Tagesnachrichten 17. August 1998
von ALBANEWS und anderen
weitere Presse-Meldungen
further press news
Tagesnachrichten 17. August 1998
_______________________________________________________________________WIRE:Aug. 17, 9:22 a.m.
FOCUS-US envoys push Kosovo peace after Serb gains
PRISTINA, Serbia, Aug 17 (Reuters) - U.S. diplomats prodded Kosovo Albanians and Serb authorities towards peace talks on Monday after Serbians ousted separatist rebels from their last bastions.
Chris Hill, the chief American mediator in Kosovo, and Jim O'Brien, an adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, were in Belgrade for talks with deputy Yugoslav Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic and possibly Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, U.S. diplomats said.
Ethnic Albanian political leader Ibrahim Rugova agreed last week to resume peace talks, which he had suspended in June, but so far no date has been set for the talks to begin.
The latest flurry of diplomatic activity coincided with the Seribians forcing separatist guerrillas of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) out of one of their last bastions in the hill town of Junik, near the Albanian border, on Sunday.
A massive Serb offensive in western Kosovo, backed by tanks and helicopters, has contributed to the growing refugee crisis in Serbia's southermost province, refugee officials said.A U.N. team that visited western Kosovo on Sunday found about 20,000 people living in a four-kilometer-long area near the Vistrica River, west of Decani, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said.
"Some of them have fled from one village to another and have been out in the field for two weeks," the UNHCR said in a statement.
"They were forced to flee the latest outbreak of fighting south of Pec," the statement added.
The Albanian-language daily Koha Ditore had said that some 40,000 people were living in the river area.
Relief agencies have previously estimated that about 200,000 people, or 10 percent of Kosovo's population, have been uprooted by the fighting.
In the effort to get peace talks going, O'Brien, who helped draft the Bosnian peace treaty, also met ethnic Albanians over the weekend in Pristina, a U.S. diplomat said.
"They came up with elements and ideas for a platform for discussion (with Serbian authorities)," the diplomat said.
U.S. sources said they did not think Rugova, who is president of Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanian community, was waiting for a complete halt to all Serb military and police operations in Kosovo as a pre-condition for peace talks.
"Rugova may have said for his own public gallery on Friday that there could be no talks without a halt in fighting," the U.S. diplomat said, referring to statements Rugova made at a news conference.
"But he told us during our meetings that he felt the climate was right to move forward with negotiations."Serbian sources said a mopping-up operation in the Pec district, including the village of Lodja, that followed the fall of the western hill town of Junic on Sunday, was over.
The sources said two Serbian policemen were killed late on Sunday in KLA attacks on police stations in two villages on the Pristina-Prizren road, in southwestern Kosovo.
Ethnic Albanian sources did not report any new fighting on Monday. Late on Sunday, they said that the fighting raged in the village of Lodja, near Pec.Copyright 1998 Reuters News Service.
17 August 98_______________________________________________________________________
The TimesRebels lose Kosovo town
Junik, Serbia: Serb forces have overrun this Kosovo hill town near the Albanian border, ousting separatist rebels from one of their last strongholds, police told reporters as they escorted them to the area. Junik had been the key conduit for gun-running from Albania and was the venue for the Kosovo Liberation Army's emergence into the world spotlight. Bozidar Filic, a police colonel, said that Junik, which had been under siege for two weeks, fell early yesterday morning and was under Serbian police control. There were said to have been no civilian casualties in the operation to take the town. (Reuters)
The Daily Telegraph
Guerrillas dig in as Serbs capture last stronghold
By Julius Strauss in Decani, Kosovo
BELGRADE'S forces have captured Junik, the last major bastion of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Serbian officials reported yesterday Yugoslavian soldiers and Serbian police entered the hill village - following a two-week siege involving tanks and helicopters - shortly after taking the village of Voksa just to the south. There was no immediate word on the fate of defending KLA guerrillas.
The capture of Junik caps a three-week Serb offensive against guerrillas who had taken control of nearly half of the southern Serbian province, whose population is 90 per cent ethnic Albanian. The Serbians have won a string of battles and destroyed dozens of Albanian villages, using their superior firepower to outgun the untrained and poorly equipped guerrillas.
Thousands of people have been made homeless by the fighting. More than 200,000 refugees are estimated to be in and around Kosovo.
Last week, the Serbs took a key guerrilla base at Glodjane, freeing up their forces to concentrate on Junik. On Thursday at Decani, about six miles to the north, I saw evidence that the attack on Junik was being stepped up.
Military gains by the Serbian forces mean that Belgrade will now probably begin to wind down its offensive and enter negotiations. But it is unlikely to mark the end of the KLA or the ethnic Albanian struggle for independence in Kosovo.
In the provincial capital of Pristina, an Albanian negotiating team has been assembled by politicians to discuss different possible forms of autonomy with Western envoys and Serbian officials. The KLA fighters are not represented.
A tour of the countryside last week showed that, while the Serbs now control the main roads and the towns and larger villages, in the hills and fields the KLA is digging in for a long war. A few hundred yards away from the roads, Albanian fighters hide in trenches, patiently watching over the dust tracks that interlace their territory. At the first sign of Serbian armour, lookouts are ready to melt away, messaging ahead to commanders who can defend stronger positions.
A Western observer in Pristina said: "The Serbian police would have to put 50 men in every village in Kosovo to quell the KLA. In the long term, they simply cannot afford to do that."
The Independent
Serbs crush separatists' last bastion
By Ismet Hajdari in Pristina
Serb forces overran the last stronghold of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) at Junik yesterday, in what appeared to be the culmination of a military offensive launched last month against ethnic Albanian separatists.
Junik, near the border with Albania, was the organisational, logistical and weapons distribution centre for the KLA, which is fighting for independence from Serbia.
The Yugoslav news agency Tanjug announced the fall of Junik, 50 miles west of the regional capital Pristina, after almost two weeks under siege. The report said KLA fighters tried to escape to Albania but were blocked by Serb army border guards and had "dispersed" into mountain forests.
Serbian reporters who got into Junik said up to 1,000 Kosovo fighters were believed to have been based there, with several hundred civilians.
The village was allegedly deserted but not seriously damaged.
On the main road linking the towns of Pec and Decani, near Junik, a huge column of Yugoslav army tanks could be seen with triumphant soldiers sitting on top of their vehicles, giving the Serbs' traditional three- fingered salute.
For several weeks, government forces have been driving the KLA from one stronghold after another. Their gains, however, have proved difficult to maintain. Once the Serbs move out, the Albanian fighters, sometimes still in uniforms with KLA emblems, tend to move quickly back in.
Albanian sources in Pristina said that in spite of the recent defeats, the KLA would regroup, reorganise and continue the armed struggle against President Slobodan Milosevic's government in Belgrade. Kosovo's borders with Macedonia and Albania are lightly patrolled and weapons filter in from both countries.
The pro-Albanian Kosovo Information Centre claimed that fighting was continuing yesterday in Logja and heavy artillery had destroyed part of the village. Government forces were said to have attacked with tanks and helicopters.
"It's all a very alarming picture," said Kris Janowskia, a spokesman for the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees. He said they were concerned about reports of a Serb attack on woods around Decani, where about 20,000 displaced Kosovo Albanians were believed to be camped.
The latest Serb offensive quashed hopeful speculation that Western- mediated peace talks between Belgrade and Kosovo Albanian parties might begin this week.
The Guardian
Shelling sparks Kosovo exodus
Jonathan Steele sees the Barane night provide cover for thousands of refugeesMonday August 17, 1998
The stillness of the summer night is broken by the put-put of an approaching tractor. First one set of headlights cuts the darkness, then a second, then a third. On they come, an endless stream of people traumatised by shell-fire, hoping for safety under cover of night, and desperate not to be left alone when everyone else is packing up.
Almost every Albanian in a large triangle of western Kosovo is on the road in what appears to be the biggest refugee movement of this year's war. Between 1am and 3am yesterday, 20 tractors and 10 heavily laden cars passed through Barane in a cavalcade of fear which is likely to be repeated on this and other back roads until the Serbs end their offensive.
"I don't know where we're going," said Shaban Gashi, who had left his home near Barane. "Wherever God sends us." His wife and teenage daughter were crammed into the cab beside him. A dozen other relatives huddled on the trailer behind.
"We'll just stay here. We don't know where to go. We're surrounded by the police. There's a wall around us," said Agim Ahmaxhekaj, a young man in the next village. Three more overcrowded tractors and a lorry full of refugees had stopped nearby.
The Serb police and Yugoslav army are pushing eastwards into the triangle from Pec in the north and Djakovica in the south, destroying villages as they go.
No one can count how many thousands of refugees are trying to escape the shelling. The eastern edge of the pocket into which they have been pushed is a range of hills with no exit except on foot.
"The Serbs usually shell one day as if to warn people to get out, and then come in with their tanks the next day to loot and burn," said a man in Barane. "Yesterday I had 70 guests in my house. Now they have moved on."
The distant sound of shelling had convinced most of Barane's 2,000 inhabitants, as well as its hundreds of visitors, that it was next on the list. He and a few other men stayed behind to keep guard.
Several refugees from villages near Pec said the Serbs used strike aircraft on Saturday. In a clinic in the basement of a house lay a woman eight months pregnant who had been hit by shrapnel from an air-launched rocket or bomb. The doctor said 50 patients arrived that day.
Along the river Bistrica, sitting on the pebbly shore or in adjacent fields, there were close to 2,000 people in a quarter-mile stretch.
Local people said the scene was the same for three miles upstream. People prefer the river because they can boil the water for drinking or cooking.
The Serbs claim their offensive is a response to attacks by the independence-seeking Kosovo Liberation Army. But the KLA fighters in the area yesterday were too lightly armed to take on tanks.
"I'm looking for my wife and children," said Halet Shala, a KLA commander in his forties, as he stumbled through groups of refugees standing by the river.
With a Kalashnikov on his shoulder, a belt of ammunition strapped to his chest, and a scarf round his neck, he cut a dashing figure. But his mood and his words belied it.
"I've been searching for them for three hours. They fled yesterday morning from Grabovc and I thought they might be here," he said. He excused himself quickly and resumed the search.
The majority of refugees defended the KLA, but a few were critical. "If the KLA calls itself an army, they should have planes and tanks to match the Serbs. But they don't," said Nezir Birnakaj as he stood on the upper floor of an unfinished house. With his wife and three children, he had slept on straw patted down on the concrete floor.
"We don't believe in the KLA much. It's not as big as it seems on TV," said a teacher of English.
Some may be disappointed with the KLA, but there has been a more striking - and pervasive - change in attitudes towards the West. When the Serb offensive launched the refugee crisis 10 weeks ago, it was hoped Nato would prove true to its tough talk of intervention. Now people feel betrayed and angry.
Nato's six-day air exercise which starts in Albania today is seen as a game.
"I feel sorry for Europe for supporting [Yugoslav president, Slobodan] Milosevic," said Adem Berisha, a middle-aged man from Decan who has been on the move for more than two months. "If I could meet them, I would tell Nato's generals I know they will never do anything to put their soldiers in danger to help these children."
As we talked to another family, the sound of an exploding shell caused a a moment of silence as everyone waited for another. Then children burst into tears and an elderly man shouted: "I don't want to run anymore. I've nowhere to run to."
Our Albanian interpreter, a former ballet dancer, was deeply affected. She had never been out of Pristina to the war zones. As we left the last of the campsites, she said: "These people are in the hands of God. No one else cares."
BBC News
Monday, August 17, 1998 Published at 01:45 GMT 02:45 UKNato sends Serbs mixed message
More than 1,700 troops and 50 aircraft are due to take part in a series of Nato manoeuvres in Albania starting on Monday. Eleven Nato states and 15 other countries will join in peace-keeping exercises and air-strike rehearsals. The exercises coincide with more battlefield successes for the Serbian forces fighting ethnic Albanian separatists in the neighbouring Serb province of Kosovo.
BBC Defence Correspondent, Mark Laity, says the exercises are meant to demonstrate that Nato intends to maintain a military presence in this most unstable of regions, both to help Albania reform its ramshackle armed forces and to act as a warning to Serbia against going too far in Kosovo. However, the operation cannot disguise the alliance's continuing dilemma over its Kosovo policy.
An air-power demonstration in May is credited with stopping a Serb offensive against the ethnic-Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army. But more recently, the Serbs have launched further powerful attacks without Nato threats of intervention.
Nato has been unable to get authorisation for air strikes from the United Nations because of Russian opposition. There have also been hesitations about backing the KLA, which wants full independence for Kosovo - something Nato opposes.
Our correspondent says this means these exercises - originally intended to show Nato's power - now also reveal its limitations.
--
Kosova Information Centre - London
NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, AUGUST 17, 1998_______________________________________________________________________Taken without permission, for fair use only.
Nato sends Serbs mixed message
BBC, August 17, 1998
NATO says ready to intervene in Kosovo if told
Reuters, August 17, 1998
Refugees in Kosovo Are in Peril
NYTimes, August 17, 1998
Kosovo fighting dies out after rebel loss
Reuters, August 17, 1998
___________________________________Monday, August 17, 1998 Published at 01:45 GMT 02:45 UK
Nato sends Serbs mixed message
More than 1,700 troops and 50 aircraft are due to take part in a series of Nato manoeuvres in Albania starting on Monday.
Eleven Nato states and 15 other countries will join in peace-keeping exercises and air-strike rehearsals.
The exercises coincide with more battlefield successes for the Serbian forces fighting ethnic Albanian separatists in the neighbouring Serb province of Kosovo.
BBC Defence Correspondent, Mark Laity, says the exercises are meant to demonstrate that Nato intends to maintain a military presence in this most unstable of regions, both to help Albania reform its ramshackle armed forces and to act as a warning to Serbia against going too far in Kosovo.
However, the operation cannot disguise the alliance's continuing dilemma over its Kosovo policy.
An air-power demonstration in May is credited with stopping a Serb offensive against the ethnic-Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
But more recently, the Serbs have launched further powerful attacks without Nato threats of intervention.
Nato has been unable to get authorisation for air strikes from the United Nations because of Russian opposition.
There have also been hesitations about backing the KLA, which wants full independence for Kosovo - something Nato opposes.
Our correspondent says this means these exercises - originally intended to show Nato's power - now also reveal its limitations.
___________________________________NATO says ready to intervene in Kosovo if told
06:25 a.m. Aug 17, 1998 Eastern
By Richard MurphyRINAS AIRPORT, Albania, Aug 17 (Reuters) - NATO's commander-in-chief for Southern Europe said on Monday his forces were ready to intervene in the Kosovo crisis if called upon to do so by their governments.
Speaking at the start of NATO military exercises in Albania, which borders the troubled Serbian province, Admiral T. Joseph Lopez, commander-in-chief Allied Forces Southern Europe, said the alliance was always planning ahead.
"This exercise is not directed at any particular party or element in Kosovo or Belgrade," he told reporters at Tirana's airport. "It is directed at regional stability, as are all Partnership for Peace exercises."
Lopez declined to speculate on how the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic might react to the NATO exercises, but said: "My sense is that Belgrade and any belligerents throughout the region would get the same message -- that NATO is ready.
"We are using the lessons learnt from Bosnia. Should we have to react in any way, in peace support operations or any other way, we will be ready," he added.
Lopez said NATO had a wide range of contingencies and options that could be used, including combat operations.
"We always are planning ahead should we be called on by those that have the political decision-making authority in Brussels and capitals (of the member countries)," Lopez said.
Albanian officials made clear they saw the exercises as a direct warning to the Serbian government to soften its approach on Kosovo.
Defence Minister Luan Hajdaraga accused Serbia of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" in his opening address, while Socialist Prime Minister Fatos Nano told reporters:
"This is sending the right messages to people that are being massacred and the people that are massacring them to comply with modern realities and try to work with us for identifying peaceful solutions."
The exercises started as Serbian forces forced separatist Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) out of one of their last bastions in Kosovo.
The loss of the town Junik was bound to be a shattering military and psychological blow for the KLA, which is fighting to gain independence from Serbia for the ethnic Albanian majority.
The KLA's fall in Junik gives Belgrade the upper hand in peace talks that ethnic Albanians have agreed to resume under intense pressure from the United States.
Serbia, which along with Montenegro forms Yugoslavia, has offered to discuss a form of autonomy for Kosovo. The Albanians insist on independence but that looks inconceivable following the KLA's collapse.
Some 1,700 troops from 14 NATO and Partnership for Peace countries and about 60 aircraft and helicopters will participate in the exercises at Rinas airport and in two regions to the north and east of the Albanian capital.
NATO said the six-day exercise, codenamed Cooperative Assembly, is designed to develop a common understanding of peace support operations, doctrine and training.
It is part of initiatives NATO decided to launch in Albania and the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia to promote security and regional stability and to signal NATO's actions to contain and seek peaceful resolution of regional crises.
The exercise will include search and rescue, close air support, medical evacuation, and air-drop procedures as well as infantry peace support operations skills.Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
___________________________________August 17, 1998
Refugees in Kosovo Are in Peril
By MIKE O'CONNOR
KOTRADIC, Yugoslavia -- "I am Dr. Mustaf Shala," said a shaken, unshaven man in a dirty shirt. "The wounded people are in here. Come quickly -- they are all in serious condition."
Behind him in a small house, on the floor, with the failing sunlight barely illuminating them, were a very old man lying against a large sack of onions and two women, one eight months pregnant, on mats.
"It was the airplanes," Shala said. "They bombed us with airplanes until we left Lodja." He was speaking of the latest village to become a target in the Yugoslav military offensive against rebels in Kosovo Province who are fighting to secede from Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic.
The pregnant woman, 23, stared straight ahead, her mouth silently opening and closing as if she were gulping for air. A bandage covered her head.
"I think it was shrapnel from a bomb," the doctor said. "I took out what I could, but we don't have anything like an X-ray. We don't even have medicine, except a little for pain. I cried, because that was all I could do."
Even as NATO is to begin military exercises on Monday intended to intimidate the Yugoslav government into stopping its attacks on civilians in Kosovo, and despite what Western governments call intense diplomatic pressure, the shelling and burning -- and now possibly bombing -- are continuing.
Although the government's stated target, the rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army, seem to have been hurt in the attacks, the principal victims are almost certainly civilians. Perhaps 200,000 have fled their homes in recent weeks, and an unknown number have been killed or wounded.
International aid agencies have been unable to keep up with the flow of civilians fleeing the offensive, and relief officials fear that many refugees will die from wounds or disease. The officials also fear that a slow and disorganized response by the aid groups will contribute to the refugees' plight.
"The airplanes came at five minutes before six, yesterday morning," said Shala. "I was in the clinic. I sleep there because the artillery attacks have come at night for weeks and there are always wounded."
"I saw two planes coming in from the direction of the mountains. Then two helicopters began to circle," he said.
Other people from Lodja, who had walked to this village carrying the wounded and some food, were gathered around the doctor and nodding their heads in agreement.
"The helicopters went away a little, the planes turned and came back very low and fast," the doctor went on. "Suddenly, there was a noise like we had never heard before and the whole village was shaking."
A government spokesman, police Col. Bozidar Filic, said Sunday there were no aircraft of any kind used in the attack on Lodja.
There were about 1,500 people in Lodja at the time of the attack, villagers said. Shala said that two civilians were killed outright and estimated that he treated another 25 civilians, and two rebels, for injuries. The elderly man and the second woman were inside a house when it was bombed, and both suffered serious back injuries, the doctor said.
"She is paralyzed in the left leg, and he is in a coma," he said. "But she is one I am very worried about," he said, walking over to the pregnant woman. "There is very little time to get her help."
The village of Lodja, abandoned after Saturday's attack and now occupied by government forces, could be located 20 miles away Sunday by the black smoke pouring out of its buildings. The pattern for government forces during the four-week-old offensive has been to shell civilian towns and villages, force the residents into flight, and then loot and burn the homes. The practice has not only increased the terror of refugees, thousands of whom are living in the open, but also means that many have no place to return.
At midday Sunday, a two-mile-long Yugoslav army column of tanks, cannons and armored personnel carriers with soldiers waving in victory passed along the main road from Junik and within half a mile of the burning village of Lodja. Government forces said Sunday that on Saturday they had taken control of Junik, a logistical center for the KLA, the Associated Press reported.
The villagers here in Kotradic, who have taken in the refugees from Lodja, had a telephone number for the International Red Cross office in Pristina, the provincial capital, and had been trying to call for help. They could not get through for most of the day, however, because the number was changed three weeks ago.
When they reached the Red Cross, they said, the villagers were told this place was too dangerous and Red Cross rules would not permit sending help. A U.N. refugee relief team was in the village, learned about the wounded from Lodja and wanted to take the pregnant woman out because the doctor feared she would die before morning without medical treatment. But the team said U.N. rules would not permit them to exceed their mandate and transport the wounded.
By late Sunday, the woman had been taken to a Pristina hospital, three hours away, not by relief agencies, but by a reporter. Doctors at the hospital said her recovery was uncertain.
______________________Monday August 17 8:11 AM EDT
Kosovo fighting dies out after rebel loss
PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - Fighting died out in Serbia's Kosovo province on Monday, a day after Serb security forces took control of one of the separatist rebels' last bastions.
Serbian sources said a mopping-up operation in the Pec district, including the village of Lodja, that followed the fall of the western hill town of Junic on Sunday, was over.
The sources said two Serbian policemen were killed late on Sunday in Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas' attack at police stations in two villages on the Pristina-Prizren road, in southwestern Kosovo.
Ethnic Albanian sources did not report any new fighting on Monday. Late on Sunday, they said that the fighting raged in the village of Lodja, near Pec.
Reporters who were escorted to Junik on Sunday saw large plumes of smoke billowing from villages some three kilometers (two miles) away from Pec and heard at least two loud explosions.
The town of Pec itself was almost completely deserted on Sunday.
Junik fell after troops besieged it for more than two weeks. Two Yugoslav soldiers and four policemen were killed in the last battle before Serbian security forces drove KLA guerrillas out of the town.
The loss of Junik was bound to be a military and psychological blow for the KLA, which is fighting for Kosovo's independence from Serbia.
It gives Belgrade the upper hand in peace talks that ethnic Albanians have agreed to resume under intense pressure from the United States. No dates for the talks has been set.
Meanwhile, the Albanian-language daily Koha Ditore said on some 40,000 people took shelter in a four-kilometer-long (two mile) strip in the Decani River area.
The report could not be independently confirmed. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, in Pristina said they did not have any fresh numbers on refugees who fled the recent fighting.
Relief agencies have previously estimated that about 200,000 people, or 10 percent of Kosovo's population, have been uprooted by the fighting.
Koha Ditore also said that KLA guerrillas were back in the village of Glodjane, in western Kosovo.
Serbian security forces took Glodjane last week, but left after a while. Koha's reporter said that dozens of houses were burned and several were leveled. There were no civilians in the village.
The New York Times_______________________________________________________________________
August 16, 1998U.S. Sends Marines to Embassy in Albania
TIRANA, Albania -- With the U.S. Embassy in Albania shut down for fear of a terrorist attack and its dependents and nonessential personnel sent home, a company of marines flew in Saturday to stand guard over those remaining.
"We are told there is a high threat out there," said Maj. Frank Carroll, the commander of the Marine reinforcement, which was hurriedly diverted from nearby NATO maneuvers to protect the few U.S. diplomats left in this capital.
The worries apparently stemmed from reports of the arrest in Albania of another Islamic fundamentalist belonging to the militant Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization, who if extradited could face execution by the authorities in Cairo.
At the beginning of August, the Jihad group, one of whose splinter cells assassinated President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, said that three of its members had been arrested here and turned over to the Egyptian authorities.
The Jihad promised retaliation against the United States, which it blames for the arrests. That threat was made shortly before the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Kosova was placed under the Serbian rule in 1912, against the will of its people, as a result of conquest sanctioned by the European Powers. London Conference of Ambassadors (1913) amputated territories with the majority of Albanian population from Albanian national body and awarded them to Serbia and Montenegro._______________________________________________________________________
If you take a journey through Kosova's last decade, since Serbia illegally abolished its autonomy by military might, you will encounter an unparalleled drama of suffering, pain and collective fear. It will take you to the era of Apartheid and even Nazi-Germany if you read the laws passed by Serb legislation that have one thing in mind: the gross violations of Albanians' civil and national rights with the aim of forcing them into exile.
Human rights groups have declared Kosova's people as one of the most suppressed people in the world, who live in constant fear. The agony of living under Serbian rule has taken a terrible toll. To accept the fate of remaining under Serbian tyranny is the same as accepting voluntarily to be placed on the death row.
The Albanian Golgotha has been going on for 85 years. And Kosovars have endured because they have kept alive their dream for freedom, equality, and brotherhood with other nations of modern Europe.
They have declared the independence from Serbia in a popular referendum for free, independent and democratic Republic of Kosova in 1991. And they are determined to defend this historic achievement as the only way that will ensure their national survival.
In the letter to THE TIMES (11 March 1998) a group of concerned international intellectuals wrote: "The West has hitherto chosen to accept Belgrade's claim that Kosova is an integral part of Serbia,despite Yugoslavia's dissolution. Unconditional possession of Kosova by Serbia, however, was not sanctioned by the Yugoslav Constitution, under which Kosova was explicitly tied to the Federation as such, being one of its eight members. This provision was not accidental. Peace in former Yugoslavia was ensured precisely by increasing Kosova's autonomy from Serbia, untill the tie between the two became purely nominal. Kosova's desire to leave Serbia is thus not 'separatism', but a politically valid and juridically defensible response to the break-up of Yugoslavia."
"The longer Serbia is allowed to hold on to Kosova,moreover, the more violent and unstable it is itself going to become, and with it the Balkans as a whole. For it can never become a democratic contry while it rules Kosova against its will."
"But Western politicians still seem unwilling to confront the real issue. They describe the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) as 'terroristic', although the term applies better to a State that terrorizes its own citizens, as Serbia has been doing in Kosova, than to those resisting its wanton violence. The emergence of the KLA is merely a symptom of how intolerable the situation in Kosova has become."
"The simple truth is that continuing Balkan turmoil can be avoided only by Kosova's removal from Serbian jurisdiction."
(Yours etc. Jill Craigie, Michael Foot, Adrian Hastings, Reginald Hibbert, Quintin Hoare, Branka Magas, Salman Rushdie)
The coverage of Kosova's reality in U.S. media (especially on TV and radio) has perpetuated the stereotype of Serbia's claim to kosova although those claims are not legitimate. Moreover we have not seen a comprehensive, investigative coverage like we've seen on Bosnia-Hertzegovina.
We remember, Mr. jennings, your brilliant reporting on Bosnia and we know that it made a unique impact on public opinion. Therefore, we urge you to do the same: A special report on Kosova!
To be or not to be, that is the question for two million Kosova Albanians and for peace and security in the region.
We believe the truth is a powerful weapon against ignorance and crime. And that the truth,in this case too, will be best serve by your objective and comprehensive reporting on the Balkan turmoil.We remain
Respectfully yours,
( signed ) (signed)Ferhat Ymeri and Jesse Musliu
25803 114 PL SE #E102 2815 Redwood PL
Kent, Washington 98031 Anchorage, Alaska 99508
NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, AUGUST 16, 1998Taken without permission, for fair use only.
-Serb Troops Step Up Looting and Burning in Kosovo
The New York Times, August 16, 1998
-KLA refuses to join in peace talks regarding Kosovo's future
MSNBC, August 16, 1998
- Albanian Stronghold Falls to Serbs
AP, August 16, 1998
___________________________________________August 16, 1998
Serb Troops Step Up Looting and Burning in Kosovo
The New York Times
By MIKE O'CONNORPRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- With the outside world doing little to stop them, heavily armed Serbian policemen backed by Yugoslav army soldiers are stepping up their terror against ethnic Albanian civilians in Kosovo, driving tens of thousands from their homes and shelling, looting and burning their villages.
In at least one village in southern Kosovo, the police are demolishing brick homes that survived being set afire. In a village nearby, the police told residents that they must surrender any weapons they had or their homes would be burned to the ground, according to villagers and the local Roman Catholic priest.
While the government asserts that it destroys homes only if combat conditions make this inevitable, foreign diplomats say the Serbs obviously hope to clear ethnic Albanian supporters of the armed rebels from vast areas of Kosovo.
Officials of the International Red Cross, which helps oversee the Geneva Conventions protecting civilians in war, said Saturday that they were debating whether the forces of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, were violating the conventions by displacing villagers and then destroying their homes.
Western governments have threatened to use NATO's might to stop what some foreign diplomats here have called a war against civilians. NATO says it is weighing its response, and this weekend the German defense minister, Volker Ruehe, spoke out strongly in favor of a strike against Yugoslav forces even if the Serbs' traditional Slav Orthodox ally, Russia, objects.
Meanwhile, the government is strengthening its grip on Kosovo, and civilian misery abounds.
Relief agencies estimate that up to 200,000 civilians have fled their homes since the government began a military offensive against ethnic Albanian rebels on July 19. The rebels had seized control of large parts of Kosovo in their bid to make the Serbian-ruled province an independent country.
Many refugees are still living in the open. Foreign relief workers report that many of them, especially the elderly and the young, are growing increasingly weak and suffering from disease.
But most reject the government's urgings to return home, either because they fear police or army attacks or because their homes have been destroyed.
Relief agencies say they were overwhelmed by the number of refugees and cannot do enough to help them.
Residents of the village of Novo Selo in southern Kosovo say the police have given them until Monday to turn over any weapons or see their homes destroyed. The village priest, the Rev. Frane Kola, said that he had told the police there were no hidden weapons and had invited them to search the homes, but that the police had insisted weapons be surrendered.
"If not, they say they will surround the village and burn the buildings," Kola said.
Pervua Marku, the village mechanic, said: "They will do it. Look at all the other places they are destroying."
In the nearby village of Priljep, where residents have fled and where officials say the police have been in control for many days, a police bunker with a heavy machine gun overlooked the smoldering roofs of brick homes. In the streets, policemen with assault rifles were on patrol and a bulldozer was leveling what the flames could not destroy.
With its offensive, the government has regained control of major roads and pushed rebel fighters from many areas. The main ethnic Albanian political party says 159 villages and hamlets that were controlled by the rebels are now back under government authority, but most of the residents have fled. Once civilians leave an area, the police often loot and then burn homes, farms and businesses.
By conventional military standards the rebels, who call themselves the Kosovo Liberation Army, have been very badly hurt by the government attacks. Before the offensive, rebel forces controlled as much as 40 percent of the province. Their support had swelled dramatically since a fierce police crackdown in March.
Rebel soldiers serenely patrolled major roads almost in sight of government positions and there was a virtual rebel government in some regions. Rebel commanders and many ethnic Albanians were euphoric, predicting the imminent fall of major cities.
Now government officials contend that the rebels have been beaten.
But this is not a conventional war, or even standard guerrilla warfare, because the Kosovo Liberation Army is not nearly as much a military force as it is a movement. It may not be properly trained, or commanded by military professionals, but it may not have to be.
"This is not a guerrilla war; it is a peasant uprising," said Shkelzen Maliqi, an ethnic Albanian political leader and author. "It is a movement which doesn't have the weapons to fight government forces. But this is a secessionist movement which cannot be stopped."
By what can be measured on a map alone, the Kosovo Liberation Army is reeling, and some commanders admit it. In a remote village filled with newly created refugees, where water, medicine and food were all scarce, a top commander refused to say how badly his forces were hurt.
"I don't want to talk about that, because the truth would damage my people," he said, insisting that his name and location not be revealed. Government forces were preparing to advance on the village and some rebel soldiers in the area seemed in a near panic.
On the roads traversing areas that rebels had claimed as theirs, the government controls all traffic and is running convoys of soldiers.
A regional commander of the rebels' special forces, Sabit Geti, was tearing along mountain ridges on rutted trails last week, going between rebel positions. He reclined in the passenger seat of a car, his right leg held straight by a thick, bloody bandage.
"Yes, they are hurting us," he said. "They have artillery and tanks, and we have only this," he added, holding up the assault rifle next to him.
Still, he was able to use back roads to get easily into the northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica, obtain medical care and return to the field.
Foreign military experts say that the government's offensive has stopped the extraordinary rise in the rebels' military progress but has not changed the fundamental equation, which will keep the war going unless there is a negotiated peace.
"There is a single fact that controls this conflict: 90 percent of the people here are either supporters or potential supporters of the rebels," said a foreign military expert, referring to Kosovo's overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian population. "No government can defeat that, and this government, with its tactics, is only making the rebels politically stronger."
Along the roads that government forces now hold, soldiers and police man a network of bunkers, machine-gun emplacements and trenches, many of which are surrounded by growing piles of discarded beer bottles and food containers.
In many places, however, ethnic Albanian forces that have been shoved back from the roads and cleared from the now empty villages still dominate the rugged rural terrain. There are rebel positions within a mile of Priljep, where the police are demolishing homes.
With the forces facing off in this way, military experts say the next move could be conclusive. For now, it appears that neither side has a decisive advantage.
"We did not have a good picture of how organized or cohesive the KLA was before the offensive, and it is a lot murkier now," said a European diplomat, referring to the Kosovo Liberation Army. "But they look very confused. They may not be able to convert hatred of the government into effective military action for a very long time."
But Milosevic faces risks, too. While government officials wait to see how the rebels react to the offensive, thousands of troops must be kept in the field. That costs a lot, and Milosevic's men are short of cash.
"Now, with these long, exposed, supply lines running everywhere, we'll see how well Belgrade can keep its people in beans and bullets," a foreign diplomat said.
Another diplomat said: "I believe that simply keeping the troops in the field will bankrupt the government quickly. It has only a pittance in cash reserves, it can't pay salaries for teachers and hospital workers and it has almost no revenues."
___________________________________________MSNBC
Saturday August 15 11:08 AM ETKLA refuses to join in peace talks regarding Kosovo's future
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia - Doubts about a Kosovo peace initiative deepened on Friday as separatist rebels refused to take part in a negotiating team led by Ibrahim Rugova, the region's main ethnic Albanian political leader, and instead named their own rival delegation. Meanwhile, Rugova posed a tough precondition for talks with Belgrade, further stalling efforts at compromise.
The Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, made clear it wanted nothing to do with the negotiating team unveiled on Thursday by Rugova, head of Kosovo's largest pro-independence party, and sponsored by the Big Power Contact Group and the European Union.
The separatist guerrillas seemed intent on sabotaging the Rugova initiative after snubbing invitations to join his team, vowing to fight for a final victory in Kosovo while at the same time introducing their own negotiators.
A KLA statement faxed from an unknown location said a rebel negotiating team had been formed with Adem Demaqi, a Rugova foe who was a celebrated political prisoner for 28 years and head of the Parliamentary Party of Kosovo, as its coordinator.
"This so-called negotiating team is only an alchemic effort that will fail because it does not have concrete forces like the KLA and the will of the people behind it," he told local reporters.
The negotiating team unveiled by Rugova lacked representation from the KLA, which feels he has been discredited for presiding over a decade-long campaign of passive resistance to Serbian rule in Kosovo that yielded no concessions from Belgrade.
Meanwhile, Rugova resurrected an old obstacle to dialogue with the Serbs when he told a news conference that Serbian security forces must call off their anti-KLA offensive before talks can begin.
"There has to be an appropriate climate for meaningful dialogue. And that is indispensable," he told reporters a day after naming a five-person delegation to resume suspended peace talks with Belgrade.
In an offensive started on July 20, the Serbs have ejected KLA guerrillas from most of the towns and villages they had taken in an insurrection launched last February.
Rugova, elected president of an ethnic Albanian government not recognized by Belgrade and Western powers, agreed under intense pressure from the United States to resume negotiations with the Serbs, talks which the Albanians boycotted in March and suspended in June.
Serbian authorities have agreed only to discuss restoring some autonomy in Kosovo. Western powers favor self-rule but no independence, fearing this would inflame aggrieved minorities in neighbouring countries, such as Albania or Macedonia.
Relief agencies, however, have predicted a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo if an estimated 200,000 people driven from their homes by the fighting are not resettled before the onset of cold weather in about two months' time.
Serbian sources said fighting in the province, whose 90 percent ethnic Albanian population has suffered under arbitrary police rule since being stripped of their governing autonomy in 1989, had subsided. Ethnic Albanian sources insisted the offensive continues without respite. The Serbs claim that fighting in recent days was caused only by KLA ambushes.
Ethnic Albanian media had no battle reports on Friday, but Rugova said the situation of more than 200,000 Albanian refugees "is especially grave and desperate." Some refugees have started to trickle home even thought they don't know if their villages or livestock have survived.
The Kosovo Information Center, linked to Rugova's political party, said Serbian forces burned 1,208 abandoned Albanian homes in Decani municipality during the offensive. Pitched fighting was reported earlier this week around Decani, at the foot of mountains where the KLA is clinging to its last major bastion Junik near the border of Albania.
On Thursday, the Pentagon said the United States would "strongly consider some sort of participation" in a NATO-led peacekeeping force if a diplomatic solution cannot be found to the crisis in Kosovo. Defense Department spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the NATO alliance is preparing "plans for both air and ground operations" in the province.
Bacon said that any decision on participation in a NATO force would be up to President Clinton, and one the president would make only after consulting with military leaders and Congress.
NATO's top military officer, Gen. Wesley Clark, is informally querying alliance members on whether they could contribute air forces should diplomacy fail, Bacon said.
That could range from a "show of force to significant military action," he added.
If a cease-fire or peace agreement were reached, NATO could shift to putting together a ground force to support such an effort, he said.
___________________________________________August 16, 1998
Albanian Stronghold Falls to Serbs
By The Associated Press
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Serb forces have taken the main rebel stronghold in southwestern Kosovo in what appeared to be the finale of a crackdown launched last month against ethnic Albanian separatists, Serb sources reported Sunday.
The village of Junik, near the border with Albania, was known as the organizational, logistical and weapons distribution center for the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, fighting for independence of Kosovo.
According to a police statement carried by state-run Tanjug news agency, Junik fell to the Serbs late Saturday, after nearly two weeks under siege. No information from Albanian sources was immediately available and the report could not be independently confirmed.
The report said members of the KLA tried to escape across the border to Albanian but were blocked by army border guards and eventually "broken down" and dispersed into mountain forests. Four policemen died in the operation, it said.
Junik, some 50 miles west of Pristina, first made headlines last month when top U.S. envoy, Richard Holbrooke, paid a surprise visit to KLA fighters there. The KLA is fighting for the independence of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians account for 90 percent of the province's 2 million people.
Over the past weeks government forces purged the KLA from several other major strongholds. Gains by government forces, however, have proved difficult to maintain.
On Saturday, government forces launched coordinated attacks on at least nine villages, the ethnic Albanians claimed. Fighting also raged elsewhere in the province.
In Belgrade, independent radio B92 reported that police and the Yugoslav army used tanks and helicopters in the attacks. Kosovo province is in Serbia, the larger of the two Yugoslav republics.
While Serb forces shelled the villages in an attempt to force the rebels to retreat, the government in Belgrade invited moderate Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova's team to start negotiations as early as next week.
But his party, the Democratic League of Kosovo, said its hopes that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was serious about peace talks.
Rugova had said earlier that the government offensive must stop before peace talks can begin. In any event, Rugova has been unable to persuade the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army to join him.
The Kosovo Information Center, which is close to the ethnic Albanian leadership, reported that government forces opened fire at dawn Saturday on Logja and at least eight other villages west of Pristina, the provincial capital.
There was no word on casualties. The area is inaccessible to journalists, but smoke was seen from a distance and detonations were heard.
Forty-six tanks, four jets, eight helicopters and troops transported in 20 trucks joined in the attacks, an ethnic Albanian source said. The Serb Media Center in Pristina, meanwhile, reported that separatists attacked Serb police who were securing a road near the villages early Saturday. In a counterattack, it said, police forces pushed KLA rebels into nearby forests.
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