Tagesnachrichten 12. August 1998
von ALBANEWS und anderen
weitere Presse-Meldungen
further press news
Tagesnachrichten 12. August 1998
12 August 1998_______________________________________________________________________
TRANSCRIPT: PENTAGON SPOKESMAN'S TUESDAY BRIEFING, AUGUST 11
EXCERPTS.(DoD aid in wake of embassy bombings, Andrews AFB ceremony August 13, detainees, Israeli assistance in East Africa, Albania, Kosovo, NATO, Khobar Towers, Tripp, Turkey, SKorea, Lockheed Martin, Gulf War Syndrome/Rand Corporation, embassy security, B-2s) (6510)
Pentagon Spokesman Ken Bacon briefed August 11.
Following is the Pentagon transcript:
(begin transcript)DoD News Briefing
Tuesday, August 11, 1998 - 1:35 P.M.
Presenter: Kenneth H. Bacon, ASD (PA)
......Q: Okay. On the current military exercise in FYROM, in Albania, are you planning to use also your installations in Greece?
A: My understanding is we do not plan to use our installations in Greece for that exercise just because they're too far away.
Q: And the last one, anything on the consistent reports for U.S. military involvement in Kosovo?
A: Well, first of all, our goal in Kosovo is to reach a diplomatic solution to the problem. I think we've been very clear about that from the very beginning. Second, if there is any military involvement in Kosovo, it will be done through NATO, not unilaterally by the United States.
....
_______________________________________________________________________NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, AUGUST 12, 1998
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Taken without permission, for fair use only.*Aid Groups Try to Feed Kosovo Refugees
The NY Times, August 12, 1998
*Fighting reported in Kosovo's Decani region
CNN, August 12, 1998
*Security Council Urges Negotiations Over Kosovo
Washington Post, August 12, 1998
*Thousands of Kosovo refugees begin the long trek home
MSNBC, August 12, 1998
*Serbs Attack City, Civilians Trapped
AP, August 12, 1998
*Kosovo Refugees Remain on the Run
AP, August 12, 1998
*Fierce fighting in western Kosovo
BBC Online, August 12, 1998
*UN calls for Kosovo cease-fire
BBC Online, August 12, 1998
*Police die as rebels hit back in Kosovo
The Times, August 12, 1998
*Kosovo Rebels Vow To Continue Fight
AP, August 11, 1998
*NATO to sound out members on air forces for Kosovo
Reuters, August 12, 1998
*Aid arrives for thousands of Kosovo refugees
KLA issues call to arms
Call to arms by KLA
Annan criticizes monitors
CNN, August 11, 1998
*Fighting Reported in Decani Region
AP, August 11, 1998
*Serbs reduce cradle of Kosovo uprising to ashes
Telegraph, August 11, 1998
*Resistance continues in Kosovo areas
UPI, August 11, 1998
___________________________________August 12, 1998
Aid Groups Try to Feed Kosovo Refugees
The New York Times
By MIKE O'CONNORCIREZ, Yugoslavia -- Two large cargo trucks eased through the throngs of refugees on Tuesday in this block-long hamlet in the mountains of Kosovo. Stopping at a decrepit, empty building, the drivers unlashed the cargo covers and tossed them to one side. Instantly dozens of men grabbed the 110-pound sacks of flour from the trucks and stacked them against a wall.
The gaunt men, covered with a floury grime, were told to wait for their family's portion. But the international relief officials here said that even if there were enough food in this shipment for all the people who have fled the fighting in this province to take refuge in the villages and forests nearby, it would not last long. They said they did not know when they could come back with more.
Despite what they insist were their best efforts, foreign governments were not able to prevent the Yugoslav government's recent military offensive against ethnic Albanian rebels, from which these people fled. Now, international aid agencies say they are not able to provide for the refugees.
Since the offensive began in late June, with Serbian artillery attacks against villages in areas controlled by the rebels, civilians have emptied large sections of Kosovo. But relief officials say they still have only a general notion of how many refugees there are or what their physical condition is or even which villages have been evacuated.
"There's a sketchy overview of what's going on," said Mons Nyberg, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "This came on so fast that the international community was unprepared to respond."
"There is no other way to describe it than piecemeal," said an international aid official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We hear about a group of people -- maybe it's thousands of people -- we throw some kind of supply convoy together and we take them what we have.
"I am sure we are not doing nearly enough, but since no one knows how many people we're not helping, I can't tell you how much more we should be doing."
On the other end of this hamlet from where the flour is stored, at a fly-specked medical clinic with broken windows, dozens of patients stood in sweltering, stench-filled rooms waiting to see the doctor. Nearby, foreign water and sanitation experts were inspecting a well.
They were from Oxfam, a nonprofit relief organization. The well is being used by refugees crammed into the local school. The well was adequate for the few families who lived here, local officials say, but now the water level is dropping quickly.
Refugees hauled up the water bucket and passed it around, each drinking from it or pouring water into dirty plastic bottles. With overcrowded and primitive living conditions, even for those who have shelter indoors, there is an increasing fear of epidemics. Children and the elderly are suffering from intestinal diseases already, relief agency doctors said.
The Oxfam experts said that with some effort, they think they can rig up a more reliable and sanitary way to distribute water here. But that would be for the 360 people now living in the school. The best estimates are that 80,000 people have been displaced by the current military offensive, and many of them are nowhere near a well.
Higher up in the mountains, two refugee children whose families are living in the open carried plastic bottles to a muddy stream where other children were bathing along with a herd of cattle.
Serbia is the larger of two republics remaining in Yugoslavia. About 90 percent of the residents of Kosovo province in Serbia are ethic Albanians. The government carried out its most recent offensive to recapture areas taken as the rebels gained support among Kosovo residents.
As government military forces have advanced, homes and sometimes whole villages have been set on fire. But it is fear that keeps most keeps most of the refugees from going home.
International aid officials say they do not have the staff in Kosovo to respond properly, and most say they do not expect to get much more help.
Before the current offensive, the United Nations said there were at least 167,000 refugees within Kosovo. With the estimated 80,000 new refugees, the total is well over 10 percent of the province's population.
"I've got so much work here I'm shattered -- I am dead," said Mick Lorentzen, the only staff employee of the U.N. World Food Program in Kosovo. Lorentzen said two additional employees have been assigned but have not been granted visas by the Yugoslav government.
With his family living under plastic sheets covered with tree branches to provide camouflage and protection from the sun, Abedin Makolli, 24, said on Tuesday: "We live like primitive people, but we cannot go home because it is too dangerous. We have moved three times since we left home because the army keeps coming, but we cannot go back."
___________________________________Fighting reported in Kosovo's Decani region
•KLA on latest offensive: 'Strengthened our resolve'
•U.N. secretary-general condemns 'scorched earth policy'August 12, 1998
Web posted at 1:08 a.m. EDT (0508 GMT)PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- After a string of recent losses, secessionist ethnic Albanian rebels battled Serb government forces Tuesday near Kosovo province's border with Albania.
Albanian sources, who first reported the clashes, claimed a column of 110 Yugoslav army vehicles, including 36 tanks, was seen heading for the embattled Decani region.
Yugoslavia's official Tanjug news agency confirmed the fighting close to the border with Albania, saying six Serb policemen were wounded. Neither side gave a casualty figure for the ethnic Albanians.
Tanjug said fighting was concentrated along the road connecting Decani and Djakovica, in western Kosovo, in the villages of Prilep and Glodjane, known to be strongholds of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army. It said the police were gaining ground against the KLA.
Tanjug claimed large groups of KLA fighters were attacking police patrols along the strategic road to try to keep Serb forces out of the village of Junik, the biggest KLA stronghold in western Kosovo, which has been encircled by Serb police for three weeks.
Tanjug said several hundred KLA men were firing at police from Junik on Tuesday, but the police did not fire back on the village.
Elsewhere, the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Information Center reported two ethnic Albanians, ages 2 and 15, were killed late Monday in Serb shelling of the village of Petrovo, about 18 miles south of Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital.
And the Albanian state-run ATA news agency in Tirana said the bodies of five men were bought to the hospital in Djakovica on Monday night. It did not provide other details.
The Albanian government said Tuesday that 70 people had fled across the border from Kosovo within the last 24 hours, including two badly wounded guerrillas.'Strengthened our resolve'
Independent media in Belgrade also reported the Kosovo Liberation Army had re-entered the central village of Likovac, the rebel headquarters Serb forces overran last week. The report could not be confirmed.
In a statement distributed to ethnic Albanian media, the KLA said the latest Serb offensive "has only strengthened our resolve to bravely continue on the road to freedom."
It called on Kosovo Albanians, who represent 90 percent of the Serbian province's 2 million people, to "unite with the KLA and help us in our just freedom fight."
Despite the war rhetoric, a top KLA official told the Albanian Koha Ditore newspaper the militants might join an all-Albanian negotiating team in peace negotiations with the Serbian government.U.N. secretary-general condemns 'scorched earth policy'
Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Security Council on Tuesday separately expressed concern of the escalating violence in Kosovo.
The statements by Annan and the council were issued as NATO in Brussels was expected to endorse military contingency plans on Wednesday, despite Russia's opposition to any armed action against its historic Serb allies.
A U.N. spokesman said Annan was "particularly concerned about reports that FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) security forces may be adopting a 'scorched earth policy' in some areas of Kosovo."
"He condemns such practices and urges the FRY security forces to avoid such acts of wanton destruction. He equally abhors the resort to violence and any suffering which might be caused by Kosovars," the spokesman said.
Annan, now in Europe, feared that if the crisis was unchecked it "could lead to a large-scale humanitarian disaster, with the approaching winter."
"The secretary-general remains convinced that the only path to a solution of the Kosovo crisis is through dialogue," his spokesman added.
A statement issued by the Security Council president after closed-door council consultations on Kosovo expressed "grave concern over the intensified fighting ... especially over the ongoing offensive by Belgrade's security forces."
The council called for an immediate ceasefire, "which would enhance the prospects for a meaningful dialogue between the Kosovar Albanian leadership and the FRY authorities leading to a final end to the violence in Kosovo," and urged the parties to start negotiations as soon as possible.
"The issue of Kosovo can have no military solution and all violence and acts of terrorism from whatever quarter are unacceptable," said the statement read to reporters by council president Danilo Turk of Slovenia.
The council also stressed the importance of an arms embargo it imposed on Yugoslavia, including Kosovo, on March 31 and expressed concern over "infiltration from outside the borders of the FRY" of weapons and fighting men.
This was an allusion to the smuggling of arms and fighters from neighbouring Albania by the KLA.
Both the secretary-general and the council voiced fears for the plight of uprooted civilians, with Annan "deeply troubled by reports of the vast number of displaced persons without food and shelter" and the council speaking of the "appalling humanitarian situation."
The council statement underlined the need to create conditions to allow the safe and permanent return of all refugees and internally displaced persons.
The latest figure from the U.N. refugee agency put the number of Kosovo refugees at around 240,000.
In Geneva, U.N. human rights spokesman Jose Diaz said the U.N. Human Rights Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination would send a letter next week to the Yugoslav government to express concern about the displacement of people in Kosovo.
For five months, Serb troops have been fighting the KLA, which seeks independence from Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia. Kosovo's ethnic Albanians remain largely divided between those loyal to pacifist ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova and those who support the militants.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
___________________________________Security Council Urges Negotiations Over Kosovo
By John M. Goshko
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 12, 1998; Page A21UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 11—The Security Council warned today that the bloodshed in Kosovo "can have no military solution" and urged the Yugoslav government and Albanian separatists to seek "a final end to the violence" through peaceful negotiation.
The council acted after Secretary General Kofi Annan reported that Yugoslavia might be pursuing "a scorched earth policy" to stamp out the secessionist drive by ethnic Albanians who constitute 90 percent of the population in Kosovo. If unchecked, Annan warned, Yugoslavia's practices could lead to a major humanitarian disaster.
The 15-nation council made its plea in the form of a statement, which does not have the force of a resolution and does not bind the parties to the Kosovo dispute to follow the council's wishes. That the council was not able to agree on a resolution underscored anew the degree to which the United Nations has been forced into the role of a relatively passive observer in dealing with Kosovo.
That is because the five-country contact group that has taken responsibility for seeking a Kosovo solution has been reluctant to permit the Security Council, whose members represent a much broader spectrum of opinion, to play a more activist part in Kosovo. The contact group is composed of the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany.
In addition, two of the council's permanent members, Russia and China, opposed the council taking any action that would penalize Yugoslavia. Russia has religious and cultural ties to the Serbs who control Yugoslavia. China, stressing that Kosovo is a Yugoslav province, argues against outside interference in an internal Yugoslav affair.
Because of these factors, the main effort to force a solution has devolved to the contact group and to NATO, which has contingency plans for military intervention. But the urgency of Annan's report and the insistence of some members pushed the Security Council into issuing today's statement.
The statement called for an immediate cease-fire followed by "meaningful dialogue" and negotiation on a peaceful resolution. "The issue of Kosovo can have no military solution, and all violence and acts of terrorism from whatever quarter are unacceptable," the statement said.
It condemned the "ongoing offensive by Belgrade's security forces," despite commitments by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the international community. It said this offensive fuels fighting that has had "devastating impact" by creating refugees, violating human rights and creating "an appalling humanitarian situation."
But it also gave a nod to Yugoslav concerns by affirming "the commitment of all member states to [its] sovereignty and territorial integrity." That was an unmistakable criticism of the more radical Albanians, who want Kosovo to be independent despite the international community's view that it should remain within Yugoslavia under a negotiated autonomy arrangement.© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
___________________________________Wednesday August 12 9:17 AM ET
Thousands of Kosovo refugees begin the long trek home
By Preston Mendenhall
SHTUTICE, Serbia - Thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees who fled fighting between Serb police and Kosovo rebels are starting to return home. But most refugees said they didn't know whether their villages were safe or if their homes and livestock survived a furious Serb offensive against the Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas.
In a gorge near Shtutice, known as the Valley of Apples because of the surrounding fruit orchards, dozens of tractors full of men, women and children - healthy and infirm - braved the dry heat and threat of Serb gunfire to beat a path back to their villages.
The now dwindling 2-week-old Serb offensive brought shelling near the refugees' villages, forcing them to abandon a ripe harvest, livestock and their homes.
While they didn't know what to expect, some refugees said they would risk the trip rather than the perils of disease, dehydration and diarrhea while living in the open for weeks.
"Our house is gone, but we can't live here. We can't survive in the open much longer," Myftar Zogaj told MSNBC. "If I have to rebuild my house, I must start now - before it gets cold." Zogaj also hoped to salvage what was left of the harvest.
Yet others were too scared to leave.
"We do not know what to do. We know it will get colder, but we can't go back," said Abeden Makoli, a 26-year-old father of five who has been camping in the woods with nine members of his family. We think that the Serb police will slaughter our children."
Meanwhile, the international community's failure to monitor the arms embargo against parties to the Kosovo conflict scuttled an attempt Tuesday by the U.N. Security Council to get tough with Yugoslavia.
Despite a strong statement Tuesday from Secretary-General Kofi Annan - condemning Yugoslavia's "scorched-earth policy" in Kosovo - the Security Council statement broke no new ground, reiterating calls for a ceasefire.
Its only concession to demands from at least three member countries - Britain, France and Slovenia, the council's current president - to announce action against Yugoslavia was to single out Slobodan Milosevic's regime as using "excessive force."
In a report to the council, Annan said international agencies had failed to make good on promises to monitor an arms embargo on Kosovo. Such an embargo would mostly affect separatist Albanians in Kosovo, who are getting arms and troops smuggled across the Albanian border.
Without the embargo, Russia - one of the permanent veto-bearing members of the council - could not back a strong statement, deputy Russian ambassador Yuriy Fedotov said, and Moscow was not ready to use its closeness to Yugoslavia to demand Milosevic back down.
In his report, Annan noted that soon after the conflict between Serbian authorities and ethnic Albanian separatists broke earlier this year, he had recommended that organizations such as NATO and the European Union set up a regime to monitor the arms embargo.
The organizations said they were willing to do so, he says, but so far nothing has materialized.
Despite a string of recent losses, ethnic Albanians continued fighting Tuesday and vowed to press on.
In a statement distributed to ethnic Albanian media, the KLA said the latest Serb offensive 'has only strengthened our resolve to bravely continue on the road to freedom.'
Albanian sources reported that rebels were battling Serb government forces in Kosovo province's border with Albania. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a column of 110 Yugoslav army vehicles, including 36 tanks, was seen heading for the embattled Decani region.
Yugoslavia's official Tanjug news agency confirmed the fighting close to the border with Albania, saying six Serb policemen were wounded. Neither side gave a casualty figure for the ethnic Albanians.
Tanjug said fighting was concentrated along the road connecting Decani and Djakovica, in western Kosovo, in the villages of Prilep and Glodjane, known to be strongholds of the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA. It said the Serb police were gaining ground against the KLA.
Tanjug claimed large groups of KLA fighters were attacking police patrols along the strategic road to try to keep Serb forces out of the village of Junik, the biggest KLA stronghold in western Kosovo, which has been encircled by Serb police for three weeks.
Independent media in Belgrade reported the Kosovo Liberation Army had re-entered the central village of Likovac, the rebel headquarters Serb forces overran last week. The report could not be confirmed.
In a statement distributed to ethnic Albanian media, the KLA said the latest Serb offensive "has only strengthened our resolve to bravely continue on the road to freedom."
It called on Kosovo Albanians, who represent 90 percent of the Serbian province's 2 million people, to "unite with the KLA and help us in our just freedom fight."
Despite the war rhetoric, a top KLA official told the Albanian newspaper Koha Ditore that
the militants might join an Albanian negotiating team in peace negotiations with the Serbian government.
In Geneva, U.N. human rights spokesman Jose Diaz said the U.N. Human Rights Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination would send a letter next week to the Yugoslav government to express concern about the displacement of people in Kosovo.
The latest figure from the U.N. refugee agency put the number of Kosovo refugees at around 240,000.
In the Valley of Apples, international aid organizations scrambled to give medicine and food to the ethnic Albanian refugees.
"It's getting pretty desperate out there; the people are in bad shape," said Keith Ursel, the Kosovo emergency coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders). Ursel and his four-truck convoy were traveling to the villages of Gullovac, Llapushnik and Komoran in central Kosovo, where thousands of refugees have gathered on their way home.
The nine-member Makoli family didn't join the returning refugees, however. In a makeshift shelter fashioned from trees, branches and plastic sheeting, the Makolis waited for the evening shade to go to neighboring villages to look for food. They have been living in the woods for more than a week and have been on the run for three months. The youngest, a 4-month-old boy, was weak and doctors who examined him believed he's suffering from hepatitis.
The Makolis initially fled from their home village of Chikatova, in western Kosovo, to Gradica. But then further shelling forced them to Lausa and Obrije, and then Shtutice. They were surviving on handouts from villagers in the area.
"They are very kind to us, and give us tomatoes and other vegetables," Drita Makoli said.
___________________________________Wednesday August 12 9:49 AM EDT
Serbs Attack City, Civilians Trapped
ISMET HAJDARI Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Backed by heavy artillery, Serb forces launched a fierce attack today on a major ethnic Albanian stronghold, trapping thousands of civilians and militants.
The attack on the village of Junik, near the Albanian border, came after a three-week Serb siege of one of the main bases for the Kosovo Liberation Army, ethnic Albanian sources reported.
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had promised European Union envoys that Junik, where some 1,000 KLA fighters and as many civilians are believed to be trapped, would not be attacked.
The Kosovo Information Center, close to the Albanian leadership, appealed for international help in forming a safe corridor for the civilians trapped in Junik.
Thousands of ethnic Albanians remain on the run in Kosovo, international aid officials said today. Many may be living in the woods or hills, said Red Cross spokeswoman Amanda Williamson.
The Red Cross has delivered more than 100 tons of aid to various places in the last few days, but Williamson warned that international aid might not be enough.
"We have a big crisis on our hands," she said in Geneva.
Serb sources in Kosovo reported that heavy fighting in the Decani area, close to the border with Albania, continued overnight. The most intense clashes were said to be around Glodjane, another KLA stronghold.
Serbia's independent B-92 radio reported that several thousand KLA fighters were putting up strong resistance to police attacks on the village.
The radio said there are fears of many dead and wounded and quoted both Serb and Albanian sources describing the latest fighting along the Albanian border as the fiercest since the clashes in Kosovo started in early March.
On Tuesday, Albanian sources reported that the Yugoslav army was sending reinforcements to the area. Two Yugoslav soldiers were killed in the fighting near the border Tuesday, the army said today.
Williamson said that over the weekend, a Red Cross team evacuated to Kosovska Mitrovica some 55 Albanians sheltering on a dried-up river bed in woods in the north of the central Drenica area. They included ill women, children and elderly people.
Figures from the U.N. refugee agency published Tuesday put the total figure of those displaced by the fighting at around 240,000.
World leaders are still deliberating on what to do if they can't bring the warring sides to a negotiating table soon. In Brussels today, NATO allies were fine-tuning options for military action aimed at getting Serb forces
to halt their offensive against secessionists in the southern Serbian province, populated mostly by ethnic Albanians.
At the United Nations on Tuesday, the Security Council reiterated calls for a cease-fire. Three members - Britain, France and Slovenia - pushed for action against Yugoslavia, and Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the Yugoslavs' "scorched-earth policy."
___________________________________Wednesday August 12 7:16 AM EDT
Kosovo Refugees Remain on the Run
ISMET HAJDARI Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Thousands of ethnic Albanians remained on the run in Kosovo province, international aid officials warned today, while Serb forces battled with rebels for control of a region near the Albanian border.
NATO allies, meanwhile, met today to fine-tune options for potential military intervention in Kosovo, a province in southern Serbia.
Europe's worst refugee crisis since the Bosnian war showed no signs of easing. Tens of thousands of people in Kosovo have been displaced in the past two weeks alone, Amanda Williamson, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in Geneva.
She said thousands of people may still be living in the woods or hills after being forced from their homes by recent clashes.
The Red Cross has delivered more than 100 tons of aid to various places around Kosovo in recent days, but Williams warned that international aid might not be enough.
"We have a big crisis on our hands," she said.
Williamson said a Red Cross team evacuated 55 Albanians, including ill children and elderly people, who had been sheltering on a dried-up river bed in the central Drenica area.
The Kosovo Liberation Army is fighting Serb forces for independence for Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians make up 90 percent of the population. About 240,000 people have been displaced in five months of fighting, according to U.N. estimates released Tuesday.
Serb sources in Kosovo reported that heavy fighting continued early today in the Decani area, close to the border with Albania. The most intense clashes were said to be around the village of Glodjane, a KLA stronghold.
Serbia's independent B-92 radio reported that several thousand KLA fighters were putting up strong resistance to police attacks on the village. There were fears of many dead and wounded.
There were no immediate reports from the ethnic Albanian side today. On Tuesday, Albanian sources reported that the Yugoslav army was sending reinforcements to the area.
Serbia and Montenegro are the two remaining republics in Yugoslavia.
Despite the latest fighting, there were signs that the rebel army was willing to enter negotiations with the government. The militants have suffered a string of losses to Serb forces in the past several weeks.
Veton Surroi, a top Albanian politician, said ethnic Albanians would form a coalition government in the next few days and the KLA will be represented in it.
World leaders are still deliberating on what to do to halt the fighting if they can't bring the warring sides to the negotiating table soon. In Brussels, Belgium, today, NATO allies were debating options for military action, including a possible air campaign against targets in Yugoslavia or deployment of troops along the border.
At the United Nations on Tuesday, the Security Council reiterated calls for a cease-fire. Three members - Britain, France and Slovenia - pushed for action against Yugoslavia, and Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned Yugoslavia's "scorched-earth policy."
___________________________________BBC
Wednesday, August 12, 1998 Published at 00:56 GMT 01:56 UKFierce fighting in western Kosovo
Can follow KOSOVO UN SECURITY COUNCIL There reports of heavy fighting in a western area of Kosovo near the town of Djakovica.
Serbian accounts said guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army had offered very fierce resistance to Serbian units around several villages particularly at Glodjane.
The Tanyug news agency said the KLA was apparently trying to push back Serbian troops from another village, Junik, where it said several hundred guerrillas were surrounded.From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
___________________________________BBC
Wednesday, August 12, 1998 Published at 00:39 GMT 01:39 UKUN calls for Kosovo cease-fire
The UN Security Council has called for an immediate cease-fire in the Serbian province of Kosovo, and urged the parties to start negotiations as soon as possible.
A statement issued by the Security Council president after closed-door council consultations on Kosovo expressed "grave concern" over the ongoing offensive by Serbian security forces.
"The issue of Kosovo can have no military solution," the Security Council said, and also stressed the importance of an arms embargo it imposed on Yugoslavia, including Kosovo in March.
The council statement underlined the need to create conditions to allow the safe and permanent return of all refugees and internally displaced persons, and recalled the pledges given by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end the offensive in Kosovo.
Earlier the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, expressed concern over what may be a "scorched earth policy" by the security forces in some areas of Kosovo.
"[Mr Annan] condemns such practices and urges the security forces to avoid such acts of wanton destruction. He equally abhors the resort to violence and any suffering which might be caused by Kosovars," the spokesman to the Secretary General said.
Mr Annan said that the conflict might lead to a large-scale humanitarian disaster during the coming winter, but warned that the international community risked once again being in the position where it dealt only with the symptoms of the conflict through humanitarian aid.
The BBC's UN correspondent, Jon Leyne says that this must have been a reference to the UN's impotence during the Bosnian war.
Nato is expected to endorse military contingency plans on Wednesday, although the BBC's correspondent says that Russia and China are strongly opposed to more forceful intervention, while Washington and its allies seem undecided over precisely what to do next.
More than 500 people have been killed and at least 230,000 ethnic Albanians have fled into the hills since fighting began six months ago.
___________________________________August 12 1998
EUROPEPolice die as rebels hit back in Kosovo
FROM TOM WALKER
IN BELGRADEFIVE Serbian policemen have died over the past two days as the Kosovo Liberation Army has put up unexpected resistance to a new offensive by security forces along Kosovo's western border with Albania.
Christopher Hill, the US negotiator in Kosovo, met both Albanian and Serbian leaders in Pristina yesterday in the latest Western attempt to get both sides into talks. It is still not clear, however, if the KLA can be represented in a cross-party Albanian coalition, while diplomats have conceded privately that they have lost nearly all trust in President Milosevic of Yugoslavia, who has broken promise after promiseover the past three weeks.
The policemen all died near the western town of Dakovica, the southern entrance to the broad Decane Valley where the KLA seems set to make its last stand. Albanian sources said at least nine villages between Dakovica and Pec, to the north, were under attack yesterday; their sources spotted up to 30 Yugoslav army tanks moving into position to shell villages.
In all, 14 policemen have died in Kosovo since July 20, and there is a groundswell of pessimism that the province can ever be completely tamed - a central theme to Mr Hill's diplomacy.
Three weeks ago Mr Milosevic said he would not shell the border village of Junik, thought to be the KLA's regional command centre. As with many of his promises, it has been broken with casual ease, but Junik still has not fallen. Albanian military sources attribute its resilience to the leadership of the local KLA commander, Naim Maloku.
___________________________________Tuesday August 11 5:26 PM EDT
Kosovo Rebels Vow To Continue Fight
ANNE THOMPSON Associated Press Writer
IN THE CICAVICA REGION, Yugoslavia (AP) - The ethnic Albanian rebels sit cross-legged on floor cushions, smoking cigarettes and sipping Turkish coffee, rifles at their sides. The radio crackles: It's news from another outpost.
The rebels get tense. Some jump up and leave the room, off to guard positions in a war that hasn't been going so well lately for the Kosovo Liberation Army. A recent pummeling by Serb forces left KLA headquarter villages in charred ruins, driving rebels into isolated pockets like this one, surrounded by Serbs in the central Cicavica region.
Communication with other KLA units is tough. And KLA rifles can't begin to compete with the Serb arsenal of tanks and artillery. But the rebels insist they'll keep fighting for independence for Kosovo - a province in southern Serbia, one of the two republics that make up Yugoslavia.
"We'll fight to the death," a black-clad KLA fighter named Hamet says, echoing a statement Tuesday from the KLA's mysterious leadership.
The Serb offensive "has only strengthened our resolve to bravely continue on the road to freedom," the statement said. It also called on ethnic Albanians, who in Kosovo's population of 2 million outnumber Serbs 9-to-1, to "unite with the KLA and help us in our just freedom fight."
On orders to crush the KLA, Serb forces in the past two weeks went on a burning rampage through villages in the Drenica region, a traditional stronghold of ethnic Albanian resistance. Tens of thousands of civilians fled, to live with relatives or to camp in hills and forests with no water and little food.
A Western diplomat last week called the burned villages a "typical Balkan war tactic" designed to punish civilians for supporting the rebels and to dampen their enthusiasm. The diplomat wagered that sometimes the tactic backfires - and it apparently has.
Under a blistering sun, refugees camped by a stream in a Drenica valley showed nothing but loyalty to the rebels, angrily dismissing suggestions that the KLA had been too weak to defend their villages.
Like a refrain, refugees said they supported the KLA because "we are all KLA, we are all the same people," joined in a quest for independence from Serbia, that makes up most of Yugoslavia. They expressed disgust at U.S. and European diplomats working to arrange peace negotiations with the goal of autonomy for Kosovo instead of independence.
Kosovo Albanians had autonomy for about 15 years until 1989, when Slobodan Milosevic, then president of Serbia, revoked the autonomy.
"Autonomy is meaningless," said Ramadan Balija, 25, a refugee from Drenica. "After all these massacres, they could just take autonomy away again."
The autonomy issue raises a slight contradiction in the KLA's fatalistic rally cry to fight to the death.
In principle, the KLA has agreed to join ethnic Albanian politicians in what they call a "government" for Kosovo. The KLA would control the armed forces, holding posts more or less equivalent to defense and police ministries. From this "government," U.S. diplomats expect the ethnic Albanians to form a team for negotiations with the Serbs. And independence is not an option.
So if at least some of the rebels are willing to accept autonomy, why are they continuing their fight for independence? It is just one more unanswered question about the KLA - a group with a so-called spokesman who rarely speaks, funded by Swiss bank accounts, and led by a menagerie of commanders with nicknames such as the Lion, the Tiger, the Snake and the Sultan.
Two schools of thought exist in the KLA, one of which believes the struggle is not just for Kosovo but for the ultimate goal of including parts of Macedonia and Yugoslavia's other republic, Montenegro, in a "Greater Albania."
Rebels in the dirt hills of the Cicavica region, who asked that their village not be identified, represent the "moderate" voice that looks forward to joining the "government" and allies itself with pacifist ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova.
"We're just simple soldiers, and we'll respect what is best for the state," the 35-year-old rebel unit leader said Tuesday. He gave only a first name, Shpetim, and wore camouflage pants and a gray t-shirt.
Gathered at Shpetim's headquarters, a brick house owned by a Serb family driven from the village, rebel fighters claimed that new shipments of guns were coming into KLA hands every day.
"We have weapons, not like the Serbs, but enough to fight," the rebel leader said.
The KLA statement warned NATO not to deploy troops on the Albanian-Serbian border - the main route of arms supply for the KLA - "because we would consider this the second offensive against our freedom and our national pride."
___________________________________Wednesday August 12 10:02 AM EDT
NATO to sound out members on air forces for Kosovo
By Janet McEvoy
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO said Wednesday it would act "swiftly and credibly" if asked to help restore peace in Kosovo and it authorized its military authorities to determine what contributions member states might be ready to make to possible air operations in the restive Yugoslav province.
"NATO's military authorities have been authorized to informally approach nations on the forces which they would be ready to contribute to the possible air operations," a NATO spokesman said after NATO ambassadors met.
"They (NATO ambassadors) will ensure that NATO will act swiftly and credibly should the occasion arise," the spokesman said.
NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said in a statement the 16-nation alliance's ambassadors had reviewed military planning for a full range of options for the use of force to bring an end to violence in Kosovo and create conditions for negotiations.
"Those options include the use of ground and air power and in particular the full range of options for the use of air power," he said.
NATO ambassadors had interrupted their summer break to hold the meeting following a Serb offensive in the southern Serbian province, where ethnic-Albanian guerillas are fighting for independence.
A NATO source said detailed planning on air options was finished and Wednesday's meeting signaled a move to concrete preparations in case implementation of the plans was demanded by the international community.
It will be the task of NATO's supreme allied commander to sound out nations and the NATO source stressed that possible air operations would only involve forces from NATO's 16 countries and not partner countries.
Sources stressed that despite the intensification of planning, NATO was several steps away from actually intervening as NATO believed any action would require "an appropriate legal basis."
The prospects of quick NATO military action have seemed to recede after President Clinton and French President Jacques Chirac agreed during a weekend telephone call that Russian approval would be needed for any intervention.
Russia has stressed it is against a NATO military intervention in Kosovo and holds a veto in the U.N. Security Council, which would have to draw up a mandate for NATO use of force in the region.
More than 500 people have been killed since fighting began six months ago in the province, where ethnic-Albanians outnumber Serbs by nine to one.
Western countries have condemned the recent actions by Serbian forces in Kosovo which has left, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 167,000 people displaced from their homes.
But the West appears to be still pinning its hopes on getting the Serbians and Kosovars to negotiate a peace plan drawn up by the six-nation Contact Group of major powers.
___________________________________Aid arrives for thousands of Kosovo refugees
KLA issues call to arms
Call to arms by KLA
Annan criticizes monitorsAugust 11, 1998
Web posted at: 4:14 p.m. EDT (2014 GMT)PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- International agencies on Tuesday stepped up emergency aid for thousands of people displaced by the fierce armed conflict in Kosovo.
The aid efforts came as fighting in the Serbian province continued unabated, amid a call to arms by the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Five trucks belonging to the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) headed to the village of Cirez in the Drenica region in northwestern Kosovo, one of the areas that has been hit hard in the Serbian offensive against the KLA and its alleged supporters.
The trucks distributed 48 tons of wheat flour, 1,000 food parcels and 120 boxes of high-protein biscuits to some 25,000 refugees, aid workers said.
In the western region of Klina, another five trucks distributed aid to about 18,000 refugees, the relief workers said.
"The reason we came to Cirez is that no convoy has reached here since the troubles began, and this is one of the corridors everyone uses to pass through," said Mick Lorentzen, Kosovo coordinator for the WFP.
Lorentzen said local residents had no electricity and relief workers were considering setting up a makeshift bakery, probably fired by coal and wood.
He said relief workers knew of about 18,000 registered refugees in the village and that there were another 7,000 in the area.
There were also reports Tuesday of local Serbian authorities in the town of Djakovica, in southwestern Kosovo, selling flour, oil and sugar at drastically reduced prices in a store just outside the town.
Many of the customers were ethnic Albanians, and the authorities said they intended to help solve the humanitarian problem.
Relief organizations say at least 230,000 ethnic Albanians have fled their homes since fighting broke out in February.
They fear a major humanitarian disaster unless people are resettled in their homes before the onset of winter.Call to arms by KLA
In a statement distributed to ethnic Albanian media on Tuesday, the KLA said the Serbian offensive "has only strengthened our resolve to bravely continue on the road to freedom."
The statement called on Kosovo Albanians, who represent 90 percent of the Serbian province's 2 million people, to "unite with the KLA and help us in our just freedom fight."
Albanian sources reported fighting in the western Decani region near the Albanian border Tuesday, saying a column of 110 Yugoslav army vehicles, including 36 tanks, was seen heading for the area.
The ethnic Albanian Kosovo Information Center said the bodies of five killed ethnic Albanians were brought overnight to the morgue in nearby Djakovica, the report said.
The government-run Serb Media Center said a Serbian policeman was shot dead late Monday in fighting near Djakovica.
The independent Beta news agency said 14 Serb policemen have been killed since the Serbians' latest offensive began July 20.
It said 217 ethnic Albanians were known to have died in the same period.
Independent media in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, said KLA fighters had regained control of the central village of Likovac, the rebel headquarters which Serbian forces overran last week.
The reports could not be confirmed independently.Annan criticizes monitors
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday criticized the international community for failing to make good on promises to monitor an arms embargo on Kosovo.
In his report to the Security Council, Annan noted that soon after the conflict between Serbian authorities and ethnic Albanian separatists broke out earlier this year, he had recommended that organizations such as NATO and the European Union set up a regime to monitor the arms embargo.
The organizations expressed a willingness to do so, he said, but so far nothing has materialized.
Annan said that the influx of arms had eroded chances for compromise in Kosovo.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
___________________________________Tuesday August 11 3:40 PM EDT
Fighting Reported in Decani Region
ISMET HADJARI Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - After a string of recent losses, secessionist ethnic Albanian rebels battled Serb government forces Tuesday in Kosovo province's border with Albania.
Albanian sources, who first reported the clashes, claimed a column of 110 Yugoslav army vehicles, including 36 tanks, was seen heading for the embattled Decani region.
Yugoslavia's official Tanjug news agency confirmed the fighting close to the border with Albania, saying six Serb policemen were wounded. Neither side gave a casualty figure for the ethnic Albanians.
Tanjug said fighting was concentrated along the road connecting Decani and Djakovica, in western Kosovo, in the villages of Prilep and Glodjane, known to be strongholds of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army. It said the police were gaining ground against the KLA.
Tanjug claimed large groups of KLA fighters were attacking police patrols along the strategic road to try to keep Serb forces out of the village of Junik, the biggest KLA stronghold in western Kosovo, which has been encircled by Serb police for three weeks.
Tanjug said several hundred KLA men were firing at police from Junik on Tuesday, but the police did not fire back on the village.
Elsewhere, the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Information Center reported two ethnic Albanians, age 2 and 15, were killed late Monday in Serb shelling of the village of Petrovo, about 18 miles south of Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital.
And the Albanian state-run ATA news agency in Tirana said the bodies of five men were bought to the hospital in Djakovica on Monday night. It did not provide other details.
The Albanian government said Tuesday that 70 people had fled across the border from Kosovo within the last 24 hours, including two badly wounded guerrillas.
Independent media in Belgrade also reported the Kosovo Liberation Army had re-entered the central village of Likovac, the rebel headquarters Serb forces overran last week. The report could not be confirmed.
In a statement distributed to ethnic Albanian media, the KLA said the latest Serb offensive "has only strengthened our resolve to bravely continue on the road to freedom."
It called on Kosovo Albanians, who represent 90 percent of the Serbian province's 2 million people, to "unite with the KLA and help us in our just freedom fight."
Despite the war rhetoric, a top KLA official told the Albanian Koha Ditore newspaper the militants might join an all-Albanian negotiating team in peace negotiations with the Serbian government.
In Geneva, U.N. human rights spokesman Jose Diaz said the U.N. Human Rights Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination would send a letter next week to the Yugoslav government to express concern about the displacement of people in Kosovo.
The latest figure from the U.N. refugee agency put the number of Kosovo refugees at around 240,000.
For five months, Serb troops have been fighting the KLA, which seeks independence from Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia. Kosovo's ethnic Albanians remain largely divided between those loyal to pacifist ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova and those who support the militants.
___________________________________International News
Electronic Telegraph
Tuesday 11 August 1998
Issue 1173Serbs reduce cradle of Kosovo uprising to ashes
By Julius Strauss in LausaIN the village of Lausa, the cradle of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the roofs have been burnt off almost all the houses, the inhabitants forced out and walls blown down by explosions.
The village, which lies three miles off a main road between the cities of Pec and Kosovska Mitrovica, was only a small collection of well-to-do houses and outbuildings where farm animals were kept. But in the Albanian uprising it had achieved giant status.
Since Lausa fell, it has been sealed off by Serbian police. Three efforts to enter in as many days were thwarted by roadblocks. But yesterday, using an armoured car because there were snipers in the area, I was among the first Western journalists to enter the village since its fall.
It was in Lausa that last November, during the funeral of an Albanian teacher, three masked men first appeared carrying the insignia of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Hundreds of mourners began to chant the Albanian initials of the guerrilla organisation, UCK. It marked the beginning of the armed struggle.
Last week a combined attack of Serbian police and the Yugoslav army forced the guerrillas out of Lausa. First it was bombarded by heavy guns for three days and then tanks were sent in to finish off the resistance. Local people who fled claimed that the police used some form of gas, but this could not be confirmed. The evidence was that the final days of the battle for Lausa must have been grim for its residents. Although all the dead had been removed, empty ration packets suggested that many refugees must have been trapped.
In a shady garden there was a dirty sleeping bag, an ornate wooden-framed mirror and a broken plastic chandelier which had apparently come from the house. Nearby lay the wool and skin of two sheep with bloody bones still attached that seemed to have been killed and barbecued. The only survivors of the attack appeared to be a few dogs and farm animals.
Before we entered Lausa there were widespread rumours that civilians were still hiding in the village. But it was difficult to imagine how any could have survived the torching that had touched every house we saw. Then, just as we were leaving, I saw one. He was a man in late middle age running swiftly with awkward gait between two walled gardens. He appeared to be very frightened and must have thought that the white Land-Rover we were driving belonged to the Serbian police.
We stopped by the side of the road and waited to see if he would reappear, but just then a blue car pulled up full of men in police uniforms carrying automatic weapons. "You must go now," one policeman said menacingly. A hundred yards down the road at the checkpoint, more police asked it we had seen anybody. For the Albanian man it could have meant his life. We remained silent. "No," a Romanian colleague lied. "No. There's nobody there." They seemed satisfied.
__________________________________________Top StoriesAugust 11, 1998
Resistance continues in Kosovo areas
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Aug. 11 (UPI) - Rebel ethnic Albanian troops are still putting up resistance in small pockets of Kosovo.
The Serb media Center confirmed this morning there had been fighting in Dura, about 25 miles south of the provincial capital of Pristinia and claimed it had killed three members of the Kosovoa Liberation Army.
KLA officials report bitter fighting continues in western sections near Djakovica and at the village of Junik, and claim they still have soldiers resisting Serb attacks there.
But KLA officials acknowledge four ethnic Albanians died in an exchange of gunfire at the village of Erec, and also say Serb police and Yugoslav army troops with needlessly burning many of the houses.
U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia Christopher Hill was in Pristina on Monday hoping to help end the violence.
He said he had held a "good discussion" with one ethnic Albanian leader, the moderate Ibrahim Rugova.
Rugova said a peace dialogue was impossible as long as Serbian forces kept pounding separatist guerrillas and civilian villages.
Ethnic Albanians make up roughly 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people and many of them seek independence for Kosovo.
KLA forces sought briefly to recapture one of their former strongholds late last night, the western village of Likovac, but spokesmen for the pro-Albanian Kosovo Information Center said the effort failed.
The Hungarian government is reported today as having opened five new temporary reception centers for thousands of fleeing ethnic Albanian refugees.
The refugees are permitted to cross the border without a visa, but none are allowed to travel on towards what many of them say is their preferred goal, usually Germany or Switzerland. --Copyright 1998 by United Press International.
All rights reserved. --
Time for US to get tough with Milosevic_______________________________________________________________________By Bob Dole, 08/12/98
The recent history of the Balkans has been one of promises made and promises broken. No doubt US and European diplomats would think of broken promises from Balkan leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic. But they, too, have made countless promises that went unfulfilled.
The most important among these were made by two American presidents. As war raged in Bosnia in December 1992, President Bush promised that military force would be used if Serbia instigated attacks in Kosovo. President Bill Clinton repeated that "Christmas warning" soon after entering office. More recently he pledged that the United States would not allow another Bosnia to take place in Kosovo.
Despite these promises, NATO planes remain in their hangars as Serbian forces pound scores of villages, towns, and cities in Kosovo and drive tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians from their homes. Many of these people have been living in the hills in blazing heat with no water, shelter, food, or medicine.
The reaction of the United States to this outrageous and barbaric action has been to look the other way. Apparently hoping that the world had forgotten Bush and Clinton's promises, US officials have done nothing.
Indeed, US officials were anonymously quoted as saying that they hoped that this Serbian show of force would make the Kosovar Albanians sit down and negotiate with Milosevic, the man who has masterminded their slaughter - and that of the Bosnians before them.
The United States should have sent a message to Milosevic that unless his forces pulled out of Kosovo, we would once again lead NATO to take any necessary military action. Instead, Washington sent an envoy to extract promises from Milosevic that he would allow humanitarian aid to reach the people whose homes he has burned. Even if Milosevic fulfills this promise, the US and its allies will have achieved precisely what the United Nations achieved in Bosnia: feeding the victims of Milosevic's war machine.
The only explanation for this weak and ineffectual response is that the Clinton administration and key European leaders have accepted US envoy Dick Holbrooke's view that Slobodan Milosevic is the key to peace. This sort of convoluted logic is only possible in the corridors of places like the United Nations, where diplomats are reluctant to speak the truth for fear it may offend even the worst of dictators.
The fact is that Slobodan Milosevic is the source of war and, therefore, the obstacle to peace. It is Milosevic who imposed martial law on the Kosovar Albanians and revoked their autonomy a decade ago. It is Milosevic who ordered the Yugoslav Army to attack Slovenia and Croatia. It is Milosevic's generals who razed and ravaged the city of Vukovar, killed its hospital patients, and dumped the bodies in a mass grave. It is Milosevic's henchmen, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who waged a bloody war of aggression in Bosnia, displaced two million people, and killed more than 250,000 - including 17,000 children.
Slobodan Milosevic is no more the key to peace than Pol Pot was in Cambodia, or Saddam Hussein is in Iraq.
In these troubled waters, the US Congress has once again waded through the diplomatic mud, found the facts, and sought to take appropriate action. Three weeks ago, the US Senate unanimously approved a bipartisan resolution sponsored by Senators Alfonse D'Amato and Joseph Lieberman.
This resolution calls for the US to provide the UN War Crimes Tribunal with all war crimes evidence, in particular that related to Milosevic's culpability for crimes against humanity. It also calls for the Tribunal to indict Milosevic if sufficient evidence is found and for US officials to cease any contact with him.
This is a bold step in the right direction. It is high time to stop treating Milosevic as if he is anything but the key to instability, aggression, and genocide in the Balkans.
As a next step, President Clinton should immediately and publicly repeat the Christmas warning to Milosevic; demand that his forces cease their attacks; and give him a firm deadline for the withdrawal of his troops from Kosovo. Only with a genuine cease-fire and a complete pull-out of Serb military and security forces can genuine negotiations begin.
The US should support a solution that provides the Kosovar Albanians with self-determination and full political rights and civil liberties. An internationally guaranteed republic with the same standing of Montenegro and Serbia could be an acceptable solution.
In addition, US envoys should immediately cease their efforts to replace the legitimately elected Kosovar leaders with former communists. While these ex-communists may be more amenable to certain options preferred by US diplomats and Milosevic, they do not enjoy the trust of the Kosovars. Without the support of the people no deal will be lasting.
Furthermore, it is time the US recognizes that we are not only on the brink of a regional war, but also of a humanitarian catastrophe. Washington should thus bolster its military actions by leading a humanitarian airlift to Pristina. With winter rapidly approaching and more than 260,000 Kosovars without shelter and adequate food or medicine, there must be a concerted effort to provide for these internally displaced people, as well as refugees in Montenegro and Albania.
Keeping the promises that this country's leadership has made not to allow a second Bosnia to happen is not just the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. It will save the Kosovar Albanians from further genocide, and spare the United States from becoming involved in a full-scale conflict beyond the borders of Kosovo.Bob Dole is chairman of the International Commission on Missing Persons in Bosnia and a former US senator from Kansas. He was the Republican presidential nominee in 1996.
This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 08/12/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.
. The men making war in Kosovo_______________________________________________________________________By Preston Mendenhall , MSNBC
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic gives a speech
to Yugoslav Army officers marking Army Day in Belgrade in June.
- Familiar figures in Serbia; mysteries on the ethnic Albanian rebel side
PRISTINA, Kosovo, Aug. 10 — The conflict in Kosovo has brought to arms two secretive command structures, purposely vague and reclusive in order to avoid culpability and capture. As bitter enemies, the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Serb police might not admit to sharing any common traits, but a closer look at “the generals” and commanders and their battle tactics suggests otherwise. Many are former colleagues, even graduates of the same military academies.
Kosovo: The military balance of power
Milosevic goes to great lengths to appear to be removed from anything remotely related to orders to launch offensives in Kosovo.
IN BELGRADE, the man at the top is Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, a figure widely blamed for three years of bloody conflict in Bosnia, and the situation in Kosovo today.
As he did during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, Milosevic goes to great lengths to appear to be removed from anything remotely related to orders to launch offensives in Kosovo, which have displaced more than 200,000 ethnic Albanians in recent months.
But Milosevic keeps very close company with the individuals who give orders to the Serb police — the primary “military” force Belgrade has unleashed against the KLA. The president’s true “inner circle,” however, isn’t much of a circle at all. There are two men whom Milosevic trusts; they are in charge of the Serbian police and the Yugoslavian army. Jovica Stanicic, the head of state security, runs the ruthless and professional Special Anti-terrorist Units and special police forces on the front line in Kosovo, and enjoys a close relationship with the president.
Milosevic and Stanicic are far from bosom buddies, though. They are said to consult and meet frequently, but, for two powerful men with common goals at the top of the Yugoslav and Serbian power structures, they apparently don’t socialize. It is widely believed that they have so much dirt on each other from the Bosnian war that any split would be fatal to both careers.
Milosevic recently took the extraordinary step of appointing Stanicic his “national security advisor.” Belgrade was astounded.
“There is no place in the constitution for such a position,” said Milos Vasic, a respected journalist at Vreme, a Belgrade independent weekly. “Milosevic is ignoring the counsel of traditional Yugoslav power structures and getting his advice from one man.”
POLICE VS. ARMY
‘The army officers say they see the KLA use tactics and field maneuvers
unique to the Yugoslav army and military academies.’
— MILOS VASIC Serbian journalistThe Serb police are a quasi-military force of 80,000, called upon to wipe out the KLA. Because Belgrade treats the insurgents as an internal terrorist threat, it is the Serbian republic police, rather than the federal Yugoslav army that is fighting on the ground.
But the Yugoslav army has seen its share of the conflict, because its troops are used frequently to support the police operation. Its established bases in the region, usually used to guard the southern border with Albania, provide excellent backup for the police.
The Yugoslav army chief of staff, Momcilo Pericic, is also a Milosevic insider. Pericic is wanted in Croatia for war crimes because he allegedly led the shelling of the Zagreb airport in 1991 and later of the city of Mostar.
REBEL COMMANDERS
On the other side of the Kosovo front, the KLA, too, has a secretive “insider” command structure. By analyzing arrest records and discharges and desertions of ethnic Albanians from the Yugoslav army over the past 10 years, the Serb security apparatus believes it has narrowed the list of KLA leaders down to about a dozen. None, however, has been captured.
In the battlefield, some KLA commanders have shown signs of their former professional military selves, which their counterparts in the police and army recognize, said Vreme’s Vasic.
“The army officers say they see the KLA use tactics and field maneuvers unique to the Yugoslav army and military academies,” he said.
In a recent interview in Koha Ditore, an Albanian-language daily, a rebel commander known as Qorri said several field commanders who had received training in the Yugoslav army had to be disciplined for creating hierarchical structures similar to ones in the army.
TITO’S CHILDREN
"Agim Celaj, captain in the JNA, and KLA commander,
heroically died during a battle …
He was an expert in artillery and rocketry."
— OBIT OF KLA COMMANDER ON THE REBEL WEBSITEEvidence of army training in the KLA can be found on the rebel group’s unofficial Web site, Zeri i Kosovas, where an obituary pays tribute to a fallen comrade — a former Yugoslav People’s Army officer. “Agim Celaj, captain in the JNA, and KLA commander, heroically died during a battle. … He was an expert in artillery and rocketry,” the site says. A Yugoslav military academy graduate, Celaj sought asylum in Germany in the late 1980s, and then returned in April to fight for the KLA.
“He fell, as men do, showing us that the road to freedom has only one solution: a liberating war,” the site says. By mobilizing supporters like Celaj, the KLA exploits well-organized Albanian diaspora around the globe for financial and technical support.
"There is a core of several hundred that have been trained over the past several years, probably abroad, preparing for today. That core has then returned to train thousands of others," said James Gow, a defense expert at the University of London.
The remaining command structure of the KLA is believed to have come from clan families in Kosovo. Countless villages dot the region’s landscape, and the heads of large families, which can number into the hundreds, have organized the defense of their villages and surrounding areas.
The biggest difference between the two enemies is that the Serb police and Yugoslav army are paid to do the job of clearing the rebels from Kosovo. The KLA fighters draw no salary and are not overseen by a governmental entity. A motto on the Zeri i Kosovas homepage sums up where the allegiances lie: with their guns.
"The KLA only negotiates through the institution of the rifle," it says.
From RIA Novosti_______________________________________________________________________
Izvestia
August 6, 1998
SHOULD RUSSIA PROTECT SERBS?
We Have Done More Than Received with Regard to Balkan Peoples
By Maxim YUSINNow that the Kosovo crisis is at its height Russian politicians and the public are confronted by an extremely urgent question whether Moscow should protect Serbs.
To follow the logic of the State Duma deputies who almost unanimously approve of the resolutions on the unconditional support for our "Orthodox brothers", the answer is only too obvious: Russia should, even must, protect the interests of the Serbs. The same firm opinion permeates the majority of comments on this subject in the Yugoslav press.
For Serb journalists and analysts it is an axiom that Russia should help their country. So they ask with indignation why Moscow is not in a hurry to do so and why it does not announce its readiness to take up arms and side with its ally in response to the West's threats. A Yugoslav weekly's commentator reproachfully reminds "Russian friends" that their descendants in their time entered the First World War for the sake of the Serbs.
So, what has happened? Have Russians really changed so much that, unlike their forefathers, they have forgotten their sacred duty of an ally?
But let us not hurry with self-torture. If Serb journalists like historic analogue, we can remind them of some things that happened in the past.
The attitude of Serbia to Russia was not always characterised by the degree of selfless loyalty which is expected from us today. After in 1878 Russia won independence for Serbs, that Balkan country did not stay very long in the sphere of St. Petersburg's influence.
The members of the Obrenovic dynasty who ruled in Serbia for almost a quarter of a century oriented themselves to Austria-Hungary, one of the main adversaries of the Russian Empire. The change of priorities happened shortly before the First World War which Russia entered, as a matter of fact, not only to defend Serbs but for many other reasons which were no less serious.
When some people talk of the "traditional friendship" between Russia and Serbia, one involuntarily wants to ask: When was this tradition born? The two countries had not been allies of long standing when the First World War broke out. After the October 1917 revolution in Russia they were completely isolated from each other. And I do not think that it is worth remembering the kind of "strong friendship" which Moscow and Belgrade established after Josip Broz Tito had quarrelled with Joseph Stalin.
Not only our inter-state relations were lukewarm. There was no much warmth at the personal level, either. The majority of Soviet people did not divide the people of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia into Serbs, Croats or Slovenes. For us they all--Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Moslems--were Yugoslavs. Yugoslavs, for their part, who could tour Europe without a visa and sooner reckoned their own country as part of the West often looked down on Russians.
Today, when Serbs are experiencing difficulties, when they have found themselves in complete isolation and set the whole of Europe against themselves, Belgrade suddenly remembered its Russian ally. Well, it is a good thing. The bad thing is what they lay demands on Russia.
The history of Russian-Serb relations irrefutably testifies to the fact that we owe nothing to the Balkan people. Russia has done more for the Serbs than it has ever received from them. That is why in each concrete case our diplomats, casting all emotions away and not yielding to psychological pressure, should decide in cool blood how to behave.
During the war in Bosnia and Croatia Moscow did not enter into conflict with the West for Belgrade's sake and did not threaten to take "adequate measures" in response to NATO's air strikes. Russia recognized the independence of Bosnia and Croatia and voted for sanctions against Yugoslavia in the UN Security Council. Hardly may anyone reproach us for "betrayal".
It were the Serbs who shelled "the jewel of the Adriatic Sea"--Dubrovnik, sieged Sarajevo and demolished Srebnitsa. What is more, they encroached on the fundamental principle of the inviolability of borders, thereby affecting not only Western but also Russian interests, because if, for instance, whole regions were permitted to separate from Croatia today, Chechnya would refer to this precedent tomorrow.
Russia is interested in the preservation of the territorial integrity of the new independent states in the territory of what used to be the Soviet Union and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Otherwise, the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS, and the Balkans will be heading to chaos and sanguine inter-ethnic wars. That is why it was necessary to stop the Serbs who decided to change borders with the help of arms.
The Kosovo conflict is a different story. It is for the first time that the Serbs have found themselves in an unusual role of fighters for territorial integrity on which Albanians are encroaching. It is an almost 100% analogue to Chechnya. Small wonder that the Chechen authorities from the very outset stated their solidarity with the "Moslem population of Kosovo".
Russia objectively is not interested in Kosovo's separation from Yugoslavia. That is why the question asked in the headline to this article can be answered in the affirmative. Moscow should help Serbs. But the issue at hand is not that it should fight on Belgrade's side. The idea of Russia entering into confrontation with the West for the sake of the Serbs can be born only in inflamed brain. The issue at hand is diplomatic and political support.
As far as we can judge, this is exactly what our diplomats have been doing. And not because we owe anything to anyone, but because it is useful for us in this particular case.
KOSOVA'S GROWING WAR
EVEN AFTER ADMITTING ITS ERRORS IN BOSNIA, THE WORLD COMMUNITY REFUSES TO TAKE THE FIRM ACTION THAT WOULD PREVENT THE WAR IN KOSOVA FROM SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL AND PREVENT A BLOODBATH
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Toronto Sun - The growing
war in Kosova reached a new level of intensity, and a new low of cynicism
and hypocrisy, this week. NATO, which had owed to prevent a repeat of Bosnia's
genocide, gave Serbia a green light to unleash a major offensive against
Albanian civilians and independence fighters.
Six months ago, after
a decade of brutal repression, widespread torture, and massive human rights
violations by Serb authorities, small bands of Albanian guerrillas, known
as the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) begin fighting to liberate the province
from brutal Serb control.
Savage massacres and
reprisals by Serb security forces caused the tiny rebellion to spread rapidly.
But neither the U.S. nor Europe would accept independence for Kosova, though
92% of its people are ethnic Albanians who clearly want freedom from Serb
oppression. According to the UN, Serb ethnic cleansing has turned 107,000
Albanians into refugees within Kosova over the past six months; another
38,000 have fled to neighboring Macedonia and Albania. Thus, 12.5% of Kosova's
total population is now homeless. Sources in Albania put the total refugee
figure at 250,000 and growing. That was as of last week.
On July 5, a day after
America celebrated its war of independence from Britain, a State Department
spokesman announced, with unconscious irony, that the U.S. would not accept
independence for Kosova "won by force of arms." Don't threaten "stability"
-- i.e. the status quo -- Europe and the US warned Albanians. They also
cautioned Serbia not to use force against the Albanian population, and
warned air attacks would be the response to renewed Serb ethnic cleansing.
But over the three ensuing
weeks, the KLA made substantial gains, wresting control of 40% of the region
from Serb security forces. Kosovars, outraged by Serb murder, rape and
looting, flocked to join the guerillas. The KLA obtained funds from the
worldwide Albanian diaspora, and light weapons from neighboring Albania
and Macedonia (where Albanains make up 33-40% of the population). Croatia
also provided some arms and allowed Albanian veterans of Croatia's war
of liberation from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia to go to Kosova. NATO grew
alarmed the KLA might actually succeed in liberating Kosova. If this happened,
Macedonia's Albanians could seek to join them. Greece and Bulgaria might
then go to war over disintegrating Macedonia, a sharp bone of contention
between the two old foes since 1912. The U.S. keeps a battalion of 'peacekeeeping'
troops stationed in Macedonia to guard its borders.
However, this week,
Bulgaria's head of state, President Peter Stoyanov, personally assured
me his nation, which has strong historic claims to Macedonia, had no irredentist
territorial ambitions there - even if it broke up.
No matter. Having first
threatened Serbia with bombing, Washington made a 180 degree turn, and
decided the KLA was a bigger threat. The US and Europe declared they would
never accept an independent Kosova - in effect, becoming publicly declared
allies of Serbia, goal was precisely the same. Cementing the new alliance,
Washington called off NATO's hunt for Serb war criminals in Bosnia.
The KLA had to be forced
to accept a return to phony 'autonomy' within Serbia - in other words,
give up the liberation struggle and surrender to the tender mercies of
Serb rule. The plan was to have the scholarly, ineffectual Albanian `leader'
of Kosova, Ibrahim Rugova, run a nominally autonomous government that would
take orders from Washington and Belgrade. Washington threatened to attack
KLA supply lines and choke off the flow of money from the Albanian Diaspora
by putting the KLA on its list of `terrorists.'
As before in Bosnia,
the victims had become villains. Serbia's communist ruler, Slobodan Milosevic,
the man Washington once branded a "war criminal," was encouraged by Washington
to "take the KLA down a peg," as an American diplomat nicely put it. Milosevic
had been restraining his forces, fearing air attacks by NATO.
Serb forces immediately
embarked on a ferocious scorched earth campaign, employing artillery, tank
cannon and 20mm guns to destroy Albanian villages, farms, and domestic
animals across central and southwestern Kosova. Village and after village
went up in flames. Thousands of terrified former residents cowered in fields
and hills. Guerillas of the Albanian Kosova Liberation Army were driven
out of their strongholds around Malisevo and Orahovac, suffering serious
casualties, and forced back into rough terrain. Serb mechanized forces
reopened major roads linking the Kosova capital, Prishtina, with Pec and
the southwest region along the Albanian border.
Once again, the wily
Milosevic outfoxed Washington. Instead of giving the KLA a "bloody nose"
and forcing it to the negotiating table, as Washington hoped, Milosevic's
men drove 25,000 more Albanian civilians from their homes this week, and
unleashed a full-scale offensive by the Serbian Army against the KLA. In
other words, precisely the ethnic cleansing and brutal repression seen
in Bosnia that NATO vowed it would never permit to recur in Kosova.
The Kosova Liberation
Army also committed serious blunders. Its amateur leaders mistook previous
Serb military inaction for retreat. The KLA dug in around villages and
set up blocking positions along roads. Instead of fighting a war of movement
and attrition, lightly-armed KLA units battled Serb armor and heavy artillery.
When the Serb Army was unleashed, the KLA was routed.
Guerrillas have no business
fighting set-piece battles. The KLA lacks sufficient anti-tank, ant-aircraft
weapons, radios, and supplies. The Albanian guerillas are brave, but have
poor, inexperienced leadership and, as always with Albanians, bad communications,
bitter personal rivalries, and total lack of coordination or cooperation,
either political or military.
The KLA should only
be waging a hit and run war designed to disrupt Serb road, rail, and electronic
communications. The Albanian Diaspora has ample money to hire veteran professional
soldiers -- like ex-members of Britain's elite Special Air Service. Even
a handful of such skilled warriors would be able to severely punish the
Serbs, and make their continued military occupation of Kosova prohibitively
expensive and painful. Luckily for the Serbs, Albanians are too headstrong
to take such good advice, preferring to throw away their lives in hopeless
battles, rather than fight intelligently.
Meanwhile, the neo-communist
regime that now runs Albania is actually sabotaging the KLA's efforts in
Kosova, thanks to some heavy bribes from Italy and the U.S. The Communist
Party, part of Italy's governing coalition, is financing Albanian's resurgent
Stalinists, and is bent on helping old communist Milosevic. Europe has
shamefully put Albania's pre-1992 Stalinist leaders -- at best collaborators,
at worst criminals -- back into power in the name of Balkan 'stability,'
and commercial self-interest.
All this Balkan double-dealing
points to more war, increased ethnic cleansing, and ongoing misery for
the suffering people of Kosova. As in Bosnia, the west could have snuffed
out this ugly war six months ago by decisive political and military action.
Instead, the Clinton Administration's constant changes of policy, Europe's
double-dealing, and Milosevic's relentless aggression, have turned Kosova
into another quagmire.
As in Chechnya, the
U.S. is again trying to deny freedom to a small, savagely oppressed people
for the sake of the cozy status quo.
The U.S. and Europe
are badly mistaken to believe they can bully Albanians into accepting continued
Serb misrule. Albanians are backward and poor, but they are also a stubborn
warrior people, accustomed to battling against impossible odds, and afraid
of no one.
They will fight on.
Kosovo Question Urged to be Examined in Broad Context
UNITED NATIONS (Aug. 10) XINHUA - U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan hopes that the question of Kosovo will be examined not in isolation
but in a broad and regional context, taking into account the principles
of the U.N. Charter.
His views are reflected
by his latest report to the U.N. Security Council which deliberates the
matter on Tuesday.
The report, dated August
5 and published today, covers the developments in Kosovo in July.
Annan said the situation
there is aggravated by the failure of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
and the Albanian Kosovars to enter into serious negotiations on the future
status of Kosovo.
"The continuation or
further escalation of this conflict has dangerous implications for the
stability of the region. Given the responsibilities of the United Nations
in the wider region and the ethnic makeup in neighboring countries, I cannot
but express may alarm at this prospect," he said.
"A particularly dangerous
element in the situation is the move in certain quarters away from a willingness
to search for compromise on a basis of multi-ethnic communities," he went
on to say.
Increased heavy fighting
between the Yugoslav security forces and the so-called Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) raised the numbers of civilian and military casualties to their
highest point since the outbreak of the conflict in February.
The unrelenting violence
has led to a dramatic increase in internally displace persons in Kosovo
and with the approaching winter, "kosovo has the potential of becoming
a humanitarian disaster", the report added.
The U.N. is intensifying
its efforts to prevent a major humanitarian and refugee crisis, but only
9.7 percent of assistance requirements or 1.7 million U.S. dollars has
been pledged by donors as of July 14.
Kosovo, with an area
of over 10,000 square km and a population of 2 million, is a province of
the Serbian Republic in Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians, making up 90 percent
of the Kosovars, have demanded independence of Kosovo.
The Yugoslav Government
stands against, holding that the question should be resolved within the
incumbent Constitution, by providing equal rights to all its inhabitants.
End item
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