Tagesnachrichten 8. August 1998
von ALBANEWS und anderen
weitere Presse-Meldungen
further press news
Tagesnachrichten 8. August 1998
NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, AUGUST 08, 1998_______________________________________________________________________Taken without permission, for fair use only.
Nato debates Kosovo options
August 8, 1998
Belgrade accused of hampering aid effort
August 8, 1998
Kosovo Albanian diplomat says KLA will join Rugova
August 7, 1998
Kosovo rebels lose regional command base
August 8, 1998
Serbs Say Kosovo Offensive Ending
August 7, 1998
NATO says ready for Kosovo action, Russia balks
August 7, 1998
AS SERBS' KOSOVO OFFENSIVE WINDS DOWN, WEST ISSUES BELATED WARNING
August 7, 1998
Rather Than Mass Killing, Serbs Are Forcing Rebels to Care for Refugees
August 7, 1998
___________________________________BBC
Friday, August 7, 1998 Published at 17:34 GMT 18:34 UKNato debates Kosovo options
Nato ambassadors have met in Brussels to discuss a range of options for military intervention in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
The Alliance says it is in a high state of readiness to act, if required, to stop the Serbian offensive against ethnic-Albanian separatists.
Friday's talks were informal but the ambassadors are expected to meet formally next week to continue discussing options, which include air-strikes against Serbian military targets and a land operation.
Nato says it will hold exercises in neighbouring Albania and Macedonia from mid-August.
But it stressed it needed a political mandate to intervene directly in Kosovo.
Earlier, 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 also said the Serb action brings military action closer.Kosovo leader applauds West
The President of the Kosovo Albanians, Ibrahim Rugova, welcomed the US threats of military intervention by Nato forces.
Speaking in the provincial capital, Pristina, Mr Rugova said the people of Kosovo had to be protected and he said he believed the West was serious about intervening.
He said Serbian forces were still targeting villages in central Kosovo and that children who fled their homes and were now hiding in mountains were the ones suffering the most.
Serb officials will not confirm if they are still carrying out operations against the rebels.
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.
It is thought up to 60,000 people have fled from their homes over the last two weeks since renewed fighting broke out between the Serbs and 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.
___________________________________THE LONDON TIMES
August 8, 1998Belgrade accused of hampering aid effort
FROM TOM WALKER IN PRISTINA
THE United Nations and aid agencies gave a warning yesterday that Kosovo was on the brink of a humanitarian crisis regardless of whether Nato intervenes in the republic to check Serbian advances.
They said Belgrade was so obstructive to relief efforts in Kosovo that an aid operation to save 167,000 ethnic Albanian refugees - the latest UN estimate - is still weeks away.
The Serbian Government has also barred agencies, including the Red Cross, from using shortwave radios, equipment essential for the security and efficiency of workers, in the field. Médecins sans Frontières and Oxfam have to rely on UN convoys to stay in touch with their bases in Pristina.
"They're making the life of non-governmental organisations miserable," Mons Nyberg, of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said. "I don't want to sound pathetic but it's a very difficult situation. It's a humanitarian disaster in the making."
Seasoned aid workers describe Serbia as the most difficult country they have worked in, claiming that the hurdles they face are caused by Belgrade's reluctance to help ethnic Albanians to rebuild their lives and a communist bureaucracy. Tanjug, the official news agency, has grouped the "so-called humanitarian workers" with the international media who are involved in "a dirty game fabricating stories from refugees, satanising one side to bring in the [Nato] bombs".
The Serbs, meanwhile, have been dropping leaflets on refugees from helicopters, tempting them home with the following instructions: "Go through the free roads. Show up at the police points found on the roads, show up to the first police station. We will help you to arrive safely to your homes and villages."
A UNHCR official who investigated the procedure visited the town of Orahovac where several hundred Albanians returned home over the past week. The Mayor explained that young men among the refugees were being asked to call at the police station for "informative talks lasting a few minutes".
The UN officer met an Albanian woman whose husband had not been seen since going to the police the previous day. Her brother was still in bed, recovering from the beating he received during his "informative talks". Mr Nyberg said: "We're certainly not asking people to go back - there's often no way that they can feel safe and secure."
The aid community in Pristina is trying to read into Serbian tactics before the Balkan winter, when they face the prospect of having to shelter up to 70,000 people.
Apart from those displaced within Kosovo, the UNHCR says there are 27,000 Kosovans in Montenegro, and 23,000 in Albania. It also classifies 20,000 Serbs as having fled to Serbia, a figure which is probably much higher and awkward for the Belgrade propaganda effort.
___________________________________Kosovo Albanian diplomat says KLA will join Rugova
12:03 p.m. Aug 07, 1998 Eastern
By Benet KolekaTIRANA, Aug 7 (Reuters) - The main diplomat of the ethnic Albanians' self-styled Republic of Kosovo said on Friday the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had agreed in principle to join the administration led by Ibrahim Rugova.
"They have been talking about the makeup of the new government for 10 days," Ilaz Ramajli, head of the office of the Republic of Kosovo in Albania, told Reuters. "There should be an announcement within days."
The separatist KLA's guerrilla war against Serbian rule in Kosovo has been fuelled by frustration with the lack of results achieved by the veteran Rugova in years of peaceful protest against Belgrade.
If confirmed, the KLA's move to join a Kosovo Albanian "government" would be a new departure for the guerrillas, who call for full independence for Kosovo and have dismissed Rugova's non-violent line.
Ramajli said discussions between political parties in Kosovo and the guerrillas on KLA participation in the Rugova parallel government had taken place in the presence of Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia.
"There has not yet been a public statement but in principle they agree," Ramajli said.
KLA participation would invest Rugova's parallel government with much greater authority among ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and present a united front for possible negotiations on the future of the province.
At least 500 people have died and 180,000 been displaced in a Serb crackdown on the KLA in Kosovo since February.
Rugova was reelected president of the Republic of Kosovo in a vote in March. The ballot was organised by ethnic Albanians but rejected by the Serb authorities. Since it was set up by ethnic Albanian politicians in 1990, the self-styled republic has only been recognised by neighbouring Albania.
Ramajli said Rugova was still prepared to negotiate with the Serbs on the future of Kosovo, but only in the presence of an international mediator.
Several previous attempts at negotiations collapsed over Serb refusals to accept the presence of a third party mediator. A meeting between Rugova and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic organised by the United States led to negotiating teams being set up but they held only one session before further military activity took hold.
Ramajli said Rugova's team believed that the role of mediator in any negotiations should be taken by the United States.
"The Bosnia experience drives us to believe that. Initially there, the Europeans tried to strike an agreement but they did not succeed," he said. "It was the Americans who forced the Serbs to sign an agreement."
"In my view, the differing stands between the European countries in the past and now have provided Milosevic with the possibility to try to achieve his own ends," he added.
Ramajli said that in order for negotiations to get under way, military operations would have to stop and Serb forces should be withdrawn from Kosovo as demanded by the Contact Group of major powers.
Refugees should be allowed to return to their homes and prisoners should be released.
"This would provide the conditions for the start of a true dialogue," he said.Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
___________________________________Saturday August 8 7:25 AM EDT
Kosovo rebels lose regional command base
By Mark Heinrich
PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - Ethnic Albanian separatist guerrillas in Kosovo appeared on Saturday to have lost an important regional headquarters to Serbian security forces waging an anti-rebel offensive.
The Kosovo Information Center, linked to Kosovo's leading pro-independence Albanian party, said Serbian forces had swept into the hill village of Likovac on Thursday night after hammering it with artillery for two days.
Serbian troops then turned Likovac and nearby hamlets they also captured "into a bonfire," the KIC said. It said they were setting fire to homes in an extension of a scorched-earth policy against former guerrilla-held areas.
It was the latest setback for the KLA, which has been stampeded off main roads back into remote hills along with tens of thousands of refugees who say their homes were wantonly shelled and torched without military purpose.
The KIC said most civilians in Likovac and adjacent hamlets were evacuated before the Serbs entered but some were still believed holed up there.
Security forces are also closing in on KLA redoubts in the far west, notably the town of Junik, near the border of Albania.
NATO said on Friday the 16-nation military alliance was ready to act to halt the fighting in Kosovo, but Russia again rejected military intervention.
The Western military alliance had finalized planning for possible air operations, a senior NATO diplomat said. Another Alliance source said a full arsenal of other military options was "in a high state of readiness."
The plans still await approval by government leaders who must assess serious diplomatic and geopolitical risks.
In Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Nikolai Afanasyevsky said NATO intervention would not help bring peace to Kosovo. He appealed to Serbian authorities and Albanian separatists for a truce.
"We believe there is no military solution here. This includes possible military action from outside," Afanasyevsky said after meeting Ibrahim Rugova, the self-styled president of Kosovo.
In a departure from his normal hardline stand, a leading ethnic Albanian official said the KLA had agreed to join Rugova's non-violent Kosovars in a "government."
"They have been talking about the makeup of the new government for 10 days -- there should be an announcement within days," Llaz Rmajli, head of the office of the Republic of Kosovo said.
Milosevic has said he is ready to negotiate with the Kosovars on autonomy, but feuding Albanian politicians have been unable to agree a negotiation teams among themselves.
Rugova told reporters in Pristina a peace dialogue was impossible as long as Serbian forces kept pounding separatist guerrillas and nearby villages.
The independent Serbian news agency Beta, citing Serbian sources in Pristina, said the interior ministry planned to investigate alleged excesses by security forces, including widespread firebombings of Albanian houses.
___________________________________Friday August 7 10:10 PM EDT
Serbs Say Kosovo Offensive Ending
ANNE THOMPSON Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Serb forces overran the former Albanian rebel headquarters in central Kosovo on Friday and appeared to have driven the secessionists from most of their remaining strongholds in the strategic region.
A top Serb police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the offensive in Kosovo - which has uprooted nearly 200,000 people and left hundreds dead - was "nearly over."
Remaining reports of fighting are only "final mopping-up operations" against ethnic Albanian militants and their remaining pockets of resistance, he said.
Serbs have made similar statements before but their gains in central Kosovo on Friday gave new weight to their words.
Not long after the official spoke, Serb forces entered Likovac, the village where U.S. envoy Christopher Hill met last week with Kosovo Liberation Army commanders. Under sniper fire, Serb troops moved from house to house, clearing out the last pockets of resistance in the village and setting fire to Albanian houses and haystacks.
Elsewhere in the region, KLA troops were fleeing advancing Serb forces. Serb sources said most of the fighting was centering on escape routes into Albania, where the rebels maintain sanctuaries.
In the Albanian capital Tirana, state television reported that 71 Kosovo Albanian refugees had crossed into Albania in the last 24 hours.
Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova accused Serbs of abusing hundreds of Albanians in prisons that have become "mass camps."
"We are demanding international protection and we would appreciate any international intervention to stop the Serb war machinery," Rugova told reporters in the provincial capital Pristina.
NATO has been considering military intervention in Kosovo, and a spokesman for the alliance said during Friday's meeting in Brussels, Belgium, that plans for possible intervention were nearly complete.
The plans essentially involve three options: a preventive deployment of troops along the borders of Kosovo in neighboring Albania and Macedonia; a graduated air campaign against targets in Yugoslavia; and a deployment of peacekeeping troops into Yugoslavia.
But with the KLA clearly on the run, it appeared likely that fighting could die simply because the Serbs have gained the upper hand.
Rugova's aides said he spoke Friday with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and that she expressed support for his "peaceful policy" in resolving the crisis.
Rugova declared Friday a day of mourning for hundreds killed by fighting in the current Serbian offensive. About 2,500 Albanian women held a brief candlelight vigil in Pristina in solidarity with those affected by the fighting.
The U.N. refugee agency estimates roughly 200,000 people have fled to Kosovo's woods and hills, and many of them lack food, water and other essentials. Officials worry that searing summer temperatures and a lack of hygiene could lead to disease.
In Washington, the Pentagon announced that hundreds of U.S. Marines are to participate in NATO military exercises in neighboring Albania and Macedonia in the coming months, starting with a one-week maneuver that begins in Albania on Aug.17.
On another front, Slovenia's delegate to the United Nations said Friday he would use the country's presidency of the Security Council this month to press for action on violence by Serbian forces in Kosovo.
A Western diplomat in New York said support for Yugoslavia had eroded because of Serbian excesses, a situation that might break the impasse on sanctions when the Security Council considers Kosovo next week.
Kosovo is a province in southern Serbia, where ethnic Albanians, who demand independence, represent 90 percent of the population. Serbia and the smaller republic of Montenegro make up what is left of Yugoslavia.
___________________________________Friday August 7 11:31 PM EDT
NATO says ready for Kosovo action, Russia balks
By Jeremy Gaunt
BELGRADE (Reuters) - NATO said on Friday the 16-nation military alliance was ready to act to halt the fighting in Kosovo, but Russia again rejected military intervention.
The Western military alliance had finalized planning for possible air operations, a senior NATO diplomat in Brussels said. Another Alliance source said a full arsenal of other military options was "in a high state of readiness."
But in Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Nikolai Afanasyevsky said NATO intervention would not help bring peace to Kosovo. He appealed to Serbian authorities and Albanian separatists for a truce.
"We believe there is no military solution here. This includes possible military action from outside," Afanasyevsky said after meeting Ibrahim Rugova, the self-styled president of Kosovo.
In a departure from his normal hardline stand, a leading ethnic Albanian official said the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), fighting for independence from Serbia, had agreed to join Rugova's moderate Kosovars in a "government."
"They have been talking about the makeup of the new government for 10 days -- there should be an announcement within days," Llaz Rmajli, head of the office of the Republic of Kosovo said.
France and Germany said they were sending their own delegation to Belgrade to put more diplomatic pressure on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, whose offensive against ethnic Albanian separatists has sent tens of thousands of refugees fleeing from their homes.
Fighting in Kosovo itself was again sporadic, but security forces appeared to be tightening the noose around KLA strongholds in the west.
A day after the United States warned Milosevic to end his offensive or face military intervention, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana said he was ready to back international efforts to bring an end to the conflict.
Solana, on a Warsaw visit, issued a joint statement with the Polish president expressing "disquiet" and disappointment that Milosevic had not kept an earlier promise to stop his offensive.
In Tirana, the capital of Albania, Rugova told reporters a peace dialogue was impossible as long as Serbian forces kept pounding separatist guerrillas and nearby villages.
Russia's Afanasyevsky also met U.S. Kosovo envoy Chris Hill. Both had recently had long talks with Milosevic.
Hill said he had told the Yugoslav leader that destruction of homes in Kosovo -- many of which are reported burnt -- had to end.
"I told him this has to stop and that to say that you are interested in refugee returns at a time when we see houses burning is simply not a meaningful statement," Hill said.
The Beta news agency, citing Serbian sources in Pristina, said the interior ministry planned to investigate alleged excesses by security forces, including house burnings.
Milosevic has said he is ready to negotiate with Kosovars on autonomy, but the ethnic Albanians have been unable to agree a negotiation team among themselves.
But this may soon change, as Rugova's "government," when it is formed, is expected to be the basis for the negotiating team to meet with Milosevic on Kosovo's future.
___________________________________AS SERBS' KOSOVO OFFENSIVE WINDS DOWN, WEST ISSUES BELATED WARNING
By Guy Dinmore. Special to the Tribune. Tribune news services contributed to this report.
August 7, 1998SRBICA, Yugoslavia -- Serbian forces on Thursday shelled the few remaining pockets of resistance by ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo province, despite U.S. warnings of possible military intervention if Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic does not show restraint.
In Washington on Thursday, the Pentagon announced that NATO and European troops will hold exercises in Albania beginning next week and in Macedonia next month. Defense Department spokesman Ken Bacon said the exercises should serve as a warning to Milosevic to end his military offensive in Kosovo.
"I don't think that he should doubt our ability to move forces in very quickly, whether they be air forces or ground forces," Bacon told reporters in response to questions about the exercises.
Bacon also said that NATO plans for possible military intervention in the Kosovo situation are "largely done" and that NATO's patience is wearing thin over the continuing violence in Kosovo. He said the plans could be completed by the end of Friday.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Milosevic he should halt his military offensive in Kosovo, which she said increases the threat of NATO military intervention.
State Department spokesman James Foley said Albright 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."
That echoed U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke's warning on Wednesday that the Serbian operation, which continued despite assurances by Milosevic to the contrary, "increases dramatically the likelihood or possibility of active Western intervention of a military sort."
But the warnings, which followed a period of virtual silence in Western capitals, appear to have come too late. The offensive is already winding down, with main roads and supply routes under police control.
In Kosovo on Thursday, smoke hung over the central village of Lausa where a few fighters of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army are believed to be holding out, as well as a small number of civilians trapped by the fighting. The village has been burning since Tuesday, when the authorities reported its capture.
The occasional boom of artillery fire could be heard, but police manning a checkpoint between Lausa and nearby Srbica prevented journalists and U.S. and British diplomatic observers from going farther.
Government forces have captured a swath of central and southern Kosovo over the past week, burning villages and fields and routing tens of thousands of civilians. KLA rebels have mostly retreated in disarray but are believed to have suffered few casualties.
Several towns and villages in the central Drenica region appear abandoned. Fields of corn and sunflowers stand unharvested. Police at checkpoints were in a jaunty mood, reading proclamations of victory in the official media.
Thousands of refugees and some KLA fighters are crammed into a small strip of wooded and hilly land on the eastern edge of Drenica, some spilling over into main towns in the valley below.
Aid agencies want to get the refugees back to their homes before epidemics and food shortages set in.
In Belgrade, Milosevic said state institutions were targeting "terrorists" and that measures were being taken to protect civilians and their property. No mention was made of the United Nations' estimate of 200,000 refugees--10 percent of Kosovo's mostly ethnic Albanian population--or the destruction of villages.
Helicopters flew over villages dropping leaflets urging civilians to disassociate themselves from the KLA and return to their homes. How they are supposed to do this is unclear, as hundreds of farms have been destroyed by shellfire or burned to the ground by advancing Serb security forces.
After meeting in Belgrade on Thursday with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Nikolai Afanasyevsky, the Yugoslav leader said the Kosovo conflict could be resolved only by political means and he urged the divided Kosovo Albanian leadership to reopen peace talks.
Russia opposes military intervention by NATO in Kosovo and would be likely to block any attempts to pass a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the Western alliance to use force. Milosevic said he and the Russian envoy agreed that Kosovo was Serbia's internal affair.
Milosevic also urged Western governments to condemn KLA "terrorism" and cut off its funds. The Swiss government has frozen bank accounts believed to hold several million dollars raised by Albanians in Europe for the KLA.
The state news agency Tanjug accused foreign journalists and "so-called humanitarian workers" of "playing a dirty game" of lies to provoke NATO into a military response.
Tanjug was referring to reports of mass graves found near the southern town of Orhaovac where fierce fighting erupted last month. Serbian officials said that one grave site holds the bodies of 40 "terrorists" killed in action.
___________________________________FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 1998
Rather Than Mass Killing, Serbs Are Forcing Rebels to Care for Refugees
• Recent mass-grave claims and 'ethnic cleansing' charges are played down by West.
Justin Brown
Special to The Christian Science Monitor
ORAHOVAC, YUGOSLAVIAThe body of Xhelal Ejudi, an ethnic Albanian, is buried beneath a heap of garbage and marked by a sun-bleached wooden stake. The body of Eshref Shehu, killed three weeks ago, lies under cans, flattened plastic bottles, and an old sneaker.
The crude graveyard is tucked in the hills just outside Orahovac, where Serbian forces last month battled with ethnic Albanian rebels seeking independence for Kosovo. There are 25 stakes, but it is unclear exactly what lies below ground.
Serbian authorities confirmed that they collected 58 bodies after the fighting in Orahovac. They held most of them unclaimed for a week in the nearby city of Prizren and buried the remainder between July 20 and Aug. 3.
Reports of the trash-dump graveyard, and of some 200,000 displaced persons, have sent a wave of fear through Kosovo.
"This is like Bosnia, with ethnic cleansing, house-burning, and mass graves," says Sylejman Canta, a grape farmer from Orahovac who last week watched from a hill as a bulldozer dug the graveyard. Mr. Canta was one of the few who had returned after having fled the fighting.
But international officials have made distinctions between what happened in Bosnia during its 1992-95 civil war and what is taking place in Serbia's independence-seeking southern province.
More than 400 people have died in Kosovo since fighting erupted Feb. 28, but the international community has stopped short of using force to stop the violence.
European Union monitors visited Orahovac Aug. 5 and said there was no evidence of a "mass grave." Unlike in Bosnia, efforts had been made to identify the dead. And during a recent interview, a senior Western diplomat was careful not to use the phrase "ethnic cleansing," a term coined in Bosnia when ethnic groups were forced out and replaced with other nationalities in an effort to create ethnically pure regions.
"You bet it's disturbing," says the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. But "I don't think the [Serbian authorities] are looking to replace the Albanian people with Serbian people."
Rather than try to drive all the Albanians out of Kosovo, it is more likely that the Serbs are attempting to disrupt the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) by forcing its soldiers to care for the homeless.
But the crisis in Kosovo clearly has similarities to Bosnia. For one, civilians are bearing the brunt of the fighting.
Zade Arucaj, an elderly ethnic Albanian woman from Rezale, was forced from her house this week when her village came under attack. "I don't know what happened to the men in my family," she says as she walks with two children in tow. "I don't know what happened to my house, but it was probably burned."
Less than 20 miles away, Serbian security forces could be seen filling plastic bottles with fuel. Down the road, a strip of five stores was in flames, an apparent systematic burning of Malisevo, a former rebel stronghold that last week was overrun by the Serbs.
After months of steady gains, the KLA has been beaten back in the past month by the greater firepower of the Serbian forces. As displaced persons have fled to the hills and fields, so has the KLA.
In a valley near Cirez, hundreds of ethnic Albanians set up a camp. A group of KLA soldiers in plain clothes had dropped their guns. They had just brought supplies, but there were too many people and not enough food.
Milaim Hajdari, a KLA soldier, says caring for the displaced has taken a toll on the guerrilla army.
"It has been hard enough fighting," he says, standing near a family by a stream. "But caring for these people is almost impossible."
International relief agencies have had limited access, despite reassurances from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Some areas are difficult to reach because of traffic-jammed roads and nearby fighting. Albanians there say they are not considering returning.
Belgrade accused of hampering aid effort
FROM TOM WALKER IN PRISTINA
THE United Nations and aid agencies gave a warning
yesterday that Kosovo was on the brink of a humanitarian crisis regardless
of whether Nato intervenes in the republic to check Serbian advances.
They said Belgrade was so obstructive to relief
efforts in Kosovo that an aid operation to save 167,000 ethnic Albanian
refugees - the latest UN estimate - is still weeks away.
The Serbian Government has also barred agencies,
including the Red Cross, from using shortwave radios, equipment essential
for the security and efficiency of workers, in the field. Médecins
sans Frontières and Oxfam have to rely on UN convoys to stay in
touch with their bases in Pristina.
"They're making the life of non-governmental
organisations miserable," Mons Nyberg, of the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees, said. "I don't want to sound pathetic but it's a very difficult
situation. It's a humanitarian disaster in the making."
Seasoned aid workers describe Serbia as the most
difficult country they have worked in, claiming that the hurdles they face
are caused by Belgrade's reluctance to help ethnic Albanians to rebuild
their lives and a communist bureaucracy. Tanjug, the official news agency,
has grouped the "so-called humanitarian workers" with the international
media who are involved in "a dirty game fabricating stories from refugees,
satanising one side to bring in the [Nato] bombs".
The Serbs, meanwhile, have been dropping leaflets
on refugees from helicopters, tempting them home with the following instructions:
"Go through the free roads. Show up at the police points found on the roads,
show up to the first police station. We will help you to arrive safely
to your homes and villages."
A UNHCR official who investigated the procedure
visited the town of Orahovac where several hundred Albanians returned home
over the past week. The Mayor explained that young men among the refugees
were being asked to call at the police station for "informative talks lasting
a few minutes".
The UN officer met an Albanian woman whose husband
had not been seen since going to the police the previous day. Her brother
was still in bed, recovering from the beating he received during his "informative
talks". Mr Nyberg said: "We're certainly not asking people to go back -
there's often no way that they can feel safe and secure."
The aid community in Pristina is trying to read
into Serbian tactics before the Balkan winter, when they face the prospect
of having to shelter up to 70,000 people.
Apart from those displaced within Kosovo, the
UNHCR says there are 27,000 Kosovans in Montenegro, and 23,000 in Albania.
It also classifies 20,000 Serbs as having fled to Serbia, a figure which
is probably much higher and awkward for the Belgrade propaganda effort.
The Daily Telegraph
Serbs push Kosovo's army close to collapse
By Julius Strauss in the Drenica region, northern
Kosovo
THE Kosovo Liberation Army, which only two weeks
ago controlled nearly half of the territory of the southern Serbian province,
was on the brink of collapse last night.
A visit behind KLA lines yesterday confirmed
that combined Serbian police and Yugoslav military forces had taken all
but a sliver of Drenica, the remaining guerrilla-held stronghold, and one
village in the west.
The important village of Lausa, where the KLA
first went public at the funeral of an Albanian teacher last November,
fell to Serbian tanks in mid-week, Serbian and Albanian forces said yesterday.
A KLA fighter from Lausa, who had fled to another part of the Drenica enclave,
said: "We had to leave. They overwhelmed us with tanks. They even used
planes. But there are still hundreds of civilians stuck there who couldn't
get out and literally thousands of Serbian police."
Even more crucially for the KLA, Likovac, their
headquarters, has also fallen, unconfirmed reports said last night. While
Malisevo, which fell to the Serbian offensive 10 days ago, was the commercial
centre of guerrilla-held territory, Likovac was the home of the military
top brass. A diplomat said yesterday: "As far as we know, the military
bosses were still there at the end."
The only area where the Albanian guerrillas were
still putting up spirited resistance last night was in the western village
of Junik, near the Albanian border, which has been surrounded by Serbian
forces for several weeks. Near Junik yesterday, on the main Pec to Pristina
road, Serbian police could be seen racing along the deserted tarmac, still
littered with spent bullet casings, showing the Serbian three-fingered
salute. Police at checkpoints waved as they went by.
By the standards of the previous few days, Kosovo
was relatively quiet yesterday. From the village of Prekaz, one of very
few to remain in Albanian hands, hardly an explosion could be heard, although
in the distance villages were burning. In the sky above, three Yugoslav
MiG fighter aircraft screeched past.
A week ago, Prekaz, where almost every male of
fighting age is in the KLA, was optimistic about the future despite battlefield
losses. But yesterday, a sense of impending doom hung over the village.
Guerrillas fiddled nervously with their guns. In preparation for the inevitable
Serbian attack, armed lookouts had been pulled back from the peripheries
of the enclave and a large barrier that used to serve as a KLA checkpoint
had been taken down.
The collapse of the KLA means that the policy
of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia to launch an all-out attack
on the guerrillas has paid off. In two weeks, his forces have reversed
nearly six months of Albanian gains. But the humanitarian cost has been
considerable.
United Nations refugee officials said yesterday
that there were more than 210,000 refugees in and around Kosovo. There
were hundreds behind the lines in Drenica region yesterday, most of them
in flat trailers pulled by tractors or horses.
Travelling up a 10-mile dusty road to evade Serbian
police checkpoints, we had to backtrack several times to allow tractors
to pass on the narrow way. The faces of the women and children showed bewilderment
at their plight and they carried few possessions.
Nato warns that air strikes could start 'within
days'
By Tim Butcher, Defence Correspondent
NATO operations against Serb security forces could
begin "within days, not weeks", alliance sources said yesterday after an
informal meeting of ambassadors in Brussels.
The strongly worded message was issued if only
to remind the Serbian authorities that their behaviour is being monitored.
It came after several weeks of relative diplomatic inactivity, while Serb
forces focused their efforts on successfully attacking positions of the
separatist Kosovo Liberation Army. There had been little international
protest as long as Belgrade's forces refrained from targeting civilians.
But yesterday, the Western European Union urged
Nato to intervene, saying immediate military action was needed to end the
war. A statement from Lluis Maria de Puig, WEU president said: "It is now
clear that the use of force is the only means of bringing about a political
agreement with which the parties must be forced to comply."
A range of operations - including air bombardment
- has been considered by military planners, and the Nato source said the
plans had now been completed. The source said: "In the course of this week
we did finalise the planning for possible air operations if air strikes
become necessary. The planning of a wide range of military options has
reached a high state of readiness so that a full range of plans can be
implemented quickly."
The ambassadors will meet again next week, on
a more formal basis, to discuss Kosovo, a Serbian province with a population
that is 90 per cent ethnic Albanian, and it is likely that a more strongly
worded statement will be issued then. Military action remains unlikely,
however, as long as the Serbs do not attack non-combatants. More than 100,000
civilians have been displaced by the fighting. Exact figures are unclear
because the Serb authorities continue to block access to the areas involved.
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".
The Guardian
Nato plans for Kosovo air strikes
By Janet McEvoy in Brussels
Saturday August 8, 1998
The Nato military alliance has finalised planning
for possible air operations to help restore peace in the Serbian province
of Kosovo, a senior Nato diplomat said yesterday.
"In the course of this week we did finalise the
planning for possible air operations if air strikes become necessary,"
the diplomat said after Nato ambassadors met informally.
Another Nato source said a full arsenal of other
military options was "in a high state of readiness".
The source said: "The planning of a wide range
of military options has reached a high state of readiness so a full range
of plans can be implemented quickly."
The alliance, whose ambassadors will meet formally
next week, voiced "grave concern" about continuing Serb offensives in the
mainly ethnic Albanian province, pointing to the impact on the civilian
population, the source said.
The senior diplomat said that if ordered, air
operations could be implemented in a matter of "days not weeks" and would
be targeted on Serbian air defence, command and control and military assets
within Kosovo and its support operations in the rest of Yugoslavia.
He said there was a growing belief that Yugoslavia's
president, Slobodan Milosevic, would follow the wishes of the international
community only with the threat of force.
"Milosevic only complies with the demands of
the international community if there's a credible threat of force," the
diplomat said. "Nato is not going to allow a Russian veto."
Nato foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg
on May 28, asked military experts to look at possible preventative deployments
in Albania and Macedonia, which border Kosovo, and made clear that action
in Kosovo itself, probably by aeriel rather than ground forces, was a possibility.
In recent weeks Nato seemed to move away from
the prospect of military action, partly because of opposition from Russia,
which holds a veto at the United Nations Security Council.
But the language has become stronger in recent
days as Serbian troops have continued an offensive against ethnic Albanian
militants, forcing tens of thousands of civilians into remote hills where
many face a struggle for survival. - Reuters.
--
Kosova Information Centre - London
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