Tagesnachrichten 1. August 1998
von ALBANEWS und anderen
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Tagesnachrichten 1. August 1998
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Serbs Say Kosovo Drive Is Over, but Little Changes
on the Ground
'An Empty Country'
Albanian rebels ready to enter peace talks
Ethnic Albanians Mull Proposal
U.S. Presses Serbs To Deliver Aid
Angel of Mostar raises hell ... the hell of Kosovo
Freed aid worker arrives home
Food, water on way to Kosovo refugees
Serbs, KLA press on despite talks
___________________________________
NY TIMES
August 1, 1998
Serbs Say Kosovo Drive Is Over, but Little Changes on the Ground
By MIKE O'CONNOR
SEDLARE, Yugoslavia -- Out of sight of the diplomats,
foreign monitors and aid workers there were thousands of new refugees in
the Serbian province of Kosovo on Friday, fleeing attacks just one day
after the government decreed that its military offensive was over.
The shelling that drove
people from this village Friday will not appear on a monitoring report
for Friday night, because monitors say they didn't know about it. Relief
agencies say they did not note the people who were leaving this valley,
because agency security regulations and police have kept the workers away
from the fighting.
Faik Drenica was one
of the last to leave. On Friday he turned for a final look at the red brick
houses below him in the valley.
He was calm for a moment;
then his body trembled a bit. "We sent the children away two days ago,"
he said. "I don't know where mine are, or my wife. I hope they have been
taken in by kind people. We hoped it would be safe for us here, but we
knew better. Here the regime considers us all terrorists." The three villages
in the valley held 20,000 people until Friday, he said.
The United Nations estimates
that there are 50,000 people on the road, taking refuge with strangers
or living in the forests because of the most recent Serbian government
offensive against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. But officials say the number
is closer to a guess than an estimate.
Before the most recent
wave of violence, which began last week, the estimated number of people
displaced, both Serbs and ethnic Albanians, was 150,000. The province of
approximately 2 million is 90 percent ethnic Albanian. Thousands of those
who have fled are taking refuge in Kosovo, while others have crossed into
Albania or Montenegro.
The government of President
Slobodan Milosevic sent in troops and special police five months ago to
put down a rebellion by ethnic Albanians who once had autonomy and are
seeking independence from Serbia.
Since then the government
agreed it would not attack civilians and promised to allow foreign monitors,
relief workers and journalists full access to observe combat areas. However,
none of these promises appear to have been kept.
A U.S. diplomat assigned
to the Kosovo conflict, Christopher Hill, said that Milosevic promised
again Friday to allow foreign monitors and aid workers access to all areas
of Kosovo. On Thursday, before Friday's shelling, Milosevic told envoys
from the European Union that the Serbian offensive against the Kosovo separatists
was over.
But just hours after
the president's declaration, a round of shells hit a corner bedroom of
the squat, two-story home where Aferdita Qeriqi was sleeping. It killed
her outright, villagers said.
Another shell came through
the wall of the house next door. It left a 4-foot hole and sprayed red
bricks and window glass in a fan shape that covered the dishes on the table
and stopped at the cupboards, now open and bare, as the food had been loaded
on one of the wagons going over the hill.
Except for a few guerrillas
of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, the village was deserted.
"The people had no choice but to leave," said a rebel soldier. They took
what they could and they set their animals free so they would not starve.
In front of homes with
their doors flung open, a horse and a pony stood side by side, very close,
as if to comfort each other in the empty village.
Miles up the mountain,
two children about 6 years old scampered across the smooth rocks protruding
from a small stream. The children all but disappeared behind the piles
of ivy they carried. Behind a plastic sheet that covered a hole scraped
from the side of the hill, they laid out the ivy to make beds for their
family.
Fifteen members of their
family are among the recent refugees from the Suva Reka area who are living
in the most primitive conditions in Kosovo's forests.
"This is how our ancestors
lived hundreds of years ago, but this is the only safe way for us now,"
said Ahmet Qerizi.
Myvete Qerizi, 34, first
looked at the three generations she had to feed, and then at the family's
food supply: two large bags of flour, a few bottles of cooking oil and
some salt. "I suppose we have enough for a week," she said uncertainly.
"Actually," she said,"I
haven't had time to worry about the food yet. The children are still in
shock from the shelling; they think it will happen again, even here. The
11-year-old," she said, pointing to her eldest son, "screams when he is
sleeping, and he keeps throwing up from the fear."
A doctor, who was seeing
patients in a thicket, said that he had treated 14 people for wounds from
the shelling. "First aid is all we can do here, but there are clinics in
the towns nearby where we can send the seriously wounded or the women who
are about to give birth," he said. He spoke on the condition of anonymity,
saying that he had fled with the refugees but that he had relatives in
a town controlled by the government.
Trying to mend the spirits
of the refugees in the area was the local rebel commander, who uses the
nom de guerre "Lion." "It was not combat that made the people run," he
said, explaining the attack as a Serbian government effort to clear the
villages. "I lost only one soldier, but every village in my area has dead
and injured because of the shelling. We will take care of the civilians
and then go back to fight."
The stream in front
of the Qerizis' shelter runs into a creek and then for several miles past
canyons into a small river. Along the stream and up every canyon were hundreds
of primitive campsites full of refugees.
Refugees said another
20,000 thousand people, or more, who fled the Serbian offensive in the
Malisevo area, are living in neighboring canyons. Monitors and relief workers
had puzzled over the whereabouts of the tide of refugees from the Malisevo
area. Relief workers suspect there are thousands more refugees scraping
by in other isolated parts of Kosovo.
"Some of us in these
forests will go back home when the shelling stops, or when they get desperate,"
said Ahmet Qerizi. "But for me, and others, there is no way back now. We
are living like outlaws and if we go back they will arrest us or kill us.
For us, the only way to go home is as winners in this war."
___________________________________
Washington Post
'An Empty Country'
Serbians Targeted Kosovo Villages With Any Rebel
Links, Refugees Say
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 31, 1998; Page A01
BAGARUSA, Yugoslavia, July 30—More than 70 men
and boys, all strikingly listless, sat talking quietly on the side of a
brown hill that has been their home for the past few days. Some of their
wives and daughters were out of sight in nearby farmhouses; others were
trying to bake some bread over a wood fire on another hillside.
"For two days, we are
under the open sky," said one man, an angry teacher from a village outside
the nearby city of Malisevo who said he is too afraid of retribution from
the Yugoslav government to reveal anything more than his initials, R.S.
"The insecurity and the panic is very big. . . . It's a big sin and a shame
that people live this way. It's as if we didn't exist in continental Europe,
as if we were not Europeans."
These refugees are just
a small portion of the tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians who fled Malisevo
and dozens of surrounding villages as Serbian security forces advanced
on the city Tuesday and prepared for a violent clash with the ethnic Albanian
insurgents who had controlled the city and the surrounding region for the
past two months.
The refugees' exodus
on Tuesday and the Serbians' capture of Malisevo the next day occurred
during a massive six-day Yugoslav military offensive that has wrested key
portions of Kosovo from the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force known as the
Kosovo Liberation Army. Nine-tenths of the population of Kosovo -- a province
of Yugoslavia's principal republic, Serbia -- are ethnic Albanians, and
the Kosovo Liberation Army has fought since March for the province's independence.
The government has claimed
the offensive was meant solely to recapture several pivotal highways held
by the rebels. But the accounts of refugees here and elsewhere describe
a pattern of destruction by the advancing security forces that engulfed
villages far from any major highway and went well beyond consolidating
military gains.
Several refugees said
the army had systematically targeted villages that were known to have been
even loosely under rebel control -- a condition that hundreds of villages
across Kosovo could fulfill. In scores of such villages, homes were destroyed,
businesses smashed and civilians forced to flee.
After spending several
hours touring the areas where the military had conducted its offensive,
visiting German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger said today that the government
had left Kosovo "an empty country, a wasteland . . . [with] quite a bit
of destruction of property."
"The impression our
mission got is quite devastating," said Ischinger.
Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic told Ischinger and two visiting diplomats from England and Austria
today that the offensive is complete and that a military siege of the rebel-held
town of Junik will be lifted. He also called for the West to lift sanctions
imposed on Yugoslavia weeks ago as punishment for its disproportionate
use of military force and indiscriminate destruction of civilian property.
At the same time, however,
the government is adding to its military forces in strife-torn areas of
Kosovo. An army convoy of at least 25 vehicles, including a half-dozen
armored vehicles, was seen this morning moving south from Pristina to a
military base near the city of Prizren, for example. Reporters have seen
similar army convoys and flatbed trucks carrying tanks moving into areas
of Kosovo held by the rebels in recent days, raising the prospect of additional
fighting in days or weeks to come.
None of the refugees
in this village appeared to be in dire circumstances, but many expressed
worry about what lies ahead. They have received no humanitarian aid, and
some strains are beginning to show. One family compound here has more than
100 people in it. Most of the refugees today had eaten only bread sprinkled
with sugar and raw vegetables scrounged from local farms.
Children were smeared
with grime from their travel and from playing in the fields where they
now live. Family belongings were stuffed into sacks thrown on the back
of the tractors and a few small, flatbed trucks parked on a road where
cows and goats milled about. The parents seemed dazed and upset, worried
about the possessions they left behind and uncertain about where they will
go next.
Their fears were compounded
by a few witness accounts of looting by Serbian police, as well as what
they said was the thud of distant shelling Wednesday night and this morning.
They also said they saw smoke rising today from homes in the nearby village
of Dragobil, controlled for the past three months by the Kosovo Liberation
Army.
A man who identified
himself as Arven, 31, said he came here from Dragobil with 50 members of
his extended family, ranging in age from 1 to 70, and that they were among
more than 40,000 people in and around Malisevo before the Serbian advance.
Most of the city's inhabitants were refugees from Orahovac, another city
that came under attack last week by the Yugoslav army and other government
security forces. The Kosovo Liberation Army organized and insisted on the
mass exodus from Malisevo to prevent a massacre of its civilians, Arven
and others said.
Brahim, 68, an ethnic
Albanian wearing a traditional white conical hat, said he had fled a nearby
village because "we heard the shootings and shellings all night." He said
with a shrug that he had no idea why the attack had occurred. "Maybe they
wanted to clear the area" of all ethnic Albanians, he said.
Several refugees expressed
anger that the United States had not done more to protect them from what
they describe as unremitting Serbian aggression. "The possibility existed
to help us," said Bajram Morina, 47. Referring to the desire of ethnic
Albanians to gain Kosovo's independence from Serbia, Morina said, "We have
been in this position for a long time. It is not new, and yet nothing has
been done" to provide help.
Shortly after he spoke,
two additional families -- one with six members, the other with eight --
arrived on tractors to join the group. Asked when they might return to
their homes, three men said they would consider it only if someone guaranteed
their safety.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
___________________________________
Saturday, August 1, 1998
KOSOVO
Albanian rebels ready to enter peace talks
By GEOFF KITNEY, Herald Correspondent in Berlin
INTERNATIONAL diplomatic efforts to bring ethnic
Albanian fighters to the negotiating table with Yugoslavia's President,
Mr Slobodan Milosevic, have made crucial progress despite a Government
security operation in Kosovo which has created a new flood of refugees.
Foreign diplomats in
Yugoslavia and key officials in Europe claim the intense diplomatic effort
to get the different ethnic Albanian factions, including the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA), to agree on the make-up of a negotiating team for peace talks
with the Yugoslav Government have achieved an important breakthrough in
the past few days.
The first round of talks
could start "within a few weeks".
But the peace process
is still moving too slowly for the ethnic Albanian population in large
parts of Kosovo who have been forced to flee their homes following the
largest operation by Serb forces against the KLA since the conflict escalated
into virtual civil war in March.
A spokesman for the
United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva said latest estimates
put the number of people who have been displaced by the conflict in Kosovo
at more than 100,000, making it the agency's most pressing refugee problem.
An estimated 20,000
people are reported to have fled the latest Serb operations aimed at KLA
strongholds in several regions, but international agencies are unsure where
they have gone. Many are reported to be hiding in mountainous areas where
they believe they will be protected by KLA fighters.
The KLA forces retreated
to the mountains in the face of the Serb assault and, although the Serb
authorities have claimed major victories in the week-long campaign, sources
on the ground say KLA commanders are regrouping their forces and are preparing
for a counter-offensive.
Mr Milosevic assured
a delegation of European diplomats at a meeting in Belgrade on Thursday
that the latest Serb offensive was over and claimed the security forces
had seriously weakened the KLA forces.
He also promised that
the Serb authorities would act to make it possible for the refugees to
return to their towns and villages.
Although EU observers
condemned destruction by the Serb forces of homes and said there had been
"an excessive use of force", local sources said the Serb operation had
been less destructive than past operations in which entire villages have
been destroyed.
Mr Milosevic also indicated
he was ready to begin negotiations with a representative delegation of
the Kosovo ethnic Albanian community to discuss the possibility of granting
the region an autonomous administration.
Diplomatic sources said
the US envoy Mr Christopher Hill, who has held a series of meetings with
key ethnic Albanian figures and with Mr Milosevic, had made considerable
progress on the critical issue for the peace process - bringing representatives
of the KLA fighters into the talks.
Until now, the international
community's efforts to establish a peace process have been frustrated by
its inability to identify just who the KLA's leaders are.
The Kosovo rebel forces
grew out of a number of local groups which armed themselves to fight the
Serb authorities following years of repressive rule. Although the KLA has
grown rapidly, diplomats say it still has several power centres and no
overall authority.
The efforts of US negotiators
have been directed at identifying who the key leaders of these different
groups are, and to establish who among the ethnic Albanian political leaders
is most closely connected with them.
The main ethnic Albanian
leader in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, is Dr Ibrahim Rugova but his pacifist
approach to dealing with the Serb authorities has been rejected by KLA
fighters and he has no authority with them.
The breakthrough now
being reported has involved getting Dr Rugova to effectively stand aside
as the key figure representing the ethnic Albanian community and bringing
in another senior ethnic Albanian with better links with the KLA.
___________________________________
Friday July 31 5:14 PM EDT
Ethnic Albanians Mull Proposal
ANNE THOMPSON Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Ethnic Albanian rebels
have asked U.S. diplomats for time to review a proposal to join negotiations
with the Serb-led government on ending fighting in Kosovo province, a leading
Kosovo Albanian politician said Friday.
The politician, Mehmet
Hajrizi, accompanied U.S. envoy Christopher Hill to a meeting this week
with the Kosovo Liberation Army. Hajrizi said the rebels will announce
next week whether they will enter a coalition with ethnic Albanian politicians
in Kosovo who espouse a more moderate line in seeking independence from
Serbia.
A team for negotiations
with the Serbs would be drawn from the coalition.
For months, American
and European governments have been trying to convince ethnic Albanian factions
to unite so they can begin talks with the Serb-led Yugoslav government
on a cease-fire and the future of Kosovo, a Serbian province where Albanians
make up 90 percent of the 2 million inhabitants.
The details of the negotiating
plan have not been finalized, and it is uncertain that Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic will agree to negotiate with Albanians.
Speaking to reporters
here Friday, Hill said the Yugoslav leader assured him he was "most interested"
in starting peace talks soon and that he would not stop the Albanians from
putting together a negotiating team.
Kosovo's intricate web
of Albanian factions has been a major block toward starting talks with
the Serbs. While they all support independence, divisions among both the
rebels and politicians have foiled efforts toward unity.
Hard-line guerrillas
reject the pacifist stance of ethnic Albanian political leader Ibrahim
Rugova, while another KLA faction calls Rugova its leader. Politicians
such as Hajrizi, once allied with Rugova, have in recent months denounced
him as ineffective and formed their own parties.
Complicating the mix
even further is the apparent difficulty in identifying who truly represents
the KLA, a secretive band whose members - numbering anywhere from 20,000
to 50,000 - hide in hills and villages scattered around the province.
Other KLA members and
claimed leaders are in Albania, Germany and Switzerland, from where they
channel money and weapons to the fighters back home.
KLA member Jakup Krasniqi,
who claims to represent the group, told Albanian reporters this week that
Hajrizi could not speak for the KLA - despite the politician's role in
meetings between Hill and the rebels.
Hajrizi said he is in
contact by telephone with the rebels two or three times a day. He dismissed
speculation that the KLA was cowed by Milosevic's recent offensive, which
drove the rebels from their headquarters in Malisevo and from two strategic
roads.
"The (rebels) don't
consider this a defeat and they've had very few losses," Hajrizi said.
"We can see in their faces they are absolutely sure of themselves."
Hajrizi also said the
KLA was prepared to talk with the Serbs providing that Milosevic withdraws
military forces and that international monitors participate in negotiations.
But Western diplomats said it was unlikely that ethnic Albanians and Serbs
would meet face to face any time soon.
Following a meeting
with Milosevic in Belgrade on Friday, Hill said the Yugoslav president
promised he would allow relief organizations to take food, medicine and
other supplies to Albanian civilians who fled into the forest to escape
the Serb onslaught at Malisevo earlier this week.
Milosevic also agreed
that international monitors could escort the refugees back to their homes
to guarantee their safety.
Also Friday, Sally Becker,
a British aid worker imprisoned July 16 by the Serbs in Kosovo, was released
and deported, diplomats said. Ms. Becker was sentenced to 30 days in prison
for illegally crossing the Albanian-Yugoslav border while trying to help
Kosovo refugees.
___________________________________
Friday July 31 8:32 AM EDT
U.S. Presses Serbs To Deliver Aid
ISMET HAJDARI Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - A U.S. envoy urged
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic today to allow aid workers to deliver
food, medicine and blankets to tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians who
have fled into the hills of Kosovo to escape a major government offensive.
Diplomatic sources,
speaking on condition of anonymity, also said Christopher Hill would seek
assurances that Milosevic has called off the weeklong offensive in the
province, as he promised a European Union delegation Thursday.
Unconfirmed reports
indicated sporadic fighting around the Kosovo Liberation Army stronghold
of Junik, under government siege for a fifth day. Thousands of ethnic Albanian
civilians are believed trapped, but Milosevic told the Europeans he would
not shell the town, near the Albanian border.
Ethnic Albanians make
up 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people, and many want independence
from Serbia, largest of the two republics that form Yugoslavia.
Hill, the U.S. ambassador
to Macedonia, has been spearheading international efforts to arrange peace
talks between Milosevic and leaders of the ethnic Albanian community.
The KLA has been resisting
international calls to unite behind moderate Albanian politician Ibrahim
Rugova, who opposes violence. But diplomats hoped Serb gains during the
offensive might make the rebels more amenable to a negotiated settlement.
On Wednesday, Hill met
with KLA representatives and said they showed interest for the first time
in endorsing the idea of a joint Albanian delegation.
An Albanian source,
speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that the
rebels asked Hill for a week to decide whether to accept the negotiating
team.
Meanwhile, aid workers
today searched the rugged hills around sites of recent fighting in hopes
of locating an estimated 20,000 people - mostly Albanians - displaced by
the Serb offensive.
The search for missing
civilians intensified after teams from the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees found about 500 terrified ethnic Albanians hiding Thursday
in the rugged hills near Malisevo, which the KLA abandoned two days before.
Maki Shinohara, a UNHCR
official, said the Albanians had little food and no water and were fearful
Serb police would hunt them down. She said the refugee agency would try
to ship them food and supplies today or Saturday.
In Geneva, UNHCR spokesman
Kris Janowski said at least 100,000 people had been displaced since Milosevic
launched a crackdown on Albanian militants in February.
The United States and
the Europeans reject independence for Kosovo, fearing it would lead to
similar demands among Albanian-speaking communities elsewhere in the southern
Balkans.
___________________________________
Saturday, August 1, 1998
JAILED AID WORKER DEFIANT
Angel of Mostar raises hell ... the hell of Kosovo
By CHRISTOPHER HENNING, Herald Correspondent in London
SALLY Becker, the British aid worker who became
known as the Angel of Mostar for her work in Bosnia, is fighting on the
only way she knows how: through publicity.
Arrested and jailed
by the Yugoslavian authorities last month for entering the country without
a visa, she went on a hunger strike. This week, after five days, that hunger
strike was forcibly broken by Serb doctors. They placed her on a drip-feed
when she collapsed and lost consciousness.
Now Ms Becker is in
Lipjan jail near the Kosovan capital, Pristina, serving a 30-day sentence
for entering the country "illegally in the company of [Kosovo] Albanian
terrorist", in the words of the Yugoslavian foreign ministry. She "had
seriously violated [Yugoslavian] regulations and discredited the work of
humanitarian aid workers, that she made herself out to be", the foreign
ministry said.
Sally Becker knows all
about outraged bureaucrats. She has made a career out of outraging them.
As far as she is concerned, the more outraged the bureaucrat, the better.
She began her hunger
strike to highlight the suffering of the Kosovan people in the current
Serbian campaign against ethnic Albanian nationalists.
In a statement issued
through her supporters in Britain, she said: "Being imprisoned for trying
to rescue wounded children brought a spotlight to my cell. I deserve the
right to speak of the suffering I have witnessed. Actions speak louder
than words, so my refusal of food and water is my way of redirecting the
spotlight on to the suffering of 2 million people in Kosovo." The 37-year-old
had gone to Kosovo last month with 26 women volunteers, in a convoy of
10 vehicles, to deliver medical supplies. While there, she attempted to
bring a family of ethnic Albanian refugees back across the border into
Albania through part of the battle zone on the western border of Kosovo,
and was arrested.
Ms Becker has not always
done this sort of thing. Once upon a time she was a nice Jewish girl from
a middle-class home in Hove, East Sussex. What first motivated her to get
involved in aid to war zones was a report about the peace movement protesting
against the Gulf War in 1991.
"It was seeing that
ordinary people were doing something to try to make a difference," she
said later. "I just phoned up an organisation called Women Against War
and they said they would love to have me, so I went."
Bosnia made her reputation.
In 1993, having gone there to give art therapy to children traumatised
by the war, she earned her title, The Angel of Mostar, when she rescued
25 wounded Muslim children from Mostar, in southern Bosnia, while it was
under attack from Croat forces. When she drove into the town, she didn't
know the way, couldn't speak the language and had no protection. It was
a war zone. Bullets passed close to her, and she was terrified.
"I don't know how I
geared myself up to do it except by telling myself if I was going to die,
it would happen anyway." The pluck she displayed made her an instant heroine
in Britain; her subsequent well publicised battles with bureaucracy (usually
the United Nations) only confirmed her status.
And she also found love.
Duncan Stewart, a 54-year-old GP from near her British home in Brighton,
became chief medical adviser to the aid movement she founded after her
Mostar escapade. Working together in Bosnia changed their relationship.
But Stewart was already
married, and at the end of 1993, after the tour of Bosnia was over, the
two split up: he went to Asia, and she to Tel Aviv.
"But I still couldn't
forget him and when I came back, it turned out he felt the same way," she
said. "He left home and we have been seeing each other ever since.
"I suppose it is all
to do with Bosnia. You cannot go into a situation like that, two people,
and not form some kind of special bond. We both at the time didn't want
it to happen. I did not want to be responsible for causing unhappiness
and it has caused terrible unhappiness for him. But you cannot choose who
you fall in love with."
Some idea of the annoyance
her activities can cause can be gauged from the reaction to her 1994 rescue
of 25 Croatian children and 28 family members from Nova Bila hospital in
the besieged enclave of Vitez during the Yugoslavian conflict.
She won the praise of
the British press but the anger of the UN by gazumping it by one day. A
UN operation had been organised to do the same thing.
A spokesman for the
UN High Commissioner for Refugees said at the time: "Sally Becker went
in there and said, "I am here. I'll take people out because I am here.'
Then she airlifted 25 children to a hospital in Split, dumped them there,
then went back to Brighton to proclaim victory. It was not a victory. It
was a shambles."
The UN, which was struggling
to cope with the refugee crisis and resented the meddling of a freelance
do-gooder, claimed Ms Becker's airlift was not only superfluous but had
endangered the children, compromised the neutrality of UN operations and
violated a no-fly zone.
The doctors in Split
were said to be furious at having 25 children dumped on them. Some children
had to be taken elsewhere. But Ms Becker claimed the UN had attempted to
disrupt her mission from beginning to end.
"I think the UN resent
the fact that the media focus has been on me," she told the Independent.
"They resent me and dislike me but I don't care. Those people I did bring
out do like me. They do care. My attitude to the UN is the same as Rhett
Butler's in Gone With The Wind: "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.'"
___________________________________
BBC
Friday, July 31, 1998 Published at 18:17 GMT
19:17 UK
Freed aid worker arrives home
The charity worker, Sally Becker, has returned
to Britain after being released from jail in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
Ms Becker was sentenced
to 30 days in prison for entering the region without a visa.
Although she has now
been banned from returning to Kosovo for three years, she has promised
to carry on helping refugees fleeing from the fighting there.
The 37-year-old, talking
to BBC News 24 after landing at Stanstead airport, said she was relieved
to be back home.
"It's been the worst
few weeks of my life. I've seen some places and experienced some things
but never anything like this."
Why go back?
Ms Becker said she would definitel like to return
to Kosovo.
Asked why, she said:
"Because I've met them. I've met the children, I've met the people, I've
met the women and the mums and the old people and they're superb people.
"There are lovely Serbs
and there are lovely Albanians - but unfortunatley there are extremists
and it was the extremist who got hold of me."
She said there were
now two things for her to do: "I have to get home and start fund raising
and see my dogs."
Angel of Mostar
Ms Becker, known as the Angel of Mostar, arrived
at Stansted Airport near London on Friday evening.
She had spent nearly
a week on hunger strike after being imprisoned by Serbian authorities for
illegally crossing the republic's border and for links with the outlawed
Kosovo Liberation Army.
Ms Becker was also accused
of illegally smuggling refugees across the Albanian border.
She refused food and
liquids for five days in protest against the conflict in Kosovo, which
has been ravaged by fighting between Serbian troops and ethnic Albanians.
Doctors put her on an
intravenous glucose drip after she collapsed unconscious on Monday in her
prison cell.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman
said the Ms Becker had been pardoned, released and deported to neighbouring
Macedonia, where she caught her flight for Britain.
The Serbian authorities
said in a statement: "The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia are showing responsibility
and goodwill to pardon Miss Becker from further implementation of her jail
sentence."
Ms Becker made her reputation
in 1993 when she rescued 25 wounded children from the Muslim sector of
the southern Bosnian town of Mostar while it was under Croat attack.
Mike Mendoza, a spokesman
for Ms Becker, said: "I had a call from the Foreign Office to say she was
free.
"She was taken from
her cell and literally dumped in Macedonia."
Mr Mendoza told BBC
News 24: "We are absolutely shocked when we suddenly heard she had been
freed."
Ms Becker's case had
been due to come up for appeal on Monday.
Mr Mendoza said the
aid worker was mentally low and had been very sick.
Ms Becker had said her
hunger strike was on behalf of the family she was helping and the other
civilians caught up in the Kosovan conflict.
Up until earlier this
week Ms Becker had refused any Serbian medical treatment including a drip
leading to fears that she could become seriously ill through dehydration.
___________________________________
Saturday August 1 8:50 AM EDT
Food, water on way to Kosovo refugees
By Douglas Hamilton
PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - Food and water were
being trucked in to refugees who fled to the hills of central Kosovo during
a recent offensive against ethnic Albanian guerrillas, the United Nations
said Saturday.
The U.N. refugee agency
UNHCR said it was taking flour, mineral water, family food packages and
high-protein biscuits for children in the first air convoy to the refugees,
who ran away from the guerrilla-held town of Malisevo last week.
An agency official told
Reuters there were many women and children among the refugees. "They're
living out in the open with very little," he said.
The agency said it had
made contact with some 500 people, but many more were believed to be camped
in the forest.
Thousands fled their
homes and villages in the area of Orahovac two weeks ago after the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) tried unsuccessfully to capture the town.
They fell back on Malisevo,
a KLA stronghold for months, but were uprooted again when the guerrillas
pulled out without a fight in the face of a strong attack by Yugoslav army
and Serbian special police units backed by armor.
In western Kosovo, ethnic
Albanian civilians faced a similar predicament.
While Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic insisted that a week-long offensive against the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) had finished, government forces continued to tighten
the noose around the village of Junik, another KLA redoubt near the border
with northern Albania.
Elsewhere, the main
road from Pristina to Prizren was closed because of shooting from guerrillas.
"They are losing now
and they are going nuts," said a policeman at a checkpoint near Stimlje
southwest of Pristina on Friday. "They are shooting at anything that moves.
They have put mines on the road."
The official Tanjug
news agency reported a border clash along Serbia's border with Macedonia
late Thursday night. Security forces had prevented a large group of "terrorists"
-- Tanjug's usual name for the KLA -- from crossing into the country, it
said.
Serbian forces' week-long
offensive scored major gains against the KLA, which is fighting for independence
for Kosovo, a province of Serbia with a 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority.
At least 500 people
have been killed and 150,000 displaced in five months of fighting. Local
estimates say as many as 50,000 more people have been uprooted in the latest
fighting and many are now living rough in the hills, fearing to return
to their homes.
An ethnic Albanian human
rights activist said Saturday more than 270 villages have been shelled
and at least 60,000 people displaced by Serbian forces during their latest
offensive in Kosovo.
Skelzen Maliqi of the
Board for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms of Kosovo Albanians
told independent Belgrade radio he believed the offensive was designed
not to crack down on guerrillas but to clear out the population.
"We're on the brink
of a humanitarian catastrophe," he said.
A week-long offensive
by security forces against the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) at the end
of July cleared roads and villages of separatist fighters and drove thousands
of civilians into the hills and forests of the province.
"The offensive was not
meant to destroy the KLA, but to move out as much of the population as
possible. The goal was ethnic cleansing," Maliqi said.
Maliqi said that there
was evidence that Kosovo civilians in some of the hardest hit areas now
felt let down by the KLA.
"It was provoking major
conflicts but was unable to protect the citizens (or) carry out a planned
evacuation," he said.
___________________________________
Friday July 31 10:06 AM ET
Serbs, KLA press on despite talks
PRISTINA, Serbia - Serbian forces surrounded an
ethnic Albanian guerrilla bastion in the far west of Kosovo on Friday despite
a claim by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic that the week-long offensive
against the separatists was over. The U.S. Senate, meanwhile, moved to
limit American involvement in the Balkan conflict.
Both sides in Kosovo's
bloody conflict said Serbian forces were threatening the village of Junik,
a stronghold of the secessionist Kosovo Liberation Army close to the border
with lawless northern Albania.
Official Serbian sources
said the town was held by only a few dozen hardline guerrillas and that
their commanders had already crossed over into Albania.
Ethnic Albanians said
there were thousands of civilians in the village and that attempts had
been made to evacuate them.
The move against Junik
comes at the end of a week-long offensive by government forces that has
recaptured much of Kosovo from the KLA, which is waging a guerrilla war
to wrest the 90 percent ethnic Albanian province from Serbia.
By one government estimate
the KLA now controls just 10 percent of Kosovo compared with as much as
50 percent a week or so ago.
Earlier in the day,
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic told European Union envoys pressuring
him to enter peace talks that a major offensive launched by his government
against separatist Albanians in Kosovo had ended.
"Mr. Milosevic has assured
us that military operations have come to a halt," Austria's Albert Rohan
told reporters after a meeting the veteran Yugoslav leader.
But later reports made
it clear that fighting was continuing as the rebels sought to recapture
some of the losses of the past week and the Serbs pressed forward with
their own assault.
A key question for diplomats
was whether sudden heavy losses sustained by the rebels would overcome
their aversion to a negotiated settlement or leave one party too weak and
the other too strong for good-faith talks to get off the ground.
"The KLA wi lways
have pockets in [ethnic Albanian] communities in which it can operate,"
James Gow, a defense expert at the University of London, told MSNBC. "But
over time, it's hard to see how the KLA can maintain control over territory,
given the weaponry of the Yugoslav forces."
This Serb offensive,
which seems largely to have spared civilians, has also been more palatable
for critics of Milosevic.
Ibrahim Rugova, leader
of the ethnic Albanian majority's longtime passive resistance to Serb domination
which exploded into guerrilla war last February, reported progress Thursday
in forming a common party front aligned with the KLA.
Rugova spoke in Pristina,
the Kosovo provincial capital, after meeting EU envoys who then returned
to Belgrade to meet Milosevic, who revoked Kosovo's autonomy in 1989 to
consolidate his power on a platform of Serb nationalism.
Milosevic's move nine
years ago helped precipitate the breakup of old federal Yugoslavia as four
of six republics, including Bosnia, seceded in wars lasting from 1991 to
1995.
Kosovo, if unchecked,
could prove the most disastrous turn in the Yugoslav conflict because,
for the first time, fighting could suck in adjacent countries - chaotic
Albania, which the KLA uses as a rear base, and Macedonia with its large
and restive Albanian minority.
That specter inspires
foreign efforts to settle the Kosovo conflict. Diplomats want to do so
before the freezing Balkan winter descends, which could threaten humanitarian
catastrophe if many thousands of refugees remain on the run.
Aid workers were searching
remote southern areas of Kosovo for tens of thousands of civilians believed
to have fled a Serb offensive that drove ethnic Albanian rebels from their
strongholds.
The search for missing
civilians intensified after teams from the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees found about 500 terrified ethnic Albanians hiding Thursday
in the rugged hills near Malisevo, which the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army
abandoned two days before.
Maki Shinohara, a UNHCR
official, said the Albanians had little food and no water and were fearful
Serb police would hunt them down. She said the refugee agency would try
to ship them food and supplies today or Saturday.
In Geneva, UNHCR spokesman
Kris Janowski said at least 100,000 people had been displaced within the
rebellious province since Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched
a crackdown on Albanian militants in February.
In Washington, the U.S.
Senate, with a Republican majority already unhappy with the extended U.S.
mission in Bosnia, moved to limit the scope of American action on Kosovo.
In a largely symbolic
move, the Senate voted to require the president to consult before commiting
any U.S. forces to Kosovo. Such consultations are constitutionally required
in any case. Nonetheless, Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas with
an isolationist bent, predicted: "The United States and Western European
nations are on the verge of an expensive and dangerous involvement in Kosovo."
He said Clinton has
yet to explain a rationale for such involvement.
"This amendment is a
'warning order' to the administration that it needs to answer important
questions before sending our men and women into another conflict," said
Roberts, who sponsored the Kosovo amendment. The provision also covers
deployment of troops in Albania or Macedonia in connection with the conflict.
Both countries neighbor Kosovo and could be brought into a full-scale war
there.
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