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Betreff:         [ALBANEWS] News: British Press, 7 August 98
Datum:         Fri, 7 Aug 1998 18:06:36 +0100
    Von:         Kosova Information Centre - London <kic-uk@kosova.demon.co.uk>

7 August
The Times

US talks peace but Serbs scent Kosovo victory, Tom Walker writes in Srbica
Milosevic bars observers from 'massacre' sites

THE Yugoslav leader President Milosevic yesterday risked provoking Western military intervention in Kosovo by refusing observers of the five-nation Contact Group and Western journalists access to the sites of alleged atrocities.
Despite clear warnings from Richard Holbrooke, America's senior Balkan peace broker, that Mr Milosevic is pushing his brand of brinkmanship too far, Serbian security forces on the ground clearly believe the hour of victory is nigh.
Only Llaushe, in Kosovo's most central and naturally defensive valley, lies in Mr Milosevic's path towards the annihilation of the Kosovo Liberation Army in its present form. Llaushe was where most analysts believe the Kosovo conflict really began last November, with the ambush of a police convoy that had been attempting to collect a fine from a family. It is now where the state security forces are exacting an overwhelming revenge.
From the earsplitting explosions and palls of smoke that have risen beyond the valley's high wooded sides this past week, it appears there can be little left of the village. If KLA guerrillas are still in Llaushe, then they are fighting to the death.
"Sixty-two people are still in there. They have cellars, but they cannot move," said one Albanian source. As concealed tanks fired two more shells towards the village from the deserted town of Srbica, a mile to the northeast, police told us to crouch behind the bulletproof Chevrolets of American Contact Group observers to protect ourselves against alleged "terrorist snipers".
Along with the Contact Group convoy we turned back to Srbica's police station, where the commander confirmed the Llaushe offensive was continuing. We took a 30-mile detour around the back of the valley, and tried approaching from the southwest, only to be confronted by a checkpoint. "Diplomats," scoffed an officer in tennis shoes, leaping on to the top of his armoured personnel carrier with his Kalashnikov. Our rejection was guaranteed when it was confirmed that the Contact Group convoy was carrying Albanian translators, a discovery that was greeted by the usual stream of obscenities. Evidently these were not men who tune in to the CNN news network. Had they done so on Wednesday night, they would have heard Mr Holbrooke deliver the clearest of warnings to Mr Milosevic that the offensives must stop. Mr Holbrooke reiterated that the Kosovo crisis was deepening, "increasing dramatically the likelihood or possibility of active Western intervention of a military sort".
How much the regime is listening to the West, however, remains a mystery. Mr Milosevic delivered a statement on television in which he made no reference to Mr Holbrooke and, indeed, in which he appeared to be operating in a different world.
"The state institutions are making clear distinctions between Albanian terrorists and real citizens, and real measures will be directed to safeguarding the citizens and their property," he said, asking for negotiations to resume.
In the government daily Politika Goran Matic, the federal Minister of Information, railed against foreign "media scum" in the wake of confused reporting of unconfirmed mass graves.
American and German journalists at the centre of the row had apparently fled Kosovo yesterday, after receiving threats of retribution and arrest.
 

The Daily Telegraph

Aid women threaten to sue Angel of Mostar
By Susie Steiner

SIX volunteers who accompanied Sally Becker, the woman known as the Angel of Mostar, on a humanitarian aid mission to Kosovo have sought legal advice in an attempt to sue her for alleged negligence.
The women claim that Miss Becker unnecessarily put their lives at risk during an expedition they say was ill-planned and reckless. One said: "She clearly did not know what she was doing."
But a spokesman for Operation Angel, led by Miss Becker, said: "Only six people have actually said anything, while 25 went on the trip. Anyone who is entering a war zone has to take some risks. It's not a holiday camp. Sally protected them all the way."
Miss Becker became known as the Angel of Mostar during her work with sick children in Bosnia. She led Operation Angel - a band of 26 volunteers - to Kosovo in June but stayed on alone after the group had returned to Britain. Her work there gained prominence last month when she was arrested by Yugoslav authorities while trying to smuggle a refugee family across the border.
She went on a hunger strike while serving 15 days in prison but was released to return to Britain on July 31. Now some members of the expedition are seeking to dispel the image of Miss Becker as a heroine.
Mary Banks, a coach driver with the expedition convoy, said: "We are worried stiff that she might take other convoys to Kosovo. If she does, volunteers could end up getting killed. She is a very foolhardy woman.
When we came home and later saw her on British television after her so- called jail ordeal it just stuck in our throats. She unnecessarily put our lives at risk."
Mrs Banks is joined by Dawn Jackson, from Reading, Susan Hand, from Bournemouth, Jenny Wheately, from Brighton, Alison Scheffel from Liverpool and Madeline Brown from Wantage, Oxon, in complaining about the trip.
The women, all travelling aboard a coach, claim they suffered a perilous journey in which their vehicle climbed a 10,000ft mountain over 12 hours, while being shot at by snipers.
Mrs Banks said: "We could have lost our lives about 30 times on that track which was barely wide enough to hold the coach. The girls were traumatised and screaming all the way. One of them passed out." In a statement, Miss Becker responded: "Unfortunately, our route was changed at the last minute by the authorities but they kindly provided a police escort. I'm proud to say that we managed to deliver several tons of vital humanitarian aid to hundreds of people so in need."
The expedition found itself in a region called Bajram Curri, on the border with Kosovo, which was lawless and overrun with the Albanian mafia. Mark Cutts, a United Nations field officer working in the area, said: "It was one of the most inexperienced groups I have ever found in a situation like that."
Miss Becker is leading another group to Kosovo in September and other members of Operation Angel plan to return there in the Spring. Pat Bravington, 67, the oldest member of the expedition, said: "We are very distressed at the allegations being made against Sally. She took care of us to the best of her ability. She never put us in any danger. She even arranged for the chief of police to escort us over the mountains. It's a war zone but we did not feel any fear."
 

Financial Times

KOSOVO: Serbian forces attack last pockets of resistance
By Guy Dinmore in Srbica

Serbian forces on Thursday attacked the remaining pockets of resistance of ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo province, despite US warnings of military intervention if President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia does not call off his offensive. Police blocked journalists and western diplomatic observers on the edge of the central town of Srbica from entering the village of Lausa. Smoke hung over the area and the occasional boom of artillery fire could be heard nearby.
Government forces have captured a swathe of central and southern Kosovo over the past week, burning villages and fields and putting to flight tens of thousands of civilians. Pro-independence rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army have mostly retreated in disarray after evacuating civilians.
The US envoy, Richard Holbrooke, warned on Wednesday that the operation, which was continuing despite Mr Milosevic's assurances to the contrary, "increases dramatically the likelihood or possibility of active western intervention of a military sort".
He also said Mr Milosevic had received a letter from the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, of "a very forceful nature".

BBC NEWS
Friday, August 7, 1998 Published at 13:04 GMT 14:04 UK

International pressure mounts on Milosevic

President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia is coming under renewed international pressure to halt continuing action in Kosovo by Serbian forces against ethnic Albanian separatists.
Ambassadors of Nato countries are discussing the conflict, a day after the United States warned that prospects of military intervention have increased.
Nato has also announced that exercises in two neighbouring countries - Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - will be held within a few weeks.
American and Russian envoys - the US ambassador to Macedonia, Christopher Hill, and a Russian deputy foreign minister, Nikolai Afanasyevsky - have had talks together in Kosovo as they continue attempts to negotiate a settlement to the conflict.
A White House spokesman, PJ Crowley, earlier described the continuing Serbian offensive against ethnic Albanians as totally unacceptable.
He said that systematic use of violence against the mainly ethnic Albanian population was outrageous.
The US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has said the Serb action brings military action closer.
Rugova welcomes intervention threats The President of the Kosovo Albanians, Ibrahim Rugova, has welcomed the US threats of military intervention by Nato forces.
Speaking in the provincial capital, Pristina, Mr Rugova said the people of Kosovo have to be protected and he said he believed the West was serious about intervening in the province.
He said the Serbian forces are still targeting villages in central Kosovo and that children who had to flee their homes and are now hiding in mountains are the ones who are suffering the most.
Serb officials will not confirm if they are still carrying out operations against the guerrillas.
Last week, the Yugoslav leader, Slobodon Milosevic, assured international diplomats that the Serb operation against the Kosovo Liberation Army was over. But this is not the case.
'Up to 200,000 refugees' The United Nations says up to 200,000 people have been displaced by the Serb offensive.
On Thursday, a UN convoy of trucks with flour, blankets and medical supplies reached villages west of Pristina where hundreds of ethnic Albanians are sleeping rough in the forests.
The refugees in the area - near the village of Lapcevo - are among an estimated 30,000 - 60,000 to have fled from their homes over the last two weeks, since renewed fighting broke out between the Serbs and guerrillas from the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said a shortage of clean water was the main problem for the refugees.
Those in the forest are drinking unfiltered water from nearby springs, and some say they are in need of medicine.
Ethnic Albanians make up the majority of the population in Kosovo, a province in southern Serbia.
Yugoslav security forces began an offensive against the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has been fighting for independence, in February.
--
Kosova Information Centre - London

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Betreff:         [ALBANEWS] NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, AUGUST 07, 1998/C
Datum:         Fri, 7 Aug 1998 11:35:42 -0400
    Von:         Sokol Rama <sokolrama@sprynet.com>
           NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, AUGUST 07, 1998/C

Taken without permission, for fair use only.

NATO prepares to flex ist military muscles for Milosevic
Kosovo refugees grimly flee besieged villages
Pentagon announces military Exercises near Kosovo border
U.N.'s WFP to take food to Kosovo-Albania border
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MSNBC/Yahoo!
Friday August 7 9:10 AM ET

NATO prepares to flex its military muscles for Milosevic

WASHINGTON - NATO and European troops will hold exercises in Albania the week after next and in Macedonia in September to warn Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end military action in Kosovo, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
     "I don't think that he should doubt our ability to move forces in very quickly, whether they be air forces or ground forces," Defense Department spokesman Ken Bacon said.
     The announcement came after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Milosevic his offensive against ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo increased the threat of NATO military intervention.
     President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair also talked for 30 minutes by telephone on Thursday about ways to halt the Serb offensive.
     "They discussed ways to increase the pressure on Milosevic and ways to put a stop to the offensive that is going on," White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said.
     Lockhart said the two leaders agreed that a negotiated solution to the conflict was preferable but that contingency planning for dealing with Kosovo was "intensifying" within the NATO military alliance.
     Bacon told reporters NATO contingency plans for possible military intervention in the Kosovo crisis were "largely done" and the patience of the allies was wearing thin over the continuing violence in the south Serbian province.
     He said the plans could be completed by Friday.
     "NATO will have to decide what triggers its intervention," he said. "I think that every day the violence continues, it brings the NATO community closer to consensus on this."
     Bacon declined to give details but said the plans covered "a wide range of military options." NATO asked its military experts in May to look at possible preventive deployments in Albania and Macedonia and air strikes in Kosovo itself.
     Bacon told reporters NATO contingency plans for possible military intervention in the Kosovo crisis were 'largely done' and the patience of the allies was wearing thin over the continuing violence in the south Serbian province.
     Bacon said the military exercises - to be held from Aug. 17 to 22 in Albania and from Sept. 10 to 18 in Macedonia - would involve forces from a large number of NATO countries and East European nations under the alliance's Partnership for Peace program.
     In Brussels, NATO's Military Committee said forces from 14 countries, including Russia, would take part part in the exercises in Albania, called "Cooperative Assembly."
     It named the countries as Albania, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the United States.
     "This exercise ... is designed to develop a common understanding of peace support operations, doctrine and training and to practice interoperability between participating nations' military forces," a statement said.
     The Albania exercise was planned after NATO ministerial meetings early this summer, while the Macedonia peacekeeping exercise had been tentatively planned for some time, Bacon said. Both Balkan countries border Kosovo.
     State Department spokesman James Foley said Albright's message to Milosevic expressed the "strong view that the ongoing Serb offensive and the unacceptable actions that have taken place in the context of that offensive only increase the chances of there being military action on the part of NATO."
     Foley told reporters the message was conveyed to Milosevic on Wednesday by Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, who has been spearheading U.S. attempts to halt the fighting in Kosovo.
     In the message, he said, Albright "expressed her shock and dismay over the effects of the Serb military offensive in Kosovo" and the "need to end the offensive actions" to allow refugees to return to their homes.
     Yugoslav security forces have launched a major offensive in recent days to crush a guerrilla movement leading the fight for an independent Kosovo and have driven tens of thousands of civilians from their homes.
     There have also been reports of mass graves found after Serbs occupied Albanian villages.
     While Ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's population, are pressing for independence, the major powers are only willing to contemplate greater autonomy for the province within Yugoslavia.
     The outlook for action by NATO has been clouded by differences among members over whether they need a U.N. mandate to go ahead. Russia has blocked a proposed Security Council resolution to authorize this.
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MSNBC/Yahoo!

Friday August 7 9:10 AM ET

Kosovo refugees grimly flee besieged villages

By Preston Mendenhall

SHIPOL, Serbia - A steady stream of ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing fighting in the Kosovo province flowed from the hills on Thursday into this suburb of Mitrovica, a town of 25,000 that has seen its population double in the past six days. On a dirt back road leading to the town, 70 refugees, traveling by foot and on tractors, most with little more than a plastic bag with their possessions, passed in a period of 15 minutes. There was no break in the procession.
     Several men, one armed with a pistol, stood at the final corner in the road before Mitrovica, directing recent arrivals to the town council, where local politicians attempted to find spare rooms and partially built houses for the families to call home. The men claimed to be part of a "humanitarian wing" of the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, which is fighting for independence in the region.
     "There is no KLA in this area, but we try to help people," said one of the rebel relief workers, as he shoved a Makarov pistol into the pocket of his sweatpants. He declined to be identified by name. Mitrovica is the only sizeable town on the single road that cuts across the Drenica region, the scene of intense battles over the last two weeks.
     In a farmhouse behind the Shipol mosque, 23-year-old Elfije cradled her sleeping six-day-old daughter, Ardita. Elfije said her journey started on July 28, when Serb police began to shell Curaku, her home village. She and her family ran from their homes and walked for two hours to nearby Tushilo, where Ardita was born on July 29. But Tushilo, too, then came under attack, and the family, with the two-day-old baby, fled first into the forest, and then by tractor to Shipol over a period of four days.
     "My baby has a temperature, and I'm so tired," Elfije said, as 25 other refugees in the building looked on. "We hope we can find a doctor here."
     Serbian police man checkpoints on the hills that form the small valley through which the road to Shipol passes. An Albanian refugee in Mitrovica said he had been fired on as he made his way down the road with three of his 10 children. The remaining seven, plus their children and his wife, are stuck in the village of Kladernice, about 12 miles away.
     "They are surrounded on all sides by the police," the 50-year-old farmer said, declining to identify himself for fear it would put his stranded family in danger. "My daughter has a one-year-old baby and is living in the woods - I have no idea where," he said with tears streaming down his cheeks.
     A convoy of trucks organized by the United Nations High Committee for Refugees (UNHCR) reached two towns in the Malisevo region on Thursday, the organization's spokesman told MSNBC. Six trucks loaded with 10 tons of flour, 1,000 family food packets, baby food and hygiene products were delivered to Lapcevo and Crno Vrane, Maans Nyberg said.
     "The refugees are very, very tired. The weather is so hot, and the children are dehydrated," he said.
     A local politician said Mitrovica is severely strained by the tide of refugees. "If the current situation continues, we can survive for about a month. After that, it will become a human catastrophe," said Faruk Spahiu, the leader of the Mitrovica chapter of the pro-independence Liberal Democratic Party (LDK).
     But many of the refugees spoke of their villages being destroyed behind them and questioned whether they would have anything to return to. "We hear that the police have a terrible gun which they use to throw fire on our houses," said a man who wanted to be identified only by his initials, M.Q. He described a device similar to a flame-thrower.
     Fighting continued Thursday in two areas of Kosovo. In the Drenica region in the west of the province, Serbs shelled the village of Ocareva from nearby hill. And in Jurik, near the Albanian border to the south, the KLA and Serb police faced off for the second straight week in what is becoming a decisive battle for the rebels. The entire town is surrounded, according to Serb police reports, and daily battles are reported.
     (In Washington, Ken Bacon, the Pentagon spokesman, said NATO should complete military planning for possible action related to Kosovo on Thursday or Friday. The NATO military committee has informally talked to member nations about what forces each would provide. Two plans are being contemplated - one concentrating on an air attack and another involving ground forces.)
     In Mitronica, Serb police reportedly carried out a weapons search on a downtown house. An armored personnel carrier and 25 police armed with automatic weapons surrounded the property, but would not give details of the operation.
     The commander told MSNBC that it was a sanctioned operation and "totally legal." An official at the Mitrovica LDK said that they police had been searching for a KLA weapons stash.
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CNN

Pentagon announces military exercises near Kosovo border

August 7, 1998
Web posted at: 3:16 a.m. EDT (0716 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- NATO and former Soviet Bloc troops will hold exercises in Albania later this month and in Macedonia in September to warn Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end military action in Kosovo, Pentagon officials said.
     Condemning the violence against Albanians living in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, spokesman Kenneth Bacon said Thursday that NATO allies want a cease-fire to end the fighting, but continue to hone plans for a potential military response in case intervention is necessary.
     "The current level of violence is unacceptable, and we're trying to make that clear in all sorts of communications to Milosevic and to his army and his police forces," Bacon said.
     "What the Yugoslav forces are doing today, the Serb forces directed by Milosevic, is wrong," he said. "We condemn this activity by him, the violence against the Kosovar-Albanians, the burning, the rooting people out of villages, the killings. We've been consulting with our allies about how to respond, and at the same time NATO has been completing its military planning."
     Bacon said the Albanian exercises for ground troops was scheduled following meetings earlier this summer among NATO foreign and defense ministers.
     Dubbed "Cooperative Assembly 1998," it runs from Aug. 17-22 and will bring together more than 1,200 troops from the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Greece, Spain, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, Italy, Albania, Russia, and Lithuania.
     The exercise is being held under the umbrella of NATO's cooperative "Partnership for Peace" program, designed to improve ties among allied and former Soviet Bloc militaries.

Albright warns Milosevic of NATO intervention

The announcement came after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Milosevic his offensive against ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo increased the threat of NATO military intervention.
     President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair also talked for 30 minutes by telephone on Thursday about ways to halt the Serb offensive.
     "They discussed ways to increase the pressure on Milosevic and ways to put a stop to the offensive that is going on," White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said.
     Lockhart said the two leaders agreed that a negotiated solution to the conflict was preferable but that contingency planning for dealing with Kosovo was "intensifying" within the NATO military alliance.
     Asked whether the exercise would "impress" the Yugoslav leader, Bacon replied, "The point isn't necessarily to impress him; it's to do the Partnership for Peace work in these two countries. But I don't think that he should doubt our ability to move forces in very quickly, should we decide it's necessary."
     Bacon said NATO was expected to put the final touches on some plans for military action in the next two days. "Then the international community will have to decide what to do next, based on Milosevic's activities," he said.
     Despite Milosevic's promise last month to halt military operations against Kosovo Liberation Army rebels, the latest wave of Serb violence has driven up to 200,000 Albanians from their homes.
     A Marine spokesman said more than 1,000 Marines may take part in the Albanian exercise. There are 2,183 in the Mediterranean with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, on board the amphibious warfare ships USS Saipan, USS Austin and USS Tortuga.
     Bacon said the exercise will cover a broad range of activities, including platoon and squad level training and medical, dental, and medical evacuation exercises. Some engineering units will also work on repairing and rebuilding some local buildings.
     A second similar NATO exercise will be held in Macedonia on Sept. 10-18. Troops from 22 nations will work on improving their "peacekeeping skills," Bacon said. About 200 U.S. Marines are slated to take part in that exercise, officials said.
     The Macedonian exercise will include participants from the United States, Canada, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, France, Norway, Spain, Britain, Denmark, Albania, Latvia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Estonia, Macedonia, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine.
     Finland and Lithuania will send observers, he added.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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Friday August 7 11:18 AM EDT

U.N.'s WFP to take food to Kosovo-Albania border

ROME (Reuters) - The U.N.'s food aid agency said Friday it would try to make the first food deliveries to more than 50,000 ethnic Albanians trapped in forests between Kosovo and Albania since a major Serb offensive began in June.
     The Rome-based World Food Program said in a statement that a convoy of two trucks and representatives from WFP, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and other aid groups would set out Saturday from Pristina, the capital of the southern Serb province, and Dakovica, in southwestern Kosovo.
     WFP said an estimated 25,000 displaced people, most of them women and young children, had been trapped in the forests to the west of Dakovica along with some 30,000 residents of the small agricultural area for almost two months.
     The trucks will carry at least 8,000 rations of WFP high protein biscuits and other food provided by aid groups for the most needy.
     Robert Hauser, head of WFP's unit handling the region, said that as a result of recent battles, the agency expected to find large numbers of people in urgent need of food and other relief.
     "This will be a preliminary run to provide some immediate relief and to assess needs," he said in the statement. "We hope that if we can get through now, we will be able to make regular deliveries soon afterwards."
     Displaced people poured into Dakovica on tractors, donkeys, ox carts, bicycles and on foot, hoping to cross into Albania. Dakovica is on a main road which runs parallel to the mountainous border between Kosovo and Albania.
     Escape became impossible when Serb forces fighting the separatist rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) mined the passes into Albania and began shelling Dakovica, which they see as a KLA stronghold.

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Betreff:         [ALBANEWS] NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, AUGUST 07, 1998/B
Datum:         Fri, 7 Aug 1998 07:45:12 -0400
    Von:         Sokol Rama <sokolrama@sprynet.com>
                   NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, AUGUST 07, 1998/B

Taken without permission, for fair use only.

Milosevic bars observers from 'massacre' sites
Is Kosovo intervention more bark than bite?
NATO and Other European Troops Plan Exercises to Warn Serbs
'Angel' faces legal action for risking lives
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August 7 1998
EUROPE

US talks peace but Serbs scent Kosovo victory, Tom Walker writes in Srbica

Milosevic bars observers from 'massacre' sites

THE Yugoslav leader President Milosevic yesterday risked provoking Western military intervention in Kosovo by refusing observers of the five-nation Contact Group and Western journalists access to the sites of alleged atrocities.
     Despite clear warnings from Richard Holbrooke, America's senior Balkan peace broker, that Mr Milosevic is pushing his brand of brinkmanship too far, Serbian security forces on the ground clearly believe the hour of victory is nigh.
     Only Llaushe, in Kosovo's most central and naturally defensive valley, lies in Mr Milosevic's path towards the annihilation of the Kosovo Liberation Army in its present form. Llaushe was where most analysts believe the Kosovo conflict really began last November, with the ambush of a police convoy that had been attempting to collect a fine from a family. It is now where the state security forces are exacting an overwhelming revenge.
     From the earsplitting explosions and palls of smoke that have risen beyond the valley's high wooded sides this past week, it appears there can be little left of the village. If KLA guerrillas are still in Llaushe, then they are fighting to the death.
     "Sixty-two people are still in there. They have cellars, but they cannot move," said one Albanian source. As concealed tanks fired two more shells towards the village from the deserted town of Srbica, a mile to the northeast, police told us to crouch behind the bulletproof Chevrolets of American Contact Group observers to protect ourselves against alleged "terrorist snipers".
     Along with the Contact Group convoy we turned back to Srbica's police station, where the commander confirmed the Llaushe offensive was continuing. We took a 30-mile detour around the back of the valley, and tried approaching from the southwest, only to be confronted by a checkpoint. "Diplomats," scoffed an officer in tennis shoes, leaping on to the top of his armoured personnel carrier with his Kalashnikov.
     Our rejection was guaranteed when it was confirmed that the Contact Group convoy was carrying Albanian translators, a discovery that was greeted by the usual stream of obscenities. Evidently these were not men who tune in to the CNN news network. Had they done so on Wednesday night, they would have heard Mr Holbrooke deliver the clearest of warnings to Mr Milosevic that the offensives must stop. Mr Holbrooke reiterated that the Kosovo crisis was deepening, "increasing dramatically the likelihood or possibility of active Western intervention of a military sort".
     How much the regime is listening to the West, however, remains a mystery. Mr Milosevic delivered a statement on television in which he made no reference to Mr Holbrooke and, indeed, in which he appeared to be operating in a different world.
     "The state institutions are making clear distinctions between Albanian terrorists and real citizens, and real measures will be directed to safeguarding the citizens and their property," he said, asking for negotiations to resume.
     In the government daily Politika Goran Matic, the federal Minister of Information, railed against foreign "media scum" in the wake of confused reporting of unconfirmed mass graves.
     American and German journalists at the centre of the row had apparently fled Kosovo yesterday, after receiving threats of retribution and arrest.
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Is Kosovo intervention more bark than bite?

04:44 a.m. Aug 07, 1998 Eastern
By Mark Heinrich

PRISTINA, Serbia, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Roused from holiday season torpor by headlines about refugee hordes and mass graves, the West is baring its teeth again at Yugoslavia over the war in Kosovo. But is its bark worse than its bite?
     Belgrades destructive offensive against separatist rebels seeking to end years of Serbian police rule over the majority Albanians in the province was quietly tolerated until consciences were shaken by the human factor.
     Serbian advances, replete with indiscriminate shelling by most accounts, stampeded tens of thousands of Albanian civilians into remote hills where many face a struggle to survive without shelter, food or medical aid.
     Then this week, reports circulated worldwide about alleged mass graves said to contain hundreds of Albanian civilians executed in reprisal for a guerrilla assault on the town of Orahovac.
     An initial Western investigation found no evidence but further inquiries are being made.
     The one-two punch of emotive refugee and mass grave stories jolted Big Powers who had apparently been sitting back to let Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic bludgeon the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to the negotiating table.
     After all, the KLAs underlying dream of merging Kosovo, Albania and Albanian-populated Macedonia into a "Greater Albania" would be a Balkan nightmare for the U.N. Security Council.
     Western officials were dismayed by the refusal of both the KLA and Kosovo Albanian political leaders to accept anything but total independence, which had scuttled talks with Belgrade on its tentative offer of autonomy for Kosovo.
     But most analysts believe Milosevics offensive has been so harsh -- with wanton burning and looting of abandoned Albanian communities -- that something tough must be done to rescue the cause of peace.
     The major powers still smart from their failure to break the Serb war machine in Bosnia before it had wrecked that multi-ethnic republic, so they are anxious not to let Kosovo mushroom into a humanitarian disaster.
     Western hawks are now renewing threats of NATO air strikes against Belgrade to back up a fresh flurry of diplomacy intended to prod Kosovos profoundly alienated Albanians and Serbs into a ceasefire and constructive dialogue.
     U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, through her spokesman, on Thursday expressed her "strong view that the ongoing Serbian offensive and the unacceptable actions that have taken place in the context of that offensive only increase the chances of there being military action by NATO."
     U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair also discussed the issue at length on the telephone.
     But NATO looks divided over the conditions for intervention. The U.S. State Department announced that contingency plans were ready only to be contradicted by European sources in NATO who said work remained to be done before they were approved.
     A wider shadow of doubt was cast when German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel rejected the idea if it did not get a U.N. Security Council mandate, which he said Russia -- an old ally of Serbs -- was certain to block.
     From an international legal standpoint, there may be misgivings about attacking a sovereign country that is battling an internal insurgency, not trying to change recognised borders by force, as the Bosnian Serbs did.
     Whatever the Wests distaste for Milosevics repressive rule, it believes Yugoslavias territorial integrity should be upheld and strongly opposes the creation of another ethnic splinter state in the unstable Balkans.
     In that context, calibrating military action to fit a viable political goal -- without which intervention is unlikely to be approved -- would be a thorny task with strategic and diplomatic risks.
     If the goal is autonomy, NATO could not blast Serb targets so hard as to allow the KLA to grab territory. The KLA would try to take advantage of a NATO swoop since their desire for statehood seems stronger than the worlds desire to prevent it.
     In that case, would NATO have to hit the KLA too, or seal the border of Albania to cut off its source of weapons? That might leave Belgrade too strong to negotiate in good faith, or drive a desperate KLA into terrorism.
     The wily Milosevic could defuse momentum for intervention which, with its risk of casualties, Western officials would prefer to avoid, by reining in his army at the right moment.
     Indeed, fighting in Kosovo may be easing slightly as Belgrade makes progress towards its primary goal -- pushing guerrilla gunners out of range of major roads.

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
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NYTIMES
August 7, 1998

NATO and Other European Troops Plan Exercises to Warn Serbs

By REUTERS

WASHINGTON -- NATO and European troops will hold exercises in Albania from Aug. 17 to Aug. 22, and in Macedonia in September, to warn President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia to end military action in Kosovo, the Pentagon said Thursday.
     "I don't think that he should doubt our ability to move forces in very quickly, whether they be air forces or ground forces," the Defense Department spokesman, Ken Bacon, said.
     The announcement came after Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright told Milosevic that his offensive against ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo had increased the threat of NATO military intervention.
     Fighting in the province appeared to have eased Thursday, with reports of only sporadic clashes between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian separatists. Western observers, however, again reported incidents of burning houses in villages left empty by residents who had fled to escape fighting.
     The Defense Department spokesman, Bacon, told reporters Thursday that NATO contingency plans for possible military intervention were "largely done" and the patience of the allies was wearing thin over the continuing violence in the south Serbian province.
     He said the plans could be completed by Friday.
     "NATO will have to decide what triggers its intervention," he said. "I think that every day the violence continues, it brings the NATO community closer to consensus on this."
     Bacon declined to give details but said the plans covered "a wide range of military options." NATO asked its military experts in May to look at possible preventive deployments in Albania and Macedonia and air strikes in Kosovo itself.
     Bacon said the military exercises would involve forces from a large number of NATO countries and East European nations. In Brussels, NATO's Military Committee said forces from 14 countries, including Russia, would take part part in the exercises in Albania. It named the countries as Albania, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the United States.
     The outlook for action by NATO has been clouded by differences among members over whether they need a United Nations mandate to go ahead. Russia has blocked a proposed Security Council resolution to authorize this.
     The Albania exercise was planned after meetings of NATO ministers early this summer, while the Macedonia peacekeeping exercise had been tentatively planned for some time, Bacon said. Both Balkan countries border Kosovo. The exercise in Macedonia is to take place from Sept. 10 to Sept. 18.
     The State Department spokesman, James Foley, said Ms. Albright's message to Milosevic expressed the "strong view that the ongoing Serb offensive and the unacceptable actions that have taken place in the context of that offensive only increase the chances of there being military action on the part of NATO."
     Yugoslav security forces have launched a major offensive in recent days to crush a guerrilla movement leading the fight for an independent Kosovo and have driven tens of thousands of civilians from their homes.
     There have also been reports of mass graves found after Serbs occupied Albanian villages. Ethnic Albanians make up 90 percent of Kosovo's population.
___________________________________

BBC
Friday, August 7, 1998 Published at 10:00 GMT 11:00 UK

'Angel' faces legal action for risking lives

Sally Becker - dubbed the Angel of Mostar for her humanitarian work in Bosnia - faces legal action from members of her mercy team for putting their lives at risk.
     She has just been freed by the Serbs for trying to rescue injured children from Kosovo.
     But established aid agencies said she courted disaster by flouting Serbian regulations.
     Now some of her own volunteers are considering suing her for negligence.
     They say she risked their lives in her most recent expedition, delivering medical supplies, clothing and toys to war-torn Kosovo on the Albanian border.
     They claim the operation's inadequate organisation put their lives in danger and left several members of the team traumatised.
     The journey involved crossing mountains in an old ex-Army Leyland Tiger coach.
     Bus driver Mary Banks, from Sheffield, said the 26 women volunteers on board were convinced they would not survive the crossing.
     "We didn't mind being injured if we were in a war zone but to die before we got there as so nearly happened was just stupidity," she said.
     "Sally had not done enough preparation and had no compassion or feelings for us. When we complained we were made to feel like wimps."
     Mrs Banks has now contacted a solicitor, who says the party has good grounds for a compensation claim.
     "Sally was told the mountain pass was unsuitable for a 36-foot long coach but she still said it would be okay. My hands were red raw after driving a coach on a mountain ledge 10,000 feet up for 15 hours.
     "The girls in the back were screaming to be shot by snipers because they thought that would be better than going over the edge in a bus. The whole experience was horrendous."
     Experienced aid workers already working in the area nicknamed the party "Hell's Angels" because they were so ill-preprared.
     Miss Becker has also been condemned by the United Nations, which said she was crazy to go into Kosovo with no visa and without following proper procedures.
     It also expressed concern about her plans for a return mission in September.
     A spokesman for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees said: "Her intention of saving women and children and victims of conflict is a noble one, but sometimes she creates more problems than she solves.
     "Her intention of taking refugees out of the mountains is dangerous because there are snipers everywhere. We tried to dissuade her but it was obviously in vain."
     Sally Becker told BBC Radio 4: "The volunteers were well briefed on the mountain roads.
     "We also had a police convoy from the Albania government."
     Mary Banks "had been told that the roads through Albania are treacherous on countless briefings".
     "At no time did the police say it was dangerous to cross.
     "I am sad to hear that she found the experience so distressing, but she seems to have lost sight of our aim which was to deliver aid to refugees in desperate need which we accomplished."
     She also rejected criticism from the UN.
     "The UN worked hand in hand with us on that border. They asked us to take aid to families that they could not reach.
     "I am well used to criticism, but this time I feel that it is detracting from the main issue.
     "Children are dying out there and nobody is doing anything about it. Instead we are more concerned about one woman talking about a mountain crossing when she was supposed to be going there to save lives."

_______________________________________________________________________
Betreff:         [ALBANEWS] NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, AUGUST 07, 1998
Datum:         Fri, 7 Aug 1998 07:16:34 -0400
    Von:         Sokol Rama <sokolrama@sprynet.com>
        NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, AUGUST 07, 1998

Taken without permission, for fair use only.

A brush with 'ethnic cleansing' in Serbia
Serbs raze ethnic Albanian villages
U.N. convoy crosses dead zone to Kosovo refugees
West warns Milosevic on Kosovo
Fighting Lessens in Kosovo
Clinton, Blair Discuss Kosovo
NATO to hold exercises near Kosovo borders
Clinton, Blair discuss ways to halt Serbs in Kosovo
US talks up Kosovo intervention
___________________________________

MSNBC/Yahoo
Thursday August 6 9:30 AM ET

A brush with 'ethnic cleansing' in Serbia

By Preston Mendenhall

CUERELJ, Serbia - Our armored car rounded a small knoll in the Drenica region of Kosovo. My ethnic Albanian translator, Rebeka, and I had passed village after empty village, all of them on fire, none of them likely ever again to house the tens of thousands of people who once called them home. We pressed on to find the main road back to Pristina but instead we came face to face with an elite forward unit of the Serb special police - the point of Serbia's spear in Kosovo.
     The Serbs were just as surprised as we were, and Rebeka and I immediately understood the gravity of the situation. Arriving unannounced in the middle of an active assault by Serb soldiers on an insurgent force was bound to anger our hosts. Adding to the tension were reports Wednesday from the International Committee of the Red Cross that Serb units were setting fire to ethnic Albanian villages already emptied of their populations by shelling.
     As we feared, our hosts were not happy to see us.
     With 20 sniper rifles and AK-47s trained on our armored Land Rover, we waved our hands in a small white towel in the windshield. Through the heavy steel plating on the car, we failed to understand the order to get out. So, screaming, four Serb police dragged us out by our shirt collars, pushed us on to our stomachs and held us with the heels of their boots and gun muzzles. We were then separated on either side of the road and one soldier sped off with our car.
     We failed to understand the order to get out. So, screaming, four Serb police dragged us out by our shirt collars, pushed us on to our stomachs and held us with the heels of their boots and gun muzzles.
     As I was frisked and the contents of my pockets and pack were removed, Rebeka reasoned with the police. Their voices were drowned out by mortar launches about 50 feet away. Herded into the back of a jeep, we were brought to an abandoned farm house, crawling with chiseled and heavily tattooed security police.
     The most visible Serb police forces man the frequent check points in the Kosovo region and they tend to be a swarthy, overweight bunch. The contrast of the special forces was astounding. Seemingly efficient and extremely well equipped, the elite police were a cut above their colleagues - in a totally different league. They did the heavy work and coordinated the deployments of truckloads of reinforcements who arrived even while we waited anxiously inside. The special police forces did countless tours in the Bosnian war and given that "live" training, are considered to be among the most seasoned fighters in the world. Their experience in Bosnia, as well as my own, weighed on my mind as the minutes ticked away.
     Finally, the commander, who used the nom de guerre Brazil, confiscating my video and audio tapes and my paper notebook. He turned to us bluntly and said, "Never come here again."
     The car was returned and Rebeka and I were escorted the 20 miles to Mitrovica, from where we headed back toward Pristina.
___________________________________

MSNBC/Yahoo
Thursday August 6 9:30 AM ET

Serbs raze ethnic Albanian villages

By Preston Mendenhall

CUBRELJ, Yugoslavia - Heavily armed Serb special police units attempted to push further into areas held by ethnic Albanian rebels Wednesday, wiping entire villages off the map as they advanced. Meanwhile, Richard Holbrooke, architect of the Dayton peace accord in Bosnia and the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the Serb offensive "increases dramatically" the likelihood of military intervention by the West.
     Holbrooke said he personally believed there was sufficient reason for the Western powers to move against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic but that any decision needed to be made by President Bill Clinton in consultation with Congress and NATO.
     On Wednesday, elite forces of the feared "Frankies" division of the Serb state police were close to capturing the highest points in Kosovo's Drenica region - strategically important for spotting rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
     The Serb forces lobbed hundreds of shells on villages in the valley below Kosovo's Drenica region. The small hamlets of Ocareva, Vuroje and Turicevac, whose residents fled on foot Tuesday, received the brunt of the barrage. Fires raged on ethnic Albanian homesteads and spread to the fields surrounding the area, obliterating crops vital to the survival of ethnic Albanian refugees hiding in the hills.
     A tattooed Serb commander was concerned his assault would hit colleagues nearby.
     "Give me your exact coordinates; I don't want to kill you guys, too," Brazil screamed into a microphone concealed in his bulletproof vest.
     Beyond the farmhouse where the Frankies had established a temporary headquarters, Serb police in camouflage inched up the hill on their stomachs while hundreds of mortar rounds whooshed over their heads to aid the advance.
     The rarely encountered "Frankies" are professional Serb soldiers named after Franky Simatovich, their feared commander who gained fame in the 1992-95 Bosnia war.
     The group unloaded mortar and ammo from a stream of armored supply vehicles arriving at the farmhouse headquarters. A sophisticated communications room with satellite phones had been set up on the ground floor of the barn. Backup Serb police in standard blue uniforms arrived by the truckload to support the front-line battle.
     "Get off the road!" Brazil screamed at them, apparently fearing return fire from the KLA rebels. In Kladernice, a 30-minute walk away, an ethnic Albanian described the nerve-racking nightmare of the advancing Serb forces.
     "They fire at us; we came down to the village today to make some bread and wash the baby's clothes and then we're heading back to the hills," said Xhemajm, 46.
     He told of hundreds of other stranded villagers surrounded by the Serbs on three sides waiting for their village to be overrun. The road to the front line was desolate, and houses burned in tens of villages. Houses not burned were shelled beyond recognition.
     Xhemajm's wife, Nazise, feared the same would happen to her home. "I think we'll be the next to go," she said, holding their 11-month-old baby girl, Astrite. The child was covered in red rashes because she had to live for weeks in dirty clothes, Nazise said.
     Kosovo is in southern Serbia, the dominant of two republics that make up what's left of Yugoslavia.
     Milosevic has promised to restore Kosovo's autonomy, which he canceled in 1989. But he and major world powers oppose independence for Kosovo, whose population is overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian.
     The United States and European nations fear independence could lead to demands by Albanian-speaking communities in Macedonia and Yugoslavia's other republic, Montenegro, to establish a "Greater Albania" in the southern Balkans.
     KLA rebel leaders are expected to announce this week whether they will accept a U.S. plan for ethnic Albanian politicians to enter peace talks with Milosevic. The current Serb offensive appears designed to deliver a strong blow against the rebels and force them to negotiate from a position of weakness.
     Mitrovica, another village near Cubrelj, has been flooded by refugees fleeing the fighting in the Drenica region.
     An ethnic Albanian refugee cries while sitting with her daughter on the way home to Orahovac Monday.
     Residents of the villages of Ocareva, Vuroje and Turicevac have joined more than 20,000 refugees who fled to Mitrovica in the past few days. Aid workers struggled to reach refugees still in the hills Wednesday. A convoy of six members of Medicin Sans Frontiere, or Doctors Without Borders, reached areas of Drenica Wednesday, after long delays at Serb police checkpoints. Turned away at one checkpoint, the group registered an official protest with the Yugoslav Interior Ministry.
     "We were promised the right to travel anywhere our help was needed, but we are constantly stopped," Keith Ursel, the group's coordinator for the Kosovo region, told MSNBC. The Interior Ministry eventually radioed the checkpoint to let the aid workers pass.
     "We have seen thousands of refugees in the hills," Ursel said. "We are equipped to handle 400 a day with medical supplies, baby food, water purification tablets and temporary shelter."
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Thursday August 6 4:55 PM EDT

U.N. convoy crosses dead zone to Kosovo refugees

By Mark Heinrich

LAPCEVO, Serbia (Reuters) - A U.N. aid convoy reached ethnic Albanian refugees in the rebel-held hills of central Kosovo on Thursday after crossing an eerie landscape of bombed-out ghost towns where they once lived.
     Thirteen aid trucks cautiously threaded their way through a corridor whose only signs of life were abandoned livestock and Serbian police with automatic weapons watching from the roadside or rummaging in smashed buildings.
     Most of the relief lorries went to the village of Lapcevo, around 10 km (six miles) northwest of Malisevo behind the lines of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The others went to the hamlet of Crnavrana not far away.
     A dusty swirl of humanity greeted the trucks as they entered Lapcevo, whose original population of 2,000 has roughly tripled with the refugee influx driven from south and north by Serbia's anti-KLA offensive.
     International relief deliveries to displaced Albanians, stymied for weeks by security roadblocks, are only now getting off the ground. Most Albanians stampeded into the hills over the past three weeks have not seen a single aid parcel yet.
     The main east-west highway from Pristina to Pec and the southward turnoff to Malisevo taken by the convoy were quiet with no visible security measures aside from police infantry patrols, suggesting that the Serbs had driven the KLA out of range of roadways which it had blocked for months.
     Serbian security forces had sealed off the Pristina-Pec highway for much of the past two weeks after recapturing it, claiming they were still being shot at by KLA insurgents.
     But while the convoy route was calm, residents in Lapcevo said refugees were still streaming in day and night from settlements five km or more to the north-northwest said to be still under Serbian bombardment.
     In Lapcevo, convoy trucks unloaded several tons of wheat flour, hundreds of food parcels, hygienic and sanitary items, disinfectants, detergent, baby clothes and toys including teddy bears "to keep the kids morale up," as convoy organizer Richard Floyer-Acland put it.
     A significant majority of the 180,000-odd refugees from Belgrade's devastating offensive in Kosovo, whose 1.6 million Albanian majority seeks independence from Serbia, are women and small children.
     Mans Nyberg, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Serbia, said as many as 20,000 refugees were in the area, most from Malisevo and Orahovac.
     Lapcevo residents showed Reuters Albanian-language leaflets which they said had been dropped by Serbian helicopters. The leaflets urged refugees to return to Orahovac, saying they would not be harmed if they had nothing to do with the KLA.
     "We will come back only when the area is liberated from Serbian forces. Nobody trusts them so we cannot go back. You've seen all the wrecked villages on the Malisevo-Orahovac road," said one Malisevo political leader.
     A few houses that looked untouched when the convoy traveledthe Malisevo road in the morning were burning when it passed back in the afternoon. Homes that had been firebombed or holed by tank or artillery shells without apparent military purpose were a common sight.
     Crowds of frisky youngsters waved or raised the KLA's clench-fist salute at the convoy as it rattled up dusty trails past cornfields and a few stalls heaped with watermelons.
     The mood was more somber in Lapcevo, where several houses along the main square that normally house two families each were clogged with 100-120 refugees, most of whom appeared to be members of typically large Albanian rural clans.
___________________________________

Thursday August 6 4:54 PM EDT

West warns Milosevic on Kosovo

By Jeremy Gaunt

BELGRADE (Reuters) - The United States warned Yugoslavia on Thursday to stop a Serbian offensive in Kosovo, while the European Union demanded that Belgrade cooperate with an investigation into an alleged ethnic massacre.
     NATO and U.S. Defense Department officials formally announced a series of planned military exercises in Albania next week, painting them as another reminder to Belgrade of the West's military might.
     As United Nations aid workers moved deep into the hills of Kosovo with food and provisions for tens of thousands of refugees camped there, fighting in the province appeared to have eased from recent levels.
     There were reports of only sporadic clashes between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian separatists. Western observers, however, again reported incidents of burning houses in villages left empty by residents who had fled to escape fighting.
     The Albanian Foreign Ministry in Tirana accused Serbian forces of conducting "ethnic cleansing" while Albania's parliament called on the West to intervene militarily.
     Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and visiting Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Nikolai Afansyevsky said they wanted a political solution and steps to be taken to bring Kosovo refugees home, according to the official Yugoslav news agency Tanjug.
     Kosovo Serbs, a group whose plight has been overshadowed by that of their ethnic Albanian counterparts, protested in Pristina for the return of as many as 171 relatives allegedly abducted by Kosovo Liberation army (KLA) guerrillas.
     In Washington, the State Department said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had let Milosevic know through diplomatic channels that Serbia's recent actions in Kosovo were "unacceptable" and increased the chances of NATO intervention.
     Serbian security forces launched a fierce offensive more than a week ago against KLA guerrillas demanding independence for Kosovo, a Serbian province with a 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority.
     They failed to let up even after Milosevic had promised the EU that it was over.
     A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said the NATO exercises next week should be a sign to Milosevic of the ability of the West to move quickly.
     The West, however, has appeared divided about how to deal with Milosevic and Kosovo.
     Austria, the EU president, reacting to reports in one of its newspapers of mass graves of more than 500 ethnic Albanians in the central Kosovo town of Orahovac, said it wanted Yugoslavia to grant forensic scientists access to the site.
     EU observers who visited the site on Wednesday found no immediate evidence of mass graves but said they were not sure how many people were buried there. Serbian officials said they were the graves of 40 KLA fighters.
     "We want to say to the Serbs, let the experts in so that you can then prove that such mass graves do not exist," an Austrian spokesman said.
     Die Presse, one of the newspapers that published the report on Wednesday, said it stuck by its story and again quoted eyewitnesses to the alleged mass burial.
     In the hills of western Kosovo itself, U.N. aid workers brought 13 trucks of provisions to refugees huddled in the hills and woods.
     In Lapcevo, convoy trucks unloaded several tons of wheat flour, hundreds of food parcels, hygienic and sanitary items, disinfectants, detergent, baby clothes and toys including teddy bears "to keep the kids morale up."
     On the way to Lapcevo, the convoy stopped in Malisevo, a town untouched a week ago when it was seen by reporters after it had been overrun by Serbian security forces.
     A Reuters reporter accompanying the convoy on Thursday said the town was now uninhabitable -- a wreck of looted and burned houses and businesses.
___________________________________

Thursday August 6 6:06 PM EDT

Fighting Lessens in Kosovo

ISMET HAJDARI Associated Press Writer

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Fighting eased in Kosovo on Thursday after a fierce, two-week Serb offensive that drove tens of thousands of people from their homes and created what one aid official called "a humanitarian disaster."
     Despite the apparent letup in fighting, at least some international relief workers were still having difficulty attending to the estimated 200,000 refugees from recent battles in the southern Serbian province.
     The ethnic Albanian Kosovo Information Center said fighting continued Thursday in the border area around the village of Junik and near Djakovica, but was less severe than in previous days.
     Earlier in the day, Serb sources reported fierce fighting along the main road between the provincial capital of Pristina and Prizren. It also said clashes continued near the besieged Junik, close to the Albanian border.
     "The situation in Kosovo has deteriorated significantly and can now only be described as a humanitarian disaster," Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF, said in a statement.
     "The principal victims of the escalating violence are children and women. Some 200,000 people have been displaced facing daily terror, the loss of their homes, severe malnutrition and a range of health crises."
     In a statement issued in Geneva, Doctors Without Borders said two teams were traveling through Kosovo in search of safe places where clinics can be set up with local doctors' help. The teams, it said, were struggling with poor access.
     The refugees have been displaced by Serbian forces seeking to beat back the underground Kosovo Liberation Army, which is fighting for independence for Kosovo, a province that is 90 percent Albanian. Hundreds of people have been killed since Serbian forces cracked down on the guerrillas in March.
     Moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova declared Friday a day of mourning.
     An ethnic Albanian arrested by police after fighting last week in the central town of Orahovac died in custody Thursday, according to the Kosovo Information Center, which has links to the KLA.
     It also claimed Serbian forces killed four KLA fighters, while the Serbs lost 17 men. The reports could not be verified.
     In Belgrade, Vojislav Seselj, Serbia's vice premier, called for a thorough strike against the KLA, saying "no village must remain under their control. ... There must be no yielding to pressures from Western powers who would dismember the territory of Serbia."
     Meanwhile, family members of more than 100 Serbs presumed kidnapped by ethnic Albanians met Thursday in Kosovo with U.S. and Red Cross officials, demanding help to get their relatives released or at least found.
     Beatrix Weber, of the International Committee of the Red Cross office in Pristina, the provincial capital of Kosovo, said the organization was actively working on cases of 40 missing Serbs presumed abducted by separatist rebels.
     Weber said the Red Cross lists of missing since fighting escalated earlier this year include 400 Kosovo Albanians, but she said the number was still being checked.
     Also Thursday, the European Union approved $5.5 million in aid for Kosovo. The EU Commission said the funds will enable the United Nations and humanitarian groups to take urgent steps to help people fleeing the fighting.
___________________________________

Thursday August 6 6:55 PM EDT

Clinton, Blair Discuss Kosovo

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair discussed in a Thursday telephone conversation Kosovo and Iraq.
     In a 30-minute call, the pair talked about how to increase pressure on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to halt a two-week offensive in the southern Serbia province that has uprooted more than 200,000 ethnic Albanian Kosovo citizens.
     "They agreed that a negotiated solution was preferable at this point but acknowledged that NATO has intensified its planning" for possible military action, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said.
     On Iraq, Clinton told Blair that President Saddam Hussein's refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspections is unacceptable and that Iraq's failure to comply would keep sanctions in place, Lockhart said.
     The two leaders spoke for 30 minutes on the day that Monica Lewinsky, 25, testified before a federal grand jury about her relationship with Clinton as part of the Whitewater investigation.
     While Blair has been a sympathetic figure to Clinton during the controversy, Lockhart said the two leaders did not talk about it Thursday. "Not that I'm aware of," he said.
___________________________________

Friday August 7 1:53 AM EDT

NATO to hold exercises near Kosovo borders

By Patrick Worsnip

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NATO and European troops will hold exercises in Albania the week after next and in Macedonia in September to warn Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end military action in Kosovo, the Pentagon said Thursday.
     "I don't think that he should doubt our ability to move forces in very quickly, whether they be air forces or ground forces," Defense Department spokesman Ken Bacon said.
     The announcement came after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Milosevic his offensive against ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo increased the threat of NATO military intervention.
     President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair also talked for 30 minutes by telephone on Thursday about ways to halt the Serb offensive.
     "They discussed ways to increase the pressure on Milosevic and ways to put a stop to the offensive that is going on," White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said.
     Lockhart said the two leaders agreed that a negotiated solution to the conflict was preferable but that contingency planning for dealing with Kosovo was "intensifying" within the NATO military alliance.
     Bacon told reporters NATO contingency plans for possible military intervention in the Kosovo crisis were "largely done" and the patience of the allies was wearing thin over the continuing violence in the south Serbian province.
     He said the plans could be completed by Friday.
     "NATO will have to decide what triggers its intervention," he said. "I think that every day the violence continues, it brings the NATO community closer to consensus on this."
     Bacon declined to give details but said the plans covered "a wide range of military options." NATO asked its military experts in May to look at possible preventive deployments in Albania and Macedonia and air strikes in Kosovo itself.
     Bacon said the military exercises -- to be held from Aug. 17 to 22 in Albania and from Sept. 10 to 18 in Macedonia -- would involve forces from a large number of NATO countries and East European nations under the alliance's Partnership for Peace program.
     In Brussels, NATO's Military Committee said forces from 14 countries, including Russia, would take part part in the exercises in Albania, called "Cooperative Assembly."
     It named the countries as Albania, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the United States.
     "This exercise ... is designed to develop a common understanding of peace support operations, doctrine and training and to practice interoperability between participating nations' military forces," a statement said.
     The Albania exercise was planned after NATO ministerial meetings early this summer, while the Macedonia peacekeeping exercise had been tentatively planned for some time, Bacon said. Both Balkan countries border Kosovo.
     State Department spokesman James Foley said Albright's message to Milosevic expressed the "strong view that the ongoing Serb offensive and the unacceptable actions that have taken place in the context of that offensive only increase the chances of there being military action on the part of NATO."
     Foley told reporters the message was conveyed to Milosevic on Wednesday by Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, who has been spearheading U.S. attempts to halt the fighting in Kosovo.
     In the message, he said, Albright "expressed her shock and dismay over the effects of the Serb military offensive in Kosovo" and the "need to end the offensive actions" to allow refugees to return to their homes.
     Yugoslav security forces have launched a major offensive in recent days to crush a guerrilla movement leading the fight for an independent Kosovo and have driven tens of thousands of civilians from their homes.
     There have also been reports of mass graves found after Serbs occupied Albanian villages.
     While Ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's population, are pressing for independence, the major powers are only willing to contemplate greater autonomy for the province within Yugoslavia.
     The outlook for action by NATO has been clouded by differences among members over whether they need a U.N. mandate to go ahead. Russia has blocked a proposed Security Council resolution to authorize this.
___________________________________

Friday August 7 6:45 AM EDT

Clinton, Blair discuss ways to halt Serbs in Kosovo

By Patrick Worsnip

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NATO and European troops will hold exercises in Albania the week after next and in Macedonia in September to warn Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end military action in Kosovo, the Pentagon said.
     "I don't think that he should doubt our ability to move forces in very quickly, whether they be air forces or ground forces," Defense Department spokesman Ken Bacon said.
     The announcement came after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Milosevic his offensive against ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo increased the threat of NATO military intervention.
     President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair also talked for 30 minutes by telephone on Thursday about ways to halt the Serb offensive.
     "They discussed ways to increase the pressure on Milosevic and ways to put a stop to the offensive that is going on," White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said.
     Lockhart said the two leaders agreed that a negotiated solution to the conflict was preferable but that contingency planning for dealing with Kosovo was "intensifying" within the NATO military alliance.
     Bacon told reporters NATO contingency plans for possible military intervention in the Kosovo crisis were "largely done" and the patience of the allies was wearing thin over the continuing violence in the south Serbian province.
     He said the plans could be completed by Friday.
     "NATO will have to decide what triggers its intervention," he said. "I think that every day the violence continues, it brings the NATO community closer to consensus on this."
     Bacon declined to give details but said the plans covered "a wide range of military options." NATO asked its military experts in May to look at possible preventive deployments in Albania and Macedonia and air strikes in Kosovo itself.
     Bacon said the military exercises -- to be held from Aug. 17 to 22 in Albania and from Sept. 10 to 18 in Macedonia -- would involve forces from a large number of NATO countries and East European nations under the alliance's Partnership for Peace program.
     In Brussels, NATO's Military Committee said forces from 14 countries, including Russia, would take part part in the exercises in Albania, called "Cooperative Assembly."
     It named the countries as Albania, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the United States.
     "This exercise ... is designed to develop a common understanding of peace support operations, doctrine and training and to practice interoperability between participating nations' military forces," a statement said.
     The Albania exercise was planned after NATO ministerial meetings early this summer, while the Macedonia peacekeeping exercise had been tentatively planned for some time, Bacon said. Both Balkan countries border Kosovo.
     State Department spokesman James Foley said Albright's message to Milosevic expressed the "strong view that the ongoing Serb offensive and the unacceptable actions that have taken place in the context of that offensive only increase the chances of there being military action on the part of NATO."
     Foley told reporters the message was conveyed to Milosevic on Wednesday by Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, who has been spearheading U.S. attempts to halt the fighting in Kosovo.
     In the message, he said, Albright "expressed her shock and dismay over the effects of the Serb military offensive in Kosovo" and the "need to end the offensive actions" to allow refugees to return to their homes.
     Yugoslav security forces have launched a major offensive in recent days to crush a guerrilla movement leading the fight for an independent Kosovo and have driven tens of thousands of civilians from their homes.
     There have also been reports of mass graves found after Serbs occupied Albanian villages.
     While Ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's population, are pressing for independence, the major powers are only willing to contemplate greater autonomy for the province within Yugoslavia.
     The outlook for action by NATO has been clouded by differences among members over whether they need a U.N. mandate to go ahead. Russia has blocked a proposed Security Council resolution to authorize this.
___________________________________

BBC
Friday, August 7, 1998 Published at 06:03 GMT 07:03 UK

US talks up Kosovo intervention

The United States has said preparations for a possible military intervention by Nato in the Serbian province of Kosovo will be complete within a day or two.
     A White House spokesman, PJ Crowley, described the continuing Serbian offensive against ethnic Albanian separatists in the province as totally unacceptable.
     He said that systematic use of violence against the mainly ethnic Albanian population was outrageous.
     The US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has said the Serb action brings military action closer.
     Nato has also announced that its forces will hold exercises in neighbouring Albania and Macedonia in coming weeks.
     The BBC State Department correspondent says this is the strongest signal yet to the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, who has ignored warnings for months.
     Washington's problem is convincing the Yugoslav leader that this time it means business, and has the political will to carry out its threats.

'Humanitarian disaster'

Meanwhile, the United Nations is continuing efforts to deliver emergency supplies to ethnic Albanian refugees displaced by the Serb offensive.
     A convoy of trucks with flour, blankets and medical supplies has reached villages west of the Kosovo capital, Pristina, where hundreds of ethnic Albanians are sleeping rough in the forests.
     Tens of thousands of men, women and children are believed to be sheltering around the villages after they abandoned their homes following the Serbian operation.
     The United Nations Children's Fund, Unicef, said the situation had deteriorated badly, describing it as a "humanitarian disaster".
     "Some 200,000 people have been displaced facing daily terror, the loss of their homes, severe malnutrition and a range of health crises," said a statement from the organisation's executive director, Carol Bellamy.
     "If concerted and effective international initiative is not taken soon, world leaders risk seeing the situation in Kosovo escalate to grotesque levels of violence and brutality," it added.

Water and medicine shortages

The refugees in the area - near the village of Llapcevo - are among an estimated 30,000 - 60,000 to have fled from their homes over the last two weeks, since renewed fighting broke out between the Serbs and guerrillas from the Kosovo Liberation Army.
     An official from the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, said a shortage of clean water was the main problem for the refugees.
     Those in the forest are drinking unfiltered water from nearby springs, and some say they are in need of medicine.
     The refugees include the elderly and the very young - one woman said she gave birth to her six-day-old baby in the forest.
     Ethnic Albanians make up the majority of the population in Kosovo, a province in southern Serbia.
     Yugoslav security forces began an offensive against the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has been fighting for independence, in February.

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Betreff:         [ALBANEWS] News: Western nations demand halt to Serb offensive
Datum:         Thu, 6 Aug 1998 16:39:02 -0400
    Von:         Nick <albania@erols.com> _______________________________________________________________________
Betreff:         [ALBANEWS] INFO: UN OFFICIAL, ICRC FIND REFUGEE
                     SITUATION IN KOSOVO APPALLING
Datum:         Thu, 6 Aug 1998 17:34:22 -0400
    Von:         Sokol Rama <sokolrama@sprynet.com> _______________________________________________________________________
Betreff:         [ALBANEWS] INFO: WHITE HOUSE , AUGUST 6, 1998
Datum:         Thu, 6 Aug 1998 17:34:16 -0400
    Von:         Sokol Rama <sokolrama@sprynet.com> _______________________________________________________________________
Betreff:         [ALBANEWS] NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, AUGUST 06, 1998/B
Datum:         Thu, 6 Aug 1998 17:06:25 -0400
    Von:         Sokol Rama <sokolrama@sprynet.com> _________________________________________________________________________
Background-information
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earlier news - so far as room is given by my provider on the server
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