Tagesnachrichten 9. August 1998
von ALBANEWS und anderen
weitere Presse-Meldungen
further press news
Tagesnachrichten 9. August 1998
Taken without permission, for fair use only.
*Kosovo Albanians appeal against Swiss freeze
on bank account
BBC Online, August
9, 1998
*Ruined homes bar Kosovo refugees from returning
Reuters, August 9, 1998
*Albanians claim Serbs attack Kosovo villages
Reuters, August 9, 1998
*Kosovo rebels lose command base, retain key
road
Reuters, August 8, 1998
*Foreign Powers Propose Kosovo Plan
Associated Press, August
8, 1998
*France, U.S. seek Russian backing for Kosovo
plan
Reuters, August 8, 1998
*Disinherited Albanians on the Run for Their
Lives
The New York Times,
August 9, 1998
*Peace plan offered for Kosovo
BBCOnline, August 8,
1998
___________________________________
Sunday, August 9, 1998 Published at 10:10 GMT 11:10 UK
Kosovo Albanians appeal against Swiss freeze on bank account
The main organization of Kosovo Albanians living
in Switzerland has appealed against a government decision to freeze its
bank account as part of an operation against arms-trafficking.
The organization, the
Kosovo Foundation, has asked Switzerland's highest court the Tribunal Federal
to unblock aboutfive-million dollars, which, it says, are intended for
humanitarian causes.
Switzerland froze the
accounts of the Kosovo Foundation and another group, the People's Movement
for the Liberation of Kosovo, to stop the flow of arms and funds to the
separatist Kosovo Liberation Army.
Several thousand ethnic
Albanians demonstrated against the decision in the Swiss capital, Bern,
on Saturday.
There are about one-hundred-and-eighty-
thousand Kosovo Albanians in Switzerland -- the largest expatriate community
after Germany.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
___________________________________
Ruined homes bar Kosovo refugees from returning
05:36 a.m. Aug 09, 1998 Eastern
By Mark Heinrich
DJAKOVICA, Serbia, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Peace envoys,
ethnic Albanian leaders and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic say resettling
Kosovo refugees in their homes is an urgent priority.
But many of the homes
are in ruins, and although the weather now is blisteringly hot, winter
looms.
Milosevic's military
offensive against separatist guerrillas seeking an end to years of harsh
police rule in Kosovo, an Albanian-majority province of Serbia, has driven
multitudes of civilians into the rural wilderness.
The aftermath is an
eerie landscape of wrecked ghost towns whose only signs of life are abandoned
livestock and heavily armed Serbian military police maintaining checkpoints,
roaming village streets or lounging in commandeered houses.
Some of the damage may
have occurred in battle. But since the outgunned insurgents withdrew without
serious resistance by most accounts, much of the destruction seems to have
been caused by firebombings and pillaging afterwards.
Foreign aid workers
struggling to find refugees in the highland woods accuse policy-makers,
particularly Yugoslav authorities, of hypocrisy in calling for the return
of displaced people to homes that no longer exist.
"You can say all you
want that these people have to come home in safety, but to what? It's destroyed,
and crops have been burned," said Mick Lorentzen, Kosovo mission chief
for the World Food Programme (WFP).
"Who's going to pay
to rebuild all these villages? And winter is only two months away now.
Winter is going to be a huge headache. We have to start thinking now, get
our acts together," he told Reuters at the weekend.
Although the Balkan
summer is warm and dry, autumn brings heavy rain and winter deep snow and
sub-zero temperatures.
"If you look at the
death rate in the mountains during the Kurdish refugee emergency of 1991
-- and that was at the end of the winter -- I don't see how we're going
to cope with a Balkan winter lasting from October to April," said Richard
Floyer-Acland, U.N. refugee agency coordinator in Kosovo.
The rugged wooded hills
of central and western Kosovo are teeming with refugees, overwhelmingly
women and children, with little food or water and no medicines or sanitary
facilities.
Most have not received
a single humanitarian aid parcel because they are cut off by fighting in
the vicinity. Serbian advances keep many on the move and elusive to aid
workers searching for them.
The sudden escalation
of refugee numbers since mid-July has also overwhelmed the meagre resources
of U.N. and private charitable agencies that have struggled to raise funds
for Kosovo throughout the six-month conflict.
"Albanians have the
highest population growth in Europe, so with such a young and vulnerable
population, the need for assistance here is astronomical," said James Weatherill
of Catholic Relief Services.
"We can meet the needs
of only 10 percent of the displaced right now," he said as food parcels
were being unloaded in the western town of Djakovica for distribution to
refugees scattered on nearby mountains skirting the border of Albania.
Babies are being born
in the woods and at least several have died for lack of nourishment. Mothers
weakened and traumatised by their flight are unable to breast-feed. They
have no milk powder and safe water to mix it with is scarce.
"We've just touched
the tip of the iceberg. Ten percent of the population has disappeared.
Where are they?" said Lorentzen.
Some charitable agencies
say a United Nations estimate of 200,000 displaced is too low. Weatherill
said the truer figure lay around 300,000, based on growth rates after Kosovo's
last census coupled with a new count of depopulated villages.
Lorentzen said security
in the countryside remained so precarious that aid workers could not deliver
supplies for more than a few days at a time.
"We can only provide
small amounts because if refugees then come under attack and have to move
fast, they lose 90 percent of it. In some cases, they have burned or poisoned
what they had to leave so the Serbs could not use it."
Humanitarian workers
are also wary of beating too evident a trail to refugees to avoid exposing
their whereabouts to Serbian security forces who have been accused by Albanians
of indiscriminately shelling and shooting at fleeing civilians.
"In some ways it's hard
to believe that we are in Europe. I thought we were civilised here," said
Lorentzen.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
___________________________________
Albanians claim Serbs attack Kosovo villages
10:30 a.m. Aug 09, 1998 Eastern
PRISTINA, Serbia, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Serbian forces
mopping up in western Kosovo attacked villages in the Decani area near
the Albanian border on Sunday, pro-Albanian sources said.
The Kosovo Information
Centre, linked to Kosovo's leading pro-independence ethnic Albanian party,
said Serbian units backed by tanks shelled a number of villages surrounding
Decani, including Gramocelj, Prilep and Rastavica.
"Today's is amongst
the fiercest Serb attacks in Decani area, and the casualty toll is feared
high," the KIC said in a statement faxed to news agencies.
The KIC, whose report
could not be independently confirmed, also said Serb forces again attacked
the stronghold town of Junik on Saturday night and again on Sunday.
Junik, perched at the
high end of a road that climbs towards mountains marking the border of
Albania, is one of the last remaining major outposts of the Kosovo Liberation
Army and has been surrounded by Serb forces for about two weeks.
Reporters have been
mostly barred from the area and independent information is almost impossible
to obtain.
The Serbian media centre
reported attacks on police checkpoints in the Decani area.
"Albanian terrorists
opened sniper and automatic weapons fire on Sunday morning on a number
of police checkpoints on the Decani-Djakovica road near the villages of
Prilep, Erec and Babaloc," the media centre said in a statement.
"Police returned fire
and are hunting for the attackers."
The statement also said
three Serbian policemen had been wounded on Saturday night in an attack
on police checkpoints at Probrdje, near Decani. The attacks were blamed
on Albanian separatists.
The report of fresh
Serb attacks on villages came a day after the KIC said Serbian troops had
captured a KLA stronghold in the hill village of Likovac.
Belgrade's three-week-old
offensive, powered by tanks and artillery, has overwhelmed flimsy KLA lines,
forcing them to retreat from much of the 50 percent of the province which
the separatists had loosely controlled.
The offensive, which
Western powers have pressed Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to stop,
has also forced tens of thousands of people from their homes, creating
a huge number of displaced people just months before the onset of winter.
Some charitable agencies
say a United Nations estimate of 200,000 displaced is too low.
James Weatherill of
Catholic Relief Services said the number is probably closer to 300,000,
based on growth rates after Kosovo's last census coupled with a new count
of depopulated villages.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
___________________________________
Saturday August 8 4:05 PM EDT
Kosovo rebels lose command base, retain key road
By Mark Heinrich
DECANI, Serbia (Reuters) - Albanian separatist
guerrillas in Kosovo, staggering from a sustained Serbian government offensive,
have lost a key regional headquarters but clung to one major road Saturday.
The Kosovo Information
Center, linked to Kosovo's leading pro-independence ethnic Albanian party,
said Serbian forces swept into the hill village of Likovac Thursday night
after hammering it with artillery for two days.
Serbian troops then
turned Likovac and nearby hamlets "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 Kosovo Liberation Army, which has been driven back into remote
hills after having taken loose control in up to half the province.
Tens of thousands of
villagers fled with KLA fighters to escape shelling. Many of their abandoned
homes and shops have since been firebombed and looted and their fields
set ablaze.
The KIC said most civilians
in Likovac and adjacent hamlets were evacuated before Serbian military
police moved in 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,
perched at the high end of a road that climbs westwards into the heart
of a wooded mountain range marking the border of Albania.
Saturday, heavily armed
military police occupied virtually every building along the main road between
Pec and Djakovica paralleling the border mountains, betraying high tensions
in the region.
A Yugoslav army special
forces jeep mounted with a heavy machinegun roared past a Reuters news
team halted at a police checkpoint in Decani and swerved into a side road
angling up toward the mountains.
We were following an
emergency aid convoy that reached Djakovica, 35 km (20 miles) south of
Decani, and unloaded tonnes of food parcels and other items for distribution
among Albanian refugees living rough in the borderland high country after
fleeing Serbian advances on KLA bastions.
No shooting could be
heard along the Pec-Djakovica corridor, but the Junik turnoff was blocked
by military police.
Ethnic Albanian media
reported low-intensity clashes continuing in pockets in remote central
hills.
Belgrade's three-week-old
offensive, powered by tanks and artillery overwhelming flimsy KLA lines,
seems to have driven the guerrillas off all main routes linking east with
west Kosovo which they had blocked for months, except for one.
Saturday's aid convoy
initially tried a more direct route to Djakovica, bypassing the volatile
Pec-Decani route, by taking a southwestwards turnoff from the central Klina
region. But six km (four miles) down the road we were halted by a wall
of rocks laid across the tarmac by the KLA.
Thickly wooded rolling
hills on either side made this perfect ambush country. Sprinkled on the
road just before the rock barricade were small heaps of leafs and twigs,
a warning of land mines planted in the vicinity.
Our vehicles sat there
for a few minutes before three KLA rebels emerged from behind a rock outcrop
overlooking the barricade and politely asked us to go back the way we came.
"The Serbs are firing
on us along this route and they have already wrecked several villages in
the hills near here," said one weary-looking young guerrilla. "We have
been a week here with little food or water, both us and civilians."
In diplomatic developments,
NATO said Friday the 16-nation military alliance was ready to act to halt
the fighting in Kosovo, but Russia -- which has a veto on the U.N. Security
Council -- again rejected military intervention.
Russian Deputy Foreign
Minister Nikolai Afanasyevsky, speaking to reporters in Belgrade, said
a Contact Group proposal given to Yugoslav and ethnic Albanian officials
offers Albanians a high level of autonomy but rejects independence.
Yugoslav federal President
Slobodan Milosevic has said he is ready to negotiate with the Kosovars
on autonomy, but feuding Albanian politicians have been unable to agree
a negotiation team among themselves.
In the Kosovo provincial
capital Pristina, ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova said a peace dialogue
was impossible as long as Serbian forces kept pounding separatist guerrillas
and nearby villages.
___________________________________
Saturday August 8 10:58 PM EDT
Foreign Powers Propose Kosovo Plan
ANNE THOMPSON Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Peace negotiations
for Kosovo province were back on track, a Western diplomat said Saturday,
as a heavy Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists appeared to be
winding down.
Both sides were reviewing
a blueprint for talks, with one faction of the rebel Kosovo Liberation
Army already agreeing in principle to an alliance with politicians that
would form the basis for an ethnic Albanian negotiating team.
Diplomats in the past
two days also handed both sides a proposal outlining models for how autonomy
might work in Kosovo, a province of the Serb republic of Yugoslavia where
ethnic Albanians are a majority.
Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic has agreed to restore Kosovo's autonomy, which he revoked in
1989, and ethnic Albanian politicians have said they would accept that
arrangement as a first step to independence.
But the loosely-organized
KLA has so far rejected anything besides outright secession.
In the Albanian capital
Tirana, a Rugova-allied politician said Saturday that a moderate KLA faction
had "agreed in principle" to enter an alliance with ethnic Albanian politicians
headed by Ibrahim Rugova.
Ilaz Ramajli told The
Associated Press the KLA had not yet announced its final decision, "but
they are examining all the proposals made to them in a positive way."
A Western diplomat said
on condition of anonymity that Ramajli's statement showed that U.S.-led
diplomacy aimed at starting talks was again moving forward.
The blueprint was drafted
by the so-called Contact Group of six international powers - Britain, Germany,
France, Italy, the United States and Russia - which has been trying to
secure a political solution for Kosovo since fighting between Serb forces
and the KLA escalated in March.
International powers
have rejected independence for Kosovo, fearing it would encourage extremist
groups to annex parts of Macedonia and the smaller Yugoslav republic, Montenegro,
to form - along with Kosovo - a "Greater Albania."
While the recent Serb
offensive against the rebels has been subsiding, Serb forces on Saturday
continued attacks on villages in the Drenica region, a hotbed of ethnic
Albanian nationalism. The operation appeared designed to secure Serb control
on KLA strongholds seized in recent day
___________________________________
Saturday August 8 4:05 PM EDT
France, U.S. seek Russian backing for Kosovo plan
PARIS (Reuters) - President Clinton and French
President Jacques Chirac asked NATO Saturday to continue preparing for
military intervention in Kosovo, but agreed they could not launch strikes
without Russian support.
A spokesman for Chirac
said the U.S. and French presidents talked almost exclusively about the
situation in the Serbian province of Kosovo during a 25-minute telephone
conversation.
"The two men expressed
their shared concern for the situation on the ground (in Kosovo) and the
humanitarian risk this poses," spokesman Jerome Peyrat said.
"They agreed that it
was necessary for NATO to go further with its military plans," he added.
A senior NATO diplomat
said Friday NATO had finalised planning for possible air operations to
try to end months of conflict in Kosovo between ethnic Albanian separatist
fighters and Serb forces, which has cost hundreds of lives.
Russia has so far vigorously
rejected the idea of NATO intervention, saying it would not bring peace
to the region.
Peyrat said Chirac,
who is on holiday in the Indian Ocean, had told Clinton there could be
no military operation without the backing first of the United Nations'
Security Council.
"This pre-supposes the
agreement of Russia," Chirac's spokesman said.
"Everything must be
done to find this accord for two reasons. Firstly because it is in line
with the pact between NATO and Russia. Secondly because we must maintain
the unity of the Contact Group," he added.
The six-nation Contact
Group, comprising France, the United States, Russia, Germany, Britain and
Italy, coordinates major power policy on Yugoslavia.
In Washington, White
House spokesman P.J. Crowley said Clinton and Chirac "agreed that NATO
planning should continue.
"They agreed on the
urgency of finding a way to convince Milosevic to stop his offensive and
seek a political resolution, because both presidents fear the prospects
of refugees still away from their homes as winter approaches," Crowley
said.
"There's a sense of
urgency that we need to resolve this in the next few weeks," he added.
Thursday, Clinton spoke
by telephone with British Prime Minister Tony Blair about options to deal
with the situation in Kosovo, and Friday he talked to German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl about it.
Chirac and Clinton agreed
Saturday that it was important for the Contact Group to carry on seeking
a lasting political solution to the Kosovo crisis.
France and Germany announced
Friday they would send senior diplomats to Belgrade next week to urge Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic to end military action in Kosovo.
The 10-nation Western
European Union, the only defense body which purports to speak for Europe,
demanded Friday direct NATO intervention in Kosovo to end the fighting.
More than five months
of fighting in Kosovo have left tens of thousands of people homeless in
the war-torn Serb province, part of the Yugoslav Republic.
___________________________________
The New York Times
August 9, 1998
Disinherited Albanians on the Run for Their Lives
By MIKE O'CONNOR
PORNOC, Yugoslavia -- Gzim Shala looked around
at the tufts of grass, the hard ground where they fought to grow, the skinny
trees that gave his family campsite little shelter from the sun, and the
turgid stream nearby, blanketed by dancing insects.
"This is the best we
could find," he said.
Until last week Shala
was the proud head of his extended family, owner of a house, livestock
and equipment earned in 20 years of farming. Now he is one of perhaps 100,000
ethnic Albanians driven from their homes by a Serbian offensive aimed at
wresting control over central and western Kosovo from ethnic Albanian guerrillas
who are fighting for an independent country.
The refugees have only
the slimmest measure of protection against the disease and starvation that
international aid officials fear is imminent. A U.N. official said Saturday
that the few doctors who have reached refugees estimate that 50 percent
of children suffer dehydration and the first effects of malnutrition.
Shala's family ran through
Serbian artillery, walked over mountains for four days and set up camp
here. The youngest of his clan of 16 is 1, the oldest 77.
"We have the clothes
we're wearing, three plates and two forks," he said. "One of those international
aid groups -- I think it was the Germans -- gave us five blankets."
With food and four foam
mats and plastic sheets they got from ethnic Albanian villagers nearby,
they can survive in the open, for now, as the rain has been light so far.
Two of the Shala children
broke out in festering sores on Friday. The group does not know when, or
if, new artillery fire will force renewed flight. They live off moldy bread
and green peppers cooked on coals from a fire built between two rocks.
"This is only the beginning,"
Shala said. "There will be more hunger and disease because we can't go
back home. Everything there is gone, burned. And if we go back, the police
will kill us."
He added that Albanians
who returned to one village, Glarev, were killed. "We saw that village
burning on the way here," he said.
In the Kosovo Albanians'
tight-knit society, many refugee families have been taken in by relatives
or strangers. But they and their benefactors are relying on a collapsed
economy. The villages where most have found shelter are already lacking
in food, clean water and medical care.
Refugee officials spoke
only on condition of anonymity, for fear of endangering aid efforts already
hurt by government interference. They acknowledged that they were unprepared
for such a massive problem.
"We don't have the personnel
to go out there and even assess the situation properly," said one U.N.
official.
In the village of Prapa
Can, where refugees have swelled the population to 3,500 from 1,000, Dr.
Shyt Shala's delivery room has a rough concrete floor, a single light bulb
and a candle for use when the electricity goes out.
"I suppose I see about
30 women a day for prenatal care and delivery," Shala said. "Three are
in labor here now, but I have only five sets of sterile gloves, so by tomorrow
we'll be back to primitive medicine."
"We ran out of the normal
prenatal medications like hormones and antibiotics about two weeks ago,"
added the doctor, who was almost too tired to speak. That was just after
the offensive began, he explained. "If there is a premature birth, we can't
get the mother to a real clinic. Last night and a week ago a baby died
because we couldn't help them."
The government considers
this enemy territory, as it does other refugee enclaves. Indeed, Kosovo's
ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs roughly nine to one in this impoverished
province of 2 million, and most of them support the rebels. Many refugee
families are lacking young men, who they say stayed behind to fight.
No Western government
supports the rebels' aim of independence. For the heavily armed Serbian
police officers and Yugoslav soldiers fighting for the government, that
is a green light to regain control of the territory -- by any means.
________________________________________________
Saturday, August 8, 1998 Published at 22:27 GMT 23:27 UK
Peace plan offered for Kosovo
Western countries and Russia, which are supervising
the peace process in the former Yugoslavia, have offered proposals for
a peace settlement in Kosovo.
The plan given to Yugoslav
and ethnic Albanian officials would give Kosovo a high level of autonomy
within Yugoslavia, but rules out independence.
Yugoslav officials called
it a positive step.
The Yugoslav President,
Slobodan Milosevic, has said he is ready to negotiate with the Kosovars
on autonomy, but feuding Albanian politicians have been unable to agree
a negotiation team among themselves.
The Kosovo Albanian
leader, Ibrahim Rugova, said independence was still his preferred option.
He said a peace dialogue
was impossible as long as Serbian forces kept pounding separatist guerrillas
and nearby villages.
A Russian envoy, Nikolai
Afanasyevsky, who is in Belgrade, said the document was a basis for negotiations.
UN sends more aid
The United Nations has sent more relief supplies
to central Kosovo, where another rebel Albanian base at Likovac fell to
Serbian forces on Friday.
The agency said it was
worried about the health of tens of thousands of people who escaped into
forests last month, when the former separatist stronghold of Malisevo fell
to the Serbs.
The fall of Likovac
was the latest setback for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which has
been driven back into remote hills after having taken loose control in
up to half the province.
Tens of thousands of
villagers fled with KLA fighters to escape shelling.
Rebels from the KLA
are vowing to fight on despite suffering huge blows from the Serbian forces.
In one part of western
Kosovo where the fighters still control small pockets of territory, KLA
soldiers at one checkpoint told the BBC they would remain to fight the
Serbs.
Nato 'ready to act'
On Friday, Nato ambassadors 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.
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.
07 August 1998_______________________________________________________________________TEXT: SOLANA, KWASNIEWSKI VIEW SITUATION IN KOSOVO WITH CONCERN
(Danger of upsetting political stability in Europe) (430)
Brussels -- NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski released a communique following their meeting August 7 which said they viewed "with concern the development of the situation in Kosovo which carries a danger of upsetting the political stability of the region of Europe."
Solana and Kwasniewski "noted with regret that President Slobodan Milosevic [of the "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia"] had failed to deliver on his promise made to the European Union that the armed operations of the Serb forces would be discontinued."Following is the text of the communique:
(begin text)Joint Statement of the President of the Republic of Poland Mr. Aleksander Kwasniewski with the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Mr. Javier Solana.
NATO
7 August 1998Communique
From the meeting of the President of the Republic of Poland Mr. Aleksander Kwasniewski with the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Mr. Javier Solana.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski and Secretary General Javier Solana view with concern the development of the situation in Kosovo which carries a danger of upsetting the political stability of the region of Europe.
The escalation of combat operations and the suffering they inflict upon the civilian population coerce all the political forces in Europe into taking steps conducive to the inauguration of a dialogue between the belligerents to end the conflict.
President A. Kwasniewski and Secretary General Solana noted with regret that President Slobodan Milosevic had failed to deliver on his promise made to the European Union that the armed operations of the Serb forces would be discontinued.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski informed Secretary General Javier Solana about the efforts being made by Poland, currently the Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE, in pursuit of a resolution of the conflict in Kosovo.
Secretary General Javier Solana advised President Aleksander Kwasniewski on the state of NATO's preparations for a reaction should the conflict spread.
President of the Republic of Poland Mr. Aleksander Kwasniewski also informed the Secretary General on the state of Poland's preparations for NATO membership and the country's readiness to join the Atlantic Alliance upon the fulfillment by Poland of all the formal and legal terms of membership.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski and Secretary General Javier Solana declare themselves satisfied with the progress of the integration process and appreciative of the immense historical and stabilising role being played by the enlargement of the North Atlantic Alliance.
07 August 1998_______________________________________________________________________TEXT: NATO ANNOUNCES PFP EXERCISE IN ALBANIA
("Cooperative Assembly" to take place 17-22 August) (420)
Brussels -- NATO announced August 6 that it will hold a joint allied and Partnership for Peace (PfP) exercise near Tirana, Albania August 17-22.
According to the NATO press release, the exercise, "Cooperative Assembly 98," is designed "to develop a common understanding of peace support operations, doctrine and training and to practise interoperability between participating nations' military forces."
Air, maritime and land forces from 14 countries will practice various skills, including search and rescue, close air support, medical evacuation, and air drop procedures as well as infantry peace support operations skills.Following is the text of the NATO press release:
(begin text)Exercise Cooperative Assembly 98
1. Forces from fourteen Allied and Partnership for Peace (PfP) countries and observers from another six will conduct a PfP (live/field) training exercise near Tirana, Albania, from 17-22 August 1998.
2. This exercise, COOPERATIVE ASSEMBLY 98 (CA98), is designed to develop a common understanding of peace support operations, doctrine and training and to practise interoperability between participating nations' military forces.
3. Air, maritime and land forces from fourteen countries will practise together various skills, to include search and rescue, close air support, medical evacuation, and air drop procedures as well as infantry peace support operations skills. This training will help refine and validate the procedures and requirements necessary for military forces from NATO and Partner nations to operate effectively together.
Forces participating come from: Albania, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom and United States.4. COOPERATIVE ASSEMBLY 98 is under the direction of the Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces Southern Europe (CINCSOUTH), Admiral T. Joseph Lopez. It is commanded and coordinated by Commander Naval Striking and Support Forces Southern Europe (COMSTRIKFORSOUTH), Vice Admiral D. Murphy Jr.
5. CA98 is held within the framework of the Partnership for Peace Programme launched at the NATO Summit in January 1994. This programme aims to further improve understanding and cooperation with the armed forces of Central and Eastern Europe and with several Central Asian and Caucasus nations and thus foster enhanced security relationships between NATO and its Partner nations.
Note to the Editors: A Press Information Centre will be established in Tirana (date to be confirmed). Questions about details of the exercise can be addressed to AFSOUTH Public Information, Tel +39 81 721 2971/2437, Fax +39 81 721 2239, Email: afspip@interbusiness.it
Ethnic Albanians, Serbs fight propaganda war on
the Internet
By Preston Mendenhall MSNBC
PRISTINA, Serbia, Aug. 7 — The crack of automatic weapons fire echoes the distance, punctuated by an occasional mortar explosion. Yet while the independence-minded Kosovo Liberation Army and Yugoslav forces battle over stretches of highway between here and the Albanian border to the south, their supporters are waging a different kind of war on a new front — the information highway.
AS THIS DECADE began, the Gulf War gave news viewers the chance to see live warfare on the television screen. The Internet played its part in getting news out in Bosnia, during the rebellion against Zaire’s Mobuto Sese Seko and more recently, the uprising that toppled Indonesia’s President Suharto. But nothing like what’s happening in Kosovo has ever been seen before. In remote Kosovo, where there are no foreign media satellite dishes and information is tightly controlled by the Yugoslav government, the Internet has become a battlefield in itself.
CYBER ZEALOTS In remote Kosovo, where there are no foreign media satellite dishes and information is tightly controlled by the Yugoslav government, the Internet has become a battlefield in itself.
A faithful, if fanatic, group of ethnic Albanians, foreign-based guerillas and Serb nationals are disseminating news on the conflict 24 hours a day via the Internet. Multi-lingual and updated around the clock, a half-dozen official sites dedicated to the Kosovo conflict provide everything from political condemnations and photographs of mutilated bodies to tourist information and sports scores. Even the insurgent KLA has a site. Secretive and reclusive on the ground, their page puts a face on the rebels, whose colleagues abroad, it seems, have traded live fire for a fiery tongue. The editors of www.zik.com mourn the loss of fallen comrades and recruit support for the movement. The National Movement of Kosovo, which has at times claimed to be the political wing of the KLA, writes in Albanian that the “motherland is calling.”
The site damns a recent move by Swiss authorities to close several bank accounts believed to be funneling cash to the rebels. “The Serbs have started an offensive to exterminate civilian people in Kosovo, especially in regions that have higher numbers of Albanians,” the site says. “The Serbs are trying to shut off our armed resistance and defeat the hope of freedom and the KLA.” “They think that with this offense they will win, but they are mistaken.” Repeated e-mails by MSNBC to www.zik.com went unanswered. For now, that battle station seems to be unmanned. A possible indication of the site’s origin: one of the articles is attributed to two well-known student leaders, suspected of having ties to the rebel uprising.
ONLINE IN EXILE The self-proclaimed government of the Republic of Kosovo, elected by a landslide in a clandestine 1992 vote not recognized by Belgrade, maintains a site from its Geneva offices. The Republic’s web site went the extra step of registering itself as a government organization, with the coveted “.org” tag, perhaps readying for the day when it is a fully independent state. “The people of Kosova suffer the worst systematic human rights abuses in Europe. All spheres of life for Kosova Albanians — educational, cultural and political — are impacted by the Serbian totalitarian system,” the site writes by way of its introduction.
In English, French, German and Albanian, the homepage
of the Republic of Kosovo charts the history of a government that Serb
officials call a “terrorist” province. Yet even in quiet lakeside Geneva,
the government in exile is not immune to violence. In March, two gunmen
burst into its offices and shot an employee who tried to stop them. Swiss
police are investigating.
CYBER SERBIA Not to be outdone, on the other side of the cyber frontline, the Serbs, too, have a well-oiled online propaganda machine. The Serb Ministry of Information’s Serbian Ministry of Information, run from Belgrade, traces the movement of “terrorist forces” in Kosovo. Without mentioning the outlaw KLA by name, the press department of the ministry routinely prints the number of rebels killed in attacks: “Eight terrorists were killed, and a good number were took (sic) captive,” it reported recently. Serbia-info.com also reports of inhumane treatment and murders of Serb minority families in the region.
CYBER ALBANIA Albanians, with a diaspora of more than a half million worldwide, are clearly winning the battle for the most sites.
Albanians, with a diaspora of more than a half million worldwide, are clearly winning the battle for the most sites. The tour starts with The Albanian homepage But the events in Kosovo, which escalated sharply since March, have given the page a political edge. News of “massacres” and “ethnic cleansing” splash across its front page, with links to scenes in small Kosovo villages apparently after Serb security forces swept through. Albanian.com does its best to balance its information, by providing a link to Kosovo/a Online — using both the Serb and Albanian spellings for the region - which promotes online dialog between Serbs and Albanian intellectuals and politicians. But like many sites, after a few token words about securing peace in the region, the prose becomes ardently political — anti-Serb and pro-independence.
ON THE GROUND Publishing from downtown Pristina, Koha Ditore is the regional capital’s biggest independent daily in print and online. The site receives about 15,000 hits every day, but has found the cyber battle to be every bit as dangerous as covering the battle on the ground. The site’s producer refuses to allow his name to be published because of a few Serb nationalists who regularly threaten their lives - online. “Some Serb guy e-mails us on a regular basis. He threatens to ‘cut the throats’ of the entire staff.” An anonymous alias might usually protect the editors at the paper, but with ethnic tensions high, they have to take precautions, the producer said. One of the greatest frustrations of Koha Ditore (Daily Times) online efforts has been the Yugoslav government, which apparently has refused to give the site access to a recently-completed fiber link between Pristina and Belgrade. Koha Ditore wants to become an Internet service provider, and has 20 phone lines installed and ready for users, but their applications have been rebuffed. “I have a friend that confirmed to me that the fiber optic line is working, but we can’t get a response from the government,” the producer said. So, for the time being, updating the site is an all-day process. It often takes an hour just to get a call into the Belgrade server, and then several more hours to change the page.
PRIVATE WAR A number of individual and unofficial
sites also provide insight into the age-old hatred and suspicion between
Serbs and Albanians by fervently explaining their nationality’s historic
right to the territory. No expense is spared, as their most prominent historians
hold forth on centuries of repression at the hands of the enemy. The religious
importance of Kosovo to Serbs and their cultural right to the province
is dealt with at www.kosovo.com, the Web Site of the Serbian Resistance
Movement, which publishes no fewer than four historic “outlines” (read:
novels) on Serbian identity in Kosovo. Every big gun contributor is an
expert armed with at least one Ph.D. Kosovo is an “unalienable part of
the Serbian state, without which the future security of Serbia and the
equality of all its citizens without regard to their religious or ethnic
affiliation, cannot be imagined,” it says. The Serbian Resistance Movement
calls Kosovo a “Serbian Jerusalem,” the center of the Serbian state and
culture. Ethnic Albanians living abroad also provide a lively forum for
their claim to the region. Albanian.com offers a list of Albanians online
at www.albanian.com/main/homepages, where you can find ethnic Albanians
like Qosja Rexhep, who offers music, personal musings on Kosovo, his top
ten favorite images from the region and links to other Albanian diaspora.
Ironically, given the volume of information online, few Serbs and ethnic
Albanians living in the former Yugoslavia have Internet access. Of Serbia’s
10 million population, it’s estimated that between 20,000 to 50,000 are
online. In the Kosovo province, the number drops to less 1,000. Phone lines
are unreliable or nonexistent in much of the area, and there is not a single
server for the two million inhabitants. If Kosovo is benefiting in some
way from the Internet, its residents are unaware. But there’s a site notably
absent from Web: one that provides a solution to the conflict. And the
opposing sides in Kosovo’s cyber battle for Kosovo are unlikely to declare
a truce an
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