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| Viewing file: Select action/file-type: <a name="newsitem951813174,73882,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serb Bus Blown Up by Mine in Mitrovica</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Michael Roddy<br><br>KOSOVSKA MITROVICA (Reuters) - A Serb bus was blown up Monday when it struck an anti-tank mine placed on a heavily traveled road in the tense Kosovo city of Mitrovica, French KFOR peacekeepers said.<br><br>Lt. Col. Patrick Chanliau said the bus was empty except for its driver when it hit the mine near a Muslim cemetery in the Serb side of the town. There were no injuries.<br><br>Chanliau said the explosion, which completely destroyed the vehicle, had not been an accident.<br><br>``It is clear to us that this mine was not there yesterday,'' he said. ``It is a road that is used frequently so we would have to say that it was deliberate.''<br><br>Both KFOR and Serb traffic used the road, he said.<br><br>An official of the company operating the bus said it was a regular line. ``It takes kids to school in the morning and brings workers home at night.''<br><br>The official said apart from the driver there was also a ticket taker on the bus. The official Yugoslav Tanjug news agency reported there were two people in the vehicle, and that none of them was injured.<br><br>Chanliau said French forces who make up the bulk of the KFOR peacekeepers in Mitrovica were still investigating the explosion. He could not say if there was any link between the blast and the second anniversary Monday of a fight between Serbs and KLA guerrillas in Likoshan, 22 miles west of the provincial capital Pristina, a key date in the ethnic violence that has ravaged Kosovo.<br><br>Albanian Ceremony<br><br>Former KLA rebels were expected to hold a ceremony in Likoshan to commemorate the battle in which 24 Albanians and nine Serb policemen were killed.<br><br>KFOR peacekeepers were also on guard for any disturbance in Mitrovica, the city divided between Serbs in the north and Albanians in the south.<br><br>Chanliau said that during routine weapons searches Sunday French forces had recovered several arms near a monument to miners on top of a hill in the northern part of Mitrovica.<br><br>He said the cache included two Ak 47s, an automatic pistol, a hunting rifle and seven detonators. But otherwise Mitrovica, scene of ethnic violence three times this month, was calm.<br><br>``We cannot be too optimistic but we should not be too pessimistic. For the moment the city is calm,'' he said.<br><br>At a police station of the U.N. civilian police in the southern part of the city, officers said that recent reinforcements sent to help calm the situation in Mitrovica had almost tripled the number of police there.<br><br>``It's like Christmas,'' said officer Chip Duncan, adding the number of police had risen to 98 from 35 from various countries.<br><br>Duncan said that their impact might not be felt immediately on the streets of the rundown mining city because the officers would have to find their way around.<br><br>Albanian newspapers reported that some Albanian families who had left northern Mitrovica during the recent violence had returned to their homes on a one-by-one basis that was not part of an organized U.N. and KFOR plan to return some 70 families.<br><br>U.N. and KFOR officials said they were unaware of the returns and could not comment. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951813151,19766,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Bosnian Serbs on trial for prison camp atrocities </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Guardian<br><br>Richard Norton-Taylor <br>Tuesday February 29, 2000 <br><br>The war crimes tribunal in The Hague yesterday began the trial of three Bosnian Serbs accused of the torture, rape, and murder, of thousands of Muslim and Croatian civilians at the Omarska prison camp, where western pictures of inmates in 1992 provoked international outrage. <br>In what prosecutors described as the first case to deal directly with "a system of concentration camps", Miroslav Kvocka, Milojica Kos and Mlado Radic were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for presiding over the atrocities at Omarska and other sites.<br><br>A fourth defendant, Zoran Zigic, a Bosnian Serb taxi driver, is accused of torturing and murdering prisoners.<br><br>The Australian prosecutor, Grant Niemann, told the Hague trbunal judges that "the images of skeletal malnutrition . . . sent shock waves around the world", when they were first broadcast.<br><br>Omarska was, he alleged, an integral part of the ethnic cleansing policy of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic: "This is about a government policy of persecution and ethnic cleansing. It was a crime committed on a massive scale," he said.<br><br>"The evidence will prove that thousands of Muslim and Croat detainees suffered and died because of their ethnicity, either directly at the hands of these accused or people under their authority," he said.<br><br>Serb forces swept through the Prijedor region of northern Bosnia, herding more than 6,000 Muslims and Croats into Omarska and the nearby Keraterm and Trnopolje camps, the tribunal was told.<br><br>Pointing to a replica of the Omarska camp, Mr Niemann described how new arrivals were beaten with batons and rifle butts and crowded into stiflingly hot rooms with no beds and meagre sanitary facilities.<br><br>Although the prison was predominantly male, several dozen women were held in the administration building. They worked as cleaners and were raped nightly by camp staff, he said.<br><br>Corpses accumulated out side an interrogation centre known as the White House and were dumped in graves in a meadow beside a razed mosque.<br><br>"We dug up those graves," said Mr Niemann, showing slides of exhumed bodies with what he called "blunt object injuries and bullet wounds to the head".<br><br>The prosecution say Mr Kvocka, 43, was responsible for much of what happened at Omarska as commander in June 1992 and later deputy commander. Mr Kos, 36, and Mr Radic, 47, said to be shift commanders, ordered guards to beat prisoners and sometimes participated themselves, prosecutors maintain.<br><br>Mr Zigic, 41, is accused of going on torture and murder rampages, forcing male prisoners to perform sexual acts with each other and to lie down on broken glass.<br><br>Of the 50,000 Muslims who lived in Prijedor before the ethnic war in Bosnia, only 6,000 remained after the conflict. The rest either fled or were killed, Mr Niemann told the tribunal. The Croatian population of 6,000 was cut by half. Those who remained have lived "in permanent fear and uncertainty".<br><br>In an opening statement, Mr Niemann told the tribunal that the evidence would prove "that the accused and others under their authority confined, beat, tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered many of the Bosnian and Croat detainees ... solely because of the victims' ethnicity".<br><br>He added: "It [ethnic cleansing] was certainly committed by more people than you see here today, by a large number of politicians, military police and loyal followers in the puppet entity . . . dangling on the strings of Slobodan Milosevic for the purpose of creating an ethnically pure greater Serbia."<br><br>Defence lawyers are expected to argue that their clients are scapegoats for the tribunal's inability to apprehend the alleged architects of that strategy higher up the military and political leadership.<br><br>Despite repeated calls from the Hague tribunal for their arrest, the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, remain free.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951813122,58550,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>U.N. Says Kosovo Serbs Are Targeted</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">PRISTINA (Reuters) - The United Nations warned on Monday of growing violence against Kosovo Serbs, including the murder of a physician and an anti-tank mine that destroyed a Serb bus.<br><br>A Serb community leader in the north of the troubled province accused Albanian militants of trying to provoke incidents between Serbs and the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo, while KFOR said it was keeping a sharp eye on the Serbian border, where diplomats say there has been a buildup of troops.<br><br>``Over the weekend, UNMIK police reported an increased level of violence against Serbs around Kosovo,'' said Susan Manuel, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).<br><br>Serb gynecologist Josef Vasic was shot dead Saturday in the eastern town of Gnjilane.<br><br>A Serb bus struck an anti-tank mine in the Serbian side of the tense northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica early Monday, wrecking the rear of the bus and leaving a crater in the main road to northern Kosovo.<br><br>French forces who control the area said only the driver and a ticket collector were aboard and neither was injured, but they said the mine had been deliberately set to cause damage on a road used not only by Serbs but also by KFOR.<br><br>Manuel said other less serious incidents, which caused a few minor injuries, included the use of hand grenades and other explosive devices in Gnjilane, Pecs, Mitrovica and other towns still occupied by Serbs.<br> <br>The attacks come at a time when the United Nations and KFOR are both trying to convince Serbs to stay in the ethnic- Albanian dominated province and to agree a plan to end the ethnic division of the flashpoint northern mining city of Mitrovica.<br><br>But Oliver Ivanovic, a leader of the Serbian National Council in Mitrovica, said the mine explosion showed that Albanian militants were trying to stir up trouble.<br><br>``They didn't succeed in causing trouble between Albanians and Serbs so now they are trying to provoke incidents between Serbs and KFOR,'' he said. ``I know that KFOR was the target and this was not done accidentally.''<br><br>Chief KFOR spokesman Henning Philipp said NATO forces in Kosovo were watching closely what diplomats have said is a buildup of Serbian troops along the border.<br><br>``What we are doing is monitoring the boundary...and controlling it,'' Philipp said.<br><br>Meanwhile, thousands of ethnic Albanians attended a ceremony in the Kosovo village of Likosane to mark the second anniversary of the first major clash between Serb police and guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951813098,26833,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Bildt says Balkans await change of Belgrade regime</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">UNITED NATIONS, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Many Balkan peace efforts remain largely a "big holding operation" pending a change in the Belgrade regime, whose leaders have been indicted as war criminals, U.N. envoy Carl Bildt told the Security Council on Monday. <br>"We can neither make peace without Belgrade, nor can we talk about the different issues of the region as a whole without taking in Serbia," he said, briefing an open council meeting as Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy for the Balkans. <br><br>"But nor is there any way in which we can deal with those personalities that are indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) or their close associates," Bildt added, alluding to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and some of his aides. <br><br>Referring to the conflicts that have afflicted Bosnia, Kosovo and other parts of the Balkans in recent years, he said: "We are thus, in a certain sense, in a situation in which many of our efforts in the region can be seen as little more than a big holding operation until change in Serbia opens up the prospect of moving forward with a proper peace process as well as with the wider regional agenda of reform, reconciliation and reintegration." <br><br>But just waiting for a transition in Belgrade is not acceptable, since there might be further conflicts, said Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister. <br><br>"We must actively seek change, we must meet the provocations that are there and will come further, and we must actively try to prevent existing tensions from boiling over into open conflict," he said. <br><br>Referring specifically to the situation between Serbia and Montenegro, he said: "As long as there is no change of regime in Belgrade these two republics of Yugoslavia are set on a somewhat slow but very steady collision course." <br><br>Milosevic had "grossly misused the federal institutions and grossly violated the rights of Montenegro" within that federation, Bildt said. <br><br>That the leadership of Montenegro reacted, not by seceding outright but by proposing a reformed relationship between Serbia and Montenegro, was an indication of responsibility and statesmanship that should not go unrewarded. <br><br>Bildt said the larger issue in the region was "the conflict between the forces of integration and the forces of disintegration." <br><br>"The conflict is between those who favour, or at least accept, integration within their societies as well as between them, and those who favour, often in the name of extreme nationalism, disintegration within their societies and between the nations." <br><br>Looking at the region today, "we have to conclude that the forces of disintegration are still stronger than the forces of integration," he said. <br><br>A "true deal" would be one that met the minimum demands of everyone, but the maximum demands of no one, he said, adding that this was the essence of the 1995 political deal that resulted in a peace agreement for Bosnia. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951722138,11822,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>NATO General Hopes G.I.'s Will Return to Kosovo Town</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The New York Times <br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>PRISTINA, Kosovo, Feb. 27 -- Because of the risk to the soldiers, the Pentagon has refused to allow American troops to return to northern Mitrovica, the section dominated by Serbs in the divided town that has become a flash point of ethnic tension in Kosovo, senior United Nations and Western officials say. <br><br>Gen. Klaus Reinhardt of Germany, the commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping forces in Kosovo known as KFOR, said negotiations were continuing. <br><br>Asked directly in an interview here today whether the Americans had refused to send troops back to northern Mitrovica, General Reinhardt paused for a time and then said: "Your question comes a couple of days too early. We're working on this question." <br><br>General Reinhardt has pushed hard to internationalize the KFOR troops in Mitrovica, which is in the French zone of Kosovo. When American troops first entered the north to search for weapons a week ago, angry Serbs hurled snowballs, stones and bricks at them, and they finally withdrew. The soldiers were criticized for aggressive tactics such as breaking down doors. <br><br>The general said that because he did not want the Serbs to dictate who would patrol northern Mitrovica, he sent American and German troops back into the north a few days later, but at 5 A.M., to do a weapons search. <br><br>But officials here say the Americans, who are in charge of the tense eastern sector of Kosovo, do not want to send troops back to Mitrovica. General Reinhardt said many countries in the peacekeeping force that had refused his requests to help patrol Mitrovica in November and December were now willing to take part after violence this month killed at least 11 people, most of them Albanian. <br><br>"Today a lot of the restrictions on me that were in place in December are gone," the general said, praising the Swedes, Finns and Danes in particular for their willingness to take on the risks of Mitrovica. "We'll see when the Americans go back there." <br><br>Despite the Pentagon's reluctance, officials say that Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has been on the telephone almost daily with Bernard Kouchner, the head of the United Nations mission here, urging a solution to the Mitrovica issue. <br><br>General Reinhardt also said he had pressed the Americans hard in the last month to do a better job of securing Kosovo's eastern border with the rest of Serbia. The goal there is to prevent armed Albanians, some of them in uniform, from attacking targets inside Serbia proper, especially in the three-mile-wide demilitarized zone where Serbian troops are not allowed to enter, although the police are. <br><br>Asked why such armed groups -- offshoots of the supposedly dismantled Kosovo Liberation Army -- were allowed to enter Serbia from Kosovo, the general bristled. <br><br>"We're not allowing it," he said firmly, noting that KFOR had arrested six armed people on Saturday trying to go across the border. "I told people to arrest anyone who tries to go out of our sector into eastern Kosovo. We close down the border as much as possible. We recognized that something was brewing, and my instructions were to seal that border more hermetically before there is a real crisis." <br><br>American troops have now built watchtowers along the border with Serbia, near the towns of Bujanovac, Presevo and Medvedja, which have majority Albanian populations and which more radical Albanians refer to as "eastern Kosovo." <br><br>Armed Albanians wearing uniforms with shoulder patches like those of the K.L.A., but representing an organization dubbed the Liberation Army of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja, have been seen in the demilitarized zone. In response, the government of Yugoslavia put four more militarized police units into the area, alarming NATO officials. <br><br>The area is also known as an entry point for drug smuggling, and General Reinhardt said he was still asking capitals for specialized officers in drug interdiction. The United Nations police, badly under strength, has also requested officers with such expertise, but in vain. <br><br>The official Yugoslav press agency, Tanjug, reported today that a Serbian policeman and an ethnic Albanian guerrilla were killed on Saturday night and three Serb policemen were wounded in a shootout near the village of Konculj, when Albanians ambushed a police patrol with automatic weapons and hand grenades. <br><br>It was the third recent attack against the police in the area. The Serbian police said a bomb damaged the courthouse in Bujanovac on Friday night, in an attack they blamed on "Albanian terrorists." <br><br>Western officials have accused Belgrade of trying to destabilize Kosovo, while the Yugoslavs accuse KFOR of not stopping the infiltration of armed Albanians from Kosovo. <br><br>General Reinhardt said the Kosovo peacekeeping force was now operating more intensely to check the province's northern border with Serbia proper, above Mitrovica, to prevent the flow of arms and undercover police or intelligence officers into Kosovo from Serbia. <br><br>Danish and Belgian battalions are checking vehicles more vigorously, he said, and last week the peacekeepers began to use a computer at a checkpoint to register who goes in and out. Although Kosovo is formally part of Yugoslavia, KFOR says it has the right to deny entrance to suspicious people or to deport them. <br><br>"Normally the military does not do such work," General Reinhardt said. "But there is no point in complaining. This is an area of big concern for me, and I have sent officers with specialized training to assist in this job, and I have sent my deputy to supervise, and I'm feeling very comfortable" about the security of northern Kosovo. <br><br>The general said he had been geting most of the money and personnel he needed for his military operation, but that the NATO governments "that decided to get us here" were less supportive of the United Nations civilian administration here. <br><br>In particular, he said, the failure to send promised funding for the civilian budget and to send promised international police officers has meant that his troops must do a great deal more policing than they want to do, or are trained or equipped to do. With only 2,000 international police officers here, he said, considerably fewer than 800 are on the streets on any given day. <br><br>"We're missing 3,000 police officers," said the general, who has initiated joint patrols by his troops with the police. "But there's no use complaining. It won't change the situation, so I have to make the best out of it." <br><br>The lack of international prosecutors and judges also annoys him, and he acknowledged the reluctance of Albanian prosecutors and judges to convict other Albanians. <br><br>Last week, he said, two Serbs were killed and KFOR soldiers immediately arrested suspects, having tracked them with dogs, and found the weapons used. "They turned these guys over to the police and the prosecutor, and the prosecutor released them the same day," he said. "How can we enforce law and order if this takes place?" <br><br>General Reinhardt admitted with a degree of embarrassment that someone in Mitrovica had stolen his personal revolver while Albanians were cheering him last Monday, as he sought to defuse a large Albanian demonstration. Normally the weapon is secured to his holster on a cable, but the day before, the ring attaching the pistol and the cable broke, he said. <br><br>"People were touching me and pulling me and shaking my hands, and it just went," he said. "It happened. So what? For me the key thing was to prevent the crowd from becoming violent, and when we told them to go home, they went."</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951722121,26141,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Albanian gunmen stir trouble in Serbia </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Their own community denounces KLA fighters seeking to provoke a Nato intervention across the border<br>The Guardian<br>Jonathan Steele in Gnjilane <br><br>Armed clashes between ethnic Albanian fighters and Yugoslav forces in the border region between Serbia proper and the province of Kosovo threatens to turn into a new flashpoint and raises the possibility of Nato troops operating inside Serbia. <br>The new trouble spot is the south-western corner of Serbia which is largely populated by Albanians. Former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army have started to operate in the border villages, carrying guns, wearing paramilitary uniforms and attacking Serb police in an apparent bid to provoke a Serb reaction and Nato help. <br><br>A Serb policeman died and three others were wounded on Saturday night when Albanian gunmen ambushed a patrol on the main road between Gnjilane and Bujanovac. The attack with automatic rifles and grenades occurred about six kilometres inside Serbia near the village of Konsulj. The police returned fire, killing an Albanian, according to the state-owned news agency, Tanjug. The incident followed explosions in Bujanovac the previous night. <br><br>Although General Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme commander in Europe, has warned Albanians that Nato does not want to see fighting, United States forces are taking no chances. They have started to build a mini-base right on the border line between Kosovo and Serbia proper, close to the village of Dobrosin, from where tanks and troops in an observation tower look down on the increasingly brazen street forays by guerrillas in broad daylight. <br><br>Albanian leaders in the Kosovo's main city, Pristina, as well as ordinary people in the region, say they are against cross-border violence for fear of reprisals against the 70,000 Albanians who live in southern Serbia and a new round of ethnic cleansing by Serb security forces. But evidence on the ground suggests that embittered and now demobilised guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army have started armed patrols and military training for local people. <br><br>In their first interview with journalists at the weekend, local gunmen described what they called "the little army in uniform which arose among people to defend ourselves". <br><br>There was a strange sense of deja vu as we made the encounter, just like two years ago when the world first became aware of the Kosovo Liberation Army itself - the whispered contacts, the trail on muddy roads behind a car, the walk on snow-covered fields and through coppices of dwarf oak, and finally the meeting in a village house with a group of half a dozen men with AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifles. <br><br>The difference this time was that instead of the red-and-gold shoulder badge with the Albanian eagle and the letters UCK (the Albanian initials for the KLA), they now wear badges saying UCPMB, the initials of Presevo, Medveda, and Bujenovac. These are three towns in southern Serbia, in the area the guerrillas call "eastern Kosovo". <br><br>Speaking the Swiss dialect of French, their leader, dressed in civilian clothes, said: "Our soldiers have not come from somewhere else. They are from this village and region. It was part of Kosovo originally, but the borders were changed after the second world war. People here must have the right to decide how and where they want to live." <br><br>The UCPMB was formed on January 26, he said, after Serb police entered the village of Dobrosin and killed Isa Saqipi, 31, and his brother Shaip, 35. They were innocently cutting wood, he insisted. "There have always been incidents but after that January event people began to reflect and organise," he said. <br><br>He acknowledged that half of Dobrosin's 2,500 inhabitants had fled across the border to Kosovo. The two broth ers' graves, a mere 200 yards from the barrels of the American tanks on the hill, are covered with wreaths. <br><br>Dobrosin lies just inside the five-kilometre-deep "Ground Safety Zone", which the Yugoslav forces accepted when they signed the agreement which ended Nato's bombing last June and authorised the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo (K-For). Local Serb police are allowed to operate in the zone, but Yugoslav army troops and special police with heavy weapons are forbidden. <br><br>Although US forces who control Kosovo's eastern sector send low-flying helicopters along the border line, they respect Serbia's sovereignty by not penetrating the buffer zone. But the ceasefire agreement has a major loophole. Negotiated in a rush as part of the package which put Kosovo under United Nations administration, it said any violation "would be subject to K-For military action" but did not specify what exactly might trigger a K-For response. <br><br>"If atrocities occur in the area, we will go in and take action. We're working on what the definition of an atrocity is," Major Michael Boehme, information officer Camp Monteith, the US base in Gnjilane, told the Guardian yesterday. <br><br>The K-For commander, General Klaus Reinhardt, along with Dr Bernard Kouchner, the top UN administrator and the American general in command of the eastern sector, were preparing detailed guidelines, he said.Gary Carrell, an American policeman who commands the UN police in the area, said his staff had held "preliminary meetings" with the Serbian police on the border in the last few weeks. <br><br>Albanians cross the border freely and the main aim was to prevent people involved in assassinations of Serbs from slipping away. "We're pretty sure the suspects in the killing of three Serbs in Kosovo last month were from Presevo," he said. But the plan for further meetings with the Serb police was vetoed by Jock Covey, the American who is deputy head of the UN administration. The Serb police, known as the MUP, won a fearful reputation among Albanians during last year's expulsions and killings. <br><br>It is hard to gauge what support the UCPMB has. Hundreds of people from the region have fled to Kosovo in recent weeks because of stepped-up Serb police action and alleged intimidation. <br><br>An inhabitant of Bujenovac, who has brought his family to Kosovo, said he spoke for many when he denounced the UCPMB. But he insisted on anonymity. "In Presevo it is not so bad, since the population is 95% Albanian. In Bujenovac where the Serbs are 40% it is much tougher for Albanians," he said. <br><br>Yugoslav officials agree that violence in the region is growing. General Vladimir Lazarevic, the commander of the Yugoslav Third Army, told a Belgrade newspaper recently that "the adverse political and security situation in Kosovo is spreading to municipalities bordering Kosovo". <br><br>But he rejected the notion that Albanians leaving the area for Kosovo were refugees. "This is a plan aimed at convincing the world that Serbia is expelling Albanians." He added that K-For wanted to provide a pretext for more drastic measures, diplomatic, political, and perhaps military.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951722104,81490,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>A family blown apart in Kosovo's divided city </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Observer<br><br>They survived the war - only to see a son killed and daughter maimed on the front line between Serbs and Albanians. Emma <br>Daly reports from Mitrovica<br><br>She is a survivor, a teenage girl with an iron will and the family's great hope for a better future. With her parents and her two younger brothers, Rrezarta Rrukeci made it unscathed through Kosovo's vicious war. <br><br>Despite the Nato bombardment and the expulsion of a million Albanians, the family never left home in the city of Mitrovica and were there to cheer the arrival of the international peacekeepers. <br><br>But this week Rrezarta, 17, who wants to be a lawyer, is preparing to travel to Slovenia. Perched up in bed, wearing pyjamas covered in teddy bears, she pulls back the duvet to reveal a bandaged stump and the zipper scar down her chest where the shrapnel hit. <br><br>'Oh, I forgot to tell you,' she says. 'My brother later died.' <br><br>On 4 February Rrezarta and her family, along with other relatives and neighbours, cowered in the apartment as the sounds of rampaging Serbs came closer. The front door was barricaded with a wardrobe. The voice of a neighbour among the crowd outside demanded that the family open up. 'Of course we disobeyed - we knew if we left they would kill us all. So they started shooting and then they threw the first grenade.' <br><br>The blast shattered windows, then a second explosion set the room on fire. 'Everything was in flames, and suddenly I saw holes appear in the glass and I realised a sniper was shooting from the building opposite. I went to the kitchen to get water for the fire.' <br><br>Then, a third explosion: 'I was on the floor and my leg was in my arms. It had been blown off and into my arms - that's why I lost a finger. I was trying to crawl to the next room. I opened the door to the dining area and everything had fallen to the floor. I saw my neighbour with her stomach spilling out and my brother, who was also hurt. <br><br>'I was praying to God, please take me, because the pain was...' <br><br>Her voice trails off. <br><br>Rrezarta and her family were victims of an orgy of violence that erupted in the divided city of Mitrovica on 4 February, the day after a rocket attack on a refugee bus killed two elderly Serbs. The multinational K-For troops and the undermanned UN international police tried to control the mobs but by the end of the night, eight Albanians were dead and at least three more would die of their injuries. <br><br>'This is what makes you feel so sad, and is so surprising,' says Rrezarta. 'We survived the war, and now...' <br><br>The seeds of the conflict were sown last summer when tens of thousands of Serbs fled Kosovo for fear of Albanian vengeance and French peacekeepers decided that maintaining calm in Mitrovica would best be achieved by discouraging Albanians from crossing the Ibar river to the northern half of the city where 20,000 Serbs were holed up. <br><br>Victorious Albanians wanted, understandably, to return to their homes in the north of the city - they were also fearful of partition, nervous that Serbs would create a de facto border at Mitrovica, thus keeping control of the Trepca mine. This ancient industrial complex is seen by many as Kosovo's potential economic salvation and is also of enormous symbolic importance to the Albanians, who are convinced Belgrade is scheming to split the province and take back the mine. <br><br>But now that most of the Serbs have long since fled, northern Mitrovica is the last viable enclave they hold - and the they are determined to stop their Albanian neighbours returning. 'It's better to keep that line [on the Ibar river],' says Oliver Ivanovic, a local Serb who has evolved into a smooth and media-friendly spokesman, despite Albanian allegations that he was involved in wartime atrocities. <br><br>He argues that because K-For was unable to prevent revenge attacks on Serbs elsewhere in Kosovo, there is no reason to think they will protect Serbs in Mitrovica - therefore, local Serbs must 'defend themselves'. <br><br>Such self-defence has this month forced the eviction of almost 700 Albanians and the hasty departure of another 1,500, who crossed the fortified western bridge and sought refuge in the Albanian half. K-For responded by flooding the city with troops and mounting Operation Ibar, a search for weapons which has led to a few arrests and some arms seizures. <br><br>But 2,000 of the 2,500 reinforcements have now been withdrawn after tensions calmed following a peaceful march from Pristina to Mitrovica last Monday. Although troops fired tear-gas to restrain some 200 trouble-makers who apparently wanted to cross the bridge to the Serb side, the demonstration was hailed by UN and Nato as a splendid and civilised effort to draw attention to Albanian desires to unify the city. Nato Secretary-General George Robertson yesterday insisted there were sufficient alliance troops in Kosovo to contain the crisis. <br><br>Around 4,300 soldiers are now patrolling Mitrovica, assisting 450 international police.'If you want to get to the heart of the matter, you have to look at it from the other person's point of view,' says Lieutenant-Colonel Nick Carter of the Royal Greenjackets, who was sent to Mitrovica to enforce Operation Ibar. <br><br>But that does not happen in Kosovo. And if Albanians and Serbs cannot live together, are not even willing to try, how are the UN and Nato to secure a stable, peaceful and multi-ethnic Kosovo? <br><br>One UN official in the city points out that it took years of patience to create even a semblance of normality in other Balkan cities split by ethnic wars. But as Carter says: 'This was something that has been festering here since the middle of June. The people here will only be patient for so long...'</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951722081,2188,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Kosovo heads for ethnic partition </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br>By Raymond Whitaker in Mitrovica, Kosovo <br><br>"I don't feel at home here," said Semka Rakic, 25. "I am uncomfortable about taking someone else's flat." A virulent green picture scrolled rapidly on the television, the property of a departed family of Albanians. Clearly Semka had not yet worked out how to operate the controls. <br><br>From the window, eight floors up, there was a fine view of the snowy mountains surrounding Mitrovica, the ugly, polluted Kosovo town where the business of Nato's war against Slobodan Milosevic remains unfinished. Below, one could see the River Ibar, which divides the Serbs of northern Mitrovica from the main part of the town, and the heavily-guarded bridge spanning it that has become the focal point for communal enmity. "We found the door smashed," said Semka, "so we moved in." <br><br>At the beginning of February, 20 Albanian families lived in this building. Now only one elderly couple remains, too afraid to speak to strangers. The rest fled across the river three weeks ago, after the worst bout of violence Kosovo has seen since the K-For peace-keepers arrived last June. <br><br>Two Serbs died when their United Nations bus was attacked, and 15 were hurt when a café was bombed. Eight Albanians were killed by a revenge mob; opinions differ as to whether it formed spontaneously or was organised. A week later the French troops controlling the sector came under fire from Albanians, who regard them as pro-Serb; two French soldiers were wounded and one Albanian died. At the same time Serbs fired at British peace-keepers guarding the bridge, whom they regard as pro-Albanian, and the British fired back. <br><br>All this culminated last week in the biggest demonstration the town has seen. On Monday 20,000 Albanians marched to the bridge, and a couple of thousand almost broke through. "We heard they were on their way, and there was panic in the streets," said Semka. "I thought of escaping, but my sister was still here, so we just hid in the flat. We don't go outdoors much, because you can be killed just like that." <br><br>Why stay if it is so dangerous? "I did go to Serbia with my husband for a while, but there's no work and no money there. My other sister's husband is unemployed, and she earns only 20 Deutschmarks a month [about £6.60] in a shop. Their rent is DM150. There are no jobs here either, but it's easier, because you don't have to pay rent, or for electricity or water." <br><br>This is the little-advertised nature of northern Kosovo's connection to Belgrade. In this enclave, where few Albanians ever lived, the water, the power, the newspapers, the food and the state salaries still come over the border from Serbia. Unlike the rest of Kosovo, almost everyone has a (free) telephone: a homesick Semka and her younger sister, Biljana, occasionally call up Vucitrn, where they used to live, and speak to any Albanians willing to speak to them. "If the people who used to live here come back," said Semka, "we would leave – as long as K-For secures our return to Vucitrn." <br><br>She is repeating the line taken by Oliver Ivanovic, the self-proclaimed leader of north Mitrovica's Serbs. In his office nearby, dominated by a huge Serbian tricolour, the dapper, English-speaking Mr Ivanovic questions the speed of the UN administration in seeking to return displaced Albanians to his territory. K-For is also starting to build a footbridge over the Ibar, so that Albanians might avoid Mr Ivanovic's force of "bridge monitors", armed with walkie-talkies. <br><br>"In eight months the UN and K-For have done nothing to return the hundreds of thousands of Serbs driven out of Prizren, Pec or Pristina," he says. "This is all we have left, and we are staying." <br><br>According to senior figures in Nato and the US who spoke out last week, Mr Ivanovic is Belgrade's man. He denies it, but the more northern Kosovo is purged of Albanians, the easier it becomes to achieve what may be his ultimate aim: to join his enclave to the rest of Serbia, and to make the Ibar the frontier with a Kosovo which all Albanians believe must become independent. <br><br>Some link this to a rise in tension at the other end of Kosovo. The former Kosovo Liberation Army is said to be stirring up Albanian villages across the border in the far south of Serbia, where it meets Macedonia, while Serbian paramilitaries infiltrate Kosovo in retaliation. Perhaps an exchange of territory may result, in which Serbia gets northern Kosovo and the Albanians get what they already call "eastern Kosovo". <br><br>When the theory is put to Mr Ivanovic's opposite number across the river, Bajram Rexhepe, who has Albanian and American flags on his desk, all he will say is that this is "big politics". But he admits: "It is a reality that the north has a geographic and ethnic connection with Serbia."</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951556164,32598,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serb opposition must prove unity, intellectuals say</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Yugoslav intellectuals urged the recently united Serb opposition on Friday to strengthen their campaign for democratic change in the politically isolated Balkan country. <br>They also urged the opposition to offer voters a clear vision of the future, which would immediately come into effect once President Slobodan Milosevic is defeated at the ballot box. <br><br>In turn, the G17plus expert network said it would contribute expertise and other support in a joint bid to bring democracy and prevent the isolated Balkan state from falling apart. <br><br>"We will support changes. We will do our best to make as many people as possible take part in a ballot and vote for changes," said Miroljub Labus, the chairman of the G17plus and a leading Yugoslav economist. <br><br>The feuding opposition buried hatchets on January 10, agreeing to work together to demand early general elections. <br><br>"But it is vital for the opposition to (also) offer a single list of candidates and a credible programme," Labus told a news conference. <br><br>The G17plus network -- set up last October by the G17 group of independent economists -- groups judges, writers, political scientists, musicians, historians, producers, and sociologists. <br><br>"We will use all our influence to create a wide coalition of Serb democratic forces and the Montenegrin government in a last effort to preserve the Yugoslav federation," Labus said. <br><br>The pro-western government of Montenegro has said it would not take party in a ballot organised by Milosevic's government. <br><br>But Labus said he believed the Montenegrins could change their mind if the opposition offered them self-determination. <br><br>He also urged authorities to be more tolerant of its political opponents, stop violence against media and students, and "stop fuelling a psychosis of a civil war and attempts to introduce a state of emergency through a back door." <br><br>The opposition has called on Milosevic to step down since June 1999, when NATO's 11-week bombing campaign ended. <br><br>The opposition wants early elections for the Serbian parliament, a key Yugoslav institution. But the ruling coalition of neo-communists, socialists and ultra-nationalists has so far rejected demands for early general polls. <br><br>"The election campaign has begun. But it seems there will be no elections this spring," said Mladjan Dinkic, chief coordinator for the G17 group of independent economists. <br><br>To boost the chances of an opposition bloc in a future ballot, Dinkic said the G17 planned to organise an international fund-raising conference to rebuild Serbia. <br><br>"Following Mr Labus's meeting with French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine and his German counterpart Joschka Fischer last year, we are preparing the first donors conference for Serbia. Pledges made at the conference before the elections will be made available after the poll," he added. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951556148,29171,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serb Agents Fuel Kosovo Violence </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Belgrade has dispatched agents provocateurs to Kosovo in an effort to undermine international peace-keeping efforts.<br>International War&Peace Report<br>By Miroslav Filipovic in Kraljevo<br><br>Slobodan Milosevic has been smuggling elite police and federal army units into Kosovo to forment unrest between local Serbs and Albanians, Yugoslav military sources have told IWPR.<br><br>Special forces left behind in the province as ‘sleepers’ following the withdrawal of Milosevic’s forces last June have also been activated. (See BCR No. 103, 17-Dec-99, “Serb ‘Illegals’ Operate Behind Enemy Lines in Kosovo.”)<br><br>Both groups were involved in orchestrating the recent violence in Mitrovica. Snipers from elite Serbian police forces shot dead at least four Albanians.<br><br>The admissions by senior military sources in southern Serbia add weight to NATO claims that Yugoslav forces were directly involved in the unrest in the ethnically divided northern Kosovo town.<br><br>The IWPR sources reveal that while Belgrade officials were publicly denying any involvement in the violence, which left eleven people dead, they were privately exhilarated by the success of their intervention.<br><br>Milosevic’s main aim is to sabotage the international peace-keeping efforts in Kosovo.<br><br>But at the same time, the sources say he is keen to bolster support at home by casting the Serb minority in the province as defenceless victims of Albanian aggression.<br><br>A police center in the village of Brzece in southern Serbia, close to the border with Kosovo, is reported to have been the base for the infiltration of Serbian forces into Kosovo.<br><br>IWPR sources say that Yugoslav troops and policemen change into civilian clothes and go on missions deep into Kosovo territory.<br><br>There are also suggestions they disguise themselves as NATO troops. Eye witnesses claim they have seen KFOR uniforms in storehouses at the Brzece base.<br><br>Policemen deployed at the base speak Albanian and would have no trouble passing themselves off as Kosovars. Interior ministry officials are also able to issue them with valid identification papers.<br><br>Staff at the center are replaced every 15 days. Arrivals and departures take place at night to maintain the cloak of secrecy around the operation.<br><br>The last reinforcement, three buses of policemen armed to the teeth, arrived in Brzece on February 15.<br><br>The infiltrators are joining forces with a small number of Yugoslav army and Serbian police officers left behind in Kosovo after the withdrawal of Milosevic’s forces last year.<br><br>They spent many years on active service in Kosovo, built houses, bought property and started families there. It is also believed that the army has persuaded many of them to stay by offering them bigger flats and higher salaries.<br><br>There have also been reports that the federal military authorities have sought to secretly encourage servicemen to return to Kosovo with a range of inducements.<br><br>The ‘sleepers’ have kept a low profile for the last few months, but have now been activated as part of Belgrade’s attempts to undermine KFOR and the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).<br><br>“In this phase of the Kosovo crisis, the activation of a small number of ‘sleepers’ is designed to make KFOR and UNMIK appear incompetent,” a Yugoslav military source told IWPR.<br><br>The IWPR sources say the Yugoslav military believes its intervention in Mitrovica has frustrated KFOR peace-keeping efforts in the town.<br><br>Certainly, NATO appears to be rapidly running out of ideas how to unify the town, especially after the recent clashes. Their latest response has been to dispatch 700 French troops and there are plans to bring in a further 2,000.<br><br>But IWPR source says it will be months before relations and trust between Serbs, Albanians and NATO troops will be restored. <br><br>Miroslav Filipovic is an independent journalist from Kraljevo in Serbia. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951556126,70107,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Nato looks to boost Kosovo forces but 'crisis is over' </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Ian Black in Brussels <br><br>Nato rushed to calm fears about Kosovo last night, pledging to keep its forces up to strength, but claiming that the immediate crisis in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovice was now over. <br>Speaking after an emergency meeting of the north Atlantic council, the alliance's governing body, the Nato secretary general, Lord Robertson, insisted that the situation was under control. <br><br>"Mitrovice is a potential flashpoint. It flared up but we dealt with the unrest quickly and decisively," he told reporters in Brussels. "K-For has dealt with the situation firmly and even-handedly. <br><br>"We are determined to keep K-For at the right strength to allow it to carry out all its security tasks in Kosovo." <br><br>Reinforcements could be announced next week, after Britain, Italy and Spain reportedly expressed willingness to provide more peacekeeping troops for the troubled Serbian province. France has already offered to send another 600-700 men. <br><br>Officials at Nato headquarters said another option was to deploy forces from outside the 37,000 under K-For command but which are being held in a "strategic reserve" in the region. <br><br>There was an attempt to play down the dimensions of the crisis, which has erupted uncomfortably close to next month's first anniversary of Nato's war against Yugoslavia. But troubling questions about ambiguous policies and inadequate means remain. <br><br>"It was never a question of going round the table and pointing a finger and saying 'you're not doing the job'," one senior diplomat said last night. "This wasn't about numbers and who was going to cough up." <br><br>Concern has focused on the fact that some K-For participants have allowed their contributions to slip - limiting the ability of commanders to redeploy quickly within Kosovo. <br><br>Others, privately accused of not pulling their weight, have not been willing to have their troops deployed away from their agreed command areas, in trouble spots like Mitrovice. <br><br>General Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme commander in Europe, appeared before the council for the second time this week while Gen Klaus Reinhardt of Germany, the K-For commander, addressed ambassadors by video link from Pristina. Gen Clark has formally requested three new battalions - 1,800 to 2,000 troops. <br><br>No decision was made on Gen Clark's request, but the alliance's military committee was ordered to examine troop needs and report back to the council next week. <br><br>The defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, under pressure because resources are already stretched, said that Britain - the largest contributor to K-For - would see what others had to offer. <br><br>Tensions have been high in Mitrovice since a grenade attack on a United Nations bus in early February killed two elderly Serbs. Revenge attacks followed, leading K-For troops to carry out extensive searches to seize weapons. <br><br>Nato claims that the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, is orchestrating a destabilisation campaign in the city, which contains the most significant Serb community remaining in Kosovo, and that ethnic Albanians are also trying to foment trouble. <br><br>Bernard Kouchner, the French head of the UN civilian operation in Kosovo, yesterday demanded that more police be sent to the province. "I need a lot more policemen, a lot more. I need about 2,500 more. Even the slightest bit more would be a gift for us," he said in a radio interview.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951556104,836,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>4,000 Serbs Vow to Defend Town Sector in Kosovo </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The New York Times<br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 25 -- Four thousand Serbs rallied here today and promised to defend the Serbian district of this ethnically divided town. They called for international peacekeepers to organize a plan to let them return to their houses. <br>Protesting the suffering of Serbs at the hands of ethnic Albanians, the protesters organized a rally much larger than one last week. The rally today was the Serbs' response to a protest by 25,000 Albanians on the southern side of the city on Monday. <br><br>As the protest developed today, peacekeeping troops moved out in force in case of violence. But the rally proceeded peacefully. <br><br>Speakers called for unity and strength in the face of Albanian efforts to force the Serbs to leave the last major city in Kosovo. <br><br>"In Pristina, the Serbs have disappeared," said Marko Jaksic, a leader of the Serbian National Council here. "There are no more Serbs in the towns of Prizren or Pec. During these eight months, 300,000 Serbs were forced to abandon their homes. Hundreds of churches have been burnt, and settlements have been ethnically cleansed." <br><br>"We have only this town left," Mr. Jaksic said. "Should we leave this town to settle in a new country? They are trying to force us to leave. But we cannot and do not dare go from here. All Serbs in other parts of Kosovo are watching us. We must endure." <br><br>The Serbian population of Kosovo has been reduced to isolated enclaves, except in Mitrovica, where they dominate the northern district and the region north to the boundary with Serbia. The executive head of the Serbian National Council and acknowledged leader of the Serbs in northern Kosovo, Oliver Ivanovic, called for people to show courage if Albanians tried to storm across the bridge that links the two sectors, as they did on Monday. <br><br>"There is no question we are going to stay," Mr. Ivanovic told the rally. "Maybe they will try again like last Monday, but they will not succeed. You showed you have courage." <br><br>He also urged Serbs who had fled Kosovo to return, saying: "We are calling others to show courage and come back. Kosovo is not Kosovo without Serbs. Our destiny is to live beside Albanians, if not with them." <br><br>Mr. Ivanovic said that next week he and United Nations leaders would discuss the return of some of the hundreds of Albanians who had been expelled from the Serbian district in recent weeks. But the United Nations and the NATO-led forces have to realize that the Serbs stand in the most danger in Kosovo, he added. <br><br>The mood of the crowd was uncertain and fearful. "It is, maybe, a farewell party," said an economist who gave only his first name, Boban. "If the Albanians return in big numbers, they will expel us. How can they say they want to live with us when everywhere else they throw us out?" </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951485347,35924,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>UN strives for unity in Mitrovice </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Guardian<br><br>Jonathan Steele in Mitrovice <br>Friday February 25, 2000 <br><br>UN officials yesterday stepped up plans to escort ethnic Albanian refugees back to their homes in northern Mitrovice, the city that is currently the worst flashpoint in Kosovo. <br>The first of 1,500 Albanians who fled Serb attacks on their homes during the past two weeks are to be screened today by a UN committee in the south of the divided city, where they have taken shelter. Officials say they will be asking people to prove they lived in the north. <br><br>Stung by the latest ethnic cleansing - and by accusations from US and Nato officials that the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, was behind the turmoil in the north of the city - the UN administrator for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, announced this week that Mitrovice would be transformed into a "united city", doing away with de facto partition that sees Serbs predominating on the north side of the river Ibar and ethnic Albanians on the south. <br><br>He also announced that he was increasing efforts to create a joint Serb and Albanian city administration. Oliver Ivanovic, the head of the local branch of the Serb National Council, was told by Mr Kouchner yesterday that he must cooperate with the new scheme. <br><br>The Serbs have been running a shadow government in northern Mitrovice. Such organisations, including those run by Albanians elsewhere in Kosovo, were outlawed last month. <br><br>The UN also plans to build a footbridge across the river Ibar within the next three weeks to connect the southern part of the city with an enclave of mainly Albanian houses, known as Little Bosnia, on the Serb-dominated northern side. Little Bosnia is surrounded by vehicles and troops of the Nato-led international peacekeeping force, K-For, but its inhabitants are virtually trapped. <br><br>Canadian troops yesterday stood guard by the barbed wire on the main bridge in Mitrovice, replacing British contingents which left yesterday. US troops who conducted weapons searches on Wednesday have also been withdrawn, to be replaced by Italians and Spanish. The Serb and Alban ian demonstrators who confronted each other across the bridge earlier this week have dispersed. <br><br>After violent incidents on Sunday, when Serbs stoned the American troops during weapons searches, Wednesday's searches were largely symbolic. The K-For commander, General Klaus Reinhardt, apparently did not want to give the impression that the Americans had retreated. They have since pulled out of the city. <br><br>A K-For spokesman said the massive search operations in the city were over for the time being, with the focus moving further north yesterday to the area beyond the city which adjoins the border with Serbia. There have been repeated allegations that Serb police and security forces in civilian clothes have been infiltrating. <br><br>Belgian troops mounted an operation in Leposavic yesterday and discovered eight AK47 assault rifles in Serb hands, according to Captain Olivier St Leger, a K-For spokesman in Mitrovice. <br><br>Mitrovice used to have an Albanian majority on both sides of the river Ibar. But after the UN moved into Kosovo in June, Serbs took over flats which had been home to Albanians before last year's ethnic cleansing. <br><br>The aim was partly to create a Serb fortress and to partition the city. When Serbs in southern Mitrovice found themselves forced out as Albanians returned from refugee camps abroad, the population of an gry Serbs in the north increased. <br><br>Mr Kouchner is trying to overcome the partition by assuring Serbs they will not be pushed out of the north if they let Albanian residents moves back in there. Up to now, the policy of the French military commander in charge of Mitrovice has been to block any large movement of Albanian men across the bridges. <br><br>"I understand that Serbs are scared and we have to work on building their confidence," Mr Kouchner said this week. <br><br>Mitrovice's new property committee will look at Serb claims to flats in the south as well as the plight of the Albanians who fled. <br></font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951485319,88570,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Tense Kosovo town braces for Serb demonstration</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Financial Times<br><br><br>By Michael Roddy - 25 Feb 2000 12:26GMT<br> <br><br>KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Feb 25 (Reuters) - The tense Kosovo city of Mitrovica braced for a rally by Serbs on Friday while ethnic Albanians prepared to return to their flats they abandoned during violent clashes last week.<br><br>Canadian troops who control the main Ibar River bridge dividing the city rolled out barbed wire across the span to prevent clashes. <br><br>Officials said they were not expecting trouble and predicted the number of Serb demonstrators would not approach anything like the estimated 40,000 to 50,000 Albanians who marched on Mitrovica on Monday. <br><br>I expect there will only be 2,000 to 3,000 Serbs, said a U.N. police source. And I don't think they will be crazy enough to cause any trouble. <br><br>Oliver Ivanovic, the president of the executive board of the Serb National Council in Mitrovica, was quoted by state news agency Tanjug as saying: The Serbs will gather with only one wish -- to convey to the world their determination to stay and survive in Kosovo. <br><br>The United Nations and humanitarian agencies meanwhile registered Albanian families who fled three apartment blocks in the Serb north of the city in mid February after a night of Serb-led violence which left nine dead. <br><br>By late morning some 46 families had signalled their intention to return to their homes, UNMIK police officer Nathalie Dore said. <br><br>We will check to see that the flats are not occupied by the people who are not supposed to be there, Dore said, added she did not know when an organised return to the buildings would be arranged. <br><br>Some Albanians voiced displeasure at having to register their intention to return to their homes. <br><br>The living conditions on this side are very bad, said Sashivar Begu, 55, an unemployed miner who has been living in temporary quarters in southern Mitrovica since he fled his flat on February 14. <br><br>Begu, whose left eye was heavily bandaged, said he was hurt when a hand grenade was thrown into a neighbour's flat where he was hiding the night Serb vigilantes went on a rampage. <br><br>How can I feel safe to go back there when my neighbour's flat has been completely destroyed and in mine you can count the bullet holes in the walls and in the windows? <br><br>Serbs do what they want because they feel they are being protected, he said. <br><br>Albanians in Mitrovica claim French troops, who are mainly responsible for security in the city, favour the Serbs, and have applauded recent moves by KFOR to bring in soldiers from different countries. <br><br>In Brussels, NATO ambassadors met to chart the alliance's next moves in Kosovo with the KFOR peacekeeping mission commander, General Klaus Reinhardt, joining in by video linkup from Pristina. <br><br>Alliance supreme commander General Wesley Clark, also attending the session, has called for several thousand more troops for KFOR. France has taken the lead with a promise to raise its contingent by a further 700. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951485302,45672,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Clark fears Serb unrest and calls for more troops </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br><br>By Stephen Castle in Brussels <br><br>25 February 2000 <br><br>NATO will today discuss plans for significant new troop reinforcements for Kosovo, amid fears that covert Serbian operations are fomenting unrest in the province in a deliberate challenge to K-For. <br><br>In the wake of the outbreaks of violence in Mitrovica and fears over two other trouble-spots, alliance ambassadors will try to draw up a strategy for combating the rising tension in the province. <br><br>France has already said it will offer one battalion of around 700 troops for Mitrovica but General Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme allied commander in Europe, has asked for two more battalions to be placed on four days' notice. <br><br>General Clark yesterday claimed openly that President Milosevic's forces lie behind the violence in Mitrovica and suggested that the Serb president is applying pressure in two other areas. In an interview in the International Herald Tribune he referred to the risk of a Belgrade-inspired coup in Montenegro and of a possible campaign of repression against ethnic Albanians in the Presevo Valley, which is inside Serbia. <br><br>"Mitrovica is going to be multi-ethnic, and that means ending the intimidation and other dirty work of the military units, gangs and thugs who have been sent there by Belgrade," General Clark said. <br><br>The additional troop deployment General Clark is calling for would suggest a total of around 2,000 troops being earmarked for Kosovo, where Nato already has 30,000 troops on the ground, but General Clark's office yesterday refused to specify the number or type of forces he has requested. <br><br>France, however, argued that Kosovo needs more than is presently on the offer. "This is not a French decision, it must be a collective one," France's defence ministry spokesman, Jean-François Bureau, said yesterday. <br><br>Nato fears that the events in Mitrovica are part of a concerted attempt by Belgrade to divide Kosovo, keeping a northern enclave with its valuable mineral reserves. <br><br>Meanwhile the arrival of warmer, spring weather is expected to make mobility easier for covert Serb forces, posing another potential test of Nato's strength. <br><br>Today's meeting of the North Atlantic Council will involve the military top brass, with a presentation from General Clark and a briefing by satellite link from K-For's commander, German General Klaus Reinhardt. <br><br>One possibility is that Nato will try to strengthen its Multinational Specialised Unit, comprising troops trained in civilian work to help contain trouble in Mitrovica. But today's discussion, listed on the agenda simply as "the situation in Kosovo" will review the strategy. <br><br>Nato diplomats expect a new initiative from the UN over Mitrovica, perhaps establishing it as a separate "zone" and making access for trouble-makers more difficult. With US troops now withdrawn from Mitrovica, the mood there was calmer yesterday. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951386583,5169,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serbs Threaten Protests in Kosovo</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The New York Times<br><br>By The Associated Press<br>KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Serbs in this ethnically divided city are threatening protests and more unrest in response to plans by NATO-led peacekeepers to begin resettling ethnic Albanians on the Serb-controlled north bank of the Ibar River. <br><br>The plans announced Wednesday by the peacekeeping command involve moving ethnic Albanians back to homes in three high-rise apartment buildings. U.N. officials said ethnic Albanians would begin registering Friday and relocations would begin next week. <br><br>With so many Serbs and ethnic Albanians living in the same community, Kosovska Mitrovica is the most ethnically mixed city in Kosovo -- and the most violence-prone. <br><br>In Washington, U.S. and French officials announced Wednesday that France is sending 600 to 700 more troops and the United States may send in a Marine unit to help quell the rising violence. <br><br>``It is simply normal military business to decide ... to make the real provisions so that we take control of the situation there,'' French Defense Minister Alain Richard said at a news conference with William Cohen, the U.S. defense secretary. France already has about 4,500 troops in Kosovo. <br><br>Cohen said no decision has been made on whether more American troops would go. But a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a Marine Expeditionary Unit was on standby for possible movement into the French sector of Kosovo. <br><br>In addition to resettling ethnic Albanians, NATO plans to build a footbridge across the river in front of the three apartment houses where many of the Albanians hope to return. Demonstrations would be banned in a wide area encompassing both Serb and Albanian-dominated neighborhoods. <br><br>The proposals have outraged Serb leaders, who have called for a protest Friday on the north side of the bridge despite the ban. Serb community leader Oliver Ivanovic has warned that the crisis would ``peak within 10 to 15 days'' unless the NATO-led Kosovo Force abandons its plans. <br><br>The ethnic Albanian leader of the city, Bajram Rexhepi, called on his fellow Albanians to avoid demonstrations on the south bank. <br><br>Serb leaders say they were not consulted about the decision. One leader, Nikola Kabasic, claimed Albanian snipers had fired on French peacekeepers last weekend from buildings to which ethnic Albanians will be returned. <br><br>``Serbs were excluded this time, although we believe we could have given some suggestions for calming down the situation,'' Kabasic said. Ivanovic accused the ethnic Albanians of ``building up tensions to the maximum so they would use the situation to provoke bloodshed in the northern part of the city.'' <br><br>A sweep by U.S. paratroopers in the north also upset the Serbs, who claimed their homes were ransacked. <br><br>As French troops surrounded the search area, 300 troops of the U.S. 504th Airborne Infantry -- backed by armored vehicles and in full battle gear -- crossed the Ibar River at dawn and swept through ``Little Bosnia,'' an ethnically mixed neighborhood, searching house-to-house for weapons. <br><br>A NATO spokesman, Flight Lt. Neville Clayton, said the Americans seized a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, rifles, grenades and ammunition. Maj. Erik Gunhus said eight people were taken into custody. <br><br>Following the raid, the Americans left the city and returned to their base at Camp Bondsteel in southeastern Kosovo. The U.S. soldiers were among troops from more than a dozen countries sent to reinforce the French last weekend, when tensions escalated. <br><br>French troops continued the search after the Americans left. <br><br>Thousands of ethnic Albanians were killed by Serb forces during President Slobodan Milosevic's 18-month crackdown against separatists in Kosovo. After NATO bombing forced the Serb troops to withdraw last spring, ethnic Albanians began attacking Serbs in revenge. <br><br>Tensions have been rising in Kosovska Mitrovica, which has the largest remaining Serb enclave in Kosovo, since a grenade attack on a U.N. bus Feb. 2 killed two elderly Serbs south of the city. That triggered revenge attacks that have left nine people dead and scores injured. <br><br>On Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of directing a campaign to undermine the United Nations and NATO by orchestrating the partition of Mitrovica. <br><br>A senior Yugoslav commander, Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic, has called the allegation ``nonsense'' aimed at diverting attention from NATO's failure to bring peace to the province. <br><br>Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic has said the Western goal was to ``chase the remaining non-Albanian population from Mitrovica so they could take the control'' of the rich mining complex outside the city. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951386556,24017,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>NATO says Kosovo troop strength not enough</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Financial Times<br><br>By Douglas Hamilton - 24 Feb 2000 09:26GMT<br> <br>BRUSSELS, Feb 24 (Reuters) - NATO said its military strength in Kosovo was insufficient and France said it would send up to 700 fresh troops to the northern town of Mitrovica to help combat a surge in violence there.<br><br>The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were only 30,000 troops in the province out of 49,000 originally planned for the KFOR peacekeeping mission. <br><br>The peacekeepers have been hard pressed recently through an upsurge in violence in Mitrovica between Serbians and ethnic Albanians in the ethnically divided town. <br><br>In Washington, French Defence Minister Alain Richard told reporters at a news conference Paris would make an immediate addition to its troops in the French military sector around Mitrovica. <br><br>A reserve has been prepared and this shows the planning for KFOR has been coherent and long-sighted, he said. <br><br>He said a battalion of 600 to 700 French troops would be sent to Mitrovica quickly to join the 4,700 French troops there. <br><br>U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen told the same news conference American reinforcements might also be sent to join some 5,500 U.S. troops already in Kosovo but no decision had yet been made. <br><br>Cohen and Richard both said the troop increase around Mitrovica was meant to restore peace, to send a signal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic not to interfere in Kosovo and to warn the ethnic Albanian majority in the province to abide by a peace agreement. <br><br>KFOR peacekeepers were sent to Kosovo last year following a NATO air campaign to halt Serbian repression of the ethnic Albanian majority. <br><br>The NATO official said Milosevic was attempting to orchestrate the permanent division of Mitrovica to create a Serbian canton which would lead to a de facto partition excluding ethnic Albanians. <br><br>In Belgrade, the commander of Yugoslavia's Third Army dismissed as nonsense NATO claims of a build-up of Yugoslav forces in Albanian populated areas of southern Serbia near Kosovo. <br><br>NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said in Brussels on Monday the alliance was monitoring a build-up of forces in southern Serbia. <br><br>The Macedonian army, meanwhile, said it had raised the level of combat readiness along its border with southern Serbia after the upsurge in ethnic violence in Kosovo. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951386479,5825,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Both sides pose threat to NATO on Kosovo tightrope</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BRUSSELS, Feb 23 (Reuters) - NATO knows it is walking a tightrope in Mitrovica but has no intention of backing down from its goal of unifying the ethnically-divided Kosovo city, a NATO official said on Wednesday. <br>It is also keeping a wary eye on tensions in the Albanian populated Presevo Valley area of southern Serbia where there have been reports of Kosovo Albanian extremists arming, along with a buildup of Serbian special police forces. <br><br>Alliance ambassadors planned an extraordinary meeting of the North Atlantic Council on Friday for talks with the Kosovo KFOR peacekeeping mission commander, General Klaus Reinhardt, on proposals for defusing the crisis, he said. <br><br>Reinhardt faced "a very difficult balancing act" in persuading the Mitrovica area Serbs not to leave but not at the price of walls going up across the city, the official added. <br><br>He said NATO was determined to identify and isolate the ringleaders of Serbian and ethnic Albanian radical factions intent on stirring up trouble. <br><br>Hidden weapons would be seized and NATO troops would ensure they were not replaced "through the back door." <br><br>"We are not going to back down," he said. <br><br>NATO would not accept a city divided by barricades or barbed wire leading to cantonisation of Kosovo, now a de facto international protectorate though legally a province of Serbia. <br><br>Friday's session was expected to examine KFOR's requirements in light of the mounting challenges and assess prospects for returning Kosovo Albanians under KFOR protection to their homes in north Mitrovica. <br><br>The KFOR mission currently numbers 37,000 troops but the Mitrovica standoff was straining resources, the official said. <br><br>SCOPE FOR MANIPULATION <br><br>Mitrovica, the Presevo Valley and a continuing test of wills between Serbia and its pro-western sister republic of Montenegro appeared to offer Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ample scope for trouble-making, diplomats said. <br><br>In a chorus of warnings in the past week the West told Milosevic to stop fomenting unrest, while NATO Secretary General George Robertson balanced the message by warning Albanian hardliners they too would face firm action by KFOR. <br><br>Diplomatic sources said NATO was divided on how to handle the tension, with some allies warning against spreading alarm. <br><br>NATO supreme commander General Wesley Clark, visiting Skopje, Pristina and Tirana, urged Albanian leaders this week to clamp down on hotheads and renegades bent on violence. <br><br>But tension mounted further on Wednesday when Macedonia said its army on the border with Serbia, south of the Presevo Valley, had been placed on heightened combat alert. <br><br>The NATO official said Serb hardliners in Mitrovica made no secret of the fact that they were close to the Milosevic regime. There were also some signs of radio contacts between them and the Serbian Interior Ministry MUP special police. <br><br>"We are not claiming it is all master-minded by Belgrade," he stressed. Some Serbs had walky-talkies and weapons and "know how to provoke disturbances," but there were also trouble-makers on the other side bent on putting the Serb enclave under threat. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951297773,20083,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Mitrovica crisis must be solved 'in two weeks' </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br>By Raymond Whitaker in Mitrovica <br><br>The international community has "about two weeks" to make progress in solving the divide between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo's troubled town of Mitrovica, or there will be more mass demonstrations like Monday's, when a fewBritish peace-keepers struggled to contain tens of thousands of Albanian protesters. <br><br>This is the view of Lt-Col Nick Carter, whose men were "the meat in the sandwich", as he put it, when more than 2,000 Albanian militants tried to force their way across the bridge over the River Ibar on Monday. A similar number of Serbs were waiting on the northern side of the river, which splits the town's Serbs and Albanians. Lt-Col Carter is convinced there would have been armed clashes if protesters had got through. <br><br>The militants were at the head of a much larger crowd, including some 20,000 people who had marched 25 miles in freezing weather from Kosovo's capital, Pristina, to register their protest at the continued division of Mitrovica. <br><br>But despite several hours of face-to-face shoving and a barrage of tear-gas fired by French gendarmes, the demonstration ended without major injuries on either side. Ten British soldiers were hurt, but only one is still receiving treatment, for neck injuries received when he was pushed over a Warrior armoured vehicle. <br><br>Lt-Col Carter had been aware for several days before the troubles that he had pitifully few men – 250 Royal Green Jackets and a 100-strong Canadian platoon – to handle the biggest protest Mitrovica has seen since the K-For peace-keepers arrived last June. <br><br>"The only weapons we had were restraint and our ability to talk people down, and we had to keep the French, whom the Albanians rightly or wrongly dislike, out of sight," he said. <br><br>His men used crowd control techniques that were developed in Northern Ireland. "We wore berets, not helmets, kept our riot equipment out of sight and stayed calm – and it worked." Any soldier who showed signs of losing restraint was pulled out by NCOs and allowed to cool off before returning to the crowds. <br><br>This strategy came within seconds of going disastrously wrong, however, when several hundred militants pushed forward. For a moment the bridge lay open, but it was rapidly barred by gendarmes and a Danish riot-control platoon, which created a barrier of armoured vehicles. Lt-Col Carter put his own armoured vehicles in front of the gendarmes, believing the sight of them would inflame the demonstrators. But this did not prevent the French from lobbing tear-gas grenades into the crowd, some of which hit British soldiers. <br><br>The British commander was clearly irritated by some of the behaviour of the French, such as their delay in stopping the Serbs from provoking Albanians with flags and nationalist music. "It is possible that some gendarmes feel they had to save the day, but that doesn't bother me," he said. "The big picture is that the Albanians were able peacefully to show the mass of feeling in their community at the continued division of this town. One gendarme commander said they had learned a few things about crowd control." <br><br>Lt-Col Carter also madeclear that K-For was simply there to keep a lid on the tension as long as Mitrovica was divided by the bridge. "In Pristina, people have been forced to work together, and things have improved to the point where Serbs have come back, albeit a very small number," he said. <br><br>Mitrovica was subdued yesterday, with Serbs north of the river clearly shaken by the size of the Albanian demonstration. The authorities relaxed the city-wide curfew and scaled down weapons searches. An armoured vehicle was briefly showered by rocks, bottles and sticks from a crowd incensed by the appearance of American peace-keepers on the bridge for the first time, although they were shielded to the north by French vehicles. <br><br>Oliver Ivanovic, self-styled leader of northern Mitrovica's Serbs, cast doubt on Lt-Col Carter's prediction that there would be a week or two of calm on the Albanian side. "They clearly intended to show us that one day they will come over in huge numbers and take over here," he said. "But we are proud people and we will not run away."</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951297755,15533,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>NATO Says Milosevic Incites Violence Covertly in Kosovo</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The New York Times<br>By JANE PERLEZ<br>WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 -- American and NATO officials today accused the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, of fomenting violence in Kosovo and infiltrating his plainclothes police into the province in a deliberate attempt to thwart NATO's peacekeeping efforts. <br><br>The United States and allied governments have detected direct radio links between Mr. Milosevic's special police in Serbia and Serbian militants in the city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, officials said. <br><br>The Yugoslav leader is also encouraging his plainclothes police to travel to Mitrovica, the officials said, and has ordered a buildup of special police units along the border between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia. <br><br>"Guidance, men, radios and arms" is the order of importance of Mr. Milsoevic's help to the Serbs of Mitrovica, a senior official said. Another official said that much of the violence carried out by the Serbs in Mitrovica in the last two weeks had been "planned in advance and comes from Belgrade." <br><br>At NATO headquarters and at the Pentagon, officials said they were concerned that Mr. Milosevic was doing everything possible to undo NATO's control of Mitrovica, the ethnically divided mining town of 90,000 that has become Kosovo's most volatile spot. <br><br>Just a few miles south of the border with Serbia proper, it is in effect where the Albanian-dominated province ends and Serbia begins, with the part of town north of the Ibar River 90 percent Serbian and the southern part mainly Albanian. <br><br>Thousands of Albanians have been unable to return to their homes in the north side as the Serbian community has determinedly defended a safe area for itself. The few hundred Serbs who lived on the south side have long since fled. <br><br>The officials said Mr. Milosevic did not appear to be planning to send the Yugoslav Army or uniformed units of his police forces into Kosovo. Nor does he seem to want control of the province back, the officials said, but rather to keep up the tension and then divide Kosovo into distinct Serbian and Albanian parts. <br><br>American troops were sent to Mitrovica from their southern Kosovo base last weekend along with British and Canadian soldiers to reinforce French troops after the violence got out of hand. <br><br>For the Clinton administration, the biggest fear about Kosovo is that the explosive situation in Mitrovica could blow up in a presidential election year. One of the worst fears is having NATO -- and American -- troops caught between Albanian and Serbian snipers in an "urban Belfast" situation in Mitrovica, a NATO official said today. <br><br>In a series of public statements in the last two days, American and NATO officials have warned Mr. Milosevic, in general ways, to desist from interfering in Kosovo. <br><br>The American representative at the United Nations, Richard C. Holbrooke, and the NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson, said Belgrade was directing the trouble in northern Kosovo. The State Department spokesman, James P. Rubin, said that "we certainly would be prepared to to respond if Serbian forces made the grave mistake of trying to interfere" with NATO operations. <br><br>NATO officials described the messages between Serbian radio operators in Mitrovica and Serbian intelligence operators in Serbia as being of a tactical nature. The messages included statements like "they are going here, they are going there," -- referring to movements by Albanian militants -- rather than direct orders, the officials said. <br><br>"We do know they are receiving transmission coming from MUP radio links inside Serbia," an official said, using the acronym for Mr. Milosevic's Interior Ministry special police. "They are from the locations and frequencies used by MUP." <br><br>Some of the radio links used by the special police in northern Kosovo have not been dismantled since NATO took over Kosovo last summer, a NATO official said. <br><br>As well as meddling inside Mitrovica, Mr. Milosevic has "preserved his options" by increasing the number of special police in the area of the Presevo Valley in Serbia, an area next to Kosovo, where about 80,000 Albanians live and have become increasingly restless. <br><br>The officials said that they could not be precise about the number of special police officers now in the area but that the buildup had been under way for several months. The policemen, whose presence was regularly reported by Albanian refugees, were in the same area to which the Pristina Corps of the Yugoslav Army had withdrawn at the end of the Kosovo war, they said. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic, who is regarded by the administration as a master tactician unable to resist the opportunity presented to him in Mitrovica, has maneuvered himself into a strong position, said an administration official involved in day-to-day Kosovo policy. <br><br>"Belgrade is in a great position -- a win-win position -- and NATO in a lose-lose position," the official said. <br><br>"If NATO gets tough, then Milosevic can say the Serbs are victims and Kosovo has been ethnically cleansed," he said. In that circumstance NATO would escort Albanians back to their homes in northern Mitrovica, a maneuver that would almost certainly make most of the Serbs there flee. <br><br>"If NATO shrinks from doing anything, the situation gets worse and NATO loses," the official said. He added, "It's a terrible situation for KFOR to be in," referring to the peacekeeping force in Kosovo. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951222157,88255,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Violence erupts as 70,000 march on divided Mitrovica </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br>By Raymond Whitaker in Mitrovica <br><br>British peace-keepers were embroiled in violent confrontations at Kosovo's most dangerous flashpoint yesterday when 70,000 Albanians protesting at the division of the town of Mitrovica tried to storm the bridge which separates its Serb and Albanian communities. <br><br>The Nato secretary general, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, said the alliance was monitoring "large numbers" of Yugoslav forces in Albanian areas of south Serbia and would act if necessary. <br><br>In Mitrovica, 150 men from the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Greenjackets were shoved aside as demonstrators made their way to the bridge. For a few seconds it appeared a violent confrontation with Serb demonstrators on the northern side of the river might erupt, threatening a return of armed clashes which have left 11 people dead in the Mitrovica area this month. <br><br>The British soldiers were involved in shoving matches with chanting demonstrators who broke through their cordon several times. The Royal Greenjackets' commander, Lt-Col Nick Carter, appealed to the crowd to calm down. "Please, let the British stay where we are," he said from the top of an armoured car. "Don't push us. Please stay where you are." <br><br>As the situation escalated, French riot police and Danish armoured vehicles which rushed in from the Serbian side of the bridge cut off the demonstrators and enabled the British troops to regroup. <br><br>Lt-Col Carter estimated the crowd stretching back from the bridge at 60,000-70,000. Around 20,000 Kosovo Albanians had marched from Pristina, 25 miles away, forming a column several miles long. <br><br>The crowd in Mitrovica was scattered by tear-gas fired by the French but a core of 500 protesters rallied the others. <br><br>The lack of co-ordination among the peace-keeping forces was illustrated by the fact that many British troops and their Canadian reinforcements were not equipped with gas masks, and several soldiers were seen weeping and retching between tear-gas assaults. The stand-off went on well into darkness, but the demonstrators eventually dispersed after being addressed by their leaders and General Klaus Reinhardt, the head of K-For. <br><br>A protest organiser, Felatin Novosella, earlier suggested the situation was getting out of control, saying help was needed to prevent any confrontation in Mitrovica. "What we want is help to stop them [the marchers from Pristina], because we can't stop them," he said. "The aim of this was not to march across the bridge in Mitrovica. It was just to show solidarity with the people." <br><br>A local Serb leader said the march and the search were synchronised to expel the Serb population from the north side of the town. "Peace in Kosovo is an illusion and Nato and the UN police are incapable of securing a peaceful life in Kosovo," Vuko Antonijevic, of the Serb National Council in Mitrovica, told Yugoslavia's Beta news agency. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951222102,31158,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Tensions erupt in Kosovo march </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Guardian<br><br>Nato-led troops clash with Albanian protesters amid Serb taunts <br>Jonathan Steele <br><br>Nato-led troops fired volleys of tear gas and used batons to disperse angry Albanian protesters yesterday after thousands of marchers broke an agreement not to advance on the main bridge in Kosovo's divided city of Mitrovice. <br>The huge build-up of demonstrators, who pushed through a flimsy cordon to reach the bridge, brought tension to its highest point since 10 people were murdered two and a half weeks ago. Loudspeakers across the river on the Serb side played nationalist songs to taunt the crowd. <br><br>Mitrovice has become the worst flashpoint in the unfinished war in Kosovo. When troops from the Nato-led international peace force, K-For, arrived last June they promised to defuse the tension. The clashes between protesters and peacekeepers yes terday lasted for more than an hour but subsided towards evening, by which time most of the crowd had dispersed. <br><br>The commander of the Kosovo contingent of Britain's Royal Greenjackets, Lieutenant-Colonel Nick Carter, appealed to the crowd for calm. "Please, let the British stay where we are," he said from the top of an armoured car. "Don't push us. Please stay where you are." <br><br>He estimated the size of the crowd stretching back from the bridge at 60,000-70,000. <br><br>In another ominous sign, George Robertson, Nato's secretary general, yesterday warned against violence in a Serbian region where several hundred ethnic Albanians live. The alliance would not tolerate fresh conflict, he said. <br><br>"There is clearly rising tension in the southern part of Serbia and large numbers of additional Yugoslav troops have moved into the area," he said of the Bujanovac-Presevo-Medveda region bordering south-east Kosovo, where local people have reported a spate of tit-for-tat killings. <br><br>Albanians say they are being driven out of the area, while Serb authorities say they face Albanian terrorism. The UN refugee agency has reported that 43 families from the village of Dobrosin have fled in recent weeks. Kosovo Albanian leaders argue that Presevo could be a staging ground for Yugoslav action to test K-For's cohesion, but Nato sources have ruled out K-For troops moving across the border. <br><br>Albanian newspaper reports earlier this month claimed Serb police had almost tripled their strength in the area. <br><br>The Yugoslav 3rd Army commander, General Vladimir Lazarevic, has accused Nato of failing to prevent guerrilla infiltration of a 5km-wide (3-mile) security zone around the province agreed between Belgrade and Nato. He said Albanian "terrorists" had infiltrated the zone and carried out attacks on Yugoslav police in the Kursumilja and Leskovac areas, north and west of the Presevo valley. <br><br>Under the "military-technical agreement" signed by Belgrade and Nato last June, when Serb troops withdrew from Kosovo after 11 weeks of Nato bombing, no Yugoslav army units are permitted in the "ground safety zone". The pact allows Nato to compel withdrawal of any forces, or stop activities posing a potential threat to the mission. <br><br>Asked about reports of a new "liberation army", Nato's peacekeeping commander in Kosovo, General Klaus Reinhardt, said last week that "this could become a problem in the spring if they launch attacks into Serbia". <br><br>The march to Mitrovice was in protest against violence by Serb gangs which has caused 1,500 Albanians to flee the north of the city in two weeks. The marchers accuse K-For of doing too little and allowing the city's partition. Before last year's Serb offensives, Albanians formed the majority on both sides of the river. <br><br>Tens of thousands of Albanians yesterday set out from the provincial capital Pristina, ac companied by UN police. There were a few British military police Land-Rovers at the head of the column, but no sign of any K-For barricades to halt the march on the city. <br><br>One of the protest organisers, Felatin Novosella, said help was needed to control the crowd. "We can't stop them," he said. "The aim of this march was not to march across the bridge in Mitrovice. It was just to show solidarity with the people." <br><br>The protesters had passed the town of Vucitrn, where a K-For spokesman in Pristina earlier said the organisers had agreed to stop. Only 12 representatives would be allowed to deliver a letter to UN officials in Mitrovice. Many protesters, including women and children, were walking. Others drove in cars, vans and buses. They waved the Albanian flag "Mitrovice - the heart of Kosovo", read one banner. <br><br>At least 10 people - eight Albanians and two Serbs - have died and about 20 been wounded in violence this month in Mitrovice. <br><br>A house-to-house weapons search, launched on Sunday, was suspended. "K-For had to take some of its soldiers away to provide security for these demonstrations," said Lieutenant Commander Philip Anido, a Nato spokesman. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951222059,96877,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Albanians Rally to Oust Serbs From a City in Kosovo</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The New York Times<br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br>MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 21 -- Thousands of ethnic Albanians from throughout Kosovo marched on this divided city today and clashed with a phalanx of NATO-led troops, who used tear gas and fists to keep them from reaching the Serbian district. <br><br>A throng of protesters -- some estimates put their number at 25,000, others at twice that -- tried to cross the main bridge that divides the Serbian and Albanian sections of this mining town. The crowd was turned back as thousands of Serbs stood on the other side, waving flags and playing nationalist songs. <br><br>The Albanians repeatedly pushed against the lines of British and Canadian soldiers and French paramilitary police officers as fights broke out and demonstrators were hauled away. <br><br>Tensions have flared in this divided city of 90,000 in the past two weeks. Violence has left 11 people dead and dozens wounded, including 2 French soldiers hit in gun battles. <br><br>Wave after wave of protesters arrived today on foot from the capital of Pristina, 25 miles away, and from the western towns of Pec and Srbica, among others. Young men strode up the main street waving red Albanian flags and banners as they tried to breach the military lines. <br><br>For several hours, peacekeepers struggled to contain the crowd, and French police officers resorted to volley after volley of tear gas over the heads of the British and Canadian soldiers, often leaving them choking and retching along with the demonstrators. <br><br>By nightfall the protesters, some of whom had walked for 10 hours, grew tired and drifted away. The commander of the peacekeeping force, Gen. <br><br>Klaus Reinhardt of Germany, climbed atop a British tank to talk to the crowd. He praised his troops for their restraint and said they had prevented any serious injuries or consequences. <br><br>He also said he understood the demonstrators. "They have shown the way they want to live and are demonstrating for a better future. They want a united city," he said. <br><br>But his words underlined the intractable problem this city presents for the peacekeepers and the United Nations administration. The Albanians all speak of liberating the city, by which they mean moving back into the Serbian district en masse, which in turn would force the Serbs to flee. <br><br>"We want to liberate the other side," said Shyrete Gela, a 35-year-old optician who lives in Mitrovica, as she took shelter in a shop from the clouds of tear gas. "I have cousins who live over there. My friend has her flat there, too, but Serbs are living there now. Serbs killed my brother, you know. And now people came from Pristina to help us liberate the city, so we must run with them." <br><br>Mentor Mecinaj, 21, who had walked five hours, said: "We want the north side to be the same as the south. I want to see my friends on the other side and for them to see me." <br><br>Mitrovica still bears terrible scars from the Kosovo war when Serbian forces bulldozed dozens of Albanian shops and houses and destroyed an ancient mosque on the river bank. Thousands of Albanians have been unable to return to their homes on the north side of the city as the Serbian community has determinedly defended a safe area for themselves. The few hundred Serbs who lived on the south side have long since fled. <br><br>Yet the peacekeepers' efforts are now consumed with trying to contain the immediate violence, with little time or energy left for developing a long-term solution. The British commander on the bridge, Lt. Col. Nick Carter, spoke throughout the afternoon to the crowd through a bullhorn, telling the Albanians that he wanted the same thing they did, a united Mitrovica. That brought loud cheers. <br><br>Later he said he knew that the Albanian vision was quite different from that envisioned by the international community. "Don't think that we don't realize we are only buying a little bit of time here. All I'm doing is holding this ring," he said. "Of course this is not tenable." <br><br>After the protesters dispersed, General Reinhardt told reporters, "There is no switch that you can switch and everything is better." He said his response to the last two weeks of violence had been to conduct a huge security operation throughout the city during the past five days. <br><br>He has ordered more than 2,000 soldiers and police officers to conduct house searches for weapons and criminals. Troops, including American paratroopers, were out again today conducting searches, but the collection of illegal weapons has been small, with fewer than a dozen Russian Kalashnikov rifles found. <br><br>American troops, who were stoned by Serbs in northern Mitrovica on Sunday, confined their activities to a predominantly Albanian quarter and encountered no resistance today. But they found no weapons because the area had recently been swept by the French, raising questions about the value of the exercise. <br><br>"Normally, these operations are of a more political value than anything," Mario Morcone, the United Nations administrator in Mitrovica, said of the general search operation. He maintained that security in the city had improved nevertheless, with a curfew and numerous checkpoints set up at night. <br><br>He said he hoped that in the next few days some of the hundreds of Albanian families who fled their homes in the past two weeks would be able to return to the Serbian side. Apart from that, he acknowledged, he has few ideas left on how to deal with the problems. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951124354,5621,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Milosevic Mounts an Election-Year Crackdown on His Critics</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The New York Times<br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>RAGUE, Feb. 20 -- The Yugoslav government of President Slobodan Milosevic -- its support sliding in an election year -- has sharply intensified attacks on the democratic opposition and the news media, calling them traitors and using a draconian press law to intimidate and impoverish independent publications. <br><br>Besides lawsuits, government officials have used open threats of possible violence. <br><br>In a bellicose speech last week to his party congress, Mr. Milosevic called the opposition "a group of bribed weaklings and blackmailed profiteers and thieves," bought "with substantial financial resources funneled from abroad." Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Seselj of Serbia threatened "to liquidate" the independent media, which he called "treacherous." <br><br>Traditionally, Mr. Milosevic left Serbia's disunited democratic opposition and his urban intellectual opponents a small space in which to air their opinions, knowing that he could use the cover of the law to further marginalize or repress them. <br><br>In the aftermath of the lost war over Kosovo and new efforts by the opposition -- and Washington -- to oust Mr. Milosevic, his authorities are showing that harsher face. <br><br>After a new year's interview in which Mr. Milosevic advertised the crackdown, they are using the press law to damage newspapers and particularly an independent printing house, ABC Grafika, which publishes the newspaper Glas Javnosti and prints many other independent papers and magazines. <br><br>The public information law was enacted on Oct. 20, 1998. Since then, more than 60 cases have been brought, with fines totaling more than $1 million -- very large in a country where the average monthly income is now less than $50 -- and the pace has accelerated. <br><br>In 1999, independent media were fined more than $600,000, more than half of that in suits against ABC Grafika, either for material in Glas Javnosti or for printing the daily bulletin of last year's failed political rallies against Mr. Milosevic. <br><br>With some presses already seized and the financial police investigating possible irregularities, the company is battling bankruptcy, and Glas Javnosti's editor quit because of the pressure. <br><br>"If you look at what the regime is doing, it seems they want to shut us down," said Slavoljub Kacarevic, general manager of the publishing house and now editor in chief of Glas Javnosti. "The regime is definitely showing a crueler face, and the way this law is being implemented is far worse than a year ago. Now they just fine you every month; it's endless. We look back fondly to the times when they just banned you for a while." <br><br>After the fifth consecutive trial resulting in a fine for the daily Danas, its deputy editor, Bozidar Andrejic, said, "The bottom line of the punishments is the preplanned wearing down of the targeted media." <br><br>Even Tanjug, the official press agency, has sued Danas under the law. On Friday, Danas was fined another $8,000 for quoting druggists who deplored low-quality imported pharmaceuticals. Danas's lawyer, Gradimir Nalic, said, "I expect they'll be in court now once a week." <br><br>Also on Friday, the police went to Glas Javnosti to confiscate some of its electronic equipment. <br><br>"There is now legalized chaos, with no protected normative standards of journalism," said Snjezana Milivojevic, a media analyst who was fired last year from her teaching position at Belgrade University in a political purge. <br><br>Gordana Susa, president of the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia, says that while editors deny that they are censoring themselves, "they are engaging in comforting self-delusion." <br><br>After the murder in Belgrade this month of the Yugoslav defense minister, Pavle Bulatovic, Mr. Seselj called independent journalists traitors and accomplices, charging that they took money and direction from the same governments that bombed Yugoslavia over Kosovo and, Mr. Seselj alleged, that ordered the killing. <br><br>"The gloves are off," Mr. Seselj said repeatedly. "Don't think that we're going to let you kill us off like rabbits, and that we'll be coddling and caring for you like potted plants. Anyone who works for the Americans must suffer the consequences." <br><br>"What consequences?" he went on. "The worst possible." He named newspapers and radio stations like B2-92, Danas, Glas Javnosti and Blic -- only the first two of which get Western aid. <br><br>In his new year's interview, Mr. Milosevic insisted that many private broadcasters and publishers "are under the full financial and political control of some Western governments," with the "task to destabilize the country." A key problem, he said, is poor enforcement of the press law. <br><br>The signal given, government ministers are now using the law to sue, bringing cases before government-appointed judges, and state-owned media are suing independent media. Editors and publishers must pay fines within 24 hours or face jail and the confiscation of their property. <br><br>The press law puts the burden on the media to prove the truth of any assertion, even the cited opinion of a quoted person or organization. <br><br>So in December, a small newspaper and its editor in the town of Vranje were fined $22,000 for printing part of a Western human rights report that contained material, already published in the newspaper, about Albanians fleeing town to escape the draft. <br><br>The editor suggested that the real cause was another article suggesting corruption by local officials of Mr. Milosevic's party. <br><br>Blic, Danas and Studio B were fined for printing a statement by the Serbian Renewal Movement, the largest opposition party, which accused two senior officials of organizing an attempt on the life of the party's leader, Vuk Draskovic. Mr. Kacarevic, stung by previous fines, left out the names, which he later admitted was self-censorship. <br><br>The authorities have ordinarily left alone the small-circulation weeklies of opinion Nin and Vreme, which sell fewer than 10,000 copies each, mostly to people who oppose Mr. Milosevic anyway. But this month, Nin and its editor were fined about $13,000 for an interview describing the dismissal of law professors. <br><br>With local and federal elections due this year and elections in Serbia -- Yugoslavia's larger part -- next year, one explanation for the crackdown may lie in the new reach of some independent papers, notably the daily tabloid Blic. <br><br>Independent newspapers like Danas sell about 10,000 copies a day. But Glas sells about 70,000, and Blic, owned by a Serb living in Austria, is selling close to 200,000. Together, that is significantly more copies than all official papers combined. <br><br>Blic, a fundamentally serious newspaper with spoonfuls of gossip, Hollywood and cheesecake, covers the opposition thoroughly, if not too critically. Its soft-spoken editor, Veselin Simonovic, said, "The biggest danger of that law is self-censorship." He tries to work as if it does not exist, he said, but notes that his journalists and editors constantly press him to read their copy, "to make me responsible." <br><br>Mr. Milosevic's government is in trouble, Mr. Simonovic said. "They use the law when they are losing support or feeling nervous," he said. "The level of pressure rises as their polls drop." <br><br>The government continues to maintain tight control over the national television and has increasingly jammed the signal of Studio B in Belgrade, which is run by Mr. Draskovic's party. <br><br>But the government is working on a new telecommunications law, and "we expect the electronic media will be pressured in the next stage," Ms. Susa said. The opposition controls most major towns in Serbia, with its own radio or television stations. Many are members of the Association of Independent Electronic Media, which distributes B2-92's respected news program throughout much of Serbia. <br><br>After Mr. Seselj's attack on B2-92, the association's president, Veran Matic, said he feared that the government would shut down the station, formed after the authorities seized his original station, B-92, during the Kosovo war. "It's clear that neither myself nor the people who work at B2-92 feel safe," Mr. Matic said, "and we expect that the radio could be banned again." </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951124313,29772,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Germans sent home</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Times<br><br>THE morale of German soldiers in Kosovo is beginning to crumble (Roger Boyes writes). At least 90 soldiers, including 4 officers, have been sent home because of disciplinary problems, according to Welt am Sonntag. Another 55, including 6 officers, have been sent back from the Sfor contingent in Bosnia. The cases are said to stem from alcohol and drug abuse, but there have also been sexual violations. In Kosovo two drunken German soldiers yelled racist comments at Albanians. Albanian soldiers intervened, a fight ensued and the Germans were flown out. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951124290,29668,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>US and German troops come under attack in Kosovo town </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br>By Raymond Whitaker in Mitrovica, Kosovo <br><br>21 February 2000 <br><br>Serbs in Kosovo's divided town of Mitrovica claimed a victory yesterday when more than 300 American peacekeepers taking part in a multinational search operation for weapons and "extremists" withdrew under a hail of stones, bottles, ice and snowballs. German troops were also attacked. <br><br>It was the first time US soldiers had been deployed in the northern, Serbian half of Mitrovica, where hostility to the American and British elements in the K-For peacekeeping force is intense. When the Americans arrived early in the morning to begin the searches there were clashes with local Serbs, beginning when they discovered the troops had an Albanian interpreter with them. She was removed for her own safety. <br><br>As news spread of the Americans' arrival, an angry crowd of several hundred people gathered. They broke through a protective cordon of French soldiers and gendarmes and rained blows on the US troops, who shoved them back with shields and rifles. One soldier pointed his weapon at a Serb and threatened to shoot him. The man shouted back: "Go on, shoot!" When the American commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Ellerby, went into the crowd in an attempt to negotiate with the self-styled leader of Mitrovica's Serbs, Oliver Ivanovic, he had to be plucked out by the gendarmes. <br><br>Mr Ivanovic later claimed that four Serbs had been injured, two when they had been sprayed with a riot-control substance by an American soldier. K-For said it knew nothing of the alleged incident. <br><br>The violent scenes persuaded the French commander of the Mitrovica sector, General de Saqui de Sannes, to redeploy the Americans, who were pelted with missiles as they left. One soldier had his nose broken and several vehicles were damaged. An American spokesman, Captain Russell Berg, said: "We left as scheduled after our mission was completed," but Lt-Col Patrick Chanliau, the chief French military spokesman in the town, later admitted that a decision had been taken to withdraw the Americans to avoid confrontation. <br><br>Some 2,300 troops from 12 nations took part in the weapons dragnet operation on both sides of Mitrovica. The main aim was to defuse tension after clashes earlier this month that left nine Albanians and two Serbs dead in the worst violence since K-For arrived last June. The use of American troops was apparently intended to send the Serbs a message that they could not choose which peacekeepers to accept. The crowds stoned American and German vehicles, but the French were cheered, an embarrassing accolade for a force accused by the Albanians of appeasing Serbs. <br><br>Lt-Col Chanliau insisted that the American withdrawal was not a defeat, and that it did not mean US soldiers would not be sent to northern Mitrovica again. But he added: "The purpose of the operation was not to fight people, but to recover weapons and explosives. If they wanted to stop that, they did not succeed. The search is continuing. Perhaps it is a tactic to divide us, but it won't work. An attack on any part of K-For is an attack on all of us." <br><br>The arms haul was small: 10 automatic weapons, a machine gun, a pistol, a few other rifles, and seven blocks of plastic explosive. Ten hours after the start of the operation, only one arrest had been made; but K-For emphasised that it was not complete. <br><br>The differing goals of various nations in K-For was summed up by a French gendarme captain outside the apartment building, close by a police headquarters destroyed by Nato bombs, where most of the arms were found. "The Americans believe in being aggressive," he said. "We think the main thing is to maintain calm." </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem951124267,29092,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>NATO set to pursue arms sweep of Kosovo flashpoint</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Financial Times<br>By Andrew Gray - 21 Feb 2000 08:26GMT<br> <br>KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia, Feb 21 (Reuters) - NATO troops were set on Monday to push ahead with a major search operation in the volatile Kosovo city of Mitrovica, brushing aside attacks on U.S. soldiers by Serbs throwing rocks and bottles.<br><br>Soldiers from the 3rd Battalion of 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment came under attack from a couple of hundred people during a raid on apartments in the Serb-dominated district of the ethnically divided northern industrial city. <br><br>The Serbs threw snowballs, bottles and stones and shouted insults at the troops on Sunday, the first day of the operation involving forces from more than 10 nations. <br><br>KFOR rejected Serb accusations the Americans had been too aggressive. <br><br>The French general in charge of Kosovo's northern military sector nevertheless pulled the U.S. troops out of the area to prevent an escalation in the flashpoint city, which has been the scene of several outbreaks of deadly violence recently. <br><br>Although KFOR stressed that the U.S. soldiers had more or less finished their mission there at the time of the pullout, the decision showed commanders are acutely aware that tensions are acutely balanced in Mitrovica. <br><br>German armoured personnel carriers and several Western journalists were also attacked or abused by Serbs on Sunday. <br><br>THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE <br><br>Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a few days ago described Mitrovica as certainly the most dangerous place in Europe at the moment. <br><br>Fearful of aggravating the situation further, KFOR has ruled that a protest march by ethnic Albanians on Monday from the provincial capital Pristina to Mitrovica, some 40 km (25 miles) to the northwest, will not be allowed to enter the city. <br><br>The Albanians want to protest against the division of Kosovo's third-largest city, where Serbs have grouped together to form a majority in the district north of the River Ibar. <br><br>Albanians complain that members of their community cannot return to the homes they fled in fear of Serb forces, before NATO bombing drove those forces out of Kosovo last June. <br><br>The Serbs insist they have grouped together simply for their own protection, having been forced to flee Albanian revenge attacks elsewhere in Kosovo. <br><br>Sunday's searches yielded a provisional haul of 10 AK-47 weapons, four M-48 rifles, one automatic pistol, seven blocks of plastic explosive, 18 loaded magazines, a large amount of other ammunition, one grenade and one machinegun, KFOR said. <br><br>The peacekeepers acknowledged the finds so far were not large for an operation which included numerous patrols and vehicle checkpoints and involved more than 1,500 soldiers. But they stressed the operation was far from over. <br><br>The information we have is that there are certain caches of weapons and those are the ones that we are looking for and are intent on finding, Anido told Reuters Television News. <br><br>KFOR has insisted that Sunday's reaction by the Serbs does not mean the U.S. soldiers would not be deployed again in the northern part of the city. <br><br>Gunbattles, shootings and grenade attacks have claimed the lives of at least nine people and wounded more than 20, including two French soldiers, in Mitrovica since the start of this month. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950982886,98155,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>NATO denies role in Yugoslav air space mystery</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) - NATO Friday denied charges by Belgrade that alliance military aircraft violated Yugoslav air space twice in the past week and put civilian airliners at risk over Montenegro's Adriatic coast. <br>"On those dates and at these times there were no NATO aircraft in that area. There were no near-misses and there was no NATO air exercise," spokesman Lee McClenny said. <br><br>McClenny said officials at NATO southern command in Naples had carefully examined the detailed charges and established NATO was not in any way involved in the alleged incidents. <br><br>Yugoslav Transport Minister Dejan Drobnjakovic said Wednesday that illegal NATO air activity forced it to close Tivat airport on the Adriatic coast of the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro. <br><br>The closure raised fears in pro-Western Montenegro of a fresh confrontation over airport control, as happened last December when federal troops loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic faced off with Montenegrin police. <br><br>Tivat was closed again Friday. Yugoslav officials said it was due to high winds -- a frequent local problem in winter. <br><br>Drobnjakovic said NATO had caused a "classic near-miss" with an airliner of Slovenian carrier Adria Airways on Feb. 10 as it flew over the area on a journey from Ljubljana to Tirana. <br><br>On Feb. 14, he said, a Cyprus Airlines flight from London to Larnaca reported unidentified aircraft in its vicinity. <br><br>In Nicosia, Cyprus Airways told Reuters its crew had reported unidentified aircraft, but no safety hazards. Radar readings showed them about 1,000 feet below the airliner's altitude, and on the limits of its radar range. <br><br>In Ljubljana, an Adria Airways spokeswoman said captain Andrej Travnik reported that he was informed by air traffic control of another aircraft flying below 29,700 feet in his vicinity on the flight to Tirana. <br><br>Travnik, however, said the plane was not visible and the crew had no idea whether it was military or not. <br><br>Military sources said they could think of a few possible explanations for the mystery encounters above Montenegro. <br><br>There could be confusion between air controllers in the area, which includes Croatia, Montenegro, Belgrade and Bosnia. <br><br>Or there was the possibility that military aircraft were indeed operating in the space -- in a secret Yugoslav Air Force exercise that required the closure of Tivat airport under some other pretext. <br><br>Yugoslav flight control director Miodrag Hadzic told Reuters in Belgrade Wednesday that NATO had broken a fundamental rule of aviation by not reporting its activities 48 hours in advance in a so-called NOTAM, or Notification to Airman. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950982863,36751,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Details Emerge in Kosovo Girl's Slaying</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The New York Times <br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br>AMP BONDSTEEL, Kosovo, Feb. 18 -- As an American staff sergeant appeared today at a hearing on charges of committing indecent acts with an 11-year-old Albanian girl and then murdering her, details emerged about the investigation of a second American soldier linked to the case. <br>Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi, 35, of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, has been in detention since Jan. 13, when the body of Merita Shabiu was found outside the town of Vitina in southern Kosovo. Today he appeared before an army investigating officer at a preliminary hearing to establish whether he should be court-martialed. <br><br>He faces charges of premeditated murder and committing indecent acts with a child, which army officials said precluded a rape charge. If it found him guilty, a court martial could impose death or life imprisonment. <br><br>As witnesses gave their accounts, it appeared that a second soldier, a private, had told his commanders that he was with Sergeant Ronghi that day and helped dispose of the body. <br><br>The private did not appear at the hearing, but was confirmed by an army lawyer to be under investigation in connection with the murder case. <br><br>A separate case involves several soldiers from the same unit, who are being investigated for alleged misconduct and inappropriate behavior toward local people in Vitina. <br><br>The victim's parents, Ramzije and Hamdi Shabiu, and her great uncle Rifat Samakova attended the hearing, seeing for the first time the man accused of her murder. Sergeant Ronghi sat impassively, with his lawyers sitting on either side and his back to reporters and the girl's family. He did not testify during the hearing, which lasted some five hours. <br><br>Many details surrounding the girl's murder, including the cause of death, have yet to be made public, because the investigation reports have not been completed, Captain Schmittel said. <br><br>Yet the evidence given today by 10 people -- including members of the criminal investigation teams, commanders and Sergeant Ronghi's fellow soldiers -- revealed some of the circumstances of the death and the profound impact it has had on the unit. <br><br>Military officials requested that witnesses not be identified by name, for their protection. <br><br>One sergeant described how the private now under investigation in the case had told him what happened on the evening of Jan. 13. <br><br>"He was nervous, really nervous," the sergeant said of the private. "He asked me: 'Can I trust you? Can I really trust you?' " <br><br>The private then told him that Sergeant Ronghi had loaded what seemed to be a body into their armored vehicle and driven it up to woods outside Vitina, where it was dumped. The private, who had been manning the automatic weapon in the turret of the vehicle, helped his comrade dispose of the body, according to his and others' accounts. <br><br>The witness, his voice shaking, said that he had sought out one of his superiors and that together they had gone to the site. Off the road, he said, they found the body in plastic bags, half-covered with snow. <br><br>"I moved a block of snow and saw it was a thigh," he said. "The body was in a fetal position, and I could see flesh through the bag. It looked like it had no clothes." <br><br>According to the witness, on their return they woke Sergeant Ronghi, who at first insisted that nothing had happened that day. When they said they had found the body, Sergeant Ronghi calmly told them that he had seen two local men take the girl into a yellow apartment building in central Vitina and that after the men had left, he had gone in to investigate. When he found her body, he said, he panicked and decided to move it. <br><br>The witness said the accused then asked, "Can we handle this in a different way?" and added, "I have money." <br><br>The sergeant said that his superior refused, and that the criminal investigation department was then alerted. <br><br>Another witness who had questioned the private said he had been told that about midday on the day of the incident, Sergeant Ronghi walked up to an armored vehicle, dismissed the interpreter and commandeered the vehicle with the private, supposedly to escort senior officers. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, was visiting Vitina that day. <br><br>But according to the private's account, Sergeant Ronghi instead drove to the yellow apartment building, loaded into it what he said was firewood for local Serbs, and then drove quickly out of town. <br><br>The witness added that the private had admitted helping dispose of the body, by suggesting a place to put it, kicking snow over it and pouring antifreeze over traces of blood. <br><br>The private told the witness that the accused had warned him to "keep his mouth shut," saying, "It's easy to get away with this in a third world country." <br><br>The accused knew this, according to the witness, "because he had done it in the desert." <br><br>Sergeant Ronghi did not enter a plea, but in closing remarks to the investigating officer, the defense counsel appeared to be making the case for a lesser charge, arguing that much of the evidence indicated no apparent premeditation. <br><br>The investigating officer will now consider the evidence and within a week is expected make a recommendation to a Special Court Martial Convening Authority in Kosovo. That group will then pass on a recommendation to Maj. Gen. John Abizaid, the First Infantry Division commander, who will decide whether to refer the case to a court martial. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950982829,84542,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Albright Opposes Greater Albania Idea</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Reuters<br>TIRANA (Reuters) - The United States told Albanians on Saturday that multi-ethnic tolerance was the way to integration in a democratic Europe and that any ambition to build a Greater Albania would lead only to conflict. <br><br>On her first visit to Albania as Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright said the impoverished Balkan country would have to give up old ways of doing business if it wanted to attract the foreign investment and assistance that it needs. <br><br>Albright, a driving force behind NATO intervention against Serb forces in the mainly Albanian province of Kosovo last year, came to Tirana to thank the Albanian government for their help given to Kosovo refugees during the war and to encourage the government to press on with economic and political reform. <br><br>But ethnic tensions between ethnic Serbs and Albanians in the Kosovo town of Mitrovica demonstrated what a hard task NATO still faces in the province. <br><br>``Albania must not allow itself to be used by those who would create conflict. Attempts to expand boundaries are an invitation to violence, not peace and stability. The international community would no sooner accept a Greater Albania than it would a Greater Serbia,'' she told parliament. <br><br>``In Kosovo, there is now a great struggle between those who want a peaceful and democratic multiethnic state, and those who would drag their nation back into a cycle of hatred, violence and retribution,'' she added. <br><br>``In today's world, a society and a people are judged by how well they respect the rights of religious and ethnic minority groups. I urge you to use your influence to help the people of Kosovo be guided by an attitude of tolerance and make the right choices in the weeks and months ahead,'' she said. <br><br>Opponents of intervention in Kosovo said the province would end up as part of Albania, unraveling the delicate balance between borders and ethnic minorities in the Balkans. <br><br>In practice this has not happened, but some Albanians continue to seek closer ties to the Albanian communities in Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro. <br><br>Former Albanian president Sali Berisha said in September Albanians throughout the Balkans might try to make a federation if their governments treated them as second-class citizens. <br><br>At a news conference later with Albanian Prime Minister Ilir Meta, Albright said: ``There are some elements of Albanians in various places that are taking actions that are worrisome in terms of trying to get stability.'' <br><br>``However, I must say in my conversations here, both with the president (Rexhep Meidani) and the prime minister, they have made quite clear that that is not the policy or interest of their government,'' she added. <br><br>On Mitrovica, where troops of the KFOR peacekeeping force have come under attack from ethnic Albanians and Serbs, she said: ``The resolution of ethnic tensions is critical to the security of Kosovo as a whole It's very important that Mitrovica be able to be a multi-ethnic region. That is what the essence of the Kosovo struggle was about.'' <br><br>Albright made the same point at a meeting with Hashim Thaqi, the Kosovo Liberation Army leader who had close ties with the United States before and during the Kosovo conflict. <br><br>''Her message was one of concern about rising extremism ... and the need for responsible political leaders to dissociate themselves from that and to use their moral influence to promote tolerance,'' said James Dobbins, her adviser on the Balkans. <br><br>Thaqi reassured her that he was trying to do all that and the United States accepts his assurances, a U.S. official added. ``Our information does not indicate that Thaqi...is responsible for or encouraging this,'' he added. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950774808,71929,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Out of Work and Hope, Serbs Evacuate Kosovo</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Edward Cody<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Thursday, February 17, 2000; Page A21 <br><br><br>BELGRADE –– Nenad Asanin was an unpretentious post office clerk in a small town in Kosovo. At age 29, he was married, had become a father and seemed lodged for life in a job that was steady if unglamorous. <br><br>Then his world came to an end eight months ago.<br><br>That was when, after 78 days of NATO bombing, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic abandoned his brutal repression of the secessionist revolt in Kosovo, withdrew the Serb-led security forces and ceded control of the province to its ethnic Albanian majority under protection of international peacekeepers. Since then, Kosovo's Albanians have been moving the mail, with international help, and Asanin, a barrel-shaped Serb, has been without a home, without a job and without a foreseeable future.<br><br>Asanin and his family have joined an estimated 230,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians, including more than 40,000 Roma, or Gypsies, who have fled Kosovo since NATO troops flowed into the province last June, according to a count by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Their flight has emptied the province of three-quarters of a Serbian population that stood at 200,000 to 250,000 before the war. They have added to a sum of Serbs, now reaching more than 700,000, forced out of their homelands in the past decade by the disintegration of Yugoslavia into its ethnic parts.<br><br>Milosevic's government has complained repeatedly that these refugees attract less international concern than the 850,000 Kosovo Albanians forced from their homes last spring by Serb-led security forces and the NATO bombing campaign. Officials in Belgrade pointed out that although most Kosovo Serbs fled soon after the Yugoslav withdrawal in June, the number has continued to climb since then, with 500 joining the parade in December and more in January. This is so, the officials charged, because KFOR, the NATO-run peacekeeping force, is not adequately protecting the Serbs from repeated attacks by Kosovo Albanians.<br><br>"A reign of terror is going on unabated right in front of the eyes of KFOR," the Yugoslav deputy foreign minister, Nebojsa Vujovic, told a news conference here last week. "This must stop."<br><br>Maki Shinohara, the UNHCR spokeswoman in Belgrade, said aid workers fear that the latest explosion of violence between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, at Kosovska Mitrovica, 22 miles northwest of the provincial capital of Pristina, will send still more refugees into Serbia proper. Although KFOR's mission includes making the province safe for all, hardly any Serbian refugees who fled in the past eight months have dared to return, she noted, adding: "We certainly don't encourage it."<br><br>Since Yugoslavia began breaking up, the UNHCR has registered 200,000 refugees from Bosnia, almost 300,000 from Croatia, 1,300 from Macedonia and 3,200 from Slovenia, all of them republics in the former Yugoslavia. Most are in Serbia, which with minuscule Montenegro forms what is left of the Yugoslav federation, and have been living with relatives or in scattered facilities such as factory dormitories. Because the Serbian economy has fractured over a decade of wars, most have little hope of finding employment and restarting their lives.<br><br>"It's very difficult [to find work], because NATO destroyed half our industry, and even those who already were working here don't have jobs now," said Dragan Milutonovic, who fled with his family from the Suva Reka district just outside Prizren in Kosovo's southwest corner.<br><br>Serbs and other non-Albanians fleeing Kosovo--about 200,000 in Serbia and 30,000 in Montenegro--have been designated "internally displaced persons" instead of refugees. This is because Kosovo is still technically a Serbian province, although practically it has come under the governance of the U.N. and NATO. For Asanin and his family, the effect is the same: They cannot go home.<br><br>"All our houses were burned," Asanin complained at a construction worker barracks here where he has sought shelter and food handouts from the Republic of Serbia Refugee Commission. "The old men who were left behind were killed. There is nothing left there."<br><br>Asanin fled Istok, about 40 miles west of Pristina, as soon as it became clear that Serbian security forces were on their way out. A number of Albanians had been killed in a Serb-run prison there during the war (the prison was also bombed by NATO), and Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas were in no mood to be nice to their defeated Serbian neighbors.<br><br>With his wife and two children in tow, Asanin took refuge first at a school in Kraljevo in southern Serbia. There, his wife gave birth to their third child, a son now 7 months old named Darko. But Asanin and about 100 fellow refugees were forced out in September, when the school year began, and have been wandering since in search of a place to settle down.<br><br>They landed here 12 days ago at the barracks made available by a construction company that used to do business in Kosovo. But they had to force their way in because earlier arrivals--100 Kosovo Serbs who had a connection to the construction company--did not want to share the space. The refugee commission has given them food but urged them to move on.<br><br>"We want to stay here," Asanin insisted, saying baby Darko has been hospitalized nearby with pneumonia. "We have nowhere else to go."<br><br>Milutonovic and his companions from Suva Reka have had better luck. They stayed at a simple hotel that used to house weekenders in a stand of maples near the village of Avala, 10 miles southeast of Belgrade. Since they left with their pickups and tractors June 11, that is where they have been waiting--for what, they are not sure.<br><br>"We are waiting to see what is our fate," said Svetislav Zivkovic, 35, who ran a farm and worked in a tire shop back in Suva Reka. Then, with a note of defiance, he added: "But Kosovo will always remain Serb."<br><br>Milutonovic, a wizened 57, sneered at the younger man's bravado. "If the big powers would really protect us the way they protect Albanians, we would get back on those tractors and return," he said, and settled back for a smoke.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950774729,27450,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Russia and NATO, Split Over Kosovo, Agree to Renew Relations</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The New York Times<br>By MICHAEL WINES<br>MOSCOW, Feb. 16 -- In a sign of his desire to cultivate closer ties with the West, Acting President Vladimir V. Putin agreed today to end an 11-month estrangement between Russia and NATO and rebuild what the Kremlin called an alliance aimed at "a stable and indivisible Europe." <br>The thaw was announced after a meeting between Mr. Putin and NATO's secretary general, George Robertson. Formally, at least, it closes a cavernous divide that opened last March after NATO started its air war against Yugoslavia. <br><br>But there were few illusions that the resumed partnership signals any genuine meeting of minds, given the depth of Russian bitterness over NATO's conduct of the Kosovo war. <br><br>Rather, today's agreement was seen as one more strategic move by Mr. Putin to shore up relations with the West, the one place where he can find the money, technology and expertise for rebuilding Russia. <br><br>Mr. Putin sent the chairman of the Russian Security Council, Sergei Ivanov, to Washington today to discuss arms proliferation and a potential summit meeting with President Clinton. Last week, after almost 18 months of talks, Russia struck a deal with private Western lenders to reschedule $31.8 billion in bad debt. <br><br>The deal instantly lifted Russia's credit rating and improved the climate for foreign investment, one of Mr. Putin's stated goals. <br><br>"He wants to create, let's say, a favorable environment for his 'Russia project,' if you like," said Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow. Mr. Trenin suggested that the agreement today was in part a response to unusually warm comments on Tuesday by Mr. Clinton, who praised Mr. Putin as a leader he could work with, and offered only muted criticism of Russia's conduct of the Chechnya war. <br><br>The State Department's spokesman, James P. Rubin, said the United States welcomes the accord, and that Mr. Putin has indicated that "he regards the centrality of U.S.-Russian relations as larger than differences on key issues." <br><br>Relations between Russia and NATO have never been especially cordial. The Western alliance has continued to expand toward the Russian border, effectively ignoring Moscow's objections, and Russia has complained that it has never gotten the consultative role in NATO affairs that the alliance had seemed to promise. <br><br>The relationship fell apart completely last March when the NATO attack on Yugoslavia led Russia to expel alliance representatives. <br><br>The Kosovo war was a watershed that made it acceptable for Russian politicians and citizens alike to express long-concealed suspicions of the West. The estrangement has only deepened as NATO has criticized Russia's conduct in Chechnya. <br><br>In the accord reached today, both sides agreed to abide by a 1997 agreement governing relations between NATO and Russia, and to hew to the United Nations charter -- an apparent sop to Moscow, which has complained vociferously that NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia violated United Nations principles. <br><br>Russian officials stressed that the accord did not signal any change in military policy in Chechnya. <br><br>Mr. Putin has courted support from the military. But Mr. Robertson said today that the decision to resume relations with NATO was clearly Mr. Putin's. <br><br>"I think he shared my view that the chilly period should come to an end," Mr. Robertson said on the Russian television network NTV. "I think we've moved from the permafrost onto slightly softer ground." </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950687956,42715,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>New Yugoslav Defense Minister Is an Indicted Serbian General</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By REUTERS<br>ELGRADE, Serbia, Feb. 15 -- Yugoslavia's president, Slobodan Milosevic, appointed a loyal aide today as his new defense minister. He is a Serbian general who has been indicted by a United Nations court for suspected war crimes in Kosovo. <br><br>The official Tanjug news agency said Mr. Milosevic issued a decree appointing Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic, 58, chief of staff of the Yugoslav army, as the new defense minister. He succeeds Pavle Bulatovic, who was shot dead on Feb. 7 by unknown gunmen in a Belgrade restaurant. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic also appointed General Nebojsa Pavkovic, commander of Yugoslavia's Third Army, as the new army chief of staff. <br><br>The Third Army covers southern Serbia including Kosovo Province. Kosovo is now under de facto international rule after the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces last June after 11 weeks of NATO air strikes. <br><br>General Pavkovic, 53, also seen as loyal to Mr. Milosevic, has vowed that the army will return to Kosovo one way or another. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic, General Ojdanic and three other Yugoslav officials were indicted last May by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for war crimes in Kosovo Province. <br><br>Some local analysts said the appointments signaled a hardening stance by the Yugoslav president. <br><br>But a Serbian opposition leader disagreed. Mr. Milosevic "still keeps his personal power garnished with a few obedient people, picking them up from the same small circle and shuffling them from one position to another," said Zoran Djindjic, head of the opposition Democratic Party. <br><br>Officials in Montenegro, the Western-leaning Yugoslav republic that forms Yugoslavia with Serbia, warned of worsening relations between the two republics since Mr. Bulatovic, a Montenegrin, was succeeded by General Ojdanic, a Serb. <br><br>"Montenegro has lost yet another ministerial post, one of the most important for relations between Montenegro and Serbia," said Ranko Krivokapic, vice president of the Montenegrin Social Democratic Party, which is a member of the ruling coalition. <br><br>An adviser to Montenegro's president, Milo Djukanovic, accused Mr. Milosevic of violating constitutional procedure by not consulting Montenegro on his decision.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950687939,63759,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>'The river was full of fish. Roach, tench, carp and bream. Now there is nothing' </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br>By Adam LeBor in Szeged <br><br>On a good day, before 100 tons of cyanide-contaminated slurry poured out of a Romanian gold mine into tributaries of the Tisza river, Sandor Bognar could count on a catch of up to 150kg of fish. It brought him a good living, and the joy of life and work on the river that, even more than the Danube, is closest to many Magyar hearts. <br><br>But now, in Szeged, southern Hungary, the river is empty of life, and so are Mr Bognar's nets. Much of the Tisza is dead, poisoned by the cyanide that wiped out algae and fish. Hungarian officials have described the catastrophe as the worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl. <br><br>For Mr Bognar, 40, and the dozens of other fishermen who made their living harvesting the Tisza's rich crop of carp, roach, bream and gudgeon, not just a job, but a way of life is over, probably for years. "I don't know how I am going to live now that we cannot fish here. We were so proud of how we lived, with our skills and knowledge of the water passed from generation to generation, from father to son. Not for money, but because we love the Tisza. But now we cannot see what the future holds for us," he said. <br><br>At first sight, the river running through this pretty Habsburg-era city, with its spacious squares and grassy water-side promenades, seems normal. <br><br>Wide and majestic, flowing smoothly between its tree-lined banks, the winding Tisza defines the landscape like no other waterway in the region, except the Danube. The late-morning sun casts shadows on its dappled waters. But a shadow has fallen on the city and its river, once famed for its fish. Even Szeged's local delicacy of halaszle, a spicy fish-soup of paprika and carp, has been struck off the menu. <br><br>The fish that would have been eaten has either been incinerated or lies belly up in the water. Tons of dead and rotting fish have been removed, and many more are believed to be lying dead on the river-bed. <br><br>"This is a tragedy. The river is dead. It took 30 hours for the cyanide to travel through the river [but now there is] nothing living in it. We hope the river can be revived,but it will take a long time, and we don't know how long," said Antal Gulyas, director of the Tisza Fishermen's Society. In Switzerland, the World Wide Fund for Nature said 19 species of protected fish lived in the Tisza and "this spill has, in practical terms, eradicated all life" from up to 250 miles of the river. <br><br>"We won't know the real extent of the damage until an evaluation can be carried out in the spring," the group said. "But we know already that the rehabilitation of the river will take decades." Environmentalists believe that lead and other heavy metals have entered the Tisza, and could coat the river-bottom for years. Zoltan Illes, the head of Hungary's environmental committee in parliament, said: "The fact that heavy metals also got into the rivers means an even worse problem. It will poison the whole food chain." <br><br>By Sunday, the spill had reached Yugoslavia's stretch of the Danube, leaving dead fish in its wake. Witnesses saidparts of the river were "white with the bellies of dead fish". <br><br>Even as the poison diminished to non-lethal levels, Yugoslav officials said they would sue those responsible in an international court. The sale of most freshwater fish was banned on Monday. <br><br>In the Danube town of Pancevo, 500kg of dead fish were pulled from the river. Pancevo is still recovering from last year's Nato bombing of its heavy industry which, The Independent reported in July, "unleashed a poisonous cocktail of thousands of tons of toxic chemicals into the town's water, air and soil". <br><br>This year's disaster originated in north-western Romania, where a dam at the Baia Mare gold mine overflowed on 30 January, causing cyanide to pour into the headwaters of the Tisza. A cyanide solution is used to separate gold ore from surrounding rock. <br><br>The contamination is now turning into an international diplomatic incident, as both Hungary and Yugoslavia have demanded that Romania pay damages. Hungary has asked the United Nations for an independent team of experts to assess the damage. <br><br>Along the banks of the Tisza in Serbia the fishermen are hanging black banners to mourn their dead waterway. Upstream, in Szeged, Sandor Bognar contemplates an uncertain future. <br><br>"I had my own stretch of the river to fish, three or four kilometres. It was full of fish: roach, tench, bream and several kinds of carp. Now there is nothing. I don't know how something like this could happen in modern Europe, that such a dangerous poison could be left in such a primitive set-up. It is an unbelievable tragedy."</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950687915,67083,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Restoring faith in Kosovo force</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Ethnic Albanians shot at French troops Sunday. US soldier accused of murder will have a hearing in days.<br>Richard Mertens <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor<br><br>VITINA, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>It's market day in this little town in southern Kosovo, and people are pouring in from nearby villages.<br><br>Middle-aged women carry heavy shopping bags while young men strut in black leather jackets, and teenage girls in heavy makeup stroll arm-in-arm along the main street. On either side, merchants display their wares, hawking almost everything a Kosovar might want, from wood stoves and wristwatches to live chickens.<br><br>The US Army is here, too, as part of the NATO-led protection force that came to Kosovo last June, after three months of NATO airstrikes forced Yugoslav troops to end a mass purge of the rebellious ethnic Albanian majority in the Serbian province.<br><br>Soldiers from Charlie Company, paratroopers from the American peacekeeping force in Kosovo, work their way through the jostling crowd on a routine patrol. With their flak jackets, Kevlar helmets, and M-16 assault rifles, they hardly blend in.<br><br>Last month, on a market day like this one, an American soldier allegedly sexually assaulted and killed an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl in Vitina. After the killing, more complaints against the US force came to light, including accusations of verbal abuse, beatings, and inappropriate searches of women.<br><br>The Army could hold a hearing as early as this week on whether the soldier accused of the killing, Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi, should face a court-martial. It is likely to decide within the next two weeks whether to charge any soldiers in connection with the other claims. In the meantime, the Army has replaced the unit at the center of the investigations with Charlie Company, giving its 140 soldiers the double challenge of keeping the peace in Vitina - never easy - and winning back the confidence of its residents.<br><br>"We have to kind of mend the wounds," says Staff Sgt. James Krause, of Livonia, Mich., as he leads five soldiers through the bazaar.<br><br><br>When violence boils over<br><br>Maintaining good relations is a vital but extremely tricky task in Kosovo. In the divided city of Mitrovica, a recent explosion of violence led ethnic Albanian snipers to target NATO peacekeepers on Sunday. Weekend unrest left one person dead and 19 injured, including two French soldiers. Local ethnic Albanians have accused the French contingent of favoring Serbs, who control the northern side of the city.<br><br>Back in Vitina, Staff Sgt. Hector Rubio steps forward to admire a pair of chickens held up by a grizzled old man in a black beret. "I don't want them to be afraid of us," Sergeant Rubio, from El Paso, Texas, explains as his squad continues down the street. "I don't think they know how to take us. But if you go out of your way to talk to them, then they get to know you better."<br><br>First Lt. Reubin Felkey, a platoon leader from Redwood Falls, Minn., hands out peppermint candies to children. Some respond with a shy "Thank you" in English before racing off. He senses a new wariness in Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians have regarded Americans as heroes for the role the US played in the war last spring.<br><br>"Normally when I hand out candy, I get mobbed," Lieutenant Felkey says. "I get a feeling people here are surprised. They don't make eye contact with us. You look at them, and they look away."<br><br>The Army has disclosed little about its investigations. The accusations apparently have focused on seven soldiers, including officers. Both local residents and international officials say American soldiers verbally or physically abused people while making arrests, controlling crowds, or searching for guns and other weapons. In one case, the family of a man who is mute said he was beaten when he slipped on ice and bumped a soldier. Women have complained that soldiers were disrespectful while frisking them for possible weapons.<br><br>Human rights monitors in Kosovo say they have received numerous complaints about the Americans and peacekeepers from other countries serving in Kosovo. One problem, they say, is a reluctance to take claims seriously.<br><br>"You have a security force here that should set an example of how a security force should act in the framework of human rights," says Elizabeth Griffin of Amnesty International. "Any incidents like these present a major problem."<br><br>But they also point to deeper problems for peacekeepers in Kosovo. The failure of the United Nations to assemble an effective police force here has demanded that soldiers assume a role that is foreign to their training. The paratroopers stationed in Vitina are trained to jump out of airplanes and capture airstrips. They are trained to clear trenches and knock out bunkers. They are trained, as one Army officer put it, "to have a little bit of an attitude." But in Kosovo, they often find themselves investigating crimes, manning checkpoints, or patrolling like beat cops.<br><br>"You just kind of hit the ground and execute," says Sergeant Krause, whose metaphors, if not his current work, reflect the paratroopers' can-do attitude. "It's like we train for all this other stuff, and then they send us here."<br><br><br>Concern of 'mission creep'<br><br>Secretary of Defense William Cohen made much the same point earlier this month when he said that the contradiction was becoming worrisome to both military and civilian leaders.<br><br>"I think it has reached the level of concern on the part of not only members of the US Congress, but military commanders," Mr. Cohen told reporters while in Munich for an international security conference. "They are concerned about the possibility of mission creep - that the military is being called upon to engage in police functions for which they are not properly trained and we don't want them to carry out."<br><br>Another problem is that it's not working. The presence of 45,000 peacekeepers and 2,000 UN police officers has been unable to stop the violence in Kosovo. And in many places, including Vitina, the violence is not just between ethnic Albanians and Serbs but among ethnic Albanians struggling for power or settling old scores. For weeks, arsons in Vitina have targeted ethnic Albanian businesses bought from local Serbs.<br><br>Charlie Company may not be able to solve these problems any better than its predecessor. But many people in the market said they were pleased to see the new unit.<br><br>"The soldiers who were here before were more aggressive," says Sylejman Halili, who was selling jars of honey. "These are behaving much better. They are respecting us in a human way."</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950599487,64128,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Yugoslav army says no paramilitaries in Montenegro</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Feb 14 (Reuters) - The Yugoslav army dismissed allegations on Monday that it was setting up paramilitary units in Montenegro as attempts to discredit it. <br>"Claims that the Yugoslav Army is establishing paramilitary formations in Montenegro are incorrect and ill-intentioned," Tanjug state news agency quoted an army statement as saying. <br><br>Organisational changes by the army in Montenegro were being presented as the creation of paramilitary formations "and used for political purposes to form a negative opinion about the army as an important institution of the federal state," it said. <br><br>The statement said the allegations were made in the media by some former members of the army and the Montenegrin leadership. <br><br>Montenegro, the junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, has taken steps to distance itself from Serbia since NATO's 11-week air war on Yugoslavia in 1999 to punish Belgrade for its policies in Kosovo. <br><br>Montenegro has increased its autonomy in finance and foreign policy, leaving the Yugoslav army as the last joint institution functioning between the two Yugoslav republics. <br><br>Former Yugoslav Army Chief General Momcilo Perisic told a Belgrade daily late last year that Yugoslavia had formed paramilitary units inside the army in Montenegro to trigger a conflict with police there. <br><br>Montenegro's leader Milo Djukanovic said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was using the army as a tool to keep the republic in check and stop it severing ties with Serbia. <br><br>The army said its critics had failed to mention to what extent the Montenegrin police was being reinforced. <br><br>"A battallion of military police in Montenegro is an integral part of the Yugoslav army, its equipping and use are in line with regulations and all Montenegrin citizens have equal access," the statement said. <br><br>The army said it was surprised at the continued campaign against it from the Montenegrin authorities and said an agreement to work jointly on calming the situation seemed to have been quickly forgotten. <br><br>The Yugoslav army and Montenegrin police agreed to cooperate to reduce tensions last December after a tense airport standoff. <br><br>The United States has said it would stand firm against any Serb military action against Montenegro but opposed its independence. <br><br>Djukanovic said earlier this month it was too early for a breakaway referendum, offering Milosevic more time to consider Montenegro's proposal to reform their joint state.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950599457,26101,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serbian court jails alleged Kosovo guerrillas</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Feb 14 (Reuters) - A Serbian court on Monday sentenced five ethnic Albanians to up to four years in prison for being Kosovo guerrillas and conspiring against the country, the independent Beta news agency reported. <br>Beta said eight other Kosovo Albanians were sentenced by the same court in the southern town of Leskovac last week to up to 15 years in prison, and a ninth to two years on Monday in the same case. <br><br>The trials were among several cases brought against Kosovo Albanians for their alleged role in fighting Serb rule in the southern province. <br><br>Many of them were arrested by Serb forces during NATO's March-to-June 1999 bombing campaign and transferred to other parts of Serbia. Kosovo is now under international control after Yugoslav security forces withdrew in June. <br><br>In Monday's court rulings, Beta said Driton Berisha was sentenced to four years, Ljuz Marku to three, Hadzija Redzep to two and Isuf Hadzijaj to 17 months in jail. <br><br>They were charged with being members of the Kosovo Liberation Army and of carrying firearms and digging trenches outside their village in the southern Serbian province. The report did not say when they had been arrested. <br><br>The agency did not name another ethnic Albanian man who it said was sentenced to two years in a separate trial earlier on Monday in which the court freed four Kosovo Albanians all aged under 18. <br><br>The Belgrade Humanitarian Law Fund said in a statement quoted by Beta that the five were part of a group of 13 ethnic Albanians tried in Leskovac last week, of whom eight received sentences of up to 15 years. <br><br>That group was charged with "conspiring to commit subversive activities related with terrorism." <br><br>Beta said the Yugoslav army arrested the 13 men in April 1999 in the Moslem-dominated town of Plav in Montenegro, Serbia's only remaining partner republic in the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>The Belgrade office of the International Committee of the Red Cross has said there are still some 1,600 Kosovo Albanian prisoners in Serb jails. <br><br>The ICRC has helped transfer some 400 back to Kosovo in cooperation with Serb authorities after they were released.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950599402,95860,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Kosovo Peacekeepers Warn That Extremists 'Want Peace to Fail'</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The New York Times<br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 14 -- The two men in charge of this divided town, a United Nations administrator and a French general, said today that they were counting on two foreign judges to punish extremists after 12 days of violence<br>Unless the violence stops, Mario Morcone, the United Nations administrator in Mitrovica, and Gen. Pierre de Saqui de Sannes, the French commander of peacekeeping troops in northern Kosovo, said they fear that ethnic relations will be poisoned permanently. <br><br>General de Saqui de Sannes, who has blamed the violence on both sides, said individuals were instigating attacks purposely to escalate the violence and to destroy the last multiethnic town in Kosovo where Serbs and Albanians are still living side by side, if uneasily. <br><br>"There are extremists who want the peace to fail," he said in an interview at his headquarters. While the violence consists of "isolated acts," he said, the strategy is to escalate tensions and intolerance. "I am worried that we may be in the process of an escalation of intolerance," he said. <br><br>Some Albanians have wanted to push the Serbs in northern Mitrovica and beyond out of Kosovo, and some Serbs have wanted to do the opposite -- to push the Albanians remaining among them south of the Ibar river, which divides Mitrovica, in order to create a pure Serbian area in northern Kosovo, he said. "The people are hostages to this," he said. <br><br>Mr. Morcone said that it was now clear who the troublemakers were and that it was critical to move against them. A judge and a prosecutor, both foreigners, were arriving to start dealing with the dozens of people arrested during Sunday's violence. "You may well see more arrests in the following days," he said. <br><br>"We need to arrest people and remove them from the scene. We know the people who are involved," he said. "For me it has to be the solution, not only for me here, but for all of Kosovo." <br><br>French troops rounded up and arrested 46 people -- 45 Albanians and one Serb -- on Sunday after a day of furious firefights between NATO-led peacekeepers and local gunmen. A dozen were quickly released, General de Saqui de Sannes said, and the rest were being questioned. <br><br>Suggesting that some Serbs would also be arrested, Mr. Marcone said: "Yesterday was a bad day for the Albanians, but that will not be all." <br><br>For whatever reason, Albanians engaged the French in heavy firefights, and in the resulting melee two French soldiers were wounded. <br><br>According to the general, a crowd of Albanians gathered Sunday morning near a French guard post after a grenade exploded and wounded five Albanians. The crowd began throwing stones at French soldiers who then cordoned off the area. Then a man appeared from a house, shouted at the people to get down, and fired directly at the soldiers, hitting one in the stomach and a second as he moved to react, the general said. <br><br>The soldiers pursued the man but did not catch him. There ensued several hours of shooting as French soldiers moved into the district and came under fire from several directions. Eventually they surrounded some 18 people in a house and got them to surrender. They found only one weapon in the house, but since then have seized more weapons during house searches, the general said. <br><br>There were women and minors among those arrested, he added. One old woman was found to be concealing a Kalashnikov rifle under her skirts, he said. Soldiers also stopped a local ambulance driving towards Mitrovica today and discovered 180 grenades and antitank rockets inside, the general recounted. <br><br>During the fighting Sunday a group of some 30 armed Albanians also tried to ford the Ibar river to the west of the city, but were spotted and deterred with warning shots, a spokesman for the French force said. <br><br>The events are likely to aggravate relations between the French troops and the ethnic Albanians here. Thousands flocked today to the burial of the one man killed by French troops during the fighting Sunday. <br><br>Avni Haradinaj, 35, a former guerrilla fighter of the Kosovo Liberation Army and a local hero, was buried with full honors by his former comrades in arms. His coffin, draped in the red Albanian flag, was carried up the hill to the edge of a wood outside the city, through a crowd of some 3,000 mourners. <br><br>The Albanian mayor of Mitrovica, Bajram Rexhepi, who said he had been a good friend of the dead man, said Mr. Haradinaj was unarmed when he was shot by French soldiers and was in Mitrovica visiting his sisters. "There were four people with him and they explained that he had no weapon at the moment he was killed," he said. <br><br>General de Saqui de Sannes insisted that Mr. Haradinaj was armed and was shooting at the soldiers when he was shot. <br><br>The general tried to reassure the Albanians of French neutrality. "If we were shot at by Albanians, it is difficult to arrest Serbs," he said. <br><br>In the few weeks since he took command, peacekeeping troops have raided a Serb bar that has frequently been identified as a hangout for troublemakers and paramilitaries. They also arrested a man close to the Serb leader of north Mitrovica for possessing a telescopic sight, and expelled him from the city for 20 days under a special resolution introduced by the United Nations last year, the general said. <br><br>The general defended his troops' actions on the night of Feb. 3, when Serb mobs rampaged through the city and left eight Albanians dead. The peacekeepers worked hard to contain the violence, he said, blockading the city to prevent outsiders from adding to the violence, and evacuating Albanians and foreigners to safety. "If the troops had not acted as they did, it would have been a lot worse, a real massacre," he said. <br><br>The need now is for a political solution, for institutions and money, to lift the economy and deny extremists an open field, the general said. "I cannot do much more," he warned. "I cannot stop someone throwing a grenade."</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950524381,96410,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>West abandons dream of a unified Kosovo </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Sunday Times<br>Tom Walker <br><br>A YEAR after Nato's intervention, the West's dream of Serbs and Albanians living together in Kosovo is dead. Diplomats openly concede that monoethnic cantons are the only solution to the province's intractable hatred, with Serbs confined to the north and vulnerable pockets in the centre and south. <br>Tit-for-tat bloodshed in Mitrovica, an industrial town where Serbs have been allowed to drive thousands of Albanians from their homes, has illustrated the stark choices facing a territory where Nato's Kfor troops and the United Nations civilian administration have failed to beat the rule of the gun and terrorism. <br><br>Western policy-makers have decided that pragmatism must prevail over notions of reconciliation and justice. <br><br>"There's no point banging on about it while you can't speak Serbian in Pristina without having your throat cut," said a senior western diplomat. "The Serbs have got to have somewhere to feel safe, and it looks like being Mitrovica." <br><br>Albanians have staged angry demonstrations against the tactics of French Kfor troops in Mitrovica, and on Friday they were reinforced by a company from the Royal Green Jackets. But the military objective in the town remains to keep the two populations separated. <br><br>Yesterday there was more trouble for Kfor, as an American peacekeeper recovered fron gunshot wounds he received while on guard duty in Gnjilane, and three Albanians were arrested after shooting at Norwegian soldiers near the Serbian community in Obilic. A Russian vehicle also hit a Albanian landmine. <br><br>The diplomat, like many others, has run out of patience with the Albanians, for whom the Kosovo Liberation Army continues to run amok. Between 400 and 700 Serbs have been murdered since last summer. <br><br>Even Bernard Kouchner, the UN special representative in Kosovo, who has championed the concept of "peaceful co- existence", has confided to aides that he is "fed up" with the KLA leadership. <br><br>The current Serbian population in Kosovo is estimated at between 70,000 and 100,000, less than half its pre-war total. The UN believes that municipal elections, planned for the late summer, will identify the handful of Kosovo's 29 municipalities where Serbs remain in the majority, and that from these will be formed the Mitrovica canton and two pockets - probably around the monastery of Gracanica in the centre and the ski resort area of Strpce and Brezovica in the south. <br><br>The acceptance of a fundamental failure in the Kosovo mission coincides with rising bellicosity in Belgrade. Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, and his generals have eagerly reminded the UN that, under its charter for Kosovo, there is provision for the return of limited numbers of Yugoslav army and Serbian police units. <br><br>They have also pointed out that the UN's mandate runs out in June, which the Milosevic regime is billing as a cut-off date for western intervention. In a recent interview with the Politika daily, Milosevic referred to Nato's presence as "temporary". <br><br>General Nebojsa Pavkovic, head of Yugoslavia's Third Army, meanwhile said his troops would return to Kosovo, probably in June, as authorised by an agreement signed with Nato last year. Diplomats rule out any reimposition of authority from Belgrade, at least for as long as Milosevic remains in power. <br><br>Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said he feared many more Albanians would leave northern Kosovo as Serbian extremists there continued to push for an ethnically "clean" chunk of territory. <br><br>Officially, 650 Albanians have left the area under Kfor escort, but the unofficial figure is much higher. Some western sources estimate several thousand Albanians have moved over the past week. <br><br>If Serbian cantons are established, Kfor's work will become considerably easier and more like that of its sister force in Bosnia, where, despite five years of peace, the Serbian, Croatian and Muslim communities remain resolutely divided.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950515404,54915,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Divisions run deep as Montenegro ponders secession _ civil war</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">PODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) _ The debate over breaking away from Yugoslavia is splitting Montenegro's families, friends, regions and towns, and raising worries not only of intervention by the federal army but of war among the Montenegrins themselves. <br>Those tensions have heightened since last Monday's killing of Yugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic, one of the most senior Montenegrins in President Slobodan Milosevic's regime in Belgrade. <br><br>Although no one has openly accused pro-independence Montenegrins of the crime, Milosevic's supporters here in Montenegro are portraying Bulatovic's killing as an attack on the integrity of the country. <br><br>"The divisions are very sharp," said political analyst Miodrag Vlahovic. "They are irrational, but there is not much room for dialogue." <br><br>Montenegro, a mountainous republic of 600,000 people that affords Yugoslavia its last outlet to the Adriatic Sea, stuck by the federation as Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia broke away one-by-one in the 1990s, all but Macedonia in bloodshed. <br><br>Talk of independence increased after Milosevic's pro-Western rival, Milo Djukanovic, won Montenegro's presidency in a 1997 election victory over a pro-Belgrade candidate. <br><br>Apart from complaining about domination by the larger Serbia, secession proponents argue that Yugoslavia's international isolation over the Balkans wars prevents Montenegro from implementing economic and political reforms and blocks access to international lending bodies. <br><br>But worries about civil war within Montenegro, fears of action by Milosevic's forces and lack of Western support for secession have slowed plans for a referendum on independence. <br><br>Rather than push the issue to open conflict, Montenegro's government has opted for "creeping independence." It has slowly taken over federal institutions such as customs and border control and has introduced the German mark as a parallel currency to the devalued Yugoslav dinar. <br><br>That leaves the Yugoslav military units within Montenegro as the only visible federal institution. <br><br>"The Yugoslav federation exists only formally, only on the map," said Novak Kilibarda, one of Montenegro's deputy prime ministers. "All ties have been suspended. A referendum is a certainty which has to be carried out. But maybe not immediately." <br><br>Meanwhile, tensions are bubbling in almost every facet of Montenegrin life, even the national sports club, Buducnost, which sponsors soccer and basketball teams. Its fan club has split into pro-independence and pro-Belgrade factions, and police had to separate two groups of fans during a recent basketball game with a visiting Israeli team. <br><br>The Montenegrin government claims Milosevic's supporters are fomenting divisions within the republic, arming militias to fight alongside federal troops if necessary and provoking incidents, such as the brief military takeover last year of the main airport at Podgorica, Montenegro's capital. <br><br>Predrag Bulatovic, a top official in the pro-Milosevic Socialist People's Party, dismisses such accusations. He argues it is the Montenegrin government that is preparing for war by forming a 20,000-man police force _ much larger than necessary for routine security. <br><br>But even while denying pro-Milosevic militias had been formed, Bulatovic warned that pro-Belgrade Montenegrins would "organize themselves" and "respond to force with force" if the republic's government holds a referendum on secession. <br><br>Such talk is reminiscent to the situations before the earlier Yugoslav wars, when Serb minorities took up arms after declarations of independence by Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Milosevic supported the Serb insurgents politically and militarily. <br><br>Milan Popovic, a law professor, estimates about half of Montenegro's families are divided over the republic's future. <br><br>"Some Montenegrins say they are Serbs; some call themselves Montenegrins," he said. <br><br>Most pro-Serb Montenegrins come from extended families with ancestral roots in the north near the border with Serbia. Pro-independence strength is mostly in the south, while the central parts, including the capital, are mixed. <br><br>In recent surveys, about 30 percent of Montenegrins said they wanted the republic to remain with Serbia "at any price." An equal percentage supported independence. The rest were undecided. <br><br>Many people fear that the longer the issue remains unresolved, the greater the possibility of open conflict. <br><br>"A war here would be a war to the end, father against son, brother against brother," economist Nebojsa Medojevic said.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950515373,83229,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serbia Seeks Money for River Damage</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By MISHA SAVIC Associated Press Writer <br><br>BECEJ, Yugoslavia (AP) - Serbia on Sunday announced it will demand compensation at an international court from those responsible for a cyanide spill that has contaminated a major river, destroying most aquatic life.<br><br>Serbian Environment Minister Branislav Blazic said it would take at least five years for life in the Tisa River to recover.<br><br>``The Tisa has been killed. Not even bacteria have survived,'' Blazic said as he toured the area along the river in northern Serbia. ``This is a total catastrophe.''<br><br>``We will demand an estimation of the damage and we will demand that the culprits for this tragedy be punished,'' he said.<br><br>Romania, where the pollution originated, played down the environmental damage. But people - not just aquatic life - are at risk because of the spill, said Predrag Prolic, a professor of chemistry and toxicology at Belgrade University.<br><br>He said those with wells close to the riverbed are in danger. Birds feeding off fish could die, he said. The poisoned water also can filter into the soil and then contaminate grass, grain, and livestock, Prolic said.<br><br>In Bucharest, Romania, Anton Vlad, an environmental official, suggested the spill's effects had been overstated.<br><br>``I have the impression that it is exaggerated,'' Vlad told national radio.<br><br>The cyanide spill originated in northwest Romania, near the border town of Oradea, where a dam at the Baia Mare gold mine overflowed Jan. 30, causing cyanide to pour into streams. At the mine, a cyanide solution is used to separate gold ore from surrounding rock.<br><br>From there, the polluted water flowed west into the Tisa in neighboring Hungary, killing large numbers of fish there, and then into Yugoslavia.<br><br>The spill was expected to reach the Danube River sometime Sunday. There was no official word of that happening, but the Beta news agency cited eyewitnesses late in the day who said the Danube was ``all white with the bellies of dead fish'' between the area where it is joined by the Tisa, and Belgrade, about 50 miles to the southeast.<br><br>Vlad said that once the cyanide had reached the Danube, the pollution would ``disappear because the water levels in the Danube are tens of times higher than the Tisa.''<br><br>Prolic said the Danube could dilute the spill enough to reduce its dangers, but the spill still ``destroyed life in the Tisa for years to come.''<br><br>He said the peak concentration of cyanide in the river was 20 times the permissible level. Poisonous heavy metals such as lead can be left behind after the cyanide dissipates and can also leech into the soil, Prolic said.<br><br>In Serbia, dozens of volunteers and fisherman, wearing protective rubber gloves, removed hundreds of dead fish from the Tisa to bury them. Heaps of them littered the river bank.<br><br>``Everything's dead, cyanide destroyed the entire food chain,'' said local fisherman Slobodan Krkljes, 43. ``Fishing was my job, I don't know what I'm going to do now.''<br><br>In Becej, a town on the Tisa about 55 miles north of Belgrade, police were making sure no contaminated fish were brought to the town's market for sale. Restaurants in the region have removed fish from their menus.<br><br>Experts and officials estimate that some 80 percent of the fish in the Tisa have died since the contamination entered the country Friday.<br><br>The fertile plains of Serbia's north are also the country's breadbasket. Water from the Tisa is traditionally used for irrigation.<br><br>Serbia's environment minister accused Romania of covering up the real dimensions of the poisoning, which some environmentalists say could be the biggest ecological catastrophe in Europe since the Chernobyl nuclear reactor catastrophe in 1986. Blazic claimed the initial concentration of the cyanide in Romania must have been enormous if the effects remained so deadly in Yugoslavia, about 300-400 miles down the river.<br><br>``Had we from Yugoslavia done something like this, we probably would have been bombed,'' he said.<br><br>Blazic was referring to that NATO bombing of Yugoslavia last year over its actions in Kosovo - and a widespread belief here that the West is anti-Serb. The cyanide spill adds to the ecological damage caused by NATO's bombing of oil refineries and factories here. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950515333,34643,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>NATO-Led Troops Caught in Battle Over Kosovo Town</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The New York Times <br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br>MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 13 -- French troops killed an Albanian gunman today during fierce fighting in the streets of this bitterly divided town in the most sustained clashes involving peacekeeping troops since they arrived in Kosovo eight months ago. <br><br>More than a dozen people were wounded, including two French soldiers, and 17 people were arrested by early evening after French troops -- recently accused of not cracking down hard enough on violence here -- moved aggressively to pin down the gunmen. <br><br>Both Serbs and Albanians regard Mitrovica as the last battlefield of the war for Kosovo and, as such, unfinished business. Today, the international troops seemed to have been caught in the middle of that battle. <br><br>Gunfire and explosions sounded over the northern part of the town -- home to about 9,000 Serbs, but also to 1,500 Albanians -- for some five hours, and smoke billowed from two burning houses. French, Italian and British troops came under fire on different occasions. British troops, deployed last week on the central bridge that divides the town into north and south, exchanged fire with snipers on the north side several times. By late afternoon, the shooting had ceased and French troops had surrounded a house and begun to negotiate for the men inside to surrender. <br><br>A former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who said in an interview by telephone that he had been involved in the fighting, said that Serbs had attempted to attack an Albanian area and that fighters of the now-outlawed Albanian guerrilla force had fought back to defend the area. <br><br>"Nine Albanians were injured today, including one of our soldiers," the former commander said, speaking on condition of anonymity. <br><br>Serbs have made the north of the city a bastion of Serbian control and refuge for thousands of people displaced from elsewhere in Kosovo. <br><br>Albanians, thousands of whom have still not been able to return to their homes in the north, consider it the last place still to be liberated from Serbian persecution. <br><br>Each side asserts that the other wants to control Mitrovica because Kosovo's most valuable natural assets -- iron ore and precious-metal mines -- are scattered in and around the town. <br><br>A Serbian community leader, Oliver Ivanovic, threw the blame for the fighting on the Albanians. "They are not satisfied," he said. "They're looking for big trouble." <br><br>Mr. Ivanovic said he expected further violence through the night, despite a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. "They will not stop," he said. "They will do something more." <br><br>Apparently with the agreement of the French, he was posting men on the tops of buildings throughout the Serbian area to keep watch overnight despite the curfew. They would be wearing yellow reflecting armbands to show the United Nations forces that they were unarmed, he said. Dozens of tough-looking young men moved in and out of his office shortly before the curfew began to collect the yellow armbands. <br><br>Mitrovica has been rocked by violence for the last 10 days and several hundred British, Belgian, Danish and German troops have been sent as reinforcements to the French, who are in command of the area. The violence, both grenade attacks and shootings, has centered on the northern side of the city. <br><br>There have been injuries among both ethnic communities and nearly 1,000 Albanians have been forced to flee their homes on the north side to the Albanian-populated south. On Saturday evening, French troops surrounded and searched the Dolce Vita cafe, the main hangout for hard-line Serbs. <br><br>The heaviest fighting today occurred in the so-called Bosnian quarter, a dense warren of alleyways close to the Ibar River that is mostly populated by Albanians, but where some Serbs also live. It is an area that Albanians have vowed to defend from what they say are Serb efforts to purge it of Albanians, and which Serbs say is a center of terrorists who attack Serbs. <br><br>The violence today began with a grenade explosion near an Albanian bakery around 7 a.m. in the Bosnian quarter on the north side of the river. Five Albanians were wounded in the grenade attack and were taken to the Moroccan military hospital, said Col. Ahmed Muden, chief of the hospital. Two of the wounded were treated and allowed to go home; the other three were hospitalized. One, Dr. Muden said, was in a serious condition. The wounded were all men, aged 22 to 35, he said. <br><br>It was three hours later that shooting broke out across town. Pistol shots were suddenly answered by automatic gunfire. Two French soldiers were wounded, one in the stomach and one in the arm, when a gunman opened fire on their position in the Bosnian quarter. United Nations police described it as an unprovoked attack on the soldiers, who were part of a static guard deployed to protect Albanians in the quarter. <br><br>Italian troops on a bridge nearby opened fire. French troops immediately moved 30 to 40 armored vehicles into the northern part of Mitrovica across the bridges. The shooting escalated, and British troops came under sniper fire from across the river at their positions on the central bridge. <br><br>Three Serbs were wounded during the day, including one who was with French troops when they came under fire, and another, a civilian, who was hit in a foot outside his apartment building, Mr. Ivanovic said. <br><br>An Albanian man was found in the street in a pool of blood in the middle of the day. The man was already in a coma when he was brought to the Moroccan hospital and died shortly afterward, doctors said. A statement from the NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force later said that the Albanian was a gunman who had been shot dead by French soldiers who had come under fire. <br><br>Three men were injured in exchanges of fire with peacekeeping troops, one of them the dead Albanian, a British spokesman for the peacekeepers, Warrant Officer Mark Cox, said on Sunday evening. <br><br>About 17 people had been arrested during the day, said Warrant Officer Cox, including the men surrounded in the house. <br><br>As French troops pursued the gunmen who had apparently fired on them, automatic gunfire and grenade explosions rang out over the Bosnian quarter. French snipers appeared on the roof of a tall apartment building overlooking the area and an observer helicopter hovered at a distance. Nearby, the smoke of a burning house rose from the charred rafters. <br><br>By midafternoon, the shooting ceased and negotiations began. "They are Albanians inside," said a French public affairs officer, Lt. Charles-Philippe d'Orleans, as he watched the proceedings. "It is not clear who they are or why they are doing this." <br><br>French troops with armored vehicles had cordoned off the street. "We gave them a sharp riposte with the gun mounted on the top," Lieutenant d'Orleans said. <br><br>A crowd of Serbs watching nearby were in no doubt. "They are terrorists," said Branko Barovic, a man on crutches and a known hard-liner. "They are attacking us all the time. We cannot go on living like this." <br><br>All the while, the exodus of Albanians from the north side continued, a human outpouring that started when four Albanians were killed and several Serbs were injured in a night of violence on Feb. 3. Today, one family escaped their house as it was set alight, United Nations police said. Flora Zabrgja, 22, and her mother Kimete Zabrigja, 57, were among those to flee under sniper fire after four days holed up in their apartment, terrified that their Serbian neighbors would attack them. <br><br>"After they searched the Dolce Vita, the Serbs went crazy," Ms. Zabrgja said. Then, she said, French troops arrived and told them to go. As they headed for the bridge, shots rang out. They took cover in a troop carrier on the bridge for two hours, and then ran the length of the bridge with British soldiers carrying their bags for them.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950263549,7611,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Money can buy you death, Serbia's new rich discover </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Shootings a lifestyle downer for gangster society<br><br>The Guardian <br><br>Jacky Rowland in Belgrade <br><br>The killing this week of the Yugoslav defence minister, Pavle Bulatovic, is the latest in a series of mafia-style hits that have spread fear and panic through the political and financial elite of Belgrade. <br>The absence of a ready explanation for the assassination and the fact that it happened less than a month after the killing of the paramilitary leader and gangster, Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, has left Serbs asking, "Who next?" <br><br>Nerves are particularly frayed among the nouveaux riches of Belgrade. These are people who have made their money in the last 10 years through dubious deals and by busting sanctions imposed on Serbia by the United States and the European Union for the role played by Belgrade's leadership and military in promoting the ethnic war that ravaged Bosnia after 1992. <br><br>They call themselves "businessmen" but their business often consists of smuggling and running black market and protection rackets. <br><br>"To get really rich in Serbia you need good connections within the authorities and you should have good contacts with some gangs," said Bratislav Grubacic, a journalist and political analyst. "The only problem is that the money you earn is not just yours. You have to share it with those who protected you or those who gave you the opportunity to do the job." <br><br>The huge wealth amassed by this small group of individuals has given them considerable power and led them to believe that they are beyond the law. The rash of shootings since the start of the year has broken this illusion of invulnerability. <br><br>The new rich like to flaunt their wealth but they also like their privacy. Arkan had the money to buy himself the veneer of respectability and could be seen in public places such as the Intercontinental hotel where he met his death. <br><br>Lesser hoodlums prefer to lurk in private clubs, like La Coste in the affluent suburb of Dedinje. A couple of bruisers with thick necks and golden chains guarantee the screening of clientele. <br><br>A safer way to brush shoulders with the nouveaux riches is in the City Passage shopping centre. In these calm, marble-clad halls, exclusive Italian designer boutiques offer the monied of Belgrade a number of solutions to the dilemma of what to do with their cash. A pair of imitation tigerskin boots can cost £100. The average salary in Serbia is about £25 a month. <br><br>There has been an upsurge of interest in cosmetic surgery among Serbian high society. A number of politicians' wives have benefited from cosmetic surgery, including breast implants, liposuction and nose jobs. "These people have so much money they don't know what to do with it," said Bratislav Grubacic. "They've bought houses, they've bought cars, now they want to buy back their youth." <br><br>There is no shortage of wannabes, young men and young women who saw Arkan and his lavish lifestyle as a model to aspire to. Many girls have embarked on careers as models in the hope that their looks will take them places, preferably away from Serbia. In the meantime, there is at least the chance of earning some decent money: a model can earn more in a day than a factory worker can in a month. <br><br>"Unfortunately education and spiritual values don't matter in Serbia today," said Nebojsa Grncarski, a successful male model. "All that counts is money and material things. It doesn't matter how you get them: the end justifies the means." <br><br>A visit to the studios of TV Pink provides an introduction to the get-rich-quick values of Serbia under the Yugoslav presidency of Slobodan Milosevic. The television station belongs to a crony of the president's wife, Mira Markovic. Arkan's widow, the top folk singer, Ceca, used to make regular appearances. For aspiring actors and pop stars there's a simple lesson: if you want to get ahead, get on TV Pink. <br><br>"There's no big deal about being a celebrity in Yugoslavia," insisted a TV Pink presenter, Ivana Bojic, somewhat disingenuously. "But on the other side there is another level of the jet-set, people that I don't know and who don't want to be known." <br><br>And then, of course, there are the newly poor of Serbia. These are people who used to have a middle-class lifestyle, but whose standard of living has fallen steadily during the 10 years of Milosevic's rule. <br><br>They see no way out of the poverty trap and long for political change. But as long as the system continues to serve those who are rich and powerful now, things are likely to stay just as they are. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950263494,44585,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>US bombing leaves British troops in tents</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Times<br><br>BY MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR<br><br>BRITISH soldiers are still huddled in tents in a bleak Kosovo winter because the barracks earmarked for them were blown to bits by the Americans. <br>The British-led Nato ground force had planned to use vacated Serb military barracks for accommodation and staff headquarters, but the Americans insisted on destroying them during the 78-day air campaign, placing them high on the list of targets for Tomahawk cruise missiles, precision-guided weapons and 1,000lb bombs. <br><br>The main Serb barracks in Pristina, which could have been used by Lieutenant-General Sir Mike Jackson, commander of Nato's Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), as his headquarters, was hit so many times that not a single building was left standing. <br><br>While British officers accepted that the destruction of the barracks looked good on video, they saw little point in destroying buildings that were empty of Serb personnel. Before the Nato air campaign began, it became obvious that the Serb military and Ministry of Interior police (MUP) in Kosovo were deserting all the main barracks, in the expectation that they would be prime targets for Nato bombers. <br><br>By the time the ground forces went in on June 12 last year, there was nowhere for them to sleep. The whole force resorted to tents. Ironically, the Americans are now living in specially constructed huts while the British are still awaiting construction of their accommodation. <br><br>The clash between American target selectors and the ground force commanders emerged yesterday at a conference in London of senior British military officers, meeting to examine lessons learnt from the Kosovo campaign. The problem, they said, was that the American commanders in charge of the air campaign largely ignored the entreaties of ground campaign commanders who were trying to think ahead to when the bombing had stopped. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950263462,36941,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Slain Yugo defence minister buried in Montenegro</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">GORNJI ROVCI, Yugoslavia, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Yugoslav army chiefs and government ministers joined some 1,000 mourners attending the funeral on Thursday of Defence Minister Pavle Bulatovic, gunned down this week in a Belgrade restaurant. <br>Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said at the ceremony at the slain minister's family cemetery in this Montenegrin mountain village that the murder was a terrorist act. <br><br>The prime minister, of the same Montenegrin party as the slain defence minister but no direct relation, vowed that Yugoslavia would stand up against all threats. <br><br>"The result of this crime is completely contrary to the criminals' expectations. Our will and readiness to defend Yugoslavia are even stronger," Bulatovic said. <br><br>"The one who committed this crime does not have a single reason to relax," he said. "We who stayed behind will stand up against violence, terrorism and treason." <br><br>Mourners included virtually the entire military brass as well as senior federal Yugoslav and Serbian republic officials. <br><br>Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was not there, but did attend a government memorial service for Bulatovic in Belgrade on Tuesday. <br><br>Strikingly absent were representatives of the pro-Western leadership of Montenegro, an increasingly reluctant partner of leftist Serbia in the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>One of the military commanders present, the commander of Yugoslavia's second army division based in Montenegro, spoke at an earlier ceremony in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica. <br><br>"The Yugoslav Army is angry today, it is not good to touch it, to test it on a battlefield," said General Milorad Obradovic. <br><br>"The tragic death of Pavle Bulatovic will strengthen members of the Yugoslav army in their determination to endure in their holy task, to protect the sovereignty, territory, independence and the constitutional order of Yugoslavia." <br><br>LOYAL TO MILOSEVIC <br><br>Bulatovic was a member of Montenegro's Socialist People's Party and a loyal, low-profile aide to Milosevic. The party is in opposition in Montenegro but a member of the federal government. <br><br>Bulatovic was shot by an unidentified attacker on Monday, the latest in 10 years of high-profile killings in Belgrade. <br><br>Villagers braved freezing weather and cloudy skies to pay their respects at the funeral, and army lorries were used to transport people from Podgorica on narrow, muddy roads. <br><br>Bulatovic's widow, son and brother stood next to a coffin draped in the red-white-blue Yugoslav flag. Yugoslav army troops fired a three-salvo salute. <br><br>There have been no reports of any arrests in connection with the murder, which came just weeks after feared Serbian warlord Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic was shot dead in a Belgrade hotel. <br><br>Government officials have alleged Western involvement in the killing, suggesting that it would be part of a U.S.-led plot to destroy and then occupy Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic. <br><br>Western diplomats say it may have been committed by paramilitaries who hold the government responsible for Arkan's murder, or by agents bent on removing possible witnesses against Milosevic, who has been indicted by the U.N. war crimes court. <br><br>Bulatovic, 51, was defence minister during the repressive operations in Kosovo by Yugoslav security forces which provoked NATO's 11-week air strike campaign against Yugoslavia last year. <br><br>But unlike Milosevic and four other top officials, Bulatovic was not publicly indicted for war crimes in Kosovo by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950172371,55541,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Montenegrins suspected in assassination of minister </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Christian Jennings <br>YUGOSLAVIA: Apart from his killers, and the people who paid them, nobody knows who shot the Yugoslav Defence Minister, Mr Pavle Bulatovic (51), who was murdered on Monday night as he sat having his supper in a football stadium restaurant in Belgrade's Banjica suburb. <br><br>Those who know the identity of his attackers are certainly not saying. But this being Yugoslavia, the Balkans mill of rumour, fact and half-truth has gone into overdrive.<br><br>Mr Bulatovic, who had been police minister and then defence minister since 1992 under three successive prime ministers, had no bodyguards with him at the time of his death. <br><br>He died shortly after arriving at the Belgrade Military Medical Academy near to the scene of the shooting. Two companions were wounded but survived.<br><br>Mr Bulatovic had been defence minister during the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo carried out in early 1999 by the Yugoslav army, special police and squads of paramilitaries.<br><br>He had not, unlike President Slobodan Milosevic and four other top officials, been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, although he was banned from obtaining a visa to any EU country.<br><br>The Belgrade authorities vowed to step up the fight against what they called "terrorism". Mr Bulatovic was the latest victim in a series of high-profile killings in Belgrade. <br><br>The Serb warlord, Zeljko "Arkan" Razanatovic, was assassinated on January 15th. Mr Bulatovic was Montenegrin by birth and considered to be loyal to President Milosevic and the Yugoslav Federal Republic's Prime Minister, Mr Momir Bulatovic, from the Socialist People's Party.<br><br>The Serbian Deputy Information Minister, Mr Miodrag Popovic, said the killing could have been carried out by the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, now decommissioned and renamed the Kosovo Protection Corps.<br><br>But there are more credible suspicions that Mr Bulatovic was killed by hardline Montenegrins, loyal to President Milo Djukanovic, who claim that since last August the defence minister had been organising paramilitary and Yugoslav army units with the aim of resisting, and then trying to destabilise, the Montenegrin government.<br><br>Mr Bulatovic was from the north of Montenegro, where loyalty to Mr Milosevic and resistance to Mr Djukanovic are at their highest.<br><br>The third theory is that Mr Bulatovic was killed because of his links to Darko Asanin, a Belgrade criminal. It is likely, according to Western diplomats in Kosovo and analysts in Belgrade, that Montenegrin pro-autonomy hard-liners will in any case be blamed for Mr Bulatovic's death, leading to escalating tensions in the tiny province, and a possible Serb retaliatory assassination attempt against Mr Djukanovic, which could finally ignite the much-feared war between Serbia and the last fragment of its Yugoslav federation.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950172351,39672,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Violence shows Yugo leadership unrest - Westendorp</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Recent assassinations in Yugoslavia hints at "unrest" in the government of President Slobodan Milosevic, the West's former high representative in nearby Bosnia said Wednesday. <br>"The situation in Yugoslavia is very dificult, as always ... and new events show that there is unrest among the political clique," said Carlos Westendorp, who was the West's peace coordinator in Bosnia in 1997-1999. <br><br>Westendorp, now head of the European Parliament's foreign trade, energy, research and industry committee, was speaking to reporters during a two-day visit to Sarajevo. <br><br>He said it was too early to say events were signalling "the beginning of the end of the regime" of Milosevic. <br><br>Monday, an unidentified attacker shot dead Yugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic, who was a member of the pro-Milosevic Socialist People's Party in the tiny coastal republic of Montenegro. <br><br>Bulatovic's murder came hardly a month after dreaded warlord Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic was shot dead in a Belgrade hotel. <br><br>There were no immediate reports of links between the two shootings, the latest in a decade of high-profile killings in the Yugoslav Serb capital. <br><br>Westendorp also urged the international community to give more support to Bernard Kouchner, the U.N. administrator of of Kosovo which has suffered an upsurge in ethnic Serb-Albanian violence over the past week. <br><br>"He is having problems, financial and military problems, and I think these problems should be overcome," Westendorp said. <br><br>NATO-led peacekeeping troops and the U.N. mission took control of Kosovo after the alliance's 11-week air campaign last year forced out Yugoslav security forces which had been purging the province's rebellious ethnic Albanian majority. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950172325,21966,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Opposition Blasts Milosevic Over Official's Killing</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Edward Cody<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br><br>BELGRADE, Feb. 8 –– Yugoslav opposition leaders charged today that the assassination of Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic shows President Slobodan Milosevic has turned Yugoslavia into a lawless society in which even high government officials have to fear for their lives. <br><br>In statements issued by their respective parties, the opposition figures sought to turn Bulatovic's gangland-style execution Monday night at a Belgrade restaurant into a political weapon against the man who has run this country with cunning and force through a decade of turmoil, including the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and last spring's war over the separatist province of Kosovo.<br><br>Their charges played on a sense of uncertainty and cynicism among many Serbs who see no early escape from Milosevic's standoff with the West and are told repeatedly that politically connected criminals make millions of dollars on a black market made necessary by the economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.<br><br>In a similar vein, Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, speaking to reporters in Madrid, characterized the killing as "a sort of long-knives confrontation," suggesting members of Milosevic's government have begun to fall out among themselves over power or money.<br><br>"Those who have run this country for more than a decade have created a society where they have to be afraid for their own lives," said a statement from the Democratic Party of Zoran Djindjic. "Serbia needs new authorities capable of restoring peace and security in the society."<br><br>Vuk Obradovic, a former general who runs the Social Democratic Party, called on Milosevic to resign because, he charged, the government has turned Serbia "into a criminal society where no one can feel safe anymore."<br><br>Bulatovic's assassination resonated in Belgrade--capital of the Yugoslav federation as well as Serbia--because it came only three weeks after the murder of Zeljko Raznatovic, a Serb nationalist and militia leader known as Arkan. That slaying, at close range in the lobby of Belgrade's plush Intercontinental Hotel, has not been solved. Few Belgrade residents held out hope that Bulatovic's assassination will be resolved any more quickly.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950172302,59649,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serbs Nurse Rage After Attack in Kosovo City</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By CARLOTTA GALL<br>MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 9 -- United Nations police officers apprehended a man here today who was slashing the tires of their cars and who lashed out at one policeman, injuring his eye, a spokesman for the peacekeepers said. It was a minor incident compared with the violence of last week, but it reflected the continuing tension and anger of Serbs living on the north side of the city. <br><br>Five days after some of the worst violence that troops have seen in eight months of peacekeeping, many Serbs are still cursing and threatening foreigners in the street. <br><br>A number of Serbs in Mitrovica, including more than a dozen interviewed on the street in recent days, do not appear to have altered their views since the war against NATO and the arrival of a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo. A large percentage of them attribute everything bad that has happened to the Albanians. <br><br>As many as 10,000 Serbs live in the north part of this divided city, and almost a third of them are refugees from other parts of Kosovo. They possess a readiness to take things into their own hands and a measure of organization not found among Serbs living in the isolated enclaves around Kosovo where they are far more vulnerable to attack. <br><br>The Serbs of Mitrovica see themselves as defending the only viable outpost of Serbian control in Kosovo against the Albanian majority. They are bolstered by an almost ethnically pure Serbian area stretching north behind them to the boundary with the rest of Serbia. This provides them with a direct, safe land connection. With an estimated population of 50,000 Serbs, the area represents 50 percent of the total left in Kosovo -- the largest concentration in the province. <br><br>All of the dozen or so interviewed said the Serbian mobs that rampaged through Mitrovica on Thursday night, intimidating Albanians and leaving eight dead, were reacting to the grenade attack on a Serbian cafe that wounded 15 young people. <br><br>"At that moment people remembered everything," said Oliver Ivanovic, president of the Serbian National Council and an acknowledged leader of the Serbian community. "The 20 Serbs killed in the area in the last seven months; the 28 people kidnapped and disappeared -- everyone has a reason to be angry. It was very difficult to control them." Mr. Ivanovic was on the streets Thursday night. <br><br>A history teacher, Dragoljub Radenkovic, who fled his home in Vucitrn, a town about six miles southeast of Mitrovica that is now wholly populated by Albanians, says people are revolted. "For eight months journalists have only been writing about Serbs being killed," he said. "In eight months you never saw the Serbs killing Albanians. There was a lot pent-up inside people and it exploded." <br><br>Among the Serbs, Mr. Ivanovic, a sophisticated, English-speaking businessman, who has become the main connection with the international peacekeepers and administrators in the region, was alone in acknowledging his people's recent crimes. <br><br>"Very bad things happened," he said. "I cannot support that, but just ask that you understand it. I was feeling very angry too that night." Other Serbs, including his deputy, Vuko Antonijevic, appeared to applaud the crowd's actions that night. <br><br>"I want to thank you for what you did," Mr. Antonijevic told a rally of 2,000 people on Monday. "You showed how much you love your city and how you can defend it against Islamic terrorism. You showed in the best way what is the Serbian answer for attacks on Serbian youth in coffee bars." <br><br>Another speaker, Milan Ivanovic, a doctor from Mitrovica's hospital, ranted against the NATO-led peacekeepers and United Nations officials for allowing Albanians to persecute the remaining Serbian population in Kosovo. "They are killing Serbs, they are putting Serbs in concentration camps in Kosovo and in Albania, and they are doing it in the presence of the United Nations mission," he said. <br><br>Ordinary Serbs in the street repeated similar accusations, defending the expulsions of Albanians from their midst. "They did the same to us," said Smiljana Milosevic, whose grocery store backs up to the cafe, Le Bel Ami, where the grenade attack occurred. She said the Albanians still living on the north side, now under heavy protection of peacekeeping troops, should leave, "because there are no Serbs on the other side." <br><br>But when asked how the violence could be resolved, most Serbs appeared unsure. Some said the curfew currently in force was good and improved their security. Others said the curfew had left them vulnerable and unable to defend themselves. <br><br>Many say they cannot rely on the peacekeepers and United Nations police officers for security, and must therefore provide their own. "We are just defending ourselves, with our bare hands," said the storekeeper, Ms. Milosevic. <br><br>The Serbs have a fairly well-organized defense here that is loyal to Mr. Ivanovic. It is made up mostly of tough young men who carry walkie-talkies and guard the bridge, inspecting Albanians who cross from the south side to the north. Whether the young men played a role in the violence is not known. <br><br>Mr. Ivanovic says his organization is opposed to expelling all the Albanians from the north side of the city in order to make it all Serbian, because that would invite more attacks from Albanians. He is also against the partition of the Serb-dominated region from the rest of Kosovo. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950082124,62648,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Who killed Bulatovic? Serbs grieve for assassinated minister and lawless state </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Jacky Rowland in Belgrade <br>The Guardian<br>Wednesday February 9, 2000 <br><br>The assassination of the Yugoslav defence minister, Pavle Bulatovic, has raised the spectre of civil unrest in the small republic of Montenegro as rival clans start settling scores. <br>Analysts in Belgrade are linking Monday night's killing to the feud between Montenegro's government - which wants to extricate itself from the Yugoslav federation, where its state is Serbia's sole partner - and the northern Montenegrin clans. <br><br>These clans include the Bulatovic family, who are loyal to President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. <br><br>The minister, 51, was killed by automatic gunfire on Monday night in what the Yugoslav authorities described as "a classic terrorist act". The killer opened fire through the window of a restaurant in the Banjica suburb of Belgrade as the minister was sitting at his favourite table. Two other people were wounded, including the former general and bank director, Vuk Obradovic. The killing of Pavle Bulatovic has caused shock and confusion in Belgrade and in his native Montenegro. Unlike others in the political elite in Yugoslavia, he was considered a modest man untainted by corruption or black market activities. Neither was he among Serb leaders charged by the UN tribunal in The Hague with war crimes in Kosovo war last year, nor linked in press reports to the past decade of political and underworld killings in Serbia. <br><br>The Serb paramilitary leader Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, assassinated in a Belgrade hotel last month, had been the most recent of these. <br><br>However at the time of Arkan's killing the Yugoslav information minister, Goran Matic, blamed the Montenegrin mafia - remarks he later denied making. <br><br>Bulatovic was a staunch supporter of President Milosevic and one of the fiercest critics of the Montenegrin president, Milo Djukanovic, who has made a series of moves to break up what is left of Yugoslavia. <br><br>The minister was active in organising clan meetings in northern Montenegro to rally support for continued federal rule from Belgrade. <br><br>There is a danger that Bulatovic's family and political followers will accuse the Montenegrin authorities of the murder and that pro-Belgrade clans may start fomenting plans to avenge the killing. This could further destabilise Montenegro where tensions are already high as a result of President Djukanovic's defiance of Belgrade and courtship of the west. <br><br>Inevitably there are those in Serbia who have blamed the west - the all-purpose bogeyman - for the Bulatovic murder. The Serb ultra-nationalist leader, Vojislav Seselj, whose own bodyguard was shot dead last month, accused the British, French and American intelligence services of carrying out the assassination. <br><br>"Their goal is to bring to power in Yugoslavia incompetent opposition leaders who are toadies to the west," said Mr Seselj's Serbian Radical party. <br><br>The Belgrade authorities have responded to the killing by announcing a "strong battle against the biggest evil of mankind at the end of the 20th century: terrorism". The announcement was made at a special joint session of the Yugoslav and Serbian governments, presided over by Mr Milosevic. The authorities are under pressure to show that they are still in control of a society that is increasingly violent and lawless. <br><br>But officials have yet to give any concrete details of their proposed fight against terrorism. Opposition leaders have expressed the fear that the assassination could be used as the pretext for a general crackdown against President Milosevic's opponents. <br><br>Yesterday at a memorial service in Belgrade, colleagues paid tribute to Bulatovic. <br><br>"The Yugoslav army and the defence ministry have lost a leading man in its organisation, an army minister who was first in the line of the defence of the fatherland," said the army chief, General Dragoljub Ojdanic. <br><br>Memorial services were also held in regional army headquarters throughout Serbia.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950082096,55672,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Kosovo killings force UN to act </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Jonathan Steele in Mitrovice <br>The Guardian<br>Wednesday February 9, 2000 <br><br>Troops from the international peacekeeping force stepped up controls on Kosovo's border with Serbia yesterday to stop special police and paramilitaries in civilian clothes infiltrating Mitrovice. <br>The increased border security, along with extra foot patrols in the northern part of the Kosovan town, followed the worst attack on Albanian civilians by Serbs since K-For troops arrived last June. <br><br>At least five people died and up to 30 were injured on Thursday night after French troops failed to stop gangs firing bullets and throwing grenades into Albanian flats. They also burned vehicles belonging to the United Nations police and aid agencies. <br><br>The ostensible trigger for the assault was a grenade attack on a bus last Wednesday which killed two Serbs. <br><br>Crowds of Albanians have turned out daily to jeer at the French soldiers who are in charge of security and who have continually blocked free access across Mitrovice's three bridges. The northern part of the town is largely populated by Serbs and the south by Albanians. <br><br>The protesters' claims that the French have allowed Mitrovice to slide into partition are receiving an increasingly sympathetic hearing from members of the international police deployed in the town. <br><br>An American officer with the UN police said his Albanian interpreter saw Serbs hand out grenades on Saturday. "He rang a colleague at police headquarters on the southern side who alerted me. I asked K-For to do something, but the French told me they didn't want to inflame the Serbs. <br><br>"The rules of engagement are screwed up," he said. "When it's an issue of weapons, the police cannot go in unless we're accompanied by K-For. They refused to do that." <br><br>The American said that, as the Serb gangs marauded on Thursday, another policeman watched from his balcony as Serbs beat a woman to death. "French K-For troops were nearby but they just stood and watched," the American said. <br><br>Lying in hospital with a wounded leg, Emina Gjaka, 12, recalled her terror at the attacks. "It was the noise, the pain, and the shouts of the Serbs that they would kill us all." Grenades were flung into the flat where she was sheltering, killing a 13-year-old boy. Her mother died a day later. <br><br>After the killings the French ferried around 100 people to safety in southern Mitrovice. Another hundred left separately, leaving around 3,000 Albanians in the north. <br><br>"The Serb action was deliberately timed when the French were rotating their troops with a new general and new men coming to the city on February 1," said Nexhmedin Spahiu, the editorial controller of Radio Mitrovice, an independent broadcasting station. <br><br>He also speculated that the attack was meant to raise tensions as the UN administrator, Bernard Kouchner, tried to persuade moderate Kosovo Serb leaders to join a new interim governing council for the territory. <br><br>Mr Kouchner appeared to agree when he said: "It was the first day for the French general and his troops, and it was not easy to move in an unknown town in the dark. Politically, we were on the verge of moving forward. I have a letter from Bishop Artemije [the leader of Kosovo's Orthodox Serbs] saying he was coming to the meeting of the new administrative council. That was the reason for the attacks." <br><br>Lieutenant Commander Philip Anido, the K-For spokesman, confirmed yesterday that German and Italian troops had been deployed in northern Mitrovice to strengthen the French-led team.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950082073,33642,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>EU steps up efforts to cramp Milosevic cronies </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Guardian<br>Kosovo: special report <br>Ian Black in Brussels <br><br>EU sanctions against Serbia are to be tightened to hit the Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic's ruling elite harder, while a ban on flights will be lifted in an attempt to boost opposition activity. <br>Diplomats in Brussels said last night that EU foreign ministers are expected to agree next Monday to add some 300 new names to an existing 600 strong blacklist. <br><br>Members of the Yugoslav judiciary as well as key industrialists and business leaders are likely to be banned from travel in Europe. <br><br>The aim is to hit the outer circle of power in Belgrade as well as big companies which earn badly-needed hard currency for the regime by freezing their funds in and transactions with EU member states. <br><br>At the same time, the lifting of the flight ban is designed to encourage the opposition by signalling that ordinary Serbs are not being held responsible for their leadership - a lesson learned the hard way from years of punitive UN sanctions against Iraq. <br><br>Last month Britain and the Netherlands were isolated in their defence of the EU's flight ban as France and Italy led calls for ending it. <br><br>EU member states have been divided over what to do about sanctions as long as President Milosevic remains in power, even though his domestic opponents favour lifting both the flight ban and an oil embargo. <br><br>The US is strongly against lifting the oil embargo, even though it is widely breached. <br><br>Since the end of the Kosovo war last summer, the EU has been involved in sending heating oil to two opposition-held towns in Serbia, Nis and Pirot, under its energy for democracy programme. <br><br>But there are disagreements over whether it should be extended to towns which are not opposed to the Yugoslav president. <br><br>"This extension of the visa ban is more than just symbolic," one EU diplomat said yesterday. <br><br>"This is a measure which has caused very great irritation in Milosevic's circle. People have been very greatly inconvenienced so it's been a very effective sanction." <br><br>EU countries are looking to build cooperation with the Serbian people, if not the state, as the opposition tries to overcome divisions and build a united anti-Milosevic platform. <br><br>The EU has repeatedly offered the carrot of "concrete and substantial political and economic support" to a democratic Yugoslavia.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950082049,61849,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Opposition Blasts Milosevic Over Assassination</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Edward Cody<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br><br>BELGRADE, Feb. 8 – Yugoslav opposition leaders charged today that the assassination of Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic shows President Slobodan Milosevic has turned Yugoslavia into a lawless society in which even high government officials have to fear for their lives. <br><br>In statements issued by their respective parties, the opposition figures sought to turn Bulatovic's gangland-style execution Monday night at a Belgrade restaurant into a political weapon against the man who has run this country with cunning and force through a decade of turmoil, including the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and last spring's war over the separatist province of Kosovo.<br><br>Their charges played on a sense of uncertainty and cynicism among many Serbs who see no early escape from Milosevic's standoff with the West and are told repeatedly that politically connected criminals make millions of dollars on a black market made necessary by the economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.<br><br>In a similar vein, Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, speaking to reporters in Madrid, characterized the killing as "a sort of long-knives confrontation," suggesting members of Milosevic's government have begun to fall out among themselves over power or money.<br><br>"Those who have run this country for more than a decade have created a society where they have to be afraid for their own lives," said a statement from the Democratic Party of Zoran Djindjic. "Serbia needs new authorities capable of restoring peace and security in the society."<br><br>Vuk Obradovic, a former general who runs the Social Democratic Party, called on Milosevic to resign because, he charged, the government has turned Serbia "into a criminal society where no one can feel safe anymore."<br><br>Bulatovic's assassination resonated in Belgrade – capital of the Yugoslav federation as well as Serbia – because it came only three weeks after the murder of Zeljko Raznatovic, a Serb nationalist and militia leader known as Arkan. That slaying, at close range in the lobby of Belgrade's plush Intercontinental Hotel, has not been solved. Few Belgrade residents held out hope that Bulatovic's assassination will be resolved any more quickly.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950005094,65630,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Yugoslav Defense Minister Killed; Government Holds Emergency Session </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Yugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic was killed Monday in a shooting in a Belgrade restaurant, and the Yugoslav government has convened an emergency session Monday evening. <br><br>Reuters <br><br>"This evening...at 18:55 p.m. (1755 GMT) in the Rad restaurant...Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic was killed by an unknown attacker," pro-government Politika television quoted a Belgrade police statement as saying. <br><br>The Yugoslav government, which met for an urgent session, said in a statement that Bulatovic "was the victim of a classic terrorist act" and pledged to fight against "terrorism." <br><br>Police officials in Belgrade said Bulatovic was sitting in the restaurant at the soccer club Rad, a well-known gathering place for pro-Serb Montenegrins, when he was shot. Montenegrin police officials confirmed the report. <br><br>Bulatovic was a member of the Socialist People's Party, a pro-Serb faction in Montenegro that is loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Montenegrin police said the gunman fired through a window of the restaurant, hitting Bulatovic; the restaurant's owner, Mirko Knezevic; and banker Vuk Obradovic from behind with automatic weapon fire. <br><br>The attack came less than a month after Serbia's most famed warlord, Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, was gunned down in a Belgrade hotel Jan. 15. <br><br>More than a dozen prominent people, some close to Milosevic, have been killed in Belgrade in the past decade. Most of the killings have never been solved or the culprits uncovered. <br><br>Shortly after the shooting, the area where Bulatovic sat at a corner table was covered with blood and the floor was littered with debris. Pieces of plates and broken glass were scattered around. Bullet holes were seen on the walls. <br><br>Bulatovic, 52, had been defense minister of Yugoslavia since 1994. Bulatovic was largely a figurehead minister, with all the major decisions being made by Milosevic. <br><br>From 1992 to 1994, Bulatovic served as Yugoslav interior minister in the government of Milan Panic, a Serb-born businessman who was sacked by Milosevic. <br><br>Bulatovic's Socialist Peoples Party is at odds with the Montenegrin pro-Western government of President Milo Djukanovic. Yugoslavia is made up of two republics, Serbia and the smaller Montenegro. <br><br>Bulatovic is survived by his wife and two children. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950005071,13955,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Yugoslav minister shot dead </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Defence chief is the second ally of Milosevic to die recently <br><br>TheTimes<br><br>Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade and Owen Bowcott <br><br>Yugoslavia's defence minister was shot dead last night as he ate in the restaurant of a Belgrade football stadium, the latest and the highest-ranking victim of a spate of gangland-style political killings. <br>Pavle Bulatovic, who had held the post for seven years, was the second prominent ally of President Slobodan Milosevic to be gunned down in the city in less than a month. <br><br>The Serb warlord Arkan died in the lobby of the Intercontinental hotel, in Belgrade, on January 15. <br><br>Immediately after last night's killing, the government went into emergency session and declared Mr Bulatovic had been the victim of terrorism. <br><br>"The federal government states with deepest sorrow and sadness that Pavle Bulatovic, the federal minister of defence, was killed this evening in Belgrade," a statement on Yugoslav state television, said. "The federal government gives its full support to the relevant state organs in their uncompromising struggle against terrorism." <br><br>The statement added that the government expressed its "gratitude and respect for the contribution that Pavle Bulatovic gave in the defence, affirmation and development of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and sends deepest condolences to his family." <br><br>Police said the killer struck at 6.55pm local time, firing with an automatic weapon from the stadium's football pitch through the restaurant window. <br><br>Mr Bulatovic, 51, was a senior member of the Socialist People's party, a Montenegrin party loyal to Mr Milosevic, which is in opposition in Montenegro, but is in government at the federal level. <br><br>As well as being a close ally of Mr Milosevic, Mr Bulatovic was very close to Momir Bulatovic, the Yugoslav premier. The two men were not related. <br><br>Born in the Montenegrin village of Gornji Rovci, he was married and had three children.Bulatovic was largely a figurehead, with all the major decisions being made by Mr Milosevic. <br><br>From 1992 to 1994 he served as Yugoslav interior minister in the government of Milan Panic, a Serb-born businessman who was later sacked by Mr Milosevic. <br><br>It was not immediately clear whether the minister, who was hit from behind, had died at the scene or later in hospital. <br><br>The independent Studio B TV company reported that two men sitting at the same table were wounded and were taken to a military hospital nearby. <br><br>A few hours after the shooting, the table where Mr Bulatovic sat was still covered with blood and the floor was littered with debris. <br><br>More than a dozen prominent people, some close to Mr Milosevic, have been killed in Belgrade in the past 10 years. Most of the killings have never been solved. <br><br>Other recent victims have included Dragan Simic, a young and ambitious police colonel, who was shot dead in a Belgrade car park last year; Slavko Curuvija, a prominent independent journalist and publisher critical of the Serbian authorities, who was gunned down outside his Belgrade apartment block last year during Nato air strikes against Yugoslavia; and Milorad Vlahovic another police colonel and the assistant head of the Belgrade homicide department who was also shot dead in a car park last year. <br><br>Miodrag Vlahovic, a political commentator in Montenegro's capital, Podgorica, said that the killing of Mr Bulatovic could be the result of a "conflict of interests" concerning business dealings between senior Yugoslav officials. <br><br>"The country in which the defence minister was killed like that in a restaurant is a real banana republic. There is no doubt about that," Mr Vlahovic said. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem950005028,93532,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>SERBIA: EU close to lifting flight ban </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">FT<br><br>By David Buchan, Diplomatic Editor<br><br>The European Union is moving towards lifting its ban on flights to Serbia, but also widening visa and financial restrictions on the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>The political aim for revamping sanctions, which will be discussed by EU foreign ministers next Monday, is to increase isolation for the regime while relaxing it for the rest of the Serb population. But it also reflects lobbying by EU carriers keen to resume flights to Belgrade, officials say.<br><br>For some months, Britain, the Netherlands and the Brussels Commission itself have held out against mounting pressure by other EU states, led by France and Italy, for an easing of sanctions, which Serb opposition groups also desire.<br><br>The UK and the Commission on Monday confirmed they were ready to agree to relaxing the air flight ban in return for a tightening of financial sanctions, which EU officials say leak "like a sieve", and for an increase in the number of regime officials and associates denied EU visas. Robin Cook, the UK foreign secretary, is to try to win US support for the revamped sanctions package when he travels to Washington tomorrow.<br><br>At present, some 650 Serb officials are on the EU's visa blacklist. The UK has proposed adding a further 180 people to this list, including executives of a dozen companies identified as earning hard currency for the Milosevic regime. These companies would face a freeze on funds in, and transactions with, EU countries. Sanctions are targeted on funds and operations of the federal Yugoslav government.<br><br>The list of companies includes the Bor mining group, HIP and Zorka chemical companies, Sartid steel, the NIS petroleum company, EPS electric power and four trading companies - Jugoimport, Progres, SIMPO and GENEX. UK officials describe the list as "indicative" in the sense it could be expanded to any front companies acting for those on the list.<br><br>Western officials judge from the number of complaints they have had from individual Yugoslavs trying to get off the visa blacklist that this is the most, perhaps the only, effective sanction imposed on the country since the Kosovo war. The EU will try to orchestrate any lifting of the air ban so as to give the Serb opposition credit for the measure and raise its credibility with the Serb population.<br><br>At a later stage, the EU might formally lift its widely breached oil embargo. But it could face opposition from the US, which was incensed that this oil embargo only came into effect on the last day of the Kosovo war.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949918994,80510,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>The bloody truth of how Nato changed the rules to win a 'moral war' in Yugoslavia </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br>By Robert Fisk <br><br>For me, the proof came near the end of the Yugoslav war, when Nato bombed a hospital at Surdulice on 31 May last year. Serb soldiers were hiding in the basement, civilian refugees sleeping above them. The soldiers survived, the civilians were slaughtered in the raid and James Shea, Nato's king of excuses, announced that it was "a military target". <br><br>Did he know – did Nato know – that this building was a hospital, that there were civilians as well as Yugoslav military hiding there? Sure, the Yugoslav army were using their own Serb people as human shields. And shame upon them. But if Nato knew this, then it broke international law. Article 50, paragraph 3, of the 1949 Geneva Conventions' Protocol 1 specifically demands the safeguarding of civilian lives even in the presence of "individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians". <br><br>The bodies of the dead refugees were laid out in the afternoon sun on the day of their death. One teenage girl lay on the grass a few metres from a book of love poems; her tragic love and death was researched and reported in The Independent in November. She was killed by Nato. So was a young and brilliant Serb mathematics student, cut down as she tried to rescue the wounded at Varvarin bridge. An American jet had bombed the narrow old river bridge, killing the civilians walking across it. It was a saint's day in Varvarin and a market day – the attack happened at about 1pm – and the bridge was too narrow to take a tank. <br><br>Just because there wasn't a tank on the bridge at the time, Mr Shea told us, didn't mean a tank didn't cross it. But the bridge was too narrow for any Yugoslav tank. And about 20 minutes after the first bloody assault, another American jet attacked, just in time to kill the rescuers. The girl, who had just been awarded top prize at her Belgrade college, was killed by this US pilot as she tried to pull a wounded man from the road. The same bomb beheaded the local priest as he emerged from his church. <br><br>In the countryside around lay what appeared to be parts of Nato's favourite weapon, cluster-bombs. They were dropped across all of Yugoslavia, and most of their civilian victims were in the south of Serbia. Cluster-bombs tore many of the Albanian refugees to pieces on the mistargeted convoys of refugees in the early part of the war. And cluster-bombs – possibly dropped by British aircraft – killed civilians in the Serbian city of Nis when a plane mistargeted a local military barracks. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, was so outraged at the Nis attack that she pleaded with alliance officials to take greater care in their bombardment, as well as condemning Serbia's "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo. <br><br>At some point in the second half of the Yugoslav war, Nato decided to stop apologising for civilian deaths. <br><br>And you can see why. From its initial attacks on real military barracks and facilities – almost all of them empty – Nato's air bombardment moved to dual-use factories and then "targets of opportunity" (which doomed many a Kosovo refugee travelling in convoys in which police vehicles were present) and then slid promiscuously to transportation routes and hospitals which hid soldiers and the Serb television station. <br><br>Today's Human Rights Watch report is the nearest we have seen so far to the unvarnished, bloody truth about Nato's campaign in Yugoslavia. If it depends too heavily on Yugoslav references, including the carefully produced and detailed – though sometimes selective – Belgrade government's "White Book" on Nato "crimes", its analysis of alliance tactics, claims and barefaced lies (a word not used by Human Rights Watch, of course) provides a new balance to the history of last year's "moral" war. <br><br>It condemns Nato for the attack on Serb television headquarters – as opposed to transmitters – on the basis that it could not be regarded as a military target, only a propaganda target. And that's exactly how the cabinet minister Clare Short justified the killing of 16 studio technicians and a young make-up artist. Needless to say, Nato never bombed Croatian television headquarters when it was pumping out propaganda of a similar kind in 1992. <br><br>After walking through the rubble of the Serb studios at the time, I reflected that when you kill people for what they say – however much you hate their words – then you have changed the rules of war. And that is what Nato did from April through to June of 1999. They changed the rules of war. A military barracks was a legitimate target. Then a tobacco factory, a road bridge, the railway line at Gurdulice – just when a train was crossing the bridge. <br><br>Interestingly enough, Human Rights Watch quotes General Wesley Clark, Nato's commander, saying of the pilot's video footage of the passenger train racing over the Gurdulice bridge that "you can see if you were focusing right on your job as a pilot, how suddenly that train appeared – it was really unfortunate". But the human rights organisation appears ignorant of recent revelations that Nato deliberately speeded up the video film for its press audience to three times the train's actual speed. <br><br>The train did not appear "suddenly" as General Clark mendaciously claimed. It was travelling much more slowly. And despite Human Rights Watch's claims to have interviewed so many Yugoslav survivors of air attacks – their work is indeed impressive – the group seems unaware that several survivors of the train attack say they saw the aircraft return for a second strike. Indeed, the evidence at the scene showed how the first bomb smashed a road bridge above the track, cutting the electrical wires and stopping the train. A second missile then hit the carriages. <br><br>It was not a war crime, Human Rights Watch says. In fact, Nato committed no war crimes, according to Kenneth Roth and his investigators. But it committed "violations of international humanitarian law" – which amounts to about the same thing. And still we don't know who bombed what. Survivors believe the train was attacked by a British Harrier. The report says it was an American jet. The Yugoslavs say the plane that bombed the centre of Aleksinac in April was British – based on intercepted pilot radio messages – yet still we don't know. <br><br>In the New Year Honours List, Britain's Kosovo pilots got their gongs. All their names were printed in The Independent although we have no idea who was rewarded for their role in Nato's sloppy bombing campaign – Nato failed to hit more than a handful of Serb tanks throughout the war and the Yugoslav Third Army retired unscratched from Kosovo – or who was bemedalled for watching the radar tracks. <br><br>Last September, an unnoticed article in The Officer, a magazine widely read by Ministry of Defence officials and senior army NCOs, quoted a British Harrier pilot who had been bombing Serbia the previous April. <br><br>"After a while you've got to ignore the collateral damage [civilian casualties] and start smashing those targets," he said at the time. "But the politicians aren't ready for that yet." </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949918895,2941,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Nato accused of violating international law in Kosovo </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br>By Andrew Marshall in Washington <br><br>Nato breached international law in its air attacks on Yugoslavia last year, a respected human rights body says in a report issued today. <br><br>The report, by Human Rights Watch, is particularly critical of the use of cluster-bombs. The United States stopped using the munitions halfway through the war, but Britain continued using them, raising serious issues about the Government's concern for civilian casualties. <br><br>Nato killed at least 500 civilians during the Kosovo conflict, the report concludes after visits to the sites of many of the attacks. "Human Rights Watch has found no evidence of war crimes," it says. But, it adds, "the investigation did conclude that Nato violated international humanitarian law". <br><br>The report says that Nato may have breached the Geneva Convention in five areas: it conducted air attacks using cluster-bombs near populated areas; attacked targets of questionable military legitimacy; did not take adequate measures to warn civilians of strikes; took insufficient precautions to identify the presence of civilians when attacking mobile targets; and caused excessive civilian casualties by not taking sufficient measures to verify that targets did not have concentrations of civilians. <br><br>Most of the attacks resulted from missing military targets. But "nine incidents were a result of strikes on non-military targets that Human Rights Watch believes were illegitimate", including Serb Radio and Television in Belgrade. <br><br>At least one-fifth of those who died were killed by cluster-bombs, which spray bomblets over a wide area. "Overall, cluster-bomb use by the United States and Britain can be confirmed in seven incidents throughout Yugoslavia [another five are possible butunconfirmed]," the report says. "Some 90 to 150 civiliansdied from the use of these weapons." <br><br>It reveals the United States stopped using the weapons after a hitherto secret presidential order. "Widespread reports of civilian casualties from the use of cluster-bombs and international criticism of these weapons as potentially indiscriminate, in effect, led ... to an unprecedented US executive order in the middle of May to cease their further use in the conflict," the report says. "The White House issued the order only days after civilians were killed by Nato cluster-bombs in the city of Nis on May 7." <br><br>But Britain, according to the RAF's own reports, continued to use the weapons. "Cluster-bombs should not have been used in attacks in populated areas, let alone urban targets, given the risks," it says. "Nevertheless, the [RAF] continued to drop cluster-bombs, indicating the need for universal, not national, norms regarding cluster-bomb use." The report also says there is "some evidence" Yugoslav forces used civilians as human shields. <br><br>The body calls on Nato to "establish an independent and impartial commission ... that would ... consider the need to alter targeting and bombing doctrine to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law". </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949918860,85307,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serb opposition leader sees EU sanctions move soon</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Feb 6 (Reuters) - A Serbian opposition leader said on Sunday he believed the European Union would soon start easing sanctions against Yugoslavia. <br>Vladan Batic, coordinator of the Alliance for Change group, said Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini told an opposition delegation last week that the next meeting of EU foreign ministers would make a step forward on the issue. <br><br>"Dini told us the process of easing sanctions would be initiated at the February 14 meeting of EU ministers," Batic told a news conference. <br><br>"He explicitly said it would be done as an act of goodwill towards the united Serbian opposition," he said. <br><br>Serbia has been subject to various sanctions since 1992, first for its role in the 1992-1995 war in neighbouring Bosnia and later over Belgrade's repression in the southern province of Kosovo. <br><br>The sanctions keep Yugoslavia, which consists of Serbia and Montenegro, away from financial bodies and foreign capital markets, ban investments, flights and crude oil deliveries. <br><br>The EU has been divided on the issue for months, even though domestic opponents of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic argue that the sanctions help keep him in power. <br><br>At a foreign ministers' meeting last month, Britain and the Netherlands blocked moves by their 13 EU partners to lift or ease the sanctions. <br><br>Italy has repeatedly called for the lifting of the sanctions against ordinary Serbs, especially those involving air transport and the supply of natural gas. <br><br>Dini said in a statement issued on Friday after a meeting with Batic that the EU was reviewing sanctions against Yugoslavia affecting ordinary people and urged Serb opposition parties to stay united. <br><br>He welcomed a January 10 decision by the fragmented Serb opposition to adopt a common platform, saying it would help speed up democratisation in the Balkan region. <br><br>Batic said a decision to lift or ease the sanctions would be "the first great success of the democratic opposition in Serbia in the recent past." </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949745643,93831,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Montenegro PM says wants to cooperate with UN court</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">THE HAGUE, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic said on Friday his republic wished to cooperate with the United Nations war crimes tribunal as long as it did not cause major domestic problems. <br>"We are ready to deliver all war crimes suspects whose arrest does not carry the risk of internal conflict..," Vujanovic told reporters, adding he would do so regardless of the attitude of Belgrade. <br><br>A conflict in Montenegro over arrests or the loss of human lives was not in the interest of the international community either, he said. <br><br>Vujanovic was in The Hague to meet U.N. Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and is the highest ranking Montenegrin official to do so. He described the talks as "very constructive." <br><br>Serbia and Montenegro are the two remaining partners in the Yugoslav federation after four others split off to form independent states. The republic has been at odds with Serbia since President Milo Djukanovic was elected president in 1997 and began implementing market reforms. <br><br>Vujanovic earlier this week said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was working to destabilise Montenegro where there are calls for a referendum on independence from Serbia. <br><br>Milosevic has been indicted for war crimes by the tribunal, which has often criticised Belgrade for its failure to cooperate. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949745623,61736,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>K-For on alert after ethnic violence kills three </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br><br>By Adam LeBor East Europe Correspondent <br><br>The ethnically divided town of Mitrovica, in Kosovo, was under curfew last night after violent clashes between ethnic Albanians and Nato-led troops that left five K-For peace-keepers wounded, one with a broken arm. <br><br>Troops fired a barrage of tear-gas after being pelted with rocks by angry Albanians following one of the worst weeks of violence in the province since the Nato-led force moved in last summer. The previous night, three people had been killed and 20 wounded in violence between Serbs and ethnic Albanians. <br><br>The French military commander of Kosovo's northern sector, General Pierre de Saqui de Sannes, said that he was imposing a three-night curfew on Mitrovica to help bring calm. "The situation is so tense that security comes before everything else," he said. <br><br>People in the crowd lobbed rocks and bottles for about half an hour while peace-keepers, wearing riot shields and body armour, launched rounds of tear gas. The violence finally subsided with the arrival of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), which was formed to provide a new role for ex-Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas who fought against Serb rule. <br><br>The French general acknowledged that crowd control was within the remit of the KPC, an emergency relief organisation, but he defended working with it. "I need partners who have authority," he said when he arrived at the bridge dividing the town, as KPC officers tried to make the crowd settle down. <br><br>The overnight deaths followed a rocket attack on a United Nations bus in the Mitrovica region on Wednesday that killed two Serbs and wounded three, heightening tension between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority and its Serb minority. <br><br>Following this violence late on Thursday, angry Serbs and Albanians faced off across two bridges over the Ibar River dividing the Serbian northern part of Mitrovica from the ethnic Albanian southern part, said Lt Col Henning Philipp, a spokesman for the peace-keeping force. <br><br>An hour after the first killings, an ethnic Albanian woman was shot dead. Shortly after, a grenade was thrown into a Serb cafe, wounding about 10 customers, he added. <br><br>In a separate and earlier incident, a Russian peace-keeper was shot in the shoulder while escorting Serb children home from school in the village of Beri Vojce, Lt Col Philipp said. The soldier was transported to a Russian military hospital in Kamenica, and later to another Russian military hospital in Kosovo Polje, a few miles south west of Pristina. <br><br>Several properties had been set on fire on in the course of the Thursday evening troubles, the spokesman said. Troops blocked the city's two main bridges to prevent the Serbs from entering the Albanian- dominated southern Mitrovica. General de Saqui de Sannes, met leaders of both communities at around midnight and asked them to appeal for calm. They had done as they were asked, the spokesman said. <br><br>As one of the few cities in Kosovo which still has a substantial Serb population, Mitrovica has been a flash-point since K-For took control of Kosovo, legally still part of Yugoslavia, following the withdrawal of Serb forces last June. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949745603,80336,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Sex slave trade thrives among Kosovo troops</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Times<br><br>FROM JAMES PRINGLE IN PRISTINA <br><br>THE presence of Nato-led troops in Kosovo is supporting a new and sinister white slave trade trade, in which women from impoverished parts of Eastern Europe are being bought and sold into prostitution. <br>The women, some as young as 16, are held captive by gangsters, often Albanian, and sell sexual favours to troops and businessmen in the seedy nightclubs springing up around Kosovo. <br><br>Others smuggled into the region from Moldova, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and beyond are moved further on, into Albania, across the Adriatic into Italy and from there to brothels in Western Europe, all the time under the "ownership" of organised crime. Even children are following similar routes, sold for adoption or, some say, for body parts. <br><br>International agencies trying to combat the trade say that it is expanding rapidly, despite efforts to rescue women from the clutches of the loosely organised, mafia-style gangs. They say the numbers are becoming too great for agencies to manage. <br><br>Kosovo was not, in the past, a destination for the East European sex trade, which began with the collapse of communism in 1991, but the lure of a 45,000-strong army and a large international component has proved an irresistible draw and bars and nightclubs are springing up across the province in places such as Gnjilane and Urosevac. <br><br>One at Slatina, just outside Pristina and near the HQ of Russian forces, is the Nightclub International, from which Italian Carabinieri rescued 12 young women last week. Their duties involved dispensing sexual favours, at about £30 for half an hour, to Russian and American Kfor troops and other foreign clients. <br><br>"These girls who were rescued are terrified and don't understand what has happened to them," Pasquale Lupoli, chief of mission of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) in Pristina, said. "But they are now in a protected area where security is guaranteed." <br><br>The IOM, a little-known Geneva-based governmental agency, was originally set up to provide travel documents and an assistant network to migrants; instead, it is engaged increasingly in trying to help the thousands of girls who are now prisoners in the European sex trade. <br><br>Signor Lupoli said that the number of such girls was rising so quickly that the agency was finding it very difficult to cope. The IOM had also had difficulties locating a non-government organisation (NGO) to agree to take care of them. One problem is that the girls are not refugees so do not come under, say, the UNHCR. <br><br>There was, Signor Lupoli said, also some danger. Albanian gangsters are searching for their "property" and IOM staff have received threats. In Kosovo, British troops are subject to a strict "no walking out" policy, but other nationalities' forces, such as the Russians, Americans and Italians, are less closely monitored. "None of our soldiers goes into these bars unless on an official mission," one British officer said. "If they did, they would find themselves on a military charge." <br><br>Of the dozen women rescued by the Carabinieri in Slatina, one had been raped at 14 and all had been maltreated. Like hundreds of similar victims, they had been sold several times as they were spirited across Balkan borders from owner to owner. <br><br>Greece, too, is a destination for the sex traders. Mirela Stan, 24, of Romania, and Hitara Antilsova, 29, from Ukraine, were found dead from the cold on a mountainside near the Greek-Bulgarian border in January. They perished in an effort to reach their "promised land", a Greek nightclub. <br><br>In Kosovo, the streets were empty recently after dark after a panic that teenage girls were being kidnapped by the Albanian mafia to be sold into prostitution. Indeed, some have disappeared. <br><br>These days, a young East European woman costs from £1,000 to £1,400 to buy. She first has to pay back her cost, then ostensibly she gets half of what she makes from prostitution, while the boss retains 50 per cent. Additionally, the girl has then to pay 10 per cent of her earnings for board. "Often she ends up with very little or nothing," an IOM official said. If she is lucky. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949653690,87254,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Belgrade's China Rescue</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Chinese capital is helping to prop up the cash-strapped Belgrade regime.<br>International War Peace Report<br><br>Growing financial ties between China and Yugoslavia appear to be extending the life of the Milosevic regime by undermining western efforts to limit access to hard currency.<br><br>In December, $300 million was transferred from bank accounts in China to Serbia, enabling the Serbian government to avert a looming financial crisis.<br><br>The funds - part of which were immediately used to halt a plunge in the Yugoslav dinar's black-market value - should be enough to forestall hyper-inflation in Serbia for six months and fund pensions, the military and police for several months, economists believe.<br><br>Belgrade first described the Chinese capital as a "gift", then a commercial loan, but critics of the regime are skeptical.<br><br>"It could not be a gift, because China does not make financial gifts," says leading Belgrade economist Mladen Dinkic. "I believe that this is money belonging to Serbia's political establishment that was transferred abroad, first to Cyprus, and other countries, then to China, and repatriated in December."<br><br>Serbian companies reportedly began moving money from Cyprus and other western banks to banks in Shanghai and Hong Kong last summer, anticipating that clashes between the Yugoslav Army and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) would renew international sanctions.<br><br>The transfer of capital to China has also been influenced by Cypriot attempts to move closer to the European Union, as well as increasing scrutiny of Serb-held European bank accounts by Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).<br><br>In addition to growing commercial activity, diplomacy has been stepped up.<br><br>Every week a Yugoslav Airlines jet touches down in Belgrade with a new Chinese delegation. These parties of Beijing officials are part of a dwindling number of diplomats and statesmen willing to meet Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Serbia, meanwhile, opened a consulate in Shanghai last year and the Yugoslav minister for cooperation with international financial organisations, Borka Vucic, was recently in Beijing to strengthen Sino-Serbian ties.<br><br>Vucic, believed to be responsible for the Belgrade regime's hard currency reserves, presented the head of the Chinese Red Cross with a memorial pyramid containing debris from the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, which was bombed by NATO last year. <br><br>"The pyramid was a symbol of the protest against and defiance of the NATO aggression and a message that there was no forgetting and no forgiving," she told her Chinese hosts.<br><br>Belgrade and Beijing have been increasingly friendly terms since Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic, went to Beijing during the height of Serbia's 1996-97 anti-government demonstrations.<br><br>She returned flushed with excitement, extolling China's mix of Marxist political structures and free-market economics, as a model for Serbia, and calling for Belgrade, like other European cities, to have its own Chinatown.<br><br>Indeed, so taken was Markovic with China that her political party, the Yugoslav United Left (JUL), is sometimes referred to in jest as the Serbian branch of the Chinese Communist party.<br><br>NATO's bombing of China's Belgrade embassy last May, in which three Chinese nationals were killed and 20 wounded and for which the United States paid China $24 million in compensation, brought Belgrade and Beijing even closer.<br><br>The US and NATO insist that the bombing was a tragic accident and attributed it to out-of-date CIA maps. But some reports have suggested the embassy was targeted because it was serving as a substitute communications' centre for the Yugoslav Army after NATO had destroyed other command and control points.<br><br>The Chinese government has completed its own investigation and remains adamant that the bombing was deliberate.<br><br>While the China connection provides Milosevic with a refuge for hard currency, commercial loans, investment and prestige, Serbia affords Beijing an opportunity to invest in European industries at knock-down prices and a base in Europe for both trade and intelligence.<br><br>Bratislav Grubacic, editor of the Belgrade based independent press agency VIP news, estimates that as much as two thirds of the fund transferred from Beijing to Belgrade in December was to buy the Chinese a stake in a new mobile phone network in Serbia and a stake in the Pancevo chemical plant.<br><br>In addition, Beijing is receiving covert repayments via Belgrade of a large Libyan debt. Tripoli sends oil to Serbia which, in turn, compensates Beijing. In lieu of cash, China may be being paid for the oil with a stake in a Pancevo oil company.<br><br>Laura Rozen is a regular IWPR contributor who has been reporting from the Balkans since 1996. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949653427,68331,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Bus Ambush in Kosovo Costs NATO Faith of Serbs</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The New York Times<br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br>UVO GRLO, Kosovo, Feb 3. -- Serbs who survived a bus attack in northern Kosovo on Wednesday huddled around a wood stove in the village school today, saying they felt more trapped and worried than ever. <br><br>A day after two neighbors were killed in the ambush, the villagers left their houses, clustered at the bottom of a steep slope of sheer ice, down a remote country road, to seek support and comfort. The 130 Serbs live in the tiny enclave of Suvo Grlo, surrounded by Albanian homesteads and villages. Behind them rises the wall of mountains of Montenegro, and before them stretch the highlands of Drenica, the heartland of the most determined Kosovo Albanian nationalists. <br><br>To escape this isolation, the Serbs had been using a weekly bus service, operated by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees. It was their one lifeline in recent months as it shuttled from their village and another village, Banja, to the Serbian district of Mitrovica some 20 miles away. The bus trip always brought the villagers welcome freedom of movement, but on Wednesday it proved a death trap. <br><br>"I was on the bus," said Milomirka Tomasevic, 47, crouching close to the stove. "I went to Mitrovica to buy a few things. I know when they fired on us I threw myself on the floor but I do not remember anything more." <br><br>She was not hurt in the attack but appeared to still be in shock. She began to weep. "If I die there will be no one to take care of me, I have no father or sister or brother. You have to have someone to cry after you, I have no one," she wailed. <br><br>Milomir Tomasevic, 28, was also on the bus, with his brother and sister-in-law. They had gone to buy coffee and cigarettes in the town. He escaped unhurt but his 24-year-old brother, Stojadin, was badly wounded, he said. French soldiers, part of KFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping troops, had evacuated him to their hospital and he was waiting for news. <br><br>"It was the most horrible thing that happened," he said. "We trusted KFOR. Until now we were 100 percent convinced they were guarding us and that's why we travelled on the bus. But after what happened yesterday, I do not trust anyone anymore, absolutely no one," he said. <br><br>Mr. Tomasevic complained that the peacekeeping troops, who were escorting the bus in two armored vehicles, did not react to the attack, neither firing on nor pursuing the attackers. "NATO could bring in 200 soldiers here but the way they are acting it will serve as nothing," he said. <br><br>He and the others gathered in the schoolroom said peacekeepers had to be tougher with ethnic Albanians, who they were sure were responsible for the attack. "This is not the first killing that has happened and we can see the way it is going," Mr. Tomasevic said. Two people have been killed and four wounded in the seven months since NATO arrived, the head of the village said. <br><br>The rocket attack on the United Nations bus was the worst case of violence against any escorted Serbian convoy in Kosovo and came as a blow to peacekeeping efforts to improve security. <br><br>The attack could push more Serbs to leave the village and other isolated Serbian enclaves. Already 40 percent of the population of Suvo Grlo has fled to Serbia. <br><br>And today, villagers said this latest attack might make them think again about abandoning their homes. "No one will be fool enough to stay, if there is one more incident," Mr. Tomasevic said. <br><br>The United Nations has suspended its bus service to Serbian areas in Kosovo while the attack is being investigated. The buses were frequently portrayed as a sign that normality was returning to Kosovo, but their future use is now in doubt. In fact, these villagers said they would no longer use them. <br><br>Despite claims by peacekeepers that ethnic violence is slowly decreasing, the incident exposed the unceasing desire for revenge among the ethnic Albanians who suffered at Serbian hands during the war. <br><br>The Albanian homes up the hill from the Serbian houses in Suvo Grlo all show the damage of the burning and looting conducted by Serbian forces during the war. Ten Albanians were killed from this little hamlet and most houses burned, said a shopkeeper, Zenel Sinani. <br><br>"I am sure it was not someone from this village, but it was done by someone whose heart was burned, whose family was killed," he said. <br><br>Two Albanian youths who stopped today at the scene of the bus attack, on a lonely hairpin bend near the village of Vitak, were callous in their reaction. "Only two killed, I wish there had been more," said one, before he ran off to hail a passing bus. <br><br>No Albanian villager would be sad at the news that two Serbs had been killed, his friend Artan Rustemi, 18, said. "How can they pass by this way when they committed a big massacre of 14 people here during the war?" he said. "We would not like to see them anymore. They should leave. They have a place to go."</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949653409,97115,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Grenade thrown into Serb cafe</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br>AP <br>4 February 2000 <br><br>Two grenade attacks against Serb cafes in the divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica injured about 20 people, while three Albanians were fatally shot in separate incidents, the multinational force in Kosovo said early Friday. <br><br>Following the violence late Thursday, angry Serbs and Albanians faced–off across two bridges over the Ibar River dividing the Serbian northern part of the town from the Albanian southern part, said Lt.Col Henning Philipp, spokesman for the multinational force known as KFOR. <br><br>KFOR had shut the bridge, keeping the two sides apart. <br><br>At 9 p.m. (2000 GMT), two Albanian men were shot dead in Kosovska Mitrovica. Half an hour later, a grenade was thrown into a Serb cafe, wounding between 10 and 15 customers, Philipp said. <br><br>An ethnic Albanian woman was shot dead at 10 p.m. (2100 GMT), and another grenade was thrown into another Serb cafe shortly afterwards, again wounding about 10 customers, he added. <br><br>In a separate earlier incident, a Russian KFOR soldier was shot and wounded in the shoulder while escorting Serb children from school to their homes in the village of Beri Vojce, Philipp said. <br><br>The soldier was transported to a Russian military hospital in the town of Kamenica, and later to another Russian military hospital in Kosovo Polje, a few kilometers southwest of Pristina. <br><br>The incidents came after a rocket attack on a UNHCR bus carrying Serb civilians on Wednesday left two Serbs dead and three injured.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949572046,85390,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Montenegro, citing Serb threat, seeks US aid</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic said on Wednesday Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was working to destabilise his republic and asked for $62 million in U.S. aid to help shore it up. <br>Vujanovic was in Washington to rally U.S. backing for the Montenegrin government as it faces growing domestic pressure for a referendum on declaring independence from Milosevic's Serbia, the other remaining Yugoslav republic. <br><br>He said the attempt by Montenegro, one of the only parts of the dismembered Yugoslav state to have avoided serious conflict in recent years, to instigate post-communist reforms was "at a turning point." <br><br>"If the monetary and the economic reforms do not succeed, faith in democracy will fade very quickly and the support for failed concepts of the past, including neocommunism and autocracy, will rise," he said. <br><br>He told a privately organised conference on the Balkans that quick financial aid was needed "to ensure the survival of Montenegro and minimise the chances for conflict." <br><br>Partly to counter an economic blockade imposed by Belgrade, he called for $62 million to help with monetary reform, ensuring food supplies, financing importation of strategic supplies, encouraging investment and building up the independent media. <br><br>Vujanovic is due to meet on Thursday with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, hours after she returns from a visit to offer support to another Balkan state that is edging toward democratic reforms, Croatia. <br><br>The United States, which led NATO's bombing campaign to force the withdrawal of Milosevic's troops from Kosovo last year, has said it would stand firm against any Serb military action against Montenegro, but opposes its independence. <br><br>Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said last week it was too early for a referendum on breaking with Serbia, saying he wanted to give Milosevic more time to consider Montenegro's conditions for staying in the federation. <br><br>The two have been at odds since Djukanovic was elected president in 1997 and started a reform programme. <br><br>Vujanovic said Milosevic wanted "only to destabilise Montenegro, provoke social unrest, provoke conflicts, to open the way to military intervention under the mask of protecting civil peace." <br><br>The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet, said on Wednesday both Djukanovic and Milosevic appeared to be prepared to avoid a direct conflict now, but added: "A final showdown will be hard to avoid." <br><br>In his annual statement to Congress on U.S. national security, Tenet said: "Montenegro may be heading toward independence." In November it took a step away from Serbia by introducing the German mark alongside the Yugoslav dinar. <br><br>Tenet said: "Milosevic wants to crush Djukanovic because he serves as an important symbol to the democratic opposition in Serbia and the Serbian people that the regime can be successfully challenged." </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949571999,28985,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>U.S. rules out relaxation of Serb sanctions</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">ATHENS (Reuters) - U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering Wednesday ruled out a relaxation of sanctions against Serbia, and said Washington continued to work with Serb opposition groups toward "free and fair elections." <br>Pickering met Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou in Athens as part of an 11-day, eight-nation tour of the Balkans, which started in Albania before moving on to Slovenia and Macedonia. <br><br>"I explained to the minister our policy with respect to various Serbian embargoes and the importance which we attach to continuing those embargoes, particularly as long as (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic was in charge," Pickering told reporters. <br><br>He said there were no immediate plans to lift the embargo on Serbia. <br><br>"We also discussed the question of whether in some of those areas there are human dimensions that needed to be taken into account and how that might be done," he added. <br><br>He said Washington was working closely with Serb opposition leaders "to further strengthen their organizations and find a unified position to enable free and fair elections." <br><br>Asked if he was concerned that the Kosovo crisis could flare up again, Pickering said the United States was keeping a close eye on developments in the region, adding that Washington did not support independence for Montenegro -- Serbia's small sister republic in the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>"Our policy is not to support independence for Montenegro, but we believe President Milo Djukanovic is pursuing a cautious and careful series of policies ... and deserves our support," he said. <br><br>Pickering also encouraged Greece and Turkey to continue their recent rapprochement. <br><br>"We are heartened that Greece and Turkey have made tremendous progress over the past year," he said. <br><br>"A durable peace in the Aegean Sea and in Cyprus, based on respect for international law and safeguarding democratic rights, will be a powerful force for regional stability and development," he added. <br><br>Pickering said the United States was also close to signing three bilateral agreements with Greece covering personnel at a U.S. naval base on Crete, police cooperation and commercial cooperation relating to international recognition of property, copyright and patents. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949571920,7665,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>INTERVIEW-Yugo army won't oust Milosevic- ex-chief</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE (Reuters) - No one should count on any kind of military takeover to oust Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the former chief of staff of the Yugoslav army said Wednesday. <br>The West is hoping that popular dissatisfaction in Yugoslavia will lead to the ouster of the Serbian strongman, blaming him for a decade of Balkan bloodshed. <br><br>However, the fragmented opposition has so far failed to put Milosevic under any serious pressure and some diplomats as well as many ordinary Serbs hoped his close associates would oust him. <br><br>"...all the international speculators are mistaken in thinking the army should be turned against its own citizens," Momcilo Perisic told Reuters in an interview. <br><br>Perisic said that by the same token any attempt by Serbia's ruling elite to use the army to crush dissent would not succeed because most officers would not be drawn into politics. <br><br>"It tries to make ... a few people in the army, if not the army as a whole, function only as a defender of the ruling party," he said. <br><br>"But even if they try they will not succeed, except with a few people who due to a misunderstanding or their own personal interests turn themselves into their personal servants." <br><br>Perisic was chief-of-staff of the Yugoslav army from 1993-98, a period in which it was involved in fighting in Bosnia and in the Serbian province of Kosovo. <br><br> <br><br>OUSTED BY MILOSEVIC <br><br>He was ousted by Milosevic in November after he publicly warned him against confronting NATO over Kosovo. Four months later, the alliance launched air strikes after the Yugoslav president refused to accept an international peace plan. <br><br>Perisic was also believed to have blocked military intervention in Montenegro -- the only republic left with Serbia in Yugoslavia -- during 1998 clashes between Milosevic supporters and police loyal to the pro-Western leader. <br><br>Now in opposition to Milosevic, he declined to comment on his former boss or say whether he thought middle-ranking and senior officers supported his successor Dragoljub Ojdanic. <br><br>Ojdanic has accused the West and the independence-minded Montenegrin authorities of fueling tension in the republic, where many people fear a possible outbreak of violence between the army and the heavily armed Montenegrin police. <br><br>Ojdanic was one of four of Milosevic's aides indicted with the Yugoslav leader by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague for alleged war crimes in Kosovo. <br><br>Top generals also regularly talk about an imminent return of Yugoslav forces to Kosovo, something Perisic said was totally unrealistic and designed to hide the fact Milosevic took the country through almost three months of air strikes in vain. <br><br>Asked if an offer by the Montenegrin authorities to pay troops based on the territory in German marks rather than weakening Yugoslav dinars could split the army, Perisic said no. <br><br>"The army is a united Yugoslav organization acting equally in the entire Yugoslav territory. As an institution it is hard, better said impossible, to manipulate outside the constitution."</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949571864,69655,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>A Serbian Report on Atrocities </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br><br> BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Feb. 2 -- In the first public report on atrocities in Kosovo from the Serbian perspective, a Belgrade human rights group has detailed allegations of crimes committed by Serbian forces in the province and subsequent reprisals by Albanians. <br><br>The Humanitarian Law Center released its eight-page report after a seven-month investigation by its director, Natasa Kandic, and a network of Serbian and Albanian volunteers. The report focuses on atrocities committed around the Kosovo town of Orahovac. <br><br>"Orahovac became a profile for a setting where each and every crime against the ordinary person was allowed," Ms. Kandic said in an interview. <br><br>The report details allegations by witnesses of slayings, abductions and expulsions of Albanians. According to the report, 220 or more Albanian families were ordered out of Orahovac by Serbian authorities during NATO's bombing. About 60 Albanians were conscripted to work for the Serbs. <br><br>But the report also found that more than 40 Orahovac Serbs disappeared by July 10, and all of the Serbs living in houses and 142 in apartments in the center of town were evicted, the report said. <br><br>Ms. Kandic said the situation in Orahovac shows that the international administration applies a double standard, treating every Serb as a war criminal. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949571835,9469,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>2 Killed as Rocket Hits a U.N. Bus for Serbs in Kosovo</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">New York Times<br><br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br><br> MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 2 -- A rocket attack on a bus filled with Serbian civilians killed two elderly villagers and wounded three more people today, just yards from their armed NATO escort. <br><br>The Serbs were using a weekly bus service organized by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees to their village in northern Kosovo and were ambushed, NATO peacekeepers said. A spokesman for the high commissioner's office said it was the worst such attack on a Serbian convoy here and will set back efforts to encourage peace and tolerance between Albanians and Serbs. <br><br>Tensions rose in the divided city of Mitrovica, some 12 miles from the scene, soon after the attack. French troops reported four explosions in the Serb-dominated northern half of the city. They quickly closed a bridge that connects the Serbian and Albanian parts of the city, pulling across coils of barbed wire and planks of wood studded with nails. Reinforcements arrived to take up positions on the bridge as automatic gunfire sounded. <br><br>The attack on the bus shook the office of the high commissioner, which immediately suspended all similar bus services. Since November, the office has introduced eight bus services in the province to allow Serbs who are cut off and threatened by Albanians to move freely. Until today, the bus trips had encountered no problems beyond a few stones. <br><br>In the attack today, an elderly man and woman were killed instantly. French troops took two others to a hospital at the French base in Mitrovica. A man in his 30's, with a severed leg and hand, was being operated on in a Mitrovica hospital later in the evening, said Lt. Col. Patrick Chanliau, a spokesman for the French troops. <br><br>An 80-year-old woman was also treated for a wound to her hand. And a third woman was treated at the scene and taken home. The remaining passengers, who numbered more than 40, were safely escorted to their isolated village of Banja, about 18 miles from Mitrovica. The driver, a Dutch worker, escaped unharmed. <br><br>The assailant, who fired the antitank rocket from a spot off the road, escaped with his weapon. <br><br>The attack occurred about 4 p.m. as dusk was falling on a remote foggy road. The bus was hit near the village of Vitak, in a predominantly Albanian area. <br><br>Colonel Chanliau said the attacker must have been waiting for the bus. <br><br>"We can say with certitude it was an ambush," he said. "The bus was expected, it was very visible, with the letters U.N.H.C.R. clearly marked." <br><br>French troops in light armored vehicles were driving ahead and behind the bus, providing an escort. The rocket hit the side of the bus, but neither of the escort vehicles. <br><br>The deaths and injuries of the Serbs while under international protection highlights a problem that has placed the high commissioner's office at loggerheads with the commander of the peacekeeping force in Kosovo, Gen. Klaus Reinhardt. <br><br>General Reinhardt has been pushing to give Serbs more movement around Kosovo and has sought to encourage Serbs who fled the province to return. The high commissioner's office has insisted on moving slowly on the bus services, however, and has repeatedly insisted that conditions in Kosovo are, for now, too dangerous for Serbs to be encouraged to return. <br><br>"The protection of minorities has been and remains a major preoccupation, and this sort of incident sets us back enormously in the whole area," said Dennis McNamara, head of the high commissioner's office in Kosovo. "U.N.H.C.R. is certain in that we will not encourage Serbs to return to Kosovo at this stage because of the security situation." <br><br>Until today, the bus service had been reasonably successful and popular with the Serbs, said Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the high commissioner's office. <br><br>"It gives them access to doctors, dentists, and a chance to sell their cheese or other produce," he said. "Generally, the people on them are elderly." <br><br>Mr. McNamara said: "We know from Bosnia that these operations are not without risk. We took time and care to set them up. But if someone is determined to attack, they can." </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949484404,20306,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Official Accuses Milosevic Gov't</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">PODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) - A top official in Montenegro's ruling pro-Western party on Tuesday accused the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of arming its supporters in the independence-minded republic.<br><br>Andrija Perisic, a member of Montenegro's ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, claimed in a statement that Milosevic's defense authorities have formed a paramilitary unit which is officially included in the Yugoslav forces stationed in Montenegro.<br><br>The so-called Seventh Battalion of the Yugoslav military police includes pro-Yugoslav Montenegrins led by Milosevic's aide, Momir Bulatovic, Perisic claimed. He alleged that top officials in Bulatovic's Socialist People's Party have personally organized the unit.<br><br>Yugoslav army officials have denied reports about paramilitary units within its ranks.<br><br>Montenegro is the smaller republic that makes up Yugoslavia along with Milosevic's Serbia. Montenegro's leadership has been making steps toward independence, complaining of international isolation of the country under Milosevic's autocratic rule.<br><br>Many fear another civil war if Montenegro tries to secede from Yugoslavia. The 600,000 Montenegrins are deeply divided on the idea of a joint state with Serbia.<br><br>Late last year, Montenegrin police - loyal to Montenegro's President Milo Djukanovic - and the pro-Milosevic Yugoslav army nearly clashed over who controls the airport in the capital, Podgorica.<br><br>Perisic's statement Tuesday is certain to add to the tensions and fears of possible conflict. He claimed the pro-Milosevic paramilitary unit lately has been ``additionally activated, grown in numbers and additionally armed.'' </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949484357,54580,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Montenegrins Warn of More Conflict in the Balkans</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Witnesses appearing today before The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe warned of the potential for conflict in the Balkans -- similar to that which occurred in Kosovo in 1999 -- if democracy fails to take hold in Montenegro, a province that in federation with Serbia comprises contemporary Yugoslavia.<br><br>``Since 1997, Montenegro has moved toward democratic reform, and its leaders have distanced themselves from earlier involvement in the ethnic intolerance and violence which devastated neighboring Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo,'' said Chairman Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ). ``In contrast, the Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milosevic has become more entrenched in power and more determined to bring ruin to Serbia, if necessary to maintain this power. The divergence of paths has made the existing federation almost untenable, especially in the aftermath of last year's conflict in Kosovo. We now hear reports of a confrontation with Milosevic and possible conflict in Montenegro as a result.''<br><br>Srdjan Darmanovic, Director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Podgorica, said, ``Without the active role of main Western countries and without a serious peace and stability preserving strategy in the whole region, including Montenegro, the Belgrade regime will sooner or later decide to act in order to topple the Djukanovic government or to instigate conflict in Montenegro. It is in the very logic of that regime. The real questions is, will Milosevic act, whether a referendum on independence is held or not?''<br><br>Commission Co-Chairman Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO) commented, ``Common sense makes clear that timely efforts to prevent the outbreak of conflict are worth pursuing. We are fortunate today that we can focus on developments in Montenegro where the prospects for democracy offer one of the few glimmers of hope in a region torn by conflict and ethnic hatreds. I admire the courage of those pursuing the path of democracy in Montenegro and doing so at some risk.''<br><br>Ranking Member Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) pointed out, ``We need to send as strong a signal as we can that another Milosevic-made conflict will not be tolerated. We can hope that democratic forces in Serbia can change the environment in which Serbian-Montenegrin relations are determined, by challenging Milosevic's rule. Until they do, we must be sure that instigating new violence is not an option for Milosevic, not a solution to his political problems at home.''<br><br>Veselin Vukotic, Managing Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship in Podgorica, said, ``We in Montenegro believe that the most efficient way to avoid new conflict and to develop permanent democracy is through complete reform and reconstruction of our political and economic system. However, reconstruction is needed not just of our economy, administration and state, but also of our mentality. Our principal problem lies in how our society thinks -- how we understand and solve problems . . . Our key problem is overcoming our fear of open society, open economy-overcoming our fear of globalization. On this point, we are more irrational than rational at the moment.''<br><br>``In order for Montenegro to begin changing our mentality, we must build a new economic system based on private property, economic freedom, and the development of entrepreneurship. We have already started this process, and we are getting closer to an American-style free market system, rather than the so-called ''social market`` system of Europe or the state-controlled system in Russia. We are very grateful for the assistance we have received from the United States in helping us begin our reform efforts.<br><br>``Our viewpoint is that everything must be privatized. There must be no area in which the state controls property.<br><br>``We Montenegrins don't have time to wait for Mr. Milosevic to resign. The question of his resignation is not Montenegro's problem. It is Serbia's problem. If the citizens of Serbia choose Milosevic as their president, then good luck to them. Serbia's votes are not Montenegro's concern.''<br><br>Janusz Bugajski, Director of the Eastern Europe Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC stated: ``Other than surrendering Montenegro altogether, Belgrade has three options: a military coup and occupation; the promotion of regional and ethnic conflicts; or the provocation of civil war. More likely, Milosevic will engage in various provocations, intimidations, and even assassinations to unbalance the Montenegrin leadership. He will endeavor to sow conflict between the parties in the governing coalition, heat up tensions in the Sandjak region of Montenegro by pitting Muslims against Christian Orthodox, and threaten to partition northern Montenegro if Podgorica pushes toward statehood. The political environment will continue to heat up before the planned referendum.<br><br>``I fear the worst from Mr. Milosevic at this point,'' Bugajski concluded.<br><br>In closing, Mr. Smith said, ``As democracy is strengthened in Montenegro, the international community can also give those in Serbia struggling to bring democracy to their republic a chance to succeed.'' <br><br>SOURCE: Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949401364,28808,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serbia Warns of 'Greater Albania'</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Serbia Warns of 'Greater Albania'<br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - A top Serbian opposition party warned against the perceived threat of a ``Greater Albania'' - an expansion of Albania to include Serbia's Kosovo province and Albanian-populated areas of western Macedonia.<br><br>Increasingly frequent contacts between Kosovar Albanian leader Hashim Thaci and Macedonian ethnic Albanian leader Arben Xhaferi ``clearly indicate that the monstrous idea of creating a 'Greater Albania'... is a major threat in the region,'' said a statement from the Serbian Renewal Movement.<br><br>The statement referred to a recent visit by Thaci and Xhaferi to neighboring Bulgaria. The two leaders reiterated demands for Kosovo's full secession from Serbia.<br><br>The Kosovo province has been an international protectorate since NATO intervention last year, launched to stop fighting between independence-minded ethnic Albanians and Serb government troops. The province formally remains part of Serbia.<br><br>Ethnic Albanians are an overwhelming majority in Kosovo. In neighboring Macedonia, they dominate western parts of the country adjacent to Albania proper and constitute one-fourth of the population.<br><br>Elsewhere Sunday, the independent Beta news agency reported that 100 tons of heating fuel has arrived in a poverty-stricken Serbian town as part of European Union aid to opposition-run municipalities.<br><br>The oil arrived late Saturday in Pirot, where pro-democracy parties opposed to President Slobodan Milosevic run the local government. It is to be used for central heating of schools, kindergartens and hospitals.<br><br>In all, the EU has planned to send 25,000 tons of fuel to municipalities controlled by Milosevic's opponents. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949401332,89375,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>U.S. Would Oppose Any Serb Acts Against Montenegro</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">TIRANA, Albania (Reuters) - The United States vowed Monday to stand firm against any military action by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic against Serbia's Western-leaning partner Montenegro.<br><br>Asked if the situation in Montenegro might burst into another Balkan conflict, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering said Washington believed ''any further conflict in the region should be avoided.''<br><br>``We are prepared to stand firm against any military actions of Milosevic's in the region,'' he told reporters during a visit to the Albanian capital.<br><br>Serbia and Montenegro are the two remaining partners in the Yugoslav federation after Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia split off to form independent states.<br><br>Pickering said the U.S.-backed Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic's choice of a revised role for Montenegro in the Yugoslav federation, but not independence.<br><br>Djukanovic has not named a date for a referendum on breaking away from Serbia, on the advice of Western leaders who fear another Balkan conflict.<br><br>But the pro-Western Djukanovic, who introduced the German mark as the currency alongside the dinar in November, faces growing domestic pressure to make good a threat to call a referendum.<br><br>He said last week Montenegro would not sacrifice its future for the sake of remaining under a dictatorship from Belgrade but added he wanted to give Milosevic time to consider Montenegro's conditions to remain in the federation.<br><br>Yugoslav troops briefly took over Montenegro's Podgorica airport last month in what was interpreted as a show of strength by Milosevic. </font><br></p> |
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