Tagesnachrichten 20. August 1998
von ALBANEWS und anderen
weitere Presse-Meldungen
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Tagesnachrichten 20. August 1998
Taken without permission for fair use only_______________________________________________________________________U.S. pushes for Kosovo peace in face of new clashes
Copyright © 1998 Nando.net
Copyright © 1998 Reuters News ServicePRISTINA, Serbia (August 20, 1998 11:54 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) -
U.S. envoy Chris Hill held another round of meetings with key political figures in the Kosovo crisis on Thursday to try to restart stalled peace talks.
Hill, the ambassador to Macedonia who serves as the chief U.S. Kosovo coordinator, met Ibrahim Rugova, the ethnic Albanian political leader who advocates passive resistance to Serb rule in the southern Serbian province, and Fehmi Agani, head of Rugova's peace talks team, diplomatic sources said.
Hill also was expected to meet Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic and Russian ambassador Yuri Kotov.
His latest attempt to get the talks back on track to end six months of fighting between separatist ethnic Albanian rebels and heavily armed Serb security forces was set against a background of reports of fresh clashes in the southern Serbian province.
It also followed a three-day mission to Yugoslavia by Emma Bonino of Italy, the European Union's humanitarian affairs commissioner, who reiterated in Belgrade a warning that some of the estimated 200,000 people displaced by fighting were certain to die unless they got back to their homes by winter's onset.
She said that in the morning she had visited Montenegro, the small republic which along with Serbia makes up what is left of Yugoslavia, and found some 30,000 displaced Kosovo Albanians living there, and 250 to 300 more arriving daily.
"We strongly urge the Yugoslav authorities to deliver on their promises to cease fire and cease the action of their security forces," Bonino told a news conference.
"We hope that meaningful dialogue can start because without change in the political landscape there is no way that the humanitarian community can avert a major humanitarian crisis," she said.
Belgrade has been widely condemned by the United States and other Western countries for the use of massive firepower, heavy weaponry and scorched-earth tactics in its battle to put down a rebellion by separatist rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Bonino said she and other diplomats touring Kosovo had seen "ghost villages where really there is no one there and you can see a lot of destruction and houses which are completely burned and where even if people could go back it would be very difficult."
Austrian ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said he was "deeply shocked" by what he saw in Kosovo.
"The destruction is out of all proportion when it comes to the claim that the security forces are chasing down terrorists or bandits," he said.
Rugova agreed last week to resume peace talks with Belgrade after Serb forces pushed KLA rebels, whom Rugova says he does not control, out of most of the towns and villages the rebels had taken since February.
But Serb forces remain active in the province, whose two million inhabitants are 90 percent ethnic Albanians. Rugova has made a cessation of fighting a precondition of starting talks.
A Reuters reporter traveling southwest from the Kosovo provincial capital Pristina passed a half-mile long convoy of Serbian military vehicles, including tanks, troop carriers and armored combat vehicles.
The reporter was prevented from following the convoy when it turned off the main road at a checkpoint near Komorane, but as the convoy moved away smoke could be seen coming from several houses along the road the Serb units were taking.
Police at a checkpoint said that two policemen had been killed overnight on Wednesday by a KLA ambush in a pass on the road east of Suva Reka.
At Likovac, in the Drenica area, ethnic Albanians said they had heard about the army convoy headed their way and feared there would be shelling over the weekend.By JULIJANA MOJSILOVIC, Reuters
NEWS: KOSOVA UPDATE, AUGUST 20, 1998_______________________________________________________________________Taken without permission, for fair use only.
UN official calls for action by Serbia to avert Kosovo tragedy
BBC, Aug 20,
Two men charged with smuggling arms to Kosovo
BBC, Aug 20,
SERBS TRAP REFUGEES IN KOSOVO
Chigaco Tribune, Aug 19,
Agency Warns of Kosovo Catastrophe
AP, Aug 19,
Serbs Fire Mortars on Albanians
AP, Aug 19,
___________________________________Thursday, August 20, 1998 Published at 01:51 GMT 02:51 UK
UN official calls for action by Serbia to avert Kosovo tragedy
A top United Nations refugee official has called on the Serbian authorities to encourage those displaced by fighting between troops and separatist guerrillas in Kosovo to return to their homes.
The deputy-head of the UN refugee agency, Soren-Jensen Petersen, said after touring the area that reassuring measures were needed from Belgrade to end hostilities, restore dialogue with the Kosovar Albanians and allow aid agencies better access.
He also called for a better international humanitarian response, saying donor countries had provided only a third of what had been requested.
His comments echo warnings by the European Union commissioner, Emma Bonino, who's also been visiting Kosovo and is expected in Belgrade today.
She said a political solution to the conflict was urgently needed if the onset of winter was not to turn the crisis into a humanitarian catastrophe.From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
___________________________________Thursday, August 20, 1998 Published at 10:56 GMT 11:56 UK
Two men charged with smuggling arms to Kosovo
Italian customs police have arrested a Kosovo Albanian and a Swiss citizen on charges of trafficking military equipment from Switzerland to Albanian independence fighters in Kosovo.
The men were arrested as they were boarding a ferry in the southern Italian port of Brindisi bound for Vlore in Albania.
Police say the two claimed they were transporting humanitarian supplies for Kosovo, but a search of their vehicles revealed camouflaged field-tents, night vision equipment and other military supplies, some of which bore logos of the independence fighters.
If convicted of transporting illegal military equipment, the two face up to twelve years in prison.From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
___________________________________SERBS TRAP REFUGEES IN KOSOVO
By Guy Dinmore
Special to the Tribune
August 19, 1998BROLIC, Yugoslavia -- Huddled under trees or in crowded farmhouses, thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees are trapped in a small pocket of land in the western corner of Serbia's Kosovo province, surrounded by government forces.
Around them, villages still smolder from an attack that began Saturday when helicopters and jets of the Yugoslav air force attacked their homes near the garrison town of Pec.
Babies wailed in the arms of their mothers, the elderly held out their hands in a gesture of despair. Children escaped the intense summer heat with a swim in the Bistrica River. Tractors laden with simple belongings lined its banks.
"They shell the villages to make civilians flee," said Brim Sokalaj, a 57-year-old builder. "Then come the tanks. They loot and put everything in (trucks) and then set fire to the houses."
The stated target of the government forces are rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) who are fighting for independence for Serbia's southern province. But, as often happens in war, the main victims are civilians.
The UN's refugee agency estimates 20,000 people are trapped in western Kosovo, while at least 230,000 civilians -- more than 10 percent of Kosovo's population -- have been displaced since the fighting erupted six months ago.
A cease-fire negotiated by the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission was holding for a second day Tuesday around Pec, giving aid agencies a chance to bring in doctors and supplies. They are hampered by poor roads, bad maps and the inability to communicate because Belgrade forbids the use of radios.
"We are like animals here and know nothing about what is happening," said Sokalaj, who had fled with his wife. "We are in the middle of it all, trapped. There is not much space. People started fleeing again this morning because someone said the Serbs would start shelling again."
Musa Berisha, a local human-rights activist, said he was trying to secure agreement to evacuate the refugees safely from Kosovo, either to the small Yugoslav republic of Montenegro to the west or south to Albania and Macedonia. The KLA, however, wants the local population to stay put, and Western diplomats fear that a mass exodus of refugees would further destabilize neighboring countries.
KLA fighters held checkpoints jutst 500 yards from the nearest Serbian police. Asked about the cease-fire, one local KLA commander said, "We are profiting from this time to get stronger."
Although the KLA has lost a lot of territory and some supply routes over the mountains from nearby Albania, the guerrilla force is far from spent.
Serbian officials said Yugoslav border guards Monday night killed five "armed Albanian extremists" in a group of 20 trying to cross into Kosovo.
Tim Boucher, head of mission for the aid group Doctors Without Borders, said he fears a catastrophe unless the war stops before the onset of another bitter Balkan winter.
Corn is waiting to be harvested in abandoned fields, but villagers are afraid to go back. The rotting carcasses of cattle and burned haystacks are testimony to what diplomats call the "scorched earth" tactics of a government that is trying to eradicate popular support for the KLA.
Boucher said Doctors Without Borders was making plans for winter shelter for refugees, but some aid workers say their response to the crisis has been slow and badly coordinated by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNHCR says it is understaffed and poorly funded.
Relief workers estimate that as many as a million people in Kosovo will need aid this winter unless the situation improves soon. Western governments, already struggling to cope with more than 2 million refugees from the breakup of former Yugoslavia, are unwilling to foot the bill.
While some diplomats believe NATO intervention is becoming more likely, the emphasis is still on trying to resume peace talks.
U.S. envoy Chris Hill, the chief Western mediator, met in the provincial capital Pristina on Tuesday with the new Kosovo Albanian negotiating team formed by Ibrahim Rugova, "president" of a self-declared government recognized by no one, not even the KLA. "The (negotiating) process has just begun. We have a long way to go," Hill said.
___________________________________Wednesday August 19 5:26 PM EDT
Agency Warns of Kosovo Catastrophe
ISMET HAJDARI Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Kosovo will have a refugee catastrophe this winter unless fighting in the Yugoslav province ends immediately and a political settlement is worked out, a top U.N. refugee official warned Wednesday.
Soeren Jessen Petersen, a deputy to U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said four things were needed to avert a major disaster: a cessation of hostilities between Serb forces and separatist rebels, followed by a political dialogue; better access to the area by journalists and aid groups; allowing 170,000 people displaced inside Kosovo and 50,000 forced outside the country to return home; and more support for the U.N. aid operation.
Hundreds have been killed since Serbs began a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo in late February. The United Nations estimates that more than 231,000 people have been uprooted in the months since.
Without a peace settlement, the displacement of ethnic Albanians will continue and probably increase, Peterson said.
"We would have many, many people dying during the coming winter," Petersen said. "Humanitarian action must not, once again, as it happened in Bosnia for four or five years, become a substitute for political action."
Emma Bonino, the human rights commissioner for the European Union, echoed those comments.
"The international community must face the reality. There is no way we can avert a catastrophe" without a political solution, she said Wednesday in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.
In response to rising criticism of the Serb government offensive in Kosovo, the official Tanjug news agency accused the Kosovo Liberation Army on Wednesday of using civilians as human shields while fighting government forces.
Earlier in the day, Bonino was stopped by ethnic Albanian rebels, who refused to allow her convoy with journalists to reach the disputed village of Cirez.
Albania, meanwhile, sought an urgent meeting with Yugoslav authorities after Serb mortars exploded across the border. The shelling Tuesday prompted local officials to evacuate children and the elderly from border towns in Albania.
On the diplomatic front, U.S. envoys are pressing to arrange direct talks between the Serb government and a Kosovo Albanian delegation formed last week. But the leading ethnic Albanian politician, Ibrahim Rugova, faces opposition because he does not have the support of the rebels.
___________________________________Wednesday August 19 10:51 AM EDT
Serbs Fire Mortars on Albanians
ISMET HAJDARI Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Serb mortars exploded about a mile inside Albanian territory, prompting Albania to request an urgent meeting with Yugoslav authorities.
Albanians said 15 mortars exploded over two hours Tuesday, causing local officials on the Albanian side of the frontier to evacuate children and the elderly from border communities. No casualties were reported.
The Albanian government is asking for an urgent meeting of a joint Yugoslav-Albanian border commission to discuss security, but no reply has been received, a government official said today.
Shells have landed in Albanian territory before, fueling fears that the conflict in Kosovo, where ethnic Albanian rebels are fighting for independence, could spread throughout the southern Balkans.
About 1,700 troops from the United States and 13 other countries are conducting a military exercise in the Albanian capital, Tirana, to demonstrate NATO's commitment to helping contain the Kosovo crisis.
On the diplomatic front, U.S. envoys are pressing for direct talks between the Serb government and a Kosovo Albanian delegation formed last week. Kosovo is part of Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia.
On Tuesday, the Kosovo Albanians spurned an offer by the Serbs to begin talks immediately, saying Serb attacks must cease and tens of thousands of Albanian civilians must be allowed to return to their homes.
The European Union's human rights commissioner, Emma Bonino, was touring refugee areas of Kosovo today for a firsthand assessment of the crisis.
Outside the village of Malisevo, Bonino's convoy was stopped by rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who told her she could proceed, but not with reporters.
Bonino refused, the convoy turned back, and instead visited the village of Cirez, where she expressed concern over food shortages this winter if the refugees could not return to their homes in time for the harvest.
Complicating the diplomacy is the fact that the leading ethnic Albanian politician, Ibrahim Rugova, faces opposition from the KLA because he opposes the use of violence in resolving the crisis.
Taken without permission. Fair use only._______________________________________________________________________The Christian Science Monitor
August 20, 1998,Kosovo Rebellion Shows Signs of More Pacifist Tilt
Justin Brown, Special to The Christian Science Monitor
LIKOSANE, YUGOSLAVIARebels, battered by Serbs, now find ethnic Albanians looking for a conciliatory leader.
The armed rebels who once guarded the gateway to this village in central Kosovo have quietly slipped into the hills.
Their rebel checkpoint, set up months ago to prevent Serbian infiltration, has been replaced by two boys selling goods from a roadside stand.
It was not the Serbs who drove the Kosovo Liberation Army away but local ethnic Albanians, who say they are beginning to see the KLA as a magnet for danger.
"The people made us leave," says a winded KLA soldier after he scurries from a nearby farmhouse to flag down a passing car.
A month into a crushing offensive by forces of the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian Interior Ministry, the KLA has been marginalized, not only here in Likosane, but in international diplomatic circles, where the focus of negotiations has shifted back to mainstream ethnic Albanian political leaders.
US diplomats, who are spearheading international peace efforts between the Serbs and separatist ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, have for the moment abandoned the KLA in favor of pacifist ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova.
Like the KLA, Mr. Rugova favors independence. But he is seen as being more likely to compromise and accept internationally supported plans for broad autonomy within Yugoslavia.
The US strategy, diplomatic sources say, is to build momentum with a Rugova-backed negotiating team and hope the KLA joins at a later time.
On Tuesday the Kosovo Albanians' team rejected an offer by the Serbs to begin talks immediately, saying Serb attacks must first cease. Yesterday the European Union's human rights commissioner, Emma Bonino, toured refugee areas.
MEANWHILE, some 1,700 NATO troops are conducting exercises in neighboring Albania. But armed intervention in Kosovo seems unlikely, with Western powers emphasizing that a diplomatic solution is preferable.
In Likosane, once a KLA stronghold, there are signs that the US strategy may be working. Although the KLA still has a presence here, villagers seem more concerned with caring for refugees than parading around with machine guns.
"The KLA should be under the control of Rugova, just as the international community wants," says Sahit Zymeri, calling himself the village's leader. "We've prepared a letter of support for Rugova and will send it to him soon."
It was here in Likosane that the six-month-old conflict began, when Serbian troops attacked on Feb. 28 and killed 24 ethnic Albanians, some of whom were clearly civilians.
Today, with more than 400 dead and an estimated 231,000 internal refugees across Kosovo, villagers in Likosane have focused on survival. More than 100 refugees are crammed into the local school building.
"Many of the children are sick," says Sinan Simanaj, a refugee from the nearby village of Acarevo who was overseeing the makeshift camp. He says the homes of most of the refugees were destroyed during the recent Serbian offensive, in which the rebels lost almost all of the land they once held.
Not far away, a white four-wheel-drive truck barrels over the bumpy dirt roads. It stops to pull over a visitor's car, and the truck's driver, a bearded KLA commander, questions journalists - but not with the bravado that the KLA used to have.
The Serbs have rolled through the region in the past month and part of their mission has been to crush civilian support for the guerrillas. They have done so by burning buildings, destroying crops, and killing farm animals.
Politically, the KLA has recently thrown in its lot with Adem Demaci, a fringe politician who has the reputation of being more a critic than a leader.
Mr. Demaci, a political prisoner for nearly three decades, has been a longtime rival of Rugova. But he has never been able to garner the support of the populace or the international community.
While Rugova has consistently stood behind a nonviolent approach, Demaci has at times espoused armed resistance.
The Serbs, led by Slobodan Milosevic, revoked Kosovo's autonomy in 1989. Since then they have controlled the region's 2 million people as if Kosovo were a military state. It was not until this year that the 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority took up arms.GRAPHIC: PHOTO: LIKOSANE: Ethnic Albanian refugees prepare food in Kosovo village where thousands congregated after fleeing a Serb offensive. A visiting European Union official said yesterday many may not survive the winter without a political settlement soon.
BY VADIM GHIRDA/AP
August 19, 1998_______________________________________________________________________U.S., Albania Search for Terrorists
Filed at 6:23 p.m. EDT
By The Associated PressTIRANA, Albania (AP) -- While heavily armed U.S. Marines guarded the American diplomatic compound, Albanian and American agents searched nationwide Wednesday for suspected members of a terrorist group that planned to blow up the U.S. Embassy.
An Interior Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the search began after American officials last week uncovered "serious evidence" of plans to bomb the U.S. Embassy.
He said the Albanian secret service and the CIA are compiling lists of suspects and sending police to arrest them.
The plot apparently was related to recent arrests of several Egyptians believed linked to terror attacks in Egypt, including the November 1997 massacre of 62 people at a temple in the southern city of Luxor.
He said the Albanian government believes the plot against the embassy was aimed at undermining an anti-terrorist investigation that has been under way for months with the cooperation of Egyptian authorities.
The plot also may have been linked to the bombings this month of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which 257 people were killed. On Friday, the State Department said it was evacuating non-essential embassy staff members and families of employees, and it warned Americans against traveling to Albania.
The next day, the official said, U.S. Ambassador Marisa Lino met with Albanian authorities and told them she had "solid evidence" of a plan to drive a car bomb into the embassy, located in a diplomatic compound on the edge of this Balkan capital.
On Sunday, 150 Marines and Navy commandos, who were in the area to participate in a NATO exercise, secured the walled U.S. compound, setting up bunkers.
President Clinton told Congress on Tuesday that the measures were taken "after receiving credible information of a possible attack" against the embassy here "similar to attacks against our missions" in East Africa.
"This was a soft target," Col. Sam Helland said Wednesday. "Have we made it a hard one? You bet! Anybody's going to think twice before tackling it. This is robust security."
Since June, at least five Egyptians have been arrested here in connection with the Luxor massacre and the 1993 attempted assassination of Egypt's prime minister, Atef Sedki. Both attacks were blamed on Islamic extremists.
The Albanian official said the five carried false Egyptian passports and were believed to be members of the Islamic Jihad movement. He said all five were deported to Egypt with help from American authorities.
On Aug. 6 -- one day before the Africa bombings -- an Arabic language newspaper based in London, al-Hayat, published a letter purportedly from Islamic Jihad vowing revenge against the United States for the arrests of several of its members in Albania.
Director of Press Relations Lee McClenny briefed.
KOSOVO -- Contrary to some press reports, current
efforts in Kosovo are not aimed at bringing Serbs and Kosovar Albanians
together for face-to-face talks, McClenny said. "We're in a negotiating
process right now that does not in fact require face-to-face discussions,"
he said. "Right now we're working with both sides exploring ideas and elements
for discussion -- essentially trying to agree on an agenda," he said.
Last month, "an agreement
in principle" was reached with the Kosovar Albanians to establish an all-party
executive to serve as a vehicle for negotiations with the Serbs.
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