The report "Kosovo and the Gun" was carried out by the UN's Development Program (UNDP) and Swiss-based Small Arms Survey (SAS).

The report says up to 460,000 firearms were in civilian hands in Kosovo, four years since the province with two million inhabitants came under UN and NATO control after the 1998-99 war.

UNDP's Kosovo head, Robert Piper said the presence of such a large quantity of illegal weapons has "impeded development in Kosovo."

The report gives information about the "prevalence and types of weapons in the territory, who owns them, their routes of entry into the region, and public attitudes about their presence," Piper said in a statement.

Most common weapons are pistols and assault rifles, firearms most frequently associated with crime in the UN-administrated province.

"An estimated 72 percent of all reported murders in 2002 in Kosovo were committed with small arms," the report says.

Small arms were trafficked primarily from neighbouring Albania and Serbia, it said, adding the trade is "relatively small in comparison with other Balkan states."

Kosovo came under UN and NATO control in 1999 after a NATO air war against Yugoslavia ended a brutal crackdown by Serbian forces on the ethnic-Albanian majority in the province.

According to the UN police here, the murder rate in the volatile province is at a four-year low, although the legacy of the 1998-99 war still persists.

The report identifies the holders of illicit weapons as being "criminal actors, businessmen and ex-combatants", adding that firearms were prevalent "in rural and semi-rural areas, rather than urban centres."

"Small arms tend to be stored indoors in purpose-built caches, or buried outdoors relatively close to households," the reports said.

It will be followed by a public-awareness campaign aimed at changing attitudes to weapons.

According to NATO-led peackeepers some 18,000 weapons have been destroyed since the end of the war, 4,500 in the last two years.

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