Tagesnachrichten 24. Juli 1998
von ALBANEWS und anderen
weitere Presse-Meldungen
further press news
Tagesnachrichten 24. Juli 1998
_______________________________________________________________________KOSOVA UPDATE, JULY 24, 1998
___________________________________Taken without permission, for fair use only.
EU Plans Peace Mission to Kosovo
Beatings by Serbians Reported
'Angel of Mostar' on hunger strike
U.S. diplomat: Kosovo crisis needs 'faster ... political track'
___________________________________
Friday July 24 3:07 AM EDTEU Plans Peace Mission to Kosovo
ISMET HAJDARI Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - The European Union has scheduled a peace
mission to Kosovo next week, and the United States said it supports that
effort but has not ruled out military force to stop the months of killing.
"We are prepared to act alone if necessary," Walter Slocombe,
undersecretary of defense for policy, said Thursday following word of the
EU mission. U.S. participation in a NATO operation in the southern Serbian
republic also is possible, he said.
In neighboring Macedonia, NATO's secretary general said the military
alliance continues planning "a wide range of options."
"Our obligation is to be prepared if necessary," said Secretary General
Javier Solana.
Fighting waned in Kosovo on Thursday, but an aide to Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic targeted a top U.S. envoy with verbal salvos. The
unusually harsh criticism was directed at Robert Gelbard by Ivica Dacic,
spokesman for Milosevic's Socialist party. It appeared provoked by
Gelbard's recent meeting with Milosevic's political rivals.
"Robert Gelbard, an accomplice of women and children murderers in Kosovo
and of criminals who kidnap civilians, supports terrorism and terrorist
gangs," Dacic told reporters in Belgrade, capital of both Yugoslavia and
Serbia, Yugoslavia's largest remaining republic. "It is only logical that
he also gathers the (political) scum ... everybody who is against Serbia."
Gelbard has been meeting with Serbian and Yugoslav politicians, the
opposition and ethnic Albanian leaders to negotiate an end to the
escalating conflict that pits Serbian authorities against Albanian
guerrillas seeking Kosovo's independence.
New tragedy appeared to be developing in the aftermath of a major battle in
the central town of Orahovac, where Serb forces drove out separatist Kosovo
Albanian fighters in five days of fighting that began last week.
Thousands of refugees were flooding the nearby town of Malisevo, creating
alarming shortages of food, drinking water and other necessities, local
Albanian media said.
Serbs and Kosovo Albanians accused each other Thursday of summary
executions, beatings and other atrocities during the fierce fighting for
Orahovac. With areas around the town inaccessible because of road blocks
put up by both sides, it's difficult to assess the conflicting reports.
Kosovo, a southern province in Serb-led Yugoslavia, has a population of 2
million people - 90 percent of them ethnic Albanians, who want independence
from Milosevic's regime. Hundreds of people have been killed since
Milosevic started a crackdown on Albanian militants in late February.
___________________________________Beatings by Serbians Reported
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 24, 1998; Page A27PRIZREN, Yugoslavia, July 23 – Selahudin, 49, an ethnic Albanian, lifted
his shirt to display bloody wounds and dark bruises, as he described
repeated beatings over the past three days by Serbian police who wanted to
know which Albanians had fired on the Serbs during a four-day battle for
control of the city of Orahovac.
Selahudin's experience suggests that even though the battle ended Monday in
victory for the Serbs, their security authorities are still trying to find
and punish supporters of the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group known as the
Kosovo Liberation Army.
It will be a daunting task, since virtually all of the ethnic Albanians who
compose 90 percent of the population in Kosovo – a province of Serbia,
Yugoslavia's dominant republic – support the guerrillas' aim of winning
independence.
The accounts given today by Selahudin and two other ethnic Albanians who
said they had just been released by the police were nearly identical: They
were detained with several hundred other men in Orahovac and brought by
truck to the police and fire station here in Prizren, about 15 miles to the
south, where officials examined their shoulders for bruises from the kick
of a rifle, and their arms for telltale powder burns.
Most of the men were released, but an unknown number are still detained in
uncertain conditions, the three men said. Under Yugoslav criminal
procedures, the government has no obligation to provide information on the
status of those who have been detained – or even acknowledge the detention
– before they are formally prosecuted.
Selahudin – who asked that his last name not be revealed out of fear of
retribution – said the bruises on his arms and legs came from being kicked,
and the bloody wounds on the top of his head, ear, lip and back were blows
from a truncheon. Police yelled "Kosovo is ours" while he was beaten, and
other men suffered broken teeth and noses, he said. He and another ethnic
Albanian, Xhevded, 44, said they had been handcuffed with five other men
for 10 hours to an electrical utility pole near a Serbian police garrison
in Orahovac and used as human shields against a nighttime guerrilla attack.
Their account, like many of the vivid allegations circulating here in the
battle's aftermath, was impossible to verify independently. But
international monitors here to examine the growing tension between ethnic
Albanians and the Serbs who control key government institutions are already
looking into these and other charges of human rights abuses in and around
Orahovac.
Questions are being raised over fresh graves in an ethnic Albanian cemetery
on the outskirts of Prizren, the chief municipality in southeastern Kosovo.
Ten grave markers have been placed in mounds of dirt at the cemetery, with
the names of Orahovac residents on six, according to ethnic Albanian
sources. But four of the markers display only the numbers 1, 4, 8 and 10.
Several witnesses produced photos they took clandestinely of the Wednesday
afternoon burial in response to calls from neighbors alarmed by the
presence of Serbian security personnel at the site. The pictures show a
yellow backhoe used to dig a hole roughly 45 feet wide and 20 feet long but
do not indicate how deep the hole was, nor whether it contained more than
10 bodies, as several witnesses alleged.
Suspicions about the burial were fanned in part because preparation of the
graves ceased when international monitors arrived on the scene Wednesday
morning and resumed as soon as they departed. Serbian officials initially
told the visitors they were widening a road.
Western officials who visited Orahovac and Bela Crkva, a nearby village
where fighting was particularly fierce, have said they do not believe the
Serbian claim that only a few dozen people died in the battle.
Ethnic Albanian witnesses had reported that just a few hours before foreign
reporters were allowed into the city on Wednesday, tractors picked up
corpses and carted them to an unknown site. That account could not be
confirmed.
Meanwhile, in a sign that local Serbian authorities have consolidated their
control in Orahovac, the Yugoslav government announced today that water,
electrical power and telephone service have been restored there. It also
renewed an appeal to the estimated 15,000 citizens who fled to return to
their homes.© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
___________________________________BBC
Friday, July 24, 1998 Published at 11:09 GMT 12:09 UK'Angel of Mostar' on hunger strike
A British aid worker has gone on hunger strike in prison in the Serbian
province of Kosovo protesting against the conflict in the area.
Sally Becker said her hunger strike was "in protest over the conflict" in
Kosovo, in which, she said, "women and children were being killed".
A member of her charity, Operation Angel, in Britain, Brian Johnston, said
that although there were concerns for her health he supported her decision
to go on hunger strike.
"She is doing it because it is atrocious out there," he said.
Sally Becker is known to sympathisers as the Angel of Mostar, because of
her freelance missions to the city of Mostar, in 1993, during the Bosnian
War.Justice minister visit
Serbian news agencies say the Serbian Justice Minister, Dragoljub Jankovic,
and reporters had visited Ms Becker in prison.
According to reports, Ms Becker made no complaints about her treatment in
prison.Smuggling refugees
Sally Becker is serving a one-month sentence for illegally crossing the
Yugoslav border with Albania and for having links with the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA).
She was arrested while trying to smuggle a family of ethnic Albanian
refugees from Kosovo to Albania.
She said the family was desperate and "no-one would help them."
According to reports, she said that she did not know the area she was in
was "so sensitive, because 15,000 refugees escaped through that zone and
nothing happened to them".
The Serbian authorities say she co-operated with KLA members in order to
get the family across the border.
A BBC correspondent in Pristina says Ms Becker was arrested when her party
exchanged fire with the Yugoslav army forces.
To his understanding, he says, there were KLA members in Sally Becker's
party.
Our correspondent says that it is very unusual for aid agencies to link up
with either side.
Mrs Becker has appealed against her sentence and is being represented in
court by the ethnic-Albanian former Communist leader of Kosovo, Azem
Vllasi.
___________________________________CNN
U.S. diplomat: Kosovo crisis needs 'faster ... political track'
July 23, 1998
Web posted at: 4:54 p.m. EDT (1654 GMT)PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- Western diplomats on Thursday warned the
international community that time is running out to find a political
solution to the crisis in Kosovo and keep Albania from being dragged into
the conflict.
Five days of fierce fighting between Serbian troops and the Kosovo
Liberation Army, which is battling for the province's independence, is
"further proof that we simply have to get moving faster on the political
track," Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, told CNN on
Thursday.
Hill is scheduled on Friday to resume his shuttle diplomacy between Serbian
President Slobodan Milosevic and Ibrahim Rugova, the leader of Kosovo's
self-styled government.
"What really needs to be done is to find a negotiated settlement in
Kosovo," Hill said. "Neither side is capable of delivering a knockout punch
to the other and we simply have to find a way to get them to the table and
negotiate."
Hill also warned that Albania desperately needs military aid to avoid being
sucked into the conflict north of its border.
Albania, with a weak government and poor population, is at risk of becoming
a rear base for the KLA, Hill warned. Depriving the KLA access to Albania
could slow its buildup of weapons and dampen its perception that a victory
over Serbia is in sight.
Meanwhile in Austria, a team of senior diplomats from the 54- nation
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said Thursday
that a "total lack of trust" existed between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in
Kosovo. The team of U.S., Russian, Austrian, German, Polish, Norwegian and
Danish diplomats returned to Vienna on Wednesday after completing a
weeklong visit to Yugoslavia.Milosevic refuses permanent OSCE mission
The OSCE team's report also said the group failed to persuade Milosevic's
government to allow a permanent OSCE diplomatic mission to return to the
province.
Milosevic stuck by his demand that Yugoslavia's membership to OSCE be
restored before he would accept the permanent mission or mediation that has
been offered by Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez.
Yugoslavia's membership to OSCE was suspended in 1992 for allegedly
inciting Serb uprisings in the former republics of Croatia and Bosnia.
On Thursday, the Vienna newspaper, The Standard, reported that Milosevic
had advised the European Union that he would soon announce he would be
prepared to raise Kosovo's legal status from a Serbian province to a full
republic within the Yugoslav federation.
That would give Kosovo equal footing with Serbia and Montenegro.
But the Kosovars who advocate independence say they will accept nothing
less.
The EU on Thursday said it would send a trio of high-ranking officials to
Belgrade and Pristina, the Kosovo capital, to express its concern for the
deteriorating situation. The EU did not announce a date for the mission,
but said the delegates would come from Britain, Austria and Germany -- the
former, current and next EU presidencies.Smoldering Orahovac
The fallout from the five-day battle, which ended Wednesday, was still
being assessed as Orahovac -- now a ghost town -- still smoldered.
The International Red Cross on Thursday said 20,000 people -- roughly the
entire population -- had fled Orahovac. The refugees include hundreds of
Serbs who ended up in outlying villages, officials said.
Most of the refugees poured into Malisevo, a rebel-held village in central
Kosovo, severely straining food and medical supplies.
The refugees also tell tales of atrocities -- blaming both Serb and ethnic
Albanian fighters for victimizing them.
The Red Cross said the KLA had handed over 35 Serbs, including a nun and
seven monks.
In Pristina, Kosovo's underground parliament released a declaration saying
that it was still possible to reach a peaceful settlement with Serbia and
that the province seemed to be slipping into a full-blown war.
"Kosovo is now drifting (toward) a war which may turn much bloodier and
devastating. These are decisive times for Kosovo and its future," the
declaration read.
Since February, at least 440 people have died in the battle for Kosovo's
independence. More than 300 others are missing.
On Wednesday, Hill had lengthy talks on the situation with NATO
Secretary-General Javier Solana.
Solana told reporters that officials are hopeful that efforts to negotiate
and end to the crisis would "produce some fruit."
But, he added: "Time is a very important factor."The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
TRANSCRIPT: WHITE HOUSE DAILY BRIEFING, JULY
22, 1998
EXCERPTS
(Domestic travel, Daryl Jones/Air Force, Middle East, Mowlam/Northern Ireland, grant announcements, Republican tax cut proposal, IMF funding/policies, King Hussein/illness, fast track, Cyprus, President's schedule, drug interdiction, Kosovo, Romania/NATO, China) (6320)
White House Spokesman Mike McCurry briefed.
Following is the White House transcript:
(begin transcript)
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
July 22, 1998
PRESS BRIEFING BY MIKE MCCURRY
The Briefing Room
EXCERPTS
........
Q: Mike, could you just say what's going on in Kosovo -- I mean, our diplomatic efforts to try to settle that situation --is there anything new to report?
MCCURRY: Well, I have not talked about in a while, so let me refresh myself.
Q: The Serbs claim to have just taken back a town --
MCCURRY: There has been a lot of back-and-forth
on the ground. And as a general proposition, the Serb law enforcement and
military units have tried to reinforce positions that they had that were
overrun by a somewhat more effective fighting force now presenting itself
from the Kosovar Albanian factions. We had a discussion -- we had a question
earlier about the discussions that we had with Secretary General Solana
earlier. The President and Sandy Berger both had an opportunity to review
with him some of the contingency planning that has been undertaken by NATO
military authorities, which is there as a further option if diplomatic
efforts are not conducive to producing any kind of effective dialogue between
the factions.
We have been working
along, obviously, these two tracks -- intensive diplomacy backed by sanctions
-- to try to craft a political solution and planning at NATO in the event
that military contingencies need to be explored. We continue to hold Milosevic
primarily responsible for the violence there. It is clearly the machinations
of Belgrade that has produced the highest order of conflict that has occurred
there. His brutal suppression over many years and continued refusal to
take necessary steps towards peace led to this situation. And I think that
history shows that there's a pattern there that would be enough to hold
him responsible.
But the situation is
very volatile. There is obviously provocations that occur from those who
are fighting on the other side as well. We have been trying to identify
those within the Kosovar Albania movement that are interested in a dialogue
that would lead to a peaceful resolution of these differences so that no
more innocent civilians and no more lives will be spent in the name of
a conflict that just adds further to the tensions that already exist in
the Balkans.
Q: But, Mike, how is the fact that the conflict there is less one-sided that it once was, how has that affected NATO's contingency plan? I mean, for a while you seemed poised to do something, and then all of a sudden things got more complicated.
MCCURRY: I think that's an assessment that good
military planning has to take into account, is what are the different outcomes
that would exist if there was any kind of military intervention. And the
one outcome that is to be avoided is the appearance of taking sides on
behalf of one fighting faction or another. The purpose was to repel clearly
a demonstration of aggression that was emanating from one side. You would
not want to have the effect of lending support to those who were calling
for a political outcome that we don't endorse -- i.e., the independence
of Kosovo.
...
Q: The President of Romania said on his visit
last week that Romania now is prepared to become a member of NATO. However,
Romania is performing very poorly -- for instance, with comparison with,
for instance, Slovakia, which was excluded from the first wave of enlargement.
My question is, what is it that makes Romania one of the top candidates
for the next wave of enlargement?
MCCURRY: Well, the performance of its economy
is a measure of the degree to which Romania has committed itself to a path
of reform and of democratization, of economic modernization, in particular.
And that is welcome. It is one of the signs that countries are moving in
the direction of preparing themselves for membership in the institutions
of the West and including the institutions of military security, such as
NATO.
We took the position
in the meetings with the President that we, too, believe that Romania is
an excellent candidate for membership and that we would do everything we
could, unilaterally, as the United States, to help prepare Romania for
membership, because our view is that the door is open to Romania for potential
membership in NATO. But the criteria by which a candidate member is evaluated
is very clear and reflects the judgments that have been made by all the
members of the Alliance, and they go to the performance of countries within
their Partnership For Peace roles, how they develop as they modernize their
own military forces, as they become more interoperable with NATO through
the work that they do in the Partnership For Peace, and how effectively
the Alliance judges their suitability for future membership in the Alliance
-- whether or not they're able to carry out the commitments that exist.
And we judge very optimistically
the potential for Romania, but we also acknowledge that we haven't reached
the point where we can move towards granting membership at this point.
....
Taken without permission, for fair use only.
Chances remote for peaceful Kosovo solution- WEU
EU to mediate in Kosovo crisis
Kosovo Town Is Destroyed So the Serbs Could Save
It
US Keeps Kosovo Military Option
Internat'l Kosovo Mediation Urged
Kosovo Albanians Charge Serb Crimes
Refugees stream out of Kosovo town
Eleven Kosovo Albanians indicted for terrorism
KLA fighters train openly in northern Albanian
town
Kosovo assembly sees faint hope of dialogue
Kosovo guerrillas' "rear base" in NATO sights
___________________________________
Chances remote for peaceful Kosovo solution- WEU
08:58 a.m. Jul 23, 1998 Eastern
PARIS, July 23 (Reuters) - The Assembly of the
Western European Union (WEU) said on Thursday that chances for a peaceful
settlement in Kosovo were minimal because of the international community's
failure to intervene at the start of the conflict.
"The international community
has lost its capacity to take initiative in the quest for a peaceful solution
to the problem of Kosovo. The situation is deteriorating so fast that the
chances of a peaceful settlement have by now become minute," it said in
a statement.
The WEU Assembly sounded
its warning after a fact-finding mission by its Political Committee in
Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and Kosovo's
border zone from July 14 to 21.
An estimated 440 people
have died and some 76,000 have been forced from their homes in the five-month-old
conflict in which the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) has been fighting for
the independence of Kosovo, an Albanian majority province of Serbia.
The WEU Assembly said
Serb forces were applying a strategy of "systematic cleansing" of the border
zone between Kosovo and Albania and several towns were surrounded by heavy
weaponry.
It had also received
information indicating that the Albanian border was extensively mined.
"These recent developments
have caused a strong and rapid radicalisation of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian
population," it said.
It added that support
for Ibrahim Rugova, leader of the ethnic Albanian Kosovars, was dwindling
fast while the KLA was gaining influence, helped by the constant flow of
armed fighters from Albania.
The KLA would have to
be included in any negotiations on the future status of Kosovo, even though
it did not yet have a political structure, the Assembly said.
It called for an increase
in the number of international observers in Kosovo, and urged that a "strong
and well equipped" international force be sent to Kosovo's borders with
Albania and FYROM to prevent the influx of weapons and an escalation of
the violence.
Yugoslavia said on Wednesday
it was widening the restricted security strip along Kosovo's border with
Albania to better fight ethnic Albanian guerrillas crossing into the rebel
Serbian province.
Also on Wednesday, the
Albanian government said shells from the fighting landed on its territory
for the second time in four days. It has accused Serbia of threatening
its sovereignty.
Western diplomats fear
the conflict will spread across the Yugoslav Albanian border, but calls
by the Contact Group for an internationally monitored ceasefire and talks
have been ignored by both sides.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
___________________________________
Thursday, July 23, 1998 Published at 19:07 GMT 20:07 UK
EU to mediate in Kosovo crisis
The European Union says it will send a team of
senior officials to Yugoslavia and Kosovo in an effort to end the fighting
in the Serbian province.
Austrian Foreign Minister
Wolfgang Schluessel, whose country holds the EU presidency said the most
important task would be to ensure that the Yugoslav president, Slobodan
Milosevic, play a constructive part in talks for a peaceful settlement.
No date has been set
yet for the trip.
Yugoslavia has meanwhile
announced that it will be posting additional troops to the new five-kilometre
border zone between Kosovo and Albania.
The move aims at preventing
infiltrations by ethnic Albanian rebels.
And unconfirmed reports
from Kosovo say thousands of refugees from the town of Orahovac -- recpatured
by Yugoslav troops on Wednesday -- have been arriving in a village (Malisevo)
controlled by the Kosovo Liberation Army.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
___________________________________
Kosovo Town Is Destroyed So the Serbs Could
Save It
Charred Homes, Shops Mark Melancholy Battle
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 23, 1998; Page A21
ORAHOVAC, Yugoslavia, July 22—Serbian military
officers today celebrated their victory in a four-day battle with ethnic-Albanian
insurgents for control of this once thriving city of 20,000 people, but
the hundreds of blasted, looted or burned-out homes and shops here suggest
that all sides have lost, especially the residents.
Many houses were burned
to the ground, and scores more lack roofs and windows. Dead farm animals
lay on the main roads, and the reason that only a single human corpse could
be seen today was that tractors had moved through the city this morning
to pick up bodies and take them away, according to witnesses.
The scale of destruction
was so great that years of repair work and an enormous sum of money will
be needed to overcome what machine guns, mortars, grenades and tank cannons
wrought in just a few days during one of the fiercest battles of the five-month
conflict between Serbian forces and separatist ethnic-Albanian guerrillas.
Considerable psychic
healing also will be needed to repair the bitterness and ill will between
Serbs and ethnic Albanians who once lived in relative harmony here.
Behije and Bashkin Hadje,
an ethnic Albanian couple who were 25 and 35 years old, appear to have
been among scores -- and possibly hundreds -- of people killed in the fighting.
Their identification papers were lying in a bag of clothing spilled on
the ground near a large bloodstain on one of this hillside city's steep
sidewalks, surrounded by 10 pairs of shoes and other personal belongings.
According to Capt. Milan
Sipko, a Serbian police commander, the battle was waged "to liberate the
town" from members of an insurgent group known as the Kosovo Liberation
Army, which on Friday attempted to seize control of it. The guerrillas
are demanding that Kosovo -- a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant
republic -- be given independence, a goal supported by virtually all of
the ethnic Albanians who compose 90 percent of Kosovo's population.
The guerrilla group's
attempt to expand its power base from small villages into urban centers
that have no Serbian military posts -- such as Orahovac -- failed completely.
"There are still remaining [guerrilla] snipers in the area, but the core
of the city to the left and the right is clear as far as we know," Sipko
said as he waved toward the downtown past a series of smashed shops.
Sipko said two policemen
and four Serbian civilians were killed in the fighting and nine policemen
wounded. He did not estimate how many Albanians died. But human rights
officials in the city of Prizren, about 15 miles south of here, reported
that Serbian security personnel today buried some of the Albanians who
died in the battle in mass graves at a local cemetery while barring international
monitors and local political activists from reaching the site.
Both the Kosovo Liberation
Army and the Serbian police appear to have resorted to kidnappings and
mass detentions in the fighting. Sipko said the Serbs had detained 223
people on suspicion of involvement with the guerrillas.
Sipko said most were
subsequently released and only 26 remain in jail. But this claim was challenged
by independent human rights experts in Prizren, who said that more than
100 men are still imprisoned at the city's fire station and that several
of those who were released had been beaten during interrogation.
The Kosovo Liberation
Army, which gambled here by trying to hold out against vastly superior
Serbian firepower, today released to the Red Cross 35 Serbs it had captured
at a monastery at the edge of the city and interrogated at a rebel command
post Malisevo, to the northeast. The group included eight Serbian Orthodox
priests who the rebels said were all armed at the time of their capture.
Most of the city's residents
have fled, adding more than 15,000 people to Kosovo's already heavy burden
of more than 200,000 people made homeless in the conflict.
There has been no electricity,
water or telephone service in Orahovac since the fighting began Friday,
leaving those who stayed behind in dire condition. In the basement of one
house on the city's northern slope, 20 children under the age of 5 huddled
in darkness this afternoon, awaiting their first drink of fresh water in
five days. In the courtyard of another family compound, an elderly woman
waited in a small shed, too weak to seek help.
Many of those who stayed
reported abuses by police after hundreds of guerrillas withdrew from the
city Sunday and Monday, when most of the fighting ended. Several ethnic-Albanian
women who shared the basement with the children reported hearing gunshots
and screams for help from those trapped outside during the final stage
of fighting.
Three ethnic-Albanian
men said they had seen Serbian policemen move through the neighborhood
to set fires or toss grenades into the houses of wealthy residents suspected
of having supported the rebels. Another ethnic Albanian said he peered
down from an attic window Tuesday and saw three carloads of policemen and
armed Serbian civilians stop at a smashed boutique in the city's center
and carry out armloads of clothing.
On the front steps of
the city council building, which was not damaged in the battle, Andeljko
Kolasinac, the city's Serbian mayor, said "fire came down from all sides"
during the guerrilla assault. Before that, he said, "we were in good relations
with Albanians" but that when the fighting began "every house was a sniper
base."
Avni, a 24-year-old
ethnic Albanian man who stayed in the city, crossed his arms and shook
his head when asked if he was angry at the guerrillas for having provoked
the fighting. "No comment," he said.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
___________________________________
Thursday July 23 3:23 PM EDT
US Keeps Kosovo Military Option
LAURA MYERS Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States is "prepared
to act alone" militarily if necessary to end fighting between Serbian troops
and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, U.S. officials told lawmakers Thursday.
The Clinton administration
prefers a diplomatic solution or acting in concert with NATO but has not
ruled out unilateral military action, said Walter Slocombe, undersecretary
of defense for policy.
"We're prepared to act
alone if necessary," Slocombe said when asked at a hearing of the House
International Relations Committee to clarify the U.S. position on Kosovo.
"We haven't ruled it out. But ... there's a distinction between whether
the United States believes it has the legal authority to act alone and
whether it would in fact in a concrete situation actually do so."
Rep. Lee Hamilton of
Indiana, the committee's ranking Democrat, who asked the question, suggested
U.S. allies such as France and Germany believe a mandate is needed from
the U.N. Security Council for military action in the Serbian province.
That would be problematic, Hamilton said, because permanent members China
and Russia could veto any resolution.
Robert Gelbard, the
president's special representative for conflicts in the Balkans, said the
administration believes it needs no approval for any military action from
the United Nations because its charter and international law give the United
States broad authority in cases of defense.
Hamilton noted the Bush
administration's 1992 "Christmas warning" to Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic remains in effect. In that, the United States said it would use
air power if Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant power then trying to quell Bosnia's
independence movement, mounted a similar campaign of ethnic cleansing in
Kosovo.
"There's no question
we maintain that we have the right to act unilaterally," Slocombe said.
"There's a difference
between preparing - in the sense that we're getting ready to do it and
it's our preferred course of action - and saying, `If it came to that,
and that is what our interests required, that's what we're going to do,"'
he said.
Gelbard said the Kosovo
conflict has "entered a new and potentially more dangerous phase" because
Milosevic has refused to stop his forces in the province as the Kosovo
Albanian resistance movement rapidly grows.
"There is no quick fix
for Kosovo," Gelbard said, placing primary blame on Milosevic. "This is
a difficult and complex problem, bred by years of Belgrade's intransigence
and lack of democratic institutions."
Extremist elements of
the resistance, led by the Kosovo Liberation Army, are seeking to secede
from Yugoslavia, which they accuse of abusing the human and political rights
of ethnic Albanians comprising 90 percent of the province's population.
More moderate ethnic Albanian groups also want independence but may settle
for political autonomy, which the Clinton administration supports.
Gelbard accused both
sides of committing atrocities, including kidnapping and murder of civilians.
He said fighting this week in Orahovac, which sent almost all the 20,000
Serb and ethnic Albanian residents to flee, and reports of Serbian shells
falling on Albanian territory "underscore the urgency of the situation
and the regional ramifications of continued conflict."
The Kosovo Liberation
Army "will not be able to shoot its way out of Yugoslavia, but neither
can Belgrade maintain its authority in Kosovo with a nightstick clutched
in an iron hand," Gelbard told lawmakers. "There is no battlefield solution
for either side."
Gelbard demanded that
Milosevic pull back his forces and initiate talks with Kosovo Albanian
leaders for a political settlement and cease-fire as well as other concessions.
Until then, severe political
and economic sanctions will continue, as will a growing threat of military
action, Gelbard said. NATO planning is almost complete, he said.
The United States also
worries about the humanitarian crisis among more than 80,000 people displaced
by fighting and Serbia's having cut off food from ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
So far, the administration
has contributed $24 million to relief efforts. Some lawmakers said frozen
Yugoslav assets should be used.
___________________________________
Thursday July 23 12:56 PM EDT
Internat'l Kosovo Mediation Urged
SLOBODAN LEKIC Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Croatian Foreign Minister Mate
Granic warned today that the ethnic conflict in Kosovo was turning into
an all-out war, and urged NATO intervention if the two sides cannot be
brought to the negotiating table.
"The situation is really
very sensitive in Kosovo and I think it is the last moment to prevent and
to stop further hostilities," Granic said.
Ethnic Albanians, who
make up 90 percent of the 2 million inhabitants in Serbia's southern province,
are fighting for Kosovo's independence. Hundreds of people have died since
fighting erupted earlier this year.
Repeated efforts by
international mediators have failed to stem the combat, which analysts
fear could quickly spread to neighboring Albania and Macedonia.
"We would strongly support
the involvement of the international community, especially NATO, and naturally,
together with the political dialogue, an international mediator in this
dialogue," Granic told reporters a day after meeting Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright.
Croatia fought its own
six-month war against Serb-dominated Yugoslavia in 1991, but relations
have since been normalized. Still, over 200,000 refugees and displaced
people have not yet returned to their homes.
Granic said this was
due to the widespread destruction of housing in areas where fighting had
occurred. He urged the international community to help resolve the refugee
crisis by providing financial aid.
Granic refused to specify
how much his government expected to obtain at a donors conference expected
to be held before the end of the year. But Croatian officials have privately
indicated that $300 million, mostly in long-term loans, would be a realistic
goal.
Croatia has been severely
criticized for not allowing all ethnic Serbs, who fled from the country
after the collapse of their self-proclaimed state, to return.
On Wednesday, Albright
warned Granic that his government's hopes of joining Western institutions
depended in part on the return of the Serbs. The Clinton administration
also wants Croatia to democratize, clean up its human rights record, and
allow greater freedom of the media.
Granic said that 41,000
Serbs, of the 180,000 who fled, have returned over the past two years.
He also noted that over 100,000 Croats were still displaced.
Responding to international
pressure, the Croatian parliament last month adopted a comprehensive program
for the return of refugees. A National Committee on Rebuilding Trust and
Reconciliation also has been established to promote their return and build
confidence in former war-torn areas of the country.
___________________________________
Thursday July 23 2:40 PM EDT
Kosovo Albanians Charge Serb Crimes
ISMET HAJDARI Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Fleeing some of the
worst fighting in weeks, thousands of ethnic Albanians have jammed a rebel-held
village in central Kosovo, severely straining food and medical supplies.
The refugees who have
poured into Malisevo accuse Serbs of atrocities against ethnic Albanian
civilians during the five-day battle for Orahovac. Serbs deny the accusations,
saying horrors were committed, but Serbs were the victims.
The fighting began when
ethnic Albanian rebels attacked the town on Friday, their first major offensive
in the struggle for an independent Kosovo, the southern province in Serb-led
Yugoslavia where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs 9 to 1.
The International Red
Cross said today that 20,000 people - roughly the town's entire population
- had fled the fighting in Orahovac, which ended Wednesday in a guerrilla
retreat. They include hundreds of Serbs who also ended up in outlying villages.
But many, if not most,
of the Albanian refugees fled to Malisevo, a stronghold of the Kosovo Liberation
Army about 10 miles to the northeast.
According to a report
today in the province's Albanian-language daily newspaper Koha Ditore,
13,000 Orahovac refugees ended up there.
The newspaper said a
makeshift hospital has been set up in Malisevo to care for the wounded
but supplies of food, medicine and clothing were rapidly dwindling and
there is no running water.
The village, which had
a population of about 8,000, has been cut off for weeks from normal commerce
because of Serb roadblocks between it and Pristina, the Serb-ruled provincial
capital 30 miles to the northeast.
The Red Cross said it
delivered five tons of flour and more than 1,000 food parcels to Malisevo
in the past few days. The agency also said the KLA had handed over 35 Serbs,
including a nun and seven monks.
One of the released
Serbs, Darinka Misic, 70, from a village near Orahovac, said "armed Albanians
came into the village, killed one villager and loaded seven of us women
and eight men aboard a truck."
She said they were taken
to another village, Suva Reka, where "the men were taken away and beaten.
We heard them scream."
Another group of hostages
- Serbs who had fled fighting in Croatia three years ago - were handed
over Wednesday to the U.N. refugee agency. The Croatian Serbs had been
living in makeshift shelters in the vineyards on the edge of the town.
"The shooting started
Friday afternoon," said one of the Croatian Serbs, Aleksandar Graovac.
"Bullets were hitting our huts, too, and we laid low, without food and
water. We didn't dare go out for three days. There was so much fighting.
I suppose many died."
Similar allegations
of mistreatment were leveled by the Albanians against the Serbs.
The Kosovo Information
Center, close to the province's ethnic Albanian leaders, said 52 Albanian
civilians were killed, including some dragged from their homes and shot.
The ethnic Albanian
Committee for the Defense of Human Rights called Wednesday for an international
investigation, citing witness reports massacres by Serb forces.
___________________________________
Thursday July 23 9:00 AM EDT
Refugees stream out of Kosovo town
MALISEVO, Yugoslavia, July 23 (UPI) - Still more
thousands of Orahovac ethnic Albanian refugees are streaming into Malisevo,
reporting on the fiercest fighting thus far in the Kosovo conflcit.
British and French television
news reports say refugee accounts are being collected by local officials
in Malisevo with the intention of turning them over to various human rights
groups.
Some refugees describe
prolonged and indiscriminate Serb artillery, foot soldier and Serb civilian
attacks against Orahovac homes and businesses of ethnic Albanians.
On Wednesday, Serb officials,
who are now in possession of the empty town, which once held 20,000 persons,
allowed international journalists to see portions of the community.
Both Serbian commanders
and the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army forces charge their people
had been victimized during the four-day struggle for the town.
A British Broadcasting
Corp. report said damage appeared total in some neighborhoods and non-existant
in others.
The count of Orahovac
refugees streaming into Malisevo from Orahovac has risen to more than 15,000.
Meanwhile, Serb television
aired today a comment from a man identified as the mayor of Orahovac (without
giving his name), an ethnic Serb, saying, "Every house belonging to a Serb
in the town was attacked."
He also claimed most
of the population had returned to the town.
Bosnian television in
Sarajevo reports more than 250 Kosovar Albanians have died and at least
50 of the Serbian security forces had been killed.
At issue in the fighting
in Kosovo is the desire by many of the ethnic Albanian inhibitants to turn
the province into an independent country.
Copyright 1998 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
___________________________________
Eleven Kosovo Albanians indicted for terrorism
11:48 a.m. Jul 23, 1998 Eastern
PRISTINA, Serbia, July 23 (Reuters) - A Serbian
public prosecutor has indicted 11 ethnic Albanians for membership of Kosovo's
separatist guerrilla forces, the state news agency Tanjug said on Thursday.
"They are charged with
obtaining weapons and ammunition and other military hardware intended for
terrorist activities, and with planning, organising and carrying out terrorist
actions...," Tanjug quoted the Pristina prosecutor as saying.
Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA) guerrillas are fighting for the independence of Kosovo and are believed
to have gained effective control of around half of the Albanian-majority
province, an area the size of Corsica.
At least 440 people
have been killed and more than 300 are missing in the five-month-old conflict
between the increasingly well-armed and organised KLA and Serbian state
security forces.
The KLA tried to seize
its first major town, Orahovac in the southwest near the border of Albania,
last weekend but were beaten back by Serbian forces with superior firepower.
Serbian authorities
took reporters on a tour of Orahovac on Wednesday to prove they had retaken
it and restored security.
Orahovac's mainly ethnic
Albanian population fled north into rebel-held territory and it was not
clear when or whether they would return to their homes.
The Yugoslav federal
government, in a move to squeeze KLA supply routes, announced on Wednesday
night that it would broaden the restricted security strip along Kosovo's
frontier with Albania to five km (three miles).
The high-security zone
was previously only a few hundred metres (yards) wide, according to local
media.
But Yugoslav Prime Minister
Momir Bulatovic said "Albania must be moved farther away from Kosovo" because
it had failed to prevent large numbers of rebels infiltrating from its
territory.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
___________________________________
KLA fighters train openly in northern Albanian town
12:32 p.m. Jul 23, 1998 Eastern
By Llazar Semini
TROPOJE, Albania, July 23 (Reuters) - Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) fighters have transformed the northern Albanian town of Tropoje
into a virtual military base, openly engaging in weapons training without
interference from Albanian police.
But a heavy presence
of Yugoslav forces on the Serbian side of the border appears to be limiting
their ability to smuggle weapons into the troubled province of Kosovo.
Reuters journalists
who visited the town, just five km (three miles) from the border with the
troubled Serb province of Kosovo, on Thursday saw dozens of men wearing
the distinctive KLA emblem practise shooting in courtyards and outside
a school.
One group quickly tried
to hide their weapons when a television crew approached but others, bearing
Kalashnikov rifles, strolled through the impoverished town or thronged
its dusty cafes.
Several dozen mules,
a favoured method of transport for arms across rugged mountain paths into
Kosovo, were tethered alongside an open-air weapons market in the town
centre.
The atmosphere in Tropoje
was tense and many of the fighters were hostile and unfriendly when approached
by Reuters. Some appeared dejected, perhaps as a result of the heavy losses
the guerrilla group is believed to have sustained in Kosovo in the past
week.
"The situation has got
tenser following the shelling from Serbian troops on Albanian territory
last weekend," said Christopher Dwan, a field officer for the Organisation
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
"While monitoring the
border, we have seen many Serb troops established alongside and we think
that makes it difficult for KLA fighters to cross into Kosovo from Tropoje,
which might be considered a depot for people and weapons."
Yugoslavia said on Wednesday
it was widening the restricted security strip along Kosovo's border with
Albania to better fight guerrillas crossing into the province.
Also on Wednesday, the
Albanian government said shells from the fighting landed on its territory
for the second time in four days. It has accused Serbia of threatening
its sovereignty.
Dwan said it did not
appear that Serbian forces had been deliberately targeting Albanian territory
but had been firing at the KLA.
"The situation is very
tense but I don't think it will be transformed into a war," he said. "Both
countries are very careful."
Tropoje is one of the
most lawless parts of Albania and even before the Kosovo crisis it was
not fully under the control of the Tirana government.
The town has become
a key conduit for some of the hundreds of thousands of weapons looted from
army barracks last year when Albania, Europe's poorest country, plunged
into anarchy following the collapse of fraudulent investment schemes.
The government of Prime
Minister Fatos Nano, while increasingly sympathetic to what it regards
as a resistance struggle by its ethnic brethren in Kosovo, insists that
it is trying to halt arms smuggling into the province.
But Albanian police,
underpaid and poorly trained, were making no attempt to interfere with
target practice or arms trading in Tropoje on Thursday.
Local officials are
anxious about the possibility of the fighting in Kosovo spilling over the
border into Albania.
"All the Serb troops
have been stationed along our border," said Xhevdet Hoxha, head of Tropoje
district council. "The way the events are happening there is fear the conflict
will come onto our side."
Hoxha said special police
forces had been sent from Tirana to preserve order in the town, but the
nature of the territory and the almost total lack of state control in the
area meant they were powerless to prevent the arms trade.
Dwan of the OSCE said
there was little the Albanian authorities could do.
"There is absolutely
no government ruling here," he said. "What can these special police forces
do? They have blocked the main road, and that is very good, but arms are
loaded on mules as well and you need a whole army to block all this area."
In the nearby town of
Bajram Curri, three unemployed middle-aged men feared Serb forces might
cross the border and said they were thinking of moving their families to
Tirana or another southern town.
"We are just thinking
what we can do if Serbs come here or bomb the bridge in Kukes and the ferry
here. That would cut us off from the rest of Albania," one of them said.
A companion said local
people would fight to defend their town if Serb forces crossed the border.
"But blood will flow
like the Drini river, for sure," he added.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
___________________________________
Kosovo assembly sees faint hope of dialogue
04:59 p.m Jul 23, 1998 Eastern
PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - The self-styled parliament
of ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, in a declaration released Thursday,
said possibilities for a peaceful settlement with Serbia had not been exhausted.
But the breakaway political
leaders said prospects for dialogue had dimmed markedly and the province
of Serbia, half of which is now effectively held by guerrillas, seemed
to be slipping into full-blown war.
"Despite the situation
Kosovo has been going through, the possibilities for dialogue and a peaceful
solution, although greatly reduced, have not been exhausted," they said
in their statement distributed by the Kosovo Information Center (KIC).
"Therefore, while not
giving up vigilance and self-defense, let us try to use them," the leaders
said, without offering a fresh recipe for contacts with Belgrade.
"Let us cooperate more
and coordinate our efforts with all those who can help us, with the Republic
of Albania, with Albanian lands (outside Albania proper) and with the diaspora."
Nearby Macedonia has a restive Albanian minority.
The Kosovo Information
Center said the declaration was based on the inaugural meeting of the "parliament"
in Pristina on July 16. Serbian police broke up the session but not before
the group elected a speaker and swore an oath of allegiance.
Serbian authorities,
who stripped the Albanian-majority region of its regional autonomy in 1989,
have offered to discuss renewed self-rule for Kosovo and sought talks with
ethnic Albanian political leaders.
But the Kosovo Albanians
say they will now accept nothing less than full independence and, after
an initial round of talks, have refused further contacts until fighting
between Serbian security forces and separatist rebels stops.
The two sides trade
accusations of aggression. Kosovo Albanian leaders have also demanded the
withdrawal of security forces from Kosovo as a condition for talks but
this has been rejected by Belgrade.
Shuttle diplomacy by
U.S. envoy Christopher Hill, Washington's ambassador to Macedonia, has
not budged either side so far and fighting between Serbian troops and the
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) has continued.
"Kosovo is now drifting
(towards) a war which may turn much bloodier and devastating. These are
decisive times for Kosovo and its future," the Kosovo "parliament" declaration
said.
The Yugoslav state news
agency Tanjug said on Thursday that the Serbian public prosecutor in Pristina
had indicted 11 ethnic Albanians for membership in the KLA.
"They are charged with
obtaining weapons and ammunition and other military hardware intended for
terrorist activities, and with planning, organizing and carrying out terrorist
actions...," Tanjug quoted the Pristina prosecutor as saying.
At least 440 people
have died and more than 300 are missing in the five-month-old conflict
between the increasingly well-armed and organized KLA and Serbian state
security forces.
The KLA tried to seize
its first major town, Orahovac in the southwest near the border of Albania,
last weekend but were beaten back by Serbian forces with superior firepower.
The Yugoslav federal
government, in a move to squeeze KLA supply routes, announced on Wednesday
night that it would broaden the restricted security strip along Kosovo's
frontier with Albania to five km (three miles).
The high-security zone
was previously only several hundred meters (yards) wide, according to local
media.
But Yugoslav Prime Minister
Momir Bulatovic said "Albania must be moved farther away from Kosovo" because
it had failed to prevent large numbers of rebels infiltrating from its
territory.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
___________________________________
Kosovo guerrillas' "rear base" in NATO sights
01:05 p.m Jul 23, 1998 Eastern
By Douglas Hamilton
OHRID, Macedonia, July 23 (Reuters) - Western
powers grappling with the conflict in Kosovo are being warned that neighbouring
Albania must get military aid urgently to stop it being sucked into the
conflict, diplomatic sources say.
They say the Albanian
government is unable to assert itself in the wild northern border lands
now being freely used as a launchpad by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian separatist
guerrillas in their war for independence against Serbian security forces.
If nothing is done quickly
to cure the problem, Albanian territory risks becoming firmly established
as the rear base for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
This could provoke a
military challenge from Serbia and cross-border attacks that could internationalise
the conflict.
"Albania needs urgent,
immediate help. It's institutional fragility is acute and it is in great
need," a diplomatic source told Reuters. The sources said this was the
clear message from U.S. Balkans envoy Christopher Hill this week when he
briefed the NATO allies.
The Albanian government
needed political, economic and "no doubt about it, military" assistance,
a diplomatic source said.
Hill also had lengthy
talks with NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana on Wednesday as they flew
to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, where Solana concluded top-level
meetings at the lakeside resort of Ohrid.
The American diplomat
was due on Friday to resume shuttle diplomacy between the Yugoslav government
of President Slobodan Milosevic and Kosovo Albanian political leader Ibrahim
Rugova.
"The situation is very
difficult for negotiations but a certain amount of hope is coming and the
efforts may produce some fruit," Solana told reporters in Ohrid. "Time
is a very important factor."
Depriving the KLA of
its springboard in Albania could dampen its recent euphoria, slow its buildup
of arms, change its perception that victory over Serbia is in sight and
coax its leaders to the negotiating table, the sources said.
The NATO allies have
had contingency plans for some months for a "preventive deployment" of
alliance troops in Albania to plug the porous border with Kosovo, an Albanian-majority
province of Serbia.
Talk of direct intervention
in the Kosovo conflict pushed this plan to the sidelines for a time. But
enthusiasm for direct action has cooled and the preventive route is undergoing
re-examination by the allies.
The NATO partners are
pondering whether the alliance should mount such an operation only in conjunction
with a peacekeeping mission inside Kosovo after a ceasefire pact -- which
now looks unlikely -- or go ahead without waiting for a truce accord.
They are also discussing
the size of any force, with some allies favouring a "light" deployment
while others warn that anything less than substantial military muscle could
expose NATO troops to unacceptable risks.
The allies confront
a delicate choice: how to check the growing ethnic Albanian insurgency
without tilting the scales too far in favour of Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic, who stripped Kosovo of its regional autonomy in 1989.
Guerrilla numbers have
swelled as men from the Albanian diaspora in Europe sign up. Milosevic,
under international pressure, has refrained from an all-out counter-insurgency
war, allowing the KLA to hold large tracts of rural Kosovo.
Serbian forces patrolling
their side of the border with Albania said they ambushed hundreds of ethnic
Albanian guerrillas last weekend in the biggest infiltration attempt to
date, killing as many as 90 insurgents.
The Yugoslav government
announced on Wednesday it was broadening its high-security border strip
with Albania to five km (three miles) in a bid to block the influx of gunmen.
Yugoslavia and Albania
have traded accusations of inflaming the situation. Albania said Serbian
shells crashed onto its territory. Belgrade said Albania was harbouring
"terrorists."
Albania is still recovering
from nationwide civil disorder last year during which an estimated one
million firearms were looted from the army.
This is believed to
be a major source of weapons for the KLA, which for the time being is bent
on a war for independence from Serbia and in no mood for peace talks that
the Western powers say must be limited to achieving autonomy only.
However, the KLA suffered
serious setbacks in the past week with the border ambush attacks and simultaneous
mauling from Serbian forces after they tried to take Orahovac, which would
have given them their first sizeable town in Kosovo.
With the snowy Balkan
winter ahead, when mobility will be much more difficult, and thousands
of displaced people to care for in KLA-held territory, the guerrilla campaign
could be crippled by the closing of Albania's door.
NATO plans land and
air exercises in Albania next month.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Taken without permission, for fair use only.
'Ghost town' after Serbs repel attack
Mayor: Albanians Aided Rebels
Kosovo town quiet after biggest battle in weeks
NATO Secretary-General in Macedonia
___________________________________
NYTIMES
July 23, 1998
Battle for Kosovo Town Grew in the Telling
By MIKE O'CONNOR
MALISEVO, Yugoslavia -- Refugee families, their
children looking stunned and exhausted, continued to arrive in this ethnic
Albanian town Wednesday with detailed accounts of the terrors they say
they survived in a battle between rebels and government forces in Orahovac.
Their accounts are being
meticulously collected by local officials to be turned over to human rights
groups and are likely to be repeated and become part of the accepted history
of the revolt by ethnic Albanians against the Serbian government.
However, most of the
accounts appear to be exaggerated, no matter how sincerely the witnesses
insist they heard artillery shells smash homes or saw Serbian troops burning
the businesses of ethnic Albanians.
Wednesday, for the first
time since separatist rebels attacked Serbian targets in Orahovac, just
south of here, on Saturday, the Serbian authorities, who maintain their
hold on the city, let reporters get past the outskirts and see what damage
there was.
Both Serbian authorities
and ethnic Albanian refugees assert that their people were victims of murder
and kidnappings. Their assertions could not be confirmed based on a visit
to the city.
It is clear, however,
that there was fierce fighting in some parts of Orahovac, and Wednesday
at least two bodies were still on the street. During the fighting there
was sustained firing of cannon and light artillery or mortars. At times,
small-arms fire was nearly constant.
Altogether, there may
well have been enough noise and confusion to terrify civilians hiding in
basements, especially if, as they have been told to believe, they were
likely to be killed if their side did not win the battle.
Damage was intense in
places, but rather limited in extent. There was no evidence apparent to
support assertions of wholesale shelling of civilian areas or wanton burning
of entire neighborhoods by gangs of armed Serbians.
"The shelling destroyed
150 to 200 hundred homes in my neighborhood alone. The whole city was on
fire," said a man here Wednesday, showing great agitation and signs of
severe emotional stress. "I saw this myself," said the man, who was unwilling
to give his name, saying he was too frightened. But everyone in a group
of about 20 other refugees nodded in agreement with his story. Some had
accounts of their own, all equally vivid.
In the glowing hot emotions
generated by what has become a civil war overlaying the cultural divisions
between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, what is true is not nearly as important
as what is believed. The truth is more difficult to manipulate than beliefs.
Local officials here,
who would not give their names, said the count of refugees streaming in
from Orahovac had risen from 12,000 to about 15,000 by Wednesday. Although
the figures could not be confirmed, the streets here are swollen with crowds
of people, many of whom are obviously refugees.
A local official here,
who said he was searching for the complete truth of what happened over
the last few days in Orahovac, showed page after page of signed and dated
statements from refugees detailing the destruction of homes by shelling
and of 37 murders.
"We have the proof here,
from what people saw with their own eyes, about genocide. This is the truth,"
he said. "I myself saw half the town in flames before I managed to escape
with my family over the mountains. No one will be able to go back there
to live." The man said he could not give his name.
On the Serbian side,
before the camera of the government-controlled television network, the
mayor of Orahovac, an ethnic Serb, stood on the steps of city hall speaking
dramatically of what he called a genocidal attack on the city by ethnic
Albanians. "Every Serbian house was a target. You only have to look here
for the evidence," he said, swinging his arm around to the street, which,
contrary to his declarations, showed no signs of battle damage.
When asked what had
happened to the 20,000 or so residents of the city the mayor said most
of them were back and being protected by government forces. However, only
four civilians were seen in the city. Three of them were told to keep quiet
by police and pushed inside their home by police when a reporter approached.
Much of the damage apparent
in and near Orahovac seems to have been caused by looting. Along the road
on which government forces advanced to retake the city, there was almost
no store which had not been cleaned out of all goods.
In the city itself,
few stores were left untouched. It is not clear who did the looting within
the city.
On one block, windows
of the neighborhood stationery store were smashed, and the shelves cleared
of everything but a box of staples, two ballpoint pens, and a poster of
Michael Jackson.
Windows of the next
store had been blackened by smoke then blown out by the heat of a fire
so intense that nothing remained but cinders and the ceramic tiles of the
floor. A brown suit coat and blue overalls, still on coat hangers, were
left draped over the ledge of a window. Nothing else was left, not even
the shelves.
___________________________________
BBC
Wednesday, July 22, 1998 Published at 20:33 GMT
21:33 UK
'Ghost town' after Serbs repel attack
Several days of fighting in Orahovac, a town in
the Serbian province of Kosovo appear to be over, with the Serbian security
forces pushing back ethnic Albanian separatists belonging to the Kosovo
Liberation Army.
A BBC correspondent
allowed to visit the town found it deserted. There are reports of a steady
flow of refugees having fled the town after the five days of fighting.
Some buildings had been
burned out, but most of the fighting was with light weapons, leaving Orahovac
a largely undamaged ghost town.
The town was the scene
of the bitterest fighting in the recent conflict in the region, with the
KLA attempting a new strategy of moving into urban areas.
Both sides claim to
have inflicted heavy losses but the death toll cannot be verified.
On Tuesday, a report
on Bosnian TV in Sarajevo said at least 150 Kosovan Albanians and 30 members
of the Serbian security forces had been killed.
Although the Serb victory
in Orahovac is being seen as a serious rebuff for the KLA, the separatist
fighters still control much of the Kosovo countryside, blocking roads and
disrupting Serb communications, often forcing them onto the defensive.
Some Kosovo Albanians
have also been detained on suspicion of fighting with the KLA.
The Serbian authorities
say 2,000 of the town's 20,000 inhabitants remain, but journalists on the
scene reported seeing no-one other than Serb policemen.
The European security
organisation, the OSCE, has warned of a humanitarian crisis this winter
if fighting in Kosovo continues.
___________________________________
Wednesday July 22 5:00 PM EDT
Mayor: Albanians Aided Rebels
ANNE THOMPSON Associated Press Writer
ORAHOVAC, Yugoslavia (AP) - His face red with
outrage, the Serb mayor of this battle-wrecked town condemned its Albanian
residents Wednesday, claiming they secretly aided an attack by separatist
fighters.
Each side accused the
other of atrocities in the five-day battle for Orahovac in central Kosovo,
which ended before dawn Wednesday when the last of the Kosovo Liberation
Army fighters withdrew.
Thousands of Albanian
refugees from the town of 20,000 fled over northern hills to KLA-controlled
territory, and hundreds of Serbs sought refuge in nearby rural villages.
Many people hid in basements, emerging to find Serb police in control and
several red-brick houses charred and smoking, their roofs blown off by
mortar fire.
"We were trying to maintain
peace," said Mayor Andjelko Kolasinac, standing on the town hall steps.
"But they were planning all along. And it happened in a split second."
By late Tuesday, Serb
police had fought their way to the center of the hillside town, followed
by refugee and aid agencies searching for victims of the worst fighting
in five months of ethnic conflict between Serb forces and the Albanian
rebels.
Reporters on a Serb-led
tour of the town Wednesday found a few dozen Albanians still hiding in
their houses. Two men said only hours earlier they had looked out a window
to see 10 tractors being loaded with bodies.
The claim could not
be independently confirmed. But the Kosovo Information Center, close to
the province's ethnic Albanian leaders, reported 52 Albanian civilians
were killed, including some dragged from their homes and shot.
The ethnic Albanian
Committee for the Defense of Human Rights called Wednesday for an international
investigation.
"Eyewitnesses talk of
huge massacres conducted by the army, the police and paramilitary units...
The situation in Orahovac is catastrophic," the group said in a statement.
In Orahovac, nervous-looking
Serb police guarded dusty streets covered with broken glass from shop windows.
Shoes and plastic bags sticky with blood lay in an alley near a mosque.
Under umbrellas shielding
them from the blistering sun, a few police kept rifles pointed at the northern
hills, where KLA snipers are believed to be lurking.
"We never expected this.
We were in good relations until the second it started," said the mayor,
who claimed his Albanian neighbors had secretly kept sandbags in their
houses in preparation for the attack.
Kosovo, a southern province
in Serb-led Yugoslavia, has a population of 2 million people - 90 percent
of them ethnic Albanians who want independence from the oppressive regime
of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Despite its Albanian
majority, Orahovac has a Serb mayor because Albanians have boycotted elections
since Milosevic stripped the province of its autonomy in 1989.
Hundreds of people have
been killed since Milosevic cracked down on Albanian militants in late
February.
Serb police Capt. Milan
Sipka estimated that dozens of KLA fighters died in the Orahovac battle,
as well as four Serb civilians and two police officers. KLA fighters raped
a 48-year-old woman, he said.
Serb police also accused
the KLA of kidnapping 51 people, including Albanians, Serbs and Gypsies.
On Wednesday, the KLA turned 35 Serbs over to the Red Cross, seven of them
Orthodox monks from monasteries near Orahovac, said Beatrice Weber, head
of the Red Cross delegation in the provincial capital Pristina.
Ethnic Albanian leader
Ibrahim Rugova condemned the intervention of Serb forces in Orahovac and
what he described as the massacres of civilians.
The unauthorized Albanian
parliament, of which Rugova is the president, issued a declaration Wednesday
seeking an accord among all independence-seeking Albanian military and
political factions.
It was Rugova's most
direct acknowledgment of the KLA, which opposes his advocacy of nonviolence
in the struggle for an independent Kosovo.
Orahovac was the first
major KLA attack on a large town, a departure from the rebels' usual guerrilla-style
raids on villages and police posts. But the rebels were unable to hold
the town against a strong Serb counterattack, raising questions about their
military capability.
Serb police controlled
the southern rim of the town by Monday afternoon, but KLA fighters held
the center until Tuesday night, hiding in the maternity ward of the local
hospital, police said.
___________________________________
CNN
Kosovo town quiet after biggest battle in weeks
July 22, 1998
In this story:
•Gunfire, explosions
•Accounts of a massacre
•NATO involvement likely?
ORAHOVAC, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- Ethnic Albanian
rebels withdrew under cover of darkness early Wednesday from this strategic
Kosovo town as international monitors visited the site of one of the biggest
battles in weeks between Serbian forces and separatists seeking to free
Kosovo from Serbian rule.
Serb police, shielded
from the blistering summer sun by large umbrellas, stared toward wooded
hills for signs of snipers on Wednesday. But Serb officials said the Kosovo
Liberation Army, which is fighting for Kosovo's independence, had withdrawn
several miles to the north.
The town was virtually
deserted, apart from the Serbian police. The mainly ethnic Albanian population
had fled north into rebel-held territory, and it was not clear when or
if they would return to their homes.
In Pristina, 30 miles
(50 kilometers) to the east, the Kosovo Information Center, which is allied
with ethnic Albanian politicians, claimed that 15,000 people had fled Orahovac
to escape the fighting, which started Friday with an attack by the KLA.
The Albanian center
said Serb police dragged civilians from their homes and shot them, and
quoted witnesses as saying police also shot civilians who took refuge in
the town mosque.
The reports could not
be independently confirmed.
Gunfire, explosions
Earlier Wednesday, the U.N. refugee agency cast
doubt on claims that the town of 20,000 inhabitants was completely in Serb
control, saying the area resounded with gunfire and occasional explosions
when its staff visited Tuesday.
However, by Wednesday
morning, Orahovac was quiet. The corpse of a man in civilian clothing lay
in the city's center, and the bloated body of a white horse shot in the
crossfire of the battle stank in the summer heat.
Reporters, who were
guided on a visit to Orahovac by Serb information officials, saw several
busloads of Yugoslav army troops leaving the area, and a tank on a transporter
was moving out.
The capture of Orahovac
would have expanded the nearly 40 percent of Kosovo that the KLA is said
to control. It also would have given the rebels command of a key road.
The fighting cast doubt
on the possibility of a negotiated settlement between Serbia, the dominant
republic of Yugoslavia, and ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of
the population in Kosovo.
Accounts of a massacre
Ethnic Albanian newspapers, quoting what they
said were accounts of survivors, published reports Wednesday of a barbaric
massacre in which hundreds died, but provided no evidence to corroborate
the allegations.
Albanian sources said
the morgue in Prizren, the district capital, had the bodies of 39 people
who died in the fighting that raged around and inside Orahovac.
Serbian police Capt.
Milan Sipka said two Serb combatants were killed and nine wounded, while
four Serb civilians died. He said a large number of Albanians were killed
and dozens were wounded.
Sipka said 223 Albanians
were detained for suspected links to KLA "terrorists." All but 26 were
later released.
The Red Cross and international
diplomatic observers have visited the town, but as yet no firm independent
estimate of the death toll has been made public.
An estimated 440 people
have died and more than 300 are missing in the five-month-old conflict
in Kosovo.
NATO involvement likely?
Germany's foreign minister said NATO would likely
have to get involved to end the violence.
"On both sides, there
is a lack of serious effort to contain the armed violence and resume negotiations,"
Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said in Bonn.
The fighting led the
U.N. Security Council to vote Tuesday to expand the peacekeeping force
in Macedonia by about 300 troops, mostly to strengthen security along borders
with Kosovo and Albania. U.S. troops will make up about one-third of the
1,000-plus peacekeeping force.
Ending a visit to Kosovo,
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe issued a report
Wednesday noting an influx of armed fighters from neighboring Albania,
increased abductions by both sides and growing shortages of food and medicines.
In Pristina, the self-styled
Kosovo Albanian parliament controlled by moderate Ibrahim Rugova issued
a statement acknowledging the "growth of the liberation struggle in Kosovo."
The statement was seen
as an overture to the KLA in hopes of convincing the group to join Rugova
in talks with the government.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to
this report.
__________________________________
BBC
Wednesday, July 22, 1998 Published at 21:10 GMT
22:10 UK
NATO Secretary-General in Macedonia
The Secretary-General of NATO, Javier Solana,
has arrived in Macedonia for talks with President Gligorov and government
ministers on the conflict in the neighbouring Serbian province of Kosovo.
Mr Solana will also
discuss Macedonia's prospects of joining NATO.
Macedonian leaders have
welcomed any assistance from NATO to curb arms-trafficking to Kosovo and
to stop the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army operating in Macedonia.
The KLA claimed responsibility
for a series of explosions in Macedonia earlier this year.
However, they have also
said they won't agree to NATO using Macedonia as a base for any punitive
actions against Serbia.
On Tuesday the United
Nations strengthened its peacekeeping operation on the Macedonian border
with Yugoslavia.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
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