worried about safety in the slightest - with more than 35,000 NATO peace-keeping troops in the region, he sees no reason to be afraid.

"The problems are between the ethnic communities there," he said, "but you do have to be careful.

"There is a problem with unexploded bombs from the NATO campaign and we may be asked to go into Serbia to look at two archives which they claim were destroyed by NATO.

"But at the moment, we don't know what to expect at all.

"We'll be looking at government records and others relating to family life - possibly dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries, the end of the Turkish Empire."

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