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NewsPro Archive
August 2000
Yugo prosecutor stalls on Western detainees
BELGRADE, Aug 30 (Reuters) - A Yugoslav military prosecutor has again asked for more checks into the case of four Westerners -- two Britons and two Canadians -- detained on suspicion of terrorism, a defence lawyer said on Wednesday. Defence lawyer Ivan Jankovic described the request as unnecessary and said he believed the aim was to keep the two Britons and the two Canadians in jail longer than necessary. "There is no other reason," Jankovic told Reuters. He said he believed the investigating judge already had refused the request or would do so, but that this might be overturned by a judicial panel. "My hunch is (that the panel) will grant the prosecutor"s request," said Jankovic, who represents the two Canadians. He said the prosecutor had also asked the judge to extend the remand order to keep the defendants in jail, saying it was otherwise due to expire at 4 p.m. (1400 GMT) on Thursday. It was be the second time the prosecutor had asked for additional investigation into the case, in effect delaying the deadline for a decision on whether to charge the men. The prosecutor has 15 days to decide whether to charge them after the investigation is completed. The Yugoslav army detained Britons Adrian Prangnell and John Yore along with Canadians Shaun Going and Liam Hall in the border area between Kosovo and Montenegro about a month ago. The four have denied accusations they were planning to mount terrorist attacks in Yugoslavia. The initial inquiry was completed in mid-August but the prosecutor asked the judge to interview Montenegrin policemen and hotel employees in the coastal republic last weekend to confirm the whereabouts of the four men prior to their arrests. The judge completed also this part of the investigation and then returned the file to the prosecutor last Monday. Under the new request, the prosecutor was asking for interviews with three Yugoslav soldiers in Montenegro and with a waiter at a cafe where the four Westerners had lunch on their way back to Kosovo on July 31, Jankovic said. He also wants two superiors of the Britons in Kosovo to be interviewed, information from Kosovo authorities and a detailed reconstruction of the men"s movements in Montenegro. Western officials say the Britons and Canadians were on holiday from jobs helping to rebuild majority Albanian Kosovo, still formally part of Serbia but a de facto international protectorate since June last year. The Britons were training a new police force in Kosovo under the auspices of Kosovo"s United Nations administration. Going owns a construction contracting firm operating in Kosovo and was carrying equipment used to blast stone quarries. Hall is his nephew. Britain has described the case against the Britons as absurd and urged Belgrade to either charge or free them.
The Christian Science Monitor: Unsettling prelude to Yugoslav vote
As the Sept. 24 election nears, one of Slobodan Milosevic's best-known critics has vanished.
Alex Todorovic
Special to The Christian Science Monitor
BELGRADE
Hopes are dwindling in the Yugoslav capital that former Serbian President Ivan Stambolic, Slobodan Milosevic's estranged mentor, will reappear after he vanished Friday while out on a morning jog.
Mr. Stambolic was once Serbia's most powerful politician and Mr. Milosevic's best friend, but in 1987 he was ousted from power in a Milosevic-staged political coup.
After a period of public withdrawal, Stambolic recently emerged as a fierce critic of the Milosevic family and regime, giving interviews to Serbian and Montenegrin media as Sept. 24 elections near.
Stambolic's disappearance appears to reflect a pattern of violence against those once close to the Milosevic family who have since broken ranks and spoken out against the regime. The cases include the April 1999 unsolved slaying of Slavko Curuvija, a dissident journalist who earlier had been close to the Milosevic camp.
Stambolic was most likely kidnapped, according to a security guard who saw him last. "A security guard at a restaurant saw Ivan resting in the parking lot. A white van stopped briefly in front of the restaurant and when it moved on, the guard couldn't see Ivan anymore," said Stambolic's lawyer, Nikola Barovic.
Police combed the woods near the restaurant, where Stambolic disappeared, but have made no statements on the progress of the investigation. Stambolic's wife, Kaca, said she did not believe her husband's kidnapping had a political motive, but some opposition leaders and Stambolic's lawyer are pointing the finger at the regime.
"Stambolic was president of Serbia, an important former political figure who disappeared in the middle of an election campaign, yet state-media and government officials haven't even mentioned his disappearance. The message is that this was a political act," said Barovic.
Serbia's largest opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement, demanded Stambolic's immediate release and referred to the kidnapping as a "terrorist act."
The party's president, Vuk Draskovic, has been the target of two assassination attempts in the past year and has accused the Belgrade regime of "state terrorism." Citing security concerns, Draskovic refuses to set foot in Serbia, and is residing in the pro-Western republic of Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation. His home is under constant guard by Montenegrin police.
Draskovic is not alone. Dissident journalist Alexandar Tijanic also stays away from Belgrade since being publicly rebuked by the president's wife.
Belgrade has been rocked by a series of high-profile killings in recent years, especially in the wake of NATO's bombing campaign last year. Company directors, a popular journalist, businessmen, and underworld figures like Zeljko Raznatovic "Arkan" have all been victims. The crimes remain unsolved.
Stambolic is the first pubic figure to have simply vanished.
"This reminds me of Argentinean-style terror," says Nenad Stefanovic, an opposition strategist with the Democratic Party. A funeral can draw a large crowd, which in itself becomes a political event. When someone goes missing, there is an added element of fear."
Though Stambolic was not active in opposition politics, he did maintain contacts with some opposition leaders. His recent interviews were a reminder to the Yugoslav public of President Milosevic's personal and political failings. As Milosevic's mentor and former best friend, Stambolic spoke with singular authority about the man who betrayed him.
Stambolic called his political disciple a "master of consuming and reproducing chaos" and predicted that Milosevic "was approaching a violent end. At the end he must be destroyed; most people are against him, and they will get him ... He will never go in peace."
Opposition leaders agree nobody knows President Milosevic as well as Stambolic. "Stambolic knows Mr. Milosevic's soul," says Nebojsa Covic, a former member of Milosevic's party, now turned opposition leader.
Milosevic and Stambolic met in the early 60s while in law school. Milosevic, a young man from the provinces, latched on to Stambolic, whose prominent family name foreshadowed political success. Beginning in the late 60s, Milosevic followed his mentor through a series of prominent positions in state enterprises and the Communist Party. In 1986 Stambolic became president of Serbia and lobbied hard for Milosevic to fill his old job as president of the Central Committee.
In April 1987 Stambolic asked Milosevic to go to Kosovo to appease angry Serbs who were threatening to demonstrate in Belgrade over increasing tensions with ethnic Albanians. The casual request created the Milosevic cult. Milosevic was confronted with a violent demonstration in Kosovo Polje, where police were beating Serbs in front of a crowded town hall. Pale-faced and overwhelmed by the scene below, Milosevic uttered the line that turned him into a political star overnight: "No one should dare to beat you!"
The sound bite, endlessly repeated on television, ended Milosevic's reputation as Stambolic's sidekick. From that day on, Milosevic began to harness the forces of nationalism - a move his mentor opposed.
The Guardian: Milosevic challenges UN by planning Kosovo poll
Special report: Kosovo
Gillian Sandford in Belgrade
Thursday August 31, 2000
A senior official of Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist party threw down the gauntlet to the international community with a surprise visit to Kosovo yesterday, where she declared that Belgrade would set up polling stations in the Serb province for next month's Yugoslav elections.
Gorica Gajevic, general secretary of the party, told a crowd of pro-Milosevic Serbs that 500 polling stations would be set up in the Serb enclaves for polling in the federal and presidential elections on September 24.
She also pledged that 200 flats would be built in Kosovo for returning Serb refugees.
Bernard Kouchner, the head of Kosovo's UN administration, immediately dismissed the polling promise. "If they want to have elections in Serb enclaves, that's impossible," he said.
Mr Kouchner plans to hold separate local elections within the province a month after Yugoslavia votes in the local, parliamentary and presidential poll.
Ms Gajevic's move effectively calls the international community's bluff, for UN resolution 1244 and the technical-military agreement signed in Kumanovo before the pullout of Serb troops in June last year state that Kosovo remains a part of Yugoslavia.
However, the return of some Serb forces to the region, as envisaged in the Kumanovo agreement, has not yet happened
Many Serbs unofficially admit that Kosovo is lost to Serbia. Even the opposition presidential candidate Vojislav Kostunica says that it should stay under UN administration for the time being.
Ms Gajevic's visit signals Belgrade's intent to make Kosovo an election issue and exploit the ambiguity over its status for propaganda.
Tomorrow the Yugoslav army will hold exercises of a new Kosovo unit currently based in southern Serbia.
A Belgrade analyst, Bratislav Grubacic, said the state media would probably cover the manoeuvres and announce that the unit was returning to Kosovo. A poll of Serbs in Kosovo could be a fertile area for voting fraud, he said.
An opposition party leader, Professor Zarko Korac, president of the Social Democratic Union, said: "It's another sign of the confusion in Kosovo. The whole point is: who will organise elections?"
He said that opposition politicians had unsuccesfully pressed European governments to support elections in Kosovo at the same time as those in the rest of Yugoslavia. Now Mr Milosevic's party had taken up the theme and would organise the poll.
LA Times: Business leader, WWII British officer Radlovic dies at 86
By PAM NOLES
CLAREMONT -- In one life, I. Monte Radlovic was a freedom fighter who escaped Yugoslavia, joined the famed Desert Rats of World War II and fought behind German lines. In another, he was an Inland Valley businessman and community activist, using his knowledge and resources to help entrepreneurs start their own businesses.
He was, say the peers and politicians who lauded him, an elegant, intelligent man who helped many. Radlovic died Aug. 26 at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center after a long illness. He was 86.
"His first life was all over the world," said his son, Mike Radlovic, an investment banker in Los Angeles. "His second life was right here."
Radlovic founded the United Business Brokers, which helped launch 150 to 200 businesses throughout Ontario and Upland. His seminars dealt with everything from getting started to dealing with government agencies. He also created Pomona Realty, which grew to 16 offices throughout the region, in addition to creating Magic Towers, once a popular restaurant.
Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) said Radlovic's death was "a tremendous loss for Southern California and the nation."
"Monte Radlovic epitomized the American dream. He was an immigrant who came to the United States and did extraordinarily well," Dreier said. "I had the privilege of knowing him for 20 years, and was very, very saddened by his passing."
Radlovic was a native of Montenegro. He studied law, attending the University of Belgrade and Cambridge University. He chose journalism over the bar, and worked for the London Daily Mail and the Reuters News Agency before World War II.
When the Germans invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, he escaped capture via a submarine and landed in Egypt, where he joined the British 8th Army. He fought with the Desert Rats through the North African and Italian campaigns, and rose to the rank of major in the King's Royal Rifle Corps. He was the first British officer to enter Bologna and Padua. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire from King George VI.
After the war Radlovic returned to journalism, specializing in diplomatic and political issues for Reuters. He wrote two books, "Tito's Republic" and "Etiquette And Protocol." In addition to editing a European magazine, Radlovic was named director of the British Institute for Political Research, an anti-communist organization. Eventually, he moved to America, where, among other things, he founded The Diplomat magazine.
Nick Polos, historian for the Claremont University Club, which Radlovic joined in 1986, remembers him as a warm and friendly person who spoke many languages and enjoyed political debate.
"He had Eastern European manners, an elegant gentleman and scholar," Polos said. "He had a wide knowledge I thought was rare and unusual. I think I sensed, when we argued about foreign policy, that he had very little patience for fools. But he wasn't rude about it. Always the gentleman."
Mike Radlovic said his father maintained his "love for family" while helping others.
"He loved what he did also work-wise, but if you forget about the work, it's about helping people," his son said. "He was willing to give his life for the cause. What he did here, the rest, was just another cause."
Radlovic is survived by his wife, Milena; two sons, Mike and Marko; a daughter, Sandra; and a grandchild.
LA Times: U.S. Aid to Milosevic's Foes Is Criticized as 'Kiss of Death'
By PAUL WATSON, Times Staff Writer
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia--The man with the best chance of winning the struggle to drive Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from power peacefully has a request for Washington: Stay out of it.
Vojislav Kostunica, an opposition candidate leading Milosevic in opinion polls in the run-up to Sept. 24 elections, complains that U.S. efforts over the years to promote Milosevic's political enemies have only made the Yugoslav president stronger.
But Washington is pressing ahead with plans to open an office in Budapest, the capital of neighboring Hungary, to coordinate U.S. support for the opposition in Yugoslavia.
"I call this affair with the office in Budapest the kiss of death," Kostunica, 56, said last week in an interview here.
Milosevic and his state-run media regularly attack the opposition as corrupt puppets of the U.S. and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries. Alliance warplanes bombed this nation for 78 days last year to drive Milosevic's forces from Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia's dominant republic, Serbia.
Photos of opposition politicians meeting with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other U.S. diplomats have given Milosevic potent ammunition to discredit his political foes in the eyes of many Serbs.
One of the most damaging images was a picture of Vuk Draskovic, once Milosevic's predominant rival, kissing Albright's hand at a meeting in Europe last winter.
"Thank God these relations are not as friendly and cordial as they were before because they brought the opposition nothing," Kostunica said, though he added that more focused European aid to opposition-run municipal governments is likely to win him votes.
By refusing to back Kostunica, Draskovic has improved Milosevic's hopes of winning next month's elections. Draskovic is living in self-imposed exile in Montenegro, Serbia's weaker partner in the Yugoslav federation.
In addition, Montenegro's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, is boycotting the elections, despite pressure from Albright to participate. On Friday, his government banned the republic's state-run media from covering the elections.
Two recent opinion polls have shown Kostunica leading with the support of as much as 35% of respondents to Milosevic's 23%. But few here expect the Yugoslav president to allow a free and fair vote if it appears that he will lose.
Kostunica's strategy is to deny Milosevic more than 50% of the ballots cast in the first round of voting, then go head to head against him in a runoff election. At least two other candidates are running.
A Serbian nationalist less rabid than many here, Kostunica is more of a technocrat than a politician. He finds himself up against a ruthless survivor who risks going to prison for life if defeated.
Kostunica called the indictment of Milosevic on war crimes charges toward the end of last year's war over Kosovo "a political act" and "a very serious problem" for the opposition because it left the Yugoslav president with little to lose.
Kostunica, leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia, is coy when asked if he would hand over an ousted Milosevic to the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague, as other members of his 15-party alliance have promised to do.
"There are many things about the Hague tribunal that are more about politics than law," Kostunica said. "With all those problems that we are facing at the moment, it is very difficult to think of Milosevic's Hague indictment being the first matter."
He accused some U.S. officials of conducting "some sort of private war" against Milosevic. "Because of that, we are really in the state where we are hostages--not only because of Milosevic but because of some specific decisions in American policy which I do not understand entirely."
Kostunica believes that the Clinton administration strengthened Milosevic by demonizing him and by prolonging economic sanctions that have demoralized ordinary Serbs.
"It's very difficult to imagine that a country of such influence and dominance in the world is so preoccupied with just one dictator in a very small country like Serbia," he said. "To me, it's unexplainable. But it's enabled Milosevic to play an even larger role than he normally deserves."
Sanctions have combined with a decade of war and economic mismanagement under Milosevic to cripple the economy. In July, industrial production in Yugoslavia was 5.3% lower than the same month in 1999, the private Economics Institute in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, reported. The annual rate of inflation is running at more than 100%, according to the estimates of independent economists, and the continuing collapse of the Yugoslav dinar is likely to spark hyperinflation.
The State Department announced Aug. 15 that Albright had asked William Montgomery, the U.S. ambassador to Croatia, to head a new office of Yugoslav affairs.
The office, in the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, "will consist of State Department and [U.S. Agency for International Development] officials and will work to support the full range of democratic forces in Serbia," the statement said.
But Washington's effort to support the Yugoslav opposition is so sensitive that U.S. diplomats refused to discuss, on or off the record, the office's role and budget. Nor would they say why the announcement was made just when Milosevic was intensifying attacks on the opposition for its Western links.
"It really is counterproductive," said Kostunica, who wasn't alone among the opposition in criticizing the U.S. move. "Directly, we can get nothing out of forming that office."
In his effort to unseat Milosevic, Kostunica has won support from a man often dismissed by Washington as a puppet of the Yugoslav president.
"We can see the evolution of Kostunica as a politician, from a very raw politician unwilling to take criticism or to accept different opinions into an extremely tolerant, pragmatic politician who is ready to correct his opinions if needed," said Oliver Ivanovic, a Serbian leader in Kosovo.
His "communication with the people has significantly improved, and his relations with the international community are exceptional," said Ivanovic, who expects many Serbs in Kosovo to cast ballots in the September elections, though the overwhelming majority have refused to register for foreign-administered provincial elections scheduled for October.
Even if Milosevic wins next month's elections, "it's the beginning of a battle that will bring us substantial changes in Serbia," Kostunica predicted.
Kostunica has been waiting for a decade "to see the end of Slobodan Milosevic." Now he thinks the curtain will soon fall.
"For me, it is a matter of some months, or a year," he said. "Not more than that."
Albanian govt leader warns of danger in Montenegro
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Albanian Prime Minister Ilir Meta said Thursday it was vital for Balkan peace to continue support for the democratic government in his northern neighbor Montenegro against maneuvering by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Meta, speaking after talks with U.S. leaders including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, said the Montenegrins should refuse to succumb to Milosevic but should at the same time avoid provoking the Serb forces. In an interview with Reuters, he supported the position of Montenegro"s President Milo Djukanovic that recent changes to the Yugoslav constitution were illegitimate, aimed at destroying the legal foundations of the federation that groups Serbia and Montenegro. He implied sympathy with Djukanovic"s decision to resist pressure from the United States and boycott Yugoslavia"s September 24 election, although he declined specifically to back the decision. "If the government of Montenegro would accept these constitutional changes it would legitimize the loss of the existing autonomy and position of the republic in the federation," he said. "It is very important that the government of Montenegro be patient and determined to develop democracy," Meta said. MILOSEVIC MAY PROVOKE CONFLICT He added: "And it is very important for the international community to follow with great concern and care the developments in Montenegro in order not to be unprepared if Milosevic were to provoke another conflict there as it looks (like he will)," he said. Meta said if Milosevic, a man "who cannot stop in his criminal course," eliminated democracy in Montenegro, "he would kill for a certain period the hopes of the Serbs and Montenegrins for democratic change in Yugoslavia." He added this would "leave the international community without a party in existing Yugoslavia for working for democracy, for peace, stability and for regional cooperation." Meta said it was crucial for democracy in Montenegro to survive "before another conflict will explode the plans of the international community and the Balkan countries for succeeding in implementing the (international Balkan) stability pact". Washington has strongly supported the Western-leaning government in Montenegro and has joined in warnings by NATO to Milosevic not to provoke a conflict over the republic. Albania, the poorest country in Europe trying to construct a law-abiding, democratic society out of the ruins left by 40 years of hard-line Stalinism that collapsed in 1991, has had its efforts disrupted often by Milosevic"s Balkan adventures. The Serb leader created a series of conflicts as the former Yugoslavia disintegrated in the 1990s and last year prompted NATO"s first out-of-border bombing action to protect ethnic Albanians against Serb forces driving them out of Kosovo. FORMER STUDENT ACTIVIST The 31-year-old Meta, a former student activist who took part in the agitation that brought down the old communist rulers, has pushed forward reforms of the government, the judiciary and the economy in his 10 months in power. He drew warm praise from Albright at a news conference on Wednesday, when she said he "represents an energetic new generation of Albanian leaders." The United States gives Albania more than $30 million dollars in aid annually to help in democracy and government building and some trade development. A 19-member Pentagon team is in the small Adriatic Sea state this week as part of a long-term program to help build up the Albanian military. Meta said his forces were struggling to eventually become compatible with NATO. Belgrade severed diplomatic ties with Tirana after Albania sided with NATO over Kosovo, but Montenegrin leaders have promoted links with Tirana. Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic told reporters after meeting Meta in Albania in May that he wanted cooperation with the southern neighbor despite Belgrade"s objections. Up to 300 Albanians cross daily into Montenegro, some of them bringing back cheaper goods that have helped reduce prices. But trade is restricted by the Yugoslav army, which polices Montenegro"s frontier.
The Irish Times : Opposition candidate could do well
From Gillian Sandford, in Belgrade
YUGOSLAVIA: Tension is ratcheting tighter across Yugoslavia as Mr Slobodan Milosevic faces the threat of losing the presidency in key elections next month.
Voters will choose between several candidates in the race for the presidency, which pits rival candidates and allows for a runoff second round, if no one initially takes more than half the votes.
It is the first time there has been such a direct vote for president, and analysts are already describing the September 24th poll as "a referendum on Milosevic".
The strongest challenger to Mr Milosevic is a candidate backed by a group of 18 opposition political parties which call themselves the Democratic Opposition of Serbia.
Their candidate is a man barely known in the West, Mr Vojislav Kostunica, a Belgrade academic and lawyer with a reputation for integrity, who heads the Democratic Party of Serbia, one of the smaller opposition groups.
Unlike other senior opposition leaders, Mr Kostunica stayed in Yugoslavia during the whole of the bombing and strongly criticises NATO. His brand of nationalist, anti-American rhetoric has long found an echo among Serbia's people.
Opinion polls in Yugoslavia should be treated with scepticism, but recent results from the Institute of Social Sciences showed Mr Milosevic would achieve 23 per cent of the vote, lagging behind Mr Kostunica who, it said, would get 35 per cent. Another poll put support for Mr Kostunica at 30 per cent against 25 per cent for Mr Milosevic.
Part of Mr Kostunica's attraction in Serbia is his anti-Americanism. "It takes a great deal of arrogance to say that promoting democracy in Yugoslavia is a long-term US goal," he said. "Democracy in Serbia is Serbia's goal and no one else is entitled to it. The real US goal is obviously a further break-up of Yugoslavia," he recently said.
Mr Kostunica's candidacy puts Mr Milosevic on the back foot, for the regime has sought to portray opposition leaders as American and NATO lackeys who are traitors to their country.
Federal and local polls take place alongside the presidential. These are highly important for the future of Montenegro. The pro-West coalition of parties supporting the Montenegran President, Mr Milo Djukanovic, who want to break with Mr Milosevic, has declared it will boycott the vote, moving Serbia's unstable sister-state further toward independence and perhaps to the brink of war.
In local elections Mr Milosevic needs to reclaim local authorities that fell to a coalition of opposition parties in 1996. The most important test among the town halls will be if he can reclaim the capital, Belgrade.
A sign of the political atmosphere in Serbia is the expectation surrounding a football match at the Red Star ground tomorrow. Fans at the last game shouted the anti-Milosevic slogan: "Save Serbia and kill yourself, Slobodan," provoking heavy clashes with police.
The government has since banned all sloganeering at games, and many expect clashes if fans at a game against Kiev again chant slogans against the regime.
Los Angeles Times Service : Both Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo Denounce UN Over Court-System Snags
By Paul Watson
MITROVICA, Kosovo - The United Nations, one of the world's most vocal champions of human rights, is facing mounting complaints that it has violated the most basic rules of justice in Kosovo, its protectorate.
Fourteen months after the United Nations took control of the Serbian province, both Serbs and ethnic Albanians are accusing criminal courts of excessive delays, bias among judges, widespread witness tampering and other serious violations of international rights to a fair trial.
Defending the world body, a spokeswoman, Susan Manuel, said that the United Nations was trying to make the local justice system work but that a boycott by Serbian prosecutors and judges - compounded by a chronic shortage of foreign aid money and experts - was making a difficult situation worse.
In addition, the foreign-led UN police force has complained that frequent intimidation of witnesses and court officials makes it extremely difficult to investigate and prosecute crimes.
Vladimir Vucetic is one of several prisoners whom Serbs point to as evidence that the United Nations is failing to ensure impartial justice in Kosovo.
The mentally disabled Serbian teen-ager has spent 11 months in UN detention awaiting trial. He was charged with genocide on Sept. 27, 1999, after an ethnic Albanian woman accused him of being in a group of Serbs who set fire to three houses here in Mitrovica.
His mother insists that the youth, who was 16 at the time, is not guilty of anything more than being simple-minded and easily manipulated.
''Give my son a chocolate bar, he'll jump from the roof,'' she said through an interpreter in a tiny room that serves as bedroom, kitchen and living room. ''You can do everything with him when he doesn't understand.
''I can't understand why they don't find that one year is enough time for anybody to realize he made a mistake, let alone a retarded kid whose guilt has not been proved yet.''
The boy used to attend a special school for the mentally disabled, said Father Svetislav Nojic, 63, a Serbian Orthodox priest whose daughter was one of the boy's teachers.
But for nearly a year now, the boy has shared a prison cell with three men, and although the is able to understand where he is, he's frightened.
''He responds to questions, but he generally keeps quiet,'' Father Nojic said. ''He refuses most things and keeps saying he has a headache.''
The mother said she had sent him out with 10 Yugoslav dinars, about 20 cents, to buy candy.
He was arrested by French troops, who brought him back to the family's home in northern Mitrovica, surrounded the house and searched it, she added.
UN police officers questioned her about a Serbian man with whom her son was alleged to have set fire to the houses, she said, and she insisted that she didn't know the man.
A U.S. prosecutor took control of the case Aug. 15, and the following day he reduced the charge of genocide to causing public danger. The trial is set to begin Thursday.
The lawyer, Zivojin Jokanovic, has defended Serbs charged with genocide and ethnic Albanians accused of terrorism. Right now, 43 of his non-Albanian clients are in Kosovo prisons. Half of them have been waiting more than a year for their trials, and that number will reach 80 percent by next month, he said in an interview.
The long delays not only violate the Serbian defendants' right to speedy trials but also give their ethnic Albanian accusers more time to coach and harass witnesses and prosecutors, Mr. Jokanovic charged.
''I think most witnesses are being trained by experts,'' the Serbian lawyer said. ''The public prosecutor is often blatantly lying. ''
Ms. Manuel, the UN spokeswoman in the case, acknowledged that the system was not perfect but said: ''We've been trying to give some credit to the local judiciary.
When the judiciary was set up, it wasn't clear that Albanians would only act reasonably in terms of Albanian cases.
''There are Albanian judiciary officials who are very objective, but there have been enough cases where it wasn't happening that we had to introduce the idea of international judges.''
The United Nations has only been able to recruit half the 12 foreign judges it seeks for Kosovo and just two of five foreign prosecutors. They work with 405 local court officials, almost all of whom are ethnic Albanians.
In a serious criminal case, such as murder, a foreign judge sits on a tribunal with two local judges and three jurors. The foreign judge can be overruled, and one already has been in a Mitrovica court, Mr. Jokanovic said.
A plan by Bernard Kouchner, the top UN administrator in Kosovo, to set up a special court to handle crimes of war or ethnic hatred is stalled because the UN General Assembly has yet to approve the $5 million initial budget plus $10 million a year to keep the court running, Ms. Manuel said.
Having more foreign judges won't ''solve the problem but only soften it,'' Mr. Jokanovic argued, because they can be overruled by ethnic Albanians sitting on a tribunal. Serbs won't end their boycott because of the danger they face in Kosovo, he said.
Ethnic Albanians, too, are angry at the UN justice system and have accused Mr. Kouchner of pro-Serbian bias for blocking the release of an ethnic Albanian man accused of killing three Serbs, including a 4-year-old child, on May 28.
Serbian witnesses identified Afrim Zeqiri as the killer, and the license-plate of the car that they said fled the scene matched his. He later surrendered.
Seven ethnic Albanian witnesses testified in court that Mr. Zeqiri wasn't in the village of Cernica, in southeastern Kosovo, when the slayings took place.
A Finnish judge, Ante Ruotslainen, ruled that there was not enough evidence against Mr. Zeqiri to commit him to trial and ordered his release.
But Mr. Kouchner, who governs with the power of decree under a UN Security Council resolution, overruled the judge and said Mr. Zeqiri must be locked up for up to 30 days, pending review.
It was the sixth time Mr. Zeqiri had been jailed in a year for weapons offenses and threats against Serbs, Ms. Manuel said.
THE WASHINGTON TIMES : Milosevic's grip on power still firm as elections near
By David Sands
With a month to go in the campaign, Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic appears poised to cling to power despite adverse polls and a concerted U.S. effort to aid his divided opposition.
Analysts said Mr. Milosevic retains such a firm grip on the state media and the electoral machinery that there is little chance he will be ousted in the Sept. 24 ballot, paving the way for up to eight more years in power.
"I don't think anybody in his right mind believes the Milosevic government would admit it if it lost in a fair election at the polls," said Kurt Bassuener, program officer for the Balkans Initiative run by the Washington-based U.S. Institute for Peace.
"Given the nature of the regime in Belgrade, it is nigh on impossible to expect a change of regime from the vote," said Mr. Bassuener, who added that the real test for the regime may come in the public reaction in the days after the results are announced.
A survey released late last week by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), which has studied the Serbian domestic scene intensively, also predicted Mr. Milosevic would triumph over his perennially divided opposition.
The vote will be the first national election since last year's disastrous conflict with NATO over Kosovo.
"In spite of claims by opposition leaders that Milosevic can be removed by popular will . . . serious doubts remain about the capacity of the opposition to mount a credible campaign," the ICG report said.
The pessimism persists despite two new polls this week that put Vojislav Kostunica, the candidate of a coalition of 15 opposition parties, ahead of Mr. Milosevic.
A poll released Monday by the Institute of Social Sciences gave Mr. Kostunica 35 percent to 23 percent for Mr. Milosevic, while a second poll by the Medium agency put his lead at 30 percent to 25 percent.
But efforts to get a second opposition candidate — Belgrade Mayor Vojislav Mihajlovic of the Serbian Renewal Movement, or SPO — to stand aside for Mr. Kostunica have been rejected by SPO leader Vuk Draskovic.
Adding to the mounting unease over next month's vote was a protest lodged yesterday by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that one of its teams assigned to monitor the vote had not been granted visas. It is not clear whether Mr. Milosevic will allow international observers in to monitor the vote.
Under constitutional changes pushed through Yugoslavia's parliament by Milosevic allies last month, the country will hold presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections on Sept. 24.
Mr. Milosevic, who under the old constitution would have had to step down next summer, now is eligible to serve two new four-year terms in Belgrade.
Clinton administration efforts to aid Mr. Milosevic's rivals have played to mixed reviews inside Serbia.
The State Department last week announced that it was opening a new office in Budapest to work with democratic opposition figures seeking to oust Mr. Milosevic. U.S. Ambassador to Croatia William Montgomery will head up the office.
But Mr. Kostunica complained that the opening of the Budapest office was an "American kiss of death to the democratic forces of Serbia."
"It takes a great deal of arrogance . . . to say that promoting democracy in Serbia is a long-term U.S. goal. Democracy in Serbia is Serbia's goal, and no one else is entitled to it," said Mr. Kostunica, who echoed complaints by Mr. Milosevic's allies that the office was part of a U.S. plan to break up the country.
State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker called that a "ridiculous suggestion," saying the U.S. effort was simply a response to the misery Mr. Milosevic has inflicted on his own people after more than a decade in power.
The ICG analysis found that Serbian nationalism and resentment of Western pressure play into the hands of Mr. Milosevic's still-potent propaganda machine.
And many leading opposition figures share Mr. Milosevic's sense of Serbian grievance, even though they want to see the president go after a decade of turbulence, territorial loss and economic decline.
"Almost every candidate and party seeks to compete with Milosevic in his own nationalist arena, thus complicating their relationships with the West and adding to the Serbian people's confusion," the ICG analysis notes.
The Clinton administration has also been frustrated in its efforts to persuade the pro-Western leaders of Montenegro, the junior partner to Serbia in the Yugoslav federation, to team with Serbian opposition forces in next month's vote.
Angry that Mr. Milosevic's constitutional rewrite dilutes their power in parliament, Montenegro's leaders say they will boycott the vote.
Opposition factions tried to combat their ineffectual image by releasing a 16-page unified platform last week. The document calls for tax and currency reform, the establishment of an independent judiciary, new military and police oversight, and more freedom for the country's press and universities.
The New York Times : China's Migrants Find Europe's Open Back Door: The Balkans
By CARLOTTA GALL
ZAGREB, Croatia, Aug. 21 -- The chaotic lands of the Balkans have become the latest gateway to Western Europe for tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from China, South Asia and Middle Eastern countries like Iran and Iraq, according to Western diplomats, local officials and the increasing number of refugees who get caught.
President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, in particular, has opened the gates to thousands of Chinese intent on reaching Western Europe. Under Mr. Milosevic, Yugoslavia has cultivated strong ties with China, which was Belgrade's ally during the war over Kosovo last year.
Yugoslav consulates in China freely grant tourist visas to Chinese, and the legal passage to Yugoslavia eases the way for illegal entry to the rest of Europe. Typically, the Chinese arrive by plane in Belgrade, then travel to Bosnia and on to Croatia. Then they head for the Adriatic coast and hope to reach Italy.
Bosnia has its own flow of illegal immigrants from Iran, Iraq and other countries with which the Muslim-led government in Sarajevo maintains strong ties out of gratitude for the support of Iran and Arab nations during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
But Croatia is experiencing a staggering increase in human traffic. Barely a week goes by without a new report of dozens of Chinese or other migrants being caught on the coast or inland.
The authorities here have caught 10,000 illegal immigrants trying to cross into Croatia in the first half of this year, compared with 8,000 in all of 1999. On Aug. 12, for instance, 52 illegal immigrants were sent back to Bosnia, with which Croatia shares a 1,200-mile, largely mountainous and unpatrolled border. A few days later, 36 more migrants were caught in the town of Varazdin, close to the border with Hungary and Slovenia, said Miroslav Cindori, the head of a detention center outside Zagreb.
In Mr. Cindori's center, a converted motel, young men in track suits and plastic sandals wander around and, using sign language, beg for cigarettes through the wire fence. Mostly Chinese, these men are illegal immigrants caught by the Croatian authorities, and they now await deportation.
They represent a minuscule part of Europe's latest headache caused by Belgrade.
The 85 men and 2 women detained here have mostly come through in groups, organized by a shadowy but extensive criminal network of human traffickers, who are suddenly using the Balkans for access to Europe, said Duc Tran of the International Organization for Migration, in Zagreb.
None of the Chinese detainees wanted to talk or be photographed. "No, no English, no, no," said one, smiling cheerfully but not stopping to talk. But other detainees, from Bangladesh, Tunisia and Iraq, were eager to talk and urgently asked for help. "We took the wrong road," Shahabuddin, from Dhaka, Bangladesh, explained sheepishly. "We wanted to go to Italy, and they stopped us and said, 'No, this is Croatia.' "
Their stories appear to confirm the growing alarm among Western diplomats and migration officials that a sophisticated and far-reaching network of human traffickers from Asia has switched its attention from the United States and is now looking to Europe. The traffickers have found that the troubled and unruly countries of the former Yugoslavia, with porous borders and a lack of immigration laws and agreements, are an ideal gateway to the West.
Officials in Croatia recently signed an agreement with Bosnia in an effort to halt the human flow, but they lack the diplomatic contacts needed to reach a similar agreement with Mr. Milosevic's government in Belgrade.
Chinese gangs have switched the focus of their activities toward Europe, Mr. Tran said. "There has been a change in the final destination since the clampdown by the U.S. government, which has cut down illegal immigration to the United States," he said. "Europe is now the specific destination of the Chinese."
In past years, Mr. Tran has dealt with waves of illegal immigrants from China who passed through Central America in an attempt to get to North America. It is estimated that as many as 500,000 Chinese tried to emigrate last year, he said.
In recent years, China has generally not shown the same concern over barring its citizens from leaving as the old Soviet Union did. Furthermore, many emigrating Chinese are from southeast coastal areas where illicit traffic, in people as well as goods, is well-established.
A large number of these people are now coming to Europe, taking advantage of the new Yugoslav route.
"What triggered it was the granting of visas by Belgrade," Mr. Tran said. "Two DC-10's come in a week to Belgrade. You pay $500 to $900 for a ticket, and you are in Belgrade."
The Serbian capital has a sizable Chinese community and an entire Chinese section in the vast open-air market that grew up in Belgrade over the last decade to circumvent sanctions and enable people in Belgrade to buy smuggled consumer goods. The groups of Chinese arriving by plane "are not going to Serbia for business," Mr. Tran said. "They may do some trade, but their final destination is Europe."
The lucky immigrants who make it through Bosnia and Croatia head for Italy by boat. Once there, they can travel freely within the block of European Union countries that are bound by the Schengen agreement and have abolished passport checks.
Belgrade is almost certainly making money out of the scheme, said Dr. Thomas O'Rourke, acting chief of mission in Zagreb for the International Office of Migration.
Besides the visa and ticket sales, there is talk that the Chinese can buy residency permits in Serbia for a few thousand dollars, Mr. Tran said.
Diplomats and immigration officials add that Mr. Milosevic, already indicted on charges of war crimes and widely viewed as an international pariah, may enjoy causing another problem for his foes. "He's irritating the West and making money at the same time," said a European diplomat in Zagreb.
Yet the real concern is that the movement of illegal immigrants appears to be highly organized and run by international criminal rings who have realized that smuggling people for high fees is more profitable and less risky than trafficking drugs, Mr. Tran said.
The traffic in Chinese migrants in Western Europe came to light in June when the bodies of 58 Chinese were found in an airtight container on a truck in Dover, England.
The Chinese travel in groups, and are often shipped to prearranged employers, who then recoup the cost from the immigrants' wages in sweatshops or restaurants or in the sex trade. Passage to the West can cost up to $60,000, Dr. O'Rourke said. In some cases, a whole village will join together to send the young men abroad so they can then support the village with their foreign earnings, said Mr. Cindori of the immigrant detention center.
The latest group of 35 Chinese men in his center were arrested in the coastal port of Sibenik after they were returned from Italy. They had no passports and said very little when they arrived, Mr. Cindori said, but after a few days a phone call was made.
Then, he said, their passports started arriving in the mail, some from Belgrade, some from Sarajevo and some from Zagreb. All the men are from the same place in China, the coastal province of Zhejiang. They received tourist visas at the Yugoslav consulate in nearby Shanghai and flew into Belgrade, Mr. Cindori said.
The Muslims who come through Bosnia arrive on flights from Istanbul and Tehran. A plane arrives from Iran every week and returns empty, Mr. Tran said. "As soon as they get off the plane, there are buses waiting outside, and they are gone," he said.
IWPR : Milosevic's Forbidden City
Deep in the forests of Mount Cnri Vrh a villa used by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic sits above a mysterious underground complex
Just outside the village of Dubisnica on Mount Crni Vrh, eastern Serbia, a large-scale underground construction project is well under-way. Beneath a villa once used by Communist activists the underground complex is being built at the behest of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Access to the area is strictly prohibited and police guards patrol the perimeter 24 hours a day.
Residents in Bor, Zagubica, and Milosevic's hometown of Pozarevac speak of little else these days. The complex has acquired the name, The Forbidden City.
Rumours abound the project is part of Milosevic's insurance policy - a secure hideout should he lose the up-coming presidential elections or reach some form of agreement with the international community in exchange for stepping-down from office.
News of the project first leaked out in Pozarevac after guests of Milosevic's son Marko returned from a visit to the villa. An employee from Marko's nightclub Madona, who wishes to remain anonymous, explained the guests were taken to the house at the time of an opposition rally in Pozarevac on May 9.
"He [Marko] thought clashes might break out," the source said. "I saw a lot of work being done on the mountain. Some works are underground. We stayed at the old villa and walked around the forest."
The villa is around 50 kilometres from Bor, hidden deep in the forest. Passers-by can only see the top of the roof in the autumn, when the trees are bare. But powerful lights illuminate the area by night.
S.J., a woodcutter from the Zagubica area, said, "I don't know what's in there, because access is forbidden. The villa is guarded by police."
"You can sometimes hear helicopters landing there," S.J. added. "There may be a heliport in there. Some local shepherds told me Milosevic often visits, sometimes with his family. Senior officials visit him there, and his son Marko sometimes stays there too."
A police officer from Zagubica said Milosevic spent most of his time at the villa during the NATO bombing campaign. A missile struck Milosevic's bedroom at his White Court residence in Belgrade.
Other residents in Zagubica said Nikola Sainovic, spokesman of Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia, and Vlajko Stojiljkovic, Yugoslav police minister, often stay in the town on route to the villa. Like Milosevic both have been indicted by The Hague Tribunal for alleged war crimes in Kosovo.
A weekly magazine, Ekstra, from Bijeljina in Republika Srpska recently published an exclusive story on the villa. Journalist Danica Zivkovic claimed the villa has its own cinema room, billiard room and swimming pool filled with famous spa water. The Ekstra article mentioned underground construction works, speculating these were probably bunkers. The magazine claimed Milosevic usually travelled to the villa by helicopter and employed police officers from Bor, Pozarevac and Zagunica as bodyguards around the property.
According to Ekstra one of the few foreigners to visit the villa was former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali, who, the magazine claimed, stayed at the house as a guest of Milosevic in 1995.
Although Ekstra is on sale inside Serbia, there has to date been no official response to the article.
Dragan Vitomirovic, a journalist from Zajecar, tried to write a story on the renovation work at the villa three years ago for the now defunct daily newspaper Nasa Borba. Vitomirovic said he encountered a wall of silence. Not one contractor would discuss what kind of works were being done at the house or why.
The house was originally built in the 1950s for use by the Bor police force. But Serbian and Yugoslav Communist officials took a liking to the property and began using it for holidays and meetings.
Speculation Milosevic is constructing a secure retreat mounted following reports in the New York Times that the Yugoslav president was secretly negotiating a deal with Washington, whereby he would step down in exchange for immunity from The Hague Tribunal.
The United States government strongly denied the claims and the Tribunal dismissed the any possibility Milosevic could ever be granted immunity.
Added to this, the experience of former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet, detained for months in Britain pending extradition proceedings on human rights abuse charges, has reinforced the belief Milosevic would refuse to leave Serbia should his tenure as president end.
But claims by Hague detainees Stevan Todorovic and Dragan Nikolic that bounty hunters operating inside Serbia kidnapped and transported them across the border into Bosnia, indicate even Serbia may provide only limited refuge from the clutches of The Hague.
Hence, the theory goes, work is under-way to build an underground fortress at Crni Vrh, where Milosevic can feel safe from internal and external foes - and especially from the rumoured head-hunters on the prowl for stray Hague indictees.
Marko Ruzic is a pseudonym for a journalist in Belgrade.
Yugo dinar resumes decline, seen down to 30 marks
BELGRADE, Aug 21 (Reuters) - The Yugoslav dinar started to melt down on the black market during the weekend, falling to 26.0-28.5 against the German mark on Monday in what street dealers said was a decline that would take it to the 30.0 level. The dinar was changing hands at 25.5-27.0 to the mark last Friday. Most street traders were buying on Monday at 26.0 in cash deals and some have been reported offering as much as 28.0 in goods-related deals. But few were ready to sell the German mark, which they said was a very scarce item in the past week. Some said they feared arrest as plain clothes police were spotted in the streets. "The dinar is bound to fall to 30 to the German mark by the end of the week and settle there for a while. But first, it"s got to come in line with the rate in Montenegro. Right now, it"s purely psychologically driven," one street dealer said. Montenegro, Serbia"s last and growingly reluctant partner in federal Yugoslavia, launched a dual currency system last November, legalising the mark alongside the Yugoslav dinar. Although hard currency in Montenegro accounts for most daily payments, some dinars remain in circulation as the Yugoslav army in the republic is still being paid in dinars. Montenegrin officials have slashed the dinar rate versus the German mark to 27, pushing the black market rate to as low as 30, Belgrade media said. But dealers said the fresh dinar fall was also triggered by a lack of foreign exchange, particularly German marks, the most sought-after currency in Serbia, where inflation has started to gather pace. Government statistics put July monthly inflation at 2.9 percent, down from 4.2 percent in June but economists have said the figures do not reflect reality. Since early August there has been a series of price hikes of as much as 50 percent for some items, mainly food and pharmaceuticals. The government has meanwhile stepped up payments to workers, farmers and pensioners hoping that more frequent payouts would buy a few more votes. Various opinion polls have signalled that an opposition-backed candidate might defeat President Slobodan Milosevic at the September 24 elections.
Milosevic Lags Behind Opposition Candidate
BELGRADE, Aug 22, 2000 -- (Reuters) A new poll shows Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic lagging behind the joint candidate of 15 opposition parties for September's presidential elections, independent radio B2-92 said on Monday.
The survey said Vojislav Kostunica, candidate of the 15-party Democratic Opposition of Serbia bloc, would get 35 percent of the vote and Milosevic 23 percent.
The poll was conducted earlier this month by the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), which interviewed 1,700 respondents from Serbia, excluding Kosovo, after the names of the main presidential candidates were announced.
A separate survey by the Medium polling agency also put Kostunica in the lead but with Milosevic closer behind.
It put support for Kostunica at 30 percent against 25 percent for Milosevic, the Beta news agency quoted Medium director Srbobran Brankovic as saying.
Yugoslav presidential and federal elections, along with Serbian local elections, are scheduled for September 24.
The ISS survey showed that support for Kostunica had dropped seven percent since an ISS poll in July, when 42 percent of respondents said they would vote for him if the opposition united behind him.
Since then opposition parties have nominated two more candidates for the presidential election.
The ISS survey also showed that Milosevic's support had slipped by five percent from the 28 percent he polled in the first survey.
Two other presidential candidates - Vojislav Mihailovic, from the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), the largest single opposition party, and Tomislav Nikolic of the ultra-nationalist Radical party - would each get five percent of the votes, the ISS survey said.
RIVAL OPPOSITION CANDIDATES
Opposition parties are still urging the SPO to drop Mihailovic and join them in backing Kostunica, but the SPO, led by maverick politician Vuk Draskovic, insists that it is entitled to its own candidate.
Speaking at a news conference on Monday, Mihailovic said he believed he would make it into a second round but that the SPO would back Kostunica if he failed to do so "because the most important (thing) is to beat Milosevic".
The ISS survey also found that 40 percent of voters would cast their ballots for the democratic opposition bloc in the federal parliamentary elections, which the SPO initially said it would boycott but has since indicated it might contest after all.
Other opposition parties have said this will further split the opposition votes and reduce their chances in the race for federal parliament seats.
If the SPO does contest the federal elections, other opposition parties would garner 34 percent and the SPO six percent, the survey said.
Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia and his wife's neo-communist Yugoslav Left, which are contesting the elections on a joint list, would get 23 percent, while the ultra-nationalist Radical party, their coalition partner in the government, would get seven percent in the federal election.
The ruling parties in Montenegro, Serbia's reluctant partner in Yugoslavia, have said they will not take part in the elections, accusing Milosevic of creating a private state.
The Sunday Times : Jailed British policemen reveal they were beaten
THE two British policemen facing terrorism charges in a Belgrade jail have revealed how they were beaten by Yugoslav soldiers and thought they were facing summary execution when they were arrested, writes Tom Walker.
Detective Sergeant Adrian Prangnell, 41, and PC John Yore, 31, say they were punched, stamped on and slapped. They had been seized with two Canadian friends as they returned to Kosovo from a weekend break on the Adriatic coast earlier this month. They were in Kosovo to train the province's United Nations police force.
They were handcuffed at a Yugoslav checkpoint and bundled into an army truck in remote countryside.
Loaded guns were pointed at them and they were exposed to crowds of jeering Serbs on their journey to a barracks, where they were surrounded by up to 30 soldiers. Both men say they were hit repeatedly.
"I really felt it was over, we're not going to get out alive," said Yore.
Diplomats hope that the men may be released soon following evidence to an inquiry suggesting equipment in their vehicle posed no threat to Yugoslav security.
British police tell of Serb beatings
Alex Todorovic and Tom Walker
THE two British policemen and their Canadian friends had few worries as they approached the pass into Kosovo on August 1 and saw a long line of vehicles waiting to pass through a Nato checkpoint.
Relaxed after a weekend by the sea, the men decided to beat the queue by taking a more remote back road into the province. It was a mistake that led to a less convivial Yugoslavian army post - and the beginning of a long journey which ended with Detective Sergeant Adrian Prangnell and PC John Yore locked in a Belgrade jail.
Last week, details of the men's experience emerged for the first time.
After their arrest - on suspicion of illegal entry, terrorism, importation of explosives and resisting arrest - they were bundled into a lorry. Loaded guns were pointed at them as the truck lurched through a region where anti-western feelings run high and soldiers and locals exchanged jokes over the likely fate of the "terrorists".
Graffiti praising Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslavian president, adorned every corner. "I thought they were going to eat us," a still-shaken Yore told a military source last week.
The humiliation of the four men worsened in a drab communist-era army barracks in the small town of Andrijevica. As they were unloaded from the truck, they were attacked.
In an account given to military sources in Belgrade, Prangnell, 41, said he was punched on the chin, while Yore, 31, was stamped on.
Both men - who had been working in Kosovo for nearly a year training the new United Nations police force - were then repeatedly slapped by an angry crowd of between 20 and 30 soldiers.
"I really felt it was over, we're not going to get out alive," said Yore.
Prangnell said he had "never seen so many weapons in my life". Their fears of a lynching only subsided when a commanding officer arrived and tempers calmed.
The men were separated and interrogated individually during six days in Andrijevica. They were forced to sit at a bare wooden table with their hands before them and were repeatedly questioned about what they had been doing. The Balkan heat was intense and only when they were transferred to Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital, did "things ease up a bit", according to Yore.
Now they find themselves in the drab surroundings of the military court in Belgrade, where they are kept in solitary cells and allowed just two 15-minute periods of exercise each day, when they walk in circles around an exercise yard. Bob Gordon, the British liaison officer in Belgrade, has taken them books and chocolate - some small measures of relief against the numbing fear that they could receive long jail sentences.
The military source said both Britons insisted they knew nothing about a length of detonation wire and explosive caps that were in the back of the Nissan Patrol driven by their friend Shaun Going, a Canadian contractor, who was accompanied by his nephew, Liam Hall.
The men are now feeling more relaxed in the Serbian capital.
"In Belgrade things became much more professional," said Yore, who spoke of his relief at being able to contact his family and the comfort he has received through letters from his girlfriend, to whom he writes daily.
He said loneliness and isolation are his biggest problems, and described how during the day the men are allowed to sit on the chairs in their cells but are forbidden to sleep or lie on their beds.
Each morning they are woken at 5.30 when they have to make their beds, wash and go to breakfast. Their rooms are then inspected and afterwards they are allowed their first period of exercise.
"I read more than I ever have in my life," said Yore, who devours 300 pages a day. Prison food, described by the military source as "typical Balkan fare", was said by both men to be good.
They get on well with their guards, with whom they are slowly improving their Serbo-Croat.
The military source said Prangnell, a fit rugby player, wore shorts and sports sandals, while Yore was in jeans, a T-shirt and black tennis shoes with the laces removed. Prangnell appeared to be coping the better of the two, he said.
Both men have been discouraged by news that the military prosecutor has referred their case back to the investigator, which could cause yet more delay while more witnesses are interviewed in the Montenegrin resort of Sveti Stefan, where they spent the weekend before their arrest. The prosecutor is said to be unconvinced by hotel bills and wants a receptionist at the Hotel Sveti Stefan to confirm that the men were there.
"Back home they would have found us innocent by now," complained Prangnell, while admitting that British police would have launched a similar investigation in the circumstances: "We would have done the same."
Both men believe the case is moving in their favour; border guards have confirmed that none of the group resisted arrest, and an explosives expert has testified that the equipment aboard the Nissan could have done little damage.
Diplomats fear that Going, in particular, may face a tougher time because he has worked on sensitive American construction projects.
"I believe it might be good if the Canadian and British cases were separated," said Rade Drobac, head of the Yugoslavian interests section in London.
"If only we could go to Kosovo to check on what they do there, then it would be easier to verify. But sadly nobody believes Nato any longer because it has very little credibility. The problem is a lack of trust."
Murders linked to Milosevic loot
Tom Walker, Diplomatic Correspondent
TWO senior figures in the regime of Slobodan Milosevic who were shot dead earlier this year knew where billions of dollars of bank savings had been hidden during the collapse of Yugoslavia, according to western intelligence officials.
The sources believe that Zika Petrovic, the head of Yugoslav Airlines (JAT), and Pavle Bulatovic, the defence minister, were assassinated - perhaps on Milosevic's orders - "because they knew too much".
Reports being compiled in western capitals, including Washington, suggest that the savings of millions of now penniless Yugoslavs may have been laundered through private offshore accounts in Cyprus, Lebanon, South Africa and China.
Petrovic, who was gunned down in April while walking his dog near Belgrade's central police station, was an old friend of the Milosevics. He grew up with the future president in the industrial town of Pozarevac and was a faithful member of the Yugoslav United Left communist party led by Mira Markovic, Milosevic's wife.
Intelligence officials who have interviewed former JAT pilots have learnt that Petrovic personally oversaw the loading of suitcases stashed with cash onto flights.
Bulatovic, a quiet but powerful force in Milosevic's Socialist party, became defence minister in March 1993 and acquired an intimate knowledge of the Yugoslav army's logistics channels, which, the same sources believe, had previously been used for drug-running.
He also had access to the military's contacts with former eastern bloc army officers. Intelligence officials say such connections ensured that air routes into Russia, Belarus and other countries friendly to Yugoslavia were available to transfer cash.
However, none of Bulatovic's powerful contacts could prevent him from being slain in a hail of bullets in a Belgrade restaurant in February.
Ten years ago Yugoslav investors held savings valued at roughly $12 billion (£8 billion) in a handful of state-owned banks. At the same time the central bank had foreign reserves worth nearly $10 billion.
As war broke out in Croatia and Bosnia in the early 1990s and UN sanctions began to bite, Milosevic, a former banker, froze all private savings accounts and commandeered the central reserves.
Although some money was left in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Macedonia - all of which broke away from Yugoslavia - the rest has disappeared over the past decade.
While the Milosevic regime spent much on the war effort and on shoring up the police states that the rump Yugoslavia became, financial analysts estimate that billions of dollars in cash were transported abroad.
Investigators at the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control believe as much as $4 billion (£2.7 billion) could have ended up in Cyprus alone. More than 500 Yugoslav companies, mostly in the "export-import" sector, were set up there during the early 1990s. Western investigators trying to track down Milosevic's millions believe some of these were fronts for laundering.
American officials are monitoring the case of one Yugoslav citizen who claims to have had his Beogradska bank account hijacked by money launderers.
Predrag Djordjevic attempted to ship cotton into Yugoslavia in 1994 with a United Nations permit. His Bulgarian business partner deposited about £180,000 in Deutschmarks into Djordjevic's company account in Belgrade, and the money was supposed to be transferred to the Beogradska bank in Cyprus.
The transfer was mysteriously blocked, however. After a protracted legal wrangle with the Beogradska, Djordjevic found his money had been moved into an account with another Cypriot bank, the Popular. The account was controlled by a company he had never heard of.
When the accounts were examined in court, Djordjevic discovered that about £300,000 had been transferred to a Popular account bearing the same number as his account with the Beogradska.
Djordjevic, who finally got his money far too late to save his cotton deal, plans to press charges against the Popular bank, which denies any impropriety.
The Serb, who has been left almost destitute by the lengthy legal battle, also intends to take Cyprus to the European Court of Human Rights. He maintains that the Cypriot ruling establishment is in cahoots with the Milosevic regime.
"How many other cases are there out there?" he asked. "The state, the police, they all know about this. Even the policeman in charge of fighting money laundering here advised me to leave the country."
Djordjevic's case may be one of the first clues to a financial web that has sustained the Milosevic government through a decade of sanctions.
A European Union investigation into his assets, launched during the Kosovo crisis, yielded little, according to insiders. In Washington, the Office of Foreign Assets Control has maintained a wall of silence.
Washington Post : Up in Arms: The Defense Department
By Roberto Suro
A glance at the summer crop of military journals proves conclusively that generals do in fact relive the last war over and over. Kosovo is on the mind, obsessively so, but in a surprising way.
The authors of major articles in both Aerospace Power Chronicles, the Air Force's top academic publication, and Parameters, its Army counterpart, see the potential for future military disaster in the "zero casualty syndrome" that blossomed during last year's 78-day NATO bombing campaign against Serbia.
By precluding the use of ground troops at the onset and by flying aircraft at altitudes above the range of Serbian missiles and guns, U.S. civilian and military leaders gave a higher priority to the avoidance of casualties than to accomplishment of the military mission, according to both articles. Although an assortment of authors argue from different points of view, they all worry that casualty avoidance has distorted military doctrine and foreign policy.
"The world's only superpower sent the strongest possible signal that, while it is willing to conduct military operations in situations not vital to the country's national interest, it is not willing to put in harm's way the means necessary to conduct these operations effectively and conclusively," writes Marine Corps Col. Vincent J. Goulding Jr. in Parameters.
By making the protection of their troops the top concern, commanders from the platoon to the Pentagon deny themselves the ability to maneuver and thus surprise and destroy their foes, he says. "Lack of willingness to be unpredictable and take risks precludes total victory at any level," Goulding concludes.
The "force-protection fetishism" evident in Kosovo has its roots in the fear of military embarrassment that infected the nation after Vietnam, argues Jeffrey Record, a veteran military scholar who now teaches at the Air War College. Fear of "a Balkan Vietnam" allowed Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to survive and spared his military from serious damage, Record writes in the August issue of Aerospace Power Chronicles.
"Does elevation of force protection to first place among all other operational objectives convey a seriousness of means?" Record asks. "Does it not instead signal to adversary and ally alike the presence of a frail will? Does it not encourage enemies to adopt the simple strategy of filling as many American body bags as possible?"
While there is a good deal of earnest soul-searching over the implications of the conduct of last year's air war, there are some very parochial political considerations as well.
The perennial competition for money among the military services will become more intense when a new administration takes over the White House. As part of the transition, the Defense Department will prepare a Quadrennial Defense Review for the new president, which will set long-term military strategy and budget priorities. In the preliminary bureaucratic skirmishes, the Air Force is already hailing its performance in the Balkans last year as proof that it deserves favor, while the Army, which was left out of the initial fight, is struggling not to be left behind.
So, perhaps it is not surprising that after a good deal of hand-wringing and deep thinking, Record writes that "to the extent that casualty phobia persists and to the extent it continues to promote--as it did in the war against Serbia--reliance on air power to the exclusion of ground-combat force," then budget priorities need to be reexamined. "If in combat the United States is going to be a one-armed superpower, then that arm should be as strong as possible," he says.
For his part, Goulding concludes that "long-range precision strike will always be an option, but to truly put future adversaries in the horns of a dilemma the additional dimension of equally precise combined-arms ground operations is an absolute requirement."
TALKING THE TALK: More on the Pentagon's relentless effort to stretch the English language:
"Loose Lips Sinks Ships" had a certain ring to it. That cannot be said for the current slogan to encourage vigilance against security violations: "Think SAEDA!" However you would pronounce it, the word stands for "security and espionage directed against the Army."
In offering to do anything possible to assist in the rescue of the sunken Russian submarine Kursk, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said during a news conference Friday that "we have proposed having teams of experts who have a so-called reach-back capability to provide well-organized, mission-specific expertise." Pentagon public affairs officers were stumped when asked to explain "reach-back" capability. Turns out it just means they can call other experts for help.
The Independent : Diplomats exasperated at lengthy imprisonment of two Britons, two Canadians
By Katarina Kratovac
Foreign diplomats visiting the two Britons and two Canadians jailed by the Yugoslav army on suspicions of terrorism expressed indignation on Friday at the length of imprisonment for the four.
Robert Gordon, a British representative in Belgrade, told reporters after seeing the two Britons that he was hoping "something happens and that they are released soon."
Gordon did not elaborate what that "something" would entail.
"Obviously – they have been in prison now for a very, very long time, for doing nothing more than accompanying two friends on a weekend in Montenegro," Gordon said.
Britons Adrian Prangnell and John Yore were arrested Aug. 1 together with two Canadian friends from Kosovo, when Yugoslav army troops stopped and searched their vehicle in Montenegro, which makes up Yugoslavia along with much larger Serbia. The four were on holiday on the Montenegrin coast and were en route back to Kosovo.
The two arrested Britons train local police for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Canadians worked in construction – Shaun Going is contractor employed in rebuilding homes damaged by war and his nephew, Liam Hall was working in his uncle's company for the summer. None have been formally charged and are being held at a Belgrade military prison awaiting a decision by the army prosecutor whether to indict them.
Canada's charge d'affaires in Belgrade, Angela Bogdan, who visited the two Canadians Friday, said that they asked her to pass on to families and friends that the two were "extremely grateful for the messages of goodwill."
"Liam very much hopes that he'll be able to start university September 15 and we are hoping that that can be a realization for him," Bogdan said referring to the 19–year old.
The Yugoslav army said it found explosives–related materials in the group's car, but Going maintained this was leftover material from his work as contractor.
If found guilty of terrorism, the four could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
On Thursday, Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero–Waldner, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the OSCE, called on Yugoslav officials to release the prisoners immediately.
"A speedy release of the four detained would be perceived as a sign that Yugoslavia is complying with international obligations," media here quoted Ferrero–Waldner as saying.
The Britons and Canadians are not the only foreigners jailed in Belgrade. Four Dutch citizens were arrested last month on suspicion of plotting to kill President Slobodan Milosevic. They were sentenced last week to 30 days in jail for illegally entering the country but remain under investigation and will likely face additional charges. They, too, deny all charges.
The increase in the arrests of foreigners here follows allegations by officials that NATO is hiring mercenaries to snatch fugitive war crimes suspects on Yugoslav territory. Milosevic has been indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, in connection with atrocities committed in Kosovo.
Dutch soldiers serving with the NATO and U.N. peacekeepers in Kosovo, Serbia's southern province, received orders Thursday to keep out of the rest of Yugoslavia and not travel while off–duty to Serbia proper or Montenegro.
Although Kosovo is still officially part of Yugoslavia, it is now run by international peacekeepers after last year's 78–day NATO bombing campaign forced Milosevic to end his crackdown on the province's majority Albanians and withdraw his troops.
The Times : Kosovo killings estimate halved
BY MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR
UNITED NATIONS forensic investigators searching for the bodies of ethnic Albanians murdered by Yugoslav Army and paramilitary forces in Kosovo last year now expect the final toll of confirmed killings to be between 4,000 and 5,000.
This is half the total estimated during Nato's 78-day bombing campaign. However, Graham Blewitt, deputy prosecutor at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, said yesterday that it was known that many of the bodies had been "incinerated" by the Serbs. "We will never know the full extent of the killings," he said.
The tribunal has about 200 forensic experts in Kosovo examining the remaining graves at sites where the bodies of slaughtered Albanians are known to have been buried. Mr Blewitt said the intention was to complete the work by the end of October.
He said: "At present we have exhumed in excess of 3,000 bodies, and with another three months to go, we expect the death toll to rise to between 4,000 and 5,000."
Nato was accused of exaggerating the number of killings as part of propaganda to justify the bombing campaign. Two figures were frequently quoted: 100,000 ethnic Albanians missing and 10,000 murdered by the Serbs. A Nato spokesman said yesterday that the figure of 10,000 dead had never been "an alliance estimate".
"It was a figure produced by the international community, based on a whole range of sources, including intelligence reports, interviews with refugees and witness accounts, and if it turns out that the total number of deaths is smaller, then that's very good news," the Nato spokesman said.
Mr Blewitt yesterday gave warning against a debate about numbers. The death toll, he said, was already very high and the sheer scale of the investigation still going on in Kosovo demonstrated the enormity of what was being uncovered.
Nine children were injured in a drive-by grenade attack on a Serb enclave in Kososvo last night. The attackers threw two grenades at a basketball court in the Obilic area, north of the capital, Pristina.
The Guardian : Figures put on Serb killings too high
Jonathan Steele
Nato officials conceded last night that their wartime estimates of the number of Kosovo Albanian civilians massacred by Serb forces might have been too high. They were reacting to findings by forensic experts for the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague who are preparing to complete their work in Kosovo after exhuming about 3,000 bodies.
Not all of the dead can be proved to be victims of murder or execution.
The war crimes teams have dug up 680 corpses this year at 150 sites. Added to the 2,108 found last year, the total is well below the murder estimates, ranging from 10,000 to 100,000, made during the war. Paul Risley, the Hague tribunal's press spokesman, said yesterday: "The final number of bodies uncovered will be less than 10,000 and probably more accurately determined as between two and three thousand."
Nato's intervention against Yugoslavia was prompted by massive Serb offensives against Albanian villages in Kosovo, which caused hundreds of thousands of civilians to hide in forests or flee across the border. There were frequent killings of unarmed civilians.
During the Nato airstrikes, when the Serbs restricted access to Kosovo, there was no way to verify atrocity reports. But Nato officials talked of 100,000 missing men and said at least 10,000 had been killed. Mark Laity, the acting Nato spokesman, said last night: "Nato never said the missing were all dead. The figure we stood by was 10,000. If it's wrong, I'm prepared to put up with a little bit of egg on our face if thousands are alive who were thought to be killed.
He added: "Nato is always going to lose. If there were 100,000 dead we would be criticised for entering Kosovo late. If it's a few thousand, we're criticised because people say there wasn't a crisis."
Serb opposition to launch election campaign Sept 1
BELGRADE, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Serbia"s main opposition bloc said on Monday it would start campaigning for next month"s elections three weeks before they are due, explaining that people already knew what choice they faced. Speaking on behalf of 15 parties who have joined forces in the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, Zoran Djindjic, the leader of the Democratic Party, said the campaign for the September 24 polls would officially kick off on September 1. "We do not want to burden our citizens already exhausted by long-term bad politics, long campaigns," Djindjic said of the campaign that will last only three weeks. "We do not have to explain to the people how bad this regime is," he said, adding later, "they know who we -- the opposition -- are, and who the others are. Asked why the campaign would be so short, he replied that the opposition did not have enough money for a longer one. The opposition bloc had hoped Montenegro, Serbia"s junior partner in Yugoslavia, would join the election to help it oust Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who has a strong grip on power and has campaigned informally for more than a year. But the pro-Western Democratic Party of Socialists which runs Montenegro confirmed on Monday it would boycott, citing what it says are illegal constitutional changes introduced by the Yugoslav president before calling the polls. "Guided by our position of protecting the equality and state sovereignty of Montenegro and preserving democracy in Montenegro...the party decided not to run in the elections," a party statement said. MONTENEGRINS TO BE URGED TO BOYCOTT The Serbian opposition said it would put up its own candidates to run in Montenegro for the federal parliamentary polls and hopes Montenegrins will support its choice of Vojislav Kostunica to challenge Milosevic for the presidential post. But Miodrag Vukovic, adviser to Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, told Reuters the main ruling party would call on Montenegrins to ignore the voting, which would be organised in the coastal republic by pro-Milosevic parties. "We will call on everyone supporting DPS and democratic programme...to boycott the illegal federal elections," he said. Kostunica, a moderate nationalist and leader of one of Serbia"s many opposition parties, said the situation in Montenegro was very delicate. He said the ruling party there seemed to have declared a boycott because it was afraid of losing the polls, but that its move would end up being counter-productive. "For such a decision they will be punished by their own supporters many of whom I believe will turn their back to it at the elections," Kostunica said after the opposition leaders met. "These elections are a battle to preserve Yugoslavia. We will have to address and animate the citizens of Montenegro to vote for the right candidate and for united and democratic state of Serbia and Montenegro," he added. Kostunica is also expected to present his programme on September 1, while the bloc said it would start a campaign in Serbia on Tuesday to collect one million signatures for him. Milosevic"s Socialist Party of Serbia announced on Tuesday it would join forces with his wife Mirjana Markovic"s Yugoslav Left for the federal presidential, parliamentary and Serbian local polls. The third party in their coalition, the ultra-nationalist Radical Party, has so far run a separate campaign, but analysts say it is carefully coordinated.
Belgrade court ends probe into Britons, Canadians
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Belgrade"s military court ended its investigation into four Canadian and British detainees Monday and a defense lawyer said the prosecutor should decide by the end of the month whether to put them on trial. "Based on the testimony heard so far I think there is really no case," Djordje Djurisic, the defense attorney for the two Britons, told reporters at the end of three days of hearings. The four men -- Canadians Shaun Going and Liam Hall and Britons Adrian Prangnell and John Yore -- were arrested by the Yugoslav army in Montenegro two weeks ago and transferred to Belgrade last Tuesday for an investigative hearing. A military prosecutor in Montenegro had proposed charges of violating Yugoslav sovereignty, bringing in armed groups, arms and ammunition, attempted terrorism and coercion of the military. They have denied all the charges. Ivan Jankovic, the lawyer for the two Canadians, agreed that based on the evidence the prosecutor should drop the case but said this may not necessarily happen. "With all due respect to the prosecutor himself, I do not believe it will be his autonomous decision, I believe that politics will influence this decision," Jankovic said. The arrests came amid a pre-election campaign by the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, which has portrayed the West as out to destroy Yugoslavia using foreign and domestic agents. VISAS A POLICE MATTER Jankovic said the four men could be charged for not holding Yugoslav visas but that that was an issue for police, not a military court, to decide. Four Dutch men caught in Serbia last month currently are serving 30-day jail terms for lack of visas. The Montenegrin authorities, who are trying to escape the influence of Belgrade, ignore Yugoslav visa requirements. The Britons were helping to train a new police force in Kosovo under the auspices of the U.N. administration that took over the province after 78 days of NATO air strikes compelled Yugoslav forces to withdraw. Canadian Going owns a construction contracting firm operating in Kosovo and was carrying equipment used to blast stone quarries. Hall, his nephew, was visiting him. The military prosecutor has to make the decision on them two weeks from the moment he receives the case, but could do so earlier, Djurisic said. On Monday, the head of the military patrol that had arrested the four testified as well as a military expert. The soldier said, as had three others who testified last week, that the Westerners had not resisted either during the search of their vehicle or during the arrest. The military expert, a mining engineer, said that devices were found for setting off explosions but that by themselves they could not cause any damage as there was no explosive. "The material in the car could at worst blow up a car engine," Djurisic quoted the expert as saying. Canadian and British envoys met the detainees for a third time Monday, but for only five minutes. "They are fine, they look OK and healthy. They are very grateful for the support they are getting," Robert Gordon, the British envoy, told reporters. In a statement issued later, Gordon said the men were treated well but he called on the Yugoslav authorities to observe international regulations on allowing the detainees regular consular access and contacts with their families. The statement said Prangnell and Yore had been working hard in Kosovo and had gone to a well-earned vacation in Montenegro. "We reject any suggestion that they were involved in terrorist activities," it said. ^
Opposition candidate criticizes Montenegrin election boycott
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ The opposition candidate for Yugoslavia"s presidency said Tuesday that the Montenegrin government"s decision to boycott the September vote plays into hands of President Slobodan Milosevic. The ruling parties in Montenegro _ the independence-minded republic which makes up Yugoslavia together with Serbia _ have cited recent constitutional changes which weaken the republic"s political clout as the reason for boycotting the Sept. 24 election. Vojislav Kostunica, believed to be Milosevic"s main challenger in the election, said that Montenegro"s pro-Western ruling parties have "voted for Milosevic" by refusing to take part in parliamentary and presidential elections. "Running away from elections is certainly not a characteristic of a democratic society," Kostunica was quoted by the Beta news agency as saying. But a chief Milosevic ally accused the opposition of working to break up Yugoslavia, and said the elections will be a referendum on whether the country will remain "free" or be turned into a colony. "These are no ordinary elections," said Serbia"s prime minister, Mirko Marjanovic. "History teaches us that our people never backed down when faced with such a choice." "That is why they will choose Slobodan Milosevic ... and elect those who want to preserve Yugoslavia ... not those who want to destroy it," Marjanovic added, according to the official Tanjug news agency. Milosevic and his allies have sought to portray the pro-Western opposition and Montenegro"s government as traitors serving NATO in its bid to destroy Yugoslavia. Anti-Western sentiments in Yugoslavia remain strong, following the 78-day NATO bombing last year. Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic told the Pobijeda daily on Tuesday that taking part in the elections would amount to "giving up state identity and sovereignty and giving legitimacy to efforts by the Belgrade dictatorship to prolong its political survival." Djukanovic"s boycott call is expected to allow pro-Milosevic parties to easily take control of the 50 seats Montenegro holds in the Yugoslav parliament. There are fears that tensions between Montenegro and Milosevic could lead to clashes between a strong police force controlled by Djukanovic and units of the pro-Milosevic Yugoslav army stationed in the republic.
AP: Milosevic could be plotting more aggression
Montenegro may be the Yugoslav president's next target. The Clinton administration sees pressures mounting.
By George Gedda
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration is worried that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic may be preparing to stir up new problems in the Balkans with a move against Montenegro.
Only 14 months ago, NATO air strikes drove Serbian forces out of Kosovo to end Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province.
Montenegro, Serbia's smaller partner in the Yugoslav federation, is seen as a potential target because it has a pro-Western government whose leaders have made no secret of a desire for independence.
The United States is warning Milosevic to let the republic live in peace.
As early as January, Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering was asked in the Albanian capital Tirana about possible Milosevic moves in Montenegro.
"Any further conflict in the region should be avoided," Pickering said. He added: "We are prepared to stand firm against any military actions of Milosevic's in the region."
Senior administration officials speak now of obvious actions by Milosevic to increase pressure on Montenegro, apparently intending to provoke a crisis in the republic.
U.S. officials say the Yugoslav military is being put on higher states of alert more frequently, and the United States has seen increased activity in Montenegrin communities considered loyal to Yugoslavia.
Also, the Yugoslav Army is starting to monitor the flow of traffic in and out of Montenegro, the officials say. For the first time, ships arriving in Montenegro are being searched by Yugoslav military personnel, they say.
Army troops in Montenegro, which are controlled by Milosevic's government, have established checkpoints on main roads into the republic from Bosnia and Croatia.
"All of that is new in the last few weeks," said one U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In terms of numbers, there is rough parity between Yugoslav military personnel and the number of Montenegrin police, who are considered loyal to the republic's president, Milo Djukanovic. But the paramilitary police would be no match for the better-trained and better-equipped Yugoslav military, the official said.
Politically, the most opportune time for Milosevic to move against Montenegro would be after national elections Sept. 24, assuming things go Milosevic's way as expected.
Montenegro has 600,000 people, Serbia six million.
The ruling coalition in Montenegro is boycotting the federal election, possibly opening the way for a strong showing by candidates loyal to Milosevic against an opposition slate.
In an interview published yesterday, Montenegro's prime minister, Filip Vujanovic, said no matter who won the election, the republic's citizens would decide their future.
"The future of Montenegro depends only on its citizens," Vujanovic told the weekly magazine Onogost. "If we cannot make an agreement with Serbia, the Montenegrin citizens are to decide on the future of their republic."
The charged atmosphere has U.S. officials worried that a victory by pro-Milosevic forces could give Milosevic an excuse to intervene.
Milosevic is a candidate for reelection. He changed the constitution in a way that could enable him to remain in power for another eight years.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has said she believes that the Yugoslav opposition should unite against Milosevic, even though she has little faith in the election process.
"We know that Milosevic will cheat," she said.
On Thursday, the State Department said Milosevic was aware of the West's capability to respond should he threaten Montenegro.
"He's already on notice," said Richard Boucher, a spokesman. He said senior officials had reiterated many times during the last year "our strong interest in the security of the region, including Montenegro."
That warning was echoed last week by Stipe Mesic, the president of Yugoslavia's pro-Western neighbor, Croatia.
"The international community should now send a message to Milosevic to force him to desist from causing any crisis in Montenegro," Mesic said.
AP: U.N. Sets October Date for Kosovo Elections
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia--U.N. officials Saturday set Oct. 28 as the date for Kosovo's first internationally supervised elections, an event promoted as a step toward a democratic society.
The announcement of the date by the top U.N. administrator for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, came more than a month after the deadline for registration. Voters will choose members for 30 municipal assemblies in Kosovo.
Serbs in the province, however, overwhelmingly refused to register, even though the United Nations had extended the deadline to encourage minorities to sign up. The U.N. wanted substantial participation from all ethnic groups to give legitimacy to the balloting.
More than 1 million people registered, but the province's main ethnic minorities--in particular, Serbs and Gypsies--were missing from the voter lists. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic.
Kouchner, speaking to reporters after meeting with residents of the town of Vucitrn, 18 miles north of Pristina, the provincial capital, described the Serbian decision not to participate as unfortunate.
"I am very sorry for them, and I think it was a mistake," he said.
A key Kosovo Serb leader, Oliver Ivanovic, expressed disinterest in the announcement.
"I don't care," Ivanovic said when asked about the election plans. "The Serbs won't vote. They won't participate. Let Kouchner have his elections if it makes him happy."
Meanwhile, the Tanjug news agency, a mouthpiece for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government, criticized the decision.
"Rather than effort to create democratic institutions in Kosovo, Kouchner has hereby proven himself to be an accomplice of ethnic Albanian separatists and terrorists who have ethnically cleansed the province of Serbs since his arrival there," the report said
REUTERS: Kosovo Serbs React Angrily to NATO Shutting Smelter
MITROVICA, Kosovo, Aug. 14 -- Kosovo Serbs hurled rocks and sticks at NATO troops today after peacekeepers moved in at dawn to shut down a lead smelter pumping toxic fumes into the air.
Local Serbs, who are worried about their jobs and who oppose the NATO presence in Kosovo, clashed with French peacekeepers after the plant was seized, and parts of a crowd of 400 threw objects at a group of about 40 British peacekeepers, four of whom were slightly injured.
At least one Serbian man was injured before the British, deeply unpopular among the Serbs for their part in last year's bombing campaign, were replaced by French soldiers to ease the tension.
The peacekeepers moved into the Serbian province after the bombing campaign last year, when President Slobodan Milosevic agreed to withdraw his troops. The troops were sent following the start of a rebellion by a group of Kosovo Albanians, who make up the majority of Kosovo's population, and thousands of civilians were expelled or killed before the troops withdrew.
A group of 30 engineers from the smelting plant who are loyal to Belgrade locked themselves in an administration building today and refused to discuss with United Nations experts how to extinguish the smelter furnace, at the Trepca metals complex just north of Mitrovica.
They later agreed to leave and the furnace was finally extinguished at around 4 p.m., said a United Nations spokesman, Mike Keats, adding that the area had calmed down.
The Yugoslav information minister, Goran Matic, condemned NATO's takeover of the plant on Yu-Info television, which broadcasts in the Serbian part of Mitrovica as well as elsewhere in Yugoslavia.
"This story of pollution is completely senseless," he said. "It is a classic case of robbery."
Nato had moved 900 troops in armored vehicles across the Ibar River, the divide between Albanian-dominated Kosovo and northern Mitrovica, the last major urban concentration of Serbs in the province.
Troops encountered no resistance at first when they swept into the rundown Zvecan smelter, which United Nations officials say is pumping 200 times the safe level of lead into the atmosphere.
"We had to act in order to ensure the safety of the population," said Bernard Kouchner, the French politician and doctor who is in charge of the United Nations mission that has run Kosovo as a de facto protectorate since mid-1999.
Mr. Kouchner said a French, American and Swedish consortium would develop a $16 million renovation plan for the vast and dilapidated Trepca complex, ensuring lead smelting could restart.
Mr. Kouchner criticized Zvecan's managers, saying they had refused requests to shut down the plant and rejected the United Nations' right under Security Council resolutions to manage former Yugoslav state property, such as the smelter.
"The managers have failed," he said. "A few profited while the community suffered. They failed in their duty to protect their children." Such managers would play no further part in the running of Zvecan, he added.
Control of Trepca's mineral wealth has long been disputed between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians.
The United Nations reassured Serbian workers that they would keep their jobs even while the smelter was shut for repairs, with the salaries for 1,800 Serbs guaranteed.
The United Nations hopes to turn the Trepca group, a collection of pits and decrepit factories that straddles the ethnic divide in Mitrovica, into a major contributor to the economy of Kosovo.
But Mr. Kouchner's chief economic adviser, Bernard Salome, said it could take three years before significant output appeared.
The Independent: Ministers 'tried to cover up report on Kosovo bombs'
By Kim Sengupta
15 August 2000
The Government was yesterday accused of trying to suppress a report showing only three out of 150 unguided bombs dropped by British aircraft in the Kosovo conflict last year were confirmed as hitting their targets.
The dispute was fuelled by the news that the Government had asked the D-Notice Committee, which advises the press on national security, to contact Flight International magazine, which is planning to publish the document.
The report, produced by the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency of the Ministry of Defence, also showed only 40 per cent of all bombs dropped by British aircraft in the campaign hit their target, raising the prospect that there could have been more civilian deaths and damage to property.
John Spellar, armed forces minister, when asked about the approach to the D-Notice Committee, said it was " an attempt, quite justified, to get a balanced report". The original report was "unbalanced" and the committee tried to put matters "into context". Pressed to specify the national security implications in disclosure of material embarrassing to the Government, he said there was information about "command and control ... which could be of use to a potential adversary".
It has also emerged that at a conference in February MoD officials told the media the Kosovo conflict was the most successful bombing campaign there had been. But the statistics, telling a different story, were given to defence chiefs in secret after reporters had left.
An RAF spokesman yesterday said 40 per cent of bombs reached their targets, 30 per cent missed and the rest were unaccounted for. He added: "Because those 30 per cent were unaccounted for does not imply they missed their target. If you are an optimist in life you would assume all hit the target. If you are a pessimist you would say none. The truth is, it is somewhere in the middle." He also defended the 2 per cent hit rate of high-explosive 1,000lb bombs, saying they were used in bad weather against big targets when successful strikes could not be seen.
Rear Admiral Nick Wilkinson, secretary of the D-Notice Committee, defended his involvement and said he had put Flight International in contact with the RAF. "Far from issuing a D-Notice, as some people have put it, I facilitated the whole article being published."
Labour and Conservative MPs accused the MoD of a cover-up and of deceit. The shadow Defence Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, said: "We have been calling for an inquiry for over a year, which the Government have rejected. Now it is clear why this is the case – it is because they wanted to cover up the truth." The Labour backbencher Tam Dalyell said: "How does anyone defend what happened in terms of deceit? They must have known what they said to the press was wrong. I have been to Kosovo; anyone who has been there will have seen the collateral damage." The UK Working Group on Landmines said Nato knew before the conflict that unguided cluster bombs were inaccurate when dropped from altitude, citing a US government review that said wind tended to blow them off-target.
Milosevic could be plotting more aggression
Montenegro may be the Yugoslav president's next target. The Clinton administration sees pressures mounting.
By George Gedda
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration is worried that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic may be preparing to stir up new problems in the Balkans with a move against Montenegro.
Only 14 months ago, NATO air strikes drove Serbian forces out of Kosovo to end Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province.
Montenegro, Serbia's smaller partner in the Yugoslav federation, is seen as a potential target because it has a pro-Western government whose leaders have made no secret of a desire for independence.
The United States is warning Milosevic to let the republic live in peace.
As early as January, Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering was asked in the Albanian capital Tirana about possible Milosevic moves in Montenegro.
"Any further conflict in the region should be avoided," Pickering said. He added: "We are prepared to stand firm against any military actions of Milosevic's in the region."
Senior administration officials speak now of obvious actions by Milosevic to increase pressure on Montenegro, apparently intending to provoke a crisis in the republic.
U.S. officials say the Yugoslav military is being put on higher states of alert more frequently, and the United States has seen increased activity in Montenegrin communities considered loyal to Yugoslavia.
Also, the Yugoslav Army is starting to monitor the flow of traffic in and out of Montenegro, the officials say. For the first time, ships arriving in Montenegro are being searched by Yugoslav military personnel, they say.
Army troops in Montenegro, which are controlled by Milosevic's government, have established checkpoints on main roads into the republic from Bosnia and Croatia.
"All of that is new in the last few weeks," said one U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In terms of numbers, there is rough parity between Yugoslav military personnel and the number of Montenegrin police, who are considered loyal to the republic's president, Milo Djukanovic. But the paramilitary police would be no match for the better-trained and better-equipped Yugoslav military, the official said.
Politically, the most opportune time for Milosevic to move against Montenegro would be after national elections Sept. 24, assuming things go Milosevic's way as expected.
Montenegro has 600,000 people, Serbia six million.
The ruling coalition in Montenegro is boycotting the federal election, possibly opening the way for a strong showing by candidates loyal to Milosevic against an opposition slate.
In an interview published yesterday, Montenegro's prime minister, Filip Vujanovic, said no matter who won the election, the republic's citizens would decide their future.
"The future of Montenegro depends only on its citizens," Vujanovic told the weekly magazine Onogost. "If we cannot make an agreement with Serbia, the Montenegrin citizens are to decide on the future of their republic."
The charged atmosphere has U.S. officials worried that a victory by pro-Milosevic forces could give Milosevic an excuse to intervene.
Milosevic is a candidate for reelection. He changed the constitution in a way that could enable him to remain in power for another eight years.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has said she believes that the Yugoslav opposition should unite against Milosevic, even though she has little faith in the election process.
"We know that Milosevic will cheat," she said.
On Thursday, the State Department said Milosevic was aware of the West's capability to respond should he threaten Montenegro.
"He's already on notice," said Richard Boucher, a spokesman. He said senior officials had reiterated many times during the last year "our strong interest in the security of the region, including Montenegro."
That warning was echoed last week by Stipe Mesic, the president of Yugoslavia's pro-Western neighbor, Croatia.
"The international community should now send a message to Milosevic to force him to desist from causing any crisis in Montenegro," Mesic said.
U.N. Sets October Date for Kosovo Elections
From Associated Press
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia--U.N. officials Saturday set Oct. 28 as the date for Kosovo's first internationally supervised elections, an event promoted as a step toward a democratic society.
The announcement of the date by the top U.N. administrator for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, came more than a month after the deadline for registration. Voters will choose members for 30 municipal assemblies in Kosovo.
Serbs in the province, however, overwhelmingly refused to register, even though the United Nations had extended the deadline to encourage minorities to sign up. The U.N. wanted substantial participation from all ethnic groups to give legitimacy to the balloting.
More than 1 million people registered, but the province's main ethnic minorities--in particular, Serbs and Gypsies--were missing from the voter lists. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic.
Kouchner, speaking to reporters after meeting with residents of the town of Vucitrn, 18 miles north of Pristina, the provincial capital, described the Serbian decision not to participate as unfortunate.
"I am very sorry for them, and I think it was a mistake," he said.
A key Kosovo Serb leader, Oliver Ivanovic, expressed disinterest in the announcement.
"I don't care," Ivanovic said when asked about the election plans. "The Serbs won't vote. They won't participate. Let Kouchner have his elections if it makes him happy."
Meanwhile, the Tanjug news agency, a mouthpiece for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government, criticized the decision.
"Rather than effort to create democratic institutions in Kosovo, Kouchner has hereby proven himself to be an accomplice of ethnic Albanian separatists and terrorists who have ethnically cleansed the province of Serbs since his arrival there," the report said
Kosovo Serbs React Angrily to NATO Shutting Smelter
By REUTERS
ITROVICA, Kosovo, Aug. 14 -- Kosovo Serbs hurled rocks and sticks at NATO troops today after peacekeepers moved in at dawn to shut down a lead smelter pumping toxic fumes into the air.
Local Serbs, who are worried about their jobs and who oppose the NATO presence in Kosovo, clashed with French peacekeepers after the plant was seized, and parts of a crowd of 400 threw objects at a group of about 40 British peacekeepers, four of whom were slightly injured.
At least one Serbian man was injured before the British, deeply unpopular among the Serbs for their part in last year's bombing campaign, were replaced by French soldiers to ease the tension.
The peacekeepers moved into the Serbian province after the bombing campaign last year, when President Slobodan Milosevic agreed to withdraw his troops. The troops were sent following the start of a rebellion by a group of Kosovo Albanians, who make up the majority of Kosovo's population, and thousands of civilians were expelled or killed before the troops withdrew.
A group of 30 engineers from the smelting plant who are loyal to Belgrade locked themselves in an administration building today and refused to discuss with United Nations experts how to extinguish the smelter furnace, at the Trepca metals complex just north of Mitrovica.
They later agreed to leave and the furnace was finally extinguished at around 4 p.m., said a United Nations spokesman, Mike Keats, adding that the area had calmed down.
The Yugoslav information minister, Goran Matic, condemned NATO's takeover of the plant on Yu-Info television, which broadcasts in the Serbian part of Mitrovica as well as elsewhere in Yugoslavia.
"This story of pollution is completely senseless," he said. "It is a classic case of robbery."
Nato had moved 900 troops in armored vehicles across the Ibar River, the divide between Albanian-dominated Kosovo and northern Mitrovica, the last major urban concentration of Serbs in the province.
Troops encountered no resistance at first when they swept into the rundown Zvecan smelter, which United Nations officials say is pumping 200 times the safe level of lead into the atmosphere.
"We had to act in order to ensure the safety of the population," said Bernard Kouchner, the French politician and doctor who is in charge of the United Nations mission that has run Kosovo as a de facto protectorate since mid-1999.
Mr. Kouchner said a French, American and Swedish consortium would develop a $16 million renovation plan for the vast and dilapidated Trepca complex, ensuring lead smelting could restart.
Mr. Kouchner criticized Zvecan's managers, saying they had refused requests to shut down the plant and rejected the United Nations' right under Security Council resolutions to manage former Yugoslav state property, such as the smelter.
"The managers have failed," he said. "A few profited while the community suffered. They failed in their duty to protect their children." Such managers would play no further part in the running of Zvecan, he added.
Control of Trepca's mineral wealth has long been disputed between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians.
The United Nations reassured Serbian workers that they would keep their jobs even while the smelter was shut for repairs, with the salaries for 1,800 Serbs guaranteed.
The United Nations hopes to turn the Trepca group, a collection of pits and decrepit factories that straddles the ethnic divide in Mitrovica, into a major contributor to the economy of Kosovo.
But Mr. Kouchner's chief economic adviser, Bernard Salome, said it could take three years before significant output appeared.
The Independent: Ministers 'tried to cover up report on Kosovo bombs'
By Kim Sengupta
15 August 2000
The Government was yesterday accused of trying to suppress a report showing only three out of 150 unguided bombs dropped by British aircraft in the Kosovo conflict last year were confirmed as hitting their targets.
The dispute was fuelled by the news that the Government had asked the D-Notice Committee, which advises the press on national security, to contact Flight International magazine, which is planning to publish the document.
The report, produced by the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency of the Ministry of Defence, also showed only 40 per cent of all bombs dropped by British aircraft in the campaign hit their target, raising the prospect that there could have been more civilian deaths and damage to property.
John Spellar, armed forces minister, when asked about the approach to the D-Notice Committee, said it was " an attempt, quite justified, to get a balanced report". The original report was "unbalanced" and the committee tried to put matters "into context". Pressed to specify the national security implications in disclosure of material embarrassing to the Government, he said there was information about "command and control ... which could be of use to a potential adversary".
It has also emerged that at a conference in February MoD officials told the media the Kosovo conflict was the most successful bombing campaign there had been. But the statistics, telling a different story, were given to defence chiefs in secret after reporters had left.
An RAF spokesman yesterday said 40 per cent of bombs reached their targets, 30 per cent missed and the rest were unaccounted for. He added: "Because those 30 per cent were unaccounted for does not imply they missed their target. If you are an optimist in life you would assume all hit the target. If you are a pessimist you would say none. The truth is, it is somewhere in the middle." He also defended the 2 per cent hit rate of high-explosive 1,000lb bombs, saying they were used in bad weather against big targets when successful strikes could not be seen.
Rear Admiral Nick Wilkinson, secretary of the D-Notice Committee, defended his involvement and said he had put Flight International in contact with the RAF. "Far from issuing a D-Notice, as some people have put it, I facilitated the whole article being published."
Labour and Conservative MPs accused the MoD of a cover-up and of deceit. The shadow Defence Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, said: "We have been calling for an inquiry for over a year, which the Government have rejected. Now it is clear why this is the case – it is because they wanted to cover up the truth." The Labour backbencher Tam Dalyell said: "How does anyone defend what happened in terms of deceit? They must have known what they said to the press was wrong. I have been to Kosovo; anyone who has been there will have seen the collateral damage." The UK Working Group on Landmines said Nato knew before the conflict that unguided cluster bombs were inaccurate when dropped from altitude, citing a US government review that said wind tended to blow them off-target.
The Sunday Times : Britons trapped in warlords' web
Marie Colvin, Pristina
IN THE murky waters of Kosovo's pay-offs and protection rackets, Shaun Going was one of the few foreigners savvy enough to stay afloat. But in cultivating the Albanian warlords who control the province, the Canadian builder was taking discreet risks.
The danger emerged all too clearly after Going took a break in neighbouring Montenegro, accompanied by his nephew and two British police friends. His contacts - and, in particular, a payment to the brother of the former head of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) - appear to have embroiled all four men in a Balkan nightmare.
Montenegro, the tiny sister state to Serbia in the Yugoslav federation, is ostensibly pro-western. But within its vulnerable borders are thousands of troops who are pro-Belgrade.
The men, languishing in a Belgrade jail, would have been blissfully unaware of the looming debacle as they drove towards a remote mountain crossing back into Kosovo on Tuesday, August 1. With the sun still low over the rocky gorges, the temperatures would have been pleasant and the four would have felt refreshed after their weekend at Sveti Stefan, a jewel of a resort on the Adriatic that, in less blighted regions, would be home to millionaires and film stars.
Going, 45, and his 19-year-old nephew, Liam Hall, were recuperating after two busy weeks of blasting at quarries around Kosovo. Adrian Prangnell, 41, a sergeant in the Hampshire CID, and John Yore, 31, a Cambridgeshire constable, were worn down by the unenviable task of trying to turn former rebels into policemen in a United Nations-approved Kosovar force.
There had been no problems as they drove into Montenegro the previous Friday, and by all accounts Sveti Stefan was living up to expectations. On Saturday night Hall telephoned his Italian girlfriend and told her he was having a great time, although he missed her.
Steve Ruffle, a West Midlands sergeant working in the same training programme as Yore, received a mobile telephone text message from his colleague, saying simply: "Crossing the border at 0700. See you midday. John."
Ruffle said: "I wasn't too surprised that they were late getting back. The boys had been working all hours and needed a bit of a break."
He recalled clearly the last time he had seen his friends. Prangnell had turned up with "an awful hangover" on the morning of Friday, July 28, and Ruffle had taken pity, letting him off early with Yore.
At 2.30pm, he drove both men to the Grand hotel in central Pristina, where they had arranged to meet Going and Hall for the seven-hour drive to Montenegro.
The hangovers stemmed from a curry and late drinks the previous night for the Hash House Harriers, the worldwide expatriate running club of which all four were enthusiastic members. Andreas Perrin, deputy head of the Swiss Liaison Office in Pristina, remembers all the men being at the dinner. Going left early because he was due at a quarry blast early in the morning.
The innocence of the preparations for the trip are in stark contrast to its aftermath: the men are accused of illegal entry into Yugoslavia, the importation of explosives, attempted terrorism and resisting arrest. The Belgrade publicity machine has seized on the incident. Even the basic details of the men's stay at Sveti Stefan appear to have been rewritten to suit the spin mandarins of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president.
Employees at the Sveti Stefan hotel claimed last week that the men had been there for nearly a fortnight and said they had been engaged in suspicious activities.
Luka Mitrovic, the reception manager, insisted that the party had been with them for "12 to 13 days"; his assistant, Milena, consulted a hotel ledger to back up the claim. Even a chambermaid said they had been around for two weeks, often spending nights away from the hotel.
These accounts have been rubbished in Pristina, where fellow Hash House Harriers said the British policemen had run with the club on the previous two Sundays.
Going, who was also at the Harrier events, has a further alibi provided by the Nato-led Kosovo Force or Kfor - although how much weight that will be given in Belgrade is doubtful. According to the records of his company, Meridian Resources, Going was under Kfor escort at quarries for several days from July 20 until the date of the trip.
Genti Jacellari, his office manager, was with Going on each job. "Shaun is essential to any explosion. He is the supervisor. He was in Pristina all two weeks and present at each blast. There is no way he was in Montenegro before that weekend," he said.
Ruffle assumes that after Yore sent his text message, he and his friends looked at the map for the shortest route back into Kosovo. Unfamiliar with the region, they chose a narrow track that winds through the Cakor Pass, over the frontier and down into the border town of Pec, home to the Serbian Orthodox church. It is an area from which most Serbs have been "cleansed", where feelings run high and where the Yugoslav army is always poised for action.
Here, they were turfed out of Going's Nissan Patrol, arrested and confined to a Yugoslav army barracks.
Although the evidence from Sveti Stefan seems curiously rigged against the men, diplomats have commented on the general fairness of the military investigation. The three soldiers who stopped the Nissan vehicle in the Cakor Pass, for example, have testified that the four did not resist arrest, almost certainly destroying one of the charges against them.
As far as the terrorist charges are concerned, all those familiar with the case admit that it is complicated by Going's record.
To work in Kosovo he had paid £40,000 to Gani Thaci, the elder brother of Hashim Thaci, the former KLA chief. Large security files are dedicated to the activities of both Thacis in Belgrade, where they are considered among the most wanted of Albanian terrorists.
Gani Thaci, who has fallen foul of the UN on several occasions, controls many of the province's building materials: bricks, steel, concrete and gravel. Where once he fought the Serbs, he is now engaged in turf battles with other former KLA commanders anxious for a share of the spoils.
Notably among these are two hardmen from the Thaci clan's native Drenica region: "Remi" and Sabit Geci. Both men receive 10% of profits from any Pristina restaurants on their respective patches, but they are still relatively small fry by comparison to the Thacis, who have another useful trade under their belt - the supply of petrol.
The increasingly mafia-like rule of parts of Kosovo has discouraged some agencies, leaving the field more open to private entrepreneurs such as Going. Britain's Department for International Development, for example, cancelled a large bakery project when it became clear that former KLA figures would appoint all employees.
Going's association with the Thaci clan, and the fact that he also worked as a contractor on the American embassy in Tirana, will have intensified Yugoslav suspicions. Nevertheless, diplomats insist that the two British policemen will not be tainted by his record.
"Everything is being handled correctly," said Bob Gordon, Britain's representative in Belgrade, yesterday. "It's quite clear they've done nothing wrong."
Gordon and his Canadian colleagues have been encouraged by Russian involvement in the case. A letter from Moscow to Belgrade has urged "maximum objectivity when dealing with the problem". Under the Yugoslav penal code, a military investigation can last for six months, but Gordon hopes it will be over sooner. The case will then be handed to the military prosecutor, who has to decide whether to bring formal charges within 15 days.
Additional reporting: James Pettifer, Sveti Stefan, and Edin Hamzic.
The New York Times : Five Minutes to Midnight
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia -- The most dangerous place in Europe today is Montenegro, the small republic tied to Serbia in the Yugoslav Federation. Slobodan Milosevic could intervene there at any time, overthrowing the freedom-minded Montenegrin government and once again challenging the West.
What can and should the United States and its allies do now to prevent a Milosevic démarche on Montenegro? I put the question to President Milan Kucan of Slovenia, the most successful of the former Yugoslav republics. President Kucan has known Mr. Milosevic for 40 years, and he has offered wise advice to the West since Mr. Milosevic set out a dozen years ago on his course of demagogy and bloodshed -- advice that was too often ignored.
"Have a greater presence of the Sixth Fleet in the Adriatic," Mr. Kucan replied. "Be willing to provide military instructors if [Milo] Djukanovic [the Montenegrin president] asks for them. Support Djukanovic."
The Yugoslav Army has at least 10,000 men in Montenegro, and Mr. Milosevic could use them in a coup. There is a Montenegrin police force of about 15,000, but it is ill trained for warfare. Some believe it could be effective if NATO grounded the Yugoslav Air Force by imposing a no-flight zone on the region.
Mr. Kucan said the U.S. and its allies should stop urging Mr. Djukanovic not to boycott the Yugoslav presidential election that Mr. Milosevic has called for Sept. 24, amending the Constitution so he can run again. The world has the "illusion" that Montenegro can combine with Serbian opposition parties and defeat Mr. Milosevic, he said. But those parties are weak and divided, and Montenegro cannot remake Serbian politics.
Mr. Djukanovic has moved gingerly toward declaring Montenegro independent, but not taken a decisive step. Mr. Kucan said Montenegro "must not remain a hostage in Yugoslavia. It has the right to live democratically and become a European state." Mr. Djukanovic "cannot legitimize Milosevic's election -- he'd be compromising himself in front of his own people."
A Milosevic move on Montenegro, if it comes, could be intensely troublesome for President Clinton -- and Vice President Al Gore. It would be difficult to find a legal basis for military intervention, given the fact that Montenegro is still formally a part of Yugoslavia.
President Kucan said Mr. Milosevic was "looking for an excuse to intervene." He said there was a fundamental element that had to be understood:
"Milosevic has to be re-elected president of Yugoslavia. It guarantees not just his political but his physical existence. He's knows very well what happened to [Nicolae] Ceausescu" -- the Romanian Communist dictator who was killed by his people when they revolted.
Russia could be "a very important factor in his existence," Mr. Kucan said. He suggested that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, could "guarantee Milosevic refuge, in Russia or somewhere else.
"Putin is a pragmatist," Mr. Kucan said. "To raise Russian standards of living he needs the help of the West. He knows that, and he knows help has a price. He cannot pay the price if it's Chechnya, but he can if it's Milosevic."
Mr. Kucan spent years in Belgrade in the old Yugoslavia. When he became leader of the Slovene Communist Party in 1986, he moved the republic toward democracy. He was elected president of independent Slovenia in 1992 and overwhelmingly re-elected in 1997.
The Kucan approach has made Slovenia, a country the size of Israel to the east of Venice, a model of post-Communist democracy and respect for civil liberties. It is prosperous and exceptionally uncorrupt. The finance minister said its two million people were "compulsive taxpayers."
In 1992 Mr. Kucan urged the American secretary of state, James Baker, to help the Yugoslav republics become independent peacefully. But President George Bush wanted to discourage the breakup of the Soviet Union, so Mr. Baker told Mr. Milosevic that we favored preserving Yugoslavia. Mr. Milosevic took that as a green light for his savage assaults on Croatia and Bosnia.
"From the very beginning of the Yugoslav crisis in 1988," President Kucan said, "the West has always acted five minutes after midnight. Now it's time to act five minutes before midnight."
UN to Hold Kosovo Elections For Local Leaders on Oct. 28
PRISTINA, Kosovo - The United Nations has set a date of Oct. 28 for what it is billing as Kosovo's first free and fair elections.
The head of the UN mission in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, said he hoped the municipal vote would be ''fair, democratic and well-controlled.''
Serbs in the province, however, have overwhelmingly refused to register to vote. The United Nations wanted substantial participation from all ethnic groups to give legitimacy to the balloting.
The world body, which has run Kosovo as a de facto protectorate since a 78-day NATO bombing campaign expelled Serb forces last year, said voters would elect members of 30 municipal assemblies.
Nineteen political parties, two coalitions, three citizens initiatives and 15 independent candidates have been certified to take part. About 1 million people, some 90 percent of the eligible ethnic Albanian population, have registered to vote.
The election will largely be a contest between the Democratic League of Kosovo, led by the longtime moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, and the Democratic Party of Kosovo, led by the former guerrilla chief Hashim Thaqi.
The United Nations is eager to present the balloting as a major step toward democracy for Kosovo, despite the boycott by the Serb minority. Fewer than 1,000 of the approximately 100,000 Serbs still living in Kosovo have signed up to vote.
''Serbs will not take part in this election because we have no security,'' said Oliver Ivanovic, leader of Serbs in the divided northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica.
Speaking of the United Nations, he added, ''They have not been able to return any Serbs to their homes.''
Besides requiring the return of Serbs to their homes in Kosovo, Serbian leaders in the province have demanded enhanced security.
Serbs, along with other minorities, still suffer revenge attacks from ethnic Albanians and generally live in heavily guarded enclaves.
Mr. Kouchner said he thought the Serb boycott was a mistake but was confident ''a real body of governance'' would emerge from the elections.
Successful establishment of elected local administrations is a key to persuading the international community to allow a vote for a provincewide government - a vote that some fear could become a referendum on independence from Belgrade.
Kosovo is still formally part of Yugoslavia although it is under UN control and protected by NATO-led peacekeepers. Its final status has been left deliberately vague, despite the desire of most ethnic Albanians for independence.
Croatia says Milosevic seeking crisis in Montenegro
WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - President Stipe Mesic of Croatia accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on Thursday of trying to create a crisis in Montenegro. The international community, he said, should respond by reminding Milosevic of the consequences of war and telling him that Montenegrins have the right to independence. Without national catharsis leading to integration in Europe, Serbia will go the way of Afghanistan, he predicted. Mesic was speaking at a news conference during his first working visit to Washington since he came to power after democratic elections in February. The United States has welcomed Mesic and Prime Minister Ivica Racan as Balkan leaders who have turned their backs on the violent past and sought integration with Europe. Asked what he expected in Montenegro, junior partner with Serbia in the Yugoslav federation, Mesic said Milosevic was responsible for all four Balkan wars of the 1990s. "His goal now is to cause a crisis in Montenegro and therefore the international community should now send a message to Milosevic which would force him to desist from causing any crisis," the president added. "The message ... should be along the following lines -- considering what happened after his aggression in Kosovo (in 1998 and 1999), he should never be enabled to engage in any further war adventure. "And Montenegrin citizens have the right to choose their own road, their own way, because Montenegro was one of the constituent elements of the former federation," he added. MILOSEVIC "ON NOTICE" Montenegrin leaders are in deep disagreement with Milosevic and have thought seriously about secession. U.S. officials are worried that tension between Serbia and Montenegro, possibly over next month"s federal elections, could lead to violence, dragging in U.S. and NATO forces. But U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Thursday that the United States could handle any crisis. "We and our allies have made abundantly clear our strong interest in the security of southeastern Europe, including Montenegro. Milosevic is well aware of the West"s capabilities to respond should he again threaten regional security. He"s already on notice," the spokesman said. "We remain vigilant. NATO is watching the situation very closely, and we"re working to support democratic forces in the region, which we believe is the best way for the region as a whole to find stability," he added. Mesic said that without another military adventure Milosevic would face a final domestic crisis. "(It would be) a crisis he will not be able to control in his own area and that will be the end of his regime and of himself," he added. He said the Serbian opposition, which has so far failed to agree on a single candidate to challenge Milosevic in the Sept. 24 elections, needed to abandon the Serbian nationalism which fuelled the Balkan wars. "It is for Serbia to experience catharsis... Without that, Serbia will proceed on its current path, which will lead to Afghanistan, while we proceed toward Europe," he said. Racan said the Serbian opposition had to go beyond trying to oust Milosevic, an indicted war criminal who has dominated Yugoslav politics for more than a decade. "It must also state accurately on behalf of which new democratic Serbia it is doing that. It must specify what will be the situation after Milosevic, what will be relations between Serbia and Montenegro, between Serbia and Kosovo.
Yugoslavia faces food shortages, price rises -FAO
ROME, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Yugoslavia faces increasing food shortages and price rises as drought and economic problems cut crop yields, the United Nations world food body said on Thursday. "The outlook for the coming year is for food supply to tighten considerably and prices to rise further, jeopardising the food security of the low-income population," the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a report. A joint FAO-World Food Programme (WFP) mission visited Serbia and Montenegro between June 21 and July 7 this year to evaluate crops and the food supply. It did not visit Kosovo. The mission said the availability of food at the low controlled prices, already inadequate, was decreasing while an increasing amount of food was being channelled to the more loosely regulated, higher priced market. At the same time, real salaries and wages were decreasing. Food already accounts for a significant proportion of the household budgets of the population. DISASTERS CUT CROP YIELDS FAO/WFP said man-made and natural disasters, including damage from last year"s NATO bombing, sanctions, floods, water logging and drought, had combined to reduce average yields. "The yields of winter and spring cereals as well as fodder and industrial crops are expected to be lower than in 1999," the report said. The FAO/WFP mission estimated that the wheat area for harvest in Serbia and Montenegro for 2000 had fallen to 581,000 hectares from 619,000 in 1999 and 800,000 in 1991. It estimated the 2000 wheat harvest at between 1.66 million tonnes and a best-case total of 1.8 million tonnes. The mission said the yield potential of spring crops, such as maize, sugar beet and soya, had been affected by the high temperatures and water shortages since April and production was expected to be less than in 1999. "However, the outcome will depend crucially on rainfall in July/August," it said. "Output of fodder crops is sharply less and reduced availability of animal feed could lead to further sharp reductions in animal numbers." Exports of agri-food products, needed to pay for essential imports such as oil, gas and medicines, were below official targets up to May, FAO/WFP said. "Exports of agricultural products, including maize and a small amount of wheat, are continuing this year but were below target up to May," it said. "Targets for 2001 will be drawn up once the harvests have been completed." The government regulates the domestic market for basic foodstuffs, particularly those made from wheat and flour, and sets subsidised controlled prices for bread, milk, sugar, vegetable oil and fresh meat. "The state regulated prices are low and did not cover the cost of production of wheat in 1999 when input prices soared because of severe shortages," it said. WFP is now aiding about 700,000 refugees and socially vulnerable people. In addition, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) aids 200,000 people with an individual food ration and 100,000 others with a hot meal under a soup kitchen programme.
Westerners plead innocent at Belgrade hearing
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Two Canadians and two Britons pleaded innocent Wednesday at the opening of a hearing at Belgrade"s military court into whether to raise formal, terrorism-related charges against them, their lawyer said. Djordje Djurisic, lawyer for detained British policemen Adrian Prangnell and John Yore, told reporters outside the court that a closed hearing had begun for them and the Canadians, Shaun Going and Liam Hall, arrested together last week. "This is only a preliminary investigation, an examination of the suspects, nothing else," he said. "The public prosecutor will decide whether he will file charges...It is too early to say whether there will be an indictment at all." Djurisic said the detainees, arrested in Yugoslavia"s Western-leaning republic of Montenegro a week ago, appeared to be in good shape but that he not had a chance to speak with them. "They have denied all the charges," he said. A lawyer in Montenegro said Tuesday a military prosecutor there had proposed charges of violating the sovereignty of Yugoslavia, bringing in armed groups, arms and ammunition, attempted terrorism and coercion of the military. Western officials say the Britons and Canadians were on holiday in Montenegro from work as part of the international peace effort in neighboring Kosovo and have dismissed the proposed terrorism charge against them as ridiculous. Going, who runs is own construction contracting firm, was carrying quarrying equipment in his car. None of the men had Yugoslav visas because Montenegro, which is trying to pull away from Milosevic"s Yugoslav government, does not require them. They were arrested by a patrol of the Yugoslav army, whose units in Montenegro are one of the last vestiges of federal authority there. STILL NO CONSULAR ACCESS Canadian and British diplomats also visited the court on Wednesday in the hope of attending the hearing and meeting the detainees. But after five hours inside, they emerged saying they had been denied access. "We haven"t been to see the accused. We still haven"t received consular access. We are still trying," said Robert Gordon, Britain"s top diplomat in Belgrade. "We were told consular access will be granted tomorrow morning." Craig Bale from the Canadian embassy in Belgrade said lawyers Djurisic, who is representing the Britons, and Ivan Jankovic, representing the Canadians, were discussing the case with the investigating judge. The lawyers were proposed by the embassies after Prangnell telephoned Gordon Tuesday and requested independent legal counsel. Previously they had been assigned a lawyer by the military authorities who had arrested them in Montenegro. Djurisic and Jankovic defended two Australian aid workers for the Care organization who were arrested during NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia last year and charged with espionage before being released by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
The New York Times: His Serbian Flock Scattered, the Priest Reflects
By STEVEN ERLANGER
OSOVO POLJE, Kosovo -- The Rev. Radivoje Panic has had more than his share of parishes.
He lived in Pristina, the Kosovo capital, for nearly 10 years, and often gave sermons at a small church on Taslixhe hill. A witness to terror by his own Serbs, humiliated by his inability to stop the expulsion of Albanians from Pristina, he found himself expelled by them in turn.
He was assigned to a church here in Kosovo Polje, a largely Serbian town a few miles southwest of Pristina, but it was badly damaged by hand grenades a year ago, despite the British troops nearby. About a month ago it was attacked again, reduced to rubble by dynamite in a large explosion, the third church destroyed in six weeks.
Now Father Panic serves at the last remaining church in Kosovo Polje, the Church of St. Nicholas, which is surrounded by barbed wire and patrolled by troops. It's a bizarre life, and oddly lonely. However potent religious symbols have been for Serbian nationalism and identity, neither the Serbs nor the Albanians are especially devout after so many years of Communism. Not many Serbs come to church -- mostly the old and those who want to light candles for the dead.
Even on June 28, the anniversary of the famous 1389 battle that marked the loss of this province to the Ottoman Turks for 500 years, only 11 people came here to worship. More surprising, only 70-odd came to mark the event at the early 14th-century monastery at nearby Gracanica. Services there -- under the eyes of NATO soldiers, who to some Serbs are the new Ottomans -- were conducted by Patriarch Pavle, the head of the entire Serbian Orthodox Church, and by Bishop Artemije, the church's leader in Kosovo.
At least 8,000 Serbs live around Gracanica, but even on such a symbolic day, sighed the Rev. Sava Janjic, the bishop's aide and spokesman, "you could see the empty chairs."
Father Panic, who describes himself as a simple priest, tries to see the situation as a whole. "This is the tragedy of all of us, Serbs and Albanians," he said. "There's no way to justify what happened or to improve on it. With the war and the bombing, the Albanians were pushed to leave the cities, towns and villages, and after the bombing stopped, the Serbs were pushed to leave."
He remained in Pristina throughout the war. "To be frank," he said, "I didn't see anyone personally being expelled from their apartments and houses, but I did see many Albanians leaving with their goods. I asked people why they were leaving, and they said that a lot of people were being pushed out of the apartments and houses by Serbs with guns, and that they were afraid this would happen to them."
There were a lot of armed Serbian police officers, he said, standing guard and guiding those who were leaving.
And what did he do?
He looked away, out the window, toward the barbed wire. "I remember one instance, when we tried to explain to the police that they were making a mistake, that this Albanian was a good man, that we knew him. We tried at least individually to protect him. But this cop told me to get out of there, that this was not my business."
He paused again, played with a pencil. "Individually and collectively we have responsibility," he said slowly. "But you can't punish someone based on collective guilt. What is happening now is not the responsibility of all the Albanian people. I woke up one morning to see a large group of Albanians leaving Pristina. How? Why? Could someone stop that? I explained one case. Milosevic's propaganda did the worst things here and still does today."
The Serbian Orthodox Church, which broke with President Slobodan Milosevic over his failures in Bosnia, and which calls for his resignation, was clear in its attitude toward the war in Kosovo, Father Panic said. The church opposed NATO's bombing, but it also opposed the wrong done to Kosovo's Albanians, the murders and expulsions.
Father Sava, the bishop's aide, who often comes here to get a better Internet connection on the church's telephone, says that the church should have broken with Mr. Milosevic sooner, and that many priests became too caught up in the nationalist fervor over Bosnia, with some of them photographed atop advancing tanks. "And too many others were silent," Father Sava said.
He and Bishop Artemije are regarded as traitors by Belgrade -- and by some Kosovo Serbs -- for working politically with Washington and the United Nations civilian leader here, Bernard Kouchner, to try to increase security for Serbs and allow more of them to return. The church leadership has also expressed regret and sorrow for Serbian actions here.
But its apologies to Albanians, and its call for tolerance and forgiveness, ring hollow in Albanian ears, and many Serbs here still seem unable to acknowledge what was done in their name or even by their neighbors.
"The war happened, and there was a lot of anger on both sides," Father Panic said. "Evil things happened to ordinary Albanians, too, that's the tragedy. But the peace has been signed. What happened, happened. There were 60,000 Serbs in Pristina, and now there are 238. But life must go on. And today I'm occupied mostly with the problems of simple people, who did no evil to anyone. The ones who did the evil have left."
After the war last summer, Father Panic's apartment was robbed many times and his car stolen. "There was no longer any way for me to live in Pristina," he said. "So in September, I left Pristina forever and came here."
On Taslixhe hill in Pristina, the church where Father Panic once preached, in the once-mixed neighborhood where he once lived, is guarded around the clock by the Royal Fusiliers, with their trademark feathers of red and white shooting out of their caps. The church is fine, but there are few Serbs left to use it; the soldiers, who keep watch from a sandbag shelter 24 hours a day, in all weather, are bored to tears. But the minute they leave, they know, the church will be vandalized and destroyed, as some 80 others have been.
They have two dogs, mongrels, that keep them company. One they have named NATO and the other Unmik, the acronym for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, which runs civilian life here. "NATO barks at all the cars," a soldier said, laughing. "And Unmik sleeps."
AFP : Albright hails Croatian democratization, urges Serbia to follow suit
WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (AFP) - US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Wednesday hailed Croatia's new leadership for its commitment to democracy and urged neighboring Serbia to follow suit by ousting Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in elections next month.
"I have looked with special delight at Croatia's democracy as an example to people throughout the Balkans especially in Yugoslavia," Albright said at a ceremony in Washington in which visiting Croatian President Stipe Mesic presented her with an award.
"Croatia shows how a motivated population can have its destiny in its own hands and away from a corrupt and repressive regime," she said, referring to the election of Mesic who succeeded the late ultra-nationalist Franjo Tudjman.
Since they came to power earlier this year, Mesic and Prime Minister Ivica Racan have reversed Tudjman's legacy of confrontation with the west and sought better relations with the United States, the European Union and NATO renouncing the policies of Milosevic in Yugoslavia on their eastern border.
"Together, you have turned Croatia away from the self-isolating policies of your neighbor to the east toward a fully integrated partnership with the west," Albright said, praising Mesic and Racan for the "wisdom" of their leadership.
Mesic, in remarks delivered before presenting Albright with the "Grand Order of Queen Jelena with Sash and Star" for her contributions to Croatian democracy, vowed to stay the course.
"We are sparing no effort to give Croatia a new image," Mesic said, noting that his country's chief ambitions were membership in the EU and NATO, increasing foreign investment, protecting human rights and serving as a pillar of stability in the Balkans.
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart pointed journalists to comments likely to come forth at a meeting later Wednesday between US President Bill Clinton and Mesic and Racan in the Oval office.
"I think the president wants to use this meeting to praise the Croatian government for the important work they've done over the last six months, the good start they've gotten with the new government, and to continue our efforts to promote both economic and political reform in Croatia."
Lockhart said he expected discussion of Milosevic to be part of the conversation.
Washington has made no secret of its elation over Mesic's victory in the polls and Albright visited Zagreb twice in February, to congratulate him on his election then representing the United States less than two weeks later at his inauguration.
On both stops, the secretary and other US officials were clear in their desire for the Croatian example to spill over into Serbia where Milosevic, despite being indicted for war crimes in connection with last year's ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo, still sits in power in Belgrade.
Albright used the occasion of Mesic's visit to once again blast Milosevic and appeal to the Serb opposition to unite against him in local and presidential elections due on September 24.
"In Yugoslavia, the people will have the opportunity to choose freedom, prosperity and the west and to turn their back on Milosevic's policies of isolation and ethnic hatred," she said.
Albright added, however, that the opposition, which has decided against a boycott of the poll but is presenting two candidates, boosting Milosevic's chances of reelection, will face an uphill battle.
"We know that Milosevic will cheat and he has already used violence and suppression of the independent media to ensure that elections are not free and fair," she said.
The Guardian : Britons still in jail after Belgrade hearing
Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday August 10, 2000
Two British police officers arrested more than a week ago on the Montenegro-Kosovo border were last night in a Belgrade jail still waiting to hear if they are to be charged with terrorist offences.
Det Sgt Adrian Prangnell and PC John Yore yesterday insisted they were innocent when they appeared for the first time before Yugoslavia's supreme military court.
After the closed hearing, their British-appointed lawyer, Djordje Djurisic, said they looked well. Britain's senior diplomat in Belgrade, Bob Gordon, has been promised access to the two men today. The Foreign Office is hoping international pressure will persuade the Yugoslav authorities to release the men and two Canadians arrested with them, or at least specify charges, allow them full consular access, and enable them to contact their families.
Keith Vaz, the minister for Europe, said last night he had pledges of support from Russia, the head of the UN mission in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, and the secretary general of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Jan Kuvis. The two Britons had been seconded to OSCE to work as instructors at a police academy in Kosovo.
Western diplomats and the independence-minded government of Montenegro, part of Yugoslavia, say the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, is using the arrests of the four men as propaganda weapons in the run-up to federal elections on September 24.
Mr Vaz last night attacked an "unhelpful and irresponsible" letter to the Times by two Labour MPs, Alice Mahon and Tam Dalyell, who questioned why the two British police officers were in the company of the two Canadians, Shaun Going and his nephew Liam Hall, who run a construction company in Kosovo.
The MPs referred to reports that Mr Going this year admitted paying £40,000 to Gani Thaci, the brother of Hashim Thaci, a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which Yugoslavia describes as a terrorist organisation.
The Times : British policemen to face Serb tribunal
BY RICHARD BEESTON, ALEX TODOROVIC IN PODGORICA AND JAMES PRINGLE IN PRISTINA
A British policeman said yesterday that he and a fellow officer were being treated in a "firm" manner by their Serb captors, who transferred them to Belgrade to face a military tribunal today.
In a brief but chilling conversation with a British diplomat in Belgrade, Adrian Prangnell, a police training instructor, made his first contact with the outside world since he and his fellow police officer John Yore were captured in Montenegro last week.
He said that they and their two Canadian companions were in good health, but hinted that they are being treated by their Serb captors as potential terrorists and could face up to 15 years in jail if convicted.
Bob Gordon, the head of the British interests section in Belgrade, who spoke with Mr Prangnell, hopes to attend the hearing and has arranged for a Serb lawyer to represent the two police officers.
Keith Vaz, the Foreign Office Minister handling the affair, welcomed the first direct contact with the prisoners yesterday and called on the Serb authorities to allow the men to telephone their families.
Privately, however, British diplomats are concerned that the men may now be locked into a lengthy legal process. Their case could also turn into a show trial and be used as a propaganda weapon by President Milosevic, who faces elections next month.
The Britons were arrested with the two Canadians by the Yugoslav Army on August 31 as they tried to cross the Montenegro-Kosovo border. The British officers have spent the past year training the fledgling Kosovo police force for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
Vojislav Zecevic, the defendants' lawyer in Montenegro, said that the men are suspected of commiting four crimes: entering Yugoslavia illegally; transporting armed groups, arms and munitions on the territory of Yugoslavia; attempted terrorism; and the use of force against military officials in their course of duty. Formal charges may be brought against the four men as early as next week and the case would then be sent to trial promptly.
Much of the prosecution case is based on evidence found in the Nissan car belonging to Shaun Going, the co-owner of Meridian Resources, a Canadian building and mining company with close ties to Kosovo Albanian rebel leaders and building contracts with Nato's Kfor troops. When Serb border guards stopped the car they found 19 metres of detonating wire, 35 metres of slow-burning fuse, 79 detonator caps and "pliers for creating explosive devices".
Mr Going's girlfriend, Alessandra Caratozzolo, said yesterday that there was nothing strange in having such objects in the vehicle, given Meridian Resources' quarrying work.
Genti Jacellari, Mr Going's Albanian manager, denied yesterday that his boss was guilty of any wrongdoing. "Mr Going last called from Montenegro on Monday morning and said they had all spent a very enjoyable holiday weekend at the seaside and they were on their way back," Mr Jacellari said. "That was the last I heard from him until I saw their pictures on television. Now we feel helpless."
Mr Jacellari said that Mr Going and his nephew, Liam Hall, 19, had nothing to do with terrorism and that Mr Hall was due back in Canada to sit examinations to enter college in a few days' time.
Mr Going had met the two British policemen at meetings of the Hash House Harriers, a sport and recreational group that combines hard exercise with hard drinking.
Sergeant Steve Ruffle, of the West Midlands Police, who worked alongside the two British policemen in Kosovo, said he was devastated by the news of the arrests and the charges of terrorism. "Adrian and John are just regular British police officers, not trained in terrorism or anything like that," he said.
The IWPR : Kostunica's "Middle Way"
Vuk Draskovic's decision to put up a rival candidate has taken the shine off Vojislav Kostunica's nomination as presidential candidate for the united opposition. Hopes are now pinned on forcing a second round head-to-head against Milosevic.
By Zeljko Cvijanovic in Belgrade
On August 7 Vojislav Kostunica, leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia, DSS, confirmed his acceptance of the united Serbian opposition nomination as presidential candidate. Known to many as "Seselj in a tuxedo" - a reference to Vojislav Seselj, leader of the Radical Party and an extreme nationalist - Kostunica could stand a good chance of ousting the incumbent Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic if he can make it into a second round run-off.
The decision by the Serbian Renewal Movement, Vuk Draskovic's SPO party, to put up a rival candidate has however complicated Kostunica's prospects. The SPO candidate Vojislav Mihailovic, the current mayor of Belgrade, is widely considered an incompetent and weak choice, but one likely to split the opposition vote.
Srbobran Brankovic, director of Medijum, a public opinion research institute in Belgrade, said the SPO had chosen "the weakest possible candidate to weaken the rest of the opposition."
Kostunica's backers remain confident, however, that their candidate could push Milosevic into a second round run-off and, in a one-to-one contest, could win. Opinion polls conducted in June by the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade found that 42 per cent of voters would support Kostunica in a presidential race against Milosevic, who could expect only 28 per cent of votes.
On accepting the nomination Kostunica said, "It is probably a result of my consistent anti-regime policy, combined with a good feeling for national problems."
Speaking to the Banja Luka based newspaper Nezavisne Novine in June, Kostunica said, "In everything I have done, I have seen myself as someone who could take part in building democratic institutions in Serbia, that is the joint state of Serbia and Montenegro."
He considers the premier of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, to be a puppet of the international community and he is one the few leaders of the Serbian democratic opposition who refused to attend the inauguration of Milo Djukanovic, President of Montenegro.
Pointing out that Djukanovic in a previous incarnation played the Milosevic's loyalist, Kostunica once said the Montenegrin leader's party began its rise to power "at Zuta greda [a wave of protest in 1988] and continues today on the front lawn of the White House."
Kostunica has described relations between foreigners and the Serbian state as "a game in which everything is given up in return for almost nothing, except symbolic concessions." He has said "foreigners should be pressured to unconditionally solve the question of sanctions and war damage," and he believes the opposition should shun support from the West.
The nickname "Seselj in a tuxedo" may appear alarming to the West, but in Serbia most opposition supporters accept Kostunica as a "moderate nationalist."
Kostunica criticised NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia and has shunned talks with officials from NATO member countries. This policy has prevented the Milosevic regime from using one of its favourite ploys - labeling opponents "traitors and foreign mercenaries."
His slogan "No to the White House, No to [Milosevic's] White Castle" illustrates his stance against both the Yugoslav president and Western policy in the former Yugoslavia. He is vociferously opposed to The Hague Tribunal, which he has described as a "monstrous institution", and contemptuous of the war crimes indictment issued against Milosevic.
Kostunica has also been heavily critical of the United Nations and NATO post-war operation in the province, especially over the plight of Kosovo's Serbian population.
Eleven years ago Kostunica and a group of friends founded the Democratic Party, the first opposition party in Serbia. Since then, he has combined an anti-regime standpoint with an unswerving nationalism, which disdains chauvinism or warmongering.
"We [Serbs] have not destroyed Yugoslavia, nor will we allow it to destroy us," was his refrain during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. He remained sensitive to the national question, but accused Milosevic of manipulating Serb minorities for his own purposes. "For them, solving the national question has always been a means and not an end," he said in 1994.
But he has also vented his spleen on Milosevic's enemies, attacking as "cosmopolitans" those who are ashamed to be patriotic and deriding as "micro-patriots" those he believes wish to "make an ocean" of the river Drina, which separates Bosnian Serbs from the Serbia.
Kostunica left the Democratic Party to form the DSS on the eve of elections in 1992, partly because the party's leader Zoran Djindic refused to join the Depos opposition coalition and partly over differences on national matters. He soon parted company with Vuk Draskovic too, claiming he was impossible to work with and not serious about wresting power from the Milosevic regime.
"We have different interests - ours is how to win the elections as a united opposition and Draskovic's are how to win an election in such a way that Milosevic doesn't lose," he said.
After the parliamentary elections of 1993, Kostunica refused to allow his seven deputies to form a block with the Democratic Party because Djindic had been negotiating with Milosevic to join the government. Unlike Draskovic or Djindjic, Kostunica has never negotiated with the Milosevic government - another factor contributing to his high poll rating.
Kostunica refuses coalitions on purely pragmatic grounds making him the least compromised opposition leader, but also the hardest to work with. He is known to be incorruptible and his unswerving, sometimes impractical refusal to jettison his views over the last few years probably accounts for his high approval ratings. But while the patriotic-democratic "middle way" may be the trump card that sways regime voters, his nationalism may make him unappealing to the international community.
This needn't be the case. Both Djukanovic and Biljana Plavsic were forgiven nationalist pedigrees far more ferocious than Kostunica's when they embarked on pragmatic co-operation with the international community.
Kostunica's campaign motto is, "Neither war, nor capitulation." His basic pre-election message is "Survival of the state." But his policy also recognises that finding a way back into the international community is a pre-requisite of survival.
"The return will be painful, in some ways humiliating, but there is no other way," Kostunica said.
Zeljko Cvijanovic is a regular IWPR contributor.
The Times : Serb jail threat to arrested British police
BY ALEX TODOROVIC IN PODGORICA AND RICHARD BEESTON, DIPLOMATIC EDITOR
TWO British policemen and two Canadians being held by the Yugoslav military are facing a long spell in Serb custody after compromising evidence emerged linking one of the four to Kosovo guerrillas.
One of the Canadians, a construction company owner whose car was found to contain explosive equipment, hasadmitted giving money to the brother of a Kosovo Liberation Army leader to secure post-war building contracts.
A military prosecutor in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica, must decide today whether to launch a formal investigation or release the men, who were detained returning to Kosovo after a trip to Montenegro last week.
The men's best hope is a 60-day jail sentence for entering Yugoslavia without visas. At worst they could be tried and convicted of "terrorist actions", punishable by a life sentence. In any event, the prosecutor is likely to open a criminal investigation that could take six months to complete. And the situation could be further complicated by next month's Serbian elections as President Milosevic could use the arrests to whip up nationalist support.
The policemen John Yore, 31, and Adrian Prangnell, 41, had been helping to train Kosovan police cadets when they took a weekend off to visit Montenegro with Shaun Going, 45, and his nephew Liam Hall, 19. As they returned to Kosovo they were stopped twice for routine inspections by the Montenegrin police and then again at a Yugoslav Army checkpoint.
"When they were stopped by Yugoslav border guards, one of the men expressed frustration at having to stop so many times," their lawyer, Vojislav Zecevic, said. "One of the Yugoslavs understood English and then searched the car."
The guards found the men did not have visas to enter Yugoslavia - as most Westerners do not - and a search of Mr Going's car revealed explosive materials used in mining. The Serbs say the material, believed to be detonators, could have been used in sabotage.
Mr Going admitted earlier this year that, in an attempt to win contracts, he had paid £40,000 to Gani Thaci, whose younger brother Hashim is a Kosovo Liberation Army commander. Mr Going said that there was no way of doing business in the area without coming into contact with former KLA members.
Britain was last night intensifying diplomatic efforts in London and Belgrade to win the release of the detainees and trying to make a distinction between the Canadians and the Britons.
Keith Vaz, the Foreign Office Minister, said that he would be calling in Raida Drobac, the head of the Yugoslav interests section in London, to protest about the detentions. A similar message will be delivered in Belgrade by Igor Khalavinsky, the UN representative, and the Brazilian Ambassador, whose embassy represents British interests.
"We have two policemen working for civil humanitarian causes in Kosovo who went to Montenegro for a holiday break. The next thing they know about this is they are on Serbian television being branded as terrorists," Mr Vaz said. "This is new depths of Serbian paranoia."
However, Mr Drobac said that the Serb authorities were acting within their rights, just as much as British police would respond if "terrrorist suspects" were detained in Sussex.
"These men were detained without visas on Yugoslav territory in possession of compromising material," he said. "It is only natural for the authorities to investigate."
In the meantime the men are likely to remain at a military base outside Podgorica, where, their lawyer said yesterday, they were being well-treated. "They are in good health and are satisfied given the situation." They were not confined in a jail cell and wear their own clothes.
Mr Zecevic said military authorities have little evidence against the four men, but there is enough to launch an investigation. He is optimistic that it will not last long or lead to formal charges.
The men had told him that they had wanted to take a different road back to Kosovo after their weekend break at the resort town of Sveti Stefan. They drove through the Lim River valley, a notoriously pro-Milosevic region, then took a small village road at Murino, up the Mount Cakor pass.
Misha Glenny
Hostages are Milosevic pawns in election game
THE fate of the two Britons, two Canadians and four Dutch nationals being held by the Yugoslav Army on charges of espionage and sabotage will not be determined by due process of law nor by any diplomatic manoeuvrings of the West, the United Nations or Russia.
The eight men are little more than hostages of President Milosevic's election strategy as the Serbian strongman seeks a third term as Yugoslavia's President on September 24. By arresting the men in the first place, Mr Milosevic has cranked up the Serbs' sense of isolation, reminding his electorate that a part of Serbian territory, Kosovo, remains occupied by Nato forces and suggesting that Western intelligence officers are crawling all over the country.
In spite of the many advantages that Mr Milosevic enjoys as Serbia prepares to vote, an opinion poll indicates that he is by no means guaranteed victory. The poll, published yesterday in Belgrade by the independent Belgrade Institute of Social Sciences, showed 42 per cent of Serbs would back Vojislav Kostunica, the joint candidate of most of Serbia's opposition parties, but only 28 per cent would back Mr Milosevic. The pro-Milosevic media in Belgrade has accused the Serbian opposition of collaborating with the West and even acting as a fifth column for subversive operations such as that which the two Britons and two Canadians were allegedly planning.
The arrests were further designed to highlight the supposed treachery of Milo Djukanovic, Montenegro's President, whom Belgrade has accused of acting as a cat's paw for Nato inside Yugoslavia. Serbian government officials have claimed that the two British policemen were helping Mr Djukanovic's special police force, Montenegro's embryonic army. Apart from this general strategy of creating an atmosphere of fear and subterfuge, yesterday's decision to investigate the Britons and the Canadians helped to wrong-foot Serbia's beleaguered opposition, which is mounting a desperate challenge to defeat Mr Milosevic in the presidential elections.
The announcement that the Yugoslav military would investigate the men coincided with a final agreement in Belgrade between almost all opposition parties on their common presidential candidate, Mr Kostunica. Until now the opposition has been so divided that it has failed in successive elections to agree on one candidate who could topple Mr Milosevic.
From the outside, a Milosevic victory has looked a foregone conclusion. Certainly he holds some trump cards. He runs Serbia like a personal fiefdom, including the influential state television, the police and the electoral procedure itself.
He also seems to have successfully co-opted one very flamboyant opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic, to his cause. Mr Draskovic has refused to support Mr Kostunica as presidential candidate and has put up one of his own instead. That is almost certain to split the opposition vote and independent observers in Belgrade agree that Mr Milosevic is the only person who will benefit from Mr Draskovic's decision.
In addition Mr Djukanovic's party has advised Montenegrins not to vote for the Serbian opposition candidate. Mr Djukanovic has strong ties with the Serbian opposition but refuses to take part in the presidential elections because he maintains that the decision to hold the vote is unconstitutional. Montenegrins say it was bulldozed through parliament in Belgrade without their consent.
This complex political constellation indicates that the two British policeman and their Canadian colleagues are likely to remain in custody for some weeks. Once the elections are out of the way, regardless of the outcome, the four will no longer serve any pressing political purpose and so they, like other alleged Western spies arrested during the Kosovo campaign, are likely to be released unharmed.
The Independent : Bit parts for officers in Milosevic's latest power-play
By Rupert Cornwell
Adrian Pragnell and John Yore travelled to the Balkans as British police officers seconded to an international initiative to train a new police force for Kosovo. They nowfind themselves with unwelcome, involuntary bit parts in Slobodan Milosevic's latest power-play.
Their arrests, with those of two Canadians and four Dutch citizens on suspicion of terrorism and intended kidnapping, are part of a triple-edged campaign launched last month by the Yugoslavian President, aimed at consolidating his position, picking off his rivals and embarrassing his Western adversaries.
By amending the constitution and calling direct elections on 24 September, Mr Milosevic is seeking to extend his own power and in doing so crush the separatist aspirations of Western-oriented Montenegro, Serbia's last and highly reluctant partner republic in the federation of Yugoslavia.
The arrest of the two Britons and two Canadians, a classic piece of mischief-making by Yugoslavia's leader, fits in with both goals.
As foreigners, portrayed as Nato spies on a mission to beef up Montenegro's own forces, they serve Mr Milosevic's efforts to present himself as a Serb nationalist, fighting to save the nation from destruction by the West. Secondly, the fact that they were detained in Montenegro enables the state-controlled Yugoslav media to depict the four as agents of that republic's reformist President, Milo Djukanovic.
Their main alleged crime, according to Yugoslavia's army, was to have plans to train the Montenegrin police, which Mr Djukanovic is trying to make a more credible counterweight to the 15,000 regular Yugoslav army troops stationed in Montenegro. Mr Milosevic is thus placing a double squeeze on his rival. By calling direct elections that replace a carefully calibrated rotational system for filling the presidency, he has ensured Montenegro's influence in the rump of the federation will be minimal, its 600,000 population swamped by Serbia's 9 million or more people.
By having the foreigners arrested while they were on holiday in Montenegro without valid visas, he is asserting Belgrade's power over the wayward republic, and challenging Mr Djukanovic to assert authority, perhaps affording a pretext for a full takeover.
All the while, Mr Milosevic's chances of securing another four-year term are improving by the day. Incapable as usual of uniting, the opposition parties have failed to nominate a common candidate. Instead, there are two contenders. Vojislav Mihailovic, Belgrade's mayor, will run for the largest opposition grouping, the Serbian Renewal Movement, headed by the erratic and untrusted Vuk Draskovic. The 15 other parties have put forward Vojislav Kostunica, head of the much smaller Democratic Party of Serbia.
On top of that, despite strong pleas from the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, Mr Djukanovic plans to boycott the elections entirely. This would make it even more likely that Mr Milosevic would secure an overall majority in both chambers of Yugoslavia's parliament. So far, his Western supporters have argued in vain that the only hope of defeating Mr Milosevic lies in a single opposition candidate, backed by the maximum possible vote.
The Guardian : Opposition says Draskovic a spoiler
Julijana Mojsilovic in Belgrade
Fifteen Serbian opposition parties yesterday chose the nationalist leader of the Democratic party of Serbia as their candidate to run in September against the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic.
"We unanimously decided to name Vojislav Kostunica as our joint candidate," Dusan Mihajlovic, leader of the New Democracy party, said.
Party officials met in Belgrade to make their decision after crisis talks with the biggest opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), which had nominated its own candidate on Sunday despite appeals not to risk splitting the opposition vote by going its own way.
The SPO leader, Vuk Draskovic, said that he had not changed his mind about his candidate, the Belgrade mayor Vojislav Mihajlovic, who the rest of the opposition fear will split the anti-Milosevic vote in the September 24 election.
Mr Kostunica, chosen by the other parties because his nationalism reflects popular opinion in Serbia, yesterday abandoned his acceptance condition that Montenegro, Yugoslavia's smaller republic, would stop its boycott of the vote. The public was expecting him to run, he said.
A recent opinion poll gave Mr Kostunica greater popularity than President Milosevic, while the Belgrade mayor backed by Vuk Draskovic has not even appeared on pollsters' lists.
The Democratic party leader, Zoran Djindjic, said Mr Draskovic would not discuss a joint candidate.
Mr Mihajlovic said that Mr Draskovic's insistence on his own presidential runner meant that he could not join their candidate lists for local elections, also due September 24.
"We unanimously supported the idea of going together with SPO to all elections, but after the SPO came out with its separate presidential candidate, we decided that a coalition is impossible at one level if there is competition at another."
Mr Djindjic said Mr Kostunica's advantage was that he could travel to Montenegro and Kosovo, whereas Mr Milosevic could not.
Montenegro's pro-western authorities have agreed to cooperate with the UN war crimes tribunal. It has indicted Mr Milosevic for war crimes committed by Serb forces last year in Kosovo before Nato bombing forced the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from the province, which mainly ethnic Albanian .
"Our candidate can go everywhere," Mr Djindjic said. "And where can Mr Milosevic go? To his bunker. Well, let him win in his bunker; we will win in Serbia."
On the right, meanwhile, the ultra-nationalist Radical party has proposed Tomislav Nikolic, its vice-president and Yugoslav deputy prime minister, as its presidential candidate for September.
The Independent :Opposition split as party picks mayor to take on Milosevic
By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade
The biggest opposition party in Serbia, the Serbian Renewal Movement, officially named the mayor of Belgrade, Vojislav Mihajlovic, as its presidential candidate yesterday to stand against the Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in forthcoming elections.
The decision of the main board of the Serbian Renewal Movement, the party headed by the mercurial Vuk Draskovic,threatens to undermine the efforts of the 15 other parties to challenge President Milosevic with a single candidate.
Until yesterday, Mr Draskovic had said that his party planned to boycott thepresidential and local elections on 24 September.
All the recent opinion polls in Serbia have shown that a single candidate of a united Serbian opposition, including the Serbian Renewal Movement, would defeat Mr Milosevic.
Mr Draskovic's party yesterday appealed to the rest of the opposition to back Mr Mihajlovic. "We hope that those parties will not boycott our presidential candidate, a candidate of the largest opposition party, or nominate someone else just to prevent his victory," a statement said.
The other opposition parties will name their candidate later this week. The most frequently mentioned name is that of Vojislav Kostunica, a moderate nationalist who heads the Democratic Party of Serbia.
Yesterday's about-turn by the Serbian Renewal Movement came as no surprise, because the party runs several big towns in Serbia, including the capital, Belgrade, which has a population of 2.5 million.
Mr Draskovic himself did not attend yesterday's session. He is still in Montenegro, the pro-Western junior partner of the Yugoslav Federation, where he was the target of an assassination attempt in June. Montenegro is threatening to boycott the polls, despite pressure from the United States.
Many view Mr Draskovic's undermining of united opposition efforts as a sign that he is ready to make a deal with the regime, in order to keep still-wealthy Belgrade and several other big cities in his hands.
Many have been furious with Mr Draskovic for months, because of his deep involvement in murky business in Belgrade and his tenure as a Yugoslav deputy prime minister until he was fired during the 1999 Nato bombing campaign.
Mr Mihajlovic, 48, is a pale, retiring figure, who is the grandson of General Draza Mihajlovic, the commander of the World War Two royalist and nationalist chetnik movement in Serbia.
General Mihajlovic was sentenced to death by Tito's victorious partisans for his alleged cooperation with the German occupation army. Mr Draskovic is obsessed with the life and fate of General Mihajlovic and has written a book about him.
Serbia's opposition parties have only once managed to unite against Milosevic. This was in 1996-97 in protest atfraudulent local elections and it won them power in all of Serbia's major towns and cities.
The Times : Yugoslav opposition split over presidency
BY JAMES PRINGLE, BALKANS CORRESPONDENT
VUK DRASKOVIC, the maverick leader of Serbia's largest opposition party, put forward a new candidate for Yugoslav president yesterday, throwing into disarray plans for a united opposition challenge to President Milosevic in the September elections.
The decision comes before a meeting today in Montenegro of Yugoslavia's 16 oppposition parties, which had been due to nominate a joint candidate. A split opposition vote threatens to strengthen the hand of Mr Milosevic on September 24, almost certainly allowing the indicted war criminal to serve another four-year term.
The chosen candidate of Mr Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) is Vojislav Mihailovic, the 49-year-old Mayor of Belgrade, a respected but low-key figure. "This gives us a real opportunity to fight Milosevic and win the coming elections," he said yesterday, adding that he hoped ultimately to represent the entire opposition in the elections.
But the rest of Serbia's fragmented opposition backs another candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, who in a recent opinion poll was backed as a united opposition candidate by 42 per cent, against 28 per cent for Mr Milosevic.
Mr Draskovic has opposed Mr Kostunica, arguing that his nationalist views would put him at odds with the world and frighten many Serbs "as his policies are the same as those of Slobodan Milosevic".
He praised Mr Mihailovic as "a man who would bring us peace, rule of law and co-operation with the world".
Balkan analysts say that while Mr Mihailovic, a lawyer, carries no political baggage, he will appeal especially to the middle-aged voter, being the grandson of a famous Serb General, Dragoslav Mihailovic, who led Serb resistance against the Germans during the Second World War. He was shot for treason afterwards under President Tito's communist regime.
Mr Draskovic's main opposition rival, Zoran Djindjic, the leader of the Democratic Party, said a rival opposition candidate would obscure the picture. The rest of the opposition has in the past accused Mr Draskovic, who was for a short time Yugoslav Vice-President, of co-operating with the authorities and helping Mr Milosevic behind the scenes.
However, observers say that Mr Draskovic was acting true to his mercurial form and only lately had pledged to boycott the election altogether.
An internal European Union analysis said last month that Mr Milosevic remained the most trusted leader in Serbia and would most likely win the election. Last month he pushed constitutional changes through the Yugoslav parliament which removed a bar on his seeking a new term.
The LA Times: Kosovo Rapper Vents Albanian Anger at U.N.
By PAUL WATSON, Times Staff Writer
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia--Memli Krasniqi prefers to sing what he has to say in his native Albanian--except when he
has a rap against Kosovo's foreign-run government.
In the intro to "It's a Shame," a hit on Krasniqi's debut album, released this year, he follows the genre's customary "Damn, homey. Yo, wassup man?!" with an explanation for his local fans of why he's suddenly singing in English:
"I gotta speak loud for some of those . . . political fools," Krasniqi raps. "So they can all understand me, you know what I mean? 'Cause they keep stressing me. They're still [expletive] around and messing with me."
Krasniqi's anger isn't an act. Like many of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, the 20-year-old rapper is losing patience with the foreigners who rule the Serbian province as a protectorate in everything but name.
After promising over and again that Kosovo wouldn't be partitioned into enclaves for minority Serbs, the U.N. administration and NATO-led peacekeepers appear to be doing exactly that, ethnic Albanians complain.
The starkest dividing line is in the northern mining town of Kosovska Mitrovica, where foreign troops, armored vehicles and several rows of razor-wire barricades say more to ethnic Albanians than repeated promises.
Although Krasniqi doesn't mention Mitrovica by name in "It's a Shame," that's what the song is about, he said in an interview. And the lyrics are a clear warning that ending the division is the only way to avoid more conflict.
"The future's gonna be the same as the past, if you don't change your ways very fast," Krasniqi raps. " 'Cause there is no bullet-proof vest to protect when I strike and blast.
"Just another thing, mister politicians," Krasniqi adds to close the second verse. "To me, my life is more important than your mission. So stop this game of nonsense, or get ready to deal with the consequence."
Divided City Highlights Ethnic Tensions
A symbol of Krasniqi's anger can be found in the main bridge across the Ibar River, which has become the biggest wall between Mitrovica's mainly ethnic Albanian south and the predominantly Serbian north.
But the bridge is also a symbol of a larger problem. The division of Mitrovica has also severed the derelict Trepca lead and zinc mine--once Kosovo's richest resource--from the smelter, which is still operating in Serbian hands.
The region north of Mitrovica, running about 10 miles to the border of Serbia proper, is off limits to most ethnic Albanians, who once formed the majority there.
After violent protests in February and March, the U.N. declared an area on both sides of the bridge a "confidence-building zone," to encourage people from different ethnic groups to mingle without fear of attack.
But when Krasniqi tried to step onto the bridge to pose for a picture Thursday, a French soldier guarding the entrance ordered him to leave, with a tone that Krasniqi said reminded him of the Serbian police and soldiers he long hated as "occupiers" of the separatist province.
Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority is still so thankful for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's air war against Serbian police and Yugoslav troops last year that no one talks openly about actually attacking the foreign peacekeepers. Even Krasniqi admits he is less radical than the lyrics he sings with partner Enis Presheva Jr., whose day job is translating for U.N. police detectives.
But frustration is mounting.
The U.N. administration, led by Frenchman Bernard Kouchner, is taking the worst flak as it tries to reconcile ethnic Albanian demands for independence with the U.N. Security Council's guarantees of Yugoslav sovereignty over what is still, officially, a province of Serbia.
A Desire to Drive Out Serbian 'Militants'
"Mitrovica is not an accident," Krasniqi said. "NATO troops fought a big regime like [Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic's and took it out, even though that took longer than anyone would have expected. Nobody in the world can explain to me why the biggest army in the world couldn't take out a small group of [Serbian] militants in Mitrovica.
"If they really want Kosovo whole, and not divided, that would take maybe 12 hours."
It would probably also set off an exodus of Serbs, leaving the U.N. and NATO with a failure far more embarrassing than their current attempts to stop ethnic and political violence.
More than 200,000 Serbs and other ethnic minorities fled Kosovo after the peacekeeping force arrived in mid-June 1999. An estimated 100,000 Serbs are left in Kosovo, and only a few have registered for local elections, expected this fall.
After more than a year of ethnic Albanian attacks on minorities, the U.N. administration is more openly sympathetic to the Serbs' fears.
Eric Chevallier, Kouchner's senior advisor, acknowledged ethnic Albanians' frustrations but insisted that the U.N. has to move slowly on its promise to unite Kosovo.
"The Serb people feel that the Ibar River is probably the last protection for them, where they feel a bit besieged, so they want to defend this," Chevallier said in Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital.
"And [the Serbs] argue that it's more and more difficult for them to live in other places in Kosovo," he said. "It's not satisfactory, but the only way to try to keep the idea of a multiethnic [society]--or the coexistence--going is with these little, little actions."
In recent weeks, peacekeeping troops have gone beyond guarding Serbian enclaves and conducting weapons searches to what ethnic Albanians see as direct attacks on their national rights.
For years, the members of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority have embraced the flag of neighboring Albania as their own.
The black, double-headed eagle against a red background was a symbol of defiance against Serbian rule, and a silent demand for independence. Many Kosovo Albanians hung the flag secretly in their homes, knowing that if it was discovered, they could be in great jeopardy.
When the arrival of NATO-led troops last summer made it safe to fly the Albanian colors, the flags went up across Kosovo. Now foreign peacekeepers are starting to take them down. Unofficially, U.N. officials say it's to keep the peace after complaints from Serbs that the flags are a provocation.
Local officials in the northern town of Podujevo were ordered to lower theirs from the municipal building late last month, but they raised it again in protest Wednesday. Peacekeepers have also confiscated Albanian flags from wedding convoys, to prevent partyers from waving a red flag at Serbs as they pass.
"By our tradition, whenever we have a wedding, we have a flag," farmer Halil Krasniqi, 47, said through an interpreter. "Norwegian soldiers took one of our flags, threw it in the mud and ran over it with a tank a month ago. They also took the flags down from buses taking schoolchildren on excursions."
Escape of Prisoners Raises Questions
Ethnic Albanian suspicions of shifting U.N. sympathies were aroused again Friday after three Serbian prisoners awaiting trial on charges of genocide and other war crimes escaped from a northern Mitrovica hospital. Several U.N. police officers were supposed to be guarding them.
The men, identified as Dragisa Pejca, Vlastimir Aleksic and Dragan Jovanovic, were in their beds when a guard checked around 1 a.m. Friday but were gone less than half an hour later, U.N. spokeswoman Susan Manuel said.
Manuel said she assumes that the men headed straight for the Serbian border, so there was little hope of recapturing them. Last month, another Serbian man facing war crimes charges escaped from the same hospital and was not apprehended.
Krasniqi the farmer, no relation to the rapper, lives 20 miles southwest of Pristina, near the village of Klecka, a stronghold of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army. On June 16, peacekeeping troops discovered two secret bunkers in Klecka filled with 70 tons of weapons, such as antitank rockets, mortar bombs, machine guns and tens of thousands of grenades.
As they watched the weapons being hauled off, and the hiding places destroyed along with several acres of wheat, villagers such as Krasniqi were convinced that Kouchner is starting to look like the old occupiers, the Serbs.
"We don't trust Kouchner," Krasniqi said. "Especially when you know that the French, in alliance with other countries like Italy and Russia, are old friends of Serbia. It is clear that Kouchner is hiding something."
The Independent : Britain and Canada press for policemen held by Serbs on terrorism charges to be released
By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade and Anne Penketh
5 August 2000
The Yugoslav government yesterday authorised British diplomats to visit two British policemen arrested on suspicion of terrorist activities as international pressure mounted on Belgrade to release the pair.
Diplomats in Belgrade said last night that the visit may proceed today or tomorrow.
Detective Sergeant Adrian Prangnell and Constable John Yore had spent the weekend on the Montenegrin coast with two Canadian colleagues when all four were picked up on the border with Kosovo by the Yugoslav army as they returned to their base in the UN-administered Serbian province.
The Britons are police trainers in Kosovo for the Organisation for Security (OSCE) and Cooperation in Europe while the Canadians, Shaun Going and his nephew, Liam Hall, work for a building contractor.
They are accused of training units of the pro-Western Montenegrin army.
"It is simply not acceptable to say that they were in any way responsible for any sort of unsavoury activity," said Keith Vaz, the Foreign Office minister."They were merely there with their Canadian friends on a holiday when they were apprehended by the Yugoslav army."
The Yugoslav army said the men were carrying military equipment and explosives, suggesting they were specialists in sabotage. Police photographs and short film clips of the four men, wearing casual shirts, were shown on state television late on Thursday along with items supposedly found in their possession, including foreign currency, a penknife, wiring and a map of Kosovo.
The Foreign Office has condemned the arrests and strongly denied that the men were armed. Det Sgt Prangnell's partner, Wendy Prison, said in Fratton, Hampshire: "He is just doing a police job which he thoroughly enjoys."
The Canadian chargé d'affaires in Belgrade yesterday travelled to Andrijevica, where the four were detained.
However Mr Vaz made it clear the consular access met only one of the Government's demands. He said he wanted the men released unless they could be charged with a proper offence. Britain is also calling on Yugoslav authorities to provide full information about any charges. The only response so far was the agreement "in principle" for the consular access.
The Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has sent messages to the secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and the OSCE to pressure Belgrade into releasing the men.
Montenegro, which is the junior partner of Serbia in the Yugoslav Federation, fears that the Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will use the arrests to provoke a crisis before the 24 September elections. Montenegro plans to boycott the poll.
The New York Times: U.S. Fears Montenegro May Be Target for Milosevic
By JANE PERLEZ
he United States is increasingly worried that Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav leader, will move militarily against Montenegro, the junior republic in Yugoslavia, forcing Washington and NATO into the awkward position of deciding how to react, Clinton administration officials said yesterday.
Mr. Milosevic's possible use of his Yugoslav Army troops and special forces stationed in Montenegro to undermine President Milo Djukanovic of Montenegro or even strike against him was discussed at a White House meeting this week and at NATO headquarters 10 days ago, the officials said.
The fears about Mr. Milosevic's intentions toward Montenegro have become more acute since he unilaterally changed the Constitution to arrange presidential, parliamentary and local elections on Sept. 24.
Mr. Djukanovic, who has forged a path in opposition to Mr. Milosevic for more than a year, has refused to take part in the elections and has rebuffed pleas from Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright to participate in them.
Mr. Milosevic has called the elections in an effort to remain in power for an additional eight years, a prospect that particularly distresses Dr. Albright, one of his most forceful administration opponents. She has been eager for Mr. Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists to participate in the elections, partly to increase the chances of Mr. Milosevic's defeat and partly to minimize the risk of Mr. Milosevic's using force. Montenegro has been receiving American financial assistance for the last year.
If Mr. Djukanovic refuses to participate -- and both he and the United States have called the elections illegal -- then Mr. Milosevic will be more tempted to move against him, administration officials said.
About 15,000 Yugoslav Army troops are based in Montenegro, along with 1,000 men of the seventh military police battalion. Arrayed against those forces are 15,000 Montenegrin police officers loyal to Mr. Djukanovic.
Mr. Milosevic put the army units on high alert last month while he was changing the Constitution. "This was a reminder of their ability to act with little or no warning," a NATO official said.
As for timing, the Yugoslav leader has several options, all potentially embarrassing to the Clinton administration in the fall presidential campaign. Some military action against Mr. Djukanovic after the elections on Sept. 24 would be most likely, administration officials said.
At the North Atlantic Council last week, Mr. Milosevic's designs on Montenegro were discussed at some length, a NATO official said. None of the 19 alliance members had much enthusiasm for any sort of action against Mr. Milosevic over Montenegro, the official added.
NATO members saw few parallels between Montenegro now and Kosovo last year. They could not cite a legal basis for intervention, officials said. A human crisis in Kosovo was used as the rationale for that conflict. And with a presidential election in the United States and the declining popularity of Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, domestic political considerations were uppermost.
The American national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, said yesterday that he would not speculate about what Washington or NATO would do if Mr. Milosevic moved against Mr. Djukanovic. "We support Djukanovic," Mr. Berger said. "We believe he has broad support in NATO. It would be another mistake for Milosevic."
Mr. Berger stressed that he believed that it was important for the opposition parties in Serbia to run as effective a campaign as possible against Mr. Milosevic. Then, if Mr. Milosevic stole the election, the opposition would have a reason to mobilize street demonstrations against him, Mr. Berger said.
"I remind you of Marcos," Mr. Clinton's adviser said. "That was the beginning of the end."
In 1986, Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines claimed victory in rigged elections and was eventually toppled through street protests.
Washington has tried to enlist the help of Russia, which traditionally has warm ties with Serbia, the main republic in Yugoslavia, to dampen Mr. Milosevic's ambitions in Montenegro. To that end, President Vladimir V. Putin was persuaded last month at the Group of Eight summit meeting in Okinawa, Japan, to sign a communiqué that expressed concern about the legality of the elections.
In addition, the secretary general of NATO, Lord Robertson, wrote to Mr. Putin asking him to dissuade Mr. Milosevic from moving against Montenegro. The Russians have not been cooperative. A NATO official said yesterday that the Russian ambassador to NATO, Sergei I. Kislyak, had told Lord Robertson that Mr. Putin's agreement to the communiqué in Okinawa did not guarantee Russian support for it.
OSCE bans travel to Montenegro after Westerners detained
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) _ The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Friday banned its staff from traveling to Montenegro, amid calls for Yugoslav authorities to release two British police officers and two Canadians arrested by the army earlier in the week. In a memo to its staff throughout the Balkans, the OSCE said the arrests were part of a pattern of activity indicating that "the security situation in Montenegro (is) taking a turn for the worse." "Clearly, it would be unwise to offer an opportunity for the (Yugoslav army) to use a chance encounter with OSCE people traveling without visas as another propaganda coup," said the memo from the European security organization. The OSCE previously had announced a more limited travel ban. The memo came a day after the Yugoslav army announced that it had arrested the four on suspicion of spying and training secessionist forces in pro-Western Montenegro. The four had been spending a weekend at the Montenegrin coast and were traveling back to Kosovo, the Serbian province where they work, OSCE said. They were picked up on what the OSCE called "an unauthorized road" near the Montenegro-Kosovo border. Montenegro is a part of Yugoslavia but its pro-Western administration strongly opposes President Slobodan Milosevic. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Friday for the "earliest release" of the men by the army and asked Yugoslav authorities to honor their obligations under the Vienna Convention and grant consular access to the four men. The arrests occurred amid rising tensions throughout Yugoslavia ahead of national and presidential elections set for Sept. 24. Milosevic is seeking another term, but Montenegro has announced it will boycott the balloting. Montenegrins do not require Westerners to obtain Yugoslav visas when they visit. But the Yugoslav army in Montenegro, which is loyal to Milosevic, does not recognize the waiver and considers anyone without visas to be in the country illegally. The Canadians, Shaun Going and his 19-year-old nephew, Liam Hall, were working in Kosovo for a construction company, Meridian Resources, said Shawn Barber, head of the Canadian mission in Kosovo. Senior Canadian officials on Friday called in Yugoslavia"s ambassador in Ottawa, Pavle Todorovic, to demand access to the two Canadians after a Canadian diplomat was denied a visit to them. "The ambassador sought to reassure us that Mr. Going and Mr. Hall are being treated properly by the Yugoslav army," said Foreign Affairs spokesman Ian Trities. On Thursday, one of Going"s Kosovo employees, Safer Miftari, denied the two Canadians were spying or training Montenegro"s pro-Western forces. "We deny absolutely everything ... the spying charges and that he came to Montenegro to prepare some (military) units," Miftari said. He said Going had taken his nephew for a short vacation in Montenegro and failed to return Monday night as expected. David Slin, head of the British mission in Kosovo, said Belgrade authorities had not formally notified the British government that they are holding the two British men. He identified them as Sgt. Adrian Pragnell, 41, and Constable John Yore, 31, both trainers at the OSCE-run police academy in the central Kosovo town of Vucitrn.
Changes dateline from Belgrade
PODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Montenegro, Serbia"s junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, refused pleas Wednesday to reconsider its decision to boycott next month"s Yugoslav national elections. Serbian opposition leaders pleaded with Montenegrin officials at a meeting here to drop the boycott idea and join the opposition at the polls to confront President Slobodan Milosevic in a united bloc. The meeting came a day after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic in Rome to try to convince him to participate. Otherwise, U.S. officials fear, Milosevic will win easily. But officials from Montenegro reiterated their stand Wednesday, saying they will not take part in the Sept. 24 balloting for a Yugoslav president, parliament and local officials. "We told our Serb colleagues our principled stand not to take part in the elections," said Miodrag Vukovic, a top Djukanovic adviser. He added that "in the coming period, we"ll do everything to help the Serbian opposition unseat the Belgrade dictator," but he gave no details. The representatives of 15 Serbian opposition parties flew to Montenegro"s capital for the meeting Wednesday. But in a sign of the disunity plaguing Milosevic"s opponents, the delegation contained no one from Serbia"s largest opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement, which is also boycotting the election. Nevertheless, many leading opposition figures believe this election offers the best hope for bringing down the Milosevic government. "We think the only right option is taking part in the elections," said Zoran Djindjic, the head of Serbian Democratic Party. "No analysis we"ve done so far showed a boycott would bring a positive result either for us in Serbia, or for Montenegro." The main topic during Wednesday"s meeting here was the parliamentary contest, in which 50 seats reserved for Montenegro are at stake. If the Montenegrin government boycotts, the seats would go to Milosevic"s supporters in Montenegro, the smaller Yugoslav republic. "It will be pointless to take part in the elections for the federal parliament without Montenegrins," said Mile Isakov, a member of the Serbian opposition delegation. Under Djukanovic, Montenegro has distanced itself so far from Milosevic"s government that it enjoys virtual independence. Agreeing to take part in the election would be seen in this conservative Balkan society as a loss of prestige because it would acknowledge the authority of Serbia over Montenegro. Isakov said Serbia"s opposition understands Montenegro"s misgivings and that as a possible compromise, the Montenegrin government could continue to say it is boycotting the election while allowing those who want to to vote anyway. Djukanovic"s position is not at stake in the September election.
The FT: Serb opposition divided in bid to oust Milosevic
By Julijana Mojsilovic - 4 Aug 2000 05:26GMT
BELGRADE, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Serbia's opposition said on Thursday maverick politican Vuk Draskovic risked splitting the vote against Slobodan Milosevic by putting forward his own presidential candidate.
Representatives of 15 opposition parties met to discuss a joint candidate to run against the Serbian strongman in the presidential election on September 24. Parliamentary and local elections are set for the same day.
Analysts say two opposition candidates would split the vote among Milosevic's foes and diminish the chances of ousting him.
The Serbian Renewal Movement, led by Draskovic, did not attend the meeting, but Momcilo Perisic of the Movement for Democratic Serbia said he had talked with Draskovic by phone.
Draskovic asked us to join him in boycotting parliamentary elections and demanded that we support his candidate for the federal president, said Perisic, who hosted the meeting.
In return he would work with us in the local polls.
He said Draskovic had not identified his potential presidential candidate, but an opposition source said it could be Belgrade Mayor and senior SPO official Vojislav Mihajlovic.
The SPO was not available for comment. Party sources said it would meet on Sunday to decide on all election issues.
OPPOSITION SEEKS UNITY
The Western-leaning leadership of Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, has already said it will boycott next month's elections because it believes they will not be affair.
The announcement dealt a blow to the opposition, which failed on Wednesday to persuade Monetenegro to change its mind.
If the opposition runs united, it will surely win, Perisic said. If we are divided we will help the government stay in power.
We regret Montenegro's decision and that means we'll have to get more votes on our own, but that is not an impossible task, said Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic.
The opposition parties at Thursday's meeting will take part in the presidential, parliamentary and local elections called last month by Milosevic in a bid to cement his rule.
The SPO has said it will probably only take part in the local polls, aiming to preserve its power in major cities, including Belgrade, following 1996 election wins.
Perisic urged the SPO to support a joint opposition candidate for the presidency. We know we would be more successful with the SPO. But if they don't join, we'll ask them to support our joint candidate against Milosevic.
He said the opposition would wait one week for a decision from Draskovic.
The 15 parties would choose their candidate -- tipped to be Vojislav Kostunica, leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia -- on Monday. But an opposition source said Kostunica had made clear he wanted the support of Montenegrin and Western leaders before accepting.
The Radical Party, Milosevic's coalition partner, said on Thursday that deputy party leader Tomislav Nikolic was a likely candidate if it decided to run in the presidential vote.
RFE: Yugoslavia: Albright Asks Montenegro To Take Part In Vote
By Jolyon Naegele
U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright met in Rome yesterday with Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic to convince him to reverse his threat to boycott next month's Yugoslav federal elections. Any boycott is certain to hand the vote to President Slobodan Milosevic. RFE/RL correspondent Jolyon Naegele reports.
Prague. 2 August 2000 (RFE/RL) -- Albright met in a Rome hotel for 90 minutes with Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic to discuss presidential, parliamentary and local elections slated for September 24.
Albright said it is important for the democratic opposition in Serbia to unite and participate in the elections. She said the elections are "clearly important and will provide ... a meaningful test."
The Serbian opposition, minus the largest opposition party -- Vuk Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) -- agreed on 29 July to back joint slates in vote, although it's clear they have little chance of success without the SPO and Montenegro.
Albright said she and Djukanovic also discussed ways to increase economic assistance to Montenegro.
Djukanovic, speaking to reporters after the talks, said he was concerned by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's potential to destabilize Montenegro. But he said any final decision to participate in the election rests with the ruling coalition parties in Podgorica. Montenegrin officials are planning to meet with most of the leading Serbian opposition figures, minus Draskovic, today.
He says whatever decision the parties reach, his government will not damage what he called Serbia's "fragile" opposition:
"We will not make a single move that will undermine the already fragile democratic front in Serbia -- which should take every opportunity to delegitimize Milosevic."
Montenegro's ruling parties are divided over whether the Serb opposition should participate in the elections or not.
Djukanovic's top adviser, Miodrag Vukovic, says Montenegro has "more to lose" than do the Serbian opposition parties. He tells our correspondent the government would risk the very existence of the Montenegrin state and all the democratic reforms it has carried out if it should take part in the vote and Milosevic win.
Vukovic is referring to what he calls Belgrade's "electoral and constitutional coup" last week, when the Milosevic government passed a series of constitutional changes that reduce Montenegro's role within federal Yugoslavia.
Draskovic meanwhile has renewed his call for the Serbian Renewal Movement to boycott the elections if Montenegro does not participate.
He told Montenegrin television last night the Serbian opposition parties are wrong to take part in the elections because of the constitutional changes. He says participation would lead to what he calls "constitutional violence over Montenegro" and the continuation of Milosevic's "dictatorship in Serbia."
Draskovic acknowledges concerns among the opposition parties that any boycott would surely hand the election to Milosevic, but he says any such victory would represent a "serious threat to the maintenance of a unified state of Serbia and Montenegro." He didn't elaborate on what his party would do in the event of a Milosevic victory. Political analysts say even if Albright convinces the Montenegrin leadership to participate in the vote, it's not clear whether Draskovic and his movement would take part. One analyst told RFE/RL that Draskovic's comments have lost any thread of logic.
The Independent: Serbs hold two British policemen on terrorist allegations
By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade
4 August 2000
Two British police officers working in Kosovo are among four Westerners the Yugoslav security forces claimed yesterday to have arrested on suspicion of aiding Montenegro to mount "terrorist acts" against Serbia.
The four – two British and two Canadian – were said by Belgrade to be armed, and planning to train Montenegrin police units for "terrorist acts".
They were detained on Monday night or early Tuesday near the town of Andrijevica in north-eastern Montenegro, just across the border from Kosovo where they were based, according to a Yugoslav army statement.
The Foreign Office summoned Yugoslavia's representatives in London to demand information on the arrests, about which the British Government was not officially notified. "A senior official formally protested about Belgrade's behaviour in failing to confirm the arrests," a spokesman said.
The two Britons were identified as John Yore and Adrian Prangnell, police officers stationed in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, where they were helping to train local police in a project run by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The Canadians were named as Shaun Going and his nephew, Liam Hall, who worked for the Meridian construction company, helping with the rebuilding of postwar Kosovo.
The Yugoslav army said the four, carrying military equipment and explosives, had been picked up on suspicion of espionage. There were indications, it said, that they were training special units of the Montenegrin police "and are specialists in terrorist actions".
These allegations were rejected by a spokeswoman at OSCE's headquarters in Vienna as "absolutely absurd," while OSCE officials in Kosovo said the four were not armed and were in Montenegro on holiday.
But it was not clear what they were doing in the border area. OSCE workers in Kosovo were instructed several weeks ago not to venture into Montenegro because of the risk of being picked up by the Yugoslav army, under the command of President Slobodan Milosevic.
The arrests are another sign that Mr Milosevic is stepping up the pressure on pro-Western and independence-minded Montenegro, the last surviving sister republic of Serbia in the Yugoslav federation, and will add to fears that Montenegro, after Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and most recently Kosovo, is destined to be the next war in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.
The Christian science monitor: Kosovo press names names, vigilantes act
Richard Mertens
Special to The Christian Science Monitor
PRISTINA, YUGOSLAVIA
Petar Topoljski was a young Serb who worked in Kosovo's United Nations administration. In April, a local newspaper charged that he was something more: a paramilitary thug who took part in the beating, robbing, and expulsion of ethnic Albanians last year. The paper published his photograph and address.
Eleven days after the article appeared on newsstands in Pristina, Kosovo's capital, Mr. Topoljski disappeared. His body was discovered a week later on a secluded riverbank. He had been stabbed several times.
Kosovo's international police say they cannot be sure that the newspaper article led to Topoljski's death. But the killing is prompting them to take steps to end what they call "vigilante journalism," the practice of publishing the names of Serbs and others accused of committing war crimes last year.
Dita - the newspaper that printed the Topoljski story - was fined $12,000 for another recent article that accused more than a dozen Serbs of war crimes. The paper refused to pay, and last week officials shut it down. It started publishing again on Tuesday, and has challenged the regulations in a Kosovo court.
The restrictions on the press have won them few friends in Kosovo, especially among journalists, who accuse international officials of curtailing press freedom and covering up their own failure to bring war criminals to justice.
"This is against the freedom of speech and writing," protested Dita's editor-in-chief, Belul Beqaj. "It's anti-democratic."
Meanwhile, international officials argue that printing the names of alleged war criminals, even if the accusations are true, endangers their lives and therefore goes beyond what is permissible. "The freedom of the press is not limitless," says Roland Bless, a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which oversees the Kosovo media. "It ends where another basic right is trespassed, namely the right to life."
A growing practice
Exposing alleged war criminals and Albanian collaborators has been a regular feature of Kosovo journalism since the war. Even a Kosovo woman's magazine has taken up the practice. The magazine, Kosovarja, recently published an article, entitled "Nightmare butchers," which names 11 Kosovar gypsies it says belonged to a paramilitary group. The article also makes damning statements about Kosovar gypsies in general. Now officials are mulling over plans to introduce a "code of practice" that bans publishing anything that "denigrates ethnic groups."
Stories like these are part of a larger effort among ethnic Albanians to account for the violence committed against them during their armed struggle against Serb authorities in 1998 and 1999. They also reflect ethnic Albanian frustration with international efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice.
While the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague has been busy gathering evidence against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and a handful of his associates, it has left the prosecution of lower-level criminals to Kosovo's justice system, in which courts are barely functioning.
Beqaj says Dita is not encouraging vigilante justice but simply exposing the truth. "I would feel responsible for doing something bad if I had hid the facts," he says. When the criminals are exposed "the innocent will have a good life."
Not all journalists agree with Beqaj. "It was bad journalism," says Shkelzen Maliqi, a respected commentator. And yet Mr. Maliqi and other journalists are protesting the sanctions against the newspaper. In particular, they blame officials for imposing rules without consulting them.
"There can't be anarchy," Maliqi says. "But there must be consultation."
The press restrictions come at a time when foreign governments, charitable foundations, and private media organizations are working to improve Kosovo journalism. Barely a year after the war, Kosovo journalism is thriving, with a half-dozen daily newspapers, dozens of radio stations, and a small but growing number of television stations. At the same time, the quality of journalism varies enormously. Many journalists are young and untrained. Newspapers are linked closely to political parties and lack true independence. The media face a critical test in the next two months as Kosovo heads toward elections.
Monroe Price, a professor of media law at Cardozo School of Law in New York, said during a visit to Kosovo that recent years have seen the emergence of new thinking about media rules in "post-conflict and peacekeeping contexts." The potential for violence in Kosovo, he suggested, may justify restrictions that would be unacceptable in a mature democracy. "The context is a lot here," he said.
Press under pressure
Some journalists suspect that international officials would prefer they not write about war crimes at all. "They probably feel it keeps the tension high," says Agron Bajrami, deputy editor of Koha Ditore, one of Kosovo's most respected newspapers. In any case, for many of them, the closing of Dita brings back bitter memories of practicing their craft under a repressive Serb regime.
"They're very sensitive," says Daut Dauti, general secretary of the Association of Journalists of Kosovo. "They say, 'You see, they're doing the same thing. The Serbs closed papers down. They are doing the same thing.' "
Three papers have been reprimanded for violating the new press regulation since it went into effect on June 17. Two of them, including Kosovarja, promised not do it again. "We don't want to be closed," says Berat Luzha, editor of Rilindja.
Pristina's chief police investigator, Charly Gortano, says the probe into Topoljski's murder continues. But adds, "If they want to have justice, this is not the way."
The Christian Science Monitor : Serb vote holds hope for change
Opposition parties see possibilities - though slim - that Sept. 24 vote could bring Milosevic ouster.
Alex Todorovic
BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA
For the past year, Serbia's democratic opposition has been demanding, in countless protests across the country, for elections for a new president and federal parliament, along with regional and city governments.
On Sept. 24, they'll get their chance against the unpopular Yugoslav president. Slobodan Milosevic, for his part, will try to ensure his grip on power for another four years.
Though observers say the election conditions are far from fair, it's still an opportunity. And an unexpected frontrunner has emerged from the mix of opposition leaders. Vojislav Kostunica, president of the Democratic Party of Serbia, is a veteran of Serbia's democratic opposition, but is little known to the outside world.
This may be his strongest asset. Analysts say Mr. Kostunica is perceived by the Serbian public as a principled, uncompromised politician, and that he has remained distant enough from the West to win the "patriotic vote." The ruling party and its supporters often portray opposition groups as lackeys for Western powers bent on disrupting the country.
On July 31, Yugoslavia announced it had detained four Dutch nationals, accused of working for Western intelligence agencies. Yugoslav officials claim the men were plotting to kidnap Mr. Milosevic and others indicted by The Hague War Crimes Tribunal. Paul Risley, a spokesman for the tribunal, called the accusation "pretty good fiction."
A poll conducted in mid-July by the Institute for Social Sciences in Serbia found that Kostunica would beat Milosevic 42 percent to 28 percent in a one-on-one presidential contest - a far better showing than well-known opposition figures such as Vuk Draskovic and Zoran Djindjic.
While not all of Serbia's opposition supports Kostunica's candidacy, he has the support of influential leaders and public-opinion makers like Mr. Djindjic, president of the Democratic Party, and former Information Minister Alexander Tijanic, now a dissident journalist.
Kostunica is an uninspiring public speaker and is not camera-friendly, but Mr. Tijanic says, "His version of Serb nationalism is inoffensive and attractive to Serbian people. He's the man to do it."
Over the past year, Kostunica stayed away from European capitals, while other opposition leaders met Western diplomats to discuss Yugoslavia's democratization. To many Serbs, this shoulder-rubbing with supporters of last year's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia was offensive.
When Mr. Draskovic kissed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's hand last winter in Berlin, state-run media showed the footage hundreds of times. Posters appeared all over Belgrade showing the "treacherous act."
Kostunica, meanwhile, warned that "the Balkans' problems must be solved in there and not in European capitals."
In Belgrade, the idea of a Kostunica candidacy is catching on. But at the same time, a sense of resignation hangs over the election season. Opposition supporters say the deck is stacked against them, especially when it comes to media access. In the past few months, the Milosevic government forced independent papers to cut their circulation and took over Yugoslavia's most popular opposition-controlled television station, Studio B, which reached nearly 3 million viewers. The government has promised to allow some election monitors, but only from friendly nations. The opposition is training its own monitors.
In addition, the voting system and voter rolls contain built-in advantages for the Milosevic government, according to Marko Blagojevic, a spokesman with the Center for Free Elections and Democracy, a Belgrade-based nongovernmental organization.
The opposition is aware that Milosevic's indictment by the War Crimes Tribunal last year means he has an added incentive to stay in power - to avoid trial. "The regime will battle until its last drop of blood for these elections. We will probably see new methods to get votes never seen before," says Mr. Blagojevic.
In 1997, for example, an astounding 300,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo province supposedly voted for the pro-Milosevic Serbian presidential candidate. This year, Kosovo Serbs will have to travel to southern Serbia to cast their ballots. "They can correct their election results if need be," says Blagojevic.
Such methods may be unnecessary because Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in Yugoslavia, has decided to boycott. Montenegro's pro-Western government is protesting last month's move by the federal parliament to amend the Constitution. The hastily enacted changes dilute Montenegro's power in the Yugoslav federation, while providing for a direct presidential vote. President Milo Djukanovic has hinted that if Milosevic wins, he may call a referendum on independence.
The US opposes the boycott, and Secretary of State Albright was scheduled to meet with Mr. Djukanovic in Rome on Aug. 1 to discuss the election. "It is important for the democratic opposition in Serbia to unite and participate," she told a news conference.
Some analysts say conditions are so unfair that Serbia's opposition should also opt out. "There is absolutely zero out of 100 chance that the elections will be conducted on a reasonably fair basis. A boycott of federal elections, along with protests, could turn this into a referendum on the legitimacy of the government," says Jim Hooper, a Washington-based analyst.
Serbia's opposition, with the exception of one party, sees things differently. "We will do the best that we can under the conditions. What options do we have? We can vote or use bullets. People want peace," says Nenad Stefanovic, a spokesman for the Democratic Party.
An unspoken strategy is that elections, if stolen, could galvanize mass protests similar to those in 1996 that forced Milosevic to concede a loss in municipal votes.
Montenegro President Says Poll Boycott Not Decided
ROME (Reuters) - Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said after meeting Secretary of State Madeleine Albright Tuesday that a planned boycott of Yugoslav elections by Montenegro"s ruling parties was not yet decided. The pro-Western parties had said they would not take part in any ballot organized by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and would encourage their supporters not to vote in Sept. 24 presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections. But a senior U.S. official said Albright would ask Djukanovic to think carefully about boycotting the poll, in which the West would like to see a strong opposition challenge. "This decision will be taken by the legitimate bodies of the parties which form the Montenegrin governing coalition and after taking that decision, we will inform the public," Djukanovic said after two sessions with Albright, interrupted by her meeting at the Vatican on the Middle East peace process. The ruling parties in Montenegro, the only republic not to split with Serbia in the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, say the polls are illegitimate because Milosevic changed the constitution without consulting them. "What I can say is that we will not put up with the constitutional violence he is trying to use against Montenegro," Djukanovic told reporters, with Albright by his side. SECURITY FEARS TOP THE AGENDA At the top of the agenda for Tuesday"s meeting were fears of another Balkan conflict over Montenegro, a senior State Department Official said. He said Djukanovic expected provocation from Belgrade-controlled security services in coming weeks. Albright and U.S. officials would not say whether they were pushing Montenegro to take part in the elections but a Western diplomat based in the region said before the meeting that the Americans planned to drive hard for Montenegrin participation. "I think it"s very important that we do everything we can to strengthen and unify the opposition. This is what we talked about," said Albright. "We obviously are going to stay in very close touch over the coming weeks." Albright urged the Serbian opposition to unite behind one candidate against Milosevic. President Clinton, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the European Union and NATO have all said they would back Serbia"s opposition in the bid to beat Milosevic. If Djukanovic could not field candidates for fear of losing credibility, he may be asked to encourage supporters to back the Serbian opposition at the polls, a Western diplomat said. U.S. officials say they are not trying to get Djukanovic himself to run against Milosevic for the presidency. Vuk Draskovic, leader of the main opposition party in Serbia has made clear he will not take part in the elections unless Montenegro does. Djukanovic referred to the Montenegrin parliament"s pledge to ignore any elections held under the controversial constitutional amendments, but added: "Equally we are resolved not to make a single move which will undermine the already fragile democratic front in Serbia, which should make use of every opportunity to delegitimize Milosevic." Amendments adopted by parliament on July 6 allow Milosevic, whose term is due to run out next year, to win a new period in office through a direct vote.
U.N. Tribunal, Dutch Govt. Deny Links to Milosevic’s Alleged Assassins
‘This Is Fiction’
The Yugoslav government showed a film of a Dutch citizen who was arrested in Yugoslavia along with three other Dutchmen. All are accused of planning to kidnap or kill President Slobodan Milosevic. (Reuters)
A M S T E R D A M, Netherlands, Aug. 1 — The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia today strongly denied links to a group of Dutchmen being held in Serbia on suspicion of plotting to assassinate Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Yugoslavia said Monday it had arrested four Dutchmen, allegedly sent by Western intelligence agencies, who were planning to kidnap Milosevic and other alleged war criminals indicted by The Hague tribunal.
“I would call it pretty good fiction,” said Paul Risley, spokesman for the tribunal. “This story is fiction and nothing more.”
With pictures of the four and their alleged cache of weapons spread across most Dutch newspapers, the Dutch government raised the tempo of its own denials and said it was trying to find out more about the incident.
“We deny any military operation,” said a Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman. He said Dutch diplomats were trying to make contact with their Yugoslav counterparts in The Hague and in Belgrade to find out more about the incident.
Friends and colleagues of one of those detained, Godfried de Rie, reacted to the news with shock.
“He is a dead honest, hardworking man who never planned to kidnap President Milosevic,” Jaap Havik, the owner of a Mercedes restoration firm that employed de Rie, told Dutch television. “He’s always working on cars and motorbikes.”
A next-door neighbor of de Rie’s described him as a perfectly normal person who once worked as a postman.
‘Weekend Warriors’
Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic said the men were posing as amateur “weekend warriors” but were in fact assassins sent by the West.
He said the men had been caught in Mehov Krs, an isolated corner of Serbia near Kosovo and Montenegro, about 300 miles south of Belgrade.
Matic showed a film in which one of the four, identified as Jeroen van Iersel, told an unidentified questioner that he and his friends had been looking for people indicted by the U.N. tribunal.
The Dutch spokesman said the Foreign Ministry was investigating reports that the group was arrested as long as two weeks ago.
“We will continue our efforts and go to the [Yugoslav] Foreign Ministry to ask why we were not told earlier of their arrest,” the spokesman said.
He added that de Rie had done his military service in the army in 1989. “But he was an administrator, hardly a paratrooper.”
The Dutch Foreign Ministry named the others as Bas van Schaik, Sander Zeitsen and van Iersel. All are aged between 28 and 32.
“We are pretty sure that they are neither military nor involved in military things,” the spokesman said.
The United States has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest of Milosevic, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who commanded Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-95 conflict in Bosnia.
In the film shown to journalists in Belgrade, van Iersel said he knew Milosevic and Mladic were among those indicted. He said that if he met the Yugoslav leader he would have been put in a box on top of a car and driven out of the country.
‘These Are No Pros’
Military specialists appeared in the Dutch media this morning to say it was extremely unlikely that the four are professional militiamen.
If they were what the Yugoslavs claim they are — SAS-trained assassins — then they would never have told their plans, the experts argued. Those same specialists pointed out that Dutch mercenaries fought in Croatia, mostly on the Croatian side.
Most of them came from extreme right-wing organizations, they said.
They also pointed out that the $5 million bounty is for information — not for kidnapping, much less delivering a human head.
One NATO source was reported as dismissing the whole incident as “bizarre.”
The Dutch anti-fascist group Kakfa, which monitors rightist activity, believes the men could be former members of the ultra-right CP’86 group, which was ordered dismantled last year by a Dutch court. Like many other small skinhead groups, CP’86 played survival games on the weekends.
Like most other European countries, the Netherlands has its fringe groups of ultra-rightists and neo-Nazis — many of whom are also hardcore soccer hooligans. They are closely monitored by the intelligence services.
A Milosevic Stunt?
In Belgrade, the opposition dismissed the arrests as a propaganda stunt.
“Matic is crazy about conspiracy theories,” said Bogdan Grubacic, editor of the independent English language newsletter VIP. He said the arrests are part of the propaganda war launched by the Milosevic regime ahead of early elections, scheduled for Sept. 24.
And the alleged location of the arrests, on the border to Montenegro, could serve the dual purpose of helping Milosevic to fuel his war of words with the smaller, anti-Milosevic partner in the Yugoslav federation.
The Milosevic regime says Montenegro is behind repeated assassinations. Montenegro, in return, regularly accuses Milosevic of sending his hit-men there.
Montenegro is boycotting the upcoming elections, saying the laws had been changed by the Yugoslav government to favor the re-election of Milosevic and his partners.
Yugoslav opposition groups defy U.S. pressure, plan election boycott
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Despite urging from Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, it appeared Tuesday that Yugoslav opposition groups were sticking with their plan to boycott upcoming elections. Speaking in Rome, Albright called on opposition leaders from Yugoslavia"s two republics _ Montenegro and Serbia _ to unite behind one candidate to challenge Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in Sept. 24 elections. "It is important for the democratic opposition in Serbia to unite and participate in the elections," she told a news conference. "These elections clearly are important and will provide some kind of a meaningful test." But the Serbian Renewal Movement, the largest of Serbia"s opposition parties, has so far refused to join with 15 other parties to form a cohesive bloc against Milosevic and his ruling party. The party says the balloting for parliamentary and municipal posts as well as for the presidency will not be fair. "With such a regime, there should be no discussion about the elections," Ivan Kovacevic, spokesman for the Serbian Renewal Movement, said Tuesday in Belgrade. The party"s leaders are to meet Sunday to determine their strategy. Albright met in Rome on Tuesday with Milo Djukanovic, the president of Montenegro, Yugoslavia"s pro-Western republic. Djukanovic has said Montenegro will also boycott the balloting and has hinted it may declare independence if Milosevic wins. He claimed the elections were called under terms that favor Milosevic and his neo-communist and ultranationalist allies and will be full of irregularities. Under Djukanovic, Montenegro has enjoyed support from Western powers, especially the United States, and has severed nearly all ties with Belgrade. Kovacevic said Montenegro"s decision not to participate in the elections makes them even more of a farce _ the boycott means Yugoslavia will be holding federal elections with only one of its two republics participating.
Le Monde diplomatique : Nato on trial
Established in 1998, the International Criminal Court is still struggling for life. Many states are reluctant to ratify its statute, when they are not actively opposed to it, like the United States, Russia and China. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, on the other hand, was presented as the precursor of a fairer international order. These double standards may also apply to the assessment of Nato's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. Amnesty International believes that Nato "did not fully comply with the obligation to take all precautions to protect civilians" and that, in at least one case, it attacked a civilian object.
by AVNER GIDRON and CLAUDIO CORDONE
From 24 March to 10 June 1999 the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation conducted an air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), codenamed Operation Allied Force (1). The civilian death tolls given in detailed FRY government accounts range from 400 to 600. NATO has not released official estimates of civilians or FRY combatants killed. No Nato forces were killed in hostile action during the air campaign.
Much of the debate about Operation Allied Force has revolved around one question. Was Nato legally or morally justified to intervene military against a sovereign state to stop it from committing human rights violations against its own citizens? This is an important debate, because it raises the issue of what the international community could and should have done preventively, during the years when Amnesty International and others were denouncing the abuses in Kosovo, to avoid reaching crisis point in March 1999.
It also raises the issue of whether the catastrophic level of human rights violations in Kosovo by FRY forces which followed the beginning of the Nato bombing could have been predicted and taken into account before starting the offensive.
Amnesty International recognises these dilemmas, but does not judge whether recourse to force by anyone is justified or not. It therefore takes no position on whether Nato should have intervened militarily against the FRY, or what the political settlement of Kosovo should now be. The organisation has however looked at the conduct of Nato's military intervention in the light of the rules of international humanitarian law, applying the same standards it has applied to the conduct of FRY forces in Kosovo as it does to parties to other conflicts around the world. Nato's often repeated contention that anything it did wrong in Kosovo should be judged in the light of the humanitarian cause it was pursuing can be seen as a plea for more lenient standards to be applied to Nato than to the FRY. No organisation which strives to be impartial can, however, afford to apply such double standards.
Nato has rejected all accusations of violations of international humanitarian law, maintaining that its air campaign against the FRY was the most accurate in history, and that never before were so many precautions taken to protect civilians. That may be correct. But it does not follow that in several instances things went tragically wrong, as Nato itself acknowledges. More important, it does not follow that what went wrong was purely due to unavoidable accidents.
Amnesty International has examined several aspects of the campaign, including nine specific attacks in which civilians were killed and where the rules of war were, or may have been, violated. It has not been in a position to look into other attacks, such as those on the Novi Sad bridges, which may also have been unlawful even though no civilians appear to have been killed, or into the overall impact of the bombing campaign on the civilian population. On the basis of available evidence, primarily Nato's own public statements and discussions with high-level Nato officials in Brussels in February, Amnesty International believes that Nato did not always meet its legal obligations in selecting targets and in choosing means and methods of attack.
In one instance, the attack on the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television (RTS) in Belgrade, Nato attacked a civilian object and as such committed a war crime (see article on the attack). In other attacks, such as those on the bridges in Grdelica, Lu"ane and Varvarin, Nato forces failed to suspend their attack after it was evident they had struck civilians. In other cases, including the attacks on displaced civilians in Djakovica and Kori_a, insufficient precautions were taken to minimise civilian casualties. These could have been significantly reduced if Nato forces had fully adhered to the laws of war.
During Operation Allied Force Nato never made clear exactly which standards of international humanitarian law were being applied by its forces or how it maintained a coherent interpretation of these rules during the campaign. The alliance's members do not share the same treaty obligations. The United States, whose aircraft flew nearly 80% of Nato strike-attack sorties during the campaign (2), have not ratified Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (see box). Neither have France or Turkey. Nato spokesperson Jamie Shea repeated throughout the campaign that alliance forces were respecting the laws of war to an unprecedented extent, but no explicit reference was ever made to Protocol I.
Nato officials met by Amnesty International in Brussels insisted that individual Nato member states only have legal obligations. Nato does not have a mechanism to enforce compliance of a common set of standards, or to ensure a common interpretation of such standards. These remain prerogatives of each state member, leading to inconsistencies in the application of the rules.
What rules of engagement?
Nato officials explained that, during Operation Allied Force, member states were given bombing assignments by Nato staff but could refuse them if, for example, they believed the attack would violate international law, and possibly their national law. If a target were refused for this reason, Nato officials said they would not reassign the target to another country. It is unclear, however, to what extent this actually happened. In at least one instance - the attack on the RTS headquarters - it seems the attack was carried out despite disagreement among Nato members as to its lawfulness.
"We need to understand the limitations that our coalition partners will place upon themselves and upon us" said Lieutenant General Michael Short, Commander of Allied Air Forces, Southern Europe. "There are nations that will not attack targets that my nation will attack. There are nations that do not share with us a definition of what is a valid military target, and we need to know that up front ... You and I need to know that all aircraft based in the United Kingdom are subject to rulings by the United Kingdom government about whether we are about to strike a valid target or not" (3).
"All the countries in the Atlantic Alliance acted as part of Nato with full discussion about what to target", French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine told the BBC. "But the US was also carrying out a separate American operation. They deployed national forces with a national decision-making mechanism commanded from the US. And the European allies did not know about these actions." Nato has denied this allegation (4).
On several occasions during the air campaign, Nato stated repeatedly that it was making "every possible effort to avoid collateral damage" and that its pilots operated under "strict rules of engagement", but did not disclose any details of the rules or the principles underlying them. At the Brussels meeting with Nato officials, Amnesty International learned that each member state was entitled to choose what aspects of Nato-proposed rules of engagement it would adopt, but was not able to obtain specific details.
Concern about known aspects of Nato's rules of engagement has related particularly to the practice of high-altitude bombing. Initially Nato aircraft were restricted to flying above 5,000 metres to protect pilots from the air defences. This ceiling was relaxed during the second half of the air campaign, with some planes flying as low as 2,000 metres. Nato officials told Amnesty International that an aircrew flying at 5,000 metres would only be able to identify whether the objective was the intended one, but would be unable to tell whether civilians had moved or been moved within its vicinity, for example. This rule effectively made it impossible for Nato aircrew to respect the obligation to suspend an attack once circumstances had changed on the ground rendering the objective no longer legitimate. Following the bombing of civilians in a convoy at Djakovica, the rules of engagement were amended to require visual confirmation that there were no civilians in the target area.
General Michael Short, speaking to the BBC on what happened at Djakovica on 14 April 1999, reported the pilots' reaction: "They came back to me and said, 'We need to let the forward air controllers go down to 1,700 metres. We need to let the strikers go down as low as 2,500 metres and in a diving delivery, to ensure that they verify their target, and then right back up again to 5,000 metres. We think that will get it done. We acknowledge that that increases the risk significantly, but none of us want to hit a tractor full of refugees again. We can't stand that'" (5).
Unfortunately this additional precaution was not sufficient to stop further civilian deaths. Nor were changes reportedly instituted after the 7 May attack on Ni_ (when the US stopped using cluster bombs) and the 30 May attack on Varvarin Bridge (when Nato decided to avoid attacking some objectives, such as bridges, when many civilians were likely to be in the vicinity). But these changes were basic precautions that should have been adopted from the start of the campaign in order to ensure that Nato's rules of engagement did not allow for breaches of the laws of war.
Nato also consistently failed to give "effective advance warning" of attacks which may affect civilians, as required by Protocol I. Nato officials told Amnesty International that as a general policy they chose not to issue warnings, for fear that this might endanger the crew of attacking aircraft. Nato spokesman Jamie Shea said: "There has never been an air campaign in history that has been discriminating against the military but in favour of civilians as this one even if we haven't been able to achieve - nobody can, nobody ever will - 100% perfection." (6) Few would dispute Nato's assertion that it is impossible to achieve 100% perfection in fighting a war. However, with the 5,000 metres rule and the lack of effective warnings, Nato set itself up to commit "mistakes" it then regretted.
Accurate intelligence is critical if civilian casualties are to be minimised, especially in the case of a campaign fought from the air at high altitudes and using long-range weapons. Nato appears to have focused on the planning phase, almost as if it assumed that circumstances would not change or that a change in circumstances (for example, civilians coming near the target) were of secondary importance. But serious mistakes were made even in the planning phase with lethal consequences, as apparently was the case in the attacks on Kosovar Albanian civilians in Kori_a and the attack on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.
Despite its assurances, Nato was unable, in some instances, to assess whether it was attacking genuine military targets. Some of its own assessments of battle damage were erroneous. In such a context, the risk of impact on civilians is all the greater, and the need for more effective safeguards in any future campaign is all the more important.
Amnesty International wrote to Nato during Operation Allied Force and asked that it investigate several attacks already mentioned in this article. It was told that internal investigations of several attacks had been pursued. The Nato officials added that they did not, however, consider it "useful" to disclose their findings or release details of the forces involved. They specified that no criminal or disciplinary measures were taken against those involved in the attacks that were investigated. The US Central Intelligence Agency subsequently disclosed this April that several CIA officials were disciplined for their role in misidentifying the location of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.
Nato has stated that it does not have access to Serbia and has not, therefore, been able to conduct reviews of civilian casualties caused by the bombings. But this has not stopped other reviews of the effects of the bombing, such as the US Department of Defence's Kosovo After Action Report (7). And it does not explain why investigations akin to that conducted into the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade were apparently not conducted into other, less politically sensitive instances of civilian deaths caused by Nato attacks.
On 13 June, in a welcome display of transparency by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte made public a report by an internal committee in her Office assessing the Nato bombing campaign (8). The prosecutor accepted the conclusion of the report that no criminal investigation against Nato should start, on the grounds that "either the law is not sufficiently clear or investigations are unlikely to result in the acquisition of sufficient evidence to substantiate charges against high level accused or against lower accused for particularly heinous offences" (paragraph 90).
Amnesty International respects the discretion of ICTY's prosecutor in deciding whether or not to open criminal investigations. However, the report of the ICTY assessment indicates (paragraph 90) that when Nato was requested "to answer specific questions about specific incidents, the Nato reply was couched in general terms and failed to address the specific incidents." The report also points out that the "committee has not spoken to those involved in directing or carrying out the bombing campaign". These facts must have contributed to the information gaps that the committee itself acknowledges in its report. In addition, the report does not explain what difficulties are envisaged by the Office of the Prosecutor in gathering sufficient evidence against any Nato or a Nato member state official.
Nato's lack of full cooperation in responding to ICTY's inquiries is regrettable. The fact that its prosecutor has decided not to open a criminal investigation should not lead Nato to ignore the detailed and nuanced contents of the ICTY report, or dismiss the recommendations made by Amnesty International and other organisations, including Human Rights Watch in a report published in February (9).
Nato should draw lessons from Operation Allied Force on how to maximise the protection of civilians, as required by international humanitarian law. The most powerful military alliance in the world cannot afford but to set the highest standard of protection in this regard.
* Respectively Research and Mandate Policy Adviser and Director of the Research and Mandate Program at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International in London.
(1) In a report published in June 2000, Collateral damage or unlawful killings?, Violations of the laws of war by Nato during Operation Allied Force, Amnesty International examines several aspects of the campaign, including the rules of engagement and other operational aspects, in light of international humanitarian law, Amnesty International, London, AI Index: EUR 70/18/00; http://www.amnesty.org
(2) Military Readiness Subcommittee of House Armed Services Committee, Hearing on the Readiness Impact of Operations in Kosovo, Washington, 25 October 1999.
(3) Remarks by Lieutenant General Michael C. Short at the Air Force Association's Air Warfare Symposium, Orlando, Florida, 25 February 2000.
(4) "Moral Combat - Nato at War", broadcast on BBC2 on 12 March 2000. On the same television programme General Wesley Clark, Nato's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (Saceur), denied the French allegation of a separate American operation: "That's incorrect ... I commanded all assets".
(5) "Moral Combat - Nato at War", op.cit.
(6) Press Conference, Jamie Shea and Major General Walter Jertz, Brussels, 3 May 1999
(7) http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/kaar02072000.pdf
(8) Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the Nato Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in http://un.org/icty/
(9) Human Rights Watch, Civilian Deaths in the NATO Air Campaign, New York, February 2000, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/nato
The Guardian : Dutchmen accused of Milosevic plot
Ian Black in Brussels
Tuesday August 1, 2000
The Netherlands last night denied any knowledge of a secret mission by four Dutchmen said by Yugoslavia to have been planning to kidnap or kill President Slobodan Milosevic.
Foreign ministry officials in the Hague said they had had no confirmation from Belgrade of the allegation that the four - allegedly assassins sent by western intelligence agencies - were even in custody.
A government source said the men could be tourists.
"We've been getting reports from people saying these guys were on holiday in Croatia and Montenegro as they had been last year," the source said. "The government does not exclude the possibility that the four are being used by the Yugoslav authorities as propaganda against the west. But we simply don't know at the moment."
The Yugoslav information minister, Goran Matic, announced in Belgrade that the men had planned to deliver a "Serbian head" to President Bill Clinton at the recent G8 summit in Japan.
He added that the men had been caught in Mehov Krs, an isolated corner of Serbia near Kosovo and Montenegro, about 300 miles south of Belgrade.
Mr Matic insisted that the men were professional killers and part of the "Nato military-intelligence community", not merely "weekend warriors" as the four reportedly claimed. The private view in the Hague was that they were almost certainly amateur adventurers who had got carried away.
A Dutch official confirmed the identity of one of the detainees, Gotfrides de Rie, shown giving a video confession, and the fact that he had been in the Netherlands army as a conscript doing administrative duties, but said he had left the service in 1990.
Another man on the footage shown by Mr Matic gave his name as Johannes van Iersel and said that he and his friends had been looking for people indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague.
Washington has offered a reward of up to $5m (£3.3m) for information leading to the arrest of Mr Milosevic, the Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, who is wanted for genocide, and the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.
Speaking in English with a Dutch accent, Mr Van Iersel said he knew Mr Milosevic and Gen Mladic were among those indicted.
Asked about Mr Milosevic, he said: "In case we meet him . . . I need to put him in a ski box on top of the car and drive him out of the country."
Another member of the group had a different plan, Mr Van Iersel said, which was "to kidnap and to kill the president and to decapitate his head and put it in a box and send it home".
"We have all got normal jobs in our life and at weekends we like to change into uniforms," he said.
The film also showed uniforms, maps, pocket tools, knives and cameras allegedly found with the men, as well as an SAS survival guide widely available in British bookshops.
The Yugoslav government regularly accuses western spies of plotting assassination attempts.
Western officials have made it clear that they would like to see Mr Milosevic ousted, but they have denied any attempt to assassinate him.
The Christian Science Monitor : Justice a foreign term in Kosovo
Foreign judges are one way the UN is establishing civil order, more than a year after taking control.
Richard Mertens
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, YUGOSLAVIA
The day after one of Kosovo's first war-crimes trials has begun, Judge Christer Karphammar feels close to quitting, and not for the first time.
Mr. Karphammar, a dapper Swede, is one of six foreign judges brought to Kosovo to help restore confidence in a judicial system that has floundered since the province of Serbia came under United Nations administration a year ago, following 11 weeks of NATO bombing. The foreign judges' job is to help try the most sensitive cases, especially crimes involving minority Serbs and majority ethnic Albanians.
Karphammar is struggling. Kosovo law is difficult for an outsider to understand, he says. And there are more basic problems: The day before, the trial of a Serb charged in the "ethnic cleansing" of Albanian villages had to be postponed because the courtroom lacked translation equipment.
More ominous, Karphammar had just received a death threat. "This is an everyday thing," he says, slumping wearily in his chair at the Mitrovica courthouse, a dingy four-story building surrounded by barbed wire. Threats are common not only against him, but against local judges and witnesses. "It is very, very difficult to get any justice here as long as some extremists are still operating," he says.
A working court system has long been seen as a key to peace in Kosovo, where violence against Serbs and other ethnic minorities remains a daily occurrence. Serbs have been victims of retaliatory violence ever since June 12, 1999, when NATO-led forces began to occupy Kosovo, ending the mass expulsion of ethnic Albanians and a year and a half of armed struggle between ethnic Albanians and Serbian security forces.
Punishing Serbs who committed war crimes, Western officials say, could relieve innocent Serbs of the burden of collective guilt. And punishing crimes against ethnic minorities since the war ended could end "the climate of impunity" that allows attacks to continue.
Lack of impartiality
But after more than a year, the courts are still barely working. When they do work, say police officers, UN officials, and human rights activists, they often cannot be trusted to act impartially.
Almost all court officials are ethnic Albanians and thus perceived as vulnerable, observers say, to bias against Serbs and to intimidation from their own people. David Marshall, a UN official who monitors the courts, says bluntly, "A judge who sits on an interethnic case has a gun on his back, or he potentially has."
Though few trials have been completed, officials and independent investigators say there is already evidence that judges and prosecutors treat Serbs more harshly than ethnic Albanians. A group of British lawyers who studied the issue reported problems ranging from "a lack of impartiality to a compete disregard of evidence."
The case of Miroljub Momcilovic and his sons, Boban and Jugoslav, is often cited as an example. The Momcilovics are Serbs from Gnjilane, in Kosovo's American-run sector. On July 10, 1999, five ethnic Albanians showed up at the motorcycle shop run out of their home, demanding to be let in. A gunfight broke out, drawing in American soldiers stationed nearby.
When the shooting ended, two Albanians lay dead. The Momcilovics were arrested and accused of killing Afrim Gagica, a former member of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). A local prosecutor concluded that the soldiers had killed the other man in self-defense.
A video recorded by the Momcilovics' security camera shows the Albanians brandishing guns and kicking at the outside gate. Despite this suggestion that the Momcilovics may have acted in self-defense, an Albanian judge ordered the men to stand trial for murder. When the trial opened on April 25, the tape was not admitted as evidence.
It was admitted this month, when the trial reopened after a long delay and the addition of a French judge to the five-judge panel that is hearing the case. There was also new evidence: a 130-page report from US authorities suggesting that American troops were responsible for both casualties. Neither the Americans nor the UN have explained why it took 13 months for them to produce the new evidence. Meanwhile, the Momcilovics have been in jail for more than a year.
Judges and prosecutors have shown less zeal in prosecuting ethnic Albanians. One of the more poignant cases involves the murder of Asllan Hyseni, a Gypsy from the town of Kosovo Polje. The UN police arrested four former KLA members in the killing. Three gave statements admitting involvement, but naming the fourth as the murderer. The police found parts of a gun that matched the caliber of the murder weapon, but before the pieces were analyzed, an Albanian judge ordered the men released.
Rebuilding from scratch
Kosovo's court system has been fraught with troubles from the beginning. Before the UN took over, Serbs ran the judiciary. When they left, it had to be rebuilt.
The lack of Serb judges has been especially damaging. UN officials say Serb jurists are under pressure from Belgrade not to cooperate, or are simply afraid. Of 275 judges and prosecutors in Kosovo, only one is a Serb.
In the absence of an ethnically mixed judiciary, the UN hopes that foreign judges will improve the chances of impartiality. It wants to place them in each of the province's five district courts, where they will sit with local judges on sensitive cases. It also plans for them to serve in a special court for war and ethnic crimes which could begin working this fall.
But finding qualified judges is difficult, officials say. Nor have Albanian judges exactly welcomed them.
"We didn't need the help, and it's not necessary," says Kapllan Baruti, head of the Mitrovica court. Mr. Baruti dismisses suggestions that his Albanian colleagues might not be impartial. But he acknowledges that they have received threats from Serbs and that "there could be greater risks" when they begin to try Albanian defendants, especially former KLA members, who still inspire fear in Kosovo.
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