PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, May 26 (AFP) - The West has acted on the Kosovo issue "like a bull in a china shop," according to the former political representative of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), Adem Demaci. "NATO first said it will not send ground troops (into Kosovo), and then they started bombing. Thus it allowed the other (Serb) side to carry on," Demaci told reporters including an AFP correspondent in Pristina late Tuesday. "When the strikes started, I believed they would not last longer than several days. But Serbia has held out for two months," he noted. Demaci, nicknamed the Mandela of Kosovo for having spent 28 years in prison under the former communist regime in Yugoslavia, broke away from the KLA just before the abortive Rambouillet talks began in February. It had been a mistake by the West to "negotiate in the place of the Serbs and the Albanians," Demaci said. "If the United States wants to be the guarantor (of an accord), that is good. But there should be a Serb on one side of the table and an Albanian on the other," he said. "The West came to help, but they acted badly, like a bull in a china shop." Now NATO was seeking to avoid being shamed, while the Serbs venged themselves on the Albanians and there was a general settling of scores, Demaci said. He also criticized the Kosovo Albanian moderate leader Ibrahim Rugova saying he "accepted any kind of an accord" with Belgrade. Only now that he had gone abroad was Rugova saying he had been not been a free man in Kosovo. "In fact, (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic is cunning and has managed to sow discord among the Albanians," Demaci said.  