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| Viewing file: Select action/file-type: ``xThe Guardian<br>Rory Carroll in Rome <br><br>The end of the Balkan war has brought a wave of criminal gangs into southern Italy, many of which are proving so violent and well-armed that the mafia has forged alliances with them rather than try to resist the onslaught. <br>Police have been stunned by the savagery and professionalism of recent heists in which gangs used Kalashnikovs, explosives and motorised battering rams to kill escorts in armoured cars. In the past robbers tended to shoot only if pursued or fired at first. <br><br>Albanians and mercenaries from Serbia, Montenegro and other parts of the former Yugoslavia are blamed for the attacks, which are linked to the growing trade across the Adriatic in contraband cigarettes, drugs and illegal immigrants. <br><br>Two ambushes on remote roads in the heel of Italy last week brought a wave of public shock of the kind not seen since the Red Brigade terrorists were active. <br><br>In the first attack last Monday, 10 masked men, some with Balkan accents, rammed and cornered two trucks driven by private security guards near the town of Lecce. Explosives blasted open the doors and machinegun fire raked the guards, killing three and wounding five. The gang escaped with £700,000. <br><br>In a second attack on the same day guards were said to have had a miraculous escape when a different gang intercepted a delivery of pensions. <br><br>"The abundance of arms, vehicles and determination is striking," said Alessandro Stasi, a chief appeals prosecutor. <br><br>The viciousness of the foreign gangs has persuaded most mafia leaders to step aside or try to forge alliances, according to Amato Lamberti of the Camorra Observatory, which monitors mafia activity. <br><br>"This is a new type of criminal, with new rules and new weapons. He has explosives and machine guns and doesn't hesitate to use them. They tend to be from Montenegro, Albania and recently we're seeing more and more Serbs." <br><br>Evidence that foreign and Italian gangs were collaborating emerged last May when a group attacked an armoured truck in Milan with explosives and fired more than 350 rounds, killing one guard. Several men from the Balkans were later arrested. <br><br>According to Professor Ernesto Savona, the director of Transcrime, an Italian research institute which studies international crime, Albanian gangs now control the smuggling of illegal immigrants. <br><br>A pact is believed to have been made in which the Italian gangs retained control over trade in cigarettes and arms, while the new arrivals took over prostitution rackets, and the smuggling of drugs and illegal immigrants. <br><br>Last week an Italian judge ordered Branko Perovic, the foreign minister of Montenegro since 1998, and 26 other people to stand trial on smuggling and criminal association charges. The charges against him relate to the period when he worked for the Rome office of the Yugoslav Airlines, JAT. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBalkan gangs push mafia aside ``x945163018,12917,``x``x
``xCroatia buries President Franjo Tudjman, a demi-despot who provided cover for some of the Serbian leader's excesses <br>Croatians mourn the death of President Franjo Tudjman <br>The Time Daily<br> <br><br>Slobodan Milosevic wasn't at the funeral Monday of his fellow president, Croatia's Franjo Tudjman; they were sworn enemies as a result of the Bosnian war. But even as tens of thousands of Croats turned out to mourn the former Yugoslav army general who led them through a bloody war for independence, the Serbian strongman may have felt the loss of his nemesis — after all, Tudjman and Milosevic were the very best of enemies. "Tudjman probably wouldn't have been elected in 1990 if most Croats hadn't felt threatened by Milosevic's nationalism," says TIME Central Europe bureau reporter Dejan Anastasijevic. "And Milosevic more than once used Tudjman's threats to the Serbs in Croatia and elsewhere to rally support for himself." <br>Also absent from Tudjman's funeral were the leaders of the NATO countries, which, although they'd backed him in his war against the Serbs, subsequently began to keep their distance from the authoritarian nationalist. "The West's early decisions on Croatia were made in a time of crisis management, when Tudjman's anticommunism was enough to win him support," says Anastasijevic. "Later, Tudjman's lack of enthusiasm for democracy and factors such as his denial of the Holocaust made them more uncomfortable." But while Western governments are hoping that Tudjman's passing will open the way for a new democratic turn toward Europe, the late president's legacy presents many obstacles. "Tudjman's 10 years in power saw the emergence of an oligarchy that will fight hard against any moves toward greater democracy," says Anastasijevic. "The country's democratic forces also have to act carefully so as not to provoke a coup by Tudjman's handpicked generals. So Tudjman's system will definitely outlive him." <br><br>— TONY KARON ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWhy Milosevic May Miss Neighboring Strongman``x945163077,84157,``x``x
``xBy Reuters<br>PRISTINA (Reuters) - International officials on Monday announced new measures to crack down on the violence and impunity which have plagued postwar Kosovo and mounted a staunch defense of their first six months in charge of the territory. <br><br>Bernard Kouchner, the head of Kosovo's United Nations-led administration, said he would appoint 400 extra judges and prosecutors and change the applicable law in an effort to kick start a justice system which has barely functioned. <br><br>General Klaus Reinhardt, commander of the 50,000-strong NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force, said his troops would mount more joint patrols with Kosovo's international police force. <br><br>Speaking at a news conference with other senior officials to mark half a year of KFOR and the U.N. in Kosovo, both men insisted their staff had accomplished much in a short time. <br><br>But officials also acknowledged they had not yet got a grip on crime and ethnically motivated violence, although both have declined since KFOR and the U.N. arrived after 11 weeks of NATO bombing to end repression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. <br><br>``The intervention by NATO in Kosovo in the first place was to protect a minority and to ensure the human rights of the oppressed and vulnerable,'' Kouchner said. <br><br>``Our efforts to do the same for the current minorities, particularly the Serbs, have partially failed.'' <br><br>Some 420 murders have been committed in the past six months, according to KFOR and U.N. statistics, with Serbs in particular the victims of gruesome attacks by revenge-seeking Albanians. <br><br>Kouchner said Kosovo, which legally remains part of Yugoslavia, would get its own penal code and use laws in force before it was stripped of its autonomy in 1989. <br><br>ATTEMPT TO GET JUDGES WORKING <br><br>The move is intended to win over ethnic Albanian judges and lawyers who have refused to apply current Yugoslav and Serbian legislation. But it may prove controversial in Belgrade, which insists Kosovo is still under its overall jurisdiction. <br><br>``With all these steps, Kosovo should enter the new millennium as a more secure place...where crime is not tolerated and where justice is available for all,'' Kouchner said. <br><br>The former French health minister also took aim at critics in the media who have accused his administration of being too slow to get a basic infrastructure up and running. <br><br>``Many people say we've been slow, but slow to do what?'' he said. ``Does anyone remember what we found here six months ago? Empty streets. Shuttered shops. No water. No work.'' <br><br>He cited getting health and education systems going again, establishing a customs service, and providing emergency repair kits to around 60,000 families whose homes were damaged by conflict among his administration's successes. <br><br>Reinhardt said his troops had already accomplished much of their mission by ensuring Serb forces had withdrawn and had stayed out. They were now focusing on increasing protection for Serbs and other minorities, seen as collaborators by Albanians. <br><br>``Three out of four of my soldiers are out day and night patrolling,'' the German general said. <br><br>``I now have 1,000 soldiers on static guard duty every day. Their sole purpose is the guarding of houses, churches or other sites where ethnic minorities are located,'' he added. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N., KFOR Tackle Kosovo Crime, Defend Record``x945163108,7781,``x``x
``xBy Raymond Whitaker in Trstenik, Kosovo <br>14 December 1999 <br><br>If a British eight-year-old visited Trstenik One primary school, in the Drenica valley of Kosovo, he or she might think it looked quite familiar at first. <br><br>The building is perhaps a bit spartan, but its Seventies-style design would not seem out of place in a medium-sized town in the Home Counties. There is a playground, paid for by the charity War Child and installed by Canadian peace-keepers. <br><br>The thick mud covering the assembly area, tracked all over the school by its lively population of pupils aged from six to fourteen, is more of a problem: the director, Rexhep Bazaj, 51, says that it drives him to distraction. <br><br>"Serbian tanks cracked the water pipes when they came into the grounds," the director explained. "The ground is waterlogged all round the entrance, and it is impossible to keep the school clean. I wish we could get someone to fix the problem." This is the first clue that the air of normality at Trstenik is deceptive, but there are others. <br><br>Large white tents, provided by a French charity, dot a field next to the school. Until recently classes were held there, because the main building was unusable. During the Nato bombing and the Serbian reign of terror in Kosovo, one classroom was turned into a torture chamber. <br><br>Blood-encrusted wires, staves and clothing were found by the teachers when they returned. The evidence was taken away by war-crimes investigators, who also discovered human body parts in a well just outside the grounds. <br><br>Other classrooms were used as detention cells by Serbian forces. The inmates included two teachers from the school, who were taken to Serbia with President Slobodan Milosevic's departing troops. One of the manual workers, wounded when the Serbs fired on refugees, also ended up here. <br><br>"We don't know too much about what went on at the school during the bombing, because we were hiding in the hills," Mr Bazaj said. "All I know is that when we came back the school was burnt out. We had to replace every window and door, repaint every wall and clear wreckage and filth from every classroom. It took two months." <br><br>All the school's equipment was smashed; in an alcove stand two safes that have been forced open. <br><br>Zymer Halilaj, 52, teaching an Albanian-language class of pupils aged nine and ten, says that things are somewhat easier since the windows in his classroom were restored a week earlier, before which temperatures had fallen below freezing at times. Now his main problem is the destruction of all the school's books. "I have to write everything on the blackboard for them to copy down," he complained. "It is very time-consuming." <br><br>Trstenik One and Two, a companion school a mile away, are highly unusual. Built and run by the Albanian community of the Drenica region, with help from relatives abroad, they were outside the control of the Serbian authorities. Albanians in most other parts of Kosovo were educated in private homes after 1990, when Serbia began removing the province's autonomy. But Drenica was where Albanian passive resistance turned to guerrilla warfare early in 1998, and this year's ethnic cleansing campaign is not the first time the children's education has been disrupted. <br><br>"In March 1998, when the first Serbian massacre took place not far from here, we had to close the school for a month," Mr Bazaj said. "We reopened when the international observers came, then closed again when they withdrew, just before the Nato bombing began. <br><br>"Three of our teachers and 13 pupils were killed by the Serbs during the bombing, and all the children are still traumatised to some extent. Some of them went to Macedonia, but many others were in the hills, fleeing from place to place to escape the Serbs." <br><br>Trstenik now has 932 children coming to school in two shifts, some 10 per cent below its prewar enrolment. "The destruction in this region was the worst in Kosovo, and some families are simply unable to return, because they have no homes to go to," the director said. "The pull of the Drenica is strong, and many people have come back despite the terrible conditions. More than half our pupils are in sub-standard accommodation, and many lack proper shoes and warm clothing." <br><br>A little way south and up a muddy track just out of sight of the school, Hamide Hajdini, 35, lives in a tent supplied by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, next to the ruins of her home. She shares it with her husband, their nine children – two of whom attend Trstenik – and her father-in-law aged 70. "The house was shelled, then burnt by the paramilitaries," she said. "We had to go into the mountains and live in rain, snow and cold. <br><br>"I am glad my daughters are back at school, but it is very difficult for them to study at the moment. We have just finished repairing the stable, and will move in there for the winter. Maybe it will be better then, but I don't know when we will be able to rebuild our house." <br><br>The effect on Trstenik was described by Muzafere Nika, 29, whose responsibilities as the new school administrator include discipline. The previous administrator was killed in the Serbian pogrom. "The children cannot concentrate at all, and some have problems of aggression," she said. "The 45-minute periods seem far too long to them. Discipline is definitely at a lower level than it used to be, but it is not surprising when some of them are still living in tents. Everything they had was burnt and destroyed." <br><br>Primary schools in Britain are normally covered in drawings, paintings and cut-outs produced by the children, and Trstenik used to be the same. No longer, or at least not yet: with one exception, the walls are bare, partly because materials are lacking, partly because there has not been time for the pupils to produce anything. <br><br>The exception, however, is chilling. In one corner, unaccountably left hanging when the Serbs tore everything else down, there is a realistic and skilfully executed crayon drawing of a Kosovo Liberation Army attack on a bridge. Even to the youngest British primary school pupil, that would make clear things are far from normal in this school, and will not be for some time to come.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLessons are hard in classrooms darkened by torture ``x945163149,12545,``x``x
``xITN special:<br> <br> ITN has obtained an extraordinary and shocking insight into life in Kosovo, six months after the end of the war.<br>Despite an ongoing international aid effort, and despite the presence of thousands of KFOR troops, there is still widespread suffering. <br><br>There are three major problems:<br><br>The first is that - for some - aid is not getting through. That is a crucial consideration because winter has set in, and many families are still living in tents.<br><br>Second, there is still considerable tension between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, and some Serbs are forced to rely on armed peacekeeping troops for their survival.<br><br>And third is the fact that thousands of men, forcibly taken away by Serb troops, are still unaccounted for. <br><br>ITN correspondent Mark Austin, who reported on the war in Kosovo, returned six months on to the capital Pristina, and to some of the province's remotest areas. <br><br>Kosovo is in the grip of the first snow of a bleak Balkan winter.<br><br>Like hundreds of thousands of Albanian refugees the Sedeu family is back home, but in truth it is no home at all.<br><br>In temperatures below freezing even the most basic chores are a struggle<br><br>These people were promised fuel and materials to rebuild their ruined house but six months on and in this - and many other villages - no help has arrived.<br><br>The UN relief operation is bogged down by disorganisation and delay.<br><br>Nato forces are being asked to join in the aid distribution - tracked military vehicles often the only means to reach the more remote areas.<br><br>It is slow going. For the aid agencies here it is a race against time and a race they are losing.<br><br>It is clearly going to take a long time to rebuild Kosovo, and as winter sets in there is already patience among the people here for the United Nations to do more and to do it quickly.<br><br>The West may have won the war - is it now in danger of squandering the peace.<br><br>It is a question worth asking because six months on Kosovo remains dangerous and divided.<br><br>In one town barbed wire still separates Albanians from the few Serbs left - Serbs who in Pristina count increasingly on round the clock protection of British troops.<br><br>Last week and elderly Serb couple were shot dead in their apartment. Albanian gunmen are blamed.<br><br>They have also threatened other Serbs, including Sonny Brzera - a young single mother, who lives with her baby Jack and eight-year-old son Ivan.<br><br>They have only ventured out four times in five months.<br><br>When we were there Ivan made the trip to school for the first time since the war ended.<br><br>It was an extraordinary operation: he and twenty-five other Serb children were gathered together by armed soldiers.<br><br>They were herded into armoured landrovers for the ten mile journey to a Serb enclave.<br><br>It is a frightening way to go to school but for Serb children in Pristina it is the only way.<br><br>"Constant fear for the Serbs. They're actually frightened to step foot outside their houses now. Young Ivan for instance has been in his house now for three months. The only time he gets to go out is when a K-FOR soldier takes him," Sergeant Dicky Bird from the Royal Green Jackets told ITN.<br><br>These are the lengths they have to go to to ensure the safety of Serb schoolchildren in Pristina.<br><br>Six months on and Tony Blair's declared aim of a multi-ethnic Kosovo is simply a world away.<br><br>In fields across the province lie the anti-tank mines intended for NATO's invasion force.<br><br>A ground invasion never happened of course but the mines remain, hidden now more than ever by the winter snow. <br><br>Albanian women have joined the de-mining teams but this is a job that will take years.<br><br>And for thousands of women here it is the war with no end.<br><br>Six months on their husbands are still missing.<br><br>Pranvera Sharani doesn't know whether her husband and five other men from her family are dead or languishing in Serb prisons.<br><br>"We just want to know. We cry every day," she told me. <br><br>Her neighbour is also missing her husband.<br><br>On the eve of the new millennium this remains a desperate place.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo hit by winter aid shortage ``x945255414,50606,``x``x
``xThe News York Times<br><br>By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br><br>THE HAGUE, the Netherlands -- The war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Tuesday sentenced a Bosnian Serb who had likened himself to Hitler to 40 years in prison, the toughest punishment handed down so far by the six-year-old United Nations court. <br>Goran Jelisic, 31, was found guilty on Oct. 19 of 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed while he was a shift commander at the notorious Luka prison camp in northern Bosnia during the Bosnian war. However, he was found not guilty of genocide. <br><br>Jelisic, a former farm mechanic who prosecutors said was responsible for the deaths of dozens of prisoners, had pleaded guilty and acknowledged before the court that he went by the nickname Adolf, a reference to Hitler. <br><br>During three and a half weeks of testimony earlier this fall, witnesses and prosecutors described Mr. Jelisic as responsible for a reign of terror at the Luka camp, near Brcko, in the spring and summer of 1992. <br><br>"The crimes that you, Goran Jelisic, have committed have shocked the conscience of mankind," said the presiding judge, Claude Jorda of France. <br><br>Jelisic stood silently in the dock as the sentence was read. <br><br>The charges related to the torture and murder of 13 Muslims and Croats in May 1992, shortly after the start of the Bosnian war. <br><br>Judge Jorda said that Mr. Jelisic's behavior had been "repugnant, bestial and sadistic." <br><br>"Your scornful attitude toward your victims, your enthusiasm for committing the crimes, the inhumanity of the crimes and your dangerous nature," he said, "constitute especially aggravating circumstances." <br><br>The longest prison sentence handed down by the court previously was 25 years for Dusan Tadic, another Bosnian Serb who was convicted of systematically torturing and murdering Muslims and Croats during the Bosnian war. <br><br>In the testimony against Jelisic, he was said by one witness to have boasted that he executed 20 to 30 Muslims every morning before breakfast. The ruling detailed the grisly way in which Jelisic's victims were beaten, mutilated and executed before being dumped into a river or a mass grave. <br><br>"Anyone who was here during the war knows what Adolf has done, not just to the victims but to all of us," Nedima Redzepagic, 48, a Muslim resident of Brcko, said Tuesday. "His name will be a nightmare to me my whole life. That monster deserves at least life imprisonment. But I'm very glad that he will finally be in the prison for a long, long time." <br><br>Jelisic's case set a high standard for proving the genocide charge. <br><br>Judge Jorda said that while Jelisic "presents the external signs of a perpetrator of genocide," prosecutors had not proven that genocide occurred or that Jelisic had clearly played a role in it. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWar Crimes Tribunal Sentences Bosnian Serb to a 40-Year Term ``x945255524,96083,``x``x
``xSARAJEVO (Reuters) — A U.N. expert called Monday for the immediate cleanup of pollution caused by the NATO-led bombing of Yugoslavia, saying it was endangering human health.<br><br>"The crisis in the Balkans has serious environmental impacts, and there is an immediate need for . . . cleanup work of the environmental hot spots. Otherwise there will be further risks for human health and for environment in the region," Pasi Rinne of the U.N. Environment Program for the Balkans said.<br> Rinne was presenting a report by the U.N. body at an international seminar on the environmental impact of conflicts and rehabilitation measures.<br> The report identified four major "hot spots" in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Pancevo near Belgrade, the central town of Kragujevac, the northern town Novi Sad and the Bor mining center.<br> Rinne said it was urgent to clean up the seriously contaminated wastewater canal of the Pancevo industrial complex, which flows into the Danube River, and the petrochemical factory that had suffered a mercury spill.<br> The Kragujevac Zastava car plant, the Novi Sad oil refinery and the Bor ore smelting complex also needed immediate action.<br> The impact of the Yugoslav conflict on Albania and Macedonia was related to the huge numbers of refugees they received from the Serbian province of Kosovo, the report said.<br> "Environmental problems caused by the stream of refugees into unprepared areas, with sanitation and drinking water services under enormous pressure in overcrowded refugee camps, are still an issue," Rinne said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. urges immediate cleanup of polluted areas in Yugoslavia ``x945255624,28591,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br>The New York Times<br><br>RISTINA, Yugoslavia -- The United Nations has agreed to a power-sharing pact with three Kosovo Albanian leaders, bringing them into the official administration to help govern the unruly Serbian province. <br><br>The U.N. special representative here, Bernard Kouchner, who signed the deal Wednesday, remains in charge. But he will now have a four-member Administrative Council that will propose policy and legislation. <br><br>The deal gives Kosovars an executive role in governing the province and official status and council seats to three Albanian leaders: Hashim Thaci, former political head of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army; Ibrahim Rugova of the Democratic League for Kosovo; and Rexhep Qosja of the Unified Democratic Movement. <br><br>The fourth seat was reserved for a Serb. But Serbian leaders rejected Kouchner's invitation to send a representative. <br><br>U.N. officials said the accord would dismantle the unofficial local structures that the Albanians have been running and break up the political rivalries that have frequently stymied U.N. administration. <br><br>At a news conference after the signing, Kouchner described the agreement as the "first real success of the U.N. mission in Kosovo." It would give substantial autonomy, followed by self-government, to Kosovo, in keeping with a U.N. resolution on Kosovo, he said. <br><br>The chief of the troops here, Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, also welcomed the accord, saying it would foster needed cooperation among local officials, citizens and security forces in combating the crime and revenge killings that have engulfed Kosovo since NATO forced Serbian forces to withdraw in June.<br><br>Thaci seconded that view, saying: "This structure will help reduce the level of crime. I sincerely believe that with these structures there will not be any more masked people, political mafia and other crimes. And instead of hatred, I hope we shall build a climate of tolerance and peaceful coexistence." <br><br>The Albanian leaders said they would work together and join forces to build a new Kosovo until elections for a provincial government could be organized next year. <br><br>But the deal has quite obviously left the Kosovo Serbs out in the cold. <br><br>Serbian leaders in Kosovo have yet to endorse the pact and have not nominated anyone to fill their designated council position. Ethnic Serbs have left the province in large numbers since the NATO-led forces took over. But tens of thousands remain. They have withdrawn more and more into their own enclaves for safety and complain that their political and security needs are being ignored. <br><br>Even without the participation of the Serbs, however, the U.N. administration had arrived at such an impasse in managing civil and political life in Kosovo that many here felt that an agreement was desperately needed. Residents of Pristina, the provincial capital, say fear has gripped the city, with rumors of kidnappings keeping them at home at night. <br><br>At the least, the accord will spread responsibility from the United Nations to local leaders. Thaci and Rugova are to disband their alternative governments and integrate their people into the new administration, physically moving into offices in the U.N. administrative building in the center of town. <br><br>Kosovars are to take up positions throughout the administration of the province alongside U.N. officials. There are to be 14 departments with responsibility for finance, commerce, education, justice, health and so on. <br><br>Defense will be left to the NATO-led forces. But the governing council will have an expert committee on security that will work with international troops and the police. <br><br>Kouchner will be more like a presiding officer over the council, said a spokeswoman at the United Nations, Nadia Younes. <br><br>His deputy, Jock Covey, will be co-chairman of the council, along with a rotating co-chairman from among the four Kosovo council members. <br><br>Thaci, who has headed a self-declared provisional government since the security forces took over the administration of Kosovo from the Serbs, and Rugova, who calls himself president of a shadow government elected by Albanians some years ago, appear to have buried their personal rivalry. <br><br>Yet they could not resist political digs at each other at the news conference. <br><br>Of the three Albanians, Thaci was the main person who was dragging his feet on the agreement, said a U.N. official. "He had done the most legwork setting up his own structures," the official said, "and in a sense had the most to lose." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. Agrees to Share Power With Kosovars``x945333357,43844,``x``x
``xBy Neil Buckley in Strasbourg<br>The Financial Times<br><br>European Union states and the European parliament have found a last-minute compromise to a dispute over funding for the reconstruction of Kosovo.<br><br>The dispute had threatened to leave the EU without an agreed budget at the outset of 2000.<br><br>The deal ends a dispute that has been bubbling for weeks between parliament, the European Commission and the EU's Council of Ministers over how to find the E500m ($508m) the EU had pledged at a donor conference this summer to humanitarian aid in Kosovo and for rebuilding the Serbian province next year.<br><br>But while the EU's institutions agreed on how to pay for a multiannual programme for Kosovo worth E360m a year, they put off a decision on where the remaining E140m should come from until next year.<br><br>The delay opens the EU to the criticism that it is failing to deliver on its promises at a time when it is trying to increase its foreign policy clout.<br><br>EU ambassadors late on Wednesday accepted a deal offered by parliament, which is expected to be rubberstamped by EU ministers on Thursday morning.<br><br>That should clear the way for parliament, which has the final vote on the budget, to then approve it.<br><br>The EU's pledge for Kosovo was one of several foreign-policy commitments made after the Union's draft budget for 2000 had already been drawn up.<br><br>EU ministers had originally insisted that the E500m pledge for Kosovo should be financed partly by a 10 per cent cut in other external aid programmes.<br><br>Parliament refused, saying the money should come from unspent funds in other parts of the budget, together with an overall increase in the Union's external aid budget.<br><br>Wednesday's compromise involved E60m unspent from this year's budget being granted to Kosovo, with E300m found from other sources in next year's budget, of which E40m would come from existing external aid projects.<br><br>But Pat Cox, European Liberal Democrat leader in parliament and set to become the assembly's president in the second half of its five-year term, said the issue was one of principle.<br><br>"You can't deal with important foreign-policy investments like south-east Europe on the cheap," he said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKOSOVO: EU resolves funding dispute ``x945333860,70739,``x``x
``xBERLIN (Reuters) - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright turned down appeals from Yugoslav opposition leaders Friday to lift Western sanctions against Belgrade, saying free elections must be held first. <br>Speaking after meeting Serbian opposition leaders and Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, Albright restated Washington's determination not to lift the embargo on air flights and oil so long as Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic holds on to power. <br><br>"I can understand why they (the opposition leaders) are voicing these ideas," Albright told a news conference. <br><br>"We have said we are ready to suspend oil and flight bans on the holding of free and fair elections. We consider this a very important way of indicating that we are ready to integrate a freely elected Yugoslavia into a stable Balkans." <br><br>Leaders of the Serbian democratic opposition, including Zoran Djindjic, leader of the pro-western Democratic Party, and Vuk Draskovic, head of the nationalist Serbian Renewal Movement, said the sanctions were counterproductive. <br><br>They said the embargo was forcing Serbia, already cut off from the outside world in the aftermath of the Kosovo conflict, ever deeper into isolation. <br><br>Serbia has been subject to various international sanctions since 1992 over its role in a series of Balkan wars. <br><br> <br>SANCTIONS TURNING SERBIA INTO A "PRISON" <br><br>"The sanctions are against the people of Serbia and are a Western-built wall transforming our state into a prison," Draskovic told reporters. <br><br>Djindjic, who has a tense relationship with Draskovic, also called on the West to provide more help in the opposition movement's push to oust Milosevic from power by peaceful means. <br><br>"The West would help if it lifted sanctions," he told Reuters in an interview. "Otherwise the people say that the West does not respect us because it does not follow our requests." <br><br>Finnish Foreign Minister Tarja Halonen, representing the EU presidency, said it was "in the hands of the people" to fullfil the preconditions for lifting the blockade. <br><br>Europe has taken a less firm line on the sanctions than Washington, with one German government source saying that Berlin supported their easing. <br><br>But the source ruled out an early unilateral move by Europe to lift sanctions, saying that could only happen in step with the United States. <br><br>Albright praised Djukanovic for tiny Montenegro's democratic stand against threats from Serbia and said that although economic sanctions would remain in force, the United States would step up humanitarian aid efforts. <br><br>Djukanovic said: "Today, Montenegro is facing great repression because Milosevic correctly identifies that the threat to his regime is coming from Montenegro. <br><br>"I hope he is right in his fears. Despite his resistance, we are stepping down the road to democracy." <br><br>Both Albright and Halonen said that more fuel would be sent by the West to towns controlled by pro-democracy forces under the "Energy for Democracy" program. <br><br>Albright described the talks as the beginning of a "new phase" in bringing democracy to Yugoslavia. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.S. rejects Yugoslav opposition call to end sanctions``x945516144,42547,``x``x
``xWASHINGTON, Dec 17 (Reuters) - The United States and the European Union said on Friday they would continue to push for democratic change in Yugoslavia and work with various forces to promote such change. <br>In a joint statement following a meeting between President Bill Clinton and an EU delegation led by European Commission President Romano Prodi and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, the two vowed to keep up their presence and efforts for change in the Balkans. <br><br>"We agree on the central importance of promoting democratic change in Yugoslavia and will remain engaged in enhancing the security of the region until that happens," the statement said. <br><br>Forces from EU nations and the United States are among the KFOR peacekeeping troops deployed in Kosovo for about six months since NATO-led troops occupied Kosovo following an 11-week bombing campaign of Yugoslavia. <br><br>The United States and European Union said they will keep working with pro-democracy opposition leaders in Yugoslavia and the Western-leaning government of Montenegro, which along with Serbia makes up the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>"We support the efforts of the freely elected government of Montenegro to advance political and economic reform within the FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia)," the statement said. <br><br>It reaffirmed efforts by NATO's KFOR and the United Nation's civilian administration to set the foundations for an effective administration in the southern Serbian province. <br><br>The statement said the United States and European Union also hoped to see democratic change in Croatia, where politicians are readying to replace the late President Franjo Tudjman. <br><br>"We call upon Croatia to take steps to ensure that its parliamentary and presidential election processes are free and fair, in accordance with democratic principles and OSCE (Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe) standards," the statement said. <br><br>The communique also applauded efforts by southeastern European countries to improve their investment climate, fight corruption, control arms and weapons of mass destruction and advance democracy and human rights throughout the region. <br><br>"We intend to work closely with southeastern Europe to take full advantage of the opportunity before us at the verge of a new century to forge greater stability and advance the region's integration into the euro-Atlantic mainstream."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xEU, U.S. pledge to work for change in Yugoslavia``x945516180,10626,``x``x
``xSARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) _ Snow blanketed Bosnia and Yugoslavia on Friday, closing schools in the Bosnian capital, where 3 feet of snow fell _ the most in Sarajevo in 50 years. <br>Bosnia's state electric company mobilized 1,000 workers to try to keep power flowing. The state news agency warned a state of emergency might be required if the snow continues. <br><br>In Yugoslavia, some bus service was curtailed in the suburbs of the Serbian capital, Belgrade. Schools and factories in the central Serbian town of Gornji Milanovac were closed. <br><br>Several inches of snow covered the main north-south highway between Belgrade and Nis. Serbian television warned motorists not to venture out without snow tires or chains. <br><br>Airports in Sarajevo and in the Bosnian towns of Mostar, Banja Luka and Tuzla were closed and many roads were impassable. <br><br>In the south, the rain-swollen Neretva River slipped over its banks Thursday, flooding ground-floor apartments and a dozen of houses in Mostar, forcing the evacuation of about 400 families to a neighboring town. <br><br>Radio Mostar reported that floodwaters demolished pedestrian bridges near the site of a 16th century stone bridge that had been destroyed in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. <br><br>In the Bosnian Serb part of the country, snow knocked down power lines, leaving several towns without electricity. <br><br>Roads in mountain areas of Yugoslavia's smaller republic, Montenegro, also were closed due to snow, while flooding swept away a bridge over the Moraca River in Uvac, 15 miles north of the capital, Podgorica. No one was injured in the bridge collapse. <br><br>Most Montenegrin roads were blocked by snow. Northbound bus service was halted and the main railroad link to the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, from the coastal resort of Bar was shut down.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xHeavy snowfall could prompt state of emergency in Bosnia``x945516206,97801,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Dec 17 (Reuters) - The Yugoslav army and Montenegrin police agreed on Friday to bury their differences and to cooperate to reduce tension in the Western-leaning republic following an airport standoff last week. <br>A joint statement issued after a meeting of the Yugoslav Second Army, the Yugoslav Navy and the Montenegrin Interior Minstry said all sides agreed to work together to overcome and prevent any possible misunderstandings. <br><br>It said: "Well-organised and coordinated cooperation can prevent possible misunderstandings, which will significantly reduce overall tensions in Montenegro." <br><br>The meeting in Podgorica came ten days after a tense standoff between Montenegrin police and Yugoslav air force troops at the republic's main airport, apparently linked to a dispute over a planned hangar building. <br><br>The military has said some army units will remain on raised combat readiness at the airport outside Podgorica as long as Montenegrin police stay near the disputed area. <br><br>Friday's statement made no mention of the December 8 standoff. <br><br>"With the aim to further cooperate in fields determined by the Constitution and Law, the highest ranking officials of the Interior Ministry, the Yugoslav Second Army and the Yugoslav Navy agreed on further contacts, exchange of information and continued cooperation," the statement said. <br><br>Montenegro, a junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, avoided direct involvement in the conflict between Serbia and NATO over Kosovo earlier this year. <br><br>The two Yugoslav republics have been increasingly at odds since August, when Podgorica urged Belgrade to reform the federation and asked for more autonomy in running its own finance, defence and foreign policy. <br><br>The Western-leaning Montenegrin leadership has threatened to hold a referendum on independence if Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic does not agree to reform the state. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav army and Montenegrin police bury hatchet``x945516238,15124,``x``x
``xGIOIA DEL COLLE, Italy, Dec 17 (Reuters) - British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon on Friday warned Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic that the West was keeping a wary eye on him -- and would respond to any more aggression. <br>"It is important that he remains contained," Hoon told reporters after visiting British troops in the Balkans and Harrier jump jet pilots stationed at the southern Italian air base of Gioia del Colle. <br><br>Six months after the end of the NATO air war over Kosovo, Hoon was as blunt as his predecessor George Robertson in condemning Milosevic. <br><br>"He is a man who has repeatedly broken his word not only to his own people but also to Western nations. We have to make sure he does not have an opportunity to take advantage of us, we need to keep a watchful eye on Milosevic," Hoon said. <br><br>The warning came amid new tensions between Serbia and Montenegro -- the last two remaining states making up the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. <br><br>Yugoslav armed forces accused the Western-leaning Montenegrin state of "playing with fire" earlier this month after it challenged Yugoslav control of the military side of Montenegro's main airport. <br><br>"Clearly there is tension and there is tension about the airport on both sides. We have to make sure they do not step over the mark," Hoon said. <br><br>"Across the region we want to ensure we are in a position to respond to Milosevic if necessary." <br><br>Hoon flew into Pristina on Thursday to visit the 4,000 British troops patrolling war-ravaged Kosovo. <br><br>"There is some progress. It is very slow. One of the key questions is how are we able to pull it all together," he said. <br><br>Since taking office two months ago, Hoon has consistently highlighted "overstretch" as a major problem for British troops acting around the world from Sierra Leone to East Timor. The peacemaking commitments have been a major drain on resources. <br><br>On this, his first trip to the Balkans as defence secretary, he announced that British forces would be dramatically cut next year in Bosnia from the current level of 3,300 to 2,000 by the end of next year. <br><br>But NATO's troop commitment would not be reduced as Canada and the Netherlands would be making up the shortfall. <br><br>At present, Hoon said, there were no plans to cut British troop levels in Kosovo.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWest keeping wary on Milosevic - UK's Hoon``x945516272,57033,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>GORAZDEVAC, Kosovo -- Zivko Maksic walks around this village as if he were taking exercise in a prison yard. An electrician, he used to work at the beer distillery in Pec, about six miles away, but now it is too dangerous to travel there. In fact, he cannot even tend his fields, less than a mile from the village. When he tries, neighboring Albanians shoot at him. <br>Mr. Maksic, 54, is almost philosophical about his narrowed world. "The land we have that's close, we work that," he said. "But the land farther on isn't safe. We tried to work it but they attacked us." <br><br>Mr. Maksic is a beefy man who looks pale, ill and exhausted. He and his friends Radomir Jeremic, 36, and Sinisa Jovovic, 22, were standing chatting idly on a recent day, under a low roof against a freezing drizzle. <br><br>"We have no access to the town, that's the hardest thing," Mr. Jovovic said, referring to Pec. He is single, but cannot possibly think about getting married. He had a girlfriend in Pec but "that's finished now." <br><br>The Serbs in this last remaining Serbian village near Pec are surrounded by hostile Albanians and guarded by Italian troops from the international peacekeeping force that arrived in June. The troops have checkpoints at every road into the village to protect this enclave of "multi-ethnicity" in western Kosovo, but they do little patrolling. <br><br>In fact, there is shooting nearly every night, an effort to scare the Serbian villagers, and Albanians often cut off the electricity. <br><br>The other night, when a grenade went off and broke the windows of the last operating coffee shop, the Italians were nowhere to be found, Mr. Maksic said. When asked about the attack, the Italian captain, who would not give his name, asked in apparent innocence, "Oh, is that what happened?" <br><br>Still, the easygoing Italians are popular here. Residents cannot imagine how they could live without the protection. <br><br>"The Serbs here are O.K.," the Italian captain said. "Our problems are with the Albanians." <br><br>In the windows of a nearby shop, there was a pathetic collection of goods, all from Serbia: vodka and fruit brandy, filthy cans of tinned fish, some salt, cheap cigarettes and "Only!" brand cola and orange soda. <br><br>Pec, like the rest of Kosovo, is overflowing with goods from Albania and Macedonia. But the Italians say they have better things to do than to shop for the Serbs of Gorazdevac. German troops do bring in fresh bread from a bakery they have restarted in their zone, near Prizren. <br><br>But the only vegetables available are those the residents can grow or preserve. There are no newspapers, nor access to any Serbian-language media -- print or broadcast. <br><br>There have been a few protected convoys to Pec, Mr. Maksic said. "But they attack the buses with stones," he said. "Two buses went through Pec and they broke all the windows, and now people are frightened to go." <br><br>The Yugoslav government helps a little. Pensions are paid on time but do not go very far. A truck convoy comes about every 10 days, bringing supplies and animal feed, but it is not enough. <br><br>Other than farming, there is not much to do here. The only factory in town, which made cheap shoes, shut down five years ago. The peacekeepers sometimes pay residents 2 German marks an hour (about $1.10) to clean up common areas or about 5 marks an hour (plus fuel) if residents provide their own tractors. <br><br>Part of the tension has stemmed from the return of Serbs to Gorazdevac. Some fled at the end of the war and have come back; others have come from other parts of Kosovo. Some have come to stay; more have looked around, then left again. <br><br>By the end of October, about 600 Serbs were living here, about 60 percent of the population before the war this spring, but many Kosovo Albanians are convinced there are war criminals among the Serbs who use the protection of the peacekeepers' convoys to cover their movements. The peacekeepers have been reluctant to escort Albanians through Gorazdevac, even from nearby Pocesce, whose only access road to Pec runs through here. <br><br>In a report by the human rights division of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Gorazdevac is called "perhaps the most delicately balanced single issue" in western Kosovo. "It was also the most likely to initiate violence," the report concluded. <br><br>In general, the Serbs here deny deep feelings of guilt or responsibility over the mistreatment of Albanians by Serbian troops and militias, or at least they do not express such feelings to a foreigner. "The Albanians started this long ago," Mr. Maksic said. "They wanted a Kosovo republic, to leave Yugoslavia. They asked for too much." <br><br>Just outside the village are some burned-out homes where Albanians once lived. The Serbs say they know little about what happened. Mr. Jovovic suggested that the Albanians "moved out on their own," and that to prevent having Serbs use the houses, "they burned them themselves." <br><br>When told how bizarre that sounded, Mr. Jovovic shrugged. <br><br>Milijanko Jeremic, 45, and no relation to Radomir, said the problems all stemmed from "two policemen who came from Serbia during the war, and they made all the problems." The villagers, he insisted, were guilty of nothing. He shrugged. "It was war." <br><br>Of course he knew the Albanians suffered, Milijanko Jeremic said. But now, he said: "All the Turks, the Croats and the Serbs are being pushed out. It was a war, and a nasty war. But should only one people live here now? Is that what America wants? I have nothing in Serbia. My house and my country are here." (Serbs often call local Muslims Turks, a relic of Ottoman rule.) <br><br>He kicked at the grass. "We're not pessimists," he said, then laughed. "Of course, we're not big optimists, either." <br><br>Bozidar Radulovic, 65, said there was nothing good for anyone during the war. "But now we're in a bad situation," he said. "We live like in a quarantine, on a reservation." He pointed down the road to the coffeehouse, where the grenade exploded. <br><br>"There's lots of pressure on us," he said. "They provoke us. That shop was the only place we go out and they bombed it. We're afraid to go anywhere." <br><br>Suddenly there was an eerie screaming. In the center of the village, in a yard, Mr. Jovovic was helping Mr. Maksic slaughter a pig. As the blood pumped from its throat, the pig continued to squeal. <br><br>Aco Dakic, 57, fixing the tiles on his roof in the rain, barely looked up at the sound. He said about 10 houses of Serbian families had been burned on the outskirts of the village, and about six belonging to Albanians. His wife helped hold the ladder. <br><br>Will he stay in Gorazdevac? Mr. Dakic said: "Well, my wife wants to stay. Anyway, where can we go? We don't have anywhere else to go. Whatever we have, we have here. For 35 years, whatever I could earn or build is here." <br><br>They have three daughters, however -- 16, 19 and 20. "And what kind of life will they have here?" Mr. Dakic asked. His wife turned away. He swore an oath. "We don't know anything," he said bitterly. "We have no information." <br><br>Asked about the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, who had been popular with Kosovo's Serbs, Mr. Dakic said: "That's a political thing. I don't want to get into it." <br><br>What about his Albanian neighbors? Mr. Dakic looked upset. "We were fine, almost like brothers," he said. "But the Albanian leaders and our leaders needed to find a common language, not violence." <br><br>He stopped, then asked: "Why did NATO come? To push the Serbs out? I can't understand why they can't put things in order." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xStrangers in a Familiar Land: The Serbs of Kosovo``x945516456,92049,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic In Belgrade And Raymond Whitaker In Pristina <br>19 December 1999 <br><br>The jailing in Serbia of Flora Brovina, an Albanian paediatrician, writer and women's activist, has attracted international protest and highlighted one of the unresolved issues of the Kosovo war – the estimated 1,500 Albanian political prisoners still held by the Belgrade regime. <br><br>Dr Brovina, 50, was arrested in Pristina in April and has now been sentenced to 12 years by a court in the Serbian city of Nis for "conspiring to commit hostile acts" and "terrorism" aimed at promoting the independence of Kosovo. The evidence against her included possession of wool donated by Oxfam, which she distributed to displaced Albanian women to knit sweaters. The British-based aid organisation also has projects in Serbia, but as Nikola Barovic, a Belgrade lawyer, put it: "In Stalin's time one got 10 years for nothing. Here one gets 12." <br><br>Another Serbian legal figure, Natasha Kandic, head of the Humanitarian Law Centre, said: "The sentence against Flora Brovina is a political measure against her [and] clearly has nothing to do with the alleged crime Brovina has committed." <br><br>Other Serbian opposition groups described her imprisonment as "ethnic revenge", especially after it emerged that both the judge in Dr Brovina's trial, Marina Milanovic, and the prosecutor, Miodrag Surla, come from Kosovo. Both worked in the district court of Pristina, which hurriedly moved to Nis when the Serbian administration withdrew from the province in June. Serbian judges are named by parliament and are considered part of the regime. <br><br>Although she suffers from health problems – she has high blood pressure and slight paralysis on her left side – Dr Brovina is reported to have refused to lodge an appeal against her sentence. Married to Ajri Begu, who is now an economic adviser to the United Nations administration in Kosovo, she supported herself during her medical studies by writing for magazines, and has published several books of poetry. She is unusual in her generation of Albanian women for her involvement in public affairs – in 1992 she founded the League of Albanian Women in Kosovo to protest against Serbian rule and to provide humanitarian assistance to Albanian women and children. <br><br>Although she insisted the organisation was non-political, she organised numerous protests. When Serbian forces staged bloody reprisals in the Drenica region early in 1998, she led 20,000 women in a march through Pristina. <br><br>The Serbian authorities had probably marked Dr Brovina out as an opponent much earlier, however. Her PhD thesis was on a spate of mysterious poisonings in Kosovo in 1990, when thousands of Albanian schoolchildren were sent to hospital with head and stomach pains and vomiting. Some experts blamed mass hysteria, but a UN toxicologist who analysed the victims' blood and urine samples found signs of sarin poisoning. Several years later it emerged that the Yugoslav army had produced the deadly nerve gas. <br><br>Gradimir Nalic, of the Yugoslav Committee of Lawyers for Human Rights, said Dr Brovina was "a scapegoat". "The whole process against her," he added, "showed the arrogance of the regime. There was also a message in that for the first time it was not an anonymous, simple ethnic Albanian on trial, but an intellectual, a physician, a human rights activist." <br><br>Baton Haxhiu, editor of Koha Ditore, Kosovo's most prominent Albanian-language newspaper, described Dr Brovina as a "hostage" of Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic. "Her imprisonment, with the Serbian elections coming up, helps him to show his people that Kosovo is not lost," he said. "Milosevic can say: 'This is how we deal with separatists and terrorists on our soil.' It is also useful in his dealings with the international community – Flora and the rest of the Albanians held in Serbia can be used as bargaining chips as he tries to escape isolation." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBelgrade's jailing of activist sparks international protest ``x945679903,47503,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br>Raymond Whitaker <br>19 December 1999 <br><br>Avoid Malisevo on market day: if I were composing a travel guide to Kosovo, that would be my first piece of advice. <br><br>When I first made acquaintance with it, Malisevo – the "s" is pronounced as a "sh" – was the most sinister place in the Balkans. The Kosovo Liberation Army had seized the town in 1998 during a brief and bloody attempt at conventional warfare against the Serbs, and unwisely declared it the "capital" of liberated Kosovo. <br><br>In revenge the Serbs levelled Malisevo. Driving down its snowy, ruined main street at dusk in January, with not a soul about bar the heavily armed paramilitary police of the Serbian interior ministry, was to know how Albanians felt under Serbian rule. You shrank down in your car and tried to make yourself invisible. <br><br>That was the biggest change when I returned in June, just after the Serbian forces had been replaced by multinational peacekeepers. Now it was the Albanians who were walking tall and the Serbs who were creeping about, if they dared to venture out at all. Despite the thousands of dead, the devastation on all sides, the long summer evenings outside the Grand Hotel in Pristina were like one big party. Cars raced past with red-and-black Albanian flags flapping from the windows; joyous reunions were taking place on every side. <br><br>Not, however, in Malisevo. The town had suffered so much destruction, so many dead, that life was slower to return. But Kosovo this year has been a place of changes as sudden as those of its climate – until you open the curtains in the morning, you never know whether you will be greeted by rain, sunshine, heavy snow or an overnight thaw. <br><br>Descending into Malisevo on a Thursday this month, I was confronted by an impenetrable mile-long traffic jam. Market stalls lined both sides of the street and hundreds of people were strolling past them, narrowing the passage still further. Two lines of K-For military vehicles, heavy trucks delivering aid, tractors and the myriad private cars that now clog every road in Kosovo were trying to push through the crowds. It took an hour to get from one end of town to the other and my appointment in Prizren was a dead loss. <br><br>From grim oppression in January to euphoria in June to chaos in December: that has been my experience of Kosovo in 1999. The highway to Pristina from the snarled-up Macedonian border, where truck drivers wait for days to pay the taxes and bribes necessary to gain entry to Kosovo, is a good barometer of the changes. At the beginning of the year the restaurants and petrol stations along the way were open, but doing next to no business in a stagnant Serbian-run economy. All were destroyed in the war and in the summer you had to buy your fuel, often containing more water than petrol, from sellers waving bottles at the side of the road. <br><br>Now Serbian place names have been defaced on every road sign and at the turn-off to south-western Kosovo the names Kukes and Tirana have been added. All the filling stations have re-opened and more are being built. The same with restaurants and bars: a flood of investment has come into Kosovo, much of it from the crime lords of northern Albania, feeding off the influx of K-For troops, UN officials, journalists and the hundreds of aid organisations whose logos cover every available surface. Fortunes are being made by some, widening the gap between the top and the bottom of Kosovar Albanian society. <br><br>After the Serbs removed Kosovo's autonomy a decade ago, the Albanians did their best to ignore the authorities. They set up their own schools and clinics in private homes and went into business for themselves, funded to a large extent by remittances from relatives working in Germany and Switzerland. The Serbs, clinging to their state jobs, were often worse off. <br><br>Now the UN is in charge but the Albanians are still going their own way. And, without the sense of shared adversity which used to bind them, the result is anarchy. Pristina is a crazy place where the street and traffic lights do not work, there is no phone or postal service and the water and power are off for several hours a day, but everyone is frantically doing business amid the destruction. You can buy anything you need at street stalls and eat and drink well at restaurants equipped with their own generators. "We must wean the Albanians away from their parallel administration mentality," a UN official told me, but the Albanians do not appear to be listening. <br><br>The price, of course, is that guns rule. At first they were used against the Serbs, who were often driven out despite the protests of Albanians who knew them. In the past few weeks Albanians have increasingly become the victims. When it comes to crime, Kosovars – many still recovering from the shock of spending time in Albania during the war – are unanimous that the problem comes from there. But there are political attacks as well, often blamed on the former Kosovo Liberation Army, which seems to have no shortage of weapons despite having supposedly been disarmed by Nato. "If you want to see how many guns there still are in Kosovo, just be here on Millennium Eve, when they'll all be fired in the air," one resident of Pristina told me. <br><br>For all the Wild West atmosphere, Pristina and the other large towns of Kosovo will be considerably better off this winter than the countryside. Rural Albanians took the brunt of Serbian brutality this year, as they have done every other year, and many who lost everything have migrated into the towns. But as the year 2000 comes in, hundreds of thousands of people across Kosovo will be huddled in tents or one hastily repaired room of their wrecked homes, just trying to keep warm. <br><br>Seeking out these pockets of deprivation, we stopped at a curve on a mountainous road to answer the call of nature. A short way down a dirt track leading off the road, I came across piles of clothing slowly rotting into the soil and a moment later noticed the bullet casings still littering the tarmac where we had parked. Such relics of the summer's horrors are a sobering reminder, not only of what Kosovo has been through in 1999, but of how far into the new millennium its inhabitants will have to go before they can hope for something like normality.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xA year in Kosovo: from Serbian oppression to the Wild West ``x945679956,15792,``x``x
``xThe Sunday Times<br>James Clark Home Affairs Correspondent <br><br>THE western allies who won the Kosovo conflict stand on the brink of losing the peace, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Nato's new secretary-general, has warned. <br>The former British defence secretary said the province was on a knife-edge and could be plunged into chaos again if the United Nations is unable to enforce the peace agreement won earlier this year. <br><br>Speaking in Brussels last week, Robertson said: "There's a very thin line between success and failure - and we're walking that line at the moment. I believe we will win. I believe that again the stakes are too high to lose Kosovo to another mono-ethnic state. <br><br>"We had Bernard Kouchner, the UN representative in Kosovo, delivering a pretty tough message to foreign ministers from 45 nations that if they don't start giving the UN the money to get the civilian police in there, to get the teachers back to the schools, to get the administration going, to get this Kosovo protection corps under way, then we'll lose the peace." <br><br>A Nato source said last night that Robertson was concerned not only for the future of Kosovo, but that failure "to finish the job" would reflect badly on the organisation's credibility. <br><br>He said: "The money is arriving very slowly. What must not happen is that we find ourselves unable to pay the wages of the men we have taken from the <br><br>various factions and brought into the peace corps. If that happens, mafia organisations are just waiting to employ them." <br><br>Robertson, who has shuttled between 21 countries in the two months since his appointment,also indicated for the first time how close Nato had come to sending in ground troops before Belgrade capitulated. <br><br>"I have no doubt that if we had come to crunch decisions, and we were fast approaching that, the alliance would have stuck. The credibility of Nato would have been deeply damaged if we had not succeeded." <br><br>Turning to the growing scale of the Chechnya crisis, Robertson rejected demands that Nato intervene: "I have not yet met anyone in their right mind who suggests we take military action against Russia for what they are doing in Chechnya today." <br><br>Russia could stabilise under a different leadership, he said: "There will be presidential election next year. President Yeltsin will hand over to a successor. There are again inside Russia the seeds of future progress."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNato warns of more chaos in Kosovo ``x945679996,56774,``x``x
``xNando Media<br><br>BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (December 21, 1999 1:26 a.m. EST <a href="http://www.nandotimes.com">http://www.nandotimes.com</a>) - The Bosnian Serb general who kept Sarajevo under siege for nearly three years, transforming the former Olympic host into a symbol of suffering and ethnic intolerance, was arrested Monday by NATO troops. <br><br>The soldiers arrested Stanislav Galic under a sealed indictment issued by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, tribunal spokesman Paul Risley said. <br><br>At least 20 peacekeepers detained Galic and placed a hood over his head before taking him away, the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug reported, citing eyewitnesses. Other witnesses told The Associated Press that Galic was seized after cars blocked his vehicle. <br><br>The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity. <br><br>The arrest leaves Radovan Karadzic, the wartime leader of Bosnia's Serbs, and Ratko Mladic, his senior general, as the most important figures from the Bosnian Serb military command structure who remain at large. <br><br>Risley said Galic would stand trial for his role as commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the Bosnian Serb army during the 1992-1995 siege of Sarajevo. <br><br>"For 44 months, the Sarajevo Romanija Corps implemented a military strategy which used shelling and sniping to kill, maim, wound and terrorize the civilian inhabitants of Sarajevo," read Galic's indictment released by the tribunal. <br><br>"People were even injured and killed inside their own homes, being hit by bullets that came through the windows," it said. "The attacks on Sarajevo civilians were often unrelated to military actions and were designed to keep the inhabitants in a constant state of terror." <br><br>Gen. Radislav Krstic, accused of genocide in the fall of Srebrenica in 1995, and Gen. Momir Talic, alleged architect of the bloody purge of Croats and Muslims from northern Bosnia in 1992, were arrested on tribunal charges earlier this year. <br><br>"This latest arrest ... is in line with my policy of targeting senior figures in the chain of command for crimes committed during periods of armed conflict," said Carla Del Ponte, the tribunal's chief prosecutor. <br><br>In Brussels, Belgium, NATO said the arrest was a "warning to all those indicted for war crimes and still at large." <br><br>At U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke called for the arrest of other suspected war criminals. The capture "is evidence enough that we have not finished with the problems of Bosnia," he said. "We're not turning away from Bosnia." <br><br>Before the start of the Bosnian war, Galic served as a colonel with the Yugoslav army. He was promoted to general after taking command of the Sarajevo-Romanija corps. <br><br>Recently, he was an adviser to Nikola Poplasen, the hard-line Bosnian Serb president removed from office in March by international officials administering Bosnia. Poplasen was fired for opposing the Dayton peace accords, which ended the war. <br><br>Poplasen said the arrest was an attempt to "humiliate the Serb population." <br><br>The Bosnian Serb defense ministry complained the tribunal unfairly targeted their part of the country and "nobody is arresting generals from the Muslim-Croat federation." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO arrests Bosnian Serb commander who directed siege of Sarajevo ``x945771300,58190,``x``x
``xTHE HAGUE (Reuters) - The U.N. criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Monday confirmed the arrest of General Stanislav Galic, commander of the Bosnian Serb unit which laid siege to Sarajevo during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.<br><br>``We now have the three commanders of the area occupied by the Bosnian Serbs,'' prosecution spokesman Paul Risley said.<br><br>Galic, who headed the Bosnian Serb's Sarajevo-Romanija corps, is charged with violations of the laws and customs of war and crimes against humanity for allegedly initiating a shelling and sniping campaign against the besieged Bosnian capital.<br><br>He was expected to arrive in the Hague within the next 48 hours and make his initial appearance before the tribunal this week, Risley said.<br><br>Tanjug reported the Bosnian Serb Interior Ministry as saying the retired general and advisor to ousted Bosnian Serb hard-line president Nikola Poplasen, had been arrested by the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) this morning.<br><br>The arrest adds to that of General Radislav Krstic, accused of genocide at Srbrenica in 1995, and Bosnian Serb military chief Momir Talic, charged with a bloody purge of Muslims and Croats in northwestern Bosnia in 1992. ``They reported to (Radovan) Karadzic and General (Ratko) Mladic who are the last two senior individuals remaining,'' Risley said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. Tribunal Confirms Bosnian Serb General Arrest``x945771336,91301,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>RISTINA, Yugoslavia -- In the absence of a strong international police force in Kosovo and facing a rise in crime, the commander of peacekeeping troops in the province has ordered his soldiers back out onto the streets in force. <br><br>He is not happy about it, but six months into the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, he says the 1,800-member U.N. police force was not able to cope. <br> <br><br>"We realized there was no success and that we had to back up the police," the commander, Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, said Monday in an interview at his headquarters, perched on a hill above Pristina, the Kosovo capital. <br><br>Over the weekend a marked increase of troops was evident here, as they set up road blocks to spot-check cars for weapons and to look at the identification papers of drivers and passengers. The troops were reacting to the increase in violence of recent weeks and a fear of kidnapping. <br><br>Reinhardt joined in the call for nations to contribute more people to the police force, but in the meantime he is stepping in to fill the gap, sending some of his forces out from their bases by the hundreds. "You cannot fight the high-level criminal with a tankist or a soldier -- they are not trained to do it," he said. "But there is a gap which we try to bridge by being there." <br><br>Reinhardt took over command of the 50,000 members of the peacekeeping force for Kosovo in October, after his predecessor, Gen. Mike Jackson, said the job was no longer one for the military, but for the U.N. police and civil administration. <br><br>Now two months later, Reinhardt and the overwhelming presence of his soldiers represent the only realistic chance to prevent violence in the province. Alongside ethnic killings and intimidation -- mostly by Albanians against Serbs and other minorities -- there has also been an increase of crime among the Albanians and a spread of organized crime, all of which falls to the general's lot. <br><br>The general, who began his military career in the German Mountain Infantry and went through the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. in the 1970s, is a gray-haired, unassuming man. In his loose-fitted German camouflage jacket, he lacks the charisma of the tall, battered figure of Jackson. <br><br>Yet in his quiet way, he is tackling the nasty climate of ethnic retaliation with a firm resolution and some unorthodox ideas that he says are bearing results. <br><br>Each of his five military brigades in Kosovo has 120 patrols out on the streets, in the villages and countryside every day, he said, and 1,000 of his forces are day and night guarding Serbian families in their homes and protecting buildings and installations. <br><br>He is moving troops from areas that are relatively calm, dominated by one ethnic group, to mixed areas, or "fault lines," where there is violence. He has boosted the troop level in the Serbian area of Kosovo Polje, just outside Pristina, to 2,000 from 600, and improved security considerably. <br><br>He has also sent an extra battalion to the town of Gniljane, in the American sector, and moved in three companies to protect the various ethnic minorities -- Serbs, Muslim Slavs or Goranis and Turks -- in and around the town of Prizren in southern Kosovo. <br><br>German forces in the Prizren area have been criticized for not doing enough to stop the intimidation of minorities there, but the general sticks by his policy. "With 50,000 men, you cannot safeguard everyone, but by being there we can prevent things happening," he said. <br><br>He has been resolute, too, in ordering sweeps through districts where there has been an outbreak of violence, often traveling to watch the operations himself. He was there when French troops sealed off and searched an area in the Serbian part of the divided town of Mitrovica last week after a grenade attack. "We put on a big show of force," he said, "to show we take counter actions immediately." <br><br>Road blocks or barricades are not tolerated, and even the residents of Orohovac have been persuaded to remove their weeks-old blockade against Russian troops who were to deploy there. <br><br>"I took them away by persuading people that this is the better way," he said. He does not seem to have solved the issue of the Russian deployment there, which local Albanians vigorously oppose, but the tension has subsided. <br><br>The general also supports an unorthodox tactic used in Pristina, where the British commander of the city is using former policemen of the Kosovo Liberation Army as a source of information and a conduit for solving problems. <br><br>There are clearly parts of the mission that chafe the general. "It is tougher than I expected as far as the workload, and more difficult as far as human relationships," he said in a reference to the ethnic tensions. <br><br>He is impatient to see the judicial system up and running so he can rid his soldiers of the job of being prison guards. <br><br>Yet he has clear ideas about the running of the province that go beyond his role as a soldier. Just back from a lunch with four Serbian bishops in the monastery at Gracanica, outside Pristina, he was clearly determined to defend the Serbian minority. His men will protect Serbian convoys and buses to allow Serbs to travel to market and to other Serbian enclaves. "By doing that we take the pressure out of the pot," he said. "If people feel under siege they become aggressive." <br><br>He called for financing for education and employment, saying a majority of young Albanians were jobless and frustrated, and were taking out their frustration on the minorities. <br><br>He also said he disagreed with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is advising displaced Serbs not to try to return to Kosovo for the moment, and he spoke with satisfaction that a few hundred Serbs had managed to return to villages in northern Kosovo under protection of his troops. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGerman General's Kosovo Peackeepers Are Fighting Crime``x945771374,46792,``x``x
``xBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br>HE HAGUE, Dec. 22 -- The United Nations' chief prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia said today that she would almost double the number of war-crimes investigations next year in hopes of indicting more than 150 suspects by the time the tribunal finished its work. <br>The prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, said almost all the new targets of indictments would be senior officials responsible for "ethnic cleansing" campaigns in the wars following the breakup of Yugoslavia. <br><br>"My top priority for the new year will be the arrest of leading figures who are still at liberty," she said. Key figures under indictment but not in custody include the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic; the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic; and Mr. Karadzic's military chief, Ratko Mladic. <br><br>Mrs. Del Ponte, a former federal prosecutor in Switzerland who replaced Louise Arbour of Canada in September, departed from her predecessor's policy of not discussing continuing investigations. The number of investigations in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo will increase to 36 next year, from 19 now, she said. <br><br>"You have not yet seen the whole of the investigative activity of the office of the prosecutor," she said at a news conference marking her 100th day in office. <br><br>By the time prosecutors finish investigations in 2004, Mrs. Del Ponte said, she hopes to have indicted 150 suspects -- five times the number now in custody. <br><br>Mrs. Del Ponte's comments came a day after the tribunal took custody of a Bosnian Serb general, Stanislav Galic. <br><br>General Galic, who was arrested on Monday by NATO forces in Bosnia, has been charged with giving the orders to shoot at civilians during the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo. Mrs. Del Ponte called his arrest "a powerful indication of what can be done," and urged NATO to dedicate a task force to arrest others who are believed to be responsible for atrocities. <br><br>Mrs. Del Ponte also responded to reported comments by Mr. Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic. Ms. Markovic was said to have likened tribunal officials to Nazis and called the tribunal's prison "a sophisticated replacement for concentration camps and crematoria." <br><br>Mrs. Del Ponte said, "If I could speak with Madame Milosevic, I would tell her to invite her husband to the detention center to see how comfortable it is." <br><br>Mrs. Del Ponte, who is also the chief prosecutor for the United Nations tribunal on Rwanda, said she would devote half her time to the Tanzania-based court to improve operations there. That appeared to be a gesture to the Rwandan authorities, who angrily suspended cooperation with the tribunal after an important genocide suspect was released on a technicality. <br><br>"The year 2000 will be a big year" for the Rwanda tribunal, she said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. Prosecutor Plans Bigger Push in Balkans``x945937944,89308,``x``x
``xHaving called for the 'decontamination' of the media, Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic's wife Mira Markovic is once more leading the charge against opposition broadcasters.<br><br>By Vlado Mares in Belgrade (BCR No.104, 21-Dec-99)<br><br>Having so recently demanded the "decontamination of the media", and the Belgrade regime has now renewed its witch-hunt of political opponents at the universities.<br><br>Mira Markovic, the leader of the Yugoslav Left (JUL) and the wife of the Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has accused university professors of offering drugs and hard currency to the students, in place of lectures.<br><br>She used the occasion of the opening of the new Belgrade radio station KUL on December 15 to make her original contribution to the spreading of paranoia and xenophobia in Serbia.<br><br>The name of the radio derives from the slogan of the party of Mira Markovic - JUL IS KUL (Jul is Cool), and the ceremony was held in the offices of the Committee of JUL's University branch.<br><br>"They (university lecturers) are getting the directions for contact with the Yugoslav students and the means for such contacts in some foreign embassies in our country and from some intelligence and other similar institutions abroad," Mira Markovic pointed out.<br><br>"The presence of certain persons who are interpreting the situation in the FRY and in the world to the students could be noticed at the universities in our country over the past several years.<br><br>"One sort of those interpreters have never graduated from any faculty, while others have studied outside our country, with the obligation they assumed to pay back to those who enabled and financed their stay abroad," Markovic said.<br><br>She went on to maintain that the lecturers were "offering drugs and hard currency" to the students, instead of discussions about theoretical, academic and philosophical issues.<br><br>JUL announced the decontamination of the media at the end of November. Only a week later, at the beginning of December, the leader of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) Vojislav Seselj, brought charges against the Belgrade dailies Blic and Danas, as well as the Belgrade radio-television station Studio B.<br><br>Judging by the speed, with which the regime charged against the media after their decontamination was announced, time bodes ill for Serbia's universities.<br><br>The authorities first clamped down on dissent in the universities in May last year when a new law aimed at educational establishments led to the dismissal as well as the resignation of a large number of lecturers<br><br>The regime's "success" made Seselj, Milosevic's coalition partner, Vojislav Seselj say on 1 March this year: "We sorted out the situation at the Universities, we have sorted out the situation in the media to a large extent, we will sort out the situation in the judiciary as well. A bit a bit, we'll make order in Serbia."<br><br>However, after the NATO intervention and the increase in the anti-regime mood of the citizens, Milosevic has assesses that the previous "successes in making order in Serbia" have proven insufficient.<br><br>This is why the JUL announced a new campaign. As always, Seselj has turned out to be the regime's best executioner. Belgrade will no doubt now combine direct repression and destruction while employing more subtle and indirect methods.<br><br>Meantime, a few weeks after the latest fines were handed down to the independent media for transgressing the law on information, the authorities are putting the finishing touches to their latest plan to win control of both the hearts and minds of the people.<br><br>The preparations for the opening of as many as 11 new television stations in Belgrade are underway. Most of them will broadcast their own news programmes as dictated fully by the government.<br><br>One of the first to start broadcasting is the TV programme of Radio B 92, led by the perpetual student Aleksandar Nikacevic, which has already begun to broadcast a test signal, and which, as was announced, should start broadcasting at the end of December.<br><br>During the NATO campaign, the original B-92 radio station then led by Veran Matic, was taken over and "nationalised" by the authorities that installed Nikacevic. Matic and his team started a new station - Radio B2-92 which like its original predecessor, is a thorn in the regime's side.<br><br>The next project the regime is planning, is the launch of Yugoslav Radio Television (JRT) headed by Jovan Ristic, a leader of the JUL party and the long-standing director of the Radio-Television of Serbia.<br><br>The station's launch was originally scheduled for December, but is now slated for the spring. The Interspeed company controls the station, which is itself part owned by the president's son, Marko Milosevic.<br><br>And the GENEX company headed by former Serbian Prime Minister Radoman Bozovic, one of the closest of Milosevic's associates, is readying its own station for a spring launch.<br><br>Meantime, the Belgrade media company Sajam, headed by Sinisa Zaric, has also announced the launch of a TV station devoted to the business world and business fairs. Belgrade's GRMEC, headed by Rajko Uncanin, is also planning to launch a TV stations, which, according to some information, could be called Business TV.<br><br>It is interesting that all those listed, except from Jovan Ristic, are on the list of those who are barred from travelling to EU countries due to their support of the Milosevic regime.<br><br>Sources report that the new TV stations have been allowed to locate their transmitters in prime areas around the city. It is believed that at least one station will broadcast in the range of 12 gigahertz, which, experts claim, will seriously obstruct the reception of satellite TV.<br><br>Vlado Mares is a journalist for the Belgrade independent news agency BETA.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMira Shocked By Sex, Drugs And Rock And Roll ``x945937979,65398,``x``x
``xTIRANA, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Albania has lifted the oil embargo against Montenegro, Serbia's West-leaning partner in Yugoslavia, and Kosovo on condition that fuel products are not sold in Serbia, the government said on Wednesday. <br>Ministries would now authorise the sale or supply of oil and petroleum products to its neighbours Montenegro and Kosovo but would not permit delivery of fuel to Serbian cities controlled by opponents of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>"Selling oil and its by-products to the Republic of Montenegro and Kosovo will be allowed on condition they do not pass through the territory of the Republic of Serbia or reach any other destination in Serbia," the government said in a statement. <br><br>Fuel aid began arriving in some Serbian towns earlier this month under an EU scheme designed to boost Milosevic's opponents and provide heating fuel as winter sets in. <br><br>Lifting the embargo is part of Albania's efforts to cooperate with its northwestern neighbour Montenegro and help the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo rebuild the shattered province. <br><br>Albania's scrapping of the ban follows the lead set by the EU which freed Kosovo and Montenegro in October from an oil embargo slapped on Yugoslavia last year. <br><br>The EU and the United States have imposed sanctions on Yugoslavia to punish Belgrade for Serbian repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, now controlled by NATO-led peacekeepers. <br><br>After NATO's March-to-June bombing campaign, Western countries said they would not allow any post-war aid to Serbia as long as President Slobodan Milosevic remained in power. <br><br>Foreign Ministry spokesman Sokol Gjoka said Albania lifted the embargo to show its willingness to cooperate with democratic forces in Montenegro that back European integration and oppose the Milosevic regime. <br><br>The coastal republic has been in a tug-of-war with Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia since its 650,000-strong population elected pro-Western Milo Djukanovic president two years ago. <br><br>Albania is also keen to promote trade between Montenegro, which is also home to an ethnic Albanian minority, and its underdeveloped northern areas. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbania lifts oil embargo on Montenegro, Kosovo``x945938041,87081,``x``x
``xBy DUSAN STOJANOVIC -- Associated Press Writer<br><br> BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- The Yugoslav president and Russia's defense minister exchanged medals of friendship and heroism Thursday, and accused the West of failing in its peace mission in Kosovo. <br><br> A statement from President Slobodan Milosevic's office after his meeting with Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev accused NATO members of continuing a policy of "violating Yugoslavia's legitimate rights, peace and stability in the region." <br><br> It charged that the West had violated the U.N. agreement regarding Yugoslavia's southern province and that international officials were "aiding ethnic cleansing" of non-Albanians from Kosovo. <br><br> "Yugoslavia and Russia consider the present situation in Kosovo unsustainable," the statement said. It called on the United Nations to step in and allow the return of Yugoslav army and police forces to the province. <br><br> NATO-led peacekeepers arrived in Kosovo in June following a 78-day bombing campaign to halt Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. <br><br> Western governments and international human rights groups have assailed Moscow in recent weeks for its own bombing campaign in the Russian breakaway province of Chechnya. In light of Kosovo, the Kremlin has called that criticism hypocritical. <br><br> Russia has said it would not bow to Western demands to moderate its campaign against Chechen rebels, whom it calls terrorists, and Sergeyev did not hesitate to throw his support behind Milosevic Thursday. <br><br> The Russian defense minister also bestowed awards on Yugoslav army chiefs for their "heroic defense of the country," the state-run Tanjug news agency reported. <br><br> Among those decorated was Yugoslav army chief of staff, Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic, who along with Milosevic has been indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. <br><br> "The NATO aggressor did not dare undertake a land operation, fully aware of the strength and determination of your army," Sergeyev was quoted by Tanjug as saying while handing out the medals. <br><br> Earlier Thursday, at a ceremony at Milosevic's residence in Belgrade, the Yugoslav president decorated Sergeyev with medals for promoting cooperation between the two countries and their armies. <br><br> Sergeyev arrived in Yugoslavia on a two-day visit for what Russian media said would be tough talks with U.N. and NATO officials in Kosovo on the way they were doing their jobs. <br><br> He met Thursday with Milosevic and his army commanders, who are looking for help in repairing damage caused to the military by NATO airstrikes. <br><br> Milosevic has criticized the international Kosovo mission for its failure to protect minority Serbs in the province from retaliatory ethnic Albanian attacks, and Sergeyev said Thursday, "events over the past few months prove that what is happening in Kosovo is not peace." <br><br>Sergeyev's trip to Kosovo was scheduled for Friday. While in the province, he said he will meet German Defense Minister Rudolf Sharping to discuss military relations between the two countries. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRussian defense minister visits Yugoslavia``x946029156,89861,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Raymond Whitaker in Stimlje, Kosovo <br><br><br>"We are all equal here," said Sadik Musliu. "Why can't the rest of Kosovo be the same?" <br><br>It says much about Kosovo today that the Stimlje Institute, the mental hospital of which Dr Musliu is director, is the only place in the whole province where Serbs and Albanians can safely live together. Outside the high fence, revenge attacks and intimidation are driving Serbs out of Kosovo every day, but within the institute, more than half of the 316 inmates are Serbian. The same is true of the children's wing, where there are 35 patients between the ages of two and 12. <br><br>"Nobody has ever tried to exclude patients on the basis of community, neither before the war nor afterwards," said Dr Musliu, 42. He became director of the hospital in the summer, when Belgrade withdrew its forces from Kosovo and all but one of the Serbian staff departed. "The Serbian patients can go into the town without fear," he said. "The institute has the respect of local people." <br><br>Unlike almost every other public institution in Kosovo, the Serbs did not wreck the hospital when they left, but that does not mean it has been immune from the effects of two years of war, ethnic cleansing and Nato bombing. There was fighting between Serbian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army within a few hundred yards of the gates, and just over the hill is the village of Racak, where the massacre of 45 Albanian civilians in January set in motion the events which led to Nato's air campaign. <br><br>"The patients could hear shooting many times," said Dr Musliu. "Through the fence they saw people being beaten, and paramilitaries driving up and down shouting: 'Long live Milosevic!' They were all frightened, Serbs and Albanians." The institute's head nurse, Liriye Bistiqi, escaped death at Racak by less than five minutes, having left for the hospital just before the Serbian police and paramilitaries arrived, while Dr Musliu himself took refuge in the hills with his family during the worst of the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Serbs during the bombing campaign. <br><br>Now the doctor and the nurse struggle to restore the workings of Kosovo's only mental hospital, which, although intact, suffers from disrepair and a shortage of qualified staff. Patients wander the grounds – one woman was trudging barefoot through the snow until shooed indoors – importuning everyone for cigarettes and money. Even the older patients in the children's ward smoke, including one boy whose legs had been amputated by a train. <br><br>The younger children have just as strong a craving for affection, rushing to staff and visitors to solicit hugs. Among them is Samela, seven, who has lived in the institute all her life, because her mother is a patient. "Now she is disturbed like the rest, but she has nowhere else to go," said the director. "At least she has her mother. Most of the other children have no one. <br><br>"If they are Serbs, their parents may have fled to Serbia, if they are Albanian their mothers and fathers may be dead. Since the war, nobody comes to visit them. They call us mother and father, and each other brother and sister." Two elderly patients were eating with the youngsters. "Their own children have gone to Serbia," he said. "They want to treat these ones as if they were theirs." <br><br>The children, who speak a mixture of Serbian and Albanian among themselves, seem lively enough, despite the poor food and the lack of playthings – one boy who had found a piece of plastic wrap was being begged by the others for a chance to pop some of the bubbles. "It is hard to keep them stimulated," said Dr Musliu, "but we are doing what we can to teach them art and music as well as technical subjects." <br><br>The War Child charity delivers fresh fruit to the children each week and has provided a playground, but must now find winter clothing to enable more of them to play outside. <br><br>Apart from basics such as better food and washing facilities, Dr Musliu considers the greatest need, for adults as well as children at the institute, to be more professionally qualified staff. "I was the only doctor here until last month, when one more came, and I am still the only one trained in mental health," he said. "Before the war, 80 out of a staff of 110 were Serbs, and they are very difficult to replace. This hospital should have at least eight doctors, and ideally three or four specialists in psychiatry. We can't get people to work here because we can't find them accommodation or tell them when or if they will be paid." <br><br>Some help is being provided by the Norwegian Red Cross, but, for the moment, Stimlje Institute can only tick over. "We have people coming to the gates every day, begging for admission, but we can't improve conditions if we let more patients in," said the doctor. "When I came here 16 years ago we were able to look after 440 people, including 70 children. Now I have one child who could be discharged, but his family is from Vojvodina [at the other end of Serbia]. There is no way he can go home." <br><br>During the past two years in particular, the hospital must have seemed like a refuge from the insanity surrounding it. The demand for its services can only grow in the years to come, given the trauma suffered by so many people in Kosovo, but its future is as uncertain as anything else in a province still nominally part of Serbia but in practice drifting towards some kind of independent status under the UN. Dr Musliu, however, refuses to speculate on any of this. "This is a humanitarian institution," he says firmly. "All I can think about is the people under my care." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAn island of tolerance in province destroyed by conflict ``x946029210,82991,``x``x
``x<br>PODGORICA, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Montenegro's Foreign Minister Branko Perovic resigned on Thursday over alleged involvement in smuggling and criminal association with the Italian Mafia. <br>In a damage-limitation move which Western diplomatic sources said had been awaited, Perovic gave up his office to placate European Union supporters of Montenegro's western-leaning government and ease opposition pressure against it. <br><br>The small coastal republic of Montenegro, Serbia's only partner in what remains of federal Yugoslavia, is engaged in a struggle with Belgrade to separate its fate from that of the isolated government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Western governments, backing Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic as an example of democratic alternatives to Milosevic, may have insisted that Perovic had to go, diplomatic sources in the capital, Podgorica, said. <br><br>"In a desire to free you from worry for my fate, of perhaps abusing my high-ranking position in the government or of covering up the case, I am submitting my irrevocable resignation," Perovic told parliament. <br><br>The resignation came amid strong criticism from the opposition Socialist People's Party, led by Yugoslav Premier Momir Bulatovic, which has accused the government of involvement in organised crime. <br><br>Earlier this month, fears increased that Montenegro's de facto divorce from Serbia could explode into civil war when federal army troops and special police loyal to the Montenegro government squared off at the capital's airport. <br><br>But the dispute, over the right to build on airport land, was resolved without violence and the situation has eased. <br><br>PM: LET ITALIAN COURT DECIDE <br><br>An Italian judge earlier this month ordered Perovic and 26 other people to stand trial on smuggling and criminal association charges, relating to the period when Perovic worked for the Rome office of the Yugoslav airlines (JAT). <br><br>But Prime Minister Philip Vujanovic said that whatever his foreign minister was charged with doing must have been approved by Bulatovic himself. <br><br>"This man has left with honour and the one who appointed him to Italy is your leader Momir Bulatovic. And for four years he knew what Perovic was doing and approved of it," he said. <br><br>Vujanovic also accused the pro-Belgrade opposition party of hypocrisy. <br><br>"Your regime is led by a man (Milosevic) who is not accused of alleged commercial crimes but of war crimes, and will soon be accused of genocide. Yet not one of you called him to come to the Yugoslav parliament and explain," Vujanovic said <br><br>Vujanovic told parliament he was grateful to Perovic for all he had done for Montenegro and that the foreign minister had done nothing for his personal gain. "Let the Italian court decide who is guilty," Vujanovic told the deputies. <br><br>"We were expecting something like this to happen three months ago," said one Western diplomat, noting that the pro-Belgrade opposition party clearly had advance knowledge of Italy's looming charges against Perovic. <br><br>"Perovic did an excellent job as a diplomat but he had obviously become an embarrassment to them, damaging the image of the Djukanovic government to the benefit of its opponents and Belgrade," he added. <br><br>Justice Minister Dragan Soc said Perovic's resignation would ease pressure on Montenegro's government. <br><br>"I look at this resignation as a political and a moral act, aimed at freeing the government of pressures resulting from the court charges and from interpretations of the charges by the (pro-Belgrade) Socialist People's Party," Soc told Reuters. <br><br>The charges in the case against Perovic indicate involvement of businessmen and members of the Mazzarella clan of the Camorra crime organisation, the Naples-area version of the Sicilian Mafia. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFOCUS-Montenegro minister quits over Mafia charge``x946029253,2188,``x``x
``x<br>PODGORICA, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Montenegro will pay Yugoslav Army troops on its territory in hard currency instead of depreciating Yugoslav dinars in an attempt to win their loyalty from Belgrade, President Milo Djukanovic said on Thursday. <br>The offer was the latest shot in a monetary, political and legal war to separate Montenegro's fate from the internationally shunned government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Djukanovic said it would be made to Montenegrin 2nd Army commanders in the coming days but warned that "Belgrade may not like it and it may be a pretext for them to misuse the army." <br><br>The pro-Western leader is engaged in struggle with Milosevic to insulate Montenegro's 650,000 people from what he calls Belgrade's disastrous policy of starting -- and losing -- wars, and printing money. <br><br>He said the army's practice of flying in sackloads of dinars to pay its troops in the tiny Adriatic republic threatened to seriously dilute its drive to make the German mark an official currency and, in time, to create Montenegro's own money. <br><br>Speaking to a meeting of university students, Djukanovic predicted the republic's monetary system would stabilise next year. But he criticised banks and companies for keeping their reserves of deutschemarks out of circulation. <br><br>FOOD IMPORTS <br><br>He also promised to start importing food staples to make up for shortages caused by Belgrade's refusal to continue normal supplies, a move in the continuing dispute over federal control over currency and banking. <br><br>Montenegro has already established its own visa and customs regime and refuses to recognise federal authority. <br><br>Djukanovic said Milosevic was using the army as a tool to keep Montenegro in check and stop it severing ties with Serbia, putting an end to the shrinking federal republic. <br><br>But he said Montenegro should do nothing to provoke Belgrade into action that both would regret, a reference to fears of civil war between Serbs and Montenegrins in the republic. <br><br>Western powers who back Djukanovic have muted earlier, veiled warnings to Milosevic that NATO could intervene to protect Montenegro and are now urging Belgrade and Podgorica to exercise restraint and refrain from provocations. <br><br>Their policy appears to be to support the republic financially and politically, encouraging links with Serbian opposition to Milosevic while hoping for a change of government in Belgrade and democratic reform. <br><br>But the political situation is becoming increasingly polarised, with reports that Belgrade is forming a military police battalion of Milosevic loyalists to do its bidding in Montenegro should the republic seek a clean break. <br><br>Montenegrin Foreign Minister Branko Perovic resigned earlier on Thursday amid allegations by an Italian court of past mafia links -- a decision diplomatic sources said was urged on Djukanovic by European Union powers who support his government. <br><br>The president said Perovic had made a highly moral move and predicted his name would be cleared.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro to woo Yugoslav army with cash``x946029381,17581,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Montenegro (Reuters) - It does not smell like war here in Montenegro on the eve of the new millennium, but the potential at least lurks in the clear air of the Balkan winter. <br>Serbia's last remaining partner in federal Yugoslavia, and its only outlet to the Adriatic sea, is trying to steer an independent course away from what it views as the ruinous policies of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>There has been continuous friction over Montenegro's independent visa, customs and monetary laws, its rejection of federal authority from Belgrade, the presence of a federal army that may one day confront the republic's strong police force. <br><br>But so far, no shots have been fired. <br><br>"It all seems so normal. But nothing is normal right now in this parallel world," said a resident Western observer strolling along crowded streets past new boutiques. <br><br>MAFIA AND MAD COW DISEASE <br><br>Thursday, the foreign minister resigned under the taint of Italian allegations that he collaborated with the mafia in smuggling. The president said he planned to offer the army payment in deutschemarks instead of Belgrade's weak dinar. <br><br>The city is choked by too many cars, one for every two citizens, with many luxury models stolen from rich Western Europe and tolerated at the time by a cash-needy government. <br><br>The pro-Serbian opposition has accused the pro-Western government of importing mad cow disease in cattle donated by Germany and Austria. <br><br>There are rumors of U.N. refugee camps being prepared in nearby Herzegovina so Montenegro can be emptied and refilled with Albanians. <br><br>Conspiracy, disinformation and paranoia perpetuate the anxiety of a people who feel they are facing the choice of sharing Serbia's international isolation for as long as Milosevic remains in power, or risking a breach. <br><br>The Belgrade government, nurturing its ties to Moscow and Beijing, accuses the West of fomenting separatism in Montenegro. <br><br>But Western powers, still getting their breath back from the Kosovo campaign and weary of the long slog to building democracy in ex-Yugoslavia, are urging restraint on all sides. <br><br>Although NATO brackets Montenegro with 25,000 troops in Bosnia and twice that many in Kosovo, the prospect of direct Western military intervention, as in the allied bombing of Yugoslavia earlier this year, appears remote. <br><br>"For now it is the politics of ambiguity," said political analyst Srdjan Darmanovic of the Montenegro Center for Democracy and Human Rights. "We are in a sense a hostage of the problem of Kosovo and its long-term status in or out of Yugoslavia." <br><br>ELECTION YEAR <br><br>"There has been constant conflict and there is a definite risk of escalation, but I do not say it is inevitable," Darmanovic said. <br><br>He predicted rising political tension in the spring as the main pro-Western and pro-Serbia parties campaign for votes in local elections in Podgorica and Herceg Novi, which will ballot a quarter of all Montenegro voters. <br><br>"The propaganda campaigns have already started," he added. Montenegro has already said it will not take part in Yugoslav federal elections scheduled for late next year because Belgrade has not replied to its request for a redefinition of their relationship. <br><br>A boycott could hand the political advantage to Belgrade. An early election call by Belgrade could be the signal for "the instigation of a new crisis," Darmanovic said. <br><br>Yugoslav Army chief of Staff Dragoljub Ojdanovic has denied Montenegro allegations that a new military police unit, the 7TH Battalion, has been recruited from the ranks of hardliners in the pro-Serbian opposition party. <br><br>Darker rumors circulate, impossible to test, of 2,000 disengaged paramilitary fighters who have supposedly converged on Montenegro in civilian dress from former flashpoints. <br><br>Montenegro cannot be compared to past Yugoslav conflicts. It does not have the ethnic hatred of Kosovo or the longstanding nationalism of Croatia. Its multi-ethnic mix -- 62 percent Montenegrin, 10 percent Serb, 14 percent Muslim and 7 percent Albanian -- has been relatively stable. <br><br>Some Western analysts doubt whether Milosevic would gamble on a full-scale army crackdown to halt what Belgrade sees as a slide to independence, but they fear a creeping coup d'etat, or an overnight fait accompli which would catch NATO flat-footed with no plan and possibly no collective will to intervene. <br><br>For the time being, Montenegro is counting on Western political and financial support, particularly backing for its risky move to a deutschemark economy which has angered Belgrade. <br><br>The prospect of an all-or-nothing independence referendum next spring appears to have receded while President Milo Djukanovic, heeding European Union and U.S. calls for prudence, attempts to persuade voters he can improve their lives and keep Milosevic at bay without violence. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xANALYSIS-Serbia's last partner sees tense new year``x946121193,26495,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Dec 24 (Reuters) - The Yugoslav government said on Friday that the resignation of Montenegro's foreign minister had stripped the veil off corruption in the coastal republic, whose pro-reform stance has put it at loggerheads with Belgrade. <br>"Unfortunately, there are other individuals in Montenegro who violated other laws. I think this is only the first step towards baring the truth," said Yugoslav federal Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, a Montenegrin leftist and bitter enemy of the republican government in Podgorica. <br><br>"The Socialist People's Party will submit to the public undisputed material evidence of corruption among the members of the Montenegrin government," he told Reuters in an interview. <br><br>Bulatovic, a former Montenegrin president regarded as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's protege, is also the head of the largest opposition party in his native republic. <br><br>"I have for long warned the public that Montenegro has no future with business which became the predominant economic activity in Montenegro," he said, alluding to corruption. <br><br>"I am personally not looking forward to it (exposing graft) because I think it is shameful for one state to find itself in such a position." <br><br>Branko Perovic, foreign minister of Montenegro which is increasingly defying central authority exercised from Belgrade, resigned on Thursday over alleged involvement in smuggling and criminal links with the Italian mafia. <br><br>His resignation coincided with strong criticism from Bulatovic's party, which accused the pro-Western Podgorica government of involvement in organised crime. <br><br>"This resignation was forced by the decision of Italian judiciary and not by criticism of a single political party. An Italian court filed charges against the Montenegrin foreign minister, who is only a tip of the iceberg," Bulatovic said. <br><br>EVIDENCE LEADS TO DJUKANOVIC, SAYS FOE <br><br>"All material evidence in the world and in the country prove that (Montenegrin President Milo) Djukanovic himself has organised these activities, which have unfortunately brought Montenegro a very bad reputation in Europe," Bulatovic said. <br><br>Western diplomats and opposition critics say the leftist-nationalist, Serbian-led government in Belgrade is itself corrupt and tinged by gangsterism. The other Yugoslav republic is Serbia, which is far bigger than Montenegro. <br><br>An Italian judge earlier this month ordered Perovic and 26 other people to stand trial on smuggling and criminal association charges, relating to the period when Perovic worked for the Rome office of Yugoslav Airlines (JAT)``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xINTERVIEW-Yugo PM says Montenegro graft exposed``x946121427,23339,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Dec 24 (Reuters) - The Yugoslav government said on Friday that the resignation of Montenegro's foreign minister had stripped the veil off corruption in the coastal republic, whose pro-reform stance has put it at loggerheads with Belgrade. <br>"Unfortunately, there are other individuals in Montenegro who violated other laws. I think this is only the first step towards baring the truth," said Yugoslav federal Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, a Montenegrin leftist and bitter enemy of the republican government in Podgorica. <br><br>"The Socialist People's Party will submit to the public undisputed material evidence of corruption among the members of the Montenegrin government," he told Reuters in an interview. <br><br>Bulatovic, a former Montenegrin president regarded as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's protege, is also the head of the largest opposition party in his native republic. <br><br>"I have for long warned the public that Montenegro has no future with business which became the predominant economic activity in Montenegro," he said, alluding to corruption. <br><br>"I am personally not looking forward to it (exposing graft) because I think it is shameful for one state to find itself in such a position." <br><br>Branko Perovic, foreign minister of Montenegro which is increasingly defying central authority exercised from Belgrade, resigned on Thursday over alleged involvement in smuggling and criminal links with the Italian mafia. <br><br>His resignation coincided with strong criticism from Bulatovic's party, which accused the pro-Western Podgorica government of involvement in organised crime. <br><br>"This resignation was forced by the decision of Italian judiciary and not by criticism of a single political party. An Italian court filed charges against the Montenegrin foreign minister, who is only a tip of the iceberg," Bulatovic said. <br><br>EVIDENCE LEADS TO DJUKANOVIC, SAYS FOE <br><br>"All material evidence in the world and in the country prove that (Montenegrin President Milo) Djukanovic himself has organised these activities, which have unfortunately brought Montenegro a very bad reputation in Europe," Bulatovic said. <br><br>Western diplomats and opposition critics say the leftist-nationalist, Serbian-led government in Belgrade is itself corrupt and tinged by gangsterism. The other Yugoslav republic is Serbia, which is far bigger than Montenegro. <br><br>An Italian judge earlier this month ordered Perovic and 26 other people to stand trial on smuggling and criminal association charges, relating to the period when Perovic worked for the Rome office of Yugoslav Airlines (JAT). <br><br>Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic praised Perovic's resignation as a move aimed at relaxing pressure being exerted on his government. Vujanovic also accused Bulatovic of being familiar with and approving of Perovic's disputed activities. <br><br>According to Montenegrin media reports, Perovic mediated in a business that provided the Podgorica tobacco industry new equipment and a deal that still keeps its factory running. <br><br>But Bulatovic insisted the resignation was just a tactical manoeuvre. <br><br>"The decision by the Naples prosecutor's office will be the sole criterium. All activities of the Italian side lead to Djukanovic as the main organiser. The name of Momir Bulatovic is mentioned nowhere on the list," he said. <br><br>NON-VIOLENT SERBIAN NEW YEAR <br><br>Bulatovic, whose party is estimated to enjoy 40 percent popular support in Montenegro, played down reports that the socialists were planning a violent celebration of the Serbian Orthodox New Year on January 13. <br><br>"That is nonsense, spread by (Montenegrin Interior Minister) Vukasin Maras and Djukanovic, who think that problems in the state can be resolved by police exclusively. <br><br>"We have every right to celebrate the Serbian New Year. We will not be initiators of any clashes or unrest, but we do have a right to gather in a democratic society." <br><br>In January 1998, the Yugoslav prime minister's supporters organised violent demonstrations on New Year's Eve in an apparent bid to scuttle Djukanovic's takeover as president the next day after he defeated Bulatovic in elections. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xINTERVIEW-Yugo PM says Montenegro graft exposed``x946121441,98973,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Dec 24 (Reuters) - The Yugoslav government said on Friday that the resignation of Montenegro's foreign minister had stripped the veil off corruption in the coastal republic, whose pro-reform stance has put it at loggerheads with Belgrade. <br>"Unfortunately, there are other individuals in Montenegro who violated other laws. I think this is only the first step towards baring the truth," said Yugoslav federal Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, a Montenegrin leftist and bitter enemy of the republican government in Podgorica. <br><br>"The Socialist People's Party will submit to the public undisputed material evidence of corruption among the members of the Montenegrin government," he told Reuters in an interview. <br><br>Bulatovic, a former Montenegrin president regarded as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's protege, is also the head of the largest opposition party in his native republic. <br><br>"I have for long warned the public that Montenegro has no future with business which became the predominant economic activity in Montenegro," he said, alluding to corruption. <br><br>"I am personally not looking forward to it (exposing graft) because I think it is shameful for one state to find itself in such a position." <br><br>Branko Perovic, foreign minister of Montenegro which is increasingly defying central authority exercised from Belgrade, resigned on Thursday over alleged involvement in smuggling and criminal links with the Italian mafia. <br><br>His resignation coincided with strong criticism from Bulatovic's party, which accused the pro-Western Podgorica government of involvement in organised crime. <br><br>"This resignation was forced by the decision of Italian judiciary and not by criticism of a single political party. An Italian court filed charges against the Montenegrin foreign minister, who is only a tip of the iceberg," Bulatovic said. <br><br>EVIDENCE LEADS TO DJUKANOVIC, SAYS FOE <br><br>"All material evidence in the world and in the country prove that (Montenegrin President Milo) Djukanovic himself has organised these activities, which have unfortunately brought Montenegro a very bad reputation in Europe," Bulatovic said. <br><br>Western diplomats and opposition critics say the leftist-nationalist, Serbian-led government in Belgrade is itself corrupt and tinged by gangsterism. The other Yugoslav republic is Serbia, which is far bigger than Montenegro. <br><br>An Italian judge earlier this month ordered Perovic and 26 other people to stand trial on smuggling and criminal association charges, relating to the period when Perovic worked for the Rome office of Yugoslav Airlines (JAT). <br><br>Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic praised Perovic's resignation as a move aimed at relaxing pressure being exerted on his government. Vujanovic also accused Bulatovic of being familiar with and approving of Perovic's disputed activities. <br><br>According to Montenegrin media reports, Perovic mediated in a business that provided the Podgorica tobacco industry new equipment and a deal that still keeps its factory running. <br><br>But Bulatovic insisted the resignation was just a tactical manoeuvre. <br><br>"The decision by the Naples prosecutor's office will be the sole criterium. All activities of the Italian side lead to Djukanovic as the main organiser. The name of Momir Bulatovic is mentioned nowhere on the list," he said. <br><br>NON-VIOLENT SERBIAN NEW YEAR <br><br>Bulatovic, whose party is estimated to enjoy 40 percent popular support in Montenegro, played down reports that the socialists were planning a violent celebration of the Serbian Orthodox New Year on January 13. <br><br>"That is nonsense, spread by (Montenegrin Interior Minister) Vukasin Maras and Djukanovic, who think that problems in the state can be resolved by police exclusively. <br><br>"We have every right to celebrate the Serbian New Year. We will not be initiators of any clashes or unrest, but we do have a right to gather in a democratic society." <br><br>In January 1998, the Yugoslav prime minister's supporters organised violent demonstrations on New Year's Eve in an apparent bid to scuttle Djukanovic's takeover as president the next day after he defeated Bulatovic in elections. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xINTERVIEW-Yugo PM says Montenegro graft exposed``x946121466,72008,``x``x
``xThe Washington Post<br><br>By R. Jeffrey Smith<br><br>ARIZONA HIGHWAY, Bosnia –– A tribute to American military generosity and good intentions is posted in the middle of the teeming marketplace on this rural road, just around the corner from the "Las Vegas" and "Colorado" brothels and dozens of shops selling counterfeit CDs and other smuggled merchandise. <br><br>"Our thanks to the U.S. Army for supporting in the development of this market," says the large sign in the midst of what has been jokingly called the Wal-Mart of Bosnia but is actually one of the largest havens for tax cheats, contraband and prostitution in the Balkans.<br><br>The sign, no longer a point of pride at the nearby headquarters of the 4,000 U.S. peacekeeping troops in northeastern Bosnia, has become instead an embarrassing symbol of how some of the estimated $5 billion in Western investment in this war-wracked country has gone sour.<br><br>Here and elsewhere in Bosnia, criminal gangs--using skills gained circumventing blockades and embargoes during the 1992-95 Bosnian war--are smuggling in thousands of cartons of untaxed cigarettes and unknown quantities of illegal drugs a week. They have also established well-protected corridors for trafficking in stolen cars from Western Europe and prostitutes from Eastern Europe. <br><br>"Unofficial markets . . . have mushroomed throughout the country," said a recent European Commission report on organized crime in Bosnia. Western officials say that 40 to 60 percent of Bosnia's economy now appears to be based on black-market commerce. This has fueled the rise of a wealthy criminal class that wields enormous political influence and annually diverts hundreds of millions of dollars in potential tax revenue to itself. <br><br>Although there is little evidence of direct diversion of foreign aid to private hands, the siphoning off of public revenue has helped ensure the country's continued dependency on outside assistance for many years to come, officials say. "To me, the biggest problem [in Bosnia] is the economy . . . and linked to that is crime and corruption," U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ronald Adams, the top NATO officer in Bosnia, said in an interview in Sarajevo, the capital. <br><br>Since 1995, when a U.S.-drafted peace accord halted 2 1/2 years of war between Bosnia's Muslims, Croats and Serbs, virtually the only economic growth stimulated here has been either through crime or the trickle-down effect of direct foreign aid, according to James Lyons, head of the International Crisis Group office here. <br><br>Criminal groups have thrived in Bosnia because ethnic enmities have hampered the formation of a government with blanket legal jurisdiction over the patches of territory administered by rival Muslim, Serb and Croat officials. "Within Bosnia today, organized crime and corruption are more serious threats to security and stability than military confrontation," said American diplomat Robert Barry, head of the local office of the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Barry recently told a group of students that he sees an "emerging relationship" between extremist politicians, members of wartime security institutions and new criminal gangs as the biggest obstacle to democratic reform in Bosnia. <br><br>From its formal opening in the spring of 1996, the Arizona market, named for NATO's designation of an adjacent highway, was seen as a model for the rest of Bosnia. Western officials promoted the site as a cradle of local entrepreneurship that would provide an economic springboard for the rest of the country. The Pentagon funded roughly $40,000 of its start-up costs, and the market was officially established on a muddy field in a NATO-enforced "zone of separation" between former Croat, Muslim and Serbian combatants. <br><br>In the three years since, the market has grown into a sprawling complex of more than 1,000 largely wooden trading stalls that employ more than 2,500 people and indirectly support another 7,500. In a single weekend, it has attracted as many as 25,000 customers from throughout Bosnia and four neighboring nations--Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Yugoslavia. Most are drawn by extraordinary bargains made possible because none of the merchants pay taxes and most goods are either smuggled in or customs duties on them were underpaid. <br><br>Some officials say the Arizona market is an example of how the West's policies here--particularly its preoccupation with physical reconstruction instead of the more difficult task of orchestrating lasting economic and political reform--have fostered the enormous expansion of criminal activity. Western officials say Bosnia loses an estimated $30 million a year from untaxed sales of legal goods at the market, but some proceeds are pocketed by local police, who have helped obstruct law enforcement and tax collection. In addition, international monitors have implicated the chief of the local police force, Marko Geljic, and 21 other police officers in prostitution-related activities at the market. <br><br>But the Arizona market is not an isolated den of criminal activity in Bosnia. In the southern city of Stolac, a weekly market in cars stolen in Western Europe and brought in through Italy, Slovenia and Croatia draws thousands of customers. Zenit Kelic, who heads the nascent federal customs agency, says that license plates and registration papers are readily available for purchase from municipal officials in the town. "A huge number of police officers in Stolac are directly involved in running that crime," Kelic said of the auto-theft ring. <br><br>Western officials began contemplating serious action to clean up the Arizona market early this year when an extremist group of Bosnian Croat war veterans with close ties to hard-line government officials in Croatia began erecting a second market at the site. The founding director of the organization, Mladen Nateltilic, has been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, and the group has sent threatening letters to Western officials probing its business activities. <br><br>But the officials' concern grew to alarm when it appeared that the veterans group--whose symbol is a wheelchair-bound man with an assault rifle in his lap--was seeking revenues from the new market to promote nationalist aims in Bosnia. <br><br>Jacques Klein, an American who directs U.N. operations in Bosnia and oversees international monitoring of all police activities, was among those who argued at a meeting of Western diplomats last month that move to build a second market justified bulldozing the entire site. <br><br>"Its time is past," Klein said in an interview. "It is controlled by hard-line obstructionists [who oppose ethnic integration]. . . . All the structures are illegal. There are illegal auto sales, prostitution and counterfeit CDs. . . . No one knows who owns the land, and it is killing trade in neighboring areas." <br><br>So far, the idea has been rejected by other Western officials, who say the market is now so big and its beneficiaries so powerful that its destruction would touch off violence and risk NATO casualties. <br><br>Other officials noted that Robert Ferend, the new Western administrator of the Brcko municipality that includes the Arizona market, sees the site as a potential source of revenue for the municipality if its operations can be regulated and properly taxed. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBosnian Mart Becomes Den Of Criminal Enterprise``x946288237,57149,``x``x
``xBy REUTERS<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 26 -- The largest Serbian opposition party intends to call on people to demonstrate for early elections, the independent news agency Beta said today. <br><br>"We have decided not to wait anymore," Beta quoted Aleksandar Cotric from the Serbian Renewal Movement as saying. <br><br>The move could strengthen the bitterly divided and fragile opposition, which has so far failed to unite on methods to be used to end the rule of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, despite many such efforts in the past. <br><br>Addressing an party meeting in the western Serbian town of Loznica, Mr. Cotric said the movement would soon "call its supporters to win early elections on the streets," Beta reported. <br><br>The movement, led by Vuk Draskovic, avoided a protest wave begun by the Alliance for Change opposition group after NATO's March-to-June air war against Yugoslavia. <br><br>The alliance, insisting on Mr. Milosevic's resignation ahead of early elections, held anti-government rallies for 89 consecutive nights but put them on hold 10 days ago until mid-January. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xOpposition in Serbia to Seek Early Elections``x946288284,33764,``x``x
``xORAHOVAC, Serbia (Reuters) - A convoy of peacekeeping vehicles carrying injured, sick and elderly Serbs with children left a Kosovo town for government-controlled Serbia on Saturday, fleeing winter cold and ethnic strife in the province. <br>"At home in Orahovac we have no heating, the temperature is below zero all the time. We are freezing," Stanka Janetovic, 34, told Reuters. Her son Goran, 7, was suffering from pneumonia and the medical unit in Orahovac had no antibiotics. <br><br>"The injured and children suffer the most. Besides keeping them warm, we have no other means to treat them nor feed them," she said, adding that she wanted to take her son to the safety of Nis, a large city in southern Serbia. <br><br>Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia, has been under U.N. administration since June when Serbian security forces halted a bloody crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians and withdrew under NATO bombardment. <br><br>Serbs remaining in Kosovo have been subjected to revenge violence by majority Albanians since NATO-led peacekeepers arrived and tens of thousands of Serbs have fled the province as a result. <br><br>Orahovac, a town in central Kosovo, has an enclave of 2,000 Serbs who feel menaced by surrounding Albanians. <br><br>On their way out of Kosovo, the 46 Serbs in the convoy from Orahovac stopped at the Russian hospital in Kosovo Polje, where six Serbs injured in ethnic violence were treated recently, before continuing onwards to central Serbia. <br><br>Orahovac's ethnic Albanians say that local Serbs were involved in massacres of their kin during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia earlier this year. <br><br>SERB 'CONCENTRATION CAMP' IN ORAHOVAC <br><br>For their part, Orahovac Serbs say they are living in a ghetto akin to a concentration camp, under the constant threat of ethnic Albanian attacks. <br><br>They say 10 Serbs have been killed and more than 10 injured since the arrival of the KFOR peace force. <br><br>Last week, one Serb was killed and several wounded in a grenade attack on a cafe, after which Orahovac Serbs gathered before the local Orthodox church demanding KFOR enable them to leave safely or they would all walk to Montenegro, a neighboring Yugoslav republic. <br><br>They shelved the idea until another reported bomb attack on a Serb house on Friday night. <br><br>After several hours of negotiations with KFOR, they reached a deal to let a group of 46, including six injured, 12 ailing elderly people and children with their families, leave in KFOR vehicles. <br><br>"I have relatives in Vojvodina (northern Serbia) and hope to get there to save my children, because they need urgent medical treatment. They suffer malnutrition and cold," Milica Kujundzic, mother of eight-month-old Ivan and three-year-old Tamara, said. <br><br>Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, due to return home later on Saturday after a two-day visit to Yugoslavia which included a stop in Kosovo, was quoted by the state agency Tanjug as saying he hoped Russian peacekeepers would eventually operate in the Orahovac area to reassure its Serbs. <br><br>Ethnic Albanians blocked roads around Orahovac with cars and tractors from August to November to prevent Russians from taking over security in the area from Dutch soldiers as scheduled. <br><br>Kosovo Albanians say the Russians have a pro-Serb bias. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbs Leave Tense Kosovo Town in NATO Convoy``x946288332,54152,``x``x
``xABC News<br>Yugoslavia that forced it to halt a mass purge of rebellious ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and withdraw troops and police from the province, which is now under U.N. administration. <br><br>MONTENEGRO, WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL CITED AS PROPAGANDA TARGETS <br><br>Vucic said the pressure was expected to take the form of media reports on Montenegro, Yugoslavia's reformist, pro-Western republic now estranged from leftist Serbia, and activities of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. <br><br>"What is the aim of the West? Their media will focus on Montenegro, preparing ground for fresh political pressure on Yugoslavia. And except for two local media, no electronic media in Montenegro would oppose this occupation," he said. <br><br>"The Hague tribunal is another topic for the Western media. But the Serbian government has prepared a web site where it will unveil the truth on the crimes of the Hague tribunal. The Serbian government will fight this propaganda and disseminate the truth about the tribunal," he added. <br><br>Serbia and Montenegro have been increasingly at odds over the past two years as the small, coastal republic seeks to break away from what it sees as the damaging leftist nationalism of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Milosevic is one of five senior Yugoslav officials indicted by the tribunal for alleged Serbian atrocities against ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo conflict. <br><br>Vucic, a member of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party, a coalition partner to Socialists and neo-communists in the Serbian government, said an important aspect of Western pressure was the financing of some local media. <br><br>He singled out the independent news agency Beta and the daily Danas as among those receiving aid from abroad. <br><br>Such financing came from the Open Society Fund of billionaire financier George Soros, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, the European Union, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, according to Vucic. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbia to step up ripostes to 'Western propaganda'``x946288398,42257,``x``x
``xThe New York Time <br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>LESKOVAC, Serbia -- For Vlada, a unit commander for the Yugoslav Army during the Kosovo war, the months since have been a wretched period of guilt, poverty, doubt and repression, stemming from his participation in anti-government demonstrations in this conservative, wary town. <br><br>He thinks he is slightly mad; he thinks everyone else in Leskovac is, too, ground down by Serbia's long isolation, its wrecked economy, the war and the long reign of the seemingly immovable Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, whom he reviles. <br><br>Vlada still dreams of what he saw in Kosovo, of the long lines of expelled Albanians, of the dying and the dead, but less often. Now his dreams are of anxiety and loss. <br><br>"I have big problems with myself," he said, smoking a cheap Drina cigarette in his small house. "I'm nervous from morning until night, and I want to have a fight or an argument with someone all the time. <br><br>"There's no money here, no cash, no cooking oil, no sugar, no fresh milk. We look like Romania at the end of the 80's. No one smiles on the street. Everyone looks sad, and people are dressed badly. The best job belongs to the guy who fixes shoes. It's miserable. No one has problems of $1,000 or $2,000, but of 20 cents, $2 or $20. We've become a cheap people, separated from one another, without morality or scruples or fellow feeling." <br><br>He described a friend who said he could find him cooking oil. "So I gave him 100 dinars for eight bottles of oil," he said, mentioning an amount equal to about $5.50. "And two weeks later, there is nothing. And he will never come, and our friendship falls apart over 100 dinars. Because he couldn't ask me for a loan -- no one can afford to give loans any more." <br><br>In early July, after Serbian troops and policemen were forced to withdraw from Kosovo by 78 days of NATO airstrikes, Vlada took part in the anti-government demonstrations here in Leskovac, his home in deep southern Serbia and a traditional stronghold of Mr. Milosevic's Socialist Party. <br><br>The demonstrations, led by army reservists seeking delayed combat pay, shook the government. But the Belgrade-based democratic opposition did not capitalize on the spontaneous unrest, and the demonstrations here, too, have since dwindled away. <br><br>But Vlada, whose bitter accounts of the war were detailed in The New York Times in July, has been marked for special attention by the government, as have other protesters. As the demonstrations collapsed and Mr. Milosevic himself came to visit the town in October, Vlada has been harassed in a pattern that demonstrates the skill of this authoritarian government and the deep hold the Socialists -- the former Communists -- still have on the structures of power. <br><br>"The repression here is not physical but psychological," he said. "It's as if every activist of the ruling structure has been ordered in the next 24 hours to frighten two people who are against the regime." <br><br>Local members of the Socialist Party sought out every person who had been in the demonstrations here, which were filmed by the police, and also sought out their friends. <br><br>"The police go to my friends," Vlada said, and ask: 'Why him? Why did he do it? Why does he need this?' " <br><br>Vlada, who feels exposed enough in Leskovac and asked that his last name not be used, makes leather goods. He has little money and wants to continue his education in economics to finish a degree. He made an application that was denied, he said, "and I got back the answer, 'We can't help because he was in the demonstrations.' " <br><br>The message was delivered to his cousin by two members of the Socialist Party, who questioned the cousin about Vlada. The content of the message, Vlada said, was: "Well, they can help me, but they're very disappointed in me. And they expected the cousin to pass on the message and talk to me, which of course he did." <br><br>All this watching, a long tradition from the authoritarian party, is more effective than prison and cheaper, Vlada said, especially in small towns, when everyone knows everyone else. "If they arrested people, they'd need more jails and have to feed them at least once a day," he said sardonically. <br><br>The reason he met a reporter in his home, he said, was that last summer, after meeting in a cafe, he was asked questions about the encounter by people he knew. <br><br>"They asked: 'Who were those people? What did you talk about?' " he said. "It didn't matter that no one approached us at the time. The party has a wonderful infrastructure here. It's like a kind of secret service that works in cells and circles." <br><br>When Mr. Milosevic came to Leskovac on Oct. 11, the town was full of police and security guards, and everybody who worked for a state company was told to attend the rally or risk losing their jobs. <br><br>"If there were 20,000 people there, there were 5,000 security men, all of them edgy," Vlada said. "It was easier to lose your life that day as a Serb in Leskovac than as a Serb today in Kosovo. The world thinks every Serb is guilty for everything, but for the last six years, Milosevic can't walk freely through the streets. Every third person would kill him in cold blood, and the rest wouldn't care. Eighty percent of people wait for him to die; it's the only way we can get out of this magic vicious circle." <br><br>Leskovac is a center for Yugoslavia's Third Army, which controls southern Serbia and, before the war, Kosovo. When its main commanders, Nebojsa Pavkovic and Vladimir Lazarevic, come here to local headquarters, which is in a park, the whole town is blocked, with military policemen in bulletproof vests standing guard, rifles fixed with bayonets. <br><br>"They protect these beloved generals from the people who love them," Vlada said acidly. The park itself has been closed to normal civilians for months now. "So in the center of this town you have armed military police, and it's another shame." <br><br>But it is the poverty and hopelessness of his life and that of his friends, their lack of perspective in a deepening winter, that depresses Vlada the most. <br><br>Here in Leskovac, even those who work are making the equivalent of only 30 to 50 German marks a month, or $16 to $27. With no fresh milk, a liter package of preserved milk costs a mark a day. "To get your kids milk now takes your whole salary," he said. <br><br>To have your appendix out, he said, you need to give 100 marks to the surgeon -- two months' salary -- and bring your own food to the hospital. <br><br>"This is horrible now," he said. "Everyone has their own fear, that someone will arrest you or kill you, and your death will mean nothing to anyone around you. People are afraid the electricity will be cut off in the winter because they owe money for it, or it will be cut off because of shortages, like today, for four hours. Everyone is afraid something in the house will break, because there is no money to fix it, let alone replace it. <br><br>"And people become crueler and less thoughtful to one another. I think I'm a cultured person, and now I start screaming about prices in the shops. It doesn't matter that the salesman isn't responsible. When I buy toothpaste, I need 20 minutes to compare the sizes and the prices, and in the end I buy something, but it shocks me, and I come home nervous. And I put the toothpaste on the table, and I tell my wife how much it costs." <br><br>Even those who work for the government are in trouble. A friend spent two months working hard to rebuild a bombed railway bridge at Grdelica, where NATO rockets hit a passenger train. For 60 days of work, the man received 500 dinars, or $27. <br><br>But when the politicians came to reopen the bridge, in a blaze of publicity, they decorated the manager of the company for his services to the nation and provided a lavish spread of meat and drink. <br><br>The workers protested and said they would prefer the cash. But the manager said: "Don't worry, no one will ever pay for this food and drink. Maybe someone else will get a medal." <br><br>Vlada insists that he did not knowingly kill anyone in Kosovo, though he saw terrible and disturbing events, with "ethnic cleansing," killings and mental and moral breakdowns. "I'm satisfied with the way I acted, and if called to fight to defend the country I would go again," Vlada said. "But I hate the whole world for giving me this opportunity." <br><br>The war was unnecessary, he said. It was "made by empires and pride." And now, he said, the mess in Kosovo lets Mr. Milosevic defend the war and accuse the opposition of being traitors for dealing with the leaders of the same countries that bombed Serbia. "The visit of the opposition leaders to Washington and to Madeleine Albright was covered here as if they were going to ask for a new bombing campaign, and a lot of people believe this," he said. <br><br>Zoran Djindjic, the leader of the Democratic Party, who is contemplating resigning for his failure to oust Mr. Milosevic, is treated like the government's main enemy. "People who hate Milosevic buy this propaganda," Vlada said. "They would be happy if Milosevic dies, but first they want to kill Djindjic." <br><br>Vlada says Kosovo sometimes bursts through into his dreams. He and his men spent 60 days without clean water or electricity, sleeping on the floor of abandoned Albanian houses in the hills between Gnjilane and Kacanik, fighting the Kosovo Liberation Army and hiding from NATO bombs. <br><br>"Lately, I dream of the house we were in last," he said. "A few days ago I had a real nightmare. There is the house, and the owner of the house changes. Sometimes it's a Serb, sometimes it's an Albanian." <br><br>"There are a lot of people standing around, and I know that the dead have come back to live in their houses," he said, his voice suddenly cracking, "and I don't want them to think badly about me." <br><br>He stopped to compose himself, lighting another Drina. "But my problems now are sugar and cooking oil and toothpaste," he said. "This town is a twilight zone, like your worst dreams, when you're dreaming and sweating. When you have something and you lose it in a dream, and it recedes farther and farther away, and you can't catch it. <br><br>"That's our life today. We'll probably live worse than this, and this is horrible. We never think it can get worse, but it does."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xOne Man's Nightmare in Serbia: Life With Virtually Nothing Left``x946371607,31316,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Montenegro (Reuters) - Montenegrins who do not want their country to be the stage for the final clash in the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia say the West must understand they will not wait forever to escape from Slobodan Milosevic. <br>Pressure is mounting to break free of Montenegro's dominant but isolated federal partner, Serbia, they warn, and the coming months will be crucial. <br><br>"There is growing impatience, especially among the young, who are not prepared to sacrifice another decade in Milosevic's dungeon," said a senior aide to President Milo Djukanovic. <br><br>Djukanovic's pro-Western government has applied its own visa and customs laws and introduced the deutschemark as currency. <br><br>But its self-assertiveness appears to have alarmed the West and Djukanovic has been told Montenegro will get no recognition from the United States and the European Union if it secedes. <br><br>This is despite the fact that Montenegro was a full constituent republic of the old federal Yugoslavia, like Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, all now recognized as independent states. <br><br>Djukanovic is being urged, instead, to work for democracy from within Yugoslavia, joining forces with the troubled Serbian opposition "as if we were Serbia and as if we did not already have our government," as one exasperated senior official put it. <br><br>"Waiting endlessly is what we will not do. And neither are we selling out our sovereignty, no way," said deputy premier Dragisa Burzan. The Djukanovic aide said it would be "immoral to insist we live under Milosevic's leadership." <br><br>"Does the West prefer to have Milosevic in one room or in the whole apartment?" demanded electoral analyst Veselin Pavicevic. Montenegro already has democracy, whereas Milosevic's opponents still seem hopelessly divided. <br><br>A top aide to Djukanovic said the West was making the wrong move by "reducing Montenegro to the level of just some other Serbian opposition town." And the chances of democracy spreading from here to Belgrade were thin, he added. <br><br>"The only genuine political counter to Milosevic's power is the Montenegro democratic movement, which is already in government," said presidential aide Milan Racen. <br><br>The republic may be small, with just 650,000 people, but it's a state with a history going back over 800 years, he said. <br><br> <br><br>PRESIDENT-FOR-LIFE MILOSEVIC? <br><br>Other senior government figures and analysts interviewed by Reuters over the past few days say agree that this "mistaken" policy -- apparently driven by fear of more violence and aversion to a new confrontation with Belgrade after Kosovo -- plays directly into Milosevic's hands. <br><br>They warn that Belgrade and the opposition Serbian nationalist party which represents it here is out to destabilize Montenegro and oust Djukanovic, perhaps by fomenting violence that would trigger "emergency" measures. <br><br>"He will certainly start a new conflict if he thinks it will enable him to stay in power. And with Montenegro he could create a new political space allowing him to stay in office for life," said a senior Montenegrin official. <br><br>"If NATO allowed him to occupy Montenegro militarily that would mean the ultimate and complete defeat of international policy in the region," he added, urging the West to make its policy "pre-emptive and not reactive." <br><br>Pro-Milosevic politicians deny any such strategy. They accuse the Montenegrin government of crime, corruption and political dirty tricks, including secret plots to compromise opponents, undermine the federal army and rig elections. <br><br>Srdjan Bozovic of the pro-Belgrade party recently brought these charges to the attention of the European Union monitoring mission here, evidently in hopes of a sympathetic hearing from EU countries ambivalent toward Djukanovic, such as Italy. <br><br>But Bozovic's party, said government supporters, is simply preparing the scene for the violence it plans to make happen. <br><br> <br><br>NO TANKS EXPECTED <br><br>Chain-smoking deputy premier Burzan does not expect to look up soon and see Yugoslav army tanks surrounding his office. <br><br>"I don't think there's any plan for a coup d'etat in the classic sense," he said. "I think Milosevic cannot launch an open assault on us because he knows he would be defeated and possibly shaken right out of power at home." "He is trying to strangle us economically, create social tensions and sow unrest so he can step in a 'save the people' from their mean and corrupt government," Burzan said. <br><br>He appealed for Western credits and investment guarantees of $250 million next year to bolster the economy and ensure that the move to a hard currency cannot be undermined by Belgrade. <br><br>"Otherwise I am afraid we will seen the democratization process destroyed by social unrest stoked by Milosevic." <br><br>Some worry that street clashes could be ignited in mid-January when the Orthodox Christian New Year coincides with the second anniversary of Djukanovic's election victory and gunfire is typically part of the celebration. <br><br>Burzan said Milosevic would like 50,000 on the streets for the occasion but even when pro-Serb feeling was high during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia "they could only manage 5,000-8,000 people, so I think this is an exaggerated fear," he said. <br><br> <br><br>HIGH-RISK ELECTIONS TO COME <br><br>Elections in spring are another matter. Nearly a quarter of the electorate is due to vote in municipal elections in the capital, Podgorica, and the city of Herceg Novi, and there are fears of rising tension as they approach. "These will be high-risk elections," said Pavicevic. <br><br>Bozovic of the Serb party said the situation was difficult but "not on such a scale that it would lead to armed clashes." <br><br>Pro-Serb officials deny that a new Military Police unit, the 7th Battalion, is being recruited exclusively from pro-Milosevic ranks in Montenegro as a political battering ram. <br><br>Belgrade insists it is a perfectly normal force. <br><br>"That's a lie. It is exclusively a one-party unit," said a presidential aide here. "They have 600 men already. The aim is to build its strength to 2,000 but they won't get it." <br><br>Well-armed police loyal to Djukanovic now outnumber the federal army, which is poorly paid and suffers low morale. Djukanovic recently suggested paying them in deutschemarks to secure their loyalty to Montenegro rather than Belgrade, which flies in sacks of fast-depreciating dinars to meet the payroll.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro to West: we can't wait forever``x946371652,7134,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic made a sudden series of changes in the army on Tuesday, promoting some commanders and dismissing others. <br>"The Yugoslav President and Supreme Commander Slobodan Milosevic issued decrees on the promotion, assignment to new posts and cessation of professional service of a certain number of Yugoslav army chiefs," the state news agency Tanjug said, quoting Milosevic's military cabinet. <br><br>It went on to list senior officers who had been promoted but did not identify who, or how many, had been sacked. <br><br>One of the most significant promotions went to Vladimir Lazarevic, who Tanjug said rose from the post of commander of the army's Pristina Corps -- based in Kosovo until it was forced to withdraw in June -- to deputy head of the broader Third Army. <br><br>On Monday, Lazarevic was one of several senior officials quoted as saying Serb forces would soon return to Kosovo and NATO-led peacekeepers might be forced out in June, part of an apparent new campaign by Belgrade to garner popular support. <br><br>NATO SOURCES REJECT IDEA OF SERB FORCES RETURNING <br><br>NATO sources say there is no chance of Serb forces returning to the province after the widespread atrocities committed against the province's majority ethnic Albanian population and local analysts see the statements as political posturing. <br><br>But they share an underlying concern that Milosevic may strike out, either against Kosovo or Montenegro, Serbia's smaller partner in the Yugoslav Federation, if public dissatisfaction grows and he finds himself completely cornered. <br><br>Milorad Obradovic, commander of the Second Army, which covers Montenegro, was given a higher rank in the same job as was Geza Farkass, security chief of the general headquarters. <br><br>Earlier this month the army saw off police from the pro-Western and independence-minded republic -- the only one not to have split with Serbia -- in a tense standoff over control of its main airport. <br><br>TIMING OF PROMOTIONS A SURPRISE <br><br>Bratislav Grubacic, a leading political analyst and editor of the Belgrade newsletter VIP, said the promotions were logical but that the timing came as a surprise. <br><br>He said the names of those who lost their jobs might indicate the extent of dissatisfaction within the military, whose facilities were badly hit in almost three months of NATO air strikes that ended with a humiliating withdrawal from Kosovo. <br><br>"I would be very interested to see the list of those dismissed," he said. <br><br>Grubacic said that despite the army's humiliating withdrawal from Kosovo most of the top commanders were loyal to Milosevic, who he said made sure they were well looked after. <br><br>"On the lower levels it's difficult to judge. There is a lot of dissatisfaction among the lower ranks but not yet to the extent that the army might turn against the regime." <br><br>The government has set aside more than 70 percent of next year's budget to rebuild military infrastructure and replace equipment damaged in the air strikes as well as making sure officers feel properly rewarded in an inflationary environment. <br><br>"Decorations are a sort of pay-off," he said. "They give people the feeling that everything's comfortable in the army." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic makes sudden changes in army``x946461469,54473,``x``x
``xAssociated Press<br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Serbia's largest opposition coalition accepted an invitation Thursday from a rival group to discuss developing a joint strategy to oust President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Vladan Batic of the Alliance for Change told Belgrade's independent B2-92 radio station that he would attend the meeting and hoped the opposition would forge a successful united front. <br><br>Talks are set for Jan. 10. <br><br>The largest single opposition party in Serbia - the Serbian Renewal Movement led by Vuk Draskovic - called Monday for a meeting of all major pro-democracy leaders to draft a joint platform against Milosevic. <br><br>"We shall not disclose any strategy proposals in advance because the whole idea of the talks is that they harness common ground for the entire opposition," Draskovic's party spokesman Ivan Kovacevic said Tuesday. <br><br>The meeting is seen as yet another attempt to bring Serbia's fractured opposition together. It has been plagued by personal rivalries between its leaders, and the rifts have in the past ruined chances for Milosevic's ouster. <br><br>Western officials, while supporting the opposition's struggle, have criticized its disunity. <br><br>Earlier this year, Draskovic refused to join street protests led by the Alliance for Change, insisting they would lead to civil war. <br><br>Two minor opposition groups have also accepted the call for the January gathering. Regular elections in Yugoslavia are scheduled for the year 2000. <br><br>In a rally hinting at the opposition's drawing power, some 10,000 Belgraders gathered Tuesday on the capital's main square for a rock concert meant to usher in 2000, three days early. <br><br>The concert, organized by the pro-opposition G-17 Plus group of intellectuals, was a symbolic gesture against the scheduled New Year's Eve celebration to be organized by the Socialists and Communist Youth groups. <br><br>One of the organizers of the concert said that since "Serbia is already so far behind the rest of the world, why not enter the New Year three days ahead of everyone else?" media reported. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xOpposition coalition accepts rival's call for meeting ousting Milosevic``x946461500,23486,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Gavin Cordon, PA News <br>The Government said it was "confident" Nato forces had acted within international law during the Kosovo conflict following the announcement that the UN chief war crimes prosecutor was to review the alliance's bombing campaign. <br><br>Ministry of Defence officials were privately relaxed following the disclosure that prosecutor Carla Del Ponte had received a report on the conduct of Nato pilots and their commanders during the 78–day bombardment of Yugoslavia. <br><br>"We are confident that, at all stages of the conflict, Nato forces conformed with the relevant international law," a MoD spokesman said. <br><br>The report was compiled by Ms Del Ponte's staff at the urging of several "interested parties," including a group of Russian parliamentarians and a renowned Canadian law professor, her spokesman Paul Risley said in The Hague. <br><br>The war crimes tribunal, set up in 1993 by the UN Security Council, cannot indict governments or international organisations. <br><br>If Ms Del Ponte chose to press charges against any individual as a result of the report, it would be a landmark in international justice – and a highly controversial one. <br><br>No Western leader or military figure has ever before been hauled before an international tribunal. <br><br>Nato launched the bombing campaign in March to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to halt his crackdown against ethnic Albanians in the southern province of Kosovo. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMoD confident that Nato acted lawfully in Kosovo ``x946461542,89418,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br><br>THE HAGUE, Dec. 28 -- The chief war crimes prosecutor for the United Nations is reviewing the conduct of NATO pilots and their commanders during last spring's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, her spokesman said today. <br><br>The staff of the prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, compiled a report on the air strikes at the urging of several "interested parties," including a group of Russian lawmakers and a Canadian law professor, said the spokesman, Paul Risley. <br><br>The war crimes tribunal, set up in 1993 by the Security Council, cannot indict governments or international organizations. <br><br>But if Ms. Del Ponte presses charges against any individual, it would be a landmark in global justice -- and a highly debatable one. No Western civilian or military leader has ever been brought before an international tribunal. <br><br>NATO began the bombing campaign in March to force President Slobodan Milosevic to halt his crackdown against Albanians in Kosovo. <br><br>The contents of the tribunal's report are confidential. However, NATO has been criticized for civilian deaths in what it has described as accidents, including the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and an attack on a bridge as a passenger train was crossing it. <br><br>NATO's spokesman, Jamie Shea, refused to comment on the inquiry. <br><br>Investigating NATO's conduct would go far in dispelling the belief -- prevalent in the Balkans -- that the tribunal is a tool used by Western leaders to escape accountability. <br><br>But even if evidence of violations of international conventions on warfare were found, it is questionable whether Ms. Del Ponte, a former Swiss federal prosecutor, would go so far as to issue any indictments. <br><br>The handling of the report is a delicate matter for the tribunal, which depends on the military alliance to arrest and hand over suspects. NATO peacekeepers in the Balkans have detained about half of the 34 suspects now in custody. <br><br>Ms. Del Ponte alluded to this when a reporter for The Observer in London asked whether she would be prepared to press charges if the inquiry turned up incriminating evidence. <br><br>"If I am not willing to do that, I am not in the right place: I must give up the mission," she said in the interview, published last weekend. <br><br>But she stressed that other investigations would take precedence, saying: "It's not my priority, because I have inquiries about genocide, about bodies in mass graves." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. Tribunal Investigating NATO's War in Yugoslavia``x946461587,17843,``x``x
``xBELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has shored up loyalty in his devastated army with a slew of promotions which also make clear he is not prepared to allow Montenegro and Kosovo to slip quietly from his control. <br>The most senior figures singled out for promotion are prominent in a new campaign to try to show that the army still has a role to play in western-leaning Montenegro, which has threatened independence, and Kosovo, where NATO now rules. <br><br>Decrees issued Tuesday evening by Milosevic, who is supreme commander, indicate that he may have weeded out possible dissent with an accompanying series of dismissals, although that is hard to judge because it was not specified who was sacked. <br><br>The dismissals could have merely formed part of reported plan of sharp cutbacks in the armed forces which the cash-strapped government can no longer afford to maintain. <br><br>The promotions and decorations appeared to be aimed at keeping happy officers whose barracks and equipment were smashed in NATO air strikes this year and who have now been hit by the funding shortfall, rather than paving the way for any offensive. <br><br>But the focus on Montenegro and Kosovo make clear Milosevic, who faces an economic crisis and an ongoing although so far ineffectual opposition campaign to oust him, also wants to keep these two hot spots high on the political agenda. <br><br>Earlier this month, NATO warned Milosevic not to interfere in Montenegro, the only republic left with Serbia in Yugoslavia, after the army saw off Montenegrin police in a tense standoff over control of its main civilian and military airport. <br><br>MONTENEGRO, KOSOVO COMMANDERS PROMOTED <br><br>Milorad Obradovic, commander of the Second Army, which covers Montenegro, was given a higher rank in the same job in one of Milosevic's Tuesday decrees, carried by state news agency Tanjug and read on state television. <br><br>Military intelligence chief Geza Farkass also got a higher rank and Vladimir Lazarevic rose from commander of the army's Pristina Corps -- based in Kosovo until NATO forced it from the province last June -- to deputy head of the Third Army. <br><br>Monday, Lazarevic and his new direct boss, Third Army commander Nebojsa Pavkovic, both said Serb forces could return to Kosovo in June when the NATO-led peacekeepers might be forced out by a veto on their continued deployment by China or Russia. <br><br>Shunned by the West, which has made clear it wants him out, Milosevic has turned to Russia and China for support in hopes of exploiting their differences with Washington and Brussels. <br><br>The two states, which have veto power on the U.N. Security Council, have criticized NATO's actions in Kosovo, but the issue of the peacekeepers' continued mandate is likely to be at most a bargaining chip in their wider dealings with the West. <br><br>NATO sources say there is no chance of Serb forces returning to the province after the widespread atrocities committed against the majority ethnic Albanian population and local analysts see the statements as political posturing. <br><br>They share an underlying concern that Milosevic may try to strike out against Kosovo or Montenegro if public anger grows and he finds himself completely cornered, but say if he does he is more likely to use police or paramilitaries than the army. <br><br>NEW MOBILIZATION DIFFICULT AFTER KOSOVO <br><br>It was well-trained police which played the main role in flushing out separatist Kosovo Albanian guerrillas during the year-long conflict which proceeded the air strikes, while the conscript army merely pounded villages from a distance. <br><br>Bratislav Grubacic, editor of the Belgrade newsletter VIP, said senior officers were themselves aware the army could not return to Kosovo and would have trouble mobilizing troops for a fight in Slav Montenegro, especially since the air strikes. <br><br>As to whether the military could threaten Milosevic, he said the top commanders were loyal to the president, who he said made sure they were well looked after, despite the army's humiliating withdrawal from Kosovo and parlous state. <br><br>"On the lower levels it's difficult to judge. There is a lot of dissatisfaction among the lower ranks but not yet to the extent that the army might turn against the regime." <br><br>The Tanjug report on the decree made clear Milosevic had not forgotten the lower ranks. <br><br>"More than 80 percent of the medals were for noncommissioned officers and junior officers," it said, citing Milosevic's military cabinet. <br><br>"Decorations are a sort of pay-off," said Grubacic. <br><br>"They give people the feeling that everything's comfortable in the army." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xANALYSIS-Milosevic eyes politics in army reshuffle``x946541996,9792,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Montenegro offered on Wednesday to pay Yugoslav army officers in the republic in hard currency if the army agreed to supply goods from Serbia to the same value in return, a government official said. <br>The offer, announced by Montenegro's Finance Minister Miroslav Ivanisevic after a government session, was the latest move by the independence-minded republic to separate its fate from that of isolated Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>It was clearly designed to protect Montenegro from inflation by cutting out the weakening Yugoslav dinar, overcome a trade blockade by Belgrade and lure the military to its side. <br><br>But it was not immediately clear if the army would accept it without at least tacit approval from Milosevic, since the local commander, Milorad Obradovic, is considered loyal to Belgrade. <br><br>"The Montenegrin government decided today to pay salaries to all employees in Montenegro in German marks," Ivanisevic told reporters. <br><br>"Taking into consideration the living standard of the Yugoslav army employees and pensioners in Montenegro, the government also decided the incomes of these two categories should be converted into hard currency from dinars," he said. <br><br>"This is conditioned on the Yugoslav army ensuring goods can be purchased for Montenegro from Serbia at wholesale prices in exchange for the dinars earmarked for salaries and pensions." <br><br>Belgrade slapped a ban on payments operations with Montenegro after the Western-leaning republic introduced the German mark as legal tender in November. Serb police also block deliveries of food to the republic. <br><br>The army's practice of flying in sackloads of dinars to pay its troops in the coastal republic have threatened Montenegro's monetary moves, part of a series of unilateral steps to boost its autonomy from Belgrade. <br><br>The two republics, which make up today's Yugoslavia, have been at loggerheads since pro-Western Milo Djukanovic was elected president of Montenegro in 1997 and introduced policies at odds with Milosevic's leftist rule. <br><br>Last week Djukanovic said Milosevic might not approve of Montenegro's offer to the military, which he said was necessary to limit inflationary pressure in the republic and boost the army's living standards. <br><br>"By halting payment operations, Serbia made each new dinar a worthless paper in Montenegro," he said. "In that sense paying the army members in dinars represents an inflationary pressure." <br><br>He told university students on Thursday the offer would be made to commanders of Yugoslavia's Second Army, which covers Montenegro, in a few days but that "Belgrade may not like it and it may be a pretext for them to misuse the army." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro offers salaries deals to Yugoslav army``x946542057,39132,``x``x
``xBy Philippa Fletcher <br>BELGRADE — Serb opposition figures turned to music to mark the dawn of the new millennium three days early on Wednesday, saying the country needed to move faster toward a new century and a fresh start. <br>Economists from an opposition network formed earlier this year joined musicians for an open air concert in Belgrade to try to forge an opposition force aimed at ousting Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>The main organizer was Mladjan Dinkic, a 35-year-old dissident economist who also plays bass guitar in a group called Monetary Shock.<br><br>"Let's sing together for a little while and then we'll overthrow the one who has been in our way all these years," Dinkic told a mainly young crowd of several thousand.<br><br>The performers quickly distinguished themselves from the country's squabbling opposition politicians, by starting their concert early, rather than up to an hour late like the ill-attended daily rallies held for almost three months from September.<br><br>Entering 2000 Three Days Early<br><br>"Let's enter the year 2000 three days before the deadline — because during the last 10 years we've lost almost the entire century. We have no more time to waste!" said a G-17 Plus statement explaining the early celebration.<br><br>The economists' opposition network of professionals is called G-17 Plus.<br><br>The concert, held under the slogan "New people for a new time," also had a much lighter touch than the nightly rallies across Serbia by the opposition politicians.<br><br>Those were marked by lengthy speeches blaming Milosevic's 10 years in power for a growing economic crisis and Serbia's international isolation.<br><br>At Tuesday's concert, singer Rambo Amadeus confessed to the lively crowd braving a cold winter drizzle that he'd had a few drinks.<br><br>"I was celebrating the first birthday of my son. I hope this is the last year under this regime for him ... when he was only three months old he experienced bombing," he said, referring to the NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia over Kosovo this year.<br><br>Pensioner Gordana Radic said she had come to support a group she felt could attract those disappointed by the opposition.<br><br>"I'm a bit old for the music!" she shouted over the noise.<br><br>Dinkic said after the concert ended with New Year countdown and a few fireworks that there was much more to be done.<br><br>"Next year we have to prove that we are able to change the regime and to change it, and finally to start working and living normally like other people in the world," he said, forgetting that he had already declared the start of the new year.<br><br>The Serbian Culture Ministry took over arrangements for the real millennium eve concert in Belgrade after opposition Serbian Renewal Movement, which runs the city council, pulled out on Friday, saying it did not want to spark a civil war.<br><br>The party, led by the charismatic but mercurial Vuk Draskovic, said it had heard pro-government political parties were planning their own concert for the same night and feared a clash between rival supporters — its most oft-cited reason for not adding its weight to the daily street protests. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRocking Serb economists mark New Year early ``x946542082,573,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br><br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>RAGUE, Dec. 29 -- Officials of the tribunal investigating war crimes in the Balkans said today that a study of possible Western crimes in the recent Kosovo war is a preliminary, internal document that is highly unlikely to produce indictments or even be published. <br>The officials were quick to play down the importance of the study, which was requested in August by the United Nations' chief prosecutor at the time, Louise Arbour. The report, which was completed last week by the tribunal's senior legal adviser, will be studied over the holidays by the current chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, the officials said. <br><br>The existence of the study was reported on Sunday by the British newspaper The Observer in an interview with Mrs. Del Ponte. But Mrs. Del Ponte emphasized that the tribunal had more pressing tasks than prosecuting the Western leaders who have been most supportive of the tribunal, including the extension of current indictments of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and four of his top associates to possibly include charges of genocide. <br><br>"It's not my priority, because I have inquiries about genocide, about bodies in mass graves," she told the paper. <br><br>The tribunal's spokesman, Paul Risley, said in a telephone interview today that the study was an appropriate response to public concerns about NATO's tactics. "It is very important for this tribunal to assert its authority over any and all parties to the armed conflict within the former Yugoslavia," he said. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic has not been indicted for actions in Bosnia, however, leading to criticism from Belgrade, Moscow, Beijing and elsewhere that the tribunal has bent to pressure from the United States to bring an indictment over Kosovo. But tribunal officials say that Washington in particular has been reluctant to hand over relevant intelligence about Bosnia that touched Mr. Milosevic or the late Croatian president, Franjo Tudjman. <br><br>The tribunal can charge only individuals with crimes, not states, institutions or organizations. <br><br>The preliminary report is understood to be a legal analysis of the basis for bringing charges of war crimes for NATO activities like the bombing of civilian power stations and bridges, which NATO said had military uses. The report also examines the wide use of cluster munitions, which NATO said were being used only against airfields and other military targets, but some of which fell into populated areas, like the grounds of a hospital in the center of Nis, in central Serbia. The study looks at the history of such weapons and how they have been used in previous wars. <br><br>As an internal document, it will not be released to the public, Mr. Risley said. If Mrs. Del Ponte decides to take no further action, the document will be filed for later historians. If she decides to order work on preparing indictments of individuals, the document would simply provide useful background. <br><br>The tribunal currently relies on NATO troops in Bosnia to capture and hand over those charged with war crimes who still live there, and Mrs. Del Ponte has pushed NATO governments to do more to capture notable figures like Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, who is said by Western officials to move between Montenegro and the Foca area of Bosnia, and Gen. Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander, who is thought to live in Serbia. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. Tribunal Plays Down Its Scrutiny of NATO Acts``x946542119,88387,``x``x
``xBy REUTERS<br><br>THE HAGUE, Dec. 29 -- A top Bosnian Serb commander pleaded not guilty today to charges that he directed a sniping, shelling and terror campaign against civilians during the three-year siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. <br>The commander, Gen. Stanislav Galic, 56, led the Sarajevo Romanija Corps from 1992 to 1994, reporting to Dr. Karadzic and General Mladic. He has since retired and was arrested last week by NATO forces in Bosnia. <br><br>The siege of Sarajevo, from early 1992 until 1995, killed 10,500 people, almost 1,800 of them children, the indictment said. Prosecutors say General Galic was in command during the deadliest months of the campaign. <br><br>He is accused of seven counts of violations of the laws and customs of war and crimes against humanity -- more specifically, sniping, shelling, inflicting terror and murder. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xEx-General Pleads Not Guilty``x946542156,958,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>The Yugoslav government has accused opposition leader Vuk Draskovic of being a "French spy" and of wanting civil war, ahead of a strategy meeting for opponents of President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Goran Matic, the Yugoslav Information Minister, claimed Mr Draskovic was a puppet of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. <br><br>"We should not be surprised if the ... meeting brings an initiative to offer Nato a partnership. This would pardon the commanders and executors of the crimes committed during the aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," he said. <br><br>With leadership provided by the Mr Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), Serbia's 16 major opposition parties and groups, including the Alliance for Change, will meet to discuss how they can force Mr Milosevic to call early elections. <br><br>SPO officials do not exclude the possibility of calling for joint mass protests, a strategy the party did not support when the Alliance started anti-Milosevic rallies last year. A spokesman for SPO, Ivan Kovacevic, said: "The time has come now for all forms of battle against the regime." <br><br>Previously, SPO had tried to press for the early elections through parliamentary procedure but found its efforts blocked by the ruling "red-black coalition" of Milosevic's Socialists, his wife's JUL and the Radicals of Vojislav Seselj. <br><br>Dragor Hiber of the Alliance said that it would be enough if all the opposition parties agreed on simple things, such as a non-aggression pact between them and a refusal to co-operate with the ruling coalition in case opposition forces win the elections. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xDraskovic accused of spying for France ``x947500865,95195,``x``x
``xBy Daniel Bukumirovic<br><br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Vojslav Seselj said Thursday Belgrade should ``intervene using all available means'' if Montenegro decided to secede.<br><br>Seselj was commenting on a New Year's message by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, which challenged the pro-Western leadership of Montenegro, the junior partner to Serbia in the two-member federation, to call a referendum on independence.<br><br>Montenegrin officials, who had themselves threatened such a referendum if Milosevic refuses to reform Yugoslavia to free them from his policies, said the challenge was a trick and that Seselj's statements could be closer to Belgrade's real view.<br><br>``Slobodan Milosevic as Yugoslav president has a right to his opinion. He said Montenegrin citizens could decide their destiny for themselves. It is an old democratic principle, and we don't have anything against it,'' said Seselj, who represents the radical wing of a ruling coalition controlled by Milosevic.<br><br>``But the Yugoslav constitution does not foresee the possibility of secession of a federal unit, and the federal state has in such cases to intervene using all available means.''<br><br>The Montenegrin government, anticipating a radical statement from Seselj, had already said that Milosevic would have to distance himself from the minister to prove his rational- sounding words were genuine.<br><br>Western officials, mindful of bloody attempts to carve out Serb states in other ex-Yugoslav republics which split away, have advised Montenegro, which has already gone its own way on the economic front, not to try for full independence.<br><br>``The best solution for Montenegro is that which suits Montenegro,'' Milosevic said in his New Year address, which came at a time of heightened tensions with the coastal republic.<br><br>``If the Montenegrin people think life outside Yugoslavia would be better for them, they have a right to chose such a life, and if, on the other hand, they think life in Yugoslavia is the optimum choice for them they have to stick to it.''<br><br>Some analysts said the address was a way for Milosevic to make clear he rejected reform and expected Montenegro to stop unilateral moves toward autonomy, while at the same time sounding reasonable.<br><br>``Milosevic's statement should be treated with caution, as if it was a threat,'' Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister Novak Kilibarda told Reuters Wednesday, recalling that Milosevic never waved the flag of war throughout a decade of conflicts.<br><br>``If the Yugoslav president says he disagrees with Seselj, then we may trust him,'' he said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBelgrade Plays 'Good Cop' 'Bad Cop' on Montenegro``x947500899,59945,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Montenegro may phase out the Yugoslav federation's official currency, the dinar, by the end of the month, a newspaper reported Wednesday.<br><br>Dimitrije Vesovic, who supervises the republic's money supply, was quoted by the newspaper, Pobjeda, as saying that the introduction of the German mark as a parallel currency in November has been so successful that there has been a sharp decrease in the supply of the dinar.<br><br>Dropping the circulation of the dinar would further distance Montenegro from Serbia, its much larger partner in Yugoslavia. The leaders of both republics have been at odds for months.<br><br>The monetary changes began as result of political differences between Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic and the reformist, pro-Western leadership of Montenegro. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro May Phase Out Dinar``x947500928,91155,``x``x
``xBy Philippa Fletcher<br><br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - The Yugoslav government responded coolly to the historic defeat of Croatia's ruling party in a parliamentary election, while an opposition party said it showed democratic forces were on the ascendancy.<br><br>``It's an expected defeat, it's nothing new,'' Goran Matic, information secretary of the Yugoslav Federation now made up of just Serbia and Montenegro, told Reuters after late President Franjo Tudjman's HDZ conceded defeat to its center-left foes.<br><br>A spokesman for the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement, led by Vuk Draskovic, welcomed the victory of the main Croatian opposition bloc uniting Social Democrats with Social Liberals over the HDZ, which has ruled Croatia since 1990.<br><br>``We congratulate the opposition on its victory in Croatia,'' Ivan Kovacevic said at the party's weekly news conference.<br><br>``The Croatian experience points the way to (Serbian) democratic forces if they really want to win,'' he said, blaming rivals for divisions which have hamstrung opposition efforts to end Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's decade-long rule.<br><br>Matic said he was not worried by the vote for change.<br><br>``Why should it concern us? Those are Croatian elections,'' he said.<br><br>Ivica Racan, head of the victorious Croatian bloc, pledged to win back support from Western governments that shunned the ex-Yugoslav republic in protest at Tudjman's autocratic rule. The veteran leader died last month and presidential elections are scheduled for January 24.<br><br>Racan also pledged to tackle hardship by cutting the budget and offering tax breaks to investors.<br><br>Like today's Yugoslavia, Croatia was ostracized by the West over its role in the 1992-5 Bosnian conflict, which followed close on the heels of the war between Serbs and Croats which accompanied Croatia's moves to independence in 1991.<br><br>Since last year's conflict with NATO over Serbia's Kosovo province, the Belgrade government has been isolated further by the West, which has said Milosevic was at the heart of all recent Balkans conflicts and continues to be a threat to peace.<br><br>Matic, whose government insists it can stave off economic crisis without the help of the West who it says only wants to destroy and then occupy Yugoslavia piece by piece, said Croatia's new leaders had a lot to prove.<br><br>``Each political party makes promises. Let's see how they fulfil them.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBelgrade Cool; Foes Pleased by Croatian Election``x947500959,37350,``x``x
``xRUSSIA'S military offensive in Chechnya is an unintended result of NATO's attack on Yugoslavia. <br><br>There are many similarities between the two wars, both in concept and in execution. Russia has learned from our example. <br><br># NATO bombed Serbia into submission. Russia hopes to bomb Chechnya into submission. <br><br># NATO claimed that it did not target Serbian civilians. Russia claims that it does not target Chechen civilians. A Russian official complains, "When you (Americans) bombed civilians in Kosovo, you called it collateral damage. When we do it, you call it a violation of human rights." <br><br># NATO's bombardment caused hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee from Kosovo. Russian bombs drive columns of refugees out of Chechnya. <br><br># NATO claimed that the war was necessary to defeat Serb terrorists, thugs and murderers. Russia claims it must, similarly, rout Chechen terrorists, thugs and murderers. <br><br># NATO bombed because its credibility was in jeopardy. Russia bombs, in the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, because, "We have capitulated everywhere. Our country cannot abandon the right to defend itself, and defense means completing this operation." The new acting president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, echoed these sentiments, saying, "We will not tolerate any humiliation to the national pride of Russians or any threat to the integrity of the country." <br><br># NATO avoided a ground war, fearing heavy allied casualties. Threatening to "drop the bridges and turn out the lights" if Belgrade did not surrender, the West defeated Yugoslavia through massive aerial bombardment. <br><br>Russia lost the first war in Chechnya in 1994-96 because it got bogged down in ground combat. This time Moscow, seeking to minimize its losses, replicates NATO's tactics. Recently, though, winter has set in and poor visibility has made bombing difficult. Russian casualties have begun to mount. <br><br>Last spring, Russian entreaties against NATO's massive application of force in Serbia were ignored. This winter, Western condemnations of Russia's "indiscriminate bombing" are disregarded in Moscow. <br><br>At a summit in Istanbul in mid-November, President Clinton warned his "good friend" Yeltsin that if attacks on civilians continued, "the world would not stand idly by." <br><br>Yeltsin responded that Clinton could no longer claim the moral high ground. Wasn't the attack on Serbia a war of "disproportionate consequence?" <br><br>Had not the United States used inflated estimates of hundreds of thousands of murdered Kosovars as a pretext to interfere in a sovereign nation's internal affairs? <br><br>Last month, Clinton again warned that the offensive must stop. Yeltsin reminded Washington "that Russia has a full arsenal of nuclear weapons." <br><br>How did we get to this war of words? What happened to glasnost and perestroika? <br><br>A decade ago, the Russians drove the Communists out of power with the expectation that the Free World would embrace them as allies. It never happened. <br><br>At the time of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the West promised that it would not expand eastward. Since then, NATO, with the inclusion of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, has moved up to the borders of the former Soviet Union. It threatens to extend the alliance still further. <br><br>The Clinton administration, reversing long-standing arms control policy, seems determined to press ahead with an antimissile defense that would abrogate the ABM treaty of 1972. <br><br>The ill-conceived, poorly monitored infusion of billions of dollars from the International Monetary Fund into Russia has created a kleptocracy in which the shrewd and corrupt strip the country of its assets and drive average, law-abiding citizens into poverty. While criminals with foreign bank accounts live in regal splendor, Russian pensioners go hungry. <br><br>And to add insult to injury, at the very conference in which the West demanded a withdrawal from Chechnya, a treaty designed to squeeze Russia out of petroleum profits was signed. With Clinton as smiling witness, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey agreed to build a pipeline that, intentionally by-passing Russia, would send Caspian Sea oil directly into Western markets. <br><br>Our idle threats over Chechnya are counterproductive. If we truly want Moscow to stop targeting civilians, we should set the example. <br><br><br>Examiner contributor Alex A. Vardamis, former director for European studies at the Army War College, is a retired colonel who served as military attache in Greece. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIf Serbia, then Chechnya ``x947763188,87084,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Montenegro will reshuffle its government later this month to replace foreign minister Branko Perovic, who resigned last month over alleged involvement in smuggling and criminal association with the Italian mafia. <br>Local media said on Wednesday that Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic had called an extraordinary session of parliament for January 26 to outline the reshuffle, which according to the Montenegrin constitution must be approved by the deputies. <br><br>Part of the ruling coalition of the pro-Western republic, the only one left with Serbia in the internationally isolated Yugoslav Federation led by Slobodan Milosevic, is also pressing for other ministerial changes, the Vijesti daily said. <br><br>Vijesti said there was so far only one obvious candidate to replace Perovic, who told parliament last month he would step down, after an Italian judge ordered him and others to stand trial on smuggling and criminal association charges. <br><br>"In diplomatic ranks only the name of Branko Lukovac, Montenegro's envoy to Slovenia, is mentioned as a possible replacement for Perovic," it said. <br><br>Western diplomatic sources have said Perovic's resignation was a damage limitation move to appease European Union backers of Montenegro's government and ease pressure from its Milosevic-backed opponents. <br><br>The National Party and the Social Democratic Party, junior partners in the tripartite ruling coalition, are pressing for the replacement of Minister of Religious Affairs Slobodan Tomovic, Vijesti said. <br><br>The parties say Tomovic is too close to the Serbian Orthodox Church and that this is not fair on the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which the Serbian Church does not recognise. <br><br>Last week police prevented supporters of the Montenegrin Church holding a ceremony in a place where adherents of the Serbian Church had already gathered, saying they feared a clash. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro to reshuffle government``x947763236,6497,``x``x
``xATHENS, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Greece and Italy on Tuesday called for early democratic elections in Serbia and an eventual lifting of the embargo that has been imposed on their Balkan neighbour.<br><br>Prime Minister Costas Simitis and his Italian counterpart Massimo D'Alema, who is on a two-day official visit to Greece, urged the European Union and the United States to support efforts for Serbian democracy.<br><br>The two leaders also backed Serb opposition calls for early elections with international guarantees for their transparency and an eventual lifting of the embargo.<br><br>``Greece has always supported the view that the embargo cannot solve the problems. If there is not economic development in the region, there will not be calm in the Balkans,'' Simitis told reporters after a one-hour meeting with D'Alema.<br><br>``The point is not to help one side or the other. We must pursue democracy,'' Simitis added.<br><br>D'Alema also called for the lifting of sanctions against ordinary Serbs, especially in the fields of air transportation and the supply of natural gas. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGreece and Italy call for end of Serbian sanctions``x947763292,53829,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia killed some 2,000 people, half of whom were children, a top Yugoslav army general said Wednesday.<br><br>NATO carried out its 78-day bombing campaign last year in an effort to stop government troops' crackdown against ethnic Albanians in Serbia's southern province of Kosovo.<br><br>The independent Beta news agency quoted Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic as saying that ``NATO did not accomplish any of its declared goals but it killed 2,000 innocent victims, 50 percent of whom were children.''<br><br>NATO has not confirmed a number of people killed by its airstrikes in Yugoslavia. Serbian officials have said before that more than 300 people died, but that number was unconfirmed as well.<br><br>Lazarevic did not give a breakdown of the death toll between civilians and the Yugoslav military, nor say on what his estimate was based. Earlier statements by top officials of Yugoslavia, the federation of Serbia and Montenegro, had mentioned some 500 casualties among the armed forces.<br><br>Lazarevic was one of the top commanders in Kosovo during the conflict.<br><br>The bombardment ended when the government troops agreed to pull out from the province, which opened way for the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, which is now administered by the United Nations.<br><br>Meanwhile, police arrested and questioned a top opposition official for several hours Wednesday, the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement said. Miladin Kovacevic, a top adviser to opposition party leader Vuk Draskovic, was confronted by the police in a Belgrade street and taken into custody, a statement from the opposition party said. He was released later in the day.<br><br>Serbian Renewal Movement and other opposition parties agreed this week on a new, joint effort to try oust Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Kovacevic was the official who announced the decision Monday. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav: NATO Bombs Killed 2,000``x947763331,81838,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br>Jackie Rowlands in Belgrade <br><br>The Serbian opposition will be celebrating Orthodox new year tonight in a greater state of harmony than at any stage since the end of the Nato bombing campaign. <br>Rival opposition parties are encouraging their supporters to come together at an open-air New Year's Eve party organised by the students' resistance movement in Republic Square in Belgrade, the scene of ultimately doomed protests last year against the rule of President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>The hitherto feuding opposition is congratulating itself on the signing of a "historic agreement" earlier this week in which 15 political parties adopted a joint strategy aimed at securing early presidential, parliamentary and local elections in Serbia. <br><br>At their festivities the students are to name their men and women of 1999, and more than a few opposition leaders will doubtless be hoping to find their names on the list. <br><br>"We, the leaders of the democratic opposition, decided to once again demand from Milosevic and both Yugoslav and Serbian parliaments to agree to call early elections by the end of April." said a spokesman for the controversial and charismatic opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic. <br><br>The demand for elections was accompanied by a threat of renewed anti-government protests starting in March. <br><br>The action plan was the initiative of Mr Draskovic, who is trying to assume the role of overall leader of the Serbian opposition. He appears to believe that his moment has come after the failure of his rival, Zoran Djindjic, to galvanise public support during a countrywide protest campaign last summer. <br><br>The decision by all the main opposition parties to support the strategy indicates a new pragmatism and a tacit admission that opposition disunity has alienated the people of Serbia. <br><br>Beyond the demand for elections, Mr Draskovic's blueprint outlines a strategy for rehabilitating Serbia internationally. It contains proposals for the lifting of sanctions against Belgrade once the authorities agree to elections and for the readmission of Serbia into the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. <br><br>To avoid accusations of selling out to the west, the opposition also calls for Serbian troops to be allowed to return to Kosovo. <br><br>Mr Draskovic is adopting a softly softly approach to political change rather than the top-to-bottom shake-out advocated by some of his younger opposition rivals. Notably absent from his blueprint is the demand for the immediate removal of President Milosevic. <br><br>Mr Draskovic is meanwhile courting disaffected members of Mr Milosevic's ruling Socialist party of Serbia, who are alarmed at the growing influenc``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic's rivals try to bury feuds ``x947763647,11395,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Jerome Socolovsky, Associated Press Writer <br><br>U.N. judges today sentenced five Bosnian Croat militiamen to up to 25 years in prison in the biggest conviction yet at the international war crimes court on the Balkan conflict. <br><br>The verdicts followed 16 months of hearings and testimony from 158 witnesses in what prosecutors have depicted as one of the most horrific "ethnic cleansing" attacks in the 1992–95 Bosnian war. <br><br>The Bosnian Croats were convicted for taking part in a killing spree in the central Bosnian village of Ahmici, which left more than 100 Muslim men, women and children dead. Every Muslim home was burned to the ground. <br><br>"Indisputably, what happened on April 16, 1993, in Ahmici has gone down in history as comprising one of the most vicious illustrations of man's inhumanity to man," said presiding Judge Antonio Cassese. <br><br>"Today, the name of that small village must be added to the long list of previously unknown hamlets and towns that recall abhorrent deeds and make all of us shudder with horror and shame," he said. <br><br>The Italian judge read out a list of towns that included the infamous Nazi concentration camp, Dachau; Soweto, site of a massacre in apartheid South Africa; and My Lai, where U.S. soldiers slaughtered civilians during the Vietnam War. <br><br>However, Cassese conceded that his chamber had "not tried the major culprits ... those who ordered and planned, and those who carried out the very worst of the atrocities" at Ahmici. <br><br>The ruling sentenced Vladimir Santic, commander of a local police battalion, to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity for murdering and passing on orders from superiors to men under his command. Co–perpetrator Drago Josipovic was sentenced to 15 years. <br><br>Members of the Kupreskic family, brothers Zoran and Mirjan, and cousin Vlatko were given terms of up to 10 years for participating in the slaughter. <br><br>A sixth defendant, Dragan Papic, was set free because Cassese said the evidence could not prove his guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." <br><br>Unless the verdicts are appealed, the men will serve out their terms in one of several European countries that have offered to incarcerate Balkan war criminals. <br><br>On April 16, 1993, bands of armed Bosnian Croats who descended on the village and killed at least 103 Muslims, including 33 women and children. Entire families were gunned down, scores of houses were burned and two mosques were destroyed. People were burned alive. <br><br>When British peacekeepers came upon the village, all 172 Muslim houses had been destroyed, while not a single Croat home had been touched. <br><br>According to the indictment, Bosnian Croat militia conducted "a highly coordinated military operation" to empty the area around the valley of Muslim inhabitants. <br><br>The trial of Gen. Timohir Blaskic, commander of Croat forces in the area, finished last July, but no date has been announced for a verdict. <br><br>Although the Ahmici defendants were rank–and–file militiamen, some came from the town they were accused of attacking. That forced the court to grapple with one of the central mysteries of the Balkan conflict: How neighbors, whose children once played together, became sworn enemies almost overnight. <br><br>Since its establishment in 1993, the U.N. court has handed down only eight convictions. Seven are under appeal. Only one convict has served out his term, in Norway. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTribunal sentences five Bosnian Croats in biggest conviction yet ``x947844554,88985,``x``x
``xPODGORICA (Reuters) - Montenegrin police and anti-terrorist units were out in force in the republic's capital Thursday for a rally organized by supporters of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br>Special police in flak-jackets and carrying arms guarded the parliament, government and other key buildings in the independence-minded republic, the only one to remain with Serbia in Milosevic's Yugoslav Federation. <br><br>They also deployed, with several armored personnel carriers and fire engines, near the central square where people gathered for the event, held to mark the Serbian Orthodox New Year's Eve. <br><br>Two years ago 39 police were among 45 people injured in a clash with supporters of the Milosevic-backed Socialist People's Party, who tried to storm the government a day before the inauguration of pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic. <br><br>Djukanovic, who was prime minister at the time, has gradually increased Montenegro's autonomy from Belgrade during his time in power and reinforced the police force against possible retaliation by Yugoslav troops based in Montenegro. <br><br>A police source said the Yugoslav soldiers had been given the day off to mark the Orthodox New Year. <br><br>The Socialist People's Party hoped to fill the central square for the gathering, which it says will be a combination of a religious celebration and a rock concert. <br><br>Predrag Bulatovic, deputy head of the party, whose followers are unhappy with Djukanovic's market reforms, said earlier this week there would be no political speeches and that nothing would be done to incite the crowd. <br><br>The police were clearly taking no chances. <br><br>"It's much more tense than last year," said the source. <br><br>"But we won't allow anything to happen like two years ago. If anyone tries anything, they'll be arrested," he said. <br><br>"For now it's all peaceful. Everything's under control." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xPolice out in force for Montenegro rally``x947844588,96339,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Serbia's ruling coalition Thursday rejected the latest calls from the Serbian opposition to hold early general elections. <br>Serbia's fragmented opposition united Monday on a plan to launch joint anti-government demonstrations if Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ignored their demand for early elections at all levels by the end of April. <br><br>The opposition had said they would stage the first street protest in support of their demands in March. <br><br>A spokesman for Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) at a weekly news conference ridiculed the opposition demand. <br><br>"It is ridiculous to seek elections in an election year," Ivica Dacic said. "I do not understand how 16 parties, of which only one or two are in the parliament, can meet to demand elections." <br><br>Federal elections covering Yugoslavia's constituent republics of Serbia and Montenegro are due this year, as are municipal elections in Serbia. Elections for the Serbian republic parliament and president are due in 2001 and 2002 respectively. <br><br>The opposition argues that an early general poll would pave the way for democratic forces to legally take over from Milosevic, who they say is pushing the country further into isolation. <br><br>They say the vote would also clear obstacles to improving Serbia's ties with its small but increasingly independent partner Montenegro, which has said would not take part in any joint federal ballot organized by Milosevic and his allies. <br><br>At a separate news conference, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party and Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister, Vojislav Seselj, said only regular elections due this year would be held. <br><br>Seselj said his party wanted local elections to be held in the spring, while a vote for the Yugoslav parliament had to be held by Nov. 2. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRuling Serbs reject opposition election call``x947844619,49822,``x``x
``xFOCUS-Milosevic loyalists challenge Montenegro<br>PODGORICA, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Supporters of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic held a large, defiant rally in Montenegro on Thursday, clearly aimed at warning the republic's Western-backed government not to try to break away. <br>Thousands of people packed the main square of the capital Podgorica for the event, held to mark Orthodox New Year's Eve. <br><br>Heavily-armed police and anti-riot brigades from the republic, which is gradually edging away from Belgrade, deployed around the parliament, government and other key buildings but stayed away from the rally. <br><br>"Yugoslavia! Yugoslavia! Serbia! Serbia!" the crowd chanted while performers played nationalist songs from Serbia, which dominates the two-republic Yugoslav federation that Montenegro's reformist government has threatened to quit. <br><br>As midnight struck, Zorica Taic-Rabrenovic from the Milosevic-backed Socialist People's Party compared the Serbs to Jesus Christ. <br><br>"As he was crucified and tormented so we have been crucified and tormented all these years. They couldn't do anything to him. They can't do anything to us," she told the crowd, stoking fears among Serbs that the West is against them. <br><br>A noisy and impressive firework display followed, accompanied by the sound of firecrackers lit by the audience. <br><br>Two years ago, 39 police were among 45 people injured in a clash with supporters of the Milosevic-backed Socialist People's Party, who tried to storm the government a day before the inauguration of pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic. <br><br>MONTENEGRIN GOVERNMENT REINFORCES POLICE <br><br>Djukanovic, who was prime minister at the time, has gradually increased Montenegro's autonomy from Belgrade during his time in power and reinforced the police force against possible retaliation by Yugoslav troops based in Montenegro. <br><br>A police source said the Yugoslav soldiers had been given the day off to mark the Orthodox New Year. <br><br>One large group in the crowd came from the Lijeva Rijeva region, the home village of Milosevic's late father. <br><br>"The political situation isn't dangerous, it's the government that's dangerous," said Vucic Davidovic, 39, who said he lost his police job four years ago because he was a Serb and now lived on a pension of 75 German marks a month. <br><br>"We want to live together, they should be ashamed," he said, referring to the large police presence in the town. <br><br>Predrag Bulatovic, deputy head of the Socialist People's Party, whose followers are unhappy with Djukanovic's market reforms, said earlier this week there would be no political speeches and that nothing would be done to incite the crowd. <br><br>Lidija Ljumovic, 14, said she had come to the event with her 13-year-old friend for its religious significance and the pop music as well as to support the party. <br><br>"We support it because the governing party is splitting Yugoslavia," Ljumovic said. <br><br>All those asked at the rally said they did not expect trouble. But the police were clearly taking no chances. <br><br>"It's much more tense than last year," said the source, speaking as the crowd began pouring into the square. <br><br>"But we won't allow anything to happen like two years ago. If anyone tries anything, they'll be arrested," he said. <br><br>"For now it's all peaceful. Everything's under control." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``x``x947844683,89314,``x``x
``xStaff Sergeant Also Charged with Committing Indecent Acts <br>Reuters<br> <br>By Andrew Gray<br><br>VITINA, Serbia, Jan 16 — A U.S. soldier in Kosovo was charged today with the murder of a local 12-year-old ethnic Albanian girl, U.S. forces said.<br> The soldier, 35-year-old Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi, was also charged with committing indecent acts with a child, the chief of staff for Kosovo’s U.S.-led military sector said.<br> “I’d like to express our heartfelt and deepest condolences to the family of the victim,” a sombre Colonel Ellis Golson told reporters at Camp Bondsteel, the main U.S. base in Kosovo.<br> Outside the girl’s home in the town of Vitina, about 9 miles from the giant U.S. camp in eastern Kosovo, neighbors gathered to offer sympathy and support to her family. <br>Anger at U.S. Forces<br>Some expressed anger at U.S. forces in general. But the victim’s distraught father, clutching a photograph from U.S. military authorities of his daughter on a mortuary slab, said he he did not hold the entire force responsible.<br> “You can’t blame the whole army. You can’t blame the commander,” said Hamdi Shabiu, sobbing sometimes as he talked to reporters outside his home. “We want to know who this soldier was... Why did they allow such a soldier to come here?”<br> The picture he held showed the head of his daughter Merite, her skin pale and apparently bruised, resting on a white pillow with her light brown hair pulled back.<br> The killing prompted shock in Vitina and around Kosovo, which is home to more than 40,000 troops from the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force. They began deploying last June after alliance bombing drove Serb forces out of the province.<br> Although no longer met with the grand displays of gratitude which marked their arrival, KFOR troops are generally given a warm reception by Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanians, who see them as a guarantee against the return of the Serb forces that terrorized them.<br> The case is the first time a KFOR soldier has been suspected of such a serious crime.<br> “The very reason that KFOR came here was to stop violence,” KFOR commander General Klaus Reinhardt said in a statement. “To discover that one of our own members may have been involved in the ultimate act of violence — murder — fills me with horror and anger.” <br><br>Body Found Outside Vitina<br>U.S. troops found Merite’s body two miles outside Vitina on Thursday evening, a spokeswoman for U.S. forces said.<br> Ronghi, from the Third Battalion of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina but currently stationed in Vitina, was immediately detained, Major Debbie Allen told reporters.<br> She understood Ronghi had served in the army for more than 12 years.<br> The killer had attacked the girl, Allen said, but the exact cause of death was still part of the investigation, as was the question of whether she had been raped.<br> She said the indecency charge specified that “an act occurred with a child under 16 years of age that was for sexual gratification or stimulation of the person who did it.”<br> Brigadier General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the U.S. forces in Kosovo, met with Vitina leaders on Saturday evening.<br> “They discussed how important it is to continue relations,” Allen said.<br> “The unit has a good relationship in this community. They have been there a few months, they have established a position there that has been welcomed by the people,” she told reporters at Bondsteel. “This is an isolated situation.” ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAmerican Soldier Charged With Ethnic Albanian Girl’s Murder``x948106160,87352,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ The flu epidemic raging in Yugoslavia over the past three weeks has killed dozens of people, but seems to be ebbing, media reported Saturday. <br>Flu killed at least nine people in the northern city of Subotica, the Belgrade daily Glas reported. It also listed several other towns in Serbia and Montenegro _ the two Yugoslav republics _ where hospitals also recorded increased deaths from the flu. <br><br>The latest official estimate of cases of flu put the number of people affected at 82,000 in Serbia and 44,000 in Montenegro, but real figures are likely higher because many flu victims do not go to a doctor. <br><br>On Friday, 2,602 new cases were recorded in Belgrade _ the first decrease in daily rate since the outbreak began last month. Health authorities said this may be an indication the epidemic could be over in a week or two. <br><br>In the southwestern town of Uzice, the number of deaths rose by about 20 percent over the last three weeks, local health officials said. A similar increase was reported in the northern town of Novi Sad, also as apparent consequence of the flu epidemic. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFlu kills dozens, but epidemic may soon be over``x948106191,56496,``x``x
``xBy Misha Savic <br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — The gangland-style slaying of Serbia's most notorious paramilitary leader was aimed at silencing a man who could tie key figures in President Slobodan Milosevic's government with Balkan war crimes, opposition members claimed Sunday. <br><br>Zeljko Raznatovic, a hero to radical Serb nationalists and symbol of terror to thousands of non-Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, was gunned down Saturday in a plush Belgrade hotel as he sat in a sectioned-off part of the lobby. <br><br>One source said Raznatovic, better known as Arkan, was shot in the eye. Two of his bodyguards were also killed in the hail of bullets, and the assailants escaped. <br><br>"Someone was making sure that one of the key people who knew too much should not live too long," said Mirza Hajric, adviser to Muslim member of the Bosnian presidency, Alija Izetbegovic. "Unfortunately, he missed an opportunity to testify against President Milosevic." <br><br>Arkan, 47, had been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague for atrocities committed by his "Tigers" militia during secessionist wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. <br><br>Arkan's Tigers were purportedly organized in the early 1990s by Milosevic's secret police to fight alongside government troops in Bosnia and Croatia. That enabled Milosevic's government to try to disassociate itself from the ethnic cleansing and other atrocities committed during those conflicts. <br><br>Belgrade police issued no statement about the killing, and witnesses gave conflicting reports about whether one or more assailants were involved. <br><br>However, Arkan was often seen in the company of senior police and security officials. The links between Arkan and the government led to speculation among Serbian opposition figures and others that the killing was meant to silence Arkan. <br> <br><br>Milosevic and several other key government figures were indicted by The Hague court last year. Two months ago, reports in the independent Belgrade media claimed Arkan was considering fleeing to the West. The reports, denied by Arkan's lawyer, also said he was trying to cut a back-room deal with the war crimes tribunal to testify against Milosevic in exchange for immunity from prosecution. <br><br>And Arkan's killing was not unprecedented: More than a dozen prominent journalists, police, politicians and underworld figures have been victims of unsolved murders in Belgrade since 1991. <br><br>"A number of people who had a prominent role in the past wars are vanishing in professionally organized murders," said opposition politician Zarko Korac. <br><br>While independent media covered the murder as its top story, official newspapers and broadcasters barely mentioned the slaying. <br><br>The main state-run newspaper, Politika, published its report on page 20 of its Sunday edition. State-run television reported the death at the end of its late Saturday newscast — just before the weather report. <br><br>Elsewhere, international officials expressed regret that Arkan would never be called to account for his actions in Balkan wars before a court of law. Jacques Klein, the chief U.N. representative in Bosnia, called Arkan a "psychopathic mass murderer." <br><br>"The sad part of all of this is that he was not actually brought to justice, that he was not brought to The Hague," Klein said. <br><br>U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the United States takes "no satisfaction" in Arkan's death and "would have wanted him to stand trial in The Hague for his crimes." <br><br>But in Belgrade, some shed tears for Arkan, who had won popularity by relentlessly whipping up Serb nationalism. A crowd swarmed to the hospital where an ambulance brought Arkan after the shooting, and men and women cried as they were told the man known as "babyface killer" was dead. <br><br>After the Bosnian and Croatian wars, Arkan settled in Belgrade and married a folk singer with whom he had two children. He is also survived by seven other children from his previous marriages. <br><br>Arkan's funeral was scheduled for Wednesday. His body will lie in state beginning Tuesday at the Serbian Unity Party headquarters in the plush Dedinje district in Belgrade. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xArkan's Death Frustrates Officials Who Wanted His War Crimes Testimony ``x948106253,73909,``x``x
``xFinancial Times<br><br>The opposition claims Arkan's killing confirms government links with terrorism, writes Irena Guzelova in Belgrade<br><br>Early suspicions that the murder of Serbian paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as Arkan, was gangland-inspired have given way to opposition speculation that it may have been officially sanctioned.<br><br>Arkan and two of his bodyguards were shot when gunmen opened fire in Belgrade's Intercontinental hotel on Saturday afternoon. Arkan later died in hospital.<br><br>Reputedly one of Serbia's wealthiest individuals, Arkan was a longtime ally of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>His murder was the latest in a series of unsolved killings of both business-linked and political leaders.<br><br>"There were only two people who used to be behind such murders, Arkan and Milosevic," said a former police official.<br><br>Opposition leaders claim the killing shows the government intends to spread fear and insecurity in Serbia. The regime, increasingly intolerant of dissent and intent on consolidating its power, has stepped up its surveillance within its own ruling coalition, the judiciary and media.<br><br>The government made no comment on the assassination, and the state-controlled newspaper Politika only reported the murder on page 20.<br><br>"Someone who knew a lot and took part in many things was killed," said Goran Svilanovic, a leader of the anti-Milosevic Civic Alliance, saying that Arkan "was very close to the authorities, or so it seemed".<br><br>"This is further confirmation that we are living in a country of state terrorism," said a statement from Serbia's largest opposition party, led by Vuk Draskovic, who claims he was also the victim of an assassination attempt last year.<br><br>A Muslim leader in Bosnia, where Arkan's "Tiger" militia allegedly killed and terrorised hundreds of civilians, said the paramilitary leader may have known details linking Mr Milosevic with war crimes.<br><br>There is no shortage of people who would have wished Arkan dead. A leading figure in the underworld whose criminal record went back to the 1970s, Arkan was under indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for alleged war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia.<br><br>He used his football club Obilic as a front for his business deals.<br><br>His attack, carrying all the signs of a professional murder, could have been inspired by any number of motives.<br><br>"Hustling and corruption are enormous and people are living without any money," said Toma Fila, a lawyer acting on behalf of some of the Serbs indited for war crimes.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xArkan murder 'may have had state backing' ``x948106315,28112,``x``x
``xThe Sunday Times<br>Tom Walker <br> <br>THE notorious Serbian warlord Arkan was shot and killed last night by masked gunmen in the lobby of a Belgrade hotel. <br>Witnesses said Arkan, 47, an indicted war criminal accused of ordering the killing of thousands of Muslims during the war in Bosnia, was hit three times in the face when two unidentified men sprayed the lobby of the Hotel Intercontinental with automatic fire. <br><br>One of the men was later reported to have been arrested. Arkan was rushed to an emergency clinic in Belgrade's central hospital, where he was pronounced dead. <br><br>One of his bodyguards was killed and a female kickboxer who had been sitting with him in a cordoned-off area of the lobby was seriously injured. <br><br>Arkan, whose real name was Zeljko Raznatovic, became notorious as head of the Tiger paramilitaries responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the Bosnian and Croatian wars. A flamboyant figure with a beautiful pop star wife, he was also reputedly Serbia's richest man, thanks to profits from organised crime. <br><br>He was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague in September 1997, but the indictment was kept under wraps until the Nato air campaign in the Balkans began last March. There were rumours he may have been involved in atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, but it was never proven. Arkan was also wanted by Interpol, and had previously escaped from police in Belgium, Germany and Sweden. <br><br>There was immediate speculation in Belgrade that Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, might have been behind the attack. Sources close to Arkan, including his lawyer Giovanni di Stefano, had said recently that he was submitting evidence to the Hague, and this could have provided vital evidence in any eventual trial of Milosevic. Arkan was confident that charges against him might be dropped if he cooperated with prosecutors. <br><br>Bob Stewart, former British UN commander in Bosnia, said he believed, however, that Arkan was more likely to have been killed by members of a rival mafia group. "It doesn't seem very much of a surprise that someone has decided to do what I could almost call the decent thing," he said. <br><br>Arkan, who married Ceca, a Serbian "turbofolk" star, in a garish ceremony in 1995, had lived a charmed existence in Belgrade for years, apparently believing he was beyond the law. He was wanted for bank robberies in western Europe in the 1970s and 1980s and was also believed to have amassed wealth from war profiteering. <br><br>Martin Bell, the independent MP who met Arkan while a BBC reporter in the Balkans, described him as having considerable charisma. "Somehow I doubt that Arkan will die in his bed," he wrote. <br><br>Bloody king of the mobsters <br><br>WITH his fake military uniforms, ceremonial swords, gun-toting female bodyguards and lissome pop star wife, Arkan, the Serbian warlord who died after being shot in a Belgrade hotel last night, had come to epitomise the new Serbia at its most vulgar and corrupt. <br>An indicted war criminal accused of widespread ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity during the Croatian and Bosnian wars at the head of a gang of paramilitaries who called themselves the Tigers, he was also a notorious racketeer and gangster who made a fortune from gun running and drug dealing. <br><br>For the past decade Arkan, the son of a senior Yugoslav army officer, had thrived from the rich pickings to be gleaned from constant war and social dislocation. <br><br>Born on April 17, 1952, in Slovenia, he dropped out of school and was first jailed at 17 for theft. He became a hitman for the Yugoslav secret police before embarking on a criminal career that took him on bank robbing sprees across Europe. <br><br>He escaped from a prison in Belgium, shot his way out of a courtroom in Sweden, and escaped from a guarded hospital room in Frankfurt before eventually taking refuge within the growing anarchy of the collapsing Yugoslavia. <br><br>Using his influence as the leader of the Red Star Belgrade football supporters club, he quickly established an underground network of thugs and assassins that metamorphosed into the Tigers. They saw their first action in the Serbo-Croatian war of 1991 and 1992, helping Serb communities in Croatia cleanse large territories which were then declared autonomous Serb republics. <br><br>In 1993 the Tigers took their killing to northern Bosnia, where Arkan enthusiastically drove thousands of Muslims from their homes. Some of the most brutal killing was around the Bijelina area near the Serbian border, and rumours went around that Arkan was to be seen on videos in which his victims were chainsawed to death. <br><br>As his power grew Arkan became impervious to the law, and did as he saw fit in Belgrade. He built a garish villa outside the Red Star ground, and bizarrely included a cake shop on the ground floor. <br><br>He was officially listed as a baker; unofficially, he ran a multitude of smuggling rackets across the former Yugoslavia, using his connections in the police and customs to earn a vast fortune. Apart from the bankers and state industry captains in Slobodan Milosevic's inner circle, Arkan became Yugoslavia's richest and most dangerous man. <br><br>He made few excuses for his continued cleansing operations in Bosnia. "We are warriors in our blood. My grandfather fought the Austro-Hungarians and the Germans. My father was a partisan," he said shortly before his third wedding in 1995, to Ceca, Serbia's most glamorous "turbofolk" singer. <br><br>The ceremony, featuring Arkan in a second world war marshal's uniform, was carried live on a new television station, Palma, famous also for its midnight pornography. <br><br>Arkan became a member of parliament early in the decade, and was given a convenient vote-rigging seat in the rebellious province of Kosovo. He quickly established close ties with the Albanian mafia, with whom he ran an efficient drug smuggling operation from Turkey and up through Serbia and Bosnia into western Europe. <br><br>Later he abandoned his allegiance to Red Star Belgrade and patronised his own football club, Obilic, whom he transformed into Yugoslav champions. Unable to travel with the club in Europe because of Interpol warrants for his arrest, Arkan sent Ceca instead. <br><br>His relationship with Milosevic was always shrouded in mystery, but most analysts believed Arkan knew too much about the Yugoslav leader for comfort. Through his lawyer Giovanni de Stefano, Arkan had made representations to the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, where he protested his innocence of charges of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. <br><br>Arkan was secretly indicted by the Hague in 1997, and the charges were made public last March. Sources close to him, however, said he appeared to have believed he could do a deal in which he provided evidence against Milosevic that would ensure his own immunity from punishment. It was the most risky game he could have played. <br><br>Ironically, Ceca, in the video from her new album Ceca 2000, is depicted shooting the lover of her husband, whom she then frames for the attack. Ceca was not with Arkan in the attack on the Intercontintental, and nor were his famed new band of female bodyguards. <br><br>There was a rumour in Belgrade that one of Arkan's oldest sons had an affair with Ceca, and the singer did sport a black eye two years ago. Nevertheless she protested to the end that she loved her man. "If God will allow me I will bear to Arkan another son," she said in a recent television interview. <br><br>Most recently Arkan made himself known to the international press corps by swaggering around Belgrade's Hyatt hotel during Nato airstrikes, his pot-bellied cronies often at his side. He formed a new private army called the Serbian Defence Force, which he always insisted was not involved in the Kosovo campaign. <br><br>He was affable enough socially, with a firm handshake and cheery demeanour; his eyes, though, were noted for their coldness, and he would quickly fly into a fury. <br><br>Harald Doornbos, a Dutch television correspondent, was once literally thrown out of Arkan's house after quizzing him on his police record, and Arkan grabbed the tape from his cameraman and smashed it against the wall. <br><br>The men who needed him dead <br><br>THE most popular theory for Arkan's killing was that he had sent evidence to the Hague implicating Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, in war crimes, write Tom Walker and Edin Hamzic. <br>Police sources in Belgrade had warned Arkan he was sailing close to the wind, but he always believed that his bodyguards were a match for any assassin that Milosevic might send his way. <br><br>Milosevic has been linked in the past with ruthless murders, including the shooting during Nato airstrikes of Slavko Curuvija, a newspaper editor. <br><br>"Only the man at the top could have done this," said one former policeman close to the Milosevic security apparatus. "The only thing done professionally over the past five years in Belgrade is murder. <br><br>"But this shows that the regime is really losing it, that they're seriously desperate. Arkan had been loyal over the years, after all. A lot of other people must now be worried." <br><br>Through his dominance of the underworld, Arkan had made many enemies apart from the head of state, and Serbia has over the past two years become a much more criminalised society. <br><br>The city's elite cemetery in the park beneath Milosevic's Dedenje villa is a tribute to the gangster fraternity's fallen; several of the larger and more ornate tombstones honouring friends of the president and his son Marko. <br><br>Arkan could have clashed with Marko himself, or any number of leaders of the so-called "Vozdovacki Clan", a mafia elite spawned in the past two years largely from gangsters returning to Yugoslavia from the Serbian diaspora. Arkan is supposed to have traded at various times in drugs, guns, prostitutes and alcohol - which all constitute a lucrative and fiercely fought businesses in the Balkans. <br><br>Another theory circulating in Belgrade last night was that Arkan had clashed with the Albanian mafia. One witness claimed that one of the assassins seen fleeing the Hotel Intercontinental was heard shouting in Albanian. There was also speculation that Arkan had attempted to cut off the Albanian drug-running routes through Serbia after Nato airstrikes. <br><br>It was also posited that the Kosovo Liberation Army could have used its underworld contacts to eliminate Arkan, although equally it could be argued that the KLA relied on Arkan for weapons procurement. <br><br>Others potentially with an interest in the ending of Arkan's reign included Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, two Bosnian Serb warlords and indicted war criminals with similar fears to Milosevic - namely, that when it came to the Hague, Arkan knew too much. Neither man has much influence in modern Belgrade, however. <br><br>Another potential source of friction was his football club, Obilic. On several occasions last year he was accused of match fixing, and several of the figures behind Belgrade's two traditional giants, Red Star and Partisan, would have gladly seen Arkan removed from the sports scene. <br><br>During the Nato airstrikes Arkan's casino in the Hotel Yugoslavia was destroyed, and he is believed to have been anxious to reestablish himself in the casino business. His wife Ceca also had a perfume shop in the Hotel Intercontinental.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbian 'Tiger' warlord dies in hail of gunfire ``x948108909,53563,``x``x
``xASSOCIATED PRESS <br> <br>A U.S. peacekeeper in Kosovo is in custody, charged with a grisly crime against a little girl, NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports. <br> <br> VITINA, Yugoslavia, Jan. 17 — The top U.S. military official in Kosovo sent his condolences to the family of an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl who was sexually assaulted and killed, allegedly by an American soldier serving in Kosovo. <br> <br> <br> ‘I did not know your daughter but as a father I feel a deep sense of loss and can imagine your pain.’ <br>— BRIG. GEN. RICARDO SANCHEZ<br> “ON BEHALF of KFOR and the U.S. military presence in Kosovo, I want to express to you our most heartfelt sympathy on the death of your daughter,” read a personal letter by Brig. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, released Monday.<br> Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi, serving with the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, known as KFOR, was charged Sunday with sexually assaulting and killing the ethnic Albanian girl, the U.S. military said Sunday.<br> It is the first time a peacekeeper from any country has been accused of such serious crimes since the 50,000-strong peacekeeping force arrived in June.<br> “I did not know your daughter but as a father I feel a deep sense of loss and can imagine your pain,” Sanchez’s letter said. “I cannot say I know how you feel but I know how I feel. ... The department of the army will spare no effort in bringing this matter to justice.”<br> <br>INCIDENT THREATENS RELATIONS<br> The incident has threatened relations between the Americans and the Kosovo civilians the peacekeepers were sent to protect. The peacekeepers arrived after NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign forced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to halt his bloody crackdown against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority. <br> <br> “We don’t want them here to give us security if they are going to do this,” said Muharram Samakova, a neighbor of the girl’s family.<br> Ronghi, 35, is a weapons squad leader assigned to A Company, 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment from Fort Bragg, N.C. His home town was not immediately known. He was being held in detention at nearby Camp Bondsteel pending transfer to the U.S. Army’s confinement facility in Mannheim, Germany. The army said Sunday it will appoint an officer to conduct a pretrial investigation and recommend whether Ronghi should be court-martialed. <br> The girl’s body was found late Thursday in the countryside near the city of Vitina, 45 miles southeast of the provincial capital, Pristina, the army said. A senior U.N. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Saturday that the girl appeared to have been raped before she was killed.<br><br> Shabiu said he last saw his daughter early Thursday when she left to go to the market. She did not return. Neighbors in an apartment complex across the street told him she had been killed in the basement of the building.<br> “They killed her 20 meters (yards) away from the house,” he said. “They took her — she was only 11 1/2 years old.”<br> Serbian state-run television, which regularly criticizes the NATO peacekeeping mission, said Sunday evening that the case “exposed an unprecedented disgrace.”<br> The U.S. peacekeepers are widely seen as heroes by Kosovo Albanians because of Washington’s role in the NATO bombing campaign. On Sunday, groups of ethnic Albanian children could be seen milling around U.S. military vehicles, laughing, chatting and playing with the soldiers.<br> However, neighbors of the Shabiu family were outraged. <br> <br> Hxsen Islami said local residents had filed complaints with the U.S. command in Vitina about male soldiers searching young girls for weapons. He said the complaints had gotten no response.<br> “I’m sorry, but they are touching the girls,” Islami said.<br> U.S. military officials at the main headquarters at Camp Bondsteel said they knew nothing about such complaints. Brig. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the head of Kosovo’s American forces, met Saturday night with community leaders in Vitina and offered his condolences to the family.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xApology for girl’s death in Kosovo ``x948197926,69838,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>The Serbian warlord Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, is to be buried on Thursday at a low-key ceremony for family and friends only, the party of the assassinated paramilitary leader said yesterday. <br><br>The sources from Raznatovic's Serbian Unity Party said he would be buried on Thursday morning at Belgrade's Novo Groblje cemetery, close to the city centre. <br><br>The burial of Raznatovic, who was shot dead on Saturday in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel in Belgrade, will follow a memorial service tomorrow at a small cinema in the central Syndicate House. <br><br>The party sources declined to comment on the reasons for such a muted farewell to the Serbian nationalist – once close to the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic – who had been indicted by the United Nations war-crimes tribunal for alleged atrocities during the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. <br><br>The country's leaders have been accused by the opposition of ordering the murder to silence a man who knew too much, and it is widely believed in Belgrade that the Raznatovic family, his football club (the Belgrade team Obilic) and the party are playing by the regime's rules. "It amounts to an official embargo on publicity on the case," an analyst in Belgrade said, insisting on anonymity. <br><br>This theory has been bolstered by the unusually thin coverage of Raznatovic's assassination by the official media, the powerful Radio-Television of Serbia (RTS) and the pro-government Politika daily newspaper. RTS covered his death with one laconic sentence, and Politika's coverage has been restrained. But for the private and independent media, the stories on the killing of Arkan, a powerful businessman with links to the criminal underworld, have been heading news bulletins. <br><br>In the absence of any official word on the police investigation into the murder, speculation continued to be rife yesterday as to whether Raznatovic's links to the underworld had motivated the killing or whether the regime of Mr Milosevic may have been involved. <br><br>The first reaction to the murder from a member of the ruling élite was guarded. Radmilo Bogdanovic, a senior member of Mr Milosevic's Socialist Party and a former interior minister, played down the claim that the authorities were to blame. <br><br>"The easiest thing for them to do is to call it state terrorism, but I see no way to link those things," Mr Bogdanovic said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBelgrade imposes official news blackout on Arkan assassination ``x948197971,463,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Serbian opposition leaders said they will seek Wednesday to convince Europe and the United States that they have overcome their differences and persuade the West to back them up with more aid. <br>Dragoslav Avramovic, a former central bank governor and the icon of one wing of the splintered opposition, told a news conference it had three aid projects to discuss. <br><br>"We expect tomorrow's meeting to be on the level of experts and to clarify the steps to be taken, funds to be addressed and a deadline for effecting these projects," Avramovic said. <br><br>Avramovic and other opposition leaders will outline the projects in Budva, on the coast of Montenegro, to officials from the United States and European Union. <br><br>Officials from the smaller Yugoslav republic's pro-Western government also are due to take part in what will be the second round of discussions under a newly formed trilateral commission meant to strengthen ties between the opposition and the West. <br><br>The talks follow what the opposition politicians, who are split into several competing groups, have called a landmark agreement between them to cooperate in their so far ineffectual campaign to oust Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Western officials, who are trying to isolate Milosevic with economic sanctions, have welcomed the Jan. 10 agreement but made clear they want to see how it progresses. <br><br>"It's very positive, giving some hope," an EU official based in Belgrade said last week, asking not to be named. <br><br>"Of course, we've seen something similar in the past. We want to see the opposition cement together. We should not go overboard right now," he said. <br><br> <br><br>OPPOSITION SEEKS AMMUNITION FOR PROPAGANDA WAR <br><br>The opposition politicians hope to keep the focus on aid to help them counter government charges that they are traitors whose links with the West have not helped ordinary Serbs. <br><br>"We are well aware that every meeting of this kind poses a threat to the opposition's public image," Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic told the same news conference. <br><br>The first project outlined by Avramovic was a six-month plan to deliver heating oil to 23 Serbian towns, at a cost of $14 million. Some of the proposed towns are controlled by the government. <br><br>The European Union launched fuel deliveries in November under a plan called Energy for Democracy, but only two towns, both run by Milosevic's foes, so far have received fuel. <br><br>The deliveries initially were held up by what the EU said were deliberate attempts at sabotage by Belgrade. They have since moved forward but more slowly than the opposition would like. <br><br>Avramovic said the second project aimed to distribute humanitarian parcels to the families in urgent need, initially in 13 towns and later throughout Serbia. <br><br>The third project was the "most ambitious," he said, adding that it should help about 40 percent of Serbia's pensioners. <br><br>"Pensioners with monthly income worth less than 50 German ($26) would receive 60 marks ($32) every three months. The money would be paid in hard currency," he said. <br><br>If approved, the project would last two years and compensate for the fall in real value of pensions. <br><br>Djindjic said negotiations with the West were not easy. <br><br>"If you are not the legitimate negotiator, if you are not the government and if you lack the institutional support it is hard to get results in negotiating with international institutions," he said. "It is a success that we are recognized as a partners in negotiations and that we discuss issues in a professional way." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb opposition seeks more aid from the West``x948279236,39562,``x``x
``xOHRID, Macedonia (Reuters) - Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro agreed Tuesday to develop direct links, clearly aiming to free themselves from the influence of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's sanctions-bound government. <br>"The prime ministers committed themselves to efforts for reconstruction and the building of roads, railways, telecommunications, oil pipeline links and power supply network in the region," said a joint statement after the leaders met. <br><br>Filip Vujanovic, prime minister of Montenegro -- still part of Yugoslavia but gradually moving away from the larger republic Serbia -- said his foreign minister would meet his Albanian counterpart soon to discuss opening up their common border. <br><br>Albanian Prime Minister Ilir Meta told reporters: "We discussed opening border crossings between Albania and Montenegro, modernizing the railway line, road connections, electricity links between Podgorica and Elbasan ... . I believe no one has a right to isolate the citizens of the two countries." <br><br>Belgrade protested strongly when Montenegro opened a border crossing with Croatia in 1998 without consulting it and Yugoslav troops stopped an attempt by Montenegrin police to take over a part of the republic's airport in December. <br><br>"The future ... depends on peace, respect of territorial integrity, borders and minority rights," Vujanovic said after the talks, held at the Macedonian lake resort of Ohrid. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMacedonia, Albania, Montenegro seek closer links``x948279266,28762,``x``x
``xBy Holger Jensen<br><br>ATHENS, Greece -- It doesn't take long here to realize that Greece is as much a part of the war-torn Balkans as it is a NATO ally and Mediterranean tourist resort.<br><br>Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, Greece borders Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia. Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and what's left of Yugoslavia, is only an hour's flying time from Athens.<br><br>Greece accounts for more than half the productivity of an otherwise poor and unstable region. It is the biggest investor in countries to the north, which buy 12 percent of Greek exports and return the favor by sending a flood of unwanted migrants southward.<br><br>Albanian illegals do the menial labor that Greeks won't do, and are viewed in the same light as Mexican illegals in the United States. Their number has increased dramatically since the Kosovo war; no one knows how many there are but 125,000 were apprehended last year and Greek officials are the first to admit this is merely a fraction of those who made it across their porous borders without getting caught.<br><br>Greeks despise Albanian Muslims and fear a "greater Albania" much more than they do a "greater Serbia." Like the Serbs, they are quite racist in blaming Albanians for most of Southern Europe's drug smuggling and organized crime.<br><br>"They breed like rabbits," said one high-ranking official in the Greek Foreign Ministry, "and display irredentist aggression" toward other ethnic groups, suggesting they want a single Albanian state encompassing not only Albania but also Kosovo and Macedonia.<br><br>Greece is also at odds with Macedonia, whom it accuses of creating an "artificial nationalism" on what used to be Greek soil, while condemning that country's sizeable Albanian minority for setting up parallel government institutions similar to those that gave Slobodan Milosevic the excuse he needed to crack down on the Albanian majority in Kosovo.<br><br>Yet Greeks show no particular kinship with Slavic Serbs either, even though both share the Eastern Orthodox religion. Rather, they feel as Americans would if NATO had bombed Mexico, leaving us to deal with the fallout of a lost trade and a host of unwanted refugees.<br><br>As if that were not enough, Greece also has to contend with a hostile Turkey across the Aegean Sea. Most Americans are blithely unaware of the fact that the two NATO allies routinely scramble jets -- often hundreds of times a year -- to counter real or imagined threats from each other.<br><br>The two countries have not fought a war since 1821. But they have detested each other since the Turks overran Greece in 1460 and made it part of the Ottoman Empire for the next 350 years. Although the Greeks finally attained independence in 1827 they continued to be ruled by foreign kings, princes or German occupiers until after World War II.<br><br>Although Turkey and Greece both joined NATO in 1951, they were allies in name only. Four years later the Turkish government orchestrated "spontaneous" attacks on the Greek minority in Constantinople (now Istanbul), causing a sizeable casualties and a mass exodus of Greeks.<br><br>Further flight occurred in 1964 when Turkey began expropriating Greek properties and shut down all minority schools on the islands of Imbros and Tenedos. The Greek population of those islands shrank from 8,000 to 250, and that of Constantinople declined from approximately 120,000 to fewer than 2,000. Communal clashes on Cyprus added to the tension and prompted the dispatch of a U.N. peacekeeping force. The Delaware-sized island is only 60 miles off the Turkish coast but its population is predominantly Greek. One of the conditions attached to its independence from Britain in 1960 was that neither community would seek union with Athens or Ankara.<br><br>But Cyprus was split in 1974 after a short-lived coup by extremists wanting to unite with Greece. Turkish invaders seized 38% of the island, establishing a northern "Turkish Republic" recognized by no one but Ankara, while the Greeks kept their "Republic of Cyprus" in the south.<br><br>A "green line" manned by United Nations troops separates the two. And Turkey still has 35,000 troops and 300 tanks in the northern sector, saying they are needed to protect the Turkish minority.<br><br>In the shallow Aegean, where the continental shelf between the two countries is virtually one and the same, they keep contesting the ownership of islands and mineral rights. <br><br>In 1996, Athens said it would extend its territorial waters from 6 miles to 12 to discourage what it called unauthorized Turkish oil exploration. Turkey objected to making the Aegean a "Greek lake" and nearly went to war over two islets inhabited only by goats.<br><br>Greece also claims a 10-mile air limit, as opposed to Turkey's six-mile limit, which Ankara deliberately ignores.<br><br>The United States has tried to remain neutral in these disputes, but Greece accuses Washington of favoring Turkey because it has NATO's second-largest army and guards the alliance's southern flank.<br><br>Konstantin Gerokostopoulos, director of the department for Greek-Turkish relations in the Foreign Ministry, complains that U.S. neutrality, "despite American maps that clearly define Greek territory, simply encourages the spurious claims of the Turks.<br><br>There is also lingering Greek resentment of U.S. support for a harsh military junta during the Cold War. A 1967 coup, led by the late Col. George Papadopoulos, toppled the parliamentary government after years of political instability, which many Greeks blamed on what they saw as U.S. meddling in Greek affairs.<br><br>The junta imposed an ultraconservative regime that did not permit political dissent or free expression at a time when much of Western Europe was being transformed by student protests and underground movements. In a harsh crackdown on student demonstrators in 1973, the military regime jailed hundreds of opponents, tortured many and banished others to barren islands.<br><br>On a November visit to Greece, President Clinton apologized that "the United States allowed its interests in prosecuting the Cold War to prevail over its interest, I should say its obligation, to support democracy."<br><br>But that did not stop thousands of Greek demonstrators from taking to the streets, as they do every year on Nov. 17, to denounce the United States and mark the anniversary of the junta's 1973 crackdown. Anti-NATO protests added to the mayhem, with hooded protesters setting fires and smashing storefronts in central Athens.<br><br>Clinton, branded a "fascist and murderer," was forced to cut short a three-day visit to little over a day.<br><br>Given the fact that 97 percent of the Greek populace opposed NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, their government went out on a considerable limb supporting it. Prime Minister Costas Simitis provided a port, Thesalonika, for the entry of NATO troops and has contributed peacekeepers for Kosovo.<br><br>More importantly, Greece has dropped its longstanding opposition to Turkey joining the European Union, hoping this will pave the way for eventual settlement of the Cyprus, Aegean and other disputes with a belligerent neighbor.<br><br>"We did this not because we want Washington to 'owe us one,' but because we believe it is good for NATO, for the E.U. and, ultimately, for Greece," said Gerokostopoulos. "It is in our best interests to have peaceful relations and economic interchange with all our neighbors.<br><br>"But it will take a long time. And Americans should understand that this is a rough neighborhood. When the souvlaki (he used another word) hits the fan, we get splattered."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBalkan unrest causes Greece headaches ``x948279340,43795,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br><br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>ELGRADE, Serbia, Jan. 18 -- The government of President Slobodan Milosevic had no role in the killing on Saturday of Zeljko Raznatovic, the notorious Serbian paramilitary leader known as Arkan, a senior Yugoslav government official said today. <br>"Arkan was simply a criminal, and he was killed by the Montenegrin mafia that wants to take over Belgrade," the Yugoslav information minister, Goran Matic, said in an interview. <br><br>He vouched for a report in today's issue of the government newspaper, Politika, that one of the gunmen had been seriously wounded and is in a hospital after an operation. <br><br><br>The newspaper Blic reported that the wounded man is hospitalized in Loznica, northeast of Belgrade near the Bosnian border. He is Dusan Gavric, about 25, and is from a village near Loznica, the newspaper said. Mr. Gavric was a member of Mr. Raznatovic's paramilitary group, the Tigers, since 1993. <br><br>While the gunman has so far not regained consciousness, Mr. Matic said, the police expect to be able to interrogate him about the murder. <br><br>Mr. Matic also promised new developments soon on a long-standing police investigation of the November 1997 gangland-style shooting of a politician close to Mr. Milosevic, Zoran Todorovic, known as Kunda. Mr. Todorovic was a close associate of Mr. Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic, and a senior official of her Yugoslav United Left party, and his death has also been widely laid at the door of the Milosevic government. <br><br>Mr. Matic's comments were the first explicit denial of widespread accusations by Serbian analysts and the political opposition that the Milosevic government and its security forces had murdered Mr. Raznatovic, the 47-year-old businessman, gangster and indicted war criminal, in a professionally organized hit on Saturday at Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel. <br><br>Together with the Politika report, which clearly came from official sources, Mr. Matic's comments were an effort to stop rampant speculation here that the murder had been politically motivated or had any relationship to Mr. Raznatovic's activities in the Croatian and Bosnian wars. There, he fought with his own Serbian Volunteer Guard and was indicted for his actions by the international tribunal for war crimes in The Hague. <br><br>Many in Belgrade believe that Mr. Raznatovic's hints that he might provide the tribunal information about the role of Mr. Milosevic and other Serbian officials in those wars was one of the reasons he might have been murdered. <br><br>But Mr. Raznatovic, clearly disaffected from Belgrade and allied with former police officials opposed to Ms. Markovic's party, was also making overtures to the political opposition in recent months. And he was a supporter of the president of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, who broke with Mr. Milosevic and has moved closer to the West. <br><br>Mr. Raznatovic had wide business interests -- both open and criminal and financed from the profits of his earlier work with the secret police and the wars in Bosnia and Croatia -- that ranged from soccer clubs and bakeries to banking and gasoline smuggling. He is thought to have had no end of possible enemies. But his reputation and his extensive security made anything but a highly professional hit unlikely. <br><br>Killed with Mr. Raznatovic were a business associate in a casino, Milenko Mandic, known as Manda, and a senior police official with the Interior Ministry, Dragan Garic, believed to have been a colonel. <br><br>According to Politika, Mr. Garic and Mr. Mandic were killed simply so they could not identify the two assassins, one of whom came up to them in a cordoned off part of the lobby, greeted Mr. Raznatovic and then fired at the three from close range, escaping unharmed, while his associate was seriously wounded by a bodyguard before escaping. <br><br>Mr. Matic, similarly, explained the presence of the police official with Mr. Raznatovic as in the nature of his job, which was to deal with foreigners for the Interior Ministry. "His job meant dealing with foreigners, which meant that he was often in the Intercontinental Hotel," Mr. Matic said. <br><br>The fact that one of the assassins was wounded, and is in police custody in the hospital, and that a serious police investigation is under way, Politika asserted, should stop speculation about a political hit. <br><br><br>The police found the wounded gunmen by checking hospitals throughout Serbia, Mr. Matic said. "The gunman had the option of dying or going to a hospital," Mr. Matic said. But Mr. Matic confirmed that the police had not yet been able to talk to the man, and that he is "in serious condition." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic Government Denies Role in Killing of Serbian Warlord``x948279426,43520,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Serbian opposition leaders met representatives of the United States and the European Union on Wednesday to discuss how they can help the democratisation of Serbia. <br>Officials from the pro-Western government of Montenegro, the smaller of Yugoslavia's two constituent republics, joined the meeting at Budva on the Montenegro coast. <br><br>Belgrade's independent radio B292 quoted a Portuguese envoy as saying the U.S. and EU representatives hoped for a unified opposition stance. <br><br>"We hope to hear from them what their needs are and we will see if we can meet their demands politically and financially," the envoy, Antonio Tanger Correia, said. Portugal currently holds the rotating EU presidency. <br><br>The talks follow what opposition leaders have called a landmark agreement between them to cooperate in a campaign to oust Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic that has so far proved ineffectual. <br><br>The Budva meeting is the second round of discussions under a newly-formed trilateral commission meant to strengthen ties between the Yugoslav opposition and the West. <br><br>The opposition wants Western humanitarian, financial and political support in its efforts to democratise Serbia and wants sanctions against the country lifted in exchange for fair and free elections. <br><br>"As far as I know the question of sanctions will be seriously examined," Correia was quoted as saying. <br><br>But Michael Graham, chief representative of the EU Commission in Belgrade, told B292 there was little probability of a concrete decision on lifting the sanctions. <br><br>EU ministers had to discuss the issue, he said. <br><br>"The Budva meeting will be another occasion for representatives of the international community to hear the stands of the opposition and to convey them to their superiors," Graham told B292. <br><br>Western officials, who are trying to isolate Milosevic with economic sanctions, have welcomed a January 10 agreement by the opposition to unite but have made clear that they want to see how the process progresses. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWestern officals discuss aid for Serb democracy``x948355318,83193,``x``x
``xSARAJEVO, Jan 19 (Reuters) - A Western envoy in the Balkans warned on Wednesday of possible civil war in Montenegro if the coastal republic tried to break away from Serbia and what remains of their Yugoslav federation. <br>Wolfgang Petritsch, the West's top peace envoy in Bosnia, also said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was likely to hold on to power as long as the splintered Serbian opposition were unable to unite. <br><br>"I believe he is going to hang on as long as the opposition is in such disarray," Petritsch, a former Austrian ambassador to Belgrade, told Reuters in an interview. <br><br>The Western-leaning leadership of Montenegro has threatened to hold a referendum on independence unless Belgrade agrees to reform the Yugoslav constitution to give Montenegro more autonomy, but Petritsch said such a vote would be a blueprint for disaster. <br><br>Moves towards independence "would basically spell civil war and that would of course be in favour of Milosevic," he said. <br><br>"There is a huge potential for a civil war there since about half of the population are actually sympathising, not so much with Milosevic, but with Serbia. <br><br>"They feel as Serbs and there was always a very close relationship between these two countries." <br><br>MURDER HIGHLIGHTS SERBIAN CRISIS <br><br>Petritsch, also a former European Union envoy on Kosovo, said Saturday's assassination of feared Serb warlord Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic highlighted what he described as the dismal state of Serbian society. <br><br>"They are in deep crisis," Petritsch said. "And at the centre of the crisis is of course Milosevic." <br><br>But change would not come as long as his political opponents were unable to show the people that they had a viable alternative, he said. <br><br>The opposition, split into several competing groups, last week reached what its leaders described as a landmark agreement to cooperate in their so far ineffectual campaign to oust Milosevic after a decade of Balkan wars. <br><br>"I know them all and this is a group of people who have good intentions but who lack in many ways the vision that would be necessary to get Yugoslavia out of this deep crisis," Petritsch said. <br><br>He stressed that it was up to the Serbian people to introduce change, and this should take place in a democratic way and not through a bloody revolution. <br><br>He said Milosevic had refused to sign the Rambouillet accord on Kosovo last March -- triggering NATO's bombing campaign against Belgrade -- because it would have brought a "huge onslaught" of democratisation in Serbia. <br><br>"And he, from his viewpoint rightly so, realised that is the greatest danger for him," Petritsch said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xINTERVIEW-Envoy sees risk of Montenegrin civil war``x948355354,45379,``x``x
``xBy DANICA KIRKA <br><br>ALEKSINAC, Yugoslavia (AP) - If anyone in Serbia should hate the United States, it ought to be Zagorka Marinkovic.<br><br>Her house was obliterated when U.S. bombers blasted her neighborhood during last year's NATO 78-day bombing campaign. The family across the street died, along with 14 other people. Only the rubble left a lasting impression.<br><br>``Hate Americans? Oh no!'' she says, leaning forward to kiss her U.S. visitor. ``It takes two to tango, you know. You can't have a fight without two or three.''<br><br>Welcome to Serbia, where real life defies expectations - and often explanation.<br><br>After all, this is an authoritarian state where opposition newspapers denounce the government, where an accused war criminal appears as a television talk show guest, where a hotel celebrated Orthodox New Year's with a salute to the Depression-era 1930s and where twinkling red Christmas lights decorated the Socialist Party headquarters, which was blasted during the NATO bombing campaign.<br><br>Examples abound of this virtual reality, the dichotomy of a country that keeps running even though no one is really sure how. Oil is embargoed, yet traffic jams the cities. Businesses don't pay their workers, but people swarm cafes.<br><br>Fifty percent of the workforce is unemployed, but rush hour lasts all day long. A combative press manages to publish despite government harassment.<br><br>``Normal life is beyond comprehension for us,'' said author Slavoljub Djukic. ``One can adapt to suffering as well as peace. It's like an imposed reality.''<br><br>It wasn't even considered unusual this week when opposition politicians flatly accused President Slobodan Milosevic's government of gunning down the paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic, known as ``Arkan.''<br><br>Nor was Arkan, shot in the head while at the swank Intercontinental Hotel, vilified for his past. Though his alleged underworld connections and war crimes indictment were well known, many in Serbia coughed up a good word on his behalf, praising Arkan's choice to take up arms in wars in Bosnia and Croatia.<br><br>His fighting unit, the Tigers, earned plaudits for being well-trained.<br><br>``He was famous for personally leading his own men even into the most dangerous military operations,'' the independent daily Blic said. ``Extreme discipline and obedience by members of the Tigers fascinated even Arkan's biggest enemies.''<br><br>The wars accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia have marked Serbia, a largely rural region the size of Maine. Scarred by a decade of international sanctions imposed because of Milosevic's warmongering, the official economy is in virtual collapse. The black market, however, flourishes.<br><br>A recession forces pensioners to stand in line at dawn to buy subsidized milk. Tens of thousands of laborers visit soup kitchens. Former professionals sell their old shoes in street markets.<br><br>The opposition mayor of Nis, Zoran Zivkovic, estimated that as many as 70 percent of the population lives near or at the poverty line. The average family in his city survives on about $28 a month.<br><br>Those struggling to make ends meet don't have to look far to see it can be worse: The region has been flooded by as many as 1 million Serb refugees from Bosnia, Croatia and most recently, Kosovo.<br><br>Struggling with the influx, the government has lodged Serb refugees in places like the Sicevo Gorge, a former holiday resort nestled against a hillside just outside of Nis, the country's third largest city.<br><br>Water leaks through the cracked walls of the resort's cabins. A single toilet is shared by dozens.<br><br>Elmije Novabrda, a cleaning lady from Kosovo, lives in one cabin with her husband and six children. Cradling her six-week old baby, she numbly tried to explain how her life had fallen apart.<br><br>``My children were so healthy. They had cheeks like apples. Now they are always sick,'' she said. ``Now we have nothing.''<br><br>People struggling with daily survival are too exhausted to worry about the future, much less efforts to oust Milosevic, opposition leaders say.<br><br>``Aside from those who actually lost family in the bombing, many have forgotten the war,'' Zivkovic said. ``They have other problems.''<br><br>The country has made modest efforts to rebuild, including the construction work in Aleksinac, 125 miles south of the capital, Belgrade. Milosevic himself cut the ribbon at the grand opening there of a rebuilt apartment building, painted in ``Miami Vice''-like hues of peach and green.<br><br>He also visited Mrs. Marinkovic's block, though she didn't speak to him directly. The government has given her help to rebuild and, given the circumstances, she says she feels blessed.<br><br>``God saved us,'' she said. ``We were lucky.'' ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLife in Serbia Defies Explanation``x948355416,92613,``x``x
``xHISARYA, Bulgaria, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Leaders of seven countries bordering Yugoslavia met on Friday with senior EU and NATO officials to discuss how to help crumbling economies and prevent more war in the troubled Balkans. <br>The informal summit in this Bulgarian spa resort is to discuss the international isolation of the Belgrade government blamed for much of the region's instability for the past decade. <br><br>"The goal of the meeting is to facilitate peace, to exchange ideas how we can overcome the Kosovo crisis and work for democratisation of the region," Bulgarian Prime Minister Ivan Kostov said after the opening of the meeting. <br><br>"For the first time we are not generating problems but trying to find a solution," he told national television. <br><br>The meeting brings together the premiers of Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia with the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana and NATO Deputy Secretary-General Sergio Balanzino. <br><br>All the participating countries have problems of their own, but share fears over Yugoslavia and its President Slobodan Milosevic, blamed for starting three wars in the past decade. <br><br>These sent hundreds of thousands of refugees to neighbouring states, and many of them have yet to return. <br><br>EASING OF SANCTIONS AGAINST BELGRADE MAY BE AN ISSUE <br><br>All participating states have suffered economic losses due to last year's war over Serbia's southern Kosovo province, and are seeking economic and political aid from the West as they try to join Europe's mainstream. <br><br>Kostov indicated he would raise the issue of easing economic sanctions against Yugoslavia which hit its neighbours badly. <br><br>"The embargo should be focused on those who are responsible for this crisis. It should be carried out in such a way that it does not affect ordinary people," he told Bulgarian television immediately after the formal start of the meeting. <br><br>The meeting has no formal agenda. Substantive talks are scheduled for Saturday, when the leaders are likely to seek answers from NATO and the EU on whether the Balkan Stability Pact launched by the major powers with fanfare last year is to become more than just fine words and good intentions. <br><br>So far little has been done to fill it with economic substance. Kostov said the project simply lacked funds. <br><br>Another issue, particularly important for Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, is how to restore shipping on the Danube, blocked by the wreckage of bridges destroyed during last year's NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia. <br><br>So far, the West has ruled out aid in clearing the Danube as long as Milosevic remains in power. <br><br>The countries south of Yugoslavia, especially Albania and Macedonia, which has a large ethnic Albanian minority, are concerned about Kosovo, where the international community has struggled to restore calm and build democracy. <br><br>Solana, who led NATO during the air war against Yugoslavia, visited Kosovo earlier on Friday and was likely to brief the meeting on his findings. <br><br>The participants are also likely to consider the standoff between Milosevic and pro-Western Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic in what remains of Yugoslavia. <br><br>Albanian Prime Minister Ilir Meta told reporters sanctions against Belgrade should avoid harming Montenegro.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFOCUS-Yugoslavia's neighbours discuss Balkan woes``x948540715,30386,``x``x
``xLONDON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Montenegro should not expect the United States or NATO to ride to its rescue if it declares independence from Yugoslavia, sparking a confrontation with Serbia, a senior NATO diplomat said on Friday. <br>He indicated the West would be more likely to react with harsher economic sanctions against Serbia than with military action if Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched a crackdown on the tiny republic. <br><br>Montenegro's elected pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, faces growing domestic pressure to hold a referendum on independence amid fears that Milosevic may use his security forces to destabilise the Podgorica government. <br><br>"How to bring leverage to bear to prevent a showdown is the dilemma facing all of us," the NATO diplomat said. <br><br>While the West supported Djukanovic's efforts to establish autonomy, democracy and a market economy, "he should be very careful not to provoke a showdown because he shouldn't count on being rescued by the U.S. or its allies," the envoy said. <br><br>It was the second warning this week against a plebiscite on indepedence. Wolfgang Petritsch, the West's top envoy in Bosnia, said on Wednesday that moves towards a referendum would spell civil war in Montenegro. <br><br>The NATO diplomat said he did not see immediate storm clouds in Montenegro because both sides were aware of the risks. <br><br>However, an incident last month in which Yugoslav troops briefly took over Podgorica airport had demonstrated Milosevic's ability to seize control, he said. <br><br>Opinion polls in Montenegro showed support for breaking away from Yugoslavia was tepid, the envoy added. Montenegro has been at odds with Serbia since Djukanovic was elected president in 1997 and began implementing market reforms. <br><br>Djukanovic told a news conference on Thursday he expected high tension between his republic and Milosevic's federal authorities to be resolved this year, but he did not say how. <br><br>"It is realistic to expect the Yugoslav political crisis to be resolved soon," he said. <br><br>NATO HOPES SANCTIONS WILL DETER MILOSEVIC <br><br>The diplomat said he hoped that NATO's "big stick" and the threat of harsher economic sanctions would deter Milosevic from using force in Montenegro. <br><br>"The Serbian economy remains a basket case...A much stricter sanctions regime of the kind we had in 1994-95 at the height of the Bosnian war could impose severe pain on his economy," the NATO envoy said. <br><br>NATO has maintained deliberate ambiguity about whether it would intervene militarily if Milosevic used the Yugoslav army to oust Djukanovic's government. <br><br>The West recogised the right of other constituent republics of former Yugoslavia to secede. But it has rejected the Kosovo Albanians' demands for independence, even after NATO waged an 11-week air war last year to drive Yugoslav troops out of the Serbian province. <br><br>The diplomat said the United States believed Kosovo's final status could not be usefully addressed now or for several years to come because there was no mutually acceptable outcome. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO aide says Montenegro shouldn't expect rescue``x948540779,4266,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Jan 21 (Reuters) - A new, Italian-led consortium said on Friday it planned to open a trading centre near Belgrade and resume business links with Serbia, in a challenge to international sanctions. <br>"I sincerely hope that with this consortium we will manage to do something, to break the wall of sanctions and bring Serbia back to where it belongs," said Giuseppe Perniola, president of the Italian MA.GI.GA.s.r.l. export-import society for economic, technical and financial cooperation. <br><br>"This initiative is just the tip of an iceberg that has started to melt," Perniola told a news conference in Belgrade. <br><br>Perniola spoke on behalf of Italian industrialists from food and metal processing, telecommunications, car and furniture industries, who arrived in Belgrade on Thursday for a three-day visit to discuss forms of cooperation with Serbian firms. <br><br>The firms, mainly Italian but also some French, have set up a consortium called Consorzio Europeo Italia. Perniola said it would soon be joined by other western European companies. <br><br>"We expect this consortium to embrace the whole of Serbia. Serbs like us and we hope we'll be able to respond to that affection," said Perniola. "We hope that business will beat politics." <br><br>ITALIAN FIRMS VISIT SERBIA <br><br>The visiting companies included an industrial glue producing arm of Elf Aquitane, Cacciamali Spa, A.T.B., Samco, Inside International, Paladini Sa., Bigelli marmi Srl, Santo Galeazzi Pegassus, Bulbarelli, Il Ponte Srl, Ato Findley and Finelca Spa, the consortium said. <br><br>The French visited the Grmec chemicals giant to discuss production of industrial glues for wood-processing industries. <br><br>Cacciamali toured two local bus producing facilities while A.T.B. visited Pancevo oil refinery, heavily destroyed in NATO's three-month bombing last year. Talks between the companies will resume soon in Italy. <br><br>Samco had a meeting scheduled with Zastava car group on chances to produce spare parts for export markets outside Italy and Serbia. Santo Galeazzi Pegasus agreed with Takovo food processing plant to produce, process and can food for export markets. <br><br>Inside International eyed opportunies to expand its presence in Serbia. It already has cooperation with Simpo, a local firm. <br><br>"Inside has recently completed interior design of two Walt Disney ships. They are now looking for local Serbian furniture producers," Perniola said. <br><br>Il Ponte has discussed construction works with Braca Karic firm and said it would open an arts school for local talents. <br><br>Finelca will meet officials of the Ministry of Telecommunications and Mihajlo Pupin telecoms equipment maker. <br><br>SERBIA UNDER SANCTIONS <br><br>Serbia has been subject to various sanctions since 1992, first for its role in the 1992-1995 war in neighbouring Bosnia and later over Belgrade's repression in Kosovo. <br><br>The sanctions keep Yugoslavia, which consists of Serbia and Montenegro, away from world financial bodies and foreign capital markets, ban investments, flights and crude oil deliveries. <br><br>Perniola said the new commercial centre, to be opened next month 35 kms (20 miles) north-west of Belgrade, would be a wholetrade centre designed to attract local and east European businesses, particularly from former Soviet republics. <br><br>"The Schengen (visa regime) has restricted access of some citizens from eastern Europe to Italy. All eastern countries that had always wanted to buy 'Made in Italy' goods because of the quality can now come and buy these in Belgrade," he said. <br><br>"This will restore Italy's historic role of representing the bridge between the East and the West," Perniola said. <br><br>While Serbian companies will be able to collect a wide variety of consumer goods immediately upon customs fees payment, foreign firms will do so after paying 0.5 percent in administrative fees, he added. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xItalian firms to challenge Serbia sanctions``x948540829,66384,``x``x
``xBRUSSELS, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Work on clearing bombed bridges from the Danube River in Yugoslavia could begin in March if Belgrade agrees next week to a proposal that the European Union would help fund, EU sources said on Friday. <br>Removing the wreckage of three bridges destroyed by NATO during last year's 11-week air war over Kosovo from the river at Novi Sad in Serbia is essential to reopen the key international waterway to commercial shipping. <br><br>But it would require a compromise on the sensitive issue of post-war reconstruction that could cause friction with the United States. <br><br>The 30 million euro (eur-dollar) project awaits approval next Tuesday by the Budapest-based, 11-member Danube Commission, made up of states through which the river flows, including Yugoslavia. The decision requires unanimity. <br><br>Crucially, the plan involves erecting one temporary bridge over the river, EU sources told Reuters. The European Commission would pay 80 percent of the cost if it goes ahead. Allowing time for tenders, work could begin "probably in March." <br><br>Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has so far insisted the Danube will not be cleared until NATO allies agree to foot the bill for rebuilding bridges they destroyed. At least eight Danube bridges were among the 59 hit by NATO bombs and missiles. <br><br>The NATO allies, and the EU, have vowed that Serbia will get no reconstruction aid at all as long as Milosevic is in power. <br><br>A senior NATO diplomat said the United States was concerned that the West should not reward "Milosevic's blackmail tactics." Any EU money spent on Danube bridges would free cash for the Yugoslav leader to spend elsewhere, he said. <br><br>However, European allies including France and Germany are concerned at the regional economic damage being inflicted by the river's continued closure. <br><br>"No new investment and no reconstruction aid is still the official EU position," said an EU official who did not wish to be named. "So, this is all rather tricky." <br><br>The proposal calls for the clear-up to start with removal of unexploded munitions, which could require NATO military experts. But NATO sources said they were unaware of any unexploded bombs at the Novi Sad site. <br><br>MINIMALIST SOLUTION <br><br>Lower Danube states, led by Serbia's northern neighbour Hungary, have been pressing for months for a pragmatic solution to the impasse, so that full commercial navigation on the 2,850 km (1,700 mile) waterway can be restored. <br><br>Regional trade -- decimated by years of war in ex-Yugoslavia and the international wall of sanctions it generated -- has been severely hindered by the Danube blockage. Some shipping companies say they have lost millions. <br><br>Hungary warned late last year of a threat of major flooding upstream from Novi Sad if winter ice piled up around the bridge wreckage and strangled the river flow. But that risk, which may have been exaggerated to gain sympathy, appears to have receded. <br><br>Serbia threw a pontoon bridge across the Danube at Novi Sad after the NATO bombing ended. To let shipping pass, this will have to be removed and replaced by an alternative crossing. <br><br>The sources said the temporary solution for Novi Sad could be an old metal bridge currently stored in broken up parts in Austria -- technically not a "new investment." <br><br>Such a compromise on the "no reconstruction aid" policy may be more acceptable because Novi Said is run by political opponents of Milosevic, as are the cities of Nis and Pirot which have already received EU aid in the form of winter heating oil. <br><br>That "energy for democracy" scheme has won the acquiescence of Milosevic after a stop-go start and the EU is now considering extending fuel shipments to a score of opposition-run towns. <br><br>The West is looking to build cooperation with the Serbian people, if not the state, as the political opposition, whose leaders met Western representatives in Montenegro this week, overcomes divisions and builds a united anti-Milosevic platform. <br><br>EU foreign ministers are due to discuss a carrot-and-stick strategy on Monday, reviewing the ban on flights to Yugoslavia and other sanctions as well as the latest news on the Danube. <br><br>A position paper for that meeting reiterated that the main responsibility lies with Belgrade but said the EU would be ready "to examine a possible contribution once a proposal of the Danube Commission has been approved." <br><br>A NATO diplomat said Washington and its closest allies would be wary of giving anything away to Belgrade at this stage, but "the Americans realise the terrible impact of the Danube problem and know that we can't just leave it alone." <br><br>"I expect we are now moving towards some minimalist solution and as long as it does not presage any wider programme of assistance, the Americans will go along," he said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xEU ready to clear Danube if Serbia plays ball``x948540868,67403,``x``x
``xSOFIA, Jan 23, 2000 -- (Reuters) Leaders of seven countries bordering Yugoslavia meet on Friday with senior European Union and NATO officials to discuss economic and security concerns in the continent's unstable Balkan region.<br><br>The informal summit in the Bulgarian spa resort of Hisarya is aimed at highlighting the international isolation of the hard-line regime in Belgrade and efforts to find regional identity in an area torn by ethnic and political strife for centuries.<br><br>"The goal of the meeting is to send an authentic regional message to the international community, to Yugoslavia and to Kosovo Albanians," Mihail Mihailov, chief of the Bulgarian government press service, said on Thursday.<br><br>"We should show that we are capable of generating stability. We are not only a problem but also a solution," he said.<br><br>The meeting brings together the premiers of Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia with the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana and NATO Deputy Secretary-General Sergio Balanzino.<br><br>All the participating countries have problems of their own, but they also share a number of concerns topped by Yugoslavia and its veteran leader Slobodan Milosevic, blamed for starting three wars in the region in the past decade.<br><br>These sent hundreds of thousands of refugees to neighboring states, and many of them have yet to return.<br><br>COUNTRIES SEEKING ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AID FROM WEST<br><br>All participating states have suffered economic losses due to last year's war over Serbia's southern Kosovo province, and are seeking economic and political aid from the West as they try to integrate into Europe's mainstream.<br><br>The leaders are likely to seek answers from NATO and the EU on whether a Balkan Stability Pact launched by the major powers in a blaze of publicity last year is to become more than just good intentions. So far little has been done to fill it with economic substance.<br><br>Another issue, particularly important for Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, is restoring navigation on the Danube, disrupted by the wreckage of bridges destroyed during last year's NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia.<br><br>So far, the West has ruled out aid in clearing the Danube as long as Milosevic remains in power.<br><br>For the countries south of Yugoslavia, especially Albania and Macedonia, with its large ethnic Albanian minority, another concern is Kosovo, where the international community has struggled to restore calm and install democracy.<br><br>Solana, who headed NATO during the air war against Yugoslavia, is due to visit Kosovo on Friday and is likely to brief the meeting on his findings.<br><br>The participants are also likely to discuss the possible danger of a standoff between Milosevic and pro-Western Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic in what remains of Yugoslavia.<br><br>Wolfgang Petritsch, the West's peace envoy in Bosnia, said this week that civil war in Montenegro was possible if the tiny republic tried to break away from Belgrade.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia Neighbors Meet To Discuss Hopes, Fears``x948702599,25228,``x``x
``xTom Walker and Alex Todorovic <br>The Sunday Times<br> <br>AS THE dark earth of Belgrade's new cemetery settles on the coffin of Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic,the Serbian warlord and gangster supreme, the break-up of his empire threatens to pit his family against an array of rival mobsters and the country's corrupt political elite. <br>Arkan's third wife, Ceca, has already shown that she will not be intimidated. Metamorphosed from scantily clad pop star to grieving but defiantly beautiful widow, she cut an imperious figure at the funeral and appears to command the loyalty of Arkan's "Tiger" paramilitaries, a 1,000-strong private army financed by Raznatovic businesses. <br><br>Ceca has already spat her disgust at the Serbian authorities, protesting that police delayed Arkan's final journey to hospital from the Hotel Intercontinental where he was shot. Her claim lends weight to the widely held theory that state powers conspired to kill Arkan. <br><br>Ceca's immediate problem is bringing together Arkan's fragmented family. His eldest son, Mihailo, born in Sweden, is, at 24, just two years younger than Ceca, and has only dabbled on the fringes of Arkan's portfolio. He has run one of his father's mobile phone businesses and was involved in plans to set up a new mobile network for the former Yugoslavia. <br><br>But he has shown none of the ruthless cunning that took Arkan to the top of the underworld. If anything, Arkan preferred to keep his family out of his dirty work. Ceca must now drag them into that world if the empire is to survive. <br><br>Entertainment industry sources close to Ceca say she has a good relationship with Mihailo, who returned from Sweden to earn his family spurs with the Tigers in Bosnia. He has even featured in one of her raunchy "turbofolk" videos. Their biggest task will be to hang on to the jewel in Arkan's crown, Obilic football club. <br><br>Ceca is president, and is thought to be the only person to know the whereabouts of the club's European accounts. Because there were police warrants for Arkan's arrest in most of Europe, she travelled alone with the club in European competitions and had a close knowledge of how television revenues were distributed. <br><br>In her husband's extensive black-market legacy, however, Ceca finds herself up against the intersecting evils of gangsters and politicians from the ruling elite. Arkan's semi-legal businesses included the SDG holding company, used as a conduit for funds to the Tigers, and two more companies, Ari and Byzantine, involved in import-export, tourism and casinos. His most above-board assets included two property development companies, bakeries and boutiques. He was also building Belgrade's biggest business centre. These visible parts of his empire alone were estimated to be worth more than £5m. <br><br>From the mobster shakeup under way in Belgrade may come clues as to who killed Arkan, and whether they were sponsored by the state or motivated by revenge and greed. <br><br>Belgrade security sources have cast their minds back two months to the death of Zoran Sijan, a car racketeer from the suburb of Zemun. His assassination was linked to Arkan and, four days before the Intercontinental bloodbath, Arkan and Ceca received strange messages while appearing on a television talk show. An anonymous viewer called to say that Ceca resembled Sijan's widow and another told Arkan to wear a jacket - a gangster double-entendre for a bullet-proof vest. <br><br>Although Arkan cut an almost medieval figure, transcending the normal boundaries of gangsterdom, his wealth never matched that of the inner circle of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, and his attempts to redress that imbalance may have cost him dearly. <br><br>The Belgrade newspaper Vreme claimed he clashed with Mirko Marjanovic, the Serbian prime minister who controls all gas imports, and his interest in oil trading put him on a collision course with the parliamentary speaker, Dragan Tomic, who controls state refineries. <br><br>Arkan faced another ambitious predator in Marko Milosevic, the president's son. Once a loose cannon who did little else than run a discoteque and indulge in thuggery, Marko has for two years focused on building his personal fortune. <br><br>As police in Belgrade said they had arrested three men in connection with the killing, the most far-fetched theory is that Arkan staged the whole stunt using a double, and is in fact still alive. Only slightly less fantastic is the claim by Arkan's lawyer, Giovanni di Stefano, that a unit of Britain's Special Boat Service killed his client. <br><br>Interviewed in the G12 maximum security wing of Rome's Rebibbia prison, di Stefano, who faces extradition to Britain over fraud charges, said he had telephone intercepts from his sources in GCHQ and Russian intelligence that revealed how the SBS operation was planned.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFamily fights for control of Arkan empire``x948702620,53121,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Blizzards swept across Serbia on Sunday, straining the country's bomb-damaged electricity grid and plunging some Belgrade suburbs into cold and darkness. <br>Heavy snowfall snarled roads, including the main highway linking Serbia with Hungary and Macedonia, and forced airports in Tivat and Podgorica, Montenegro, to close, authorities said. <br><br>The official Tanjug news agency reported navigation on the Danube river had been halted by high winds and snow. <br><br>Power company Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS) appealed to the public to conserve electricity to prevent the grid from collapsing and urged people to shift to other sources of heat. <br><br>Nearly a third of Serbia's grid was damaged in three-months of NATO bombing last year, designed to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to pull his forces out of Kosovo. <br><br>In Belgrade, the temperature sank to minus five degrees Celsius in the early afternoon and weather experts forecast it would drop to minus 22 degrees between Tuesday and Friday. <br><br>"This is a moderate forecast. If the skies clear, it could get even colder," a Weather Service official told Reuters. <br><br>Residents in some Belgrade suburbs said their homes were enveloped by cold and darkness. In other areas, where gas is the prime source of community heating, lightbulbs blinked. <br><br>EPS said daily electricity consumption had jumped to 131.2 million kiloWatt-hours. Media reported this week that the utility was producing 117 million kWh a day and relying on neighbouring grids for the rest. <br><br>Yugoslavia, subject to an oil embargo which bans imports of crude and oil products, has had regular heating problems since November when the first snow fell. <br><br>Belgrade had hoped that Russia would provide enough natural gas to heat it through the winter, but Russian gas monopoly Gazprom has delivered barely half of Serbia's needs. <br><br>City authorities have urged local gas distributor Energogas to keep the heating on 24 hours a day. The central, community heating is normally delivered between 0600 and 2100 hours. <br><br>The European Union has sent heating oil to the Serbian opposition-held towns of Pirot and Nis. On Monday, the 15-nation bloc was expected to add other towns to the list of those receiving fuel under its Energy for Democracy scheme.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbia freezes, war-hit power grid strains``x948702638,86855,``x``x
``xThe Observer<br>The list of those implicated over Arkan's murder now includes the son of the Yugoslav President, who is a big player in the fuel black market<br>Kosovo: special report <br><br>Peter Beaumont and Nerma Jelacic <br>Sunday January 23, 2000 <br><br>The four men in tracksuits and trainers crossed the lobby of Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel to where Arkan was sitting, chatting with his bodyguards. They asked innocuously if the hotel's fitness club was open. Arkan replied that it had closed, shaking hands with the men, apparently ending a banal encounter for the leader of the 'Tigers': indicted war criminal, Serbian hero and gangster. <br><br>As two of the men turned - apparently to walk away - their companions produced guns, spraying the most notorious killer of the Balkan wars with bullets. <br><br>According to eyewitnesses, one of the assailants aimed a Heckler and Koch sub-machine gun at Arkan's face and sprayed him with bullets. One 9mm bullet entered his left eye, penetrating the brain. Another entered one of his lungs. <br><br>Arkan's wife - Svetlana Raznatovic, better know as the Serb folk singer Ceca - was shopping 50 metres away in La Frans boutique when she heard the gunfire. While the shopkeeper tried to restrain her, for fear that she might also get injured in the shooting, Ceca ran into the lobby, where she found her husband dying in a pool of blood, and tried to drag him towards the door. <br><br>A hotel guest helped Ceca bundle Arkan into a car and drive him to hospital as Ceca tried to clear his mouth of blood. She was too late. Arkan - Europe's most infamous mass murderer since World War II - was already dead. <br><br>Last week, as details of Arkan's last moments seeped out from beneath the wall of secrecy that descended following his death, one question remained: who killed Arkan? Was he a victim of Slobodan Milosevic's son, Marko, in a turf war over the black market in petrol and diesel? <br><br>Ceca had told friends that she had had a premonition of her husband's death. The night before she had dreamed that her teeth were falling out - a common enough dream, but in the pantheon of Serb folklore, this is a warning of impending death. But if Arkan was nervous about his safety in the week before his murder, he showed little sign of it, going about his business as usual. <br><br>This involved keeping up his high profile as half of Serbia's most high-octane couple, being seen in clubs, holding court at the hotel that was his base, supervising his football club, Obilic. But business as usual - as most residents in Belgrade were well aware - meant something discreetly hidden from the public gaze: running a criminal empire, largely involved in the black market for cigarettes and petrol. <br><br>A former bank robber still wanted on an Interpol warrant, Arkan's criminal activities have supplied one possible motive for the crime. <br><br>In Belgrade, however, as the local media have speculated, you do not make a move against a figure as popular and powerful as Arkan without some kind of political backing. <br><br>While Arkan appeared relaxed, friends say in private he was getting jumpy. Too many prominent figures from his violent milieu of crime, nationalist politics and paramilitaries had recently been murdered. <br><br>Arkan was said by friends to have been worried about his safety in the last few months, reasoning that he was one of the last survivors of the criminal and paramilitary leaders closely involved with both state security and the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. <br><br>Another indicted war crime suspect who was said to have led paramilitary forces in Bosnia, Slobodan Miljkovic, died in a hail of bullets in 1998 in the Serbian town of Kragujevac. The last such figure still alive is Ljubisa Buha, known as Cume, who is based in Belgrade. <br><br>Arkan had other reasons to be nervous. Despite his infamy in the international community and an outstanding warrant from the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, his most dangerous enemies were close by, underworld and political rivals who would have liked him out of the way. <br><br>Last month Zoran Sijan, a mafia leader and Arkan's kick-boxing partner, was shot while waiting for a traffic light. In recent years a number of Arkan's other associates and friends have also been murdered. <br><br>Some of these killings were carried out in the most blatant fashion, such as the shooting of Radovan Stojicic Badza, then the Minister of the Interior and Public Safety. Like Arkan, Badza had fought in Croatia. He was shot in a restaurant on 11 April, 1997. <br><br>In September, Vukasin Gojak Vule, a close friend and security manager at Arkan's casino, was killed in front of a nightclub. Another friend, Belgrade crime boss Rade Caldovic Centa, and his wife, Maja Pavic, were murdered in Belgrade's main square. <br><br>But if Arkan was coming under pressure from other criminal elements in Serbia, he was also not making any friends with Yugoslavia's President and fellow indicted war criminal, Slobodan Milosevic, and his powerful wife Mira Markovic. <br><br>According to opposition journalists in Belgrade, Arkan was growing disaffected with Milosevic's regime, allying himself with former police officials opposed to Mira Markovic's party. He was also, they claim, making overtures to the political opposition in recent months. Perhaps more dangerous still, Arkan had voiced support for the Presi dent of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, who broke with Milosevic and has moved closer to the West. <br><br>But it is where Belgrade's politics and crime intersect that many believe the real answer to Arkan's murder will be uncovered - in the figure of Marko Milosevic - son of Slobodan, and one of the biggest players in black market for fuel. <br><br>It is a theory that has been floated in a long article in the respected independent newspaper Vreme, which has suggested that Arkan was mur dered after trying to monopolise the fuel market, creating a conflict of interest between 'the deceased one and Marko Milosevic regarding some monopoly on the import of liquid fuels'. <br><br>'The problem is that it is being claimed that Arkan stepped on the toes of some very serious people because the sale of smuggled fuel is an extremely lucrative business,' Vreme reports. 'Names are being mentioned that are not fit to print, as well as political parties that have been consolidating business lately.' <br><br>At the heart of this version of the motive for his murder is Nato's destruction of Serbia's own oil refineries, leaving it dependent on imported fuel and creating a widespread black market. Anyone with some friends in high places, or enough cash to bribe officials, can buy a piece of the action. <br><br>Arkan, however, was reported to be getting greedy. His men were stopping trucks as they entered Serbia and paying the smugglers wholesale prices and then reselling at black market prices, effectively creating a monopoly that was cutting out other major black marketeers - including Marko. <br><br>Few in Belgrade are confident that the authorities will ever truthfully get to the bottom of Arkan's murder. For while Belgrade police have made arrests and say the case is close to completion, many observers believe that little real effort is being made to find who was behind the killings. <br><br>But one thing is intriguing. Of the three men arrested, two of them were said to be former policemen sacked or suspended for links to the underworld. Yesterday Police Colonel Milenko Ercic identified the suspects as Dobrosav Gavric, 23, allegedly the triggerman; former policeman Dejan Pitulic, 33; and Vujadin Krstic, 36. <br><br>In one of his last interviews, given to the newspaper Nezavisne Novine in the Bosnian Serb Republic, Arkan said: 'My whole life has been one mega thriller movie.' It may be a thriller that lacks a denouement.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xDid Milosevic's son kill Arkan? ``x948702662,854,``x``x
``xBy Irena Guzelova in Belgrade<br><br>Yugoslavia has agreed to allow the European Union access to clear the wreckages of three bridges on the river Danube destroyed by Nato's bombs. The debris has blocked navigation and cost neighbouring countries millions of dollars in lost trade.<br><br>Representatives of the 11 nations with access to the Danube agreed on Tuesday to an Austro-Hungarian plan to clear the bridges at a cost of E24.1m ($24.3m).<br><br>Previous attempts to clear the Danube have been stalled by Belgrade's insistence that the wreckage could not be removed until the West agreed to pay to rebuild all three bridges.<br><br>Yet building a bridge would violate EU sanctions, which forbid investment in the country.<br><br>The 11-member Danube Commission will present the proposal to the EU, whose foreign ministers will vote on it when they meet next month. It does not include plans for the EU to fund the construction of a bridge.<br><br>Under the proposal, the EU would launch a tender to clear the Danube, said Predrag Filipov, the president of the executive board of Novi Sad's city council.<br><br>The tender would exclude Yugoslav companies and give preference to those from countries neighbouring the Danube.<br><br>Representative of Novi Sad's opposition-controlled city council are travelling to Brussels to try to gather support for the construction of a new bridge.<br><br>Since Nato destroyed its bridges in spring last year, the city's 286,000 population has relied on a pontoon bridge that would also have to be dismantled to make the river navigable.<br><br>"We are arguing that the city needs a bridge for humanitarian reasons," said Mr Filipov. "Without a bridge many citizens don't have access to hospitals or schools and supplies of food."<br><br>The city of Vienna has offered to donate a temporary bridge, which has a life-span of about five years and would leave the river navigable. Though the EU would have to make a special exemption in its sanctions policy to permit the donation, it would not involve financial transfers to Yugoslavia, which are explicitly forbidden.<br><br>The blockage has not affected Yugoslavia's economy, since sanctions have already significantly reduced its trade. Russian and Ukrainian ships carrying fuel to Yugoslavia can also bypass the Danube via an extensive network of canals and waterways feeding off the river.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYUGOSLAVIA: Danube to be cleared ``x948877002,63271,``x``x
``xLONDON (Reuters) - Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said Tuesday it was too early to hold a referendum on breaking his tiny Balkan republic away from Yugoslavia. <br>Djukanovic, who faces growing domestic pressure to make good a threat to call a referendum on independence, said he wanted to give Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic time to consider Montenegro's conditions for staying in the federation with Serbia. <br><br>Speaking in London after talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Djukanovic said he was charting Montenegro's policy in a "responsible and careful" manner. <br><br>"In making such plans we do not think that this is the time for organizing a referendum," he said. <br><br>"What we think is we should give Belgrade more time to say what they have to say on the conditions that we have proposed for the preservation of our joint state," Djukanovic told reporters through an interpreter. <br><br>But he said his pro-Western government would resist efforts by Belgrade to undermine his political and market reforms. Yugoslav troops briefly took over Podgorica airport last month in what was interpreted as a show of strength by Milosevic. <br><br>"It is clear that our tolerance and our patience are not limitless and that Montenegro will not sacrifice its future ... for the sake of remaining under a dictatorship from Belgrade," Djukanovic said. <br><br>Montenegro has been at odds with Serbia since Djukanovic was elected president in 1997 and began implementing market reforms. Montenegro has just over 600,000 people, compared to Serbia's 10 million. <br><br>But Djukanovic has not named a date for a referendum on breaking away from Montenegro's powerful neighbor, on the advice of Western leaders who fear another Balkan conflict. <br><br>Last week, Western officials drove that message home, saying Montenegro could not expect the United States or NATO to come to its rescue if it tried to break away from Yugoslavia. <br><br>British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who also held talks with Djukanovic, said Montenegro's fate lay in its own hands. <br><br>"Whether or not Montenegro goes down the path of independence is a matter for Montenegro and for its neighbors," he said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro says too soon for breakaway vote``x948877028,87618,``x``x
``xBy Stefan Wagstyl, East Europe editor<br><br>Milo Djukanovic, the president of Montenegro, on Tuesday said it was too early to hold a referendum on taking his mountain republic out of Yugoslavia.<br><br>Mr Djukanovic, who is under domestic pressure to carry out a threat to call an independence referendum, said he hoped Belgrade would agree to proposals for greater autonomy for Montenegro that would make a referendum unnecessary.<br><br>Speaking during a visit to London, Mr Djukanovic said: "Montenegro still patiently hopes Belgrade will embrace such an offer . . . But such patience cannot be without limits."<br><br>Meanwhile, he said Montenegro was pressing ahead with efforts to promote democracy, economic reform and integration with the EU and transatlantic structures.<br><br>The republic, which recently introduced the German D-Mark as its official currency, replacing the Yugoslav dinar, was planning widespread privatisation in April, said Mr Djukanovic. This would involve voucher privatisation (where vouchers representing shares are distributed to citizens) as well as inviting strategic investors into larger enterprises.<br><br>Tony Blair, UK prime minister, and Robin Cook, UK foreign secretary, repeated promises to support Montenegro in its struggle to resist pressure from Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia's president.<br><br>However, Nato officials have made clear that such support does not imply military intervention in the case of an attack from Belgrade.<br><br>The Montenegrin president urged the UK to persuade the EU to expand the range of economic assistance available to his republic. He criticised the slowness with which he claimed aid promised under the international stability pact for south east Europe was arriving.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMONTENEGRO: Djukanovic calls for deal on autonomy ``x948877043,74514,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Jan 26 (Reuters) - The Yugoslav constitutional court said on Wednesday that Montenegro's decision to use the German mark as parallel legal tender was illegal and called on Podgorica to drop it. <br>Acting on the request of the Yugoslav central bank and a minor leftist political party, the Patriotic Alliance, the court gave a 15-day deadline to the pro-Western government in the smaller Yugoslav republic to respond to its ruling. <br><br>It did not say what other steps it would take if there was no response. <br><br>In a first reaction to news from Belgrade, a senior Montenegrin government official told Reuters the government in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica would ignore the decision. <br><br>"Our stance is widely known. We recognise neither the federal Yugoslav institutions nor their decisions," he said. <br><br>Two months ago, the same court said it was suspending the Montenegrin government's monetary moves, insisting they violated the constitution of the federal state comprising Serbia and Montenegro. Podgorica took no notice. <br><br>"Montenegro has endangered the functioning of the monetary and foreign exchange systems of Yugoslavia, payment operations and the implementation of monetary policy," state news agency Tanjug quoted judge Milomir Jakovljevic as saying on Wednesday. <br><br>Podgorica introduced the German mark as a parallel currency alongside the weakening Yugoslav dinar on November 2 to protect its tiny economy from inflation spilling over from Serbia. <br><br>It set up a monetary council and banned the Yugoslav central bank from controlling its finances. <br><br>The government of Montenegro has said the dual currency scheme was only legalising the status quo, as the German mark has been widely used illegally in both republics for years. <br><br>Ties between the two republics have deteriorated since 1997, when Montenegro elected pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic who said the country should work towards rejoining the world. <br><br>This was in sharp contrast to the policies of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, which pushed the country into even deeper isolation. Yugoslavia has been under various sanctions for almost 10 years. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugo court says German mark in Montenegro illegal``x948962952,42827,``x``x
``xFOX News<br><br>BANJA LUKA, Bosnia — Bosnian Serb Vice President Mirko Sarovic told parliament on Wednesday he was taking over the powers of the president in a bid to resolve a drawn-out political crisis. <br><br> The move will enable Sarovic, of the hard-line Serb Democratic Party (SDS) founded in 1990 by wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, to propose a new prime minister-designate. <br><br>The Serb republic, one of Bosnia's two autonomous entities, has been without a president for 10 months. <br><br>Last March, the Western body overseeing the peace process removed President Nikola Poplasen of the ultra-nationalist Radical party, accusing him of obstructing efforts to rebuild the country following the 1992-1995 war. <br><br>"I will make a contribution to the resolution of the political crisis in Republika Srpska," Sarovic told the Bosnian Serb assembly. "My duty is to take over these authorities while the situation is as it is." <br><br>Poplasen's failure to nominate a prime minister-designate with sufficient parliamentary backing allowed the government of Western-leaning Prime Minister Milorad Dodik to stay on in a caretaker capacity following elections in September 1998. <br><br>Dodik came to power early that year after ousting hard-liners still loyal to Karadzic, who is now a war crimes suspect believed to be hiding in eastern Bosnia. <br><br>But Sarovic said Dodik's government was not supported by parliament. "This is its key weakness," he told the assembly. <br><br>Sarovic did not say who he intended to put forward as new prime minister. The next session of parliament is scheduled for February 8. <br><br>The two main parliamentary blocks — the Western-sponsored Sloga (Unity) coalition and the two hardline parties — have around 30 seats each in the 83-seat Bosnian parliament. <br><br>Deputies elected mainly by Muslim refugees now living in Bosnia's other autonomous entity — the Muslim-Croat federation — control 15 seats, giving them a crucial role. <br><br>The Muslim-led Coalition for a Single and Democratic Bosnia (KCD) joined the SDS and the Radical party in calling for the formation of a new government during a parliamentary debate which started on Tuesday. <br><br>The KCD move appeared to reflect frustration that Dodik has not given it seats in his government. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xVice-President Takes Over Presidency Of Bosnia's Serb Republic``x948962985,62447,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Stephen Castle in Brussels <br><br>Dusko Tadic, the first man to go on trial for war crimes committed since the Second World War, had his sentence reduced to 20 years yesterday as he exhausted the appeals procedure of the international tribunal in The Hague. <br><br>The tribunal ruled that Tadic's 25-year sentence had been "excessive" because the Bosnian Serb was at a low level of command when he took part in the murder and torture of Bosnian Muslims at the Omarska detention camp in 1992.Judge Mohammed Shahabuddeen said that, while Tadic was guilty of "incontestably heinous" crimes, he was not one of the most senior architects of ethnic cleansing among the Bosnian Serb leadership. <br><br>A former leader of the Serb Democratic Party, a police reservist and karate instructor, Tadic was indicted for his part in a two-day attack on Kozarac in which 800 civilians were killed by Bosnian Serbs. But it was his role in the torture and killing at "White House" in the Omarska detention camp that confirmed his notoriety. <br><br>Although yesterday's judgment should end Tadic's long trial, his defence could gain one final chance to review the case on a technicality, depending on whether Tadic's former counsel, Milan Vujin, is found guilty of contempt of court on Monday by the appeals chamber. <br><br>Tadic was arrested in February 1994 when he was recognised in Germany by former refugees. He was charged in April the following year and found guilty of war crimes in 1996. In July 1997 he was given a 20-year sentence, which was increased two years later on appeal to 25 years. <br><br>His defence argued that the the court was making Tadic a scapegoat for the crimes of his superiors, some of whom are still at large, and said that he was a mere "tadpole in a pool of sharks". <br><br>Yesterday the court recommended Tadic serve at least 10 years of the sentence from the time of his conviction in 1997.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb fails to have atrocities sentence overturned ``x948963003,62276,``x``x
``xBy MELISSA EDDY <br><br>VITINA, Yugoslavia - Lulzim Ukshini was hanging out with his buddies in Sam's Pizzeria when a grenade exploded in a Serb store across town. The first he heard about the attack was when four U.S. peacekeepers came looking for him. <br><br>"They started to beat me nonstop, telling me to admit that I did it," he said. "Then they pulled a knife out and threatened to cut me into pieces." <br><br>Ukshini's story of mistreatment at the hands of American soldiers is being echoed by other ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, who tell of beatings, inappropriate body searches of women and daily harassment by U.S. troops. <br><br>The allegations come at a time of heightened concern following the rape and murder of an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl. U.S. Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi, a weapons-squad leader from Fort Bragg, N.C., was charged this month with murder and indecent acts with a child in connection with her death. <br><br>Ethnic Albanians say the killing is not their only complaint against the Americans. Their allegations have prompted an official Army investigation and threaten a breakdown in trust between the U.S. peacekeepers and the citizens they were sent to protect. <br><br>U.S. officials declined to discuss specific allegations because many of the complaints are under investigation. But the Army acknowledges it has a big problem with community relations in Kosovo. <br><br>"These are serious allegations that we do take seriously," said Maj. Erik Gunhus, a public affairs officer at Camp Bondsteel. "We will investigate and if we find they are true, we will act accordingly. We want to show that no one is above the law." <br><br>In a statement issued Sunday, the Army said preliminary findings indicate several U.S. soldiers may have been involved in misconduct, "including improper use of physical force and threats against Kosovar males and inappropriate physical contact with Kosovar females." Gunhus confirmed several soldiers have been transferred out of Vitina in connection with the investigation. <br><br>Still, Ukshini and other Vitina residents are skeptical. <br><br>"I wouldn't complain to KFOR because it does no good," Ukshini said, using the acronym for the NATO-led peacekeeping force that entered Kosovo in June after a 78-day bombing campaign forced a halt to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanians. <br><br>"Every time we went to complain, they told us: 'It's not true. Our soldiers don't behave like that,'" said Ramiz Hasani, 21, whose father, Xhauit, has been detained by the Americans in the killing of a Macedonian policeman. <br><br>Hasani said American soldiers have entered his father's restaurant several times in the past two months and harassed customers for no apparent reason. <br><br>Asked about the allegations, Defense Secretary William Cohen said he cannot comment on specific cases. But he said U.S. and NATO forces are doing police work in Kosovo only because there are not yet enough civilian police available. He emphasized the need for more police. <br><br>"We have long stated the position that the United States and our NATO forces can carry out a military operation quite successfully, but they are not for the most part - there are some exceptions - trained to carry out police work," Cohen said. "They are not trained for that, they are not competent really to carry out police work, nor should they be doing it." <br><br>Daut Xhemajli, president of the Vitina Municipal Board, says relations between the Americans and ethnic Albanians in this farming town 45 miles southeast of Pristina have become strained. He blames the Americans. <br><br>"One night they randomly entered a bar and started shouting at the customers, 'What are you going to burn next?' and 'Who are you going to kill now?'" he said. "They were treating all of the customers as criminals." <br><br>Contributing to the problem, Xhemajli said, is the fact that civilians have no avenue for lodging official complaints about the soldiers. "There is no facility or a civilian institution where citizens could file a complaint against KFOR," he said. <br><br>As a result, many ethnic Albanians say they try to avoid contact with the Americans. This is particularly true of women, who have complained of body searches by male soldiers. <br><br>Zijavere Azizi, 24, said she was walking in the center of town with a friend several weeks ago when four soldiers stopped the pair and started searching them without explanation. <br><br>"One of the men grabbed my arm and another grabbed my friend and pushed him against the concrete wall," she said. "They took everything out of my pockets and put their hands in my pockets, all of my pockets. ... Normally, I don't allow somebody to touch me all over my body, but I couldn't do anything." <br><br>Since then, Azizi said, she has left her home only when absolutely necessary. <br><br>Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who heads the U.S. troops in Kosovo, has met with Vitina leaders to express American concern over the allegations. <br><br>Xhemajli acknowledges: "We are seeing more serious efforts ... to cooperate with the citizens. We've been asking for this for a long time." <br><br>For Ukshini and other Vitina residents, it's a matter of restoring lost trust. <br><br>"When they entered (Kosovo), I respected them because I respect that uniform," said Ukshini, a wiry 28-year-old. "But they behaved in the most inappropriate way."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo Albanians raise complaints on U.S. soldiers' behavior ``x949059543,62102,``x``x
``xBANJA LUKA, Bosnia, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Yugoslav opposition officials, the exiled crown prince, religious leaders and Bosnian Serb politicians agreed on Thursday on the need to unite to oust President Slobodan Milosevic. <br>In a joint statement after a meeting in the Bosnian Serb capital Banja Luka, they called for democratisation of Yugoslavia's dominant republic Serbia, greater opposition unity and closer links with Serbs living abroad. <br><br>"Democratisation of Serbia and a change of the regime which has not brought to Serbs anything but tragedy are of the highest importance," the statement said. <br><br>"All participants agreed that the unity of the Serbian opposition and closer links with Serbs living in neighbouring countries and diaspora are needed for the accomplishment of these goals and Serbia's brighter future," it said. <br><br>They strongly supported the unity of Serbia and Montenegro, it added. <br><br>Yugoslavia, run by Milosevic for the last decade, is comprised of Serbia and the coastal pro-Western republic of Montenegro. <br><br>Serbia's fragmented opposition has been hampered by personal rivalries. But the main opposition parties agreed earlier this month on a plan to launch joint anti-government demonstrations if Milosevic ignored a demand for early elections by April. <br><br>The meeting was attended by Crown Prince Alexandar Karadjordjevic, Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, Bishop Artemije of the Serbian Orthodox church in Kosovo and several Yugoslav opposition leaders. <br><br>These included Civic Alliance head Goran Svilanovic, the coordinator of the Alliance for Change umbrella group, Vladan Batic, Kosovo Serb leader Momcilo Trajkovic and Belgrade mayor Vojislav Mihajlovic. <br><br>Alexander is the son of King Petar II who left Yugoslavia in 1941 after Nazi Germany overran his country. He died in exile in 1970. The prince, who was on his first visit to Bosnia, has lived abroad all his life. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavs, Bosnian Serbs call for Milosevic exit``x949059567,22564,``x``x
``xFinancial Times<br><br>By Irena Guzelova<br><br>A cold spell this week in Serbia, which has seen temperatures drop to minus 20 degrees Celsius, has shown the country's energy supply is far more resilient than many had expected. Despite dire predictions from international aid organisations during the autumn, power cuts have been sporadic and limited to periods of unusually low temperatures.<br><br>Despite the EU and US embargo on oil shipments to Serbia, the authorities have gone to enormous lengths to secure enough economic support to stop the population from freezing, while three opposition-controlled towns have benefited from free fuel oil shipments provided by the European Union and Norway.<br><br>"Both the ruling parties and the opposition are placing a huge political priority on keeping the country warm," said Robert Dann, a UN humanitarian affairs officer in Belgrade. "Both want to reap the political dividends."<br><br>Despite the EU and US embargo, the government has ready access to supplies from Russia and neighbouring countries.<br><br>Russia agreed to deliver gas, diesel and fuel oil in the autumn last year. Officials in Belgrade say Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, is delivering roughly half of the country's cold weather needs.<br><br>In addition, the UN says Serbia is spending around $1m a day importing electricity, though this amount rises during spells of cold weather.<br><br>The bulk comes from Slovakia. The UN thinks that an entire hydro-electric plant in Republika Srpska at Visegrad, near the Serbian border, is dedicated to supplying Yugoslavia.<br><br>Statements from officials in Republika Srpska indicate that Serbia's electricity debt to the country stands at about DM20m (E10.2m, $10.2m).<br><br>The Yugoslav authorities have not explained how they are financing the supplies. Analysts, however, say the government pays for much of its electricity in cash, helped by the first installments of a recently arranged $300m loan from China, whose repayment terms are thought to be unusually generous.<br><br>The UN says exports of copper to Slovakia from a mine at Bor, near the Bulgarian border, also helped Belgrade to secure the foreign currency needed to cover its energy needs.<br><br>Yet Yugoslavia is still struggling to pay for the quantities of energy it needs. Reserves of heating oil are running low.<br><br>The state oil company has said natural gas supplies, the main source of heating in many towns, are too small to keep household temperatures at their customary level.<br><br>Doctors say hospitals aren't warm enough. In Aleksinac, to the south of the country, the local health care centre stopped admitting patients for hospital treatment because of a shortage of heating oil.<br><br>State-run television is urging citizens to save energy to avoid the collapse of the country's strained electricity grid, damaged or destroyed in Nato's bombing campaign last spring.<br><br>"In normal conditions we need about 3bn cubic metres of gas per year, yet we are receiving only about a third of this because we don't have enough money," said Djoko Buric, general manager of Naftna Industrija Srbije, the state-oil company.<br><br>"The electricity system is on the edge. If something happened to a major thermal generator there would be a major blackout."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xELECTRICITY: Belgrade shows resilience over fuel supplies``x949059596,80062,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Montenegro's parliament approved Thursday a reshuffled cabinet following the resignation of the foreign minister over alleged links with the Italian Mafia. <br>Opposition deputies walked out after a lengthy debate and the ruling majority then voted in favor of Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic's new cabinet, which included Branko Lukovac, Montenegro's envoy to Slovenia, as foreign minister. <br><br>Former Foreign Minister Branko Perovic resigned last month over alleged involvement in smuggling and other criminal associations with the Mafia. <br><br>In other changes, Ljubisa Krgovic was named deputy prime minister, Rade Gregovic minister of urban planning and Radojica Luburic culture minister. <br><br>The four new ministers are all members of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), the senior partner in the ruling coalition, as were their predecessors. The changes had been planned before Perovic's resignation. <br><br>The fifth, Budimir Dubak, a member of the National Party, will be in charge of religious affairs. <br><br>Dubak replaces Slobodan Tomovic who was criticized for being too close to the Serbian Orthodox Church, which does not recognize Montenegro's breakaway Orthodox church. <br><br>Montenegro's pro-Western government came under pressure both at home and abroad when allegations against Perovic were made public after an Italian judge ordered him and others to stand trial on smuggling and criminal association charges. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro reshuffles cabinet after resignation``x949059624,71465,``x``x
``xFinancial Times<br><br>By Stephen Fidler in Washington<br><br>Slow delivery of funds pledged to Kosovo by the European Union is causing unease in Washington, where officials are worried that delays may threaten prospects for peace.<br><br>The level of US concern was expressed forcefully this week by Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state. In a speech to the European Institute in Washington on Wednesday, she said the same determination should be brought to the task of building the peace in Kosovo as was brought to the conflict. "Unfortunately, a serious crisis of funding has arisen in Kosovo. The reason is that, too often, the international community has promised money, but not delivered," she said.<br><br>"Here, as with the region as a whole, it is vital that our partners join us not only in pledging generously, but also in disbursing promptly," she said. The United Nations mission in Kosovo could not restore electric power, provide public security, arrange elections, and revitalise the economy on the basis of promises alone.<br><br>Mrs Albright did not mention the EU explicitly, except to praise the European Commission for pledging E12bn ($11.88bn) for the task of rebuilding south-eastern Europe over the next six years. But officials said the target of her remarks was the EU. The bureaucratic delays in delivering aid were potentially serious because the task of rebuilding the province was expected to accelerate in the spring.<br><br>The issue is also sensitive in the US which provided by far the largest military effort in the Kosovo conflict, and therefore the majority of the financing. The counterpart to this was expected to be Europe's much larger share in financing the post-war reconstruction.<br><br>Chris Patten, the EU's external affairs commissioner, has expressed his own frustration at the delays in delivering aid. Officials had expressed a determination not to repeat the mistakes in Bosnia where funds were very slow to arrive.<br><br>Nonetheless, aid for Kosovo and other parts of the region appeared again to have become bogged down, in part because Commission procedures for disbursing funds had been tightened following the resignation of the last Commission over financing scandals.<br><br>At a conference in November in Brussels, donors pledged more than $1bn of support for Kosovo until the end of 2000. Of that an estimated $527m was pledged by the EU and $157m by the US.<br><br>But Washington has been favourably surprised by development of the so-called stability pact for south-eastern Europe, launched last July, in which the EU plays a prominent role.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKOSOVO: US irked by funds delay ``x949140337,63335,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -- A close aide of Serbia's ultranationalist vice premier was shot and severely injured today by unidentified assailants, independent B2-92 radio reported. <br><br>Petar Panic, a security aide and longtime associate of vice premier Vojislav Seselj, was taken to a Belgrade hospital for emergency surgery after being shot several times, according to the radio report and police sources. There was no immediate word on Panic's condition. <br><br>Panic is a member of Seselj's Serbian Radical Party, an ultranationalist group that has been close to the ruling government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for years. <br><br>Panic was reportedly shot in the Belgrade suburb of Surcin, about 10 miles from the capital, shortly after noon. Hospital sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Seselj and another top Radical Party official were rushed to the hospital and Panic was being treated. <br><br>The police and the Radical Party declined immediate comment. No other details were available. <br><br>Working as Seselj's bodyguard, Panic beat a human rights activist and prominent Belgrade lawyer, Zarko Korac, after Korac argued with Seselj in a television talk show in 1998. <br><br>Earlier this month, notorious Serb paramilitary leader and ultranationalist Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, was shot dead in a Belgrade hotel together with two associates. That slaying -- the latest in a series of killings of prominent public figures -- has attracted enormous public attention and led to speculation about showdowns in Serbia's complex underworld of political, paramilitary and mob leaders. <br><br>During the wars of secession in the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Bosnia, both Arkan and Seselj organized paramilitary units that fought on the Serb side. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlly of ultranationalist Serb leader shot``x949140358,43529,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br>Richard Norton-Taylor <br><br>William Cohen, the US defence secretary, has roundly dismissed British claims that Nato had been prepared to use ground troops to force Serb army and police units out of Kosovo. <br>Sharp differences between Britain and the US - strongly denied during the bombing campaign - about the possibility of sending in troops are exposed in interviews to be broadcast in a three-part series starting tomorrow with Mr Cohen and the British prime minister, Tony Blair. <br><br>"It was never a close call in getting a consensus to put land forces in," Mr Cohen says. "Out of the total 19 [Nato countries], I doubt very much whether we could have gotten the consensus. I'm convinced we could not have." <br><br>The ongoing dispute about proposals to use ground troops when Nato was desperately concerned with the continuing failure of air attacks to destroy military targets will be exposed in the Channel 4 series, War in Europe. <br><br>"To make preparations for [a ground campaign] would have meant 150,000 to 200,000 troops, most of which would have come from us and, given the fact that we had a lack of enthusiasm for even a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, then it became very clear to me that it was going to be a very hard sell, if not impossible to persuade the American people," Mr Cohen says. <br><br>A US senate majority was opposed to a land campaign and the only option was to "stay the course" with bombing from the air, he adds. <br><br>However, Mr Blair says the US president, Bill Clinton, was prepared to consider sending in ground troops. "It would be wrong to think that the US administration was sitting there saying we're not contemplating ground troops because that wasn't their position at all," he says. <br><br>Mr Blair adds: "My belief is that President Clinton was prepared to see the thing through - and if that meant there was no other way we could do this, other than the use of ground troops, then I believe he was prepared to contemplate that. I think the bottom line about not losing was indeed the bottom line for people." <br><br>Mr Cohen also confirms that US military chiefs were split about a land campaign. <br><br>During the war, British ministers let it be known they were deeply frustrated with the Clinton administration's refusal to consider the use of ground troops. A string of US and British media reports which reflected this prompted Washington to deny any suggestion of a rift between Nato's two closest allies. <br><br>After the war, Whitehall claimed that overtly public discussions about the possibility of using ground troops was designed to keep Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic guessing. <br><br>Mr Blair tells Channel 4 that Mr Milosevic "had to know that we were prepared to do whatever it took to win". <br><br>However, Mr Cohen takes a different view. <br><br>"If you don't have a consensus for a ground campaign, then you shouldn't try to hold out the illusion that you have one," he says. "Empty gestures don't persuade your adversary that you're serious." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTV show to unveil Nato's clash in Kosovo ``x949140403,67452,``x``x
``xJanuary 28, 2000<br>By Steve Nettleton<br>CNN Interactive Correspondent<br><br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- Unless the government of Serbia soon accepts a proposal that redefines Montenegro's status within Yugoslavia, Montenegro will be forced to pursue independence from Belgrade by the end of the year, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said in an interview with CNN Interactive on Friday. <br><br>"Montenegro will not compromise on its strategic goals," Djukanovic said. "If Belgrade wants to cooperate with us, then there is a chance for the survival of the Yugoslav federation. But if Belgrade wants to continue along the road of conflict with the entire international community, then it is almost certain that Montenegro in the foreseeable future must pursue full independence to realize its strategic, political and economic interests." <br><br>Under Djukanovic, Montenegro -- Serbia's only remaining partner in Yugoslavia -- has moved to distance itself from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. It has established its own border controls, introduced the German mark as a parallel currency to the Yugoslav dinar and built up a powerful police force independent of Belgrade's authority. <br><br>Yugoslavia previously had expelled Montenegro from most federal institutions. It denied Djukanovic's party (the victor of Montenegro's 1998 parliamentary elections) the right to name Yugoslavia's prime minister, and Milosevic appointed his old political ally from Montenegro, Momir Bulatovic. Belgrade effectively cut off all trade links between Serbia and Montenegro. Serbian police have blocked shipments of food to Montenegro. <br><br>Djukanovic expressed concern that Serbia had so far refused to discuss his plan to restructure the country into a "union of states," with each republic maintaining control over its own global affairs, its own monetary system and the military on its territory. <br><br><br>Public opinion divided in Montenegro<br><br>If Belgrade continues to ignore his proposal, Djukanovic said Montenegro would hold a referendum on independence "not later than the end of this year." <br><br> <br>Public opinion in Montenegro is sharply divided on the issue of independence. The latest polls show 32 percent in favor of seceding from Yugoslavia and 30 percent opposed. Another 25 percent say they want to keep Montenegro within Yugoslavia, but only as an equal state in a confederation with Serbia. <br><br>Leaders of Montenegro's Milosevic-allied opposition say Djukanovic has no mandate to call for a referendum. <br><br>"We believe that we should have early parliamentary elections," said Predrag Bulatovic, vice president of the Montenegro Socialist People's Party. "And in those elections, Mr. Djukanovic should say if he is for independence or not. If he wins in those elections, he would be more than welcome to ask for a referendum. He doesn't have the right at this moment to ask for a referendum, even less to push for independence forcefully." <br><br>Belgrade has sent mixed signals on how it would react to a referendum for independence. <br><br>Milosevic said in December that the people of Montenegro have the right to leave Yugoslavia if they vote to do so. Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Seselj, an ultranationalist, has said however that any attempt by Montenegro to secede would be "out of the question." Seselj said Yugoslav authorities should intervene to prevent it. <br><br>In early December, the Yugoslav army, loyal to Milosevic, briefly seized control of the airport in Montenegro's capital, Podgorica, one day before the Montenegrin government planned to assume control of the facility. <br><br><br>Can a war be averted?<br><br>If Milosevic sends the army to crush a move by Montenegro toward secession, Djukanovic said his forces would be able to defend the republic. <br><br>"When you have as the head of state a man like Slobodan Milosevic, you can expect to see any evil," Djukanovic said. "He already started four Balkan wars, so it would not be a surprise at all if he showed a readiness to start a fifth one." <br><br>Djukanovic continued: "I still believe that that will not happen, not because Milosevic is going to change his politics, but because I hope that the Yugoslav army has learned something from its previous wars and it will not let itself be manipulated again." <br><br>But if war does erupt, Djukanovic said, "I am confident that the authorities of Montenegro would be able to efficiently protect the state of democracy in Montenegro." <br><br>Asked if he expected military support from the West, Djukanovic said the international community had pledged to provide security in the Balkans. <br><br>"Attacking the democracy and stability of Montenegro is in fact attacking the policy of the European Union and the United States in this region." Djukanovic said. "So I believe that the international community as well as NATO will be called to protect their policy in the Balkans." <br><br><br>A ploy by Milosevic?<br><br>Many political analysts suspect, however, that Milosevic, whose term as Yugoslav president expires in 2001, would be happy to let Montenegro leave the federation peacefully, because that would enable him to rewrite the constitution and possibly cling to power as president of Serbia. <br><br>"I'm sure that this year he will try to destabilize the government of Montenegro, to change the democratic government and to install a government that would be loyal to him -- a government that would provide a dictatorship over Montenegro as well," Djukanovic told CNN Interactive. <br><br>"As he will not succeed in doing that, as he couldn't succeed in the last two years, I am sure that he will then push Montenegro outside of the federation so that he can continue to be the unchallenged dictator in Serbia." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro president: We will not compromise with Serbia``x949309264,64031,``x``x
``xBy Reuters<br>PRISTINA (Reuters) - Leaders of Kosovo's Serb minority are close to a deal with the province's United Nations administration which would end their four-month-old boycott of multi-ethnic institutions. <br><br>Officials from Serb groups and the U.N. mission say an agreement could be sealed within the next week or two, although they also stress several hurdles still have to be overcome. <br><br>``It's about 90 percent done,'' said Father Sava, an Orthodox priest and spokesman for the Serb National Council, which represents Serbs from across Kosovo but opposes Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government. <br><br>Under the deal, Serbs would take part in a new joint administration the U.N. is setting up with local leaders to run Kosovo, although they would not be on board by the time the first departments are due to start functioning Tuesday. <br><br>In return, the U.N. has drawn up a document to address the concerns of the Serbs, many of whom are now grouped together in enclaves, living in fear of the revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians which have plagued Kosovo since June. <br><br>Outrage at the attacks and a feeling the U.N. and the NATO- led KFOR peacekeeping force were being too indulgent with the ethnic Albanian majority were behind the Serbs' pullout last September from Kosovo's main post-war forum for dialogue. <br><br>DEAL WOULD BE BOOST FOR U.N. <br><br>Many Serb leaders have concluded they can gain little by staying on the outside while the U.N. and Albanians get on with running Kosovo. They have come to believe that international officials are serious about helping all communities here. <br><br>``It's normal for us to accept this as a reality and to try to build up institutions together with the international community,'' Rada Trajkovic, another senior member of the Serb National Council, told Reuters. <br><br>Any such agreement would be a significant boost for the U.N.-led administration headed by Bernard Kouchner, the former French health minister, which has been working hard over the past few months to get the Serbs back into the fold. <br><br>It would also help Western governments to counter claims from Belgrade, and sometimes Moscow, that NATO's bombing last year to end Serb repression of ethnic Albanians was simply about attacking Serbs and that the West is not serious about building a multi-ethnic Kosovo. <br><br>The Agenda for Co-existence, as the U.N.-drafted document is called, would allow the creation of special committees in Serb areas to liaise with local administrators and make sure concerns about security and freedom of movement are addressed. <br><br>SERBS HOPE FOR OPPOSITION SUPPORT <br><br>U.N. officials and even Serb leaders say the proposal does not amount to the Serbs' original demand for self-governing Serb cantons within Kosovo. But it does assuage many concerns. <br><br>``It is a compromise. It's not everything we intended to have but it is something which is going to meet our basic goal...to help our people,'' Sava told Reuters. <br><br>The new committees would function within the municipal structures set up by the U.N., officials say. <br><br>But the Serbs still need to take a couple of steps before they will nominate a representative to sit in Kosovo's new Interim Administrative Council, overseeing joint administration. <br><br>They will conclude consultations in Kosovo, which they say have been generally favorable so far, and then go to Belgrade in the hope of securing the backing of fellow opponents of Milosevic in Serbia before announcing their final decision. <br><br>The Serbs are braced for a blasting from officials in Milosevic's government who have suggested that cooperating with Kouchner's administration is close to treason. <br><br>Even if the Serbs agree a deal, their support would not be unconditional. They say they would set a time-limit of two or three months, after which they would review their participation. <br><br>``If we don't achieve anything for the Serb community, we can say we reached out our hand to the international community but it doesn't want to help Serbs,'' Trajkovic said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo Serbs Close to Ending Institution Boycott``x949309286,38265,``x``x
``xTIRANA, Albania (Reuters) - The United States vowed Monday to stand firm against any military action by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic against Serbia's Western-leaning partner Montenegro.<br><br>Asked if the situation in Montenegro might burst into another Balkan conflict, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering said Washington believed ''any further conflict in the region should be avoided.''<br><br>``We are prepared to stand firm against any military actions of Milosevic's in the region,'' he told reporters during a visit to the Albanian capital.<br><br>Serbia and Montenegro are the two remaining partners in the Yugoslav federation after Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia split off to form independent states.<br><br>Pickering said the U.S.-backed Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic's choice of a revised role for Montenegro in the Yugoslav federation, but not independence.<br><br>Djukanovic has not named a date for a referendum on breaking away from Serbia, on the advice of Western leaders who fear another Balkan conflict.<br><br>But the pro-Western Djukanovic, who introduced the German mark as the currency alongside the dinar in November, faces growing domestic pressure to make good a threat to call a referendum.<br><br>He said last week Montenegro would not sacrifice its future for the sake of remaining under a dictatorship from Belgrade but added he wanted to give Milosevic time to consider Montenegro's conditions to remain in the federation.<br><br>Yugoslav troops briefly took over Montenegro's Podgorica airport last month in what was interpreted as a show of strength by Milosevic. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.S. Would Oppose Any Serb Acts Against Montenegro``x949401332,89375,``x``x
``xSerbia Warns of 'Greater Albania'<br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - A top Serbian opposition party warned against the perceived threat of a ``Greater Albania'' - an expansion of Albania to include Serbia's Kosovo province and Albanian-populated areas of western Macedonia.<br><br>Increasingly frequent contacts between Kosovar Albanian leader Hashim Thaci and Macedonian ethnic Albanian leader Arben Xhaferi ``clearly indicate that the monstrous idea of creating a 'Greater Albania'... is a major threat in the region,'' said a statement from the Serbian Renewal Movement.<br><br>The statement referred to a recent visit by Thaci and Xhaferi to neighboring Bulgaria. The two leaders reiterated demands for Kosovo's full secession from Serbia.<br><br>The Kosovo province has been an international protectorate since NATO intervention last year, launched to stop fighting between independence-minded ethnic Albanians and Serb government troops. The province formally remains part of Serbia.<br><br>Ethnic Albanians are an overwhelming majority in Kosovo. In neighboring Macedonia, they dominate western parts of the country adjacent to Albania proper and constitute one-fourth of the population.<br><br>Elsewhere Sunday, the independent Beta news agency reported that 100 tons of heating fuel has arrived in a poverty-stricken Serbian town as part of European Union aid to opposition-run municipalities.<br><br>The oil arrived late Saturday in Pirot, where pro-democracy parties opposed to President Slobodan Milosevic run the local government. It is to be used for central heating of schools, kindergartens and hospitals.<br><br>In all, the EU has planned to send 25,000 tons of fuel to municipalities controlled by Milosevic's opponents. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbia Warns of 'Greater Albania'``x949401364,28808,``x``x
``xWASHINGTON, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Witnesses appearing today before The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe warned of the potential for conflict in the Balkans -- similar to that which occurred in Kosovo in 1999 -- if democracy fails to take hold in Montenegro, a province that in federation with Serbia comprises contemporary Yugoslavia.<br><br>``Since 1997, Montenegro has moved toward democratic reform, and its leaders have distanced themselves from earlier involvement in the ethnic intolerance and violence which devastated neighboring Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo,'' said Chairman Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ). ``In contrast, the Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milosevic has become more entrenched in power and more determined to bring ruin to Serbia, if necessary to maintain this power. The divergence of paths has made the existing federation almost untenable, especially in the aftermath of last year's conflict in Kosovo. We now hear reports of a confrontation with Milosevic and possible conflict in Montenegro as a result.''<br><br>Srdjan Darmanovic, Director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Podgorica, said, ``Without the active role of main Western countries and without a serious peace and stability preserving strategy in the whole region, including Montenegro, the Belgrade regime will sooner or later decide to act in order to topple the Djukanovic government or to instigate conflict in Montenegro. It is in the very logic of that regime. The real questions is, will Milosevic act, whether a referendum on independence is held or not?''<br><br>Commission Co-Chairman Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO) commented, ``Common sense makes clear that timely efforts to prevent the outbreak of conflict are worth pursuing. We are fortunate today that we can focus on developments in Montenegro where the prospects for democracy offer one of the few glimmers of hope in a region torn by conflict and ethnic hatreds. I admire the courage of those pursuing the path of democracy in Montenegro and doing so at some risk.''<br><br>Ranking Member Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) pointed out, ``We need to send as strong a signal as we can that another Milosevic-made conflict will not be tolerated. We can hope that democratic forces in Serbia can change the environment in which Serbian-Montenegrin relations are determined, by challenging Milosevic's rule. Until they do, we must be sure that instigating new violence is not an option for Milosevic, not a solution to his political problems at home.''<br><br>Veselin Vukotic, Managing Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship in Podgorica, said, ``We in Montenegro believe that the most efficient way to avoid new conflict and to develop permanent democracy is through complete reform and reconstruction of our political and economic system. However, reconstruction is needed not just of our economy, administration and state, but also of our mentality. Our principal problem lies in how our society thinks -- how we understand and solve problems . . . Our key problem is overcoming our fear of open society, open economy-overcoming our fear of globalization. On this point, we are more irrational than rational at the moment.''<br><br>``In order for Montenegro to begin changing our mentality, we must build a new economic system based on private property, economic freedom, and the development of entrepreneurship. We have already started this process, and we are getting closer to an American-style free market system, rather than the so-called ''social market`` system of Europe or the state-controlled system in Russia. We are very grateful for the assistance we have received from the United States in helping us begin our reform efforts.<br><br>``Our viewpoint is that everything must be privatized. There must be no area in which the state controls property.<br><br>``We Montenegrins don't have time to wait for Mr. Milosevic to resign. The question of his resignation is not Montenegro's problem. It is Serbia's problem. If the citizens of Serbia choose Milosevic as their president, then good luck to them. Serbia's votes are not Montenegro's concern.''<br><br>Janusz Bugajski, Director of the Eastern Europe Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC stated: ``Other than surrendering Montenegro altogether, Belgrade has three options: a military coup and occupation; the promotion of regional and ethnic conflicts; or the provocation of civil war. More likely, Milosevic will engage in various provocations, intimidations, and even assassinations to unbalance the Montenegrin leadership. He will endeavor to sow conflict between the parties in the governing coalition, heat up tensions in the Sandjak region of Montenegro by pitting Muslims against Christian Orthodox, and threaten to partition northern Montenegro if Podgorica pushes toward statehood. The political environment will continue to heat up before the planned referendum.<br><br>``I fear the worst from Mr. Milosevic at this point,'' Bugajski concluded.<br><br>In closing, Mr. Smith said, ``As democracy is strengthened in Montenegro, the international community can also give those in Serbia struggling to bring democracy to their republic a chance to succeed.'' <br><br>SOURCE: Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegrins Warn of More Conflict in the Balkans``x949484357,54580,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) - A top official in Montenegro's ruling pro-Western party on Tuesday accused the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of arming its supporters in the independence-minded republic.<br><br>Andrija Perisic, a member of Montenegro's ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, claimed in a statement that Milosevic's defense authorities have formed a paramilitary unit which is officially included in the Yugoslav forces stationed in Montenegro.<br><br>The so-called Seventh Battalion of the Yugoslav military police includes pro-Yugoslav Montenegrins led by Milosevic's aide, Momir Bulatovic, Perisic claimed. He alleged that top officials in Bulatovic's Socialist People's Party have personally organized the unit.<br><br>Yugoslav army officials have denied reports about paramilitary units within its ranks.<br><br>Montenegro is the smaller republic that makes up Yugoslavia along with Milosevic's Serbia. Montenegro's leadership has been making steps toward independence, complaining of international isolation of the country under Milosevic's autocratic rule.<br><br>Many fear another civil war if Montenegro tries to secede from Yugoslavia. The 600,000 Montenegrins are deeply divided on the idea of a joint state with Serbia.<br><br>Late last year, Montenegrin police - loyal to Montenegro's President Milo Djukanovic - and the pro-Milosevic Yugoslav army nearly clashed over who controls the airport in the capital, Podgorica.<br><br>Perisic's statement Tuesday is certain to add to the tensions and fears of possible conflict. He claimed the pro-Milosevic paramilitary unit lately has been ``additionally activated, grown in numbers and additionally armed.'' ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xOfficial Accuses Milosevic Gov't``x949484404,20306,``x``x
``xNew York Times<br><br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br><br> MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 2 -- A rocket attack on a bus filled with Serbian civilians killed two elderly villagers and wounded three more people today, just yards from their armed NATO escort. <br><br>The Serbs were using a weekly bus service organized by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees to their village in northern Kosovo and were ambushed, NATO peacekeepers said. A spokesman for the high commissioner's office said it was the worst such attack on a Serbian convoy here and will set back efforts to encourage peace and tolerance between Albanians and Serbs. <br><br>Tensions rose in the divided city of Mitrovica, some 12 miles from the scene, soon after the attack. French troops reported four explosions in the Serb-dominated northern half of the city. They quickly closed a bridge that connects the Serbian and Albanian parts of the city, pulling across coils of barbed wire and planks of wood studded with nails. Reinforcements arrived to take up positions on the bridge as automatic gunfire sounded. <br><br>The attack on the bus shook the office of the high commissioner, which immediately suspended all similar bus services. Since November, the office has introduced eight bus services in the province to allow Serbs who are cut off and threatened by Albanians to move freely. Until today, the bus trips had encountered no problems beyond a few stones. <br><br>In the attack today, an elderly man and woman were killed instantly. French troops took two others to a hospital at the French base in Mitrovica. A man in his 30's, with a severed leg and hand, was being operated on in a Mitrovica hospital later in the evening, said Lt. Col. Patrick Chanliau, a spokesman for the French troops. <br><br>An 80-year-old woman was also treated for a wound to her hand. And a third woman was treated at the scene and taken home. The remaining passengers, who numbered more than 40, were safely escorted to their isolated village of Banja, about 18 miles from Mitrovica. The driver, a Dutch worker, escaped unharmed. <br><br>The assailant, who fired the antitank rocket from a spot off the road, escaped with his weapon. <br><br>The attack occurred about 4 p.m. as dusk was falling on a remote foggy road. The bus was hit near the village of Vitak, in a predominantly Albanian area. <br><br>Colonel Chanliau said the attacker must have been waiting for the bus. <br><br>"We can say with certitude it was an ambush," he said. "The bus was expected, it was very visible, with the letters U.N.H.C.R. clearly marked." <br><br>French troops in light armored vehicles were driving ahead and behind the bus, providing an escort. The rocket hit the side of the bus, but neither of the escort vehicles. <br><br>The deaths and injuries of the Serbs while under international protection highlights a problem that has placed the high commissioner's office at loggerheads with the commander of the peacekeeping force in Kosovo, Gen. Klaus Reinhardt. <br><br>General Reinhardt has been pushing to give Serbs more movement around Kosovo and has sought to encourage Serbs who fled the province to return. The high commissioner's office has insisted on moving slowly on the bus services, however, and has repeatedly insisted that conditions in Kosovo are, for now, too dangerous for Serbs to be encouraged to return. <br><br>"The protection of minorities has been and remains a major preoccupation, and this sort of incident sets us back enormously in the whole area," said Dennis McNamara, head of the high commissioner's office in Kosovo. "U.N.H.C.R. is certain in that we will not encourage Serbs to return to Kosovo at this stage because of the security situation." <br><br>Until today, the bus service had been reasonably successful and popular with the Serbs, said Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the high commissioner's office. <br><br>"It gives them access to doctors, dentists, and a chance to sell their cheese or other produce," he said. "Generally, the people on them are elderly." <br><br>Mr. McNamara said: "We know from Bosnia that these operations are not without risk. We took time and care to set them up. But if someone is determined to attack, they can." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``x2 Killed as Rocket Hits a U.N. Bus for Serbs in Kosovo``x949571835,9469,``x``x
``xBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br><br> BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Feb. 2 -- In the first public report on atrocities in Kosovo from the Serbian perspective, a Belgrade human rights group has detailed allegations of crimes committed by Serbian forces in the province and subsequent reprisals by Albanians. <br><br>The Humanitarian Law Center released its eight-page report after a seven-month investigation by its director, Natasa Kandic, and a network of Serbian and Albanian volunteers. The report focuses on atrocities committed around the Kosovo town of Orahovac. <br><br>"Orahovac became a profile for a setting where each and every crime against the ordinary person was allowed," Ms. Kandic said in an interview. <br><br>The report details allegations by witnesses of slayings, abductions and expulsions of Albanians. According to the report, 220 or more Albanian families were ordered out of Orahovac by Serbian authorities during NATO's bombing. About 60 Albanians were conscripted to work for the Serbs. <br><br>But the report also found that more than 40 Orahovac Serbs disappeared by July 10, and all of the Serbs living in houses and 142 in apartments in the center of town were evicted, the report said. <br><br>Ms. Kandic said the situation in Orahovac shows that the international administration applies a double standard, treating every Serb as a war criminal. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xA Serbian Report on Atrocities ``x949571864,69655,``x``x
``xBELGRADE (Reuters) - No one should count on any kind of military takeover to oust Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the former chief of staff of the Yugoslav army said Wednesday. <br>The West is hoping that popular dissatisfaction in Yugoslavia will lead to the ouster of the Serbian strongman, blaming him for a decade of Balkan bloodshed. <br><br>However, the fragmented opposition has so far failed to put Milosevic under any serious pressure and some diplomats as well as many ordinary Serbs hoped his close associates would oust him. <br><br>"...all the international speculators are mistaken in thinking the army should be turned against its own citizens," Momcilo Perisic told Reuters in an interview. <br><br>Perisic said that by the same token any attempt by Serbia's ruling elite to use the army to crush dissent would not succeed because most officers would not be drawn into politics. <br><br>"It tries to make ... a few people in the army, if not the army as a whole, function only as a defender of the ruling party," he said. <br><br>"But even if they try they will not succeed, except with a few people who due to a misunderstanding or their own personal interests turn themselves into their personal servants." <br><br>Perisic was chief-of-staff of the Yugoslav army from 1993-98, a period in which it was involved in fighting in Bosnia and in the Serbian province of Kosovo. <br><br> <br><br>OUSTED BY MILOSEVIC <br><br>He was ousted by Milosevic in November after he publicly warned him against confronting NATO over Kosovo. Four months later, the alliance launched air strikes after the Yugoslav president refused to accept an international peace plan. <br><br>Perisic was also believed to have blocked military intervention in Montenegro -- the only republic left with Serbia in Yugoslavia -- during 1998 clashes between Milosevic supporters and police loyal to the pro-Western leader. <br><br>Now in opposition to Milosevic, he declined to comment on his former boss or say whether he thought middle-ranking and senior officers supported his successor Dragoljub Ojdanic. <br><br>Ojdanic has accused the West and the independence-minded Montenegrin authorities of fueling tension in the republic, where many people fear a possible outbreak of violence between the army and the heavily armed Montenegrin police. <br><br>Ojdanic was one of four of Milosevic's aides indicted with the Yugoslav leader by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague for alleged war crimes in Kosovo. <br><br>Top generals also regularly talk about an imminent return of Yugoslav forces to Kosovo, something Perisic said was totally unrealistic and designed to hide the fact Milosevic took the country through almost three months of air strikes in vain. <br><br>Asked if an offer by the Montenegrin authorities to pay troops based on the territory in German marks rather than weakening Yugoslav dinars could split the army, Perisic said no. <br><br>"The army is a united Yugoslav organization acting equally in the entire Yugoslav territory. As an institution it is hard, better said impossible, to manipulate outside the constitution."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xINTERVIEW-Yugo army won't oust Milosevic- ex-chief``x949571920,7665,``x``x
``xATHENS (Reuters) - U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering Wednesday ruled out a relaxation of sanctions against Serbia, and said Washington continued to work with Serb opposition groups toward "free and fair elections." <br>Pickering met Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou in Athens as part of an 11-day, eight-nation tour of the Balkans, which started in Albania before moving on to Slovenia and Macedonia. <br><br>"I explained to the minister our policy with respect to various Serbian embargoes and the importance which we attach to continuing those embargoes, particularly as long as (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic was in charge," Pickering told reporters. <br><br>He said there were no immediate plans to lift the embargo on Serbia. <br><br>"We also discussed the question of whether in some of those areas there are human dimensions that needed to be taken into account and how that might be done," he added. <br><br>He said Washington was working closely with Serb opposition leaders "to further strengthen their organizations and find a unified position to enable free and fair elections." <br><br>Asked if he was concerned that the Kosovo crisis could flare up again, Pickering said the United States was keeping a close eye on developments in the region, adding that Washington did not support independence for Montenegro -- Serbia's small sister republic in the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>"Our policy is not to support independence for Montenegro, but we believe President Milo Djukanovic is pursuing a cautious and careful series of policies ... and deserves our support," he said. <br><br>Pickering also encouraged Greece and Turkey to continue their recent rapprochement. <br><br>"We are heartened that Greece and Turkey have made tremendous progress over the past year," he said. <br><br>"A durable peace in the Aegean Sea and in Cyprus, based on respect for international law and safeguarding democratic rights, will be a powerful force for regional stability and development," he added. <br><br>Pickering said the United States was also close to signing three bilateral agreements with Greece covering personnel at a U.S. naval base on Crete, police cooperation and commercial cooperation relating to international recognition of property, copyright and patents. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.S. rules out relaxation of Serb sanctions``x949571999,28985,``x``x
``xWASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic said on Wednesday Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was working to destabilise his republic and asked for $62 million in U.S. aid to help shore it up. <br>Vujanovic was in Washington to rally U.S. backing for the Montenegrin government as it faces growing domestic pressure for a referendum on declaring independence from Milosevic's Serbia, the other remaining Yugoslav republic. <br><br>He said the attempt by Montenegro, one of the only parts of the dismembered Yugoslav state to have avoided serious conflict in recent years, to instigate post-communist reforms was "at a turning point." <br><br>"If the monetary and the economic reforms do not succeed, faith in democracy will fade very quickly and the support for failed concepts of the past, including neocommunism and autocracy, will rise," he said. <br><br>He told a privately organised conference on the Balkans that quick financial aid was needed "to ensure the survival of Montenegro and minimise the chances for conflict." <br><br>Partly to counter an economic blockade imposed by Belgrade, he called for $62 million to help with monetary reform, ensuring food supplies, financing importation of strategic supplies, encouraging investment and building up the independent media. <br><br>Vujanovic is due to meet on Thursday with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, hours after she returns from a visit to offer support to another Balkan state that is edging toward democratic reforms, Croatia. <br><br>The United States, which led NATO's bombing campaign to force the withdrawal of Milosevic's troops from Kosovo last year, has said it would stand firm against any Serb military action against Montenegro, but opposes its independence. <br><br>Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said last week it was too early for a referendum on breaking with Serbia, saying he wanted to give Milosevic more time to consider Montenegro's conditions for staying in the federation. <br><br>The two have been at odds since Djukanovic was elected president in 1997 and started a reform programme. <br><br>Vujanovic said Milosevic wanted "only to destabilise Montenegro, provoke social unrest, provoke conflicts, to open the way to military intervention under the mask of protecting civil peace." <br><br>The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet, said on Wednesday both Djukanovic and Milosevic appeared to be prepared to avoid a direct conflict now, but added: "A final showdown will be hard to avoid." <br><br>In his annual statement to Congress on U.S. national security, Tenet said: "Montenegro may be heading toward independence." In November it took a step away from Serbia by introducing the German mark alongside the Yugoslav dinar. <br><br>Tenet said: "Milosevic wants to crush Djukanovic because he serves as an important symbol to the democratic opposition in Serbia and the Serbian people that the regime can be successfully challenged." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro, citing Serb threat, seeks US aid``x949572046,85390,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br>AP <br>4 February 2000 <br><br>Two grenade attacks against Serb cafes in the divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica injured about 20 people, while three Albanians were fatally shot in separate incidents, the multinational force in Kosovo said early Friday. <br><br>Following the violence late Thursday, angry Serbs and Albanians faced–off across two bridges over the Ibar River dividing the Serbian northern part of the town from the Albanian southern part, said Lt.Col Henning Philipp, spokesman for the multinational force known as KFOR. <br><br>KFOR had shut the bridge, keeping the two sides apart. <br><br>At 9 p.m. (2000 GMT), two Albanian men were shot dead in Kosovska Mitrovica. Half an hour later, a grenade was thrown into a Serb cafe, wounding between 10 and 15 customers, Philipp said. <br><br>An ethnic Albanian woman was shot dead at 10 p.m. (2100 GMT), and another grenade was thrown into another Serb cafe shortly afterwards, again wounding about 10 customers, he added. <br><br>In a separate earlier incident, a Russian KFOR soldier was shot and wounded in the shoulder while escorting Serb children from school to their homes in the village of Beri Vojce, Philipp said. <br><br>The soldier was transported to a Russian military hospital in the town of Kamenica, and later to another Russian military hospital in Kosovo Polje, a few kilometers southwest of Pristina. <br><br>The incidents came after a rocket attack on a UNHCR bus carrying Serb civilians on Wednesday left two Serbs dead and three injured.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGrenade thrown into Serb cafe``x949653409,97115,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br>UVO GRLO, Kosovo, Feb 3. -- Serbs who survived a bus attack in northern Kosovo on Wednesday huddled around a wood stove in the village school today, saying they felt more trapped and worried than ever. <br><br>A day after two neighbors were killed in the ambush, the villagers left their houses, clustered at the bottom of a steep slope of sheer ice, down a remote country road, to seek support and comfort. The 130 Serbs live in the tiny enclave of Suvo Grlo, surrounded by Albanian homesteads and villages. Behind them rises the wall of mountains of Montenegro, and before them stretch the highlands of Drenica, the heartland of the most determined Kosovo Albanian nationalists. <br><br>To escape this isolation, the Serbs had been using a weekly bus service, operated by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees. It was their one lifeline in recent months as it shuttled from their village and another village, Banja, to the Serbian district of Mitrovica some 20 miles away. The bus trip always brought the villagers welcome freedom of movement, but on Wednesday it proved a death trap. <br><br>"I was on the bus," said Milomirka Tomasevic, 47, crouching close to the stove. "I went to Mitrovica to buy a few things. I know when they fired on us I threw myself on the floor but I do not remember anything more." <br><br>She was not hurt in the attack but appeared to still be in shock. She began to weep. "If I die there will be no one to take care of me, I have no father or sister or brother. You have to have someone to cry after you, I have no one," she wailed. <br><br>Milomir Tomasevic, 28, was also on the bus, with his brother and sister-in-law. They had gone to buy coffee and cigarettes in the town. He escaped unhurt but his 24-year-old brother, Stojadin, was badly wounded, he said. French soldiers, part of KFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping troops, had evacuated him to their hospital and he was waiting for news. <br><br>"It was the most horrible thing that happened," he said. "We trusted KFOR. Until now we were 100 percent convinced they were guarding us and that's why we travelled on the bus. But after what happened yesterday, I do not trust anyone anymore, absolutely no one," he said. <br><br>Mr. Tomasevic complained that the peacekeeping troops, who were escorting the bus in two armored vehicles, did not react to the attack, neither firing on nor pursuing the attackers. "NATO could bring in 200 soldiers here but the way they are acting it will serve as nothing," he said. <br><br>He and the others gathered in the schoolroom said peacekeepers had to be tougher with ethnic Albanians, who they were sure were responsible for the attack. "This is not the first killing that has happened and we can see the way it is going," Mr. Tomasevic said. Two people have been killed and four wounded in the seven months since NATO arrived, the head of the village said. <br><br>The rocket attack on the United Nations bus was the worst case of violence against any escorted Serbian convoy in Kosovo and came as a blow to peacekeeping efforts to improve security. <br><br>The attack could push more Serbs to leave the village and other isolated Serbian enclaves. Already 40 percent of the population of Suvo Grlo has fled to Serbia. <br><br>And today, villagers said this latest attack might make them think again about abandoning their homes. "No one will be fool enough to stay, if there is one more incident," Mr. Tomasevic said. <br><br>The United Nations has suspended its bus service to Serbian areas in Kosovo while the attack is being investigated. The buses were frequently portrayed as a sign that normality was returning to Kosovo, but their future use is now in doubt. In fact, these villagers said they would no longer use them. <br><br>Despite claims by peacekeepers that ethnic violence is slowly decreasing, the incident exposed the unceasing desire for revenge among the ethnic Albanians who suffered at Serbian hands during the war. <br><br>The Albanian homes up the hill from the Serbian houses in Suvo Grlo all show the damage of the burning and looting conducted by Serbian forces during the war. Ten Albanians were killed from this little hamlet and most houses burned, said a shopkeeper, Zenel Sinani. <br><br>"I am sure it was not someone from this village, but it was done by someone whose heart was burned, whose family was killed," he said. <br><br>Two Albanian youths who stopped today at the scene of the bus attack, on a lonely hairpin bend near the village of Vitak, were callous in their reaction. "Only two killed, I wish there had been more," said one, before he ran off to hail a passing bus. <br><br>No Albanian villager would be sad at the news that two Serbs had been killed, his friend Artan Rustemi, 18, said. "How can they pass by this way when they committed a big massacre of 14 people here during the war?" he said. "We would not like to see them anymore. They should leave. They have a place to go."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBus Ambush in Kosovo Costs NATO Faith of Serbs``x949653427,68331,``x``x
``xChinese capital is helping to prop up the cash-strapped Belgrade regime.<br>International War Peace Report<br><br>Growing financial ties between China and Yugoslavia appear to be extending the life of the Milosevic regime by undermining western efforts to limit access to hard currency.<br><br>In December, $300 million was transferred from bank accounts in China to Serbia, enabling the Serbian government to avert a looming financial crisis.<br><br>The funds - part of which were immediately used to halt a plunge in the Yugoslav dinar's black-market value - should be enough to forestall hyper-inflation in Serbia for six months and fund pensions, the military and police for several months, economists believe.<br><br>Belgrade first described the Chinese capital as a "gift", then a commercial loan, but critics of the regime are skeptical.<br><br>"It could not be a gift, because China does not make financial gifts," says leading Belgrade economist Mladen Dinkic. "I believe that this is money belonging to Serbia's political establishment that was transferred abroad, first to Cyprus, and other countries, then to China, and repatriated in December."<br><br>Serbian companies reportedly began moving money from Cyprus and other western banks to banks in Shanghai and Hong Kong last summer, anticipating that clashes between the Yugoslav Army and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) would renew international sanctions.<br><br>The transfer of capital to China has also been influenced by Cypriot attempts to move closer to the European Union, as well as increasing scrutiny of Serb-held European bank accounts by Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).<br><br>In addition to growing commercial activity, diplomacy has been stepped up.<br><br>Every week a Yugoslav Airlines jet touches down in Belgrade with a new Chinese delegation. These parties of Beijing officials are part of a dwindling number of diplomats and statesmen willing to meet Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Serbia, meanwhile, opened a consulate in Shanghai last year and the Yugoslav minister for cooperation with international financial organisations, Borka Vucic, was recently in Beijing to strengthen Sino-Serbian ties.<br><br>Vucic, believed to be responsible for the Belgrade regime's hard currency reserves, presented the head of the Chinese Red Cross with a memorial pyramid containing debris from the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, which was bombed by NATO last year. <br><br>"The pyramid was a symbol of the protest against and defiance of the NATO aggression and a message that there was no forgetting and no forgiving," she told her Chinese hosts.<br><br>Belgrade and Beijing have been increasingly friendly terms since Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic, went to Beijing during the height of Serbia's 1996-97 anti-government demonstrations.<br><br>She returned flushed with excitement, extolling China's mix of Marxist political structures and free-market economics, as a model for Serbia, and calling for Belgrade, like other European cities, to have its own Chinatown.<br><br>Indeed, so taken was Markovic with China that her political party, the Yugoslav United Left (JUL), is sometimes referred to in jest as the Serbian branch of the Chinese Communist party.<br><br>NATO's bombing of China's Belgrade embassy last May, in which three Chinese nationals were killed and 20 wounded and for which the United States paid China $24 million in compensation, brought Belgrade and Beijing even closer.<br><br>The US and NATO insist that the bombing was a tragic accident and attributed it to out-of-date CIA maps. But some reports have suggested the embassy was targeted because it was serving as a substitute communications' centre for the Yugoslav Army after NATO had destroyed other command and control points.<br><br>The Chinese government has completed its own investigation and remains adamant that the bombing was deliberate.<br><br>While the China connection provides Milosevic with a refuge for hard currency, commercial loans, investment and prestige, Serbia affords Beijing an opportunity to invest in European industries at knock-down prices and a base in Europe for both trade and intelligence.<br><br>Bratislav Grubacic, editor of the Belgrade based independent press agency VIP news, estimates that as much as two thirds of the fund transferred from Beijing to Belgrade in December was to buy the Chinese a stake in a new mobile phone network in Serbia and a stake in the Pancevo chemical plant.<br><br>In addition, Beijing is receiving covert repayments via Belgrade of a large Libyan debt. Tripoli sends oil to Serbia which, in turn, compensates Beijing. In lieu of cash, China may be being paid for the oil with a stake in a Pancevo oil company.<br><br>Laura Rozen is a regular IWPR contributor who has been reporting from the Balkans since 1996. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBelgrade's China Rescue``x949653690,87254,``x``x
``xThe Times<br><br>FROM JAMES PRINGLE IN PRISTINA <br><br>THE presence of Nato-led troops in Kosovo is supporting a new and sinister white slave trade trade, in which women from impoverished parts of Eastern Europe are being bought and sold into prostitution. <br>The women, some as young as 16, are held captive by gangsters, often Albanian, and sell sexual favours to troops and businessmen in the seedy nightclubs springing up around Kosovo. <br><br>Others smuggled into the region from Moldova, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and beyond are moved further on, into Albania, across the Adriatic into Italy and from there to brothels in Western Europe, all the time under the "ownership" of organised crime. Even children are following similar routes, sold for adoption or, some say, for body parts. <br><br>International agencies trying to combat the trade say that it is expanding rapidly, despite efforts to rescue women from the clutches of the loosely organised, mafia-style gangs. They say the numbers are becoming too great for agencies to manage. <br><br>Kosovo was not, in the past, a destination for the East European sex trade, which began with the collapse of communism in 1991, but the lure of a 45,000-strong army and a large international component has proved an irresistible draw and bars and nightclubs are springing up across the province in places such as Gnjilane and Urosevac. <br><br>One at Slatina, just outside Pristina and near the HQ of Russian forces, is the Nightclub International, from which Italian Carabinieri rescued 12 young women last week. Their duties involved dispensing sexual favours, at about £30 for half an hour, to Russian and American Kfor troops and other foreign clients. <br><br>"These girls who were rescued are terrified and don't understand what has happened to them," Pasquale Lupoli, chief of mission of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) in Pristina, said. "But they are now in a protected area where security is guaranteed." <br><br>The IOM, a little-known Geneva-based governmental agency, was originally set up to provide travel documents and an assistant network to migrants; instead, it is engaged increasingly in trying to help the thousands of girls who are now prisoners in the European sex trade. <br><br>Signor Lupoli said that the number of such girls was rising so quickly that the agency was finding it very difficult to cope. The IOM had also had difficulties locating a non-government organisation (NGO) to agree to take care of them. One problem is that the girls are not refugees so do not come under, say, the UNHCR. <br><br>There was, Signor Lupoli said, also some danger. Albanian gangsters are searching for their "property" and IOM staff have received threats. In Kosovo, British troops are subject to a strict "no walking out" policy, but other nationalities' forces, such as the Russians, Americans and Italians, are less closely monitored. "None of our soldiers goes into these bars unless on an official mission," one British officer said. "If they did, they would find themselves on a military charge." <br><br>Of the dozen women rescued by the Carabinieri in Slatina, one had been raped at 14 and all had been maltreated. Like hundreds of similar victims, they had been sold several times as they were spirited across Balkan borders from owner to owner. <br><br>Greece, too, is a destination for the sex traders. Mirela Stan, 24, of Romania, and Hitara Antilsova, 29, from Ukraine, were found dead from the cold on a mountainside near the Greek-Bulgarian border in January. They perished in an effort to reach their "promised land", a Greek nightclub. <br><br>In Kosovo, the streets were empty recently after dark after a panic that teenage girls were being kidnapped by the Albanian mafia to be sold into prostitution. Indeed, some have disappeared. <br><br>These days, a young East European woman costs from £1,000 to £1,400 to buy. She first has to pay back her cost, then ostensibly she gets half of what she makes from prostitution, while the boss retains 50 per cent. Additionally, the girl has then to pay 10 per cent of her earnings for board. "Often she ends up with very little or nothing," an IOM official said. If she is lucky. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSex slave trade thrives among Kosovo troops``x949745603,80336,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Adam LeBor East Europe Correspondent <br><br>The ethnically divided town of Mitrovica, in Kosovo, was under curfew last night after violent clashes between ethnic Albanians and Nato-led troops that left five K-For peace-keepers wounded, one with a broken arm. <br><br>Troops fired a barrage of tear-gas after being pelted with rocks by angry Albanians following one of the worst weeks of violence in the province since the Nato-led force moved in last summer. The previous night, three people had been killed and 20 wounded in violence between Serbs and ethnic Albanians. <br><br>The French military commander of Kosovo's northern sector, General Pierre de Saqui de Sannes, said that he was imposing a three-night curfew on Mitrovica to help bring calm. "The situation is so tense that security comes before everything else," he said. <br><br>People in the crowd lobbed rocks and bottles for about half an hour while peace-keepers, wearing riot shields and body armour, launched rounds of tear gas. The violence finally subsided with the arrival of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), which was formed to provide a new role for ex-Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas who fought against Serb rule. <br><br>The French general acknowledged that crowd control was within the remit of the KPC, an emergency relief organisation, but he defended working with it. "I need partners who have authority," he said when he arrived at the bridge dividing the town, as KPC officers tried to make the crowd settle down. <br><br>The overnight deaths followed a rocket attack on a United Nations bus in the Mitrovica region on Wednesday that killed two Serbs and wounded three, heightening tension between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority and its Serb minority. <br><br>Following this violence late on Thursday, angry Serbs and Albanians faced off across two bridges over the Ibar River dividing the Serbian northern part of Mitrovica from the ethnic Albanian southern part, said Lt Col Henning Philipp, a spokesman for the peace-keeping force. <br><br>An hour after the first killings, an ethnic Albanian woman was shot dead. Shortly after, a grenade was thrown into a Serb cafe, wounding about 10 customers, he added. <br><br>In a separate and earlier incident, a Russian peace-keeper was shot in the shoulder while escorting Serb children home from school in the village of Beri Vojce, Lt Col Philipp said. The soldier was transported to a Russian military hospital in Kamenica, and later to another Russian military hospital in Kosovo Polje, a few miles south west of Pristina. <br><br>Several properties had been set on fire on in the course of the Thursday evening troubles, the spokesman said. Troops blocked the city's two main bridges to prevent the Serbs from entering the Albanian- dominated southern Mitrovica. General de Saqui de Sannes, met leaders of both communities at around midnight and asked them to appeal for calm. They had done as they were asked, the spokesman said. <br><br>As one of the few cities in Kosovo which still has a substantial Serb population, Mitrovica has been a flash-point since K-For took control of Kosovo, legally still part of Yugoslavia, following the withdrawal of Serb forces last June. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xK-For on alert after ethnic violence kills three ``x949745623,61736,``x``x
``xTHE HAGUE, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic said on Friday his republic wished to cooperate with the United Nations war crimes tribunal as long as it did not cause major domestic problems. <br>"We are ready to deliver all war crimes suspects whose arrest does not carry the risk of internal conflict..," Vujanovic told reporters, adding he would do so regardless of the attitude of Belgrade. <br><br>A conflict in Montenegro over arrests or the loss of human lives was not in the interest of the international community either, he said. <br><br>Vujanovic was in The Hague to meet U.N. Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and is the highest ranking Montenegrin official to do so. He described the talks as "very constructive." <br><br>Serbia and Montenegro are the two remaining partners in the Yugoslav federation after four others split off to form independent states. The republic has been at odds with Serbia since President Milo Djukanovic was elected president in 1997 and began implementing market reforms. <br><br>Vujanovic earlier this week said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was working to destabilise Montenegro where there are calls for a referendum on independence from Serbia. <br><br>Milosevic has been indicted for war crimes by the tribunal, which has often criticised Belgrade for its failure to cooperate. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro PM says wants to cooperate with UN court``x949745643,93831,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Feb 6 (Reuters) - A Serbian opposition leader said on Sunday he believed the European Union would soon start easing sanctions against Yugoslavia. <br>Vladan Batic, coordinator of the Alliance for Change group, said Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini told an opposition delegation last week that the next meeting of EU foreign ministers would make a step forward on the issue. <br><br>"Dini told us the process of easing sanctions would be initiated at the February 14 meeting of EU ministers," Batic told a news conference. <br><br>"He explicitly said it would be done as an act of goodwill towards the united Serbian opposition," he said. <br><br>Serbia has been subject to various sanctions since 1992, first for its role in the 1992-1995 war in neighbouring Bosnia and later over Belgrade's repression in the southern province of Kosovo. <br><br>The sanctions keep Yugoslavia, which consists of Serbia and Montenegro, away from financial bodies and foreign capital markets, ban investments, flights and crude oil deliveries. <br><br>The EU has been divided on the issue for months, even though domestic opponents of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic argue that the sanctions help keep him in power. <br><br>At a foreign ministers' meeting last month, Britain and the Netherlands blocked moves by their 13 EU partners to lift or ease the sanctions. <br><br>Italy has repeatedly called for the lifting of the sanctions against ordinary Serbs, especially those involving air transport and the supply of natural gas. <br><br>Dini said in a statement issued on Friday after a meeting with Batic that the EU was reviewing sanctions against Yugoslavia affecting ordinary people and urged Serb opposition parties to stay united. <br><br>He welcomed a January 10 decision by the fragmented Serb opposition to adopt a common platform, saying it would help speed up democratisation in the Balkan region. <br><br>Batic said a decision to lift or ease the sanctions would be "the first great success of the democratic opposition in Serbia in the recent past." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb opposition leader sees EU sanctions move soon``x949918860,85307,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br>By Andrew Marshall in Washington <br><br>Nato breached international law in its air attacks on Yugoslavia last year, a respected human rights body says in a report issued today. <br><br>The report, by Human Rights Watch, is particularly critical of the use of cluster-bombs. The United States stopped using the munitions halfway through the war, but Britain continued using them, raising serious issues about the Government's concern for civilian casualties. <br><br>Nato killed at least 500 civilians during the Kosovo conflict, the report concludes after visits to the sites of many of the attacks. "Human Rights Watch has found no evidence of war crimes," it says. But, it adds, "the investigation did conclude that Nato violated international humanitarian law". <br><br>The report says that Nato may have breached the Geneva Convention in five areas: it conducted air attacks using cluster-bombs near populated areas; attacked targets of questionable military legitimacy; did not take adequate measures to warn civilians of strikes; took insufficient precautions to identify the presence of civilians when attacking mobile targets; and caused excessive civilian casualties by not taking sufficient measures to verify that targets did not have concentrations of civilians. <br><br>Most of the attacks resulted from missing military targets. But "nine incidents were a result of strikes on non-military targets that Human Rights Watch believes were illegitimate", including Serb Radio and Television in Belgrade. <br><br>At least one-fifth of those who died were killed by cluster-bombs, which spray bomblets over a wide area. "Overall, cluster-bomb use by the United States and Britain can be confirmed in seven incidents throughout Yugoslavia [another five are possible butunconfirmed]," the report says. "Some 90 to 150 civiliansdied from the use of these weapons." <br><br>It reveals the United States stopped using the weapons after a hitherto secret presidential order. "Widespread reports of civilian casualties from the use of cluster-bombs and international criticism of these weapons as potentially indiscriminate, in effect, led ... to an unprecedented US executive order in the middle of May to cease their further use in the conflict," the report says. "The White House issued the order only days after civilians were killed by Nato cluster-bombs in the city of Nis on May 7." <br><br>But Britain, according to the RAF's own reports, continued to use the weapons. "Cluster-bombs should not have been used in attacks in populated areas, let alone urban targets, given the risks," it says. "Nevertheless, the [RAF] continued to drop cluster-bombs, indicating the need for universal, not national, norms regarding cluster-bomb use." The report also says there is "some evidence" Yugoslav forces used civilians as human shields. <br><br>The body calls on Nato to "establish an independent and impartial commission ... that would ... consider the need to alter targeting and bombing doctrine to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law". ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNato accused of violating international law in Kosovo ``x949918895,2941,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br>By Robert Fisk <br><br>For me, the proof came near the end of the Yugoslav war, when Nato bombed a hospital at Surdulice on 31 May last year. Serb soldiers were hiding in the basement, civilian refugees sleeping above them. The soldiers survived, the civilians were slaughtered in the raid and James Shea, Nato's king of excuses, announced that it was "a military target". <br><br>Did he know – did Nato know – that this building was a hospital, that there were civilians as well as Yugoslav military hiding there? Sure, the Yugoslav army were using their own Serb people as human shields. And shame upon them. But if Nato knew this, then it broke international law. Article 50, paragraph 3, of the 1949 Geneva Conventions' Protocol 1 specifically demands the safeguarding of civilian lives even in the presence of "individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians". <br><br>The bodies of the dead refugees were laid out in the afternoon sun on the day of their death. One teenage girl lay on the grass a few metres from a book of love poems; her tragic love and death was researched and reported in The Independent in November. She was killed by Nato. So was a young and brilliant Serb mathematics student, cut down as she tried to rescue the wounded at Varvarin bridge. An American jet had bombed the narrow old river bridge, killing the civilians walking across it. It was a saint's day in Varvarin and a market day – the attack happened at about 1pm – and the bridge was too narrow to take a tank. <br><br>Just because there wasn't a tank on the bridge at the time, Mr Shea told us, didn't mean a tank didn't cross it. But the bridge was too narrow for any Yugoslav tank. And about 20 minutes after the first bloody assault, another American jet attacked, just in time to kill the rescuers. The girl, who had just been awarded top prize at her Belgrade college, was killed by this US pilot as she tried to pull a wounded man from the road. The same bomb beheaded the local priest as he emerged from his church. <br><br>In the countryside around lay what appeared to be parts of Nato's favourite weapon, cluster-bombs. They were dropped across all of Yugoslavia, and most of their civilian victims were in the south of Serbia. Cluster-bombs tore many of the Albanian refugees to pieces on the mistargeted convoys of refugees in the early part of the war. And cluster-bombs – possibly dropped by British aircraft – killed civilians in the Serbian city of Nis when a plane mistargeted a local military barracks. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, was so outraged at the Nis attack that she pleaded with alliance officials to take greater care in their bombardment, as well as condemning Serbia's "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo. <br><br>At some point in the second half of the Yugoslav war, Nato decided to stop apologising for civilian deaths. <br><br>And you can see why. From its initial attacks on real military barracks and facilities – almost all of them empty – Nato's air bombardment moved to dual-use factories and then "targets of opportunity" (which doomed many a Kosovo refugee travelling in convoys in which police vehicles were present) and then slid promiscuously to transportation routes and hospitals which hid soldiers and the Serb television station. <br><br>Today's Human Rights Watch report is the nearest we have seen so far to the unvarnished, bloody truth about Nato's campaign in Yugoslavia. If it depends too heavily on Yugoslav references, including the carefully produced and detailed – though sometimes selective – Belgrade government's "White Book" on Nato "crimes", its analysis of alliance tactics, claims and barefaced lies (a word not used by Human Rights Watch, of course) provides a new balance to the history of last year's "moral" war. <br><br>It condemns Nato for the attack on Serb television headquarters – as opposed to transmitters – on the basis that it could not be regarded as a military target, only a propaganda target. And that's exactly how the cabinet minister Clare Short justified the killing of 16 studio technicians and a young make-up artist. Needless to say, Nato never bombed Croatian television headquarters when it was pumping out propaganda of a similar kind in 1992. <br><br>After walking through the rubble of the Serb studios at the time, I reflected that when you kill people for what they say – however much you hate their words – then you have changed the rules of war. And that is what Nato did from April through to June of 1999. They changed the rules of war. A military barracks was a legitimate target. Then a tobacco factory, a road bridge, the railway line at Gurdulice – just when a train was crossing the bridge. <br><br>Interestingly enough, Human Rights Watch quotes General Wesley Clark, Nato's commander, saying of the pilot's video footage of the passenger train racing over the Gurdulice bridge that "you can see if you were focusing right on your job as a pilot, how suddenly that train appeared – it was really unfortunate". But the human rights organisation appears ignorant of recent revelations that Nato deliberately speeded up the video film for its press audience to three times the train's actual speed. <br><br>The train did not appear "suddenly" as General Clark mendaciously claimed. It was travelling much more slowly. And despite Human Rights Watch's claims to have interviewed so many Yugoslav survivors of air attacks – their work is indeed impressive – the group seems unaware that several survivors of the train attack say they saw the aircraft return for a second strike. Indeed, the evidence at the scene showed how the first bomb smashed a road bridge above the track, cutting the electrical wires and stopping the train. A second missile then hit the carriages. <br><br>It was not a war crime, Human Rights Watch says. In fact, Nato committed no war crimes, according to Kenneth Roth and his investigators. But it committed "violations of international humanitarian law" – which amounts to about the same thing. And still we don't know who bombed what. Survivors believe the train was attacked by a British Harrier. The report says it was an American jet. The Yugoslavs say the plane that bombed the centre of Aleksinac in April was British – based on intercepted pilot radio messages – yet still we don't know. <br><br>In the New Year Honours List, Britain's Kosovo pilots got their gongs. All their names were printed in The Independent although we have no idea who was rewarded for their role in Nato's sloppy bombing campaign – Nato failed to hit more than a handful of Serb tanks throughout the war and the Yugoslav Third Army retired unscratched from Kosovo – or who was bemedalled for watching the radar tracks. <br><br>Last September, an unnoticed article in The Officer, a magazine widely read by Ministry of Defence officials and senior army NCOs, quoted a British Harrier pilot who had been bombing Serbia the previous April. <br><br>"After a while you've got to ignore the collateral damage [civilian casualties] and start smashing those targets," he said at the time. "But the politicians aren't ready for that yet." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe bloody truth of how Nato changed the rules to win a 'moral war' in Yugoslavia ``x949918994,80510,``x``x
``xFT<br><br>By David Buchan, Diplomatic Editor<br><br>The European Union is moving towards lifting its ban on flights to Serbia, but also widening visa and financial restrictions on the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>The political aim for revamping sanctions, which will be discussed by EU foreign ministers next Monday, is to increase isolation for the regime while relaxing it for the rest of the Serb population. But it also reflects lobbying by EU carriers keen to resume flights to Belgrade, officials say.<br><br>For some months, Britain, the Netherlands and the Brussels Commission itself have held out against mounting pressure by other EU states, led by France and Italy, for an easing of sanctions, which Serb opposition groups also desire.<br><br>The UK and the Commission on Monday confirmed they were ready to agree to relaxing the air flight ban in return for a tightening of financial sanctions, which EU officials say leak "like a sieve", and for an increase in the number of regime officials and associates denied EU visas. Robin Cook, the UK foreign secretary, is to try to win US support for the revamped sanctions package when he travels to Washington tomorrow.<br><br>At present, some 650 Serb officials are on the EU's visa blacklist. The UK has proposed adding a further 180 people to this list, including executives of a dozen companies identified as earning hard currency for the Milosevic regime. These companies would face a freeze on funds in, and transactions with, EU countries. Sanctions are targeted on funds and operations of the federal Yugoslav government.<br><br>The list of companies includes the Bor mining group, HIP and Zorka chemical companies, Sartid steel, the NIS petroleum company, EPS electric power and four trading companies - Jugoimport, Progres, SIMPO and GENEX. UK officials describe the list as "indicative" in the sense it could be expanded to any front companies acting for those on the list.<br><br>Western officials judge from the number of complaints they have had from individual Yugoslavs trying to get off the visa blacklist that this is the most, perhaps the only, effective sanction imposed on the country since the Kosovo war. The EU will try to orchestrate any lifting of the air ban so as to give the Serb opposition credit for the measure and raise its credibility with the Serb population.<br><br>At a later stage, the EU might formally lift its widely breached oil embargo. But it could face opposition from the US, which was incensed that this oil embargo only came into effect on the last day of the Kosovo war.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSERBIA: EU close to lifting flight ban ``x950005028,93532,``x``x
``xDefence chief is the second ally of Milosevic to die recently <br><br>TheTimes<br><br>Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade and Owen Bowcott <br><br>Yugoslavia's defence minister was shot dead last night as he ate in the restaurant of a Belgrade football stadium, the latest and the highest-ranking victim of a spate of gangland-style political killings. <br>Pavle Bulatovic, who had held the post for seven years, was the second prominent ally of President Slobodan Milosevic to be gunned down in the city in less than a month. <br><br>The Serb warlord Arkan died in the lobby of the Intercontinental hotel, in Belgrade, on January 15. <br><br>Immediately after last night's killing, the government went into emergency session and declared Mr Bulatovic had been the victim of terrorism. <br><br>"The federal government states with deepest sorrow and sadness that Pavle Bulatovic, the federal minister of defence, was killed this evening in Belgrade," a statement on Yugoslav state television, said. "The federal government gives its full support to the relevant state organs in their uncompromising struggle against terrorism." <br><br>The statement added that the government expressed its "gratitude and respect for the contribution that Pavle Bulatovic gave in the defence, affirmation and development of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and sends deepest condolences to his family." <br><br>Police said the killer struck at 6.55pm local time, firing with an automatic weapon from the stadium's football pitch through the restaurant window. <br><br>Mr Bulatovic, 51, was a senior member of the Socialist People's party, a Montenegrin party loyal to Mr Milosevic, which is in opposition in Montenegro, but is in government at the federal level. <br><br>As well as being a close ally of Mr Milosevic, Mr Bulatovic was very close to Momir Bulatovic, the Yugoslav premier. The two men were not related. <br><br>Born in the Montenegrin village of Gornji Rovci, he was married and had three children.Bulatovic was largely a figurehead, with all the major decisions being made by Mr Milosevic. <br><br>From 1992 to 1994 he served as Yugoslav interior minister in the government of Milan Panic, a Serb-born businessman who was later sacked by Mr Milosevic. <br><br>It was not immediately clear whether the minister, who was hit from behind, had died at the scene or later in hospital. <br><br>The independent Studio B TV company reported that two men sitting at the same table were wounded and were taken to a military hospital nearby. <br><br>A few hours after the shooting, the table where Mr Bulatovic sat was still covered with blood and the floor was littered with debris. <br><br>More than a dozen prominent people, some close to Mr Milosevic, have been killed in Belgrade in the past 10 years. Most of the killings have never been solved. <br><br>Other recent victims have included Dragan Simic, a young and ambitious police colonel, who was shot dead in a Belgrade car park last year; Slavko Curuvija, a prominent independent journalist and publisher critical of the Serbian authorities, who was gunned down outside his Belgrade apartment block last year during Nato air strikes against Yugoslavia; and Milorad Vlahovic another police colonel and the assistant head of the Belgrade homicide department who was also shot dead in a car park last year. <br><br>Miodrag Vlahovic, a political commentator in Montenegro's capital, Podgorica, said that the killing of Mr Bulatovic could be the result of a "conflict of interests" concerning business dealings between senior Yugoslav officials. <br><br>"The country in which the defence minister was killed like that in a restaurant is a real banana republic. There is no doubt about that," Mr Vlahovic said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav minister shot dead ``x950005071,13955,``x``x
``xYugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic was killed Monday in a shooting in a Belgrade restaurant, and the Yugoslav government has convened an emergency session Monday evening. <br><br>Reuters <br><br>"This evening...at 18:55 p.m. (1755 GMT) in the Rad restaurant...Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic was killed by an unknown attacker," pro-government Politika television quoted a Belgrade police statement as saying. <br><br>The Yugoslav government, which met for an urgent session, said in a statement that Bulatovic "was the victim of a classic terrorist act" and pledged to fight against "terrorism." <br><br>Police officials in Belgrade said Bulatovic was sitting in the restaurant at the soccer club Rad, a well-known gathering place for pro-Serb Montenegrins, when he was shot. Montenegrin police officials confirmed the report. <br><br>Bulatovic was a member of the Socialist People's Party, a pro-Serb faction in Montenegro that is loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Montenegrin police said the gunman fired through a window of the restaurant, hitting Bulatovic; the restaurant's owner, Mirko Knezevic; and banker Vuk Obradovic from behind with automatic weapon fire. <br><br>The attack came less than a month after Serbia's most famed warlord, Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, was gunned down in a Belgrade hotel Jan. 15. <br><br>More than a dozen prominent people, some close to Milosevic, have been killed in Belgrade in the past decade. Most of the killings have never been solved or the culprits uncovered. <br><br>Shortly after the shooting, the area where Bulatovic sat at a corner table was covered with blood and the floor was littered with debris. Pieces of plates and broken glass were scattered around. Bullet holes were seen on the walls. <br><br>Bulatovic, 52, had been defense minister of Yugoslavia since 1994. Bulatovic was largely a figurehead minister, with all the major decisions being made by Milosevic. <br><br>From 1992 to 1994, Bulatovic served as Yugoslav interior minister in the government of Milan Panic, a Serb-born businessman who was sacked by Milosevic. <br><br>Bulatovic's Socialist Peoples Party is at odds with the Montenegrin pro-Western government of President Milo Djukanovic. Yugoslavia is made up of two republics, Serbia and the smaller Montenegro. <br><br>Bulatovic is survived by his wife and two children. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav Defense Minister Killed; Government Holds Emergency Session ``x950005094,65630,``x``x
``xBy Edward Cody<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br><br>BELGRADE, Feb. 8 – Yugoslav opposition leaders charged today that the assassination of Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic shows President Slobodan Milosevic has turned Yugoslavia into a lawless society in which even high government officials have to fear for their lives. <br><br>In statements issued by their respective parties, the opposition figures sought to turn Bulatovic's gangland-style execution Monday night at a Belgrade restaurant into a political weapon against the man who has run this country with cunning and force through a decade of turmoil, including the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and last spring's war over the separatist province of Kosovo.<br><br>Their charges played on a sense of uncertainty and cynicism among many Serbs who see no early escape from Milosevic's standoff with the West and are told repeatedly that politically connected criminals make millions of dollars on a black market made necessary by the economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.<br><br>In a similar vein, Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, speaking to reporters in Madrid, characterized the killing as "a sort of long-knives confrontation," suggesting members of Milosevic's government have begun to fall out among themselves over power or money.<br><br>"Those who have run this country for more than a decade have created a society where they have to be afraid for their own lives," said a statement from the Democratic Party of Zoran Djindjic. "Serbia needs new authorities capable of restoring peace and security in the society."<br><br>Vuk Obradovic, a former general who runs the Social Democratic Party, called on Milosevic to resign because, he charged, the government has turned Serbia "into a criminal society where no one can feel safe anymore."<br><br>Bulatovic's assassination resonated in Belgrade – capital of the Yugoslav federation as well as Serbia – because it came only three weeks after the murder of Zeljko Raznatovic, a Serb nationalist and militia leader known as Arkan. That slaying, at close range in the lobby of Belgrade's plush Intercontinental Hotel, has not been solved. Few Belgrade residents held out hope that Bulatovic's assassination will be resolved any more quickly.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xOpposition Blasts Milosevic Over Assassination``x950082049,61849,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br>Kosovo: special report <br>Ian Black in Brussels <br><br>EU sanctions against Serbia are to be tightened to hit the Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic's ruling elite harder, while a ban on flights will be lifted in an attempt to boost opposition activity. <br>Diplomats in Brussels said last night that EU foreign ministers are expected to agree next Monday to add some 300 new names to an existing 600 strong blacklist. <br><br>Members of the Yugoslav judiciary as well as key industrialists and business leaders are likely to be banned from travel in Europe. <br><br>The aim is to hit the outer circle of power in Belgrade as well as big companies which earn badly-needed hard currency for the regime by freezing their funds in and transactions with EU member states. <br><br>At the same time, the lifting of the flight ban is designed to encourage the opposition by signalling that ordinary Serbs are not being held responsible for their leadership - a lesson learned the hard way from years of punitive UN sanctions against Iraq. <br><br>Last month Britain and the Netherlands were isolated in their defence of the EU's flight ban as France and Italy led calls for ending it. <br><br>EU member states have been divided over what to do about sanctions as long as President Milosevic remains in power, even though his domestic opponents favour lifting both the flight ban and an oil embargo. <br><br>The US is strongly against lifting the oil embargo, even though it is widely breached. <br><br>Since the end of the Kosovo war last summer, the EU has been involved in sending heating oil to two opposition-held towns in Serbia, Nis and Pirot, under its energy for democracy programme. <br><br>But there are disagreements over whether it should be extended to towns which are not opposed to the Yugoslav president. <br><br>"This extension of the visa ban is more than just symbolic," one EU diplomat said yesterday. <br><br>"This is a measure which has caused very great irritation in Milosevic's circle. People have been very greatly inconvenienced so it's been a very effective sanction." <br><br>EU countries are looking to build cooperation with the Serbian people, if not the state, as the opposition tries to overcome divisions and build a united anti-Milosevic platform. <br><br>The EU has repeatedly offered the carrot of "concrete and substantial political and economic support" to a democratic Yugoslavia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xEU steps up efforts to cramp Milosevic cronies ``x950082073,33642,``x``x
``xJonathan Steele in Mitrovice <br>The Guardian<br>Wednesday February 9, 2000 <br><br>Troops from the international peacekeeping force stepped up controls on Kosovo's border with Serbia yesterday to stop special police and paramilitaries in civilian clothes infiltrating Mitrovice. <br>The increased border security, along with extra foot patrols in the northern part of the Kosovan town, followed the worst attack on Albanian civilians by Serbs since K-For troops arrived last June. <br><br>At least five people died and up to 30 were injured on Thursday night after French troops failed to stop gangs firing bullets and throwing grenades into Albanian flats. They also burned vehicles belonging to the United Nations police and aid agencies. <br><br>The ostensible trigger for the assault was a grenade attack on a bus last Wednesday which killed two Serbs. <br><br>Crowds of Albanians have turned out daily to jeer at the French soldiers who are in charge of security and who have continually blocked free access across Mitrovice's three bridges. The northern part of the town is largely populated by Serbs and the south by Albanians. <br><br>The protesters' claims that the French have allowed Mitrovice to slide into partition are receiving an increasingly sympathetic hearing from members of the international police deployed in the town. <br><br>An American officer with the UN police said his Albanian interpreter saw Serbs hand out grenades on Saturday. "He rang a colleague at police headquarters on the southern side who alerted me. I asked K-For to do something, but the French told me they didn't want to inflame the Serbs. <br><br>"The rules of engagement are screwed up," he said. "When it's an issue of weapons, the police cannot go in unless we're accompanied by K-For. They refused to do that." <br><br>The American said that, as the Serb gangs marauded on Thursday, another policeman watched from his balcony as Serbs beat a woman to death. "French K-For troops were nearby but they just stood and watched," the American said. <br><br>Lying in hospital with a wounded leg, Emina Gjaka, 12, recalled her terror at the attacks. "It was the noise, the pain, and the shouts of the Serbs that they would kill us all." Grenades were flung into the flat where she was sheltering, killing a 13-year-old boy. Her mother died a day later. <br><br>After the killings the French ferried around 100 people to safety in southern Mitrovice. Another hundred left separately, leaving around 3,000 Albanians in the north. <br><br>"The Serb action was deliberately timed when the French were rotating their troops with a new general and new men coming to the city on February 1," said Nexhmedin Spahiu, the editorial controller of Radio Mitrovice, an independent broadcasting station. <br><br>He also speculated that the attack was meant to raise tensions as the UN administrator, Bernard Kouchner, tried to persuade moderate Kosovo Serb leaders to join a new interim governing council for the territory. <br><br>Mr Kouchner appeared to agree when he said: "It was the first day for the French general and his troops, and it was not easy to move in an unknown town in the dark. Politically, we were on the verge of moving forward. I have a letter from Bishop Artemije [the leader of Kosovo's Orthodox Serbs] saying he was coming to the meeting of the new administrative council. That was the reason for the attacks." <br><br>Lieutenant Commander Philip Anido, the K-For spokesman, confirmed yesterday that German and Italian troops had been deployed in northern Mitrovice to strengthen the French-led team.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo killings force UN to act ``x950082096,55672,``x``x
``xJacky Rowland in Belgrade <br>The Guardian<br>Wednesday February 9, 2000 <br><br>The assassination of the Yugoslav defence minister, Pavle Bulatovic, has raised the spectre of civil unrest in the small republic of Montenegro as rival clans start settling scores. <br>Analysts in Belgrade are linking Monday night's killing to the feud between Montenegro's government - which wants to extricate itself from the Yugoslav federation, where its state is Serbia's sole partner - and the northern Montenegrin clans. <br><br>These clans include the Bulatovic family, who are loyal to President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. <br><br>The minister, 51, was killed by automatic gunfire on Monday night in what the Yugoslav authorities described as "a classic terrorist act". The killer opened fire through the window of a restaurant in the Banjica suburb of Belgrade as the minister was sitting at his favourite table. Two other people were wounded, including the former general and bank director, Vuk Obradovic. The killing of Pavle Bulatovic has caused shock and confusion in Belgrade and in his native Montenegro. Unlike others in the political elite in Yugoslavia, he was considered a modest man untainted by corruption or black market activities. Neither was he among Serb leaders charged by the UN tribunal in The Hague with war crimes in Kosovo war last year, nor linked in press reports to the past decade of political and underworld killings in Serbia. <br><br>The Serb paramilitary leader Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, assassinated in a Belgrade hotel last month, had been the most recent of these. <br><br>However at the time of Arkan's killing the Yugoslav information minister, Goran Matic, blamed the Montenegrin mafia - remarks he later denied making. <br><br>Bulatovic was a staunch supporter of President Milosevic and one of the fiercest critics of the Montenegrin president, Milo Djukanovic, who has made a series of moves to break up what is left of Yugoslavia. <br><br>The minister was active in organising clan meetings in northern Montenegro to rally support for continued federal rule from Belgrade. <br><br>There is a danger that Bulatovic's family and political followers will accuse the Montenegrin authorities of the murder and that pro-Belgrade clans may start fomenting plans to avenge the killing. This could further destabilise Montenegro where tensions are already high as a result of President Djukanovic's defiance of Belgrade and courtship of the west. <br><br>Inevitably there are those in Serbia who have blamed the west - the all-purpose bogeyman - for the Bulatovic murder. The Serb ultra-nationalist leader, Vojislav Seselj, whose own bodyguard was shot dead last month, accused the British, French and American intelligence services of carrying out the assassination. <br><br>"Their goal is to bring to power in Yugoslavia incompetent opposition leaders who are toadies to the west," said Mr Seselj's Serbian Radical party. <br><br>The Belgrade authorities have responded to the killing by announcing a "strong battle against the biggest evil of mankind at the end of the 20th century: terrorism". The announcement was made at a special joint session of the Yugoslav and Serbian governments, presided over by Mr Milosevic. The authorities are under pressure to show that they are still in control of a society that is increasingly violent and lawless. <br><br>But officials have yet to give any concrete details of their proposed fight against terrorism. Opposition leaders have expressed the fear that the assassination could be used as the pretext for a general crackdown against President Milosevic's opponents. <br><br>Yesterday at a memorial service in Belgrade, colleagues paid tribute to Bulatovic. <br><br>"The Yugoslav army and the defence ministry have lost a leading man in its organisation, an army minister who was first in the line of the defence of the fatherland," said the army chief, General Dragoljub Ojdanic. <br><br>Memorial services were also held in regional army headquarters throughout Serbia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWho killed Bulatovic? Serbs grieve for assassinated minister and lawless state ``x950082124,62648,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br>MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 9 -- United Nations police officers apprehended a man here today who was slashing the tires of their cars and who lashed out at one policeman, injuring his eye, a spokesman for the peacekeepers said. It was a minor incident compared with the violence of last week, but it reflected the continuing tension and anger of Serbs living on the north side of the city. <br><br>Five days after some of the worst violence that troops have seen in eight months of peacekeeping, many Serbs are still cursing and threatening foreigners in the street. <br><br>A number of Serbs in Mitrovica, including more than a dozen interviewed on the street in recent days, do not appear to have altered their views since the war against NATO and the arrival of a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo. A large percentage of them attribute everything bad that has happened to the Albanians. <br><br>As many as 10,000 Serbs live in the north part of this divided city, and almost a third of them are refugees from other parts of Kosovo. They possess a readiness to take things into their own hands and a measure of organization not found among Serbs living in the isolated enclaves around Kosovo where they are far more vulnerable to attack. <br><br>The Serbs of Mitrovica see themselves as defending the only viable outpost of Serbian control in Kosovo against the Albanian majority. They are bolstered by an almost ethnically pure Serbian area stretching north behind them to the boundary with the rest of Serbia. This provides them with a direct, safe land connection. With an estimated population of 50,000 Serbs, the area represents 50 percent of the total left in Kosovo -- the largest concentration in the province. <br><br>All of the dozen or so interviewed said the Serbian mobs that rampaged through Mitrovica on Thursday night, intimidating Albanians and leaving eight dead, were reacting to the grenade attack on a Serbian cafe that wounded 15 young people. <br><br>"At that moment people remembered everything," said Oliver Ivanovic, president of the Serbian National Council and an acknowledged leader of the Serbian community. "The 20 Serbs killed in the area in the last seven months; the 28 people kidnapped and disappeared -- everyone has a reason to be angry. It was very difficult to control them." Mr. Ivanovic was on the streets Thursday night. <br><br>A history teacher, Dragoljub Radenkovic, who fled his home in Vucitrn, a town about six miles southeast of Mitrovica that is now wholly populated by Albanians, says people are revolted. "For eight months journalists have only been writing about Serbs being killed," he said. "In eight months you never saw the Serbs killing Albanians. There was a lot pent-up inside people and it exploded." <br><br>Among the Serbs, Mr. Ivanovic, a sophisticated, English-speaking businessman, who has become the main connection with the international peacekeepers and administrators in the region, was alone in acknowledging his people's recent crimes. <br><br>"Very bad things happened," he said. "I cannot support that, but just ask that you understand it. I was feeling very angry too that night." Other Serbs, including his deputy, Vuko Antonijevic, appeared to applaud the crowd's actions that night. <br><br>"I want to thank you for what you did," Mr. Antonijevic told a rally of 2,000 people on Monday. "You showed how much you love your city and how you can defend it against Islamic terrorism. You showed in the best way what is the Serbian answer for attacks on Serbian youth in coffee bars." <br><br>Another speaker, Milan Ivanovic, a doctor from Mitrovica's hospital, ranted against the NATO-led peacekeepers and United Nations officials for allowing Albanians to persecute the remaining Serbian population in Kosovo. "They are killing Serbs, they are putting Serbs in concentration camps in Kosovo and in Albania, and they are doing it in the presence of the United Nations mission," he said. <br><br>Ordinary Serbs in the street repeated similar accusations, defending the expulsions of Albanians from their midst. "They did the same to us," said Smiljana Milosevic, whose grocery store backs up to the cafe, Le Bel Ami, where the grenade attack occurred. She said the Albanians still living on the north side, now under heavy protection of peacekeeping troops, should leave, "because there are no Serbs on the other side." <br><br>But when asked how the violence could be resolved, most Serbs appeared unsure. Some said the curfew currently in force was good and improved their security. Others said the curfew had left them vulnerable and unable to defend themselves. <br><br>Many say they cannot rely on the peacekeepers and United Nations police officers for security, and must therefore provide their own. "We are just defending ourselves, with our bare hands," said the storekeeper, Ms. Milosevic. <br><br>The Serbs have a fairly well-organized defense here that is loyal to Mr. Ivanovic. It is made up mostly of tough young men who carry walkie-talkies and guard the bridge, inspecting Albanians who cross from the south side to the north. Whether the young men played a role in the violence is not known. <br><br>Mr. Ivanovic says his organization is opposed to expelling all the Albanians from the north side of the city in order to make it all Serbian, because that would invite more attacks from Albanians. He is also against the partition of the Serb-dominated region from the rest of Kosovo. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbs Nurse Rage After Attack in Kosovo City``x950172302,59649,``x``x
``xBy Edward Cody<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br><br>BELGRADE, Feb. 8 –– Yugoslav opposition leaders charged today that the assassination of Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic shows President Slobodan Milosevic has turned Yugoslavia into a lawless society in which even high government officials have to fear for their lives. <br><br>In statements issued by their respective parties, the opposition figures sought to turn Bulatovic's gangland-style execution Monday night at a Belgrade restaurant into a political weapon against the man who has run this country with cunning and force through a decade of turmoil, including the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and last spring's war over the separatist province of Kosovo.<br><br>Their charges played on a sense of uncertainty and cynicism among many Serbs who see no early escape from Milosevic's standoff with the West and are told repeatedly that politically connected criminals make millions of dollars on a black market made necessary by the economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.<br><br>In a similar vein, Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, speaking to reporters in Madrid, characterized the killing as "a sort of long-knives confrontation," suggesting members of Milosevic's government have begun to fall out among themselves over power or money.<br><br>"Those who have run this country for more than a decade have created a society where they have to be afraid for their own lives," said a statement from the Democratic Party of Zoran Djindjic. "Serbia needs new authorities capable of restoring peace and security in the society."<br><br>Vuk Obradovic, a former general who runs the Social Democratic Party, called on Milosevic to resign because, he charged, the government has turned Serbia "into a criminal society where no one can feel safe anymore."<br><br>Bulatovic's assassination resonated in Belgrade--capital of the Yugoslav federation as well as Serbia--because it came only three weeks after the murder of Zeljko Raznatovic, a Serb nationalist and militia leader known as Arkan. That slaying, at close range in the lobby of Belgrade's plush Intercontinental Hotel, has not been solved. Few Belgrade residents held out hope that Bulatovic's assassination will be resolved any more quickly.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xOpposition Blasts Milosevic Over Official's Killing``x950172325,21966,``x``x
``xSARAJEVO (Reuters) - Recent assassinations in Yugoslavia hints at "unrest" in the government of President Slobodan Milosevic, the West's former high representative in nearby Bosnia said Wednesday. <br>"The situation in Yugoslavia is very dificult, as always ... and new events show that there is unrest among the political clique," said Carlos Westendorp, who was the West's peace coordinator in Bosnia in 1997-1999. <br><br>Westendorp, now head of the European Parliament's foreign trade, energy, research and industry committee, was speaking to reporters during a two-day visit to Sarajevo. <br><br>He said it was too early to say events were signalling "the beginning of the end of the regime" of Milosevic. <br><br>Monday, an unidentified attacker shot dead Yugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic, who was a member of the pro-Milosevic Socialist People's Party in the tiny coastal republic of Montenegro. <br><br>Bulatovic's murder came hardly a month after dreaded warlord Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic was shot dead in a Belgrade hotel. <br><br>There were no immediate reports of links between the two shootings, the latest in a decade of high-profile killings in the Yugoslav Serb capital. <br><br>Westendorp also urged the international community to give more support to Bernard Kouchner, the U.N. administrator of of Kosovo which has suffered an upsurge in ethnic Serb-Albanian violence over the past week. <br><br>"He is having problems, financial and military problems, and I think these problems should be overcome," Westendorp said. <br><br>NATO-led peacekeeping troops and the U.N. mission took control of Kosovo after the alliance's 11-week air campaign last year forced out Yugoslav security forces which had been purging the province's rebellious ethnic Albanian majority. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xViolence shows Yugo leadership unrest - Westendorp``x950172351,39672,``x``x
``xBy Christian Jennings <br>YUGOSLAVIA: Apart from his killers, and the people who paid them, nobody knows who shot the Yugoslav Defence Minister, Mr Pavle Bulatovic (51), who was murdered on Monday night as he sat having his supper in a football stadium restaurant in Belgrade's Banjica suburb. <br><br>Those who know the identity of his attackers are certainly not saying. But this being Yugoslavia, the Balkans mill of rumour, fact and half-truth has gone into overdrive.<br><br>Mr Bulatovic, who had been police minister and then defence minister since 1992 under three successive prime ministers, had no bodyguards with him at the time of his death. <br><br>He died shortly after arriving at the Belgrade Military Medical Academy near to the scene of the shooting. Two companions were wounded but survived.<br><br>Mr Bulatovic had been defence minister during the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo carried out in early 1999 by the Yugoslav army, special police and squads of paramilitaries.<br><br>He had not, unlike President Slobodan Milosevic and four other top officials, been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, although he was banned from obtaining a visa to any EU country.<br><br>The Belgrade authorities vowed to step up the fight against what they called "terrorism". Mr Bulatovic was the latest victim in a series of high-profile killings in Belgrade. <br><br>The Serb warlord, Zeljko "Arkan" Razanatovic, was assassinated on January 15th. Mr Bulatovic was Montenegrin by birth and considered to be loyal to President Milosevic and the Yugoslav Federal Republic's Prime Minister, Mr Momir Bulatovic, from the Socialist People's Party.<br><br>The Serbian Deputy Information Minister, Mr Miodrag Popovic, said the killing could have been carried out by the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, now decommissioned and renamed the Kosovo Protection Corps.<br><br>But there are more credible suspicions that Mr Bulatovic was killed by hardline Montenegrins, loyal to President Milo Djukanovic, who claim that since last August the defence minister had been organising paramilitary and Yugoslav army units with the aim of resisting, and then trying to destabilise, the Montenegrin government.<br><br>Mr Bulatovic was from the north of Montenegro, where loyalty to Mr Milosevic and resistance to Mr Djukanovic are at their highest.<br><br>The third theory is that Mr Bulatovic was killed because of his links to Darko Asanin, a Belgrade criminal. It is likely, according to Western diplomats in Kosovo and analysts in Belgrade, that Montenegrin pro-autonomy hard-liners will in any case be blamed for Mr Bulatovic's death, leading to escalating tensions in the tiny province, and a possible Serb retaliatory assassination attempt against Mr Djukanovic, which could finally ignite the much-feared war between Serbia and the last fragment of its Yugoslav federation.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegrins suspected in assassination of minister ``x950172371,55541,``x``x
``xGORNJI ROVCI, Yugoslavia, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Yugoslav army chiefs and government ministers joined some 1,000 mourners attending the funeral on Thursday of Defence Minister Pavle Bulatovic, gunned down this week in a Belgrade restaurant. <br>Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said at the ceremony at the slain minister's family cemetery in this Montenegrin mountain village that the murder was a terrorist act. <br><br>The prime minister, of the same Montenegrin party as the slain defence minister but no direct relation, vowed that Yugoslavia would stand up against all threats. <br><br>"The result of this crime is completely contrary to the criminals' expectations. Our will and readiness to defend Yugoslavia are even stronger," Bulatovic said. <br><br>"The one who committed this crime does not have a single reason to relax," he said. "We who stayed behind will stand up against violence, terrorism and treason." <br><br>Mourners included virtually the entire military brass as well as senior federal Yugoslav and Serbian republic officials. <br><br>Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was not there, but did attend a government memorial service for Bulatovic in Belgrade on Tuesday. <br><br>Strikingly absent were representatives of the pro-Western leadership of Montenegro, an increasingly reluctant partner of leftist Serbia in the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>One of the military commanders present, the commander of Yugoslavia's second army division based in Montenegro, spoke at an earlier ceremony in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica. <br><br>"The Yugoslav Army is angry today, it is not good to touch it, to test it on a battlefield," said General Milorad Obradovic. <br><br>"The tragic death of Pavle Bulatovic will strengthen members of the Yugoslav army in their determination to endure in their holy task, to protect the sovereignty, territory, independence and the constitutional order of Yugoslavia." <br><br>LOYAL TO MILOSEVIC <br><br>Bulatovic was a member of Montenegro's Socialist People's Party and a loyal, low-profile aide to Milosevic. The party is in opposition in Montenegro but a member of the federal government. <br><br>Bulatovic was shot by an unidentified attacker on Monday, the latest in 10 years of high-profile killings in Belgrade. <br><br>Villagers braved freezing weather and cloudy skies to pay their respects at the funeral, and army lorries were used to transport people from Podgorica on narrow, muddy roads. <br><br>Bulatovic's widow, son and brother stood next to a coffin draped in the red-white-blue Yugoslav flag. Yugoslav army troops fired a three-salvo salute. <br><br>There have been no reports of any arrests in connection with the murder, which came just weeks after feared Serbian warlord Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic was shot dead in a Belgrade hotel. <br><br>Government officials have alleged Western involvement in the killing, suggesting that it would be part of a U.S.-led plot to destroy and then occupy Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic. <br><br>Western diplomats say it may have been committed by paramilitaries who hold the government responsible for Arkan's murder, or by agents bent on removing possible witnesses against Milosevic, who has been indicted by the U.N. war crimes court. <br><br>Bulatovic, 51, was defence minister during the repressive operations in Kosovo by Yugoslav security forces which provoked NATO's 11-week air strike campaign against Yugoslavia last year. <br><br>But unlike Milosevic and four other top officials, Bulatovic was not publicly indicted for war crimes in Kosovo by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSlain Yugo defence minister buried in Montenegro``x950263462,36941,``x``x
``xThe Times<br><br>BY MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR<br><br>BRITISH soldiers are still huddled in tents in a bleak Kosovo winter because the barracks earmarked for them were blown to bits by the Americans. <br>The British-led Nato ground force had planned to use vacated Serb military barracks for accommodation and staff headquarters, but the Americans insisted on destroying them during the 78-day air campaign, placing them high on the list of targets for Tomahawk cruise missiles, precision-guided weapons and 1,000lb bombs. <br><br>The main Serb barracks in Pristina, which could have been used by Lieutenant-General Sir Mike Jackson, commander of Nato's Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), as his headquarters, was hit so many times that not a single building was left standing. <br><br>While British officers accepted that the destruction of the barracks looked good on video, they saw little point in destroying buildings that were empty of Serb personnel. Before the Nato air campaign began, it became obvious that the Serb military and Ministry of Interior police (MUP) in Kosovo were deserting all the main barracks, in the expectation that they would be prime targets for Nato bombers. <br><br>By the time the ground forces went in on June 12 last year, there was nowhere for them to sleep. The whole force resorted to tents. Ironically, the Americans are now living in specially constructed huts while the British are still awaiting construction of their accommodation. <br><br>The clash between American target selectors and the ground force commanders emerged yesterday at a conference in London of senior British military officers, meeting to examine lessons learnt from the Kosovo campaign. The problem, they said, was that the American commanders in charge of the air campaign largely ignored the entreaties of ground campaign commanders who were trying to think ahead to when the bombing had stopped. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUS bombing leaves British troops in tents``x950263494,44585,``x``x
``xShootings a lifestyle downer for gangster society<br><br>The Guardian <br><br>Jacky Rowland in Belgrade <br><br>The killing this week of the Yugoslav defence minister, Pavle Bulatovic, is the latest in a series of mafia-style hits that have spread fear and panic through the political and financial elite of Belgrade. <br>The absence of a ready explanation for the assassination and the fact that it happened less than a month after the killing of the paramilitary leader and gangster, Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, has left Serbs asking, "Who next?" <br><br>Nerves are particularly frayed among the nouveaux riches of Belgrade. These are people who have made their money in the last 10 years through dubious deals and by busting sanctions imposed on Serbia by the United States and the European Union for the role played by Belgrade's leadership and military in promoting the ethnic war that ravaged Bosnia after 1992. <br><br>They call themselves "businessmen" but their business often consists of smuggling and running black market and protection rackets. <br><br>"To get really rich in Serbia you need good connections within the authorities and you should have good contacts with some gangs," said Bratislav Grubacic, a journalist and political analyst. "The only problem is that the money you earn is not just yours. You have to share it with those who protected you or those who gave you the opportunity to do the job." <br><br>The huge wealth amassed by this small group of individuals has given them considerable power and led them to believe that they are beyond the law. The rash of shootings since the start of the year has broken this illusion of invulnerability. <br><br>The new rich like to flaunt their wealth but they also like their privacy. Arkan had the money to buy himself the veneer of respectability and could be seen in public places such as the Intercontinental hotel where he met his death. <br><br>Lesser hoodlums prefer to lurk in private clubs, like La Coste in the affluent suburb of Dedinje. A couple of bruisers with thick necks and golden chains guarantee the screening of clientele. <br><br>A safer way to brush shoulders with the nouveaux riches is in the City Passage shopping centre. In these calm, marble-clad halls, exclusive Italian designer boutiques offer the monied of Belgrade a number of solutions to the dilemma of what to do with their cash. A pair of imitation tigerskin boots can cost £100. The average salary in Serbia is about £25 a month. <br><br>There has been an upsurge of interest in cosmetic surgery among Serbian high society. A number of politicians' wives have benefited from cosmetic surgery, including breast implants, liposuction and nose jobs. "These people have so much money they don't know what to do with it," said Bratislav Grubacic. "They've bought houses, they've bought cars, now they want to buy back their youth." <br><br>There is no shortage of wannabes, young men and young women who saw Arkan and his lavish lifestyle as a model to aspire to. Many girls have embarked on careers as models in the hope that their looks will take them places, preferably away from Serbia. In the meantime, there is at least the chance of earning some decent money: a model can earn more in a day than a factory worker can in a month. <br><br>"Unfortunately education and spiritual values don't matter in Serbia today," said Nebojsa Grncarski, a successful male model. "All that counts is money and material things. It doesn't matter how you get them: the end justifies the means." <br><br>A visit to the studios of TV Pink provides an introduction to the get-rich-quick values of Serbia under the Yugoslav presidency of Slobodan Milosevic. The television station belongs to a crony of the president's wife, Mira Markovic. Arkan's widow, the top folk singer, Ceca, used to make regular appearances. For aspiring actors and pop stars there's a simple lesson: if you want to get ahead, get on TV Pink. <br><br>"There's no big deal about being a celebrity in Yugoslavia," insisted a TV Pink presenter, Ivana Bojic, somewhat disingenuously. "But on the other side there is another level of the jet-set, people that I don't know and who don't want to be known." <br><br>And then, of course, there are the newly poor of Serbia. These are people who used to have a middle-class lifestyle, but whose standard of living has fallen steadily during the 10 years of Milosevic's rule. <br><br>They see no way out of the poverty trap and long for political change. But as long as the system continues to serve those who are rich and powerful now, things are likely to stay just as they are. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMoney can buy you death, Serbia's new rich discover ``x950263549,7611,``x``x
``xThe New York Times <br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br>MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 13 -- French troops killed an Albanian gunman today during fierce fighting in the streets of this bitterly divided town in the most sustained clashes involving peacekeeping troops since they arrived in Kosovo eight months ago. <br><br>More than a dozen people were wounded, including two French soldiers, and 17 people were arrested by early evening after French troops -- recently accused of not cracking down hard enough on violence here -- moved aggressively to pin down the gunmen. <br><br>Both Serbs and Albanians regard Mitrovica as the last battlefield of the war for Kosovo and, as such, unfinished business. Today, the international troops seemed to have been caught in the middle of that battle. <br><br>Gunfire and explosions sounded over the northern part of the town -- home to about 9,000 Serbs, but also to 1,500 Albanians -- for some five hours, and smoke billowed from two burning houses. French, Italian and British troops came under fire on different occasions. British troops, deployed last week on the central bridge that divides the town into north and south, exchanged fire with snipers on the north side several times. By late afternoon, the shooting had ceased and French troops had surrounded a house and begun to negotiate for the men inside to surrender. <br><br>A former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who said in an interview by telephone that he had been involved in the fighting, said that Serbs had attempted to attack an Albanian area and that fighters of the now-outlawed Albanian guerrilla force had fought back to defend the area. <br><br>"Nine Albanians were injured today, including one of our soldiers," the former commander said, speaking on condition of anonymity. <br><br>Serbs have made the north of the city a bastion of Serbian control and refuge for thousands of people displaced from elsewhere in Kosovo. <br><br>Albanians, thousands of whom have still not been able to return to their homes in the north, consider it the last place still to be liberated from Serbian persecution. <br><br>Each side asserts that the other wants to control Mitrovica because Kosovo's most valuable natural assets -- iron ore and precious-metal mines -- are scattered in and around the town. <br><br>A Serbian community leader, Oliver Ivanovic, threw the blame for the fighting on the Albanians. "They are not satisfied," he said. "They're looking for big trouble." <br><br>Mr. Ivanovic said he expected further violence through the night, despite a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. "They will not stop," he said. "They will do something more." <br><br>Apparently with the agreement of the French, he was posting men on the tops of buildings throughout the Serbian area to keep watch overnight despite the curfew. They would be wearing yellow reflecting armbands to show the United Nations forces that they were unarmed, he said. Dozens of tough-looking young men moved in and out of his office shortly before the curfew began to collect the yellow armbands. <br><br>Mitrovica has been rocked by violence for the last 10 days and several hundred British, Belgian, Danish and German troops have been sent as reinforcements to the French, who are in command of the area. The violence, both grenade attacks and shootings, has centered on the northern side of the city. <br><br>There have been injuries among both ethnic communities and nearly 1,000 Albanians have been forced to flee their homes on the north side to the Albanian-populated south. On Saturday evening, French troops surrounded and searched the Dolce Vita cafe, the main hangout for hard-line Serbs. <br><br>The heaviest fighting today occurred in the so-called Bosnian quarter, a dense warren of alleyways close to the Ibar River that is mostly populated by Albanians, but where some Serbs also live. It is an area that Albanians have vowed to defend from what they say are Serb efforts to purge it of Albanians, and which Serbs say is a center of terrorists who attack Serbs. <br><br>The violence today began with a grenade explosion near an Albanian bakery around 7 a.m. in the Bosnian quarter on the north side of the river. Five Albanians were wounded in the grenade attack and were taken to the Moroccan military hospital, said Col. Ahmed Muden, chief of the hospital. Two of the wounded were treated and allowed to go home; the other three were hospitalized. One, Dr. Muden said, was in a serious condition. The wounded were all men, aged 22 to 35, he said. <br><br>It was three hours later that shooting broke out across town. Pistol shots were suddenly answered by automatic gunfire. Two French soldiers were wounded, one in the stomach and one in the arm, when a gunman opened fire on their position in the Bosnian quarter. United Nations police described it as an unprovoked attack on the soldiers, who were part of a static guard deployed to protect Albanians in the quarter. <br><br>Italian troops on a bridge nearby opened fire. French troops immediately moved 30 to 40 armored vehicles into the northern part of Mitrovica across the bridges. The shooting escalated, and British troops came under sniper fire from across the river at their positions on the central bridge. <br><br>Three Serbs were wounded during the day, including one who was with French troops when they came under fire, and another, a civilian, who was hit in a foot outside his apartment building, Mr. Ivanovic said. <br><br>An Albanian man was found in the street in a pool of blood in the middle of the day. The man was already in a coma when he was brought to the Moroccan hospital and died shortly afterward, doctors said. A statement from the NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force later said that the Albanian was a gunman who had been shot dead by French soldiers who had come under fire. <br><br>Three men were injured in exchanges of fire with peacekeeping troops, one of them the dead Albanian, a British spokesman for the peacekeepers, Warrant Officer Mark Cox, said on Sunday evening. <br><br>About 17 people had been arrested during the day, said Warrant Officer Cox, including the men surrounded in the house. <br><br>As French troops pursued the gunmen who had apparently fired on them, automatic gunfire and grenade explosions rang out over the Bosnian quarter. French snipers appeared on the roof of a tall apartment building overlooking the area and an observer helicopter hovered at a distance. Nearby, the smoke of a burning house rose from the charred rafters. <br><br>By midafternoon, the shooting ceased and negotiations began. "They are Albanians inside," said a French public affairs officer, Lt. Charles-Philippe d'Orleans, as he watched the proceedings. "It is not clear who they are or why they are doing this." <br><br>French troops with armored vehicles had cordoned off the street. "We gave them a sharp riposte with the gun mounted on the top," Lieutenant d'Orleans said. <br><br>A crowd of Serbs watching nearby were in no doubt. "They are terrorists," said Branko Barovic, a man on crutches and a known hard-liner. "They are attacking us all the time. We cannot go on living like this." <br><br>All the while, the exodus of Albanians from the north side continued, a human outpouring that started when four Albanians were killed and several Serbs were injured in a night of violence on Feb. 3. Today, one family escaped their house as it was set alight, United Nations police said. Flora Zabrgja, 22, and her mother Kimete Zabrigja, 57, were among those to flee under sniper fire after four days holed up in their apartment, terrified that their Serbian neighbors would attack them. <br><br>"After they searched the Dolce Vita, the Serbs went crazy," Ms. Zabrgja said. Then, she said, French troops arrived and told them to go. As they headed for the bridge, shots rang out. They took cover in a troop carrier on the bridge for two hours, and then ran the length of the bridge with British soldiers carrying their bags for them.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO-Led Troops Caught in Battle Over Kosovo Town``x950515333,34643,``x``x
``xBy MISHA SAVIC Associated Press Writer <br><br>BECEJ, Yugoslavia (AP) - Serbia on Sunday announced it will demand compensation at an international court from those responsible for a cyanide spill that has contaminated a major river, destroying most aquatic life.<br><br>Serbian Environment Minister Branislav Blazic said it would take at least five years for life in the Tisa River to recover.<br><br>``The Tisa has been killed. Not even bacteria have survived,'' Blazic said as he toured the area along the river in northern Serbia. ``This is a total catastrophe.''<br><br>``We will demand an estimation of the damage and we will demand that the culprits for this tragedy be punished,'' he said.<br><br>Romania, where the pollution originated, played down the environmental damage. But people - not just aquatic life - are at risk because of the spill, said Predrag Prolic, a professor of chemistry and toxicology at Belgrade University.<br><br>He said those with wells close to the riverbed are in danger. Birds feeding off fish could die, he said. The poisoned water also can filter into the soil and then contaminate grass, grain, and livestock, Prolic said.<br><br>In Bucharest, Romania, Anton Vlad, an environmental official, suggested the spill's effects had been overstated.<br><br>``I have the impression that it is exaggerated,'' Vlad told national radio.<br><br>The cyanide spill originated in northwest Romania, near the border town of Oradea, where a dam at the Baia Mare gold mine overflowed Jan. 30, causing cyanide to pour into streams. At the mine, a cyanide solution is used to separate gold ore from surrounding rock.<br><br>From there, the polluted water flowed west into the Tisa in neighboring Hungary, killing large numbers of fish there, and then into Yugoslavia.<br><br>The spill was expected to reach the Danube River sometime Sunday. There was no official word of that happening, but the Beta news agency cited eyewitnesses late in the day who said the Danube was ``all white with the bellies of dead fish'' between the area where it is joined by the Tisa, and Belgrade, about 50 miles to the southeast.<br><br>Vlad said that once the cyanide had reached the Danube, the pollution would ``disappear because the water levels in the Danube are tens of times higher than the Tisa.''<br><br>Prolic said the Danube could dilute the spill enough to reduce its dangers, but the spill still ``destroyed life in the Tisa for years to come.''<br><br>He said the peak concentration of cyanide in the river was 20 times the permissible level. Poisonous heavy metals such as lead can be left behind after the cyanide dissipates and can also leech into the soil, Prolic said.<br><br>In Serbia, dozens of volunteers and fisherman, wearing protective rubber gloves, removed hundreds of dead fish from the Tisa to bury them. Heaps of them littered the river bank.<br><br>``Everything's dead, cyanide destroyed the entire food chain,'' said local fisherman Slobodan Krkljes, 43. ``Fishing was my job, I don't know what I'm going to do now.''<br><br>In Becej, a town on the Tisa about 55 miles north of Belgrade, police were making sure no contaminated fish were brought to the town's market for sale. Restaurants in the region have removed fish from their menus.<br><br>Experts and officials estimate that some 80 percent of the fish in the Tisa have died since the contamination entered the country Friday.<br><br>The fertile plains of Serbia's north are also the country's breadbasket. Water from the Tisa is traditionally used for irrigation.<br><br>Serbia's environment minister accused Romania of covering up the real dimensions of the poisoning, which some environmentalists say could be the biggest ecological catastrophe in Europe since the Chernobyl nuclear reactor catastrophe in 1986. Blazic claimed the initial concentration of the cyanide in Romania must have been enormous if the effects remained so deadly in Yugoslavia, about 300-400 miles down the river.<br><br>``Had we from Yugoslavia done something like this, we probably would have been bombed,'' he said.<br><br>Blazic was referring to that NATO bombing of Yugoslavia last year over its actions in Kosovo - and a widespread belief here that the West is anti-Serb. The cyanide spill adds to the ecological damage caused by NATO's bombing of oil refineries and factories here. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbia Seeks Money for River Damage``x950515373,83229,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) _ The debate over breaking away from Yugoslavia is splitting Montenegro's families, friends, regions and towns, and raising worries not only of intervention by the federal army but of war among the Montenegrins themselves. <br>Those tensions have heightened since last Monday's killing of Yugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic, one of the most senior Montenegrins in President Slobodan Milosevic's regime in Belgrade. <br><br>Although no one has openly accused pro-independence Montenegrins of the crime, Milosevic's supporters here in Montenegro are portraying Bulatovic's killing as an attack on the integrity of the country. <br><br>"The divisions are very sharp," said political analyst Miodrag Vlahovic. "They are irrational, but there is not much room for dialogue." <br><br>Montenegro, a mountainous republic of 600,000 people that affords Yugoslavia its last outlet to the Adriatic Sea, stuck by the federation as Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia broke away one-by-one in the 1990s, all but Macedonia in bloodshed. <br><br>Talk of independence increased after Milosevic's pro-Western rival, Milo Djukanovic, won Montenegro's presidency in a 1997 election victory over a pro-Belgrade candidate. <br><br>Apart from complaining about domination by the larger Serbia, secession proponents argue that Yugoslavia's international isolation over the Balkans wars prevents Montenegro from implementing economic and political reforms and blocks access to international lending bodies. <br><br>But worries about civil war within Montenegro, fears of action by Milosevic's forces and lack of Western support for secession have slowed plans for a referendum on independence. <br><br>Rather than push the issue to open conflict, Montenegro's government has opted for "creeping independence." It has slowly taken over federal institutions such as customs and border control and has introduced the German mark as a parallel currency to the devalued Yugoslav dinar. <br><br>That leaves the Yugoslav military units within Montenegro as the only visible federal institution. <br><br>"The Yugoslav federation exists only formally, only on the map," said Novak Kilibarda, one of Montenegro's deputy prime ministers. "All ties have been suspended. A referendum is a certainty which has to be carried out. But maybe not immediately." <br><br>Meanwhile, tensions are bubbling in almost every facet of Montenegrin life, even the national sports club, Buducnost, which sponsors soccer and basketball teams. Its fan club has split into pro-independence and pro-Belgrade factions, and police had to separate two groups of fans during a recent basketball game with a visiting Israeli team. <br><br>The Montenegrin government claims Milosevic's supporters are fomenting divisions within the republic, arming militias to fight alongside federal troops if necessary and provoking incidents, such as the brief military takeover last year of the main airport at Podgorica, Montenegro's capital. <br><br>Predrag Bulatovic, a top official in the pro-Milosevic Socialist People's Party, dismisses such accusations. He argues it is the Montenegrin government that is preparing for war by forming a 20,000-man police force _ much larger than necessary for routine security. <br><br>But even while denying pro-Milosevic militias had been formed, Bulatovic warned that pro-Belgrade Montenegrins would "organize themselves" and "respond to force with force" if the republic's government holds a referendum on secession. <br><br>Such talk is reminiscent to the situations before the earlier Yugoslav wars, when Serb minorities took up arms after declarations of independence by Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Milosevic supported the Serb insurgents politically and militarily. <br><br>Milan Popovic, a law professor, estimates about half of Montenegro's families are divided over the republic's future. <br><br>"Some Montenegrins say they are Serbs; some call themselves Montenegrins," he said. <br><br>Most pro-Serb Montenegrins come from extended families with ancestral roots in the north near the border with Serbia. Pro-independence strength is mostly in the south, while the central parts, including the capital, are mixed. <br><br>In recent surveys, about 30 percent of Montenegrins said they wanted the republic to remain with Serbia "at any price." An equal percentage supported independence. The rest were undecided. <br><br>Many people fear that the longer the issue remains unresolved, the greater the possibility of open conflict. <br><br>"A war here would be a war to the end, father against son, brother against brother," economist Nebojsa Medojevic said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xDivisions run deep as Montenegro ponders secession _ civil war``x950515404,54915,``x``x
``xThe Sunday Times<br>Tom Walker <br><br>A YEAR after Nato's intervention, the West's dream of Serbs and Albanians living together in Kosovo is dead. Diplomats openly concede that monoethnic cantons are the only solution to the province's intractable hatred, with Serbs confined to the north and vulnerable pockets in the centre and south. <br>Tit-for-tat bloodshed in Mitrovica, an industrial town where Serbs have been allowed to drive thousands of Albanians from their homes, has illustrated the stark choices facing a territory where Nato's Kfor troops and the United Nations civilian administration have failed to beat the rule of the gun and terrorism. <br><br>Western policy-makers have decided that pragmatism must prevail over notions of reconciliation and justice. <br><br>"There's no point banging on about it while you can't speak Serbian in Pristina without having your throat cut," said a senior western diplomat. "The Serbs have got to have somewhere to feel safe, and it looks like being Mitrovica." <br><br>Albanians have staged angry demonstrations against the tactics of French Kfor troops in Mitrovica, and on Friday they were reinforced by a company from the Royal Green Jackets. But the military objective in the town remains to keep the two populations separated. <br><br>Yesterday there was more trouble for Kfor, as an American peacekeeper recovered fron gunshot wounds he received while on guard duty in Gnjilane, and three Albanians were arrested after shooting at Norwegian soldiers near the Serbian community in Obilic. A Russian vehicle also hit a Albanian landmine. <br><br>The diplomat, like many others, has run out of patience with the Albanians, for whom the Kosovo Liberation Army continues to run amok. Between 400 and 700 Serbs have been murdered since last summer. <br><br>Even Bernard Kouchner, the UN special representative in Kosovo, who has championed the concept of "peaceful co- existence", has confided to aides that he is "fed up" with the KLA leadership. <br><br>The current Serbian population in Kosovo is estimated at between 70,000 and 100,000, less than half its pre-war total. The UN believes that municipal elections, planned for the late summer, will identify the handful of Kosovo's 29 municipalities where Serbs remain in the majority, and that from these will be formed the Mitrovica canton and two pockets - probably around the monastery of Gracanica in the centre and the ski resort area of Strpce and Brezovica in the south. <br><br>The acceptance of a fundamental failure in the Kosovo mission coincides with rising bellicosity in Belgrade. Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, and his generals have eagerly reminded the UN that, under its charter for Kosovo, there is provision for the return of limited numbers of Yugoslav army and Serbian police units. <br><br>They have also pointed out that the UN's mandate runs out in June, which the Milosevic regime is billing as a cut-off date for western intervention. In a recent interview with the Politika daily, Milosevic referred to Nato's presence as "temporary". <br><br>General Nebojsa Pavkovic, head of Yugoslavia's Third Army, meanwhile said his troops would return to Kosovo, probably in June, as authorised by an agreement signed with Nato last year. Diplomats rule out any reimposition of authority from Belgrade, at least for as long as Milosevic remains in power. <br><br>Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said he feared many more Albanians would leave northern Kosovo as Serbian extremists there continued to push for an ethnically "clean" chunk of territory. <br><br>Officially, 650 Albanians have left the area under Kfor escort, but the unofficial figure is much higher. Some western sources estimate several thousand Albanians have moved over the past week. <br><br>If Serbian cantons are established, Kfor's work will become considerably easier and more like that of its sister force in Bosnia, where, despite five years of peace, the Serbian, Croatian and Muslim communities remain resolutely divided.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWest abandons dream of a unified Kosovo ``x950524381,96410,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 14 -- The two men in charge of this divided town, a United Nations administrator and a French general, said today that they were counting on two foreign judges to punish extremists after 12 days of violence<br>Unless the violence stops, Mario Morcone, the United Nations administrator in Mitrovica, and Gen. Pierre de Saqui de Sannes, the French commander of peacekeeping troops in northern Kosovo, said they fear that ethnic relations will be poisoned permanently. <br><br>General de Saqui de Sannes, who has blamed the violence on both sides, said individuals were instigating attacks purposely to escalate the violence and to destroy the last multiethnic town in Kosovo where Serbs and Albanians are still living side by side, if uneasily. <br><br>"There are extremists who want the peace to fail," he said in an interview at his headquarters. While the violence consists of "isolated acts," he said, the strategy is to escalate tensions and intolerance. "I am worried that we may be in the process of an escalation of intolerance," he said. <br><br>Some Albanians have wanted to push the Serbs in northern Mitrovica and beyond out of Kosovo, and some Serbs have wanted to do the opposite -- to push the Albanians remaining among them south of the Ibar river, which divides Mitrovica, in order to create a pure Serbian area in northern Kosovo, he said. "The people are hostages to this," he said. <br><br>Mr. Morcone said that it was now clear who the troublemakers were and that it was critical to move against them. A judge and a prosecutor, both foreigners, were arriving to start dealing with the dozens of people arrested during Sunday's violence. "You may well see more arrests in the following days," he said. <br><br>"We need to arrest people and remove them from the scene. We know the people who are involved," he said. "For me it has to be the solution, not only for me here, but for all of Kosovo." <br><br>French troops rounded up and arrested 46 people -- 45 Albanians and one Serb -- on Sunday after a day of furious firefights between NATO-led peacekeepers and local gunmen. A dozen were quickly released, General de Saqui de Sannes said, and the rest were being questioned. <br><br>Suggesting that some Serbs would also be arrested, Mr. Marcone said: "Yesterday was a bad day for the Albanians, but that will not be all." <br><br>For whatever reason, Albanians engaged the French in heavy firefights, and in the resulting melee two French soldiers were wounded. <br><br>According to the general, a crowd of Albanians gathered Sunday morning near a French guard post after a grenade exploded and wounded five Albanians. The crowd began throwing stones at French soldiers who then cordoned off the area. Then a man appeared from a house, shouted at the people to get down, and fired directly at the soldiers, hitting one in the stomach and a second as he moved to react, the general said. <br><br>The soldiers pursued the man but did not catch him. There ensued several hours of shooting as French soldiers moved into the district and came under fire from several directions. Eventually they surrounded some 18 people in a house and got them to surrender. They found only one weapon in the house, but since then have seized more weapons during house searches, the general said. <br><br>There were women and minors among those arrested, he added. One old woman was found to be concealing a Kalashnikov rifle under her skirts, he said. Soldiers also stopped a local ambulance driving towards Mitrovica today and discovered 180 grenades and antitank rockets inside, the general recounted. <br><br>During the fighting Sunday a group of some 30 armed Albanians also tried to ford the Ibar river to the west of the city, but were spotted and deterred with warning shots, a spokesman for the French force said. <br><br>The events are likely to aggravate relations between the French troops and the ethnic Albanians here. Thousands flocked today to the burial of the one man killed by French troops during the fighting Sunday. <br><br>Avni Haradinaj, 35, a former guerrilla fighter of the Kosovo Liberation Army and a local hero, was buried with full honors by his former comrades in arms. His coffin, draped in the red Albanian flag, was carried up the hill to the edge of a wood outside the city, through a crowd of some 3,000 mourners. <br><br>The Albanian mayor of Mitrovica, Bajram Rexhepi, who said he had been a good friend of the dead man, said Mr. Haradinaj was unarmed when he was shot by French soldiers and was in Mitrovica visiting his sisters. "There were four people with him and they explained that he had no weapon at the moment he was killed," he said. <br><br>General de Saqui de Sannes insisted that Mr. Haradinaj was armed and was shooting at the soldiers when he was shot. <br><br>The general tried to reassure the Albanians of French neutrality. "If we were shot at by Albanians, it is difficult to arrest Serbs," he said. <br><br>In the few weeks since he took command, peacekeeping troops have raided a Serb bar that has frequently been identified as a hangout for troublemakers and paramilitaries. They also arrested a man close to the Serb leader of north Mitrovica for possessing a telescopic sight, and expelled him from the city for 20 days under a special resolution introduced by the United Nations last year, the general said. <br><br>The general defended his troops' actions on the night of Feb. 3, when Serb mobs rampaged through the city and left eight Albanians dead. The peacekeepers worked hard to contain the violence, he said, blockading the city to prevent outsiders from adding to the violence, and evacuating Albanians and foreigners to safety. "If the troops had not acted as they did, it would have been a lot worse, a real massacre," he said. <br><br>The need now is for a political solution, for institutions and money, to lift the economy and deny extremists an open field, the general said. "I cannot do much more," he warned. "I cannot stop someone throwing a grenade."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo Peacekeepers Warn That Extremists 'Want Peace to Fail'``x950599402,95860,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Feb 14 (Reuters) - A Serbian court on Monday sentenced five ethnic Albanians to up to four years in prison for being Kosovo guerrillas and conspiring against the country, the independent Beta news agency reported. <br>Beta said eight other Kosovo Albanians were sentenced by the same court in the southern town of Leskovac last week to up to 15 years in prison, and a ninth to two years on Monday in the same case. <br><br>The trials were among several cases brought against Kosovo Albanians for their alleged role in fighting Serb rule in the southern province. <br><br>Many of them were arrested by Serb forces during NATO's March-to-June 1999 bombing campaign and transferred to other parts of Serbia. Kosovo is now under international control after Yugoslav security forces withdrew in June. <br><br>In Monday's court rulings, Beta said Driton Berisha was sentenced to four years, Ljuz Marku to three, Hadzija Redzep to two and Isuf Hadzijaj to 17 months in jail. <br><br>They were charged with being members of the Kosovo Liberation Army and of carrying firearms and digging trenches outside their village in the southern Serbian province. The report did not say when they had been arrested. <br><br>The agency did not name another ethnic Albanian man who it said was sentenced to two years in a separate trial earlier on Monday in which the court freed four Kosovo Albanians all aged under 18. <br><br>The Belgrade Humanitarian Law Fund said in a statement quoted by Beta that the five were part of a group of 13 ethnic Albanians tried in Leskovac last week, of whom eight received sentences of up to 15 years. <br><br>That group was charged with "conspiring to commit subversive activities related with terrorism." <br><br>Beta said the Yugoslav army arrested the 13 men in April 1999 in the Moslem-dominated town of Plav in Montenegro, Serbia's only remaining partner republic in the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>The Belgrade office of the International Committee of the Red Cross has said there are still some 1,600 Kosovo Albanian prisoners in Serb jails. <br><br>The ICRC has helped transfer some 400 back to Kosovo in cooperation with Serb authorities after they were released.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbian court jails alleged Kosovo guerrillas``x950599457,26101,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Feb 14 (Reuters) - The Yugoslav army dismissed allegations on Monday that it was setting up paramilitary units in Montenegro as attempts to discredit it. <br>"Claims that the Yugoslav Army is establishing paramilitary formations in Montenegro are incorrect and ill-intentioned," Tanjug state news agency quoted an army statement as saying. <br><br>Organisational changes by the army in Montenegro were being presented as the creation of paramilitary formations "and used for political purposes to form a negative opinion about the army as an important institution of the federal state," it said. <br><br>The statement said the allegations were made in the media by some former members of the army and the Montenegrin leadership. <br><br>Montenegro, the junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, has taken steps to distance itself from Serbia since NATO's 11-week air war on Yugoslavia in 1999 to punish Belgrade for its policies in Kosovo. <br><br>Montenegro has increased its autonomy in finance and foreign policy, leaving the Yugoslav army as the last joint institution functioning between the two Yugoslav republics. <br><br>Former Yugoslav Army Chief General Momcilo Perisic told a Belgrade daily late last year that Yugoslavia had formed paramilitary units inside the army in Montenegro to trigger a conflict with police there. <br><br>Montenegro's leader Milo Djukanovic said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was using the army as a tool to keep the republic in check and stop it severing ties with Serbia. <br><br>The army said its critics had failed to mention to what extent the Montenegrin police was being reinforced. <br><br>"A battallion of military police in Montenegro is an integral part of the Yugoslav army, its equipping and use are in line with regulations and all Montenegrin citizens have equal access," the statement said. <br><br>The army said it was surprised at the continued campaign against it from the Montenegrin authorities and said an agreement to work jointly on calming the situation seemed to have been quickly forgotten. <br><br>The Yugoslav army and Montenegrin police agreed to cooperate to reduce tensions last December after a tense airport standoff. <br><br>The United States has said it would stand firm against any Serb military action against Montenegro but opposed its independence. <br><br>Djukanovic said earlier this month it was too early for a breakaway referendum, offering Milosevic more time to consider Montenegro's proposal to reform their joint state.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav army says no paramilitaries in Montenegro``x950599487,64128,``x``x
``xEthnic Albanians shot at French troops Sunday. US soldier accused of murder will have a hearing in days.<br>Richard Mertens <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor<br><br>VITINA, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>It's market day in this little town in southern Kosovo, and people are pouring in from nearby villages.<br><br>Middle-aged women carry heavy shopping bags while young men strut in black leather jackets, and teenage girls in heavy makeup stroll arm-in-arm along the main street. On either side, merchants display their wares, hawking almost everything a Kosovar might want, from wood stoves and wristwatches to live chickens.<br><br>The US Army is here, too, as part of the NATO-led protection force that came to Kosovo last June, after three months of NATO airstrikes forced Yugoslav troops to end a mass purge of the rebellious ethnic Albanian majority in the Serbian province.<br><br>Soldiers from Charlie Company, paratroopers from the American peacekeeping force in Kosovo, work their way through the jostling crowd on a routine patrol. With their flak jackets, Kevlar helmets, and M-16 assault rifles, they hardly blend in.<br><br>Last month, on a market day like this one, an American soldier allegedly sexually assaulted and killed an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl in Vitina. After the killing, more complaints against the US force came to light, including accusations of verbal abuse, beatings, and inappropriate searches of women.<br><br>The Army could hold a hearing as early as this week on whether the soldier accused of the killing, Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi, should face a court-martial. It is likely to decide within the next two weeks whether to charge any soldiers in connection with the other claims. In the meantime, the Army has replaced the unit at the center of the investigations with Charlie Company, giving its 140 soldiers the double challenge of keeping the peace in Vitina - never easy - and winning back the confidence of its residents.<br><br>"We have to kind of mend the wounds," says Staff Sgt. James Krause, of Livonia, Mich., as he leads five soldiers through the bazaar.<br><br><br>When violence boils over<br><br>Maintaining good relations is a vital but extremely tricky task in Kosovo. In the divided city of Mitrovica, a recent explosion of violence led ethnic Albanian snipers to target NATO peacekeepers on Sunday. Weekend unrest left one person dead and 19 injured, including two French soldiers. Local ethnic Albanians have accused the French contingent of favoring Serbs, who control the northern side of the city.<br><br>Back in Vitina, Staff Sgt. Hector Rubio steps forward to admire a pair of chickens held up by a grizzled old man in a black beret. "I don't want them to be afraid of us," Sergeant Rubio, from El Paso, Texas, explains as his squad continues down the street. "I don't think they know how to take us. But if you go out of your way to talk to them, then they get to know you better."<br><br>First Lt. Reubin Felkey, a platoon leader from Redwood Falls, Minn., hands out peppermint candies to children. Some respond with a shy "Thank you" in English before racing off. He senses a new wariness in Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians have regarded Americans as heroes for the role the US played in the war last spring.<br><br>"Normally when I hand out candy, I get mobbed," Lieutenant Felkey says. "I get a feeling people here are surprised. They don't make eye contact with us. You look at them, and they look away."<br><br>The Army has disclosed little about its investigations. The accusations apparently have focused on seven soldiers, including officers. Both local residents and international officials say American soldiers verbally or physically abused people while making arrests, controlling crowds, or searching for guns and other weapons. In one case, the family of a man who is mute said he was beaten when he slipped on ice and bumped a soldier. Women have complained that soldiers were disrespectful while frisking them for possible weapons.<br><br>Human rights monitors in Kosovo say they have received numerous complaints about the Americans and peacekeepers from other countries serving in Kosovo. One problem, they say, is a reluctance to take claims seriously.<br><br>"You have a security force here that should set an example of how a security force should act in the framework of human rights," says Elizabeth Griffin of Amnesty International. "Any incidents like these present a major problem."<br><br>But they also point to deeper problems for peacekeepers in Kosovo. The failure of the United Nations to assemble an effective police force here has demanded that soldiers assume a role that is foreign to their training. The paratroopers stationed in Vitina are trained to jump out of airplanes and capture airstrips. They are trained to clear trenches and knock out bunkers. They are trained, as one Army officer put it, "to have a little bit of an attitude." But in Kosovo, they often find themselves investigating crimes, manning checkpoints, or patrolling like beat cops.<br><br>"You just kind of hit the ground and execute," says Sergeant Krause, whose metaphors, if not his current work, reflect the paratroopers' can-do attitude. "It's like we train for all this other stuff, and then they send us here."<br><br><br>Concern of 'mission creep'<br><br>Secretary of Defense William Cohen made much the same point earlier this month when he said that the contradiction was becoming worrisome to both military and civilian leaders.<br><br>"I think it has reached the level of concern on the part of not only members of the US Congress, but military commanders," Mr. Cohen told reporters while in Munich for an international security conference. "They are concerned about the possibility of mission creep - that the military is being called upon to engage in police functions for which they are not properly trained and we don't want them to carry out."<br><br>Another problem is that it's not working. The presence of 45,000 peacekeepers and 2,000 UN police officers has been unable to stop the violence in Kosovo. And in many places, including Vitina, the violence is not just between ethnic Albanians and Serbs but among ethnic Albanians struggling for power or settling old scores. For weeks, arsons in Vitina have targeted ethnic Albanian businesses bought from local Serbs.<br><br>Charlie Company may not be able to solve these problems any better than its predecessor. But many people in the market said they were pleased to see the new unit.<br><br>"The soldiers who were here before were more aggressive," says Sylejman Halili, who was selling jars of honey. "These are behaving much better. They are respecting us in a human way."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRestoring faith in Kosovo force``x950687915,67083,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br>By Adam LeBor in Szeged <br><br>On a good day, before 100 tons of cyanide-contaminated slurry poured out of a Romanian gold mine into tributaries of the Tisza river, Sandor Bognar could count on a catch of up to 150kg of fish. It brought him a good living, and the joy of life and work on the river that, even more than the Danube, is closest to many Magyar hearts. <br><br>But now, in Szeged, southern Hungary, the river is empty of life, and so are Mr Bognar's nets. Much of the Tisza is dead, poisoned by the cyanide that wiped out algae and fish. Hungarian officials have described the catastrophe as the worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl. <br><br>For Mr Bognar, 40, and the dozens of other fishermen who made their living harvesting the Tisza's rich crop of carp, roach, bream and gudgeon, not just a job, but a way of life is over, probably for years. "I don't know how I am going to live now that we cannot fish here. We were so proud of how we lived, with our skills and knowledge of the water passed from generation to generation, from father to son. Not for money, but because we love the Tisza. But now we cannot see what the future holds for us," he said. <br><br>At first sight, the river running through this pretty Habsburg-era city, with its spacious squares and grassy water-side promenades, seems normal. <br><br>Wide and majestic, flowing smoothly between its tree-lined banks, the winding Tisza defines the landscape like no other waterway in the region, except the Danube. The late-morning sun casts shadows on its dappled waters. But a shadow has fallen on the city and its river, once famed for its fish. Even Szeged's local delicacy of halaszle, a spicy fish-soup of paprika and carp, has been struck off the menu. <br><br>The fish that would have been eaten has either been incinerated or lies belly up in the water. Tons of dead and rotting fish have been removed, and many more are believed to be lying dead on the river-bed. <br><br>"This is a tragedy. The river is dead. It took 30 hours for the cyanide to travel through the river [but now there is] nothing living in it. We hope the river can be revived,but it will take a long time, and we don't know how long," said Antal Gulyas, director of the Tisza Fishermen's Society. In Switzerland, the World Wide Fund for Nature said 19 species of protected fish lived in the Tisza and "this spill has, in practical terms, eradicated all life" from up to 250 miles of the river. <br><br>"We won't know the real extent of the damage until an evaluation can be carried out in the spring," the group said. "But we know already that the rehabilitation of the river will take decades." Environmentalists believe that lead and other heavy metals have entered the Tisza, and could coat the river-bottom for years. Zoltan Illes, the head of Hungary's environmental committee in parliament, said: "The fact that heavy metals also got into the rivers means an even worse problem. It will poison the whole food chain." <br><br>By Sunday, the spill had reached Yugoslavia's stretch of the Danube, leaving dead fish in its wake. Witnesses saidparts of the river were "white with the bellies of dead fish". <br><br>Even as the poison diminished to non-lethal levels, Yugoslav officials said they would sue those responsible in an international court. The sale of most freshwater fish was banned on Monday. <br><br>In the Danube town of Pancevo, 500kg of dead fish were pulled from the river. Pancevo is still recovering from last year's Nato bombing of its heavy industry which, The Independent reported in July, "unleashed a poisonous cocktail of thousands of tons of toxic chemicals into the town's water, air and soil". <br><br>This year's disaster originated in north-western Romania, where a dam at the Baia Mare gold mine overflowed on 30 January, causing cyanide to pour into the headwaters of the Tisza. A cyanide solution is used to separate gold ore from surrounding rock. <br><br>The contamination is now turning into an international diplomatic incident, as both Hungary and Yugoslavia have demanded that Romania pay damages. Hungary has asked the United Nations for an independent team of experts to assess the damage. <br><br>Along the banks of the Tisza in Serbia the fishermen are hanging black banners to mourn their dead waterway. Upstream, in Szeged, Sandor Bognar contemplates an uncertain future. <br><br>"I had my own stretch of the river to fish, three or four kilometres. It was full of fish: roach, tench, bream and several kinds of carp. Now there is nothing. I don't know how something like this could happen in modern Europe, that such a dangerous poison could be left in such a primitive set-up. It is an unbelievable tragedy."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``x'The river was full of fish. Roach, tench, carp and bream. Now there is nothing' ``x950687939,63759,``x``x
``xBy REUTERS<br>ELGRADE, Serbia, Feb. 15 -- Yugoslavia's president, Slobodan Milosevic, appointed a loyal aide today as his new defense minister. He is a Serbian general who has been indicted by a United Nations court for suspected war crimes in Kosovo. <br><br>The official Tanjug news agency said Mr. Milosevic issued a decree appointing Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic, 58, chief of staff of the Yugoslav army, as the new defense minister. He succeeds Pavle Bulatovic, who was shot dead on Feb. 7 by unknown gunmen in a Belgrade restaurant. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic also appointed General Nebojsa Pavkovic, commander of Yugoslavia's Third Army, as the new army chief of staff. <br><br>The Third Army covers southern Serbia including Kosovo Province. Kosovo is now under de facto international rule after the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces last June after 11 weeks of NATO air strikes. <br><br>General Pavkovic, 53, also seen as loyal to Mr. Milosevic, has vowed that the army will return to Kosovo one way or another. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic, General Ojdanic and three other Yugoslav officials were indicted last May by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for war crimes in Kosovo Province. <br><br>Some local analysts said the appointments signaled a hardening stance by the Yugoslav president. <br><br>But a Serbian opposition leader disagreed. Mr. Milosevic "still keeps his personal power garnished with a few obedient people, picking them up from the same small circle and shuffling them from one position to another," said Zoran Djindjic, head of the opposition Democratic Party. <br><br>Officials in Montenegro, the Western-leaning Yugoslav republic that forms Yugoslavia with Serbia, warned of worsening relations between the two republics since Mr. Bulatovic, a Montenegrin, was succeeded by General Ojdanic, a Serb. <br><br>"Montenegro has lost yet another ministerial post, one of the most important for relations between Montenegro and Serbia," said Ranko Krivokapic, vice president of the Montenegrin Social Democratic Party, which is a member of the ruling coalition. <br><br>An adviser to Montenegro's president, Milo Djukanovic, accused Mr. Milosevic of violating constitutional procedure by not consulting Montenegro on his decision.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNew Yugoslav Defense Minister Is an Indicted Serbian General``x950687956,42715,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By MICHAEL WINES<br>MOSCOW, Feb. 16 -- In a sign of his desire to cultivate closer ties with the West, Acting President Vladimir V. Putin agreed today to end an 11-month estrangement between Russia and NATO and rebuild what the Kremlin called an alliance aimed at "a stable and indivisible Europe." <br>The thaw was announced after a meeting between Mr. Putin and NATO's secretary general, George Robertson. Formally, at least, it closes a cavernous divide that opened last March after NATO started its air war against Yugoslavia. <br><br>But there were few illusions that the resumed partnership signals any genuine meeting of minds, given the depth of Russian bitterness over NATO's conduct of the Kosovo war. <br><br>Rather, today's agreement was seen as one more strategic move by Mr. Putin to shore up relations with the West, the one place where he can find the money, technology and expertise for rebuilding Russia. <br><br>Mr. Putin sent the chairman of the Russian Security Council, Sergei Ivanov, to Washington today to discuss arms proliferation and a potential summit meeting with President Clinton. Last week, after almost 18 months of talks, Russia struck a deal with private Western lenders to reschedule $31.8 billion in bad debt. <br><br>The deal instantly lifted Russia's credit rating and improved the climate for foreign investment, one of Mr. Putin's stated goals. <br><br>"He wants to create, let's say, a favorable environment for his 'Russia project,' if you like," said Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow. Mr. Trenin suggested that the agreement today was in part a response to unusually warm comments on Tuesday by Mr. Clinton, who praised Mr. Putin as a leader he could work with, and offered only muted criticism of Russia's conduct of the Chechnya war. <br><br>The State Department's spokesman, James P. Rubin, said the United States welcomes the accord, and that Mr. Putin has indicated that "he regards the centrality of U.S.-Russian relations as larger than differences on key issues." <br><br>Relations between Russia and NATO have never been especially cordial. The Western alliance has continued to expand toward the Russian border, effectively ignoring Moscow's objections, and Russia has complained that it has never gotten the consultative role in NATO affairs that the alliance had seemed to promise. <br><br>The relationship fell apart completely last March when the NATO attack on Yugoslavia led Russia to expel alliance representatives. <br><br>The Kosovo war was a watershed that made it acceptable for Russian politicians and citizens alike to express long-concealed suspicions of the West. The estrangement has only deepened as NATO has criticized Russia's conduct in Chechnya. <br><br>In the accord reached today, both sides agreed to abide by a 1997 agreement governing relations between NATO and Russia, and to hew to the United Nations charter -- an apparent sop to Moscow, which has complained vociferously that NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia violated United Nations principles. <br><br>Russian officials stressed that the accord did not signal any change in military policy in Chechnya. <br><br>Mr. Putin has courted support from the military. But Mr. Robertson said today that the decision to resume relations with NATO was clearly Mr. Putin's. <br><br>"I think he shared my view that the chilly period should come to an end," Mr. Robertson said on the Russian television network NTV. "I think we've moved from the permafrost onto slightly softer ground." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRussia and NATO, Split Over Kosovo, Agree to Renew Relations``x950774729,27450,``x``x
``xBy Edward Cody<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Thursday, February 17, 2000; Page A21 <br><br><br>BELGRADE –– Nenad Asanin was an unpretentious post office clerk in a small town in Kosovo. At age 29, he was married, had become a father and seemed lodged for life in a job that was steady if unglamorous. <br><br>Then his world came to an end eight months ago.<br><br>That was when, after 78 days of NATO bombing, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic abandoned his brutal repression of the secessionist revolt in Kosovo, withdrew the Serb-led security forces and ceded control of the province to its ethnic Albanian majority under protection of international peacekeepers. Since then, Kosovo's Albanians have been moving the mail, with international help, and Asanin, a barrel-shaped Serb, has been without a home, without a job and without a foreseeable future.<br><br>Asanin and his family have joined an estimated 230,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians, including more than 40,000 Roma, or Gypsies, who have fled Kosovo since NATO troops flowed into the province last June, according to a count by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Their flight has emptied the province of three-quarters of a Serbian population that stood at 200,000 to 250,000 before the war. They have added to a sum of Serbs, now reaching more than 700,000, forced out of their homelands in the past decade by the disintegration of Yugoslavia into its ethnic parts.<br><br>Milosevic's government has complained repeatedly that these refugees attract less international concern than the 850,000 Kosovo Albanians forced from their homes last spring by Serb-led security forces and the NATO bombing campaign. Officials in Belgrade pointed out that although most Kosovo Serbs fled soon after the Yugoslav withdrawal in June, the number has continued to climb since then, with 500 joining the parade in December and more in January. This is so, the officials charged, because KFOR, the NATO-run peacekeeping force, is not adequately protecting the Serbs from repeated attacks by Kosovo Albanians.<br><br>"A reign of terror is going on unabated right in front of the eyes of KFOR," the Yugoslav deputy foreign minister, Nebojsa Vujovic, told a news conference here last week. "This must stop."<br><br>Maki Shinohara, the UNHCR spokeswoman in Belgrade, said aid workers fear that the latest explosion of violence between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, at Kosovska Mitrovica, 22 miles northwest of the provincial capital of Pristina, will send still more refugees into Serbia proper. Although KFOR's mission includes making the province safe for all, hardly any Serbian refugees who fled in the past eight months have dared to return, she noted, adding: "We certainly don't encourage it."<br><br>Since Yugoslavia began breaking up, the UNHCR has registered 200,000 refugees from Bosnia, almost 300,000 from Croatia, 1,300 from Macedonia and 3,200 from Slovenia, all of them republics in the former Yugoslavia. Most are in Serbia, which with minuscule Montenegro forms what is left of the Yugoslav federation, and have been living with relatives or in scattered facilities such as factory dormitories. Because the Serbian economy has fractured over a decade of wars, most have little hope of finding employment and restarting their lives.<br><br>"It's very difficult [to find work], because NATO destroyed half our industry, and even those who already were working here don't have jobs now," said Dragan Milutonovic, who fled with his family from the Suva Reka district just outside Prizren in Kosovo's southwest corner.<br><br>Serbs and other non-Albanians fleeing Kosovo--about 200,000 in Serbia and 30,000 in Montenegro--have been designated "internally displaced persons" instead of refugees. This is because Kosovo is still technically a Serbian province, although practically it has come under the governance of the U.N. and NATO. For Asanin and his family, the effect is the same: They cannot go home.<br><br>"All our houses were burned," Asanin complained at a construction worker barracks here where he has sought shelter and food handouts from the Republic of Serbia Refugee Commission. "The old men who were left behind were killed. There is nothing left there."<br><br>Asanin fled Istok, about 40 miles west of Pristina, as soon as it became clear that Serbian security forces were on their way out. A number of Albanians had been killed in a Serb-run prison there during the war (the prison was also bombed by NATO), and Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas were in no mood to be nice to their defeated Serbian neighbors.<br><br>With his wife and two children in tow, Asanin took refuge first at a school in Kraljevo in southern Serbia. There, his wife gave birth to their third child, a son now 7 months old named Darko. But Asanin and about 100 fellow refugees were forced out in September, when the school year began, and have been wandering since in search of a place to settle down.<br><br>They landed here 12 days ago at the barracks made available by a construction company that used to do business in Kosovo. But they had to force their way in because earlier arrivals--100 Kosovo Serbs who had a connection to the construction company--did not want to share the space. The refugee commission has given them food but urged them to move on.<br><br>"We want to stay here," Asanin insisted, saying baby Darko has been hospitalized nearby with pneumonia. "We have nowhere else to go."<br><br>Milutonovic and his companions from Suva Reka have had better luck. They stayed at a simple hotel that used to house weekenders in a stand of maples near the village of Avala, 10 miles southeast of Belgrade. Since they left with their pickups and tractors June 11, that is where they have been waiting--for what, they are not sure.<br><br>"We are waiting to see what is our fate," said Svetislav Zivkovic, 35, who ran a farm and worked in a tire shop back in Suva Reka. Then, with a note of defiance, he added: "But Kosovo will always remain Serb."<br><br>Milutonovic, a wizened 57, sneered at the younger man's bravado. "If the big powers would really protect us the way they protect Albanians, we would get back on those tractors and return," he said, and settled back for a smoke.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xOut of Work and Hope, Serbs Evacuate Kosovo``x950774808,71929,``x``x
``xBy Reuters<br>TIRANA (Reuters) - The United States told Albanians on Saturday that multi-ethnic tolerance was the way to integration in a democratic Europe and that any ambition to build a Greater Albania would lead only to conflict. <br><br>On her first visit to Albania as Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright said the impoverished Balkan country would have to give up old ways of doing business if it wanted to attract the foreign investment and assistance that it needs. <br><br>Albright, a driving force behind NATO intervention against Serb forces in the mainly Albanian province of Kosovo last year, came to Tirana to thank the Albanian government for their help given to Kosovo refugees during the war and to encourage the government to press on with economic and political reform. <br><br>But ethnic tensions between ethnic Serbs and Albanians in the Kosovo town of Mitrovica demonstrated what a hard task NATO still faces in the province. <br><br>``Albania must not allow itself to be used by those who would create conflict. Attempts to expand boundaries are an invitation to violence, not peace and stability. The international community would no sooner accept a Greater Albania than it would a Greater Serbia,'' she told parliament. <br><br>``In Kosovo, there is now a great struggle between those who want a peaceful and democratic multiethnic state, and those who would drag their nation back into a cycle of hatred, violence and retribution,'' she added. <br><br>``In today's world, a society and a people are judged by how well they respect the rights of religious and ethnic minority groups. I urge you to use your influence to help the people of Kosovo be guided by an attitude of tolerance and make the right choices in the weeks and months ahead,'' she said. <br><br>Opponents of intervention in Kosovo said the province would end up as part of Albania, unraveling the delicate balance between borders and ethnic minorities in the Balkans. <br><br>In practice this has not happened, but some Albanians continue to seek closer ties to the Albanian communities in Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro. <br><br>Former Albanian president Sali Berisha said in September Albanians throughout the Balkans might try to make a federation if their governments treated them as second-class citizens. <br><br>At a news conference later with Albanian Prime Minister Ilir Meta, Albright said: ``There are some elements of Albanians in various places that are taking actions that are worrisome in terms of trying to get stability.'' <br><br>``However, I must say in my conversations here, both with the president (Rexhep Meidani) and the prime minister, they have made quite clear that that is not the policy or interest of their government,'' she added. <br><br>On Mitrovica, where troops of the KFOR peacekeeping force have come under attack from ethnic Albanians and Serbs, she said: ``The resolution of ethnic tensions is critical to the security of Kosovo as a whole It's very important that Mitrovica be able to be a multi-ethnic region. That is what the essence of the Kosovo struggle was about.'' <br><br>Albright made the same point at a meeting with Hashim Thaqi, the Kosovo Liberation Army leader who had close ties with the United States before and during the Kosovo conflict. <br><br>''Her message was one of concern about rising extremism ... and the need for responsible political leaders to dissociate themselves from that and to use their moral influence to promote tolerance,'' said James Dobbins, her adviser on the Balkans. <br><br>Thaqi reassured her that he was trying to do all that and the United States accepts his assurances, a U.S. official added. ``Our information does not indicate that Thaqi...is responsible for or encouraging this,'' he added. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbright Opposes Greater Albania Idea``x950982829,84542,``x``x
``xThe New York Times <br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br>AMP BONDSTEEL, Kosovo, Feb. 18 -- As an American staff sergeant appeared today at a hearing on charges of committing indecent acts with an 11-year-old Albanian girl and then murdering her, details emerged about the investigation of a second American soldier linked to the case. <br>Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi, 35, of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, has been in detention since Jan. 13, when the body of Merita Shabiu was found outside the town of Vitina in southern Kosovo. Today he appeared before an army investigating officer at a preliminary hearing to establish whether he should be court-martialed. <br><br>He faces charges of premeditated murder and committing indecent acts with a child, which army officials said precluded a rape charge. If it found him guilty, a court martial could impose death or life imprisonment. <br><br>As witnesses gave their accounts, it appeared that a second soldier, a private, had told his commanders that he was with Sergeant Ronghi that day and helped dispose of the body. <br><br>The private did not appear at the hearing, but was confirmed by an army lawyer to be under investigation in connection with the murder case. <br><br>A separate case involves several soldiers from the same unit, who are being investigated for alleged misconduct and inappropriate behavior toward local people in Vitina. <br><br>The victim's parents, Ramzije and Hamdi Shabiu, and her great uncle Rifat Samakova attended the hearing, seeing for the first time the man accused of her murder. Sergeant Ronghi sat impassively, with his lawyers sitting on either side and his back to reporters and the girl's family. He did not testify during the hearing, which lasted some five hours. <br><br>Many details surrounding the girl's murder, including the cause of death, have yet to be made public, because the investigation reports have not been completed, Captain Schmittel said. <br><br>Yet the evidence given today by 10 people -- including members of the criminal investigation teams, commanders and Sergeant Ronghi's fellow soldiers -- revealed some of the circumstances of the death and the profound impact it has had on the unit. <br><br>Military officials requested that witnesses not be identified by name, for their protection. <br><br>One sergeant described how the private now under investigation in the case had told him what happened on the evening of Jan. 13. <br><br>"He was nervous, really nervous," the sergeant said of the private. "He asked me: 'Can I trust you? Can I really trust you?' " <br><br>The private then told him that Sergeant Ronghi had loaded what seemed to be a body into their armored vehicle and driven it up to woods outside Vitina, where it was dumped. The private, who had been manning the automatic weapon in the turret of the vehicle, helped his comrade dispose of the body, according to his and others' accounts. <br><br>The witness, his voice shaking, said that he had sought out one of his superiors and that together they had gone to the site. Off the road, he said, they found the body in plastic bags, half-covered with snow. <br><br>"I moved a block of snow and saw it was a thigh," he said. "The body was in a fetal position, and I could see flesh through the bag. It looked like it had no clothes." <br><br>According to the witness, on their return they woke Sergeant Ronghi, who at first insisted that nothing had happened that day. When they said they had found the body, Sergeant Ronghi calmly told them that he had seen two local men take the girl into a yellow apartment building in central Vitina and that after the men had left, he had gone in to investigate. When he found her body, he said, he panicked and decided to move it. <br><br>The witness said the accused then asked, "Can we handle this in a different way?" and added, "I have money." <br><br>The sergeant said that his superior refused, and that the criminal investigation department was then alerted. <br><br>Another witness who had questioned the private said he had been told that about midday on the day of the incident, Sergeant Ronghi walked up to an armored vehicle, dismissed the interpreter and commandeered the vehicle with the private, supposedly to escort senior officers. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, was visiting Vitina that day. <br><br>But according to the private's account, Sergeant Ronghi instead drove to the yellow apartment building, loaded into it what he said was firewood for local Serbs, and then drove quickly out of town. <br><br>The witness added that the private had admitted helping dispose of the body, by suggesting a place to put it, kicking snow over it and pouring antifreeze over traces of blood. <br><br>The private told the witness that the accused had warned him to "keep his mouth shut," saying, "It's easy to get away with this in a third world country." <br><br>The accused knew this, according to the witness, "because he had done it in the desert." <br><br>Sergeant Ronghi did not enter a plea, but in closing remarks to the investigating officer, the defense counsel appeared to be making the case for a lesser charge, arguing that much of the evidence indicated no apparent premeditation. <br><br>The investigating officer will now consider the evidence and within a week is expected make a recommendation to a Special Court Martial Convening Authority in Kosovo. That group will then pass on a recommendation to Maj. Gen. John Abizaid, the First Infantry Division commander, who will decide whether to refer the case to a court martial. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xDetails Emerge in Kosovo Girl's Slaying``x950982863,36751,``x``x
``xBRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) - NATO Friday denied charges by Belgrade that alliance military aircraft violated Yugoslav air space twice in the past week and put civilian airliners at risk over Montenegro's Adriatic coast. <br>"On those dates and at these times there were no NATO aircraft in that area. There were no near-misses and there was no NATO air exercise," spokesman Lee McClenny said. <br><br>McClenny said officials at NATO southern command in Naples had carefully examined the detailed charges and established NATO was not in any way involved in the alleged incidents. <br><br>Yugoslav Transport Minister Dejan Drobnjakovic said Wednesday that illegal NATO air activity forced it to close Tivat airport on the Adriatic coast of the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro. <br><br>The closure raised fears in pro-Western Montenegro of a fresh confrontation over airport control, as happened last December when federal troops loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic faced off with Montenegrin police. <br><br>Tivat was closed again Friday. Yugoslav officials said it was due to high winds -- a frequent local problem in winter. <br><br>Drobnjakovic said NATO had caused a "classic near-miss" with an airliner of Slovenian carrier Adria Airways on Feb. 10 as it flew over the area on a journey from Ljubljana to Tirana. <br><br>On Feb. 14, he said, a Cyprus Airlines flight from London to Larnaca reported unidentified aircraft in its vicinity. <br><br>In Nicosia, Cyprus Airways told Reuters its crew had reported unidentified aircraft, but no safety hazards. Radar readings showed them about 1,000 feet below the airliner's altitude, and on the limits of its radar range. <br><br>In Ljubljana, an Adria Airways spokeswoman said captain Andrej Travnik reported that he was informed by air traffic control of another aircraft flying below 29,700 feet in his vicinity on the flight to Tirana. <br><br>Travnik, however, said the plane was not visible and the crew had no idea whether it was military or not. <br><br>Military sources said they could think of a few possible explanations for the mystery encounters above Montenegro. <br><br>There could be confusion between air controllers in the area, which includes Croatia, Montenegro, Belgrade and Bosnia. <br><br>Or there was the possibility that military aircraft were indeed operating in the space -- in a secret Yugoslav Air Force exercise that required the closure of Tivat airport under some other pretext. <br><br>Yugoslav flight control director Miodrag Hadzic told Reuters in Belgrade Wednesday that NATO had broken a fundamental rule of aviation by not reporting its activities 48 hours in advance in a so-called NOTAM, or Notification to Airman. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO denies role in Yugoslav air space mystery``x950982886,98155,``x``x
``xFinancial Times<br>By Andrew Gray - 21 Feb 2000 08:26GMT<br> <br>KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia, Feb 21 (Reuters) - NATO troops were set on Monday to push ahead with a major search operation in the volatile Kosovo city of Mitrovica, brushing aside attacks on U.S. soldiers by Serbs throwing rocks and bottles.<br><br>Soldiers from the 3rd Battalion of 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment came under attack from a couple of hundred people during a raid on apartments in the Serb-dominated district of the ethnically divided northern industrial city. <br><br>The Serbs threw snowballs, bottles and stones and shouted insults at the troops on Sunday, the first day of the operation involving forces from more than 10 nations. <br><br>KFOR rejected Serb accusations the Americans had been too aggressive. <br><br>The French general in charge of Kosovo's northern military sector nevertheless pulled the U.S. troops out of the area to prevent an escalation in the flashpoint city, which has been the scene of several outbreaks of deadly violence recently. <br><br>Although KFOR stressed that the U.S. soldiers had more or less finished their mission there at the time of the pullout, the decision showed commanders are acutely aware that tensions are acutely balanced in Mitrovica. <br><br>German armoured personnel carriers and several Western journalists were also attacked or abused by Serbs on Sunday. <br><br>THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE <br><br>Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a few days ago described Mitrovica as certainly the most dangerous place in Europe at the moment. <br><br>Fearful of aggravating the situation further, KFOR has ruled that a protest march by ethnic Albanians on Monday from the provincial capital Pristina to Mitrovica, some 40 km (25 miles) to the northwest, will not be allowed to enter the city. <br><br>The Albanians want to protest against the division of Kosovo's third-largest city, where Serbs have grouped together to form a majority in the district north of the River Ibar. <br><br>Albanians complain that members of their community cannot return to the homes they fled in fear of Serb forces, before NATO bombing drove those forces out of Kosovo last June. <br><br>The Serbs insist they have grouped together simply for their own protection, having been forced to flee Albanian revenge attacks elsewhere in Kosovo. <br><br>Sunday's searches yielded a provisional haul of 10 AK-47 weapons, four M-48 rifles, one automatic pistol, seven blocks of plastic explosive, 18 loaded magazines, a large amount of other ammunition, one grenade and one machinegun, KFOR said. <br><br>The peacekeepers acknowledged the finds so far were not large for an operation which included numerous patrols and vehicle checkpoints and involved more than 1,500 soldiers. But they stressed the operation was far from over. <br><br>The information we have is that there are certain caches of weapons and those are the ones that we are looking for and are intent on finding, Anido told Reuters Television News. <br><br>KFOR has insisted that Sunday's reaction by the Serbs does not mean the U.S. soldiers would not be deployed again in the northern part of the city. <br><br>Gunbattles, shootings and grenade attacks have claimed the lives of at least nine people and wounded more than 20, including two French soldiers, in Mitrovica since the start of this month. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO set to pursue arms sweep of Kosovo flashpoint``x951124267,29092,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br>By Raymond Whitaker in Mitrovica, Kosovo <br><br>21 February 2000 <br><br>Serbs in Kosovo's divided town of Mitrovica claimed a victory yesterday when more than 300 American peacekeepers taking part in a multinational search operation for weapons and "extremists" withdrew under a hail of stones, bottles, ice and snowballs. German troops were also attacked. <br><br>It was the first time US soldiers had been deployed in the northern, Serbian half of Mitrovica, where hostility to the American and British elements in the K-For peacekeeping force is intense. When the Americans arrived early in the morning to begin the searches there were clashes with local Serbs, beginning when they discovered the troops had an Albanian interpreter with them. She was removed for her own safety. <br><br>As news spread of the Americans' arrival, an angry crowd of several hundred people gathered. They broke through a protective cordon of French soldiers and gendarmes and rained blows on the US troops, who shoved them back with shields and rifles. One soldier pointed his weapon at a Serb and threatened to shoot him. The man shouted back: "Go on, shoot!" When the American commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Ellerby, went into the crowd in an attempt to negotiate with the self-styled leader of Mitrovica's Serbs, Oliver Ivanovic, he had to be plucked out by the gendarmes. <br><br>Mr Ivanovic later claimed that four Serbs had been injured, two when they had been sprayed with a riot-control substance by an American soldier. K-For said it knew nothing of the alleged incident. <br><br>The violent scenes persuaded the French commander of the Mitrovica sector, General de Saqui de Sannes, to redeploy the Americans, who were pelted with missiles as they left. One soldier had his nose broken and several vehicles were damaged. An American spokesman, Captain Russell Berg, said: "We left as scheduled after our mission was completed," but Lt-Col Patrick Chanliau, the chief French military spokesman in the town, later admitted that a decision had been taken to withdraw the Americans to avoid confrontation. <br><br>Some 2,300 troops from 12 nations took part in the weapons dragnet operation on both sides of Mitrovica. The main aim was to defuse tension after clashes earlier this month that left nine Albanians and two Serbs dead in the worst violence since K-For arrived last June. The use of American troops was apparently intended to send the Serbs a message that they could not choose which peacekeepers to accept. The crowds stoned American and German vehicles, but the French were cheered, an embarrassing accolade for a force accused by the Albanians of appeasing Serbs. <br><br>Lt-Col Chanliau insisted that the American withdrawal was not a defeat, and that it did not mean US soldiers would not be sent to northern Mitrovica again. But he added: "The purpose of the operation was not to fight people, but to recover weapons and explosives. If they wanted to stop that, they did not succeed. The search is continuing. Perhaps it is a tactic to divide us, but it won't work. An attack on any part of K-For is an attack on all of us." <br><br>The arms haul was small: 10 automatic weapons, a machine gun, a pistol, a few other rifles, and seven blocks of plastic explosive. Ten hours after the start of the operation, only one arrest had been made; but K-For emphasised that it was not complete. <br><br>The differing goals of various nations in K-For was summed up by a French gendarme captain outside the apartment building, close by a police headquarters destroyed by Nato bombs, where most of the arms were found. "The Americans believe in being aggressive," he said. "We think the main thing is to maintain calm." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUS and German troops come under attack in Kosovo town ``x951124290,29668,``x``x
``xThe Times<br><br>THE morale of German soldiers in Kosovo is beginning to crumble (Roger Boyes writes). At least 90 soldiers, including 4 officers, have been sent home because of disciplinary problems, according to Welt am Sonntag. Another 55, including 6 officers, have been sent back from the Sfor contingent in Bosnia. The cases are said to stem from alcohol and drug abuse, but there have also been sexual violations. In Kosovo two drunken German soldiers yelled racist comments at Albanians. Albanian soldiers intervened, a fight ensued and the Germans were flown out. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGermans sent home``x951124313,29772,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>RAGUE, Feb. 20 -- The Yugoslav government of President Slobodan Milosevic -- its support sliding in an election year -- has sharply intensified attacks on the democratic opposition and the news media, calling them traitors and using a draconian press law to intimidate and impoverish independent publications. <br><br>Besides lawsuits, government officials have used open threats of possible violence. <br><br>In a bellicose speech last week to his party congress, Mr. Milosevic called the opposition "a group of bribed weaklings and blackmailed profiteers and thieves," bought "with substantial financial resources funneled from abroad." Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Seselj of Serbia threatened "to liquidate" the independent media, which he called "treacherous." <br><br>Traditionally, Mr. Milosevic left Serbia's disunited democratic opposition and his urban intellectual opponents a small space in which to air their opinions, knowing that he could use the cover of the law to further marginalize or repress them. <br><br>In the aftermath of the lost war over Kosovo and new efforts by the opposition -- and Washington -- to oust Mr. Milosevic, his authorities are showing that harsher face. <br><br>After a new year's interview in which Mr. Milosevic advertised the crackdown, they are using the press law to damage newspapers and particularly an independent printing house, ABC Grafika, which publishes the newspaper Glas Javnosti and prints many other independent papers and magazines. <br><br>The public information law was enacted on Oct. 20, 1998. Since then, more than 60 cases have been brought, with fines totaling more than $1 million -- very large in a country where the average monthly income is now less than $50 -- and the pace has accelerated. <br><br>In 1999, independent media were fined more than $600,000, more than half of that in suits against ABC Grafika, either for material in Glas Javnosti or for printing the daily bulletin of last year's failed political rallies against Mr. Milosevic. <br><br>With some presses already seized and the financial police investigating possible irregularities, the company is battling bankruptcy, and Glas Javnosti's editor quit because of the pressure. <br><br>"If you look at what the regime is doing, it seems they want to shut us down," said Slavoljub Kacarevic, general manager of the publishing house and now editor in chief of Glas Javnosti. "The regime is definitely showing a crueler face, and the way this law is being implemented is far worse than a year ago. Now they just fine you every month; it's endless. We look back fondly to the times when they just banned you for a while." <br><br>After the fifth consecutive trial resulting in a fine for the daily Danas, its deputy editor, Bozidar Andrejic, said, "The bottom line of the punishments is the preplanned wearing down of the targeted media." <br><br>Even Tanjug, the official press agency, has sued Danas under the law. On Friday, Danas was fined another $8,000 for quoting druggists who deplored low-quality imported pharmaceuticals. Danas's lawyer, Gradimir Nalic, said, "I expect they'll be in court now once a week." <br><br>Also on Friday, the police went to Glas Javnosti to confiscate some of its electronic equipment. <br><br>"There is now legalized chaos, with no protected normative standards of journalism," said Snjezana Milivojevic, a media analyst who was fired last year from her teaching position at Belgrade University in a political purge. <br><br>Gordana Susa, president of the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia, says that while editors deny that they are censoring themselves, "they are engaging in comforting self-delusion." <br><br>After the murder in Belgrade this month of the Yugoslav defense minister, Pavle Bulatovic, Mr. Seselj called independent journalists traitors and accomplices, charging that they took money and direction from the same governments that bombed Yugoslavia over Kosovo and, Mr. Seselj alleged, that ordered the killing. <br><br>"The gloves are off," Mr. Seselj said repeatedly. "Don't think that we're going to let you kill us off like rabbits, and that we'll be coddling and caring for you like potted plants. Anyone who works for the Americans must suffer the consequences." <br><br>"What consequences?" he went on. "The worst possible." He named newspapers and radio stations like B2-92, Danas, Glas Javnosti and Blic -- only the first two of which get Western aid. <br><br>In his new year's interview, Mr. Milosevic insisted that many private broadcasters and publishers "are under the full financial and political control of some Western governments," with the "task to destabilize the country." A key problem, he said, is poor enforcement of the press law. <br><br>The signal given, government ministers are now using the law to sue, bringing cases before government-appointed judges, and state-owned media are suing independent media. Editors and publishers must pay fines within 24 hours or face jail and the confiscation of their property. <br><br>The press law puts the burden on the media to prove the truth of any assertion, even the cited opinion of a quoted person or organization. <br><br>So in December, a small newspaper and its editor in the town of Vranje were fined $22,000 for printing part of a Western human rights report that contained material, already published in the newspaper, about Albanians fleeing town to escape the draft. <br><br>The editor suggested that the real cause was another article suggesting corruption by local officials of Mr. Milosevic's party. <br><br>Blic, Danas and Studio B were fined for printing a statement by the Serbian Renewal Movement, the largest opposition party, which accused two senior officials of organizing an attempt on the life of the party's leader, Vuk Draskovic. Mr. Kacarevic, stung by previous fines, left out the names, which he later admitted was self-censorship. <br><br>The authorities have ordinarily left alone the small-circulation weeklies of opinion Nin and Vreme, which sell fewer than 10,000 copies each, mostly to people who oppose Mr. Milosevic anyway. But this month, Nin and its editor were fined about $13,000 for an interview describing the dismissal of law professors. <br><br>With local and federal elections due this year and elections in Serbia -- Yugoslavia's larger part -- next year, one explanation for the crackdown may lie in the new reach of some independent papers, notably the daily tabloid Blic. <br><br>Independent newspapers like Danas sell about 10,000 copies a day. But Glas sells about 70,000, and Blic, owned by a Serb living in Austria, is selling close to 200,000. Together, that is significantly more copies than all official papers combined. <br><br>Blic, a fundamentally serious newspaper with spoonfuls of gossip, Hollywood and cheesecake, covers the opposition thoroughly, if not too critically. Its soft-spoken editor, Veselin Simonovic, said, "The biggest danger of that law is self-censorship." He tries to work as if it does not exist, he said, but notes that his journalists and editors constantly press him to read their copy, "to make me responsible." <br><br>Mr. Milosevic's government is in trouble, Mr. Simonovic said. "They use the law when they are losing support or feeling nervous," he said. "The level of pressure rises as their polls drop." <br><br>The government continues to maintain tight control over the national television and has increasingly jammed the signal of Studio B in Belgrade, which is run by Mr. Draskovic's party. <br><br>But the government is working on a new telecommunications law, and "we expect the electronic media will be pressured in the next stage," Ms. Susa said. The opposition controls most major towns in Serbia, with its own radio or television stations. Many are members of the Association of Independent Electronic Media, which distributes B2-92's respected news program throughout much of Serbia. <br><br>After Mr. Seselj's attack on B2-92, the association's president, Veran Matic, said he feared that the government would shut down the station, formed after the authorities seized his original station, B-92, during the Kosovo war. "It's clear that neither myself nor the people who work at B2-92 feel safe," Mr. Matic said, "and we expect that the radio could be banned again." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic Mounts an Election-Year Crackdown on His Critics``x951124354,5621,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br>MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 21 -- Thousands of ethnic Albanians from throughout Kosovo marched on this divided city today and clashed with a phalanx of NATO-led troops, who used tear gas and fists to keep them from reaching the Serbian district. <br><br>A throng of protesters -- some estimates put their number at 25,000, others at twice that -- tried to cross the main bridge that divides the Serbian and Albanian sections of this mining town. The crowd was turned back as thousands of Serbs stood on the other side, waving flags and playing nationalist songs. <br><br>The Albanians repeatedly pushed against the lines of British and Canadian soldiers and French paramilitary police officers as fights broke out and demonstrators were hauled away. <br><br>Tensions have flared in this divided city of 90,000 in the past two weeks. Violence has left 11 people dead and dozens wounded, including 2 French soldiers hit in gun battles. <br><br>Wave after wave of protesters arrived today on foot from the capital of Pristina, 25 miles away, and from the western towns of Pec and Srbica, among others. Young men strode up the main street waving red Albanian flags and banners as they tried to breach the military lines. <br><br>For several hours, peacekeepers struggled to contain the crowd, and French police officers resorted to volley after volley of tear gas over the heads of the British and Canadian soldiers, often leaving them choking and retching along with the demonstrators. <br><br>By nightfall the protesters, some of whom had walked for 10 hours, grew tired and drifted away. The commander of the peacekeeping force, Gen. <br><br>Klaus Reinhardt of Germany, climbed atop a British tank to talk to the crowd. He praised his troops for their restraint and said they had prevented any serious injuries or consequences. <br><br>He also said he understood the demonstrators. "They have shown the way they want to live and are demonstrating for a better future. They want a united city," he said. <br><br>But his words underlined the intractable problem this city presents for the peacekeepers and the United Nations administration. The Albanians all speak of liberating the city, by which they mean moving back into the Serbian district en masse, which in turn would force the Serbs to flee. <br><br>"We want to liberate the other side," said Shyrete Gela, a 35-year-old optician who lives in Mitrovica, as she took shelter in a shop from the clouds of tear gas. "I have cousins who live over there. My friend has her flat there, too, but Serbs are living there now. Serbs killed my brother, you know. And now people came from Pristina to help us liberate the city, so we must run with them." <br><br>Mentor Mecinaj, 21, who had walked five hours, said: "We want the north side to be the same as the south. I want to see my friends on the other side and for them to see me." <br><br>Mitrovica still bears terrible scars from the Kosovo war when Serbian forces bulldozed dozens of Albanian shops and houses and destroyed an ancient mosque on the river bank. Thousands of Albanians have been unable to return to their homes on the north side of the city as the Serbian community has determinedly defended a safe area for themselves. The few hundred Serbs who lived on the south side have long since fled. <br><br>Yet the peacekeepers' efforts are now consumed with trying to contain the immediate violence, with little time or energy left for developing a long-term solution. The British commander on the bridge, Lt. Col. Nick Carter, spoke throughout the afternoon to the crowd through a bullhorn, telling the Albanians that he wanted the same thing they did, a united Mitrovica. That brought loud cheers. <br><br>Later he said he knew that the Albanian vision was quite different from that envisioned by the international community. "Don't think that we don't realize we are only buying a little bit of time here. All I'm doing is holding this ring," he said. "Of course this is not tenable." <br><br>After the protesters dispersed, General Reinhardt told reporters, "There is no switch that you can switch and everything is better." He said his response to the last two weeks of violence had been to conduct a huge security operation throughout the city during the past five days. <br><br>He has ordered more than 2,000 soldiers and police officers to conduct house searches for weapons and criminals. Troops, including American paratroopers, were out again today conducting searches, but the collection of illegal weapons has been small, with fewer than a dozen Russian Kalashnikov rifles found. <br><br>American troops, who were stoned by Serbs in northern Mitrovica on Sunday, confined their activities to a predominantly Albanian quarter and encountered no resistance today. But they found no weapons because the area had recently been swept by the French, raising questions about the value of the exercise. <br><br>"Normally, these operations are of a more political value than anything," Mario Morcone, the United Nations administrator in Mitrovica, said of the general search operation. He maintained that security in the city had improved nevertheless, with a curfew and numerous checkpoints set up at night. <br><br>He said he hoped that in the next few days some of the hundreds of Albanian families who fled their homes in the past two weeks would be able to return to the Serbian side. Apart from that, he acknowledged, he has few ideas left on how to deal with the problems. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbanians Rally to Oust Serbs From a City in Kosovo``x951222059,96877,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br><br>Nato-led troops clash with Albanian protesters amid Serb taunts <br>Jonathan Steele <br><br>Nato-led troops fired volleys of tear gas and used batons to disperse angry Albanian protesters yesterday after thousands of marchers broke an agreement not to advance on the main bridge in Kosovo's divided city of Mitrovice. <br>The huge build-up of demonstrators, who pushed through a flimsy cordon to reach the bridge, brought tension to its highest point since 10 people were murdered two and a half weeks ago. Loudspeakers across the river on the Serb side played nationalist songs to taunt the crowd. <br><br>Mitrovice has become the worst flashpoint in the unfinished war in Kosovo. When troops from the Nato-led international peace force, K-For, arrived last June they promised to defuse the tension. The clashes between protesters and peacekeepers yes terday lasted for more than an hour but subsided towards evening, by which time most of the crowd had dispersed. <br><br>The commander of the Kosovo contingent of Britain's Royal Greenjackets, Lieutenant-Colonel Nick Carter, appealed to the crowd for calm. "Please, let the British stay where we are," he said from the top of an armoured car. "Don't push us. Please stay where you are." <br><br>He estimated the size of the crowd stretching back from the bridge at 60,000-70,000. <br><br>In another ominous sign, George Robertson, Nato's secretary general, yesterday warned against violence in a Serbian region where several hundred ethnic Albanians live. The alliance would not tolerate fresh conflict, he said. <br><br>"There is clearly rising tension in the southern part of Serbia and large numbers of additional Yugoslav troops have moved into the area," he said of the Bujanovac-Presevo-Medveda region bordering south-east Kosovo, where local people have reported a spate of tit-for-tat killings. <br><br>Albanians say they are being driven out of the area, while Serb authorities say they face Albanian terrorism. The UN refugee agency has reported that 43 families from the village of Dobrosin have fled in recent weeks. Kosovo Albanian leaders argue that Presevo could be a staging ground for Yugoslav action to test K-For's cohesion, but Nato sources have ruled out K-For troops moving across the border. <br><br>Albanian newspaper reports earlier this month claimed Serb police had almost tripled their strength in the area. <br><br>The Yugoslav 3rd Army commander, General Vladimir Lazarevic, has accused Nato of failing to prevent guerrilla infiltration of a 5km-wide (3-mile) security zone around the province agreed between Belgrade and Nato. He said Albanian "terrorists" had infiltrated the zone and carried out attacks on Yugoslav police in the Kursumilja and Leskovac areas, north and west of the Presevo valley. <br><br>Under the "military-technical agreement" signed by Belgrade and Nato last June, when Serb troops withdrew from Kosovo after 11 weeks of Nato bombing, no Yugoslav army units are permitted in the "ground safety zone". The pact allows Nato to compel withdrawal of any forces, or stop activities posing a potential threat to the mission. <br><br>Asked about reports of a new "liberation army", Nato's peacekeeping commander in Kosovo, General Klaus Reinhardt, said last week that "this could become a problem in the spring if they launch attacks into Serbia". <br><br>The march to Mitrovice was in protest against violence by Serb gangs which has caused 1,500 Albanians to flee the north of the city in two weeks. The marchers accuse K-For of doing too little and allowing the city's partition. Before last year's Serb offensives, Albanians formed the majority on both sides of the river. <br><br>Tens of thousands of Albanians yesterday set out from the provincial capital Pristina, ac companied by UN police. There were a few British military police Land-Rovers at the head of the column, but no sign of any K-For barricades to halt the march on the city. <br><br>One of the protest organisers, Felatin Novosella, said help was needed to control the crowd. "We can't stop them," he said. "The aim of this march was not to march across the bridge in Mitrovice. It was just to show solidarity with the people." <br><br>The protesters had passed the town of Vucitrn, where a K-For spokesman in Pristina earlier said the organisers had agreed to stop. Only 12 representatives would be allowed to deliver a letter to UN officials in Mitrovice. Many protesters, including women and children, were walking. Others drove in cars, vans and buses. They waved the Albanian flag "Mitrovice - the heart of Kosovo", read one banner. <br><br>At least 10 people - eight Albanians and two Serbs - have died and about 20 been wounded in violence this month in Mitrovice. <br><br>A house-to-house weapons search, launched on Sunday, was suspended. "K-For had to take some of its soldiers away to provide security for these demonstrations," said Lieutenant Commander Philip Anido, a Nato spokesman. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTensions erupt in Kosovo march ``x951222102,31158,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br>By Raymond Whitaker in Mitrovica <br><br>British peace-keepers were embroiled in violent confrontations at Kosovo's most dangerous flashpoint yesterday when 70,000 Albanians protesting at the division of the town of Mitrovica tried to storm the bridge which separates its Serb and Albanian communities. <br><br>The Nato secretary general, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, said the alliance was monitoring "large numbers" of Yugoslav forces in Albanian areas of south Serbia and would act if necessary. <br><br>In Mitrovica, 150 men from the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Greenjackets were shoved aside as demonstrators made their way to the bridge. For a few seconds it appeared a violent confrontation with Serb demonstrators on the northern side of the river might erupt, threatening a return of armed clashes which have left 11 people dead in the Mitrovica area this month. <br><br>The British soldiers were involved in shoving matches with chanting demonstrators who broke through their cordon several times. The Royal Greenjackets' commander, Lt-Col Nick Carter, appealed to the crowd to calm down. "Please, let the British stay where we are," he said from the top of an armoured car. "Don't push us. Please stay where you are." <br><br>As the situation escalated, French riot police and Danish armoured vehicles which rushed in from the Serbian side of the bridge cut off the demonstrators and enabled the British troops to regroup. <br><br>Lt-Col Carter estimated the crowd stretching back from the bridge at 60,000-70,000. Around 20,000 Kosovo Albanians had marched from Pristina, 25 miles away, forming a column several miles long. <br><br>The crowd in Mitrovica was scattered by tear-gas fired by the French but a core of 500 protesters rallied the others. <br><br>The lack of co-ordination among the peace-keeping forces was illustrated by the fact that many British troops and their Canadian reinforcements were not equipped with gas masks, and several soldiers were seen weeping and retching between tear-gas assaults. The stand-off went on well into darkness, but the demonstrators eventually dispersed after being addressed by their leaders and General Klaus Reinhardt, the head of K-For. <br><br>A protest organiser, Felatin Novosella, earlier suggested the situation was getting out of control, saying help was needed to prevent any confrontation in Mitrovica. "What we want is help to stop them [the marchers from Pristina], because we can't stop them," he said. "The aim of this was not to march across the bridge in Mitrovica. It was just to show solidarity with the people." <br><br>A local Serb leader said the march and the search were synchronised to expel the Serb population from the north side of the town. "Peace in Kosovo is an illusion and Nato and the UN police are incapable of securing a peaceful life in Kosovo," Vuko Antonijevic, of the Serb National Council in Mitrovica, told Yugoslavia's Beta news agency. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xViolence erupts as 70,000 march on divided Mitrovica ``x951222157,88255,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By JANE PERLEZ<br>WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 -- American and NATO officials today accused the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, of fomenting violence in Kosovo and infiltrating his plainclothes police into the province in a deliberate attempt to thwart NATO's peacekeeping efforts. <br><br>The United States and allied governments have detected direct radio links between Mr. Milosevic's special police in Serbia and Serbian militants in the city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, officials said. <br><br>The Yugoslav leader is also encouraging his plainclothes police to travel to Mitrovica, the officials said, and has ordered a buildup of special police units along the border between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia. <br><br>"Guidance, men, radios and arms" is the order of importance of Mr. Milsoevic's help to the Serbs of Mitrovica, a senior official said. Another official said that much of the violence carried out by the Serbs in Mitrovica in the last two weeks had been "planned in advance and comes from Belgrade." <br><br>At NATO headquarters and at the Pentagon, officials said they were concerned that Mr. Milosevic was doing everything possible to undo NATO's control of Mitrovica, the ethnically divided mining town of 90,000 that has become Kosovo's most volatile spot. <br><br>Just a few miles south of the border with Serbia proper, it is in effect where the Albanian-dominated province ends and Serbia begins, with the part of town north of the Ibar River 90 percent Serbian and the southern part mainly Albanian. <br><br>Thousands of Albanians have been unable to return to their homes in the north side as the Serbian community has determinedly defended a safe area for itself. The few hundred Serbs who lived on the south side have long since fled. <br><br>The officials said Mr. Milosevic did not appear to be planning to send the Yugoslav Army or uniformed units of his police forces into Kosovo. Nor does he seem to want control of the province back, the officials said, but rather to keep up the tension and then divide Kosovo into distinct Serbian and Albanian parts. <br><br>American troops were sent to Mitrovica from their southern Kosovo base last weekend along with British and Canadian soldiers to reinforce French troops after the violence got out of hand. <br><br>For the Clinton administration, the biggest fear about Kosovo is that the explosive situation in Mitrovica could blow up in a presidential election year. One of the worst fears is having NATO -- and American -- troops caught between Albanian and Serbian snipers in an "urban Belfast" situation in Mitrovica, a NATO official said today. <br><br>In a series of public statements in the last two days, American and NATO officials have warned Mr. Milosevic, in general ways, to desist from interfering in Kosovo. <br><br>The American representative at the United Nations, Richard C. Holbrooke, and the NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson, said Belgrade was directing the trouble in northern Kosovo. The State Department spokesman, James P. Rubin, said that "we certainly would be prepared to to respond if Serbian forces made the grave mistake of trying to interfere" with NATO operations. <br><br>NATO officials described the messages between Serbian radio operators in Mitrovica and Serbian intelligence operators in Serbia as being of a tactical nature. The messages included statements like "they are going here, they are going there," -- referring to movements by Albanian militants -- rather than direct orders, the officials said. <br><br>"We do know they are receiving transmission coming from MUP radio links inside Serbia," an official said, using the acronym for Mr. Milosevic's Interior Ministry special police. "They are from the locations and frequencies used by MUP." <br><br>Some of the radio links used by the special police in northern Kosovo have not been dismantled since NATO took over Kosovo last summer, a NATO official said. <br><br>As well as meddling inside Mitrovica, Mr. Milosevic has "preserved his options" by increasing the number of special police in the area of the Presevo Valley in Serbia, an area next to Kosovo, where about 80,000 Albanians live and have become increasingly restless. <br><br>The officials said that they could not be precise about the number of special police officers now in the area but that the buildup had been under way for several months. The policemen, whose presence was regularly reported by Albanian refugees, were in the same area to which the Pristina Corps of the Yugoslav Army had withdrawn at the end of the Kosovo war, they said. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic, who is regarded by the administration as a master tactician unable to resist the opportunity presented to him in Mitrovica, has maneuvered himself into a strong position, said an administration official involved in day-to-day Kosovo policy. <br><br>"Belgrade is in a great position -- a win-win position -- and NATO in a lose-lose position," the official said. <br><br>"If NATO gets tough, then Milosevic can say the Serbs are victims and Kosovo has been ethnically cleansed," he said. In that circumstance NATO would escort Albanians back to their homes in northern Mitrovica, a maneuver that would almost certainly make most of the Serbs there flee. <br><br>"If NATO shrinks from doing anything, the situation gets worse and NATO loses," the official said. He added, "It's a terrible situation for KFOR to be in," referring to the peacekeeping force in Kosovo. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO Says Milosevic Incites Violence Covertly in Kosovo``x951297755,15533,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br>By Raymond Whitaker in Mitrovica <br><br>The international community has "about two weeks" to make progress in solving the divide between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo's troubled town of Mitrovica, or there will be more mass demonstrations like Monday's, when a fewBritish peace-keepers struggled to contain tens of thousands of Albanian protesters. <br><br>This is the view of Lt-Col Nick Carter, whose men were "the meat in the sandwich", as he put it, when more than 2,000 Albanian militants tried to force their way across the bridge over the River Ibar on Monday. A similar number of Serbs were waiting on the northern side of the river, which splits the town's Serbs and Albanians. Lt-Col Carter is convinced there would have been armed clashes if protesters had got through. <br><br>The militants were at the head of a much larger crowd, including some 20,000 people who had marched 25 miles in freezing weather from Kosovo's capital, Pristina, to register their protest at the continued division of Mitrovica. <br><br>But despite several hours of face-to-face shoving and a barrage of tear-gas fired by French gendarmes, the demonstration ended without major injuries on either side. Ten British soldiers were hurt, but only one is still receiving treatment, for neck injuries received when he was pushed over a Warrior armoured vehicle. <br><br>Lt-Col Carter had been aware for several days before the troubles that he had pitifully few men – 250 Royal Green Jackets and a 100-strong Canadian platoon – to handle the biggest protest Mitrovica has seen since the K-For peace-keepers arrived last June. <br><br>"The only weapons we had were restraint and our ability to talk people down, and we had to keep the French, whom the Albanians rightly or wrongly dislike, out of sight," he said. <br><br>His men used crowd control techniques that were developed in Northern Ireland. "We wore berets, not helmets, kept our riot equipment out of sight and stayed calm – and it worked." Any soldier who showed signs of losing restraint was pulled out by NCOs and allowed to cool off before returning to the crowds. <br><br>This strategy came within seconds of going disastrously wrong, however, when several hundred militants pushed forward. For a moment the bridge lay open, but it was rapidly barred by gendarmes and a Danish riot-control platoon, which created a barrier of armoured vehicles. Lt-Col Carter put his own armoured vehicles in front of the gendarmes, believing the sight of them would inflame the demonstrators. But this did not prevent the French from lobbing tear-gas grenades into the crowd, some of which hit British soldiers. <br><br>The British commander was clearly irritated by some of the behaviour of the French, such as their delay in stopping the Serbs from provoking Albanians with flags and nationalist music. "It is possible that some gendarmes feel they had to save the day, but that doesn't bother me," he said. "The big picture is that the Albanians were able peacefully to show the mass of feeling in their community at the continued division of this town. One gendarme commander said they had learned a few things about crowd control." <br><br>Lt-Col Carter also madeclear that K-For was simply there to keep a lid on the tension as long as Mitrovica was divided by the bridge. "In Pristina, people have been forced to work together, and things have improved to the point where Serbs have come back, albeit a very small number," he said. <br><br>Mitrovica was subdued yesterday, with Serbs north of the river clearly shaken by the size of the Albanian demonstration. The authorities relaxed the city-wide curfew and scaled down weapons searches. An armoured vehicle was briefly showered by rocks, bottles and sticks from a crowd incensed by the appearance of American peace-keepers on the bridge for the first time, although they were shielded to the north by French vehicles. <br><br>Oliver Ivanovic, self-styled leader of northern Mitrovica's Serbs, cast doubt on Lt-Col Carter's prediction that there would be a week or two of calm on the Albanian side. "They clearly intended to show us that one day they will come over in huge numbers and take over here," he said. "But we are proud people and we will not run away."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMitrovica crisis must be solved 'in two weeks' ``x951297773,20083,``x``x
``xBRUSSELS, Feb 23 (Reuters) - NATO knows it is walking a tightrope in Mitrovica but has no intention of backing down from its goal of unifying the ethnically-divided Kosovo city, a NATO official said on Wednesday. <br>It is also keeping a wary eye on tensions in the Albanian populated Presevo Valley area of southern Serbia where there have been reports of Kosovo Albanian extremists arming, along with a buildup of Serbian special police forces. <br><br>Alliance ambassadors planned an extraordinary meeting of the North Atlantic Council on Friday for talks with the Kosovo KFOR peacekeeping mission commander, General Klaus Reinhardt, on proposals for defusing the crisis, he said. <br><br>Reinhardt faced "a very difficult balancing act" in persuading the Mitrovica area Serbs not to leave but not at the price of walls going up across the city, the official added. <br><br>He said NATO was determined to identify and isolate the ringleaders of Serbian and ethnic Albanian radical factions intent on stirring up trouble. <br><br>Hidden weapons would be seized and NATO troops would ensure they were not replaced "through the back door." <br><br>"We are not going to back down," he said. <br><br>NATO would not accept a city divided by barricades or barbed wire leading to cantonisation of Kosovo, now a de facto international protectorate though legally a province of Serbia. <br><br>Friday's session was expected to examine KFOR's requirements in light of the mounting challenges and assess prospects for returning Kosovo Albanians under KFOR protection to their homes in north Mitrovica. <br><br>The KFOR mission currently numbers 37,000 troops but the Mitrovica standoff was straining resources, the official said. <br><br>SCOPE FOR MANIPULATION <br><br>Mitrovica, the Presevo Valley and a continuing test of wills between Serbia and its pro-western sister republic of Montenegro appeared to offer Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ample scope for trouble-making, diplomats said. <br><br>In a chorus of warnings in the past week the West told Milosevic to stop fomenting unrest, while NATO Secretary General George Robertson balanced the message by warning Albanian hardliners they too would face firm action by KFOR. <br><br>Diplomatic sources said NATO was divided on how to handle the tension, with some allies warning against spreading alarm. <br><br>NATO supreme commander General Wesley Clark, visiting Skopje, Pristina and Tirana, urged Albanian leaders this week to clamp down on hotheads and renegades bent on violence. <br><br>But tension mounted further on Wednesday when Macedonia said its army on the border with Serbia, south of the Presevo Valley, had been placed on heightened combat alert. <br><br>The NATO official said Serb hardliners in Mitrovica made no secret of the fact that they were close to the Milosevic regime. There were also some signs of radio contacts between them and the Serbian Interior Ministry MUP special police. <br><br>"We are not claiming it is all master-minded by Belgrade," he stressed. Some Serbs had walky-talkies and weapons and "know how to provoke disturbances," but there were also trouble-makers on the other side bent on putting the Serb enclave under threat. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBoth sides pose threat to NATO on Kosovo tightrope``x951386479,5825,``x``x
``xThe Financial Times<br><br>By Douglas Hamilton - 24 Feb 2000 09:26GMT<br> <br>BRUSSELS, Feb 24 (Reuters) - NATO said its military strength in Kosovo was insufficient and France said it would send up to 700 fresh troops to the northern town of Mitrovica to help combat a surge in violence there.<br><br>The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were only 30,000 troops in the province out of 49,000 originally planned for the KFOR peacekeeping mission. <br><br>The peacekeepers have been hard pressed recently through an upsurge in violence in Mitrovica between Serbians and ethnic Albanians in the ethnically divided town. <br><br>In Washington, French Defence Minister Alain Richard told reporters at a news conference Paris would make an immediate addition to its troops in the French military sector around Mitrovica. <br><br>A reserve has been prepared and this shows the planning for KFOR has been coherent and long-sighted, he said. <br><br>He said a battalion of 600 to 700 French troops would be sent to Mitrovica quickly to join the 4,700 French troops there. <br><br>U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen told the same news conference American reinforcements might also be sent to join some 5,500 U.S. troops already in Kosovo but no decision had yet been made. <br><br>Cohen and Richard both said the troop increase around Mitrovica was meant to restore peace, to send a signal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic not to interfere in Kosovo and to warn the ethnic Albanian majority in the province to abide by a peace agreement. <br><br>KFOR peacekeepers were sent to Kosovo last year following a NATO air campaign to halt Serbian repression of the ethnic Albanian majority. <br><br>The NATO official said Milosevic was attempting to orchestrate the permanent division of Mitrovica to create a Serbian canton which would lead to a de facto partition excluding ethnic Albanians. <br><br>In Belgrade, the commander of Yugoslavia's Third Army dismissed as nonsense NATO claims of a build-up of Yugoslav forces in Albanian populated areas of southern Serbia near Kosovo. <br><br>NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said in Brussels on Monday the alliance was monitoring a build-up of forces in southern Serbia. <br><br>The Macedonian army, meanwhile, said it had raised the level of combat readiness along its border with southern Serbia after the upsurge in ethnic violence in Kosovo. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO says Kosovo troop strength not enough``x951386556,24017,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br><br>By The Associated Press<br>KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Serbs in this ethnically divided city are threatening protests and more unrest in response to plans by NATO-led peacekeepers to begin resettling ethnic Albanians on the Serb-controlled north bank of the Ibar River. <br><br>The plans announced Wednesday by the peacekeeping command involve moving ethnic Albanians back to homes in three high-rise apartment buildings. U.N. officials said ethnic Albanians would begin registering Friday and relocations would begin next week. <br><br>With so many Serbs and ethnic Albanians living in the same community, Kosovska Mitrovica is the most ethnically mixed city in Kosovo -- and the most violence-prone. <br><br>In Washington, U.S. and French officials announced Wednesday that France is sending 600 to 700 more troops and the United States may send in a Marine unit to help quell the rising violence. <br><br>``It is simply normal military business to decide ... to make the real provisions so that we take control of the situation there,'' French Defense Minister Alain Richard said at a news conference with William Cohen, the U.S. defense secretary. France already has about 4,500 troops in Kosovo. <br><br>Cohen said no decision has been made on whether more American troops would go. But a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a Marine Expeditionary Unit was on standby for possible movement into the French sector of Kosovo. <br><br>In addition to resettling ethnic Albanians, NATO plans to build a footbridge across the river in front of the three apartment houses where many of the Albanians hope to return. Demonstrations would be banned in a wide area encompassing both Serb and Albanian-dominated neighborhoods. <br><br>The proposals have outraged Serb leaders, who have called for a protest Friday on the north side of the bridge despite the ban. Serb community leader Oliver Ivanovic has warned that the crisis would ``peak within 10 to 15 days'' unless the NATO-led Kosovo Force abandons its plans. <br><br>The ethnic Albanian leader of the city, Bajram Rexhepi, called on his fellow Albanians to avoid demonstrations on the south bank. <br><br>Serb leaders say they were not consulted about the decision. One leader, Nikola Kabasic, claimed Albanian snipers had fired on French peacekeepers last weekend from buildings to which ethnic Albanians will be returned. <br><br>``Serbs were excluded this time, although we believe we could have given some suggestions for calming down the situation,'' Kabasic said. Ivanovic accused the ethnic Albanians of ``building up tensions to the maximum so they would use the situation to provoke bloodshed in the northern part of the city.'' <br><br>A sweep by U.S. paratroopers in the north also upset the Serbs, who claimed their homes were ransacked. <br><br>As French troops surrounded the search area, 300 troops of the U.S. 504th Airborne Infantry -- backed by armored vehicles and in full battle gear -- crossed the Ibar River at dawn and swept through ``Little Bosnia,'' an ethnically mixed neighborhood, searching house-to-house for weapons. <br><br>A NATO spokesman, Flight Lt. Neville Clayton, said the Americans seized a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, rifles, grenades and ammunition. Maj. Erik Gunhus said eight people were taken into custody. <br><br>Following the raid, the Americans left the city and returned to their base at Camp Bondsteel in southeastern Kosovo. The U.S. soldiers were among troops from more than a dozen countries sent to reinforce the French last weekend, when tensions escalated. <br><br>French troops continued the search after the Americans left. <br><br>Thousands of ethnic Albanians were killed by Serb forces during President Slobodan Milosevic's 18-month crackdown against separatists in Kosovo. After NATO bombing forced the Serb troops to withdraw last spring, ethnic Albanians began attacking Serbs in revenge. <br><br>Tensions have been rising in Kosovska Mitrovica, which has the largest remaining Serb enclave in Kosovo, since a grenade attack on a U.N. bus Feb. 2 killed two elderly Serbs south of the city. That triggered revenge attacks that have left nine people dead and scores injured. <br><br>On Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of directing a campaign to undermine the United Nations and NATO by orchestrating the partition of Mitrovica. <br><br>A senior Yugoslav commander, Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic, has called the allegation ``nonsense'' aimed at diverting attention from NATO's failure to bring peace to the province. <br><br>Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic has said the Western goal was to ``chase the remaining non-Albanian population from Mitrovica so they could take the control'' of the rich mining complex outside the city. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbs Threaten Protests in Kosovo``x951386583,5169,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Stephen Castle in Brussels <br><br>25 February 2000 <br><br>NATO will today discuss plans for significant new troop reinforcements for Kosovo, amid fears that covert Serbian operations are fomenting unrest in the province in a deliberate challenge to K-For. <br><br>In the wake of the outbreaks of violence in Mitrovica and fears over two other trouble-spots, alliance ambassadors will try to draw up a strategy for combating the rising tension in the province. <br><br>France has already said it will offer one battalion of around 700 troops for Mitrovica but General Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme allied commander in Europe, has asked for two more battalions to be placed on four days' notice. <br><br>General Clark yesterday claimed openly that President Milosevic's forces lie behind the violence in Mitrovica and suggested that the Serb president is applying pressure in two other areas. In an interview in the International Herald Tribune he referred to the risk of a Belgrade-inspired coup in Montenegro and of a possible campaign of repression against ethnic Albanians in the Presevo Valley, which is inside Serbia. <br><br>"Mitrovica is going to be multi-ethnic, and that means ending the intimidation and other dirty work of the military units, gangs and thugs who have been sent there by Belgrade," General Clark said. <br><br>The additional troop deployment General Clark is calling for would suggest a total of around 2,000 troops being earmarked for Kosovo, where Nato already has 30,000 troops on the ground, but General Clark's office yesterday refused to specify the number or type of forces he has requested. <br><br>France, however, argued that Kosovo needs more than is presently on the offer. "This is not a French decision, it must be a collective one," France's defence ministry spokesman, Jean-François Bureau, said yesterday. <br><br>Nato fears that the events in Mitrovica are part of a concerted attempt by Belgrade to divide Kosovo, keeping a northern enclave with its valuable mineral reserves. <br><br>Meanwhile the arrival of warmer, spring weather is expected to make mobility easier for covert Serb forces, posing another potential test of Nato's strength. <br><br>Today's meeting of the North Atlantic Council will involve the military top brass, with a presentation from General Clark and a briefing by satellite link from K-For's commander, German General Klaus Reinhardt. <br><br>One possibility is that Nato will try to strengthen its Multinational Specialised Unit, comprising troops trained in civilian work to help contain trouble in Mitrovica. But today's discussion, listed on the agenda simply as "the situation in Kosovo" will review the strategy. <br><br>Nato diplomats expect a new initiative from the UN over Mitrovica, perhaps establishing it as a separate "zone" and making access for trouble-makers more difficult. With US troops now withdrawn from Mitrovica, the mood there was calmer yesterday. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xClark fears Serb unrest and calls for more troops ``x951485302,45672,``x``x
``xFinancial Times<br><br><br>By Michael Roddy - 25 Feb 2000 12:26GMT<br> <br><br>KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Feb 25 (Reuters) - The tense Kosovo city of Mitrovica braced for a rally by Serbs on Friday while ethnic Albanians prepared to return to their flats they abandoned during violent clashes last week.<br><br>Canadian troops who control the main Ibar River bridge dividing the city rolled out barbed wire across the span to prevent clashes. <br><br>Officials said they were not expecting trouble and predicted the number of Serb demonstrators would not approach anything like the estimated 40,000 to 50,000 Albanians who marched on Mitrovica on Monday. <br><br>I expect there will only be 2,000 to 3,000 Serbs, said a U.N. police source. And I don't think they will be crazy enough to cause any trouble. <br><br>Oliver Ivanovic, the president of the executive board of the Serb National Council in Mitrovica, was quoted by state news agency Tanjug as saying: The Serbs will gather with only one wish -- to convey to the world their determination to stay and survive in Kosovo. <br><br>The United Nations and humanitarian agencies meanwhile registered Albanian families who fled three apartment blocks in the Serb north of the city in mid February after a night of Serb-led violence which left nine dead. <br><br>By late morning some 46 families had signalled their intention to return to their homes, UNMIK police officer Nathalie Dore said. <br><br>We will check to see that the flats are not occupied by the people who are not supposed to be there, Dore said, added she did not know when an organised return to the buildings would be arranged. <br><br>Some Albanians voiced displeasure at having to register their intention to return to their homes. <br><br>The living conditions on this side are very bad, said Sashivar Begu, 55, an unemployed miner who has been living in temporary quarters in southern Mitrovica since he fled his flat on February 14. <br><br>Begu, whose left eye was heavily bandaged, said he was hurt when a hand grenade was thrown into a neighbour's flat where he was hiding the night Serb vigilantes went on a rampage. <br><br>How can I feel safe to go back there when my neighbour's flat has been completely destroyed and in mine you can count the bullet holes in the walls and in the windows? <br><br>Serbs do what they want because they feel they are being protected, he said. <br><br>Albanians in Mitrovica claim French troops, who are mainly responsible for security in the city, favour the Serbs, and have applauded recent moves by KFOR to bring in soldiers from different countries. <br><br>In Brussels, NATO ambassadors met to chart the alliance's next moves in Kosovo with the KFOR peacekeeping mission commander, General Klaus Reinhardt, joining in by video linkup from Pristina. <br><br>Alliance supreme commander General Wesley Clark, also attending the session, has called for several thousand more troops for KFOR. France has taken the lead with a promise to raise its contingent by a further 700. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTense Kosovo town braces for Serb demonstration``x951485319,88570,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br><br>Jonathan Steele in Mitrovice <br>Friday February 25, 2000 <br><br>UN officials yesterday stepped up plans to escort ethnic Albanian refugees back to their homes in northern Mitrovice, the city that is currently the worst flashpoint in Kosovo. <br>The first of 1,500 Albanians who fled Serb attacks on their homes during the past two weeks are to be screened today by a UN committee in the south of the divided city, where they have taken shelter. Officials say they will be asking people to prove they lived in the north. <br><br>Stung by the latest ethnic cleansing - and by accusations from US and Nato officials that the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, was behind the turmoil in the north of the city - the UN administrator for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, announced this week that Mitrovice would be transformed into a "united city", doing away with de facto partition that sees Serbs predominating on the north side of the river Ibar and ethnic Albanians on the south. <br><br>He also announced that he was increasing efforts to create a joint Serb and Albanian city administration. Oliver Ivanovic, the head of the local branch of the Serb National Council, was told by Mr Kouchner yesterday that he must cooperate with the new scheme. <br><br>The Serbs have been running a shadow government in northern Mitrovice. Such organisations, including those run by Albanians elsewhere in Kosovo, were outlawed last month. <br><br>The UN also plans to build a footbridge across the river Ibar within the next three weeks to connect the southern part of the city with an enclave of mainly Albanian houses, known as Little Bosnia, on the Serb-dominated northern side. Little Bosnia is surrounded by vehicles and troops of the Nato-led international peacekeeping force, K-For, but its inhabitants are virtually trapped. <br><br>Canadian troops yesterday stood guard by the barbed wire on the main bridge in Mitrovice, replacing British contingents which left yesterday. US troops who conducted weapons searches on Wednesday have also been withdrawn, to be replaced by Italians and Spanish. The Serb and Alban ian demonstrators who confronted each other across the bridge earlier this week have dispersed. <br><br>After violent incidents on Sunday, when Serbs stoned the American troops during weapons searches, Wednesday's searches were largely symbolic. The K-For commander, General Klaus Reinhardt, apparently did not want to give the impression that the Americans had retreated. They have since pulled out of the city. <br><br>A K-For spokesman said the massive search operations in the city were over for the time being, with the focus moving further north yesterday to the area beyond the city which adjoins the border with Serbia. There have been repeated allegations that Serb police and security forces in civilian clothes have been infiltrating. <br><br>Belgian troops mounted an operation in Leposavic yesterday and discovered eight AK47 assault rifles in Serb hands, according to Captain Olivier St Leger, a K-For spokesman in Mitrovice. <br><br>Mitrovice used to have an Albanian majority on both sides of the river Ibar. But after the UN moved into Kosovo in June, Serbs took over flats which had been home to Albanians before last year's ethnic cleansing. <br><br>The aim was partly to create a Serb fortress and to partition the city. When Serbs in southern Mitrovice found themselves forced out as Albanians returned from refugee camps abroad, the population of an gry Serbs in the north increased. <br><br>Mr Kouchner is trying to overcome the partition by assuring Serbs they will not be pushed out of the north if they let Albanian residents moves back in there. Up to now, the policy of the French military commander in charge of Mitrovice has been to block any large movement of Albanian men across the bridges. <br><br>"I understand that Serbs are scared and we have to work on building their confidence," Mr Kouchner said this week. <br><br>Mitrovice's new property committee will look at Serb claims to flats in the south as well as the plight of the Albanians who fled. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUN strives for unity in Mitrovice ``x951485347,35924,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 25 -- Four thousand Serbs rallied here today and promised to defend the Serbian district of this ethnically divided town. They called for international peacekeepers to organize a plan to let them return to their houses. <br>Protesting the suffering of Serbs at the hands of ethnic Albanians, the protesters organized a rally much larger than one last week. The rally today was the Serbs' response to a protest by 25,000 Albanians on the southern side of the city on Monday. <br><br>As the protest developed today, peacekeeping troops moved out in force in case of violence. But the rally proceeded peacefully. <br><br>Speakers called for unity and strength in the face of Albanian efforts to force the Serbs to leave the last major city in Kosovo. <br><br>"In Pristina, the Serbs have disappeared," said Marko Jaksic, a leader of the Serbian National Council here. "There are no more Serbs in the towns of Prizren or Pec. During these eight months, 300,000 Serbs were forced to abandon their homes. Hundreds of churches have been burnt, and settlements have been ethnically cleansed." <br><br>"We have only this town left," Mr. Jaksic said. "Should we leave this town to settle in a new country? They are trying to force us to leave. But we cannot and do not dare go from here. All Serbs in other parts of Kosovo are watching us. We must endure." <br><br>The Serbian population of Kosovo has been reduced to isolated enclaves, except in Mitrovica, where they dominate the northern district and the region north to the boundary with Serbia. The executive head of the Serbian National Council and acknowledged leader of the Serbs in northern Kosovo, Oliver Ivanovic, called for people to show courage if Albanians tried to storm across the bridge that links the two sectors, as they did on Monday. <br><br>"There is no question we are going to stay," Mr. Ivanovic told the rally. "Maybe they will try again like last Monday, but they will not succeed. You showed you have courage." <br><br>He also urged Serbs who had fled Kosovo to return, saying: "We are calling others to show courage and come back. Kosovo is not Kosovo without Serbs. Our destiny is to live beside Albanians, if not with them." <br><br>Mr. Ivanovic said that next week he and United Nations leaders would discuss the return of some of the hundreds of Albanians who had been expelled from the Serbian district in recent weeks. But the United Nations and the NATO-led forces have to realize that the Serbs stand in the most danger in Kosovo, he added. <br><br>The mood of the crowd was uncertain and fearful. "It is, maybe, a farewell party," said an economist who gave only his first name, Boban. "If the Albanians return in big numbers, they will expel us. How can they say they want to live with us when everywhere else they throw us out?" ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``x4,000 Serbs Vow to Defend Town Sector in Kosovo ``x951556104,836,``x``x
``xIan Black in Brussels <br><br>Nato rushed to calm fears about Kosovo last night, pledging to keep its forces up to strength, but claiming that the immediate crisis in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovice was now over. <br>Speaking after an emergency meeting of the north Atlantic council, the alliance's governing body, the Nato secretary general, Lord Robertson, insisted that the situation was under control. <br><br>"Mitrovice is a potential flashpoint. It flared up but we dealt with the unrest quickly and decisively," he told reporters in Brussels. "K-For has dealt with the situation firmly and even-handedly. <br><br>"We are determined to keep K-For at the right strength to allow it to carry out all its security tasks in Kosovo." <br><br>Reinforcements could be announced next week, after Britain, Italy and Spain reportedly expressed willingness to provide more peacekeeping troops for the troubled Serbian province. France has already offered to send another 600-700 men. <br><br>Officials at Nato headquarters said another option was to deploy forces from outside the 37,000 under K-For command but which are being held in a "strategic reserve" in the region. <br><br>There was an attempt to play down the dimensions of the crisis, which has erupted uncomfortably close to next month's first anniversary of Nato's war against Yugoslavia. But troubling questions about ambiguous policies and inadequate means remain. <br><br>"It was never a question of going round the table and pointing a finger and saying 'you're not doing the job'," one senior diplomat said last night. "This wasn't about numbers and who was going to cough up." <br><br>Concern has focused on the fact that some K-For participants have allowed their contributions to slip - limiting the ability of commanders to redeploy quickly within Kosovo. <br><br>Others, privately accused of not pulling their weight, have not been willing to have their troops deployed away from their agreed command areas, in trouble spots like Mitrovice. <br><br>General Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme commander in Europe, appeared before the council for the second time this week while Gen Klaus Reinhardt of Germany, the K-For commander, addressed ambassadors by video link from Pristina. Gen Clark has formally requested three new battalions - 1,800 to 2,000 troops. <br><br>No decision was made on Gen Clark's request, but the alliance's military committee was ordered to examine troop needs and report back to the council next week. <br><br>The defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, under pressure because resources are already stretched, said that Britain - the largest contributor to K-For - would see what others had to offer. <br><br>Tensions have been high in Mitrovice since a grenade attack on a United Nations bus in early February killed two elderly Serbs. Revenge attacks followed, leading K-For troops to carry out extensive searches to seize weapons. <br><br>Nato claims that the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, is orchestrating a destabilisation campaign in the city, which contains the most significant Serb community remaining in Kosovo, and that ethnic Albanians are also trying to foment trouble. <br><br>Bernard Kouchner, the French head of the UN civilian operation in Kosovo, yesterday demanded that more police be sent to the province. "I need a lot more policemen, a lot more. I need about 2,500 more. Even the slightest bit more would be a gift for us," he said in a radio interview.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNato looks to boost Kosovo forces but 'crisis is over' ``x951556126,70107,``x``x
``xBelgrade has dispatched agents provocateurs to Kosovo in an effort to undermine international peace-keeping efforts.<br>International War&Peace Report<br>By Miroslav Filipovic in Kraljevo<br><br>Slobodan Milosevic has been smuggling elite police and federal army units into Kosovo to forment unrest between local Serbs and Albanians, Yugoslav military sources have told IWPR.<br><br>Special forces left behind in the province as ‘sleepers’ following the withdrawal of Milosevic’s forces last June have also been activated. (See BCR No. 103, 17-Dec-99, “Serb ‘Illegals’ Operate Behind Enemy Lines in Kosovo.”)<br><br>Both groups were involved in orchestrating the recent violence in Mitrovica. Snipers from elite Serbian police forces shot dead at least four Albanians.<br><br>The admissions by senior military sources in southern Serbia add weight to NATO claims that Yugoslav forces were directly involved in the unrest in the ethnically divided northern Kosovo town.<br><br>The IWPR sources reveal that while Belgrade officials were publicly denying any involvement in the violence, which left eleven people dead, they were privately exhilarated by the success of their intervention.<br><br>Milosevic’s main aim is to sabotage the international peace-keeping efforts in Kosovo.<br><br>But at the same time, the sources say he is keen to bolster support at home by casting the Serb minority in the province as defenceless victims of Albanian aggression.<br><br>A police center in the village of Brzece in southern Serbia, close to the border with Kosovo, is reported to have been the base for the infiltration of Serbian forces into Kosovo.<br><br>IWPR sources say that Yugoslav troops and policemen change into civilian clothes and go on missions deep into Kosovo territory.<br><br>There are also suggestions they disguise themselves as NATO troops. Eye witnesses claim they have seen KFOR uniforms in storehouses at the Brzece base.<br><br>Policemen deployed at the base speak Albanian and would have no trouble passing themselves off as Kosovars. Interior ministry officials are also able to issue them with valid identification papers.<br><br>Staff at the center are replaced every 15 days. Arrivals and departures take place at night to maintain the cloak of secrecy around the operation.<br><br>The last reinforcement, three buses of policemen armed to the teeth, arrived in Brzece on February 15.<br><br>The infiltrators are joining forces with a small number of Yugoslav army and Serbian police officers left behind in Kosovo after the withdrawal of Milosevic’s forces last year.<br><br>They spent many years on active service in Kosovo, built houses, bought property and started families there. It is also believed that the army has persuaded many of them to stay by offering them bigger flats and higher salaries.<br><br>There have also been reports that the federal military authorities have sought to secretly encourage servicemen to return to Kosovo with a range of inducements.<br><br>The ‘sleepers’ have kept a low profile for the last few months, but have now been activated as part of Belgrade’s attempts to undermine KFOR and the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).<br><br>“In this phase of the Kosovo crisis, the activation of a small number of ‘sleepers’ is designed to make KFOR and UNMIK appear incompetent,” a Yugoslav military source told IWPR.<br><br>The IWPR sources say the Yugoslav military believes its intervention in Mitrovica has frustrated KFOR peace-keeping efforts in the town.<br><br>Certainly, NATO appears to be rapidly running out of ideas how to unify the town, especially after the recent clashes. Their latest response has been to dispatch 700 French troops and there are plans to bring in a further 2,000.<br><br>But IWPR source says it will be months before relations and trust between Serbs, Albanians and NATO troops will be restored. <br><br>Miroslav Filipovic is an independent journalist from Kraljevo in Serbia. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb Agents Fuel Kosovo Violence ``x951556148,29171,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Yugoslav intellectuals urged the recently united Serb opposition on Friday to strengthen their campaign for democratic change in the politically isolated Balkan country. <br>They also urged the opposition to offer voters a clear vision of the future, which would immediately come into effect once President Slobodan Milosevic is defeated at the ballot box. <br><br>In turn, the G17plus expert network said it would contribute expertise and other support in a joint bid to bring democracy and prevent the isolated Balkan state from falling apart. <br><br>"We will support changes. We will do our best to make as many people as possible take part in a ballot and vote for changes," said Miroljub Labus, the chairman of the G17plus and a leading Yugoslav economist. <br><br>The feuding opposition buried hatchets on January 10, agreeing to work together to demand early general elections. <br><br>"But it is vital for the opposition to (also) offer a single list of candidates and a credible programme," Labus told a news conference. <br><br>The G17plus network -- set up last October by the G17 group of independent economists -- groups judges, writers, political scientists, musicians, historians, producers, and sociologists. <br><br>"We will use all our influence to create a wide coalition of Serb democratic forces and the Montenegrin government in a last effort to preserve the Yugoslav federation," Labus said. <br><br>The pro-western government of Montenegro has said it would not take party in a ballot organised by Milosevic's government. <br><br>But Labus said he believed the Montenegrins could change their mind if the opposition offered them self-determination. <br><br>He also urged authorities to be more tolerant of its political opponents, stop violence against media and students, and "stop fuelling a psychosis of a civil war and attempts to introduce a state of emergency through a back door." <br><br>The opposition has called on Milosevic to step down since June 1999, when NATO's 11-week bombing campaign ended. <br><br>The opposition wants early elections for the Serbian parliament, a key Yugoslav institution. But the ruling coalition of neo-communists, socialists and ultra-nationalists has so far rejected demands for early general polls. <br><br>"The election campaign has begun. But it seems there will be no elections this spring," said Mladjan Dinkic, chief coordinator for the G17 group of independent economists. <br><br>To boost the chances of an opposition bloc in a future ballot, Dinkic said the G17 planned to organise an international fund-raising conference to rebuild Serbia. <br><br>"Following Mr Labus's meeting with French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine and his German counterpart Joschka Fischer last year, we are preparing the first donors conference for Serbia. Pledges made at the conference before the elections will be made available after the poll," he added. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb opposition must prove unity, intellectuals say``x951556164,32598,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br>By Raymond Whitaker in Mitrovica, Kosovo <br><br>"I don't feel at home here," said Semka Rakic, 25. "I am uncomfortable about taking someone else's flat." A virulent green picture scrolled rapidly on the television, the property of a departed family of Albanians. Clearly Semka had not yet worked out how to operate the controls. <br><br>From the window, eight floors up, there was a fine view of the snowy mountains surrounding Mitrovica, the ugly, polluted Kosovo town where the business of Nato's war against Slobodan Milosevic remains unfinished. Below, one could see the River Ibar, which divides the Serbs of northern Mitrovica from the main part of the town, and the heavily-guarded bridge spanning it that has become the focal point for communal enmity. "We found the door smashed," said Semka, "so we moved in." <br><br>At the beginning of February, 20 Albanian families lived in this building. Now only one elderly couple remains, too afraid to speak to strangers. The rest fled across the river three weeks ago, after the worst bout of violence Kosovo has seen since the K-For peace-keepers arrived last June. <br><br>Two Serbs died when their United Nations bus was attacked, and 15 were hurt when a café was bombed. Eight Albanians were killed by a revenge mob; opinions differ as to whether it formed spontaneously or was organised. A week later the French troops controlling the sector came under fire from Albanians, who regard them as pro-Serb; two French soldiers were wounded and one Albanian died. At the same time Serbs fired at British peace-keepers guarding the bridge, whom they regard as pro-Albanian, and the British fired back. <br><br>All this culminated last week in the biggest demonstration the town has seen. On Monday 20,000 Albanians marched to the bridge, and a couple of thousand almost broke through. "We heard they were on their way, and there was panic in the streets," said Semka. "I thought of escaping, but my sister was still here, so we just hid in the flat. We don't go outdoors much, because you can be killed just like that." <br><br>Why stay if it is so dangerous? "I did go to Serbia with my husband for a while, but there's no work and no money there. My other sister's husband is unemployed, and she earns only 20 Deutschmarks a month [about £6.60] in a shop. Their rent is DM150. There are no jobs here either, but it's easier, because you don't have to pay rent, or for electricity or water." <br><br>This is the little-advertised nature of northern Kosovo's connection to Belgrade. In this enclave, where few Albanians ever lived, the water, the power, the newspapers, the food and the state salaries still come over the border from Serbia. Unlike the rest of Kosovo, almost everyone has a (free) telephone: a homesick Semka and her younger sister, Biljana, occasionally call up Vucitrn, where they used to live, and speak to any Albanians willing to speak to them. "If the people who used to live here come back," said Semka, "we would leave – as long as K-For secures our return to Vucitrn." <br><br>She is repeating the line taken by Oliver Ivanovic, the self-proclaimed leader of north Mitrovica's Serbs. In his office nearby, dominated by a huge Serbian tricolour, the dapper, English-speaking Mr Ivanovic questions the speed of the UN administration in seeking to return displaced Albanians to his territory. K-For is also starting to build a footbridge over the Ibar, so that Albanians might avoid Mr Ivanovic's force of "bridge monitors", armed with walkie-talkies. <br><br>"In eight months the UN and K-For have done nothing to return the hundreds of thousands of Serbs driven out of Prizren, Pec or Pristina," he says. "This is all we have left, and we are staying." <br><br>According to senior figures in Nato and the US who spoke out last week, Mr Ivanovic is Belgrade's man. He denies it, but the more northern Kosovo is purged of Albanians, the easier it becomes to achieve what may be his ultimate aim: to join his enclave to the rest of Serbia, and to make the Ibar the frontier with a Kosovo which all Albanians believe must become independent. <br><br>Some link this to a rise in tension at the other end of Kosovo. The former Kosovo Liberation Army is said to be stirring up Albanian villages across the border in the far south of Serbia, where it meets Macedonia, while Serbian paramilitaries infiltrate Kosovo in retaliation. Perhaps an exchange of territory may result, in which Serbia gets northern Kosovo and the Albanians get what they already call "eastern Kosovo". <br><br>When the theory is put to Mr Ivanovic's opposite number across the river, Bajram Rexhepe, who has Albanian and American flags on his desk, all he will say is that this is "big politics". But he admits: "It is a reality that the north has a geographic and ethnic connection with Serbia."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo heads for ethnic partition ``x951722081,2188,``x``x
``xThe Observer<br><br>They survived the war - only to see a son killed and daughter maimed on the front line between Serbs and Albanians. Emma <br>Daly reports from Mitrovica<br><br>She is a survivor, a teenage girl with an iron will and the family's great hope for a better future. With her parents and her two younger brothers, Rrezarta Rrukeci made it unscathed through Kosovo's vicious war. <br><br>Despite the Nato bombardment and the expulsion of a million Albanians, the family never left home in the city of Mitrovica and were there to cheer the arrival of the international peacekeepers. <br><br>But this week Rrezarta, 17, who wants to be a lawyer, is preparing to travel to Slovenia. Perched up in bed, wearing pyjamas covered in teddy bears, she pulls back the duvet to reveal a bandaged stump and the zipper scar down her chest where the shrapnel hit. <br><br>'Oh, I forgot to tell you,' she says. 'My brother later died.' <br><br>On 4 February Rrezarta and her family, along with other relatives and neighbours, cowered in the apartment as the sounds of rampaging Serbs came closer. The front door was barricaded with a wardrobe. The voice of a neighbour among the crowd outside demanded that the family open up. 'Of course we disobeyed - we knew if we left they would kill us all. So they started shooting and then they threw the first grenade.' <br><br>The blast shattered windows, then a second explosion set the room on fire. 'Everything was in flames, and suddenly I saw holes appear in the glass and I realised a sniper was shooting from the building opposite. I went to the kitchen to get water for the fire.' <br><br>Then, a third explosion: 'I was on the floor and my leg was in my arms. It had been blown off and into my arms - that's why I lost a finger. I was trying to crawl to the next room. I opened the door to the dining area and everything had fallen to the floor. I saw my neighbour with her stomach spilling out and my brother, who was also hurt. <br><br>'I was praying to God, please take me, because the pain was...' <br><br>Her voice trails off. <br><br>Rrezarta and her family were victims of an orgy of violence that erupted in the divided city of Mitrovica on 4 February, the day after a rocket attack on a refugee bus killed two elderly Serbs. The multinational K-For troops and the undermanned UN international police tried to control the mobs but by the end of the night, eight Albanians were dead and at least three more would die of their injuries. <br><br>'This is what makes you feel so sad, and is so surprising,' says Rrezarta. 'We survived the war, and now...' <br><br>The seeds of the conflict were sown last summer when tens of thousands of Serbs fled Kosovo for fear of Albanian vengeance and French peacekeepers decided that maintaining calm in Mitrovica would best be achieved by discouraging Albanians from crossing the Ibar river to the northern half of the city where 20,000 Serbs were holed up. <br><br>Victorious Albanians wanted, understandably, to return to their homes in the north of the city - they were also fearful of partition, nervous that Serbs would create a de facto border at Mitrovica, thus keeping control of the Trepca mine. This ancient industrial complex is seen by many as Kosovo's potential economic salvation and is also of enormous symbolic importance to the Albanians, who are convinced Belgrade is scheming to split the province and take back the mine. <br><br>But now that most of the Serbs have long since fled, northern Mitrovica is the last viable enclave they hold - and the they are determined to stop their Albanian neighbours returning. 'It's better to keep that line [on the Ibar river],' says Oliver Ivanovic, a local Serb who has evolved into a smooth and media-friendly spokesman, despite Albanian allegations that he was involved in wartime atrocities. <br><br>He argues that because K-For was unable to prevent revenge attacks on Serbs elsewhere in Kosovo, there is no reason to think they will protect Serbs in Mitrovica - therefore, local Serbs must 'defend themselves'. <br><br>Such self-defence has this month forced the eviction of almost 700 Albanians and the hasty departure of another 1,500, who crossed the fortified western bridge and sought refuge in the Albanian half. K-For responded by flooding the city with troops and mounting Operation Ibar, a search for weapons which has led to a few arrests and some arms seizures. <br><br>But 2,000 of the 2,500 reinforcements have now been withdrawn after tensions calmed following a peaceful march from Pristina to Mitrovica last Monday. Although troops fired tear-gas to restrain some 200 trouble-makers who apparently wanted to cross the bridge to the Serb side, the demonstration was hailed by UN and Nato as a splendid and civilised effort to draw attention to Albanian desires to unify the city. Nato Secretary-General George Robertson yesterday insisted there were sufficient alliance troops in Kosovo to contain the crisis. <br><br>Around 4,300 soldiers are now patrolling Mitrovica, assisting 450 international police.'If you want to get to the heart of the matter, you have to look at it from the other person's point of view,' says Lieutenant-Colonel Nick Carter of the Royal Greenjackets, who was sent to Mitrovica to enforce Operation Ibar. <br><br>But that does not happen in Kosovo. And if Albanians and Serbs cannot live together, are not even willing to try, how are the UN and Nato to secure a stable, peaceful and multi-ethnic Kosovo? <br><br>One UN official in the city points out that it took years of patience to create even a semblance of normality in other Balkan cities split by ethnic wars. But as Carter says: 'This was something that has been festering here since the middle of June. The people here will only be patient for so long...'``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xA family blown apart in Kosovo's divided city ``x951722104,81490,``x``x
``xTheir own community denounces KLA fighters seeking to provoke a Nato intervention across the border<br>The Guardian<br>Jonathan Steele in Gnjilane <br><br>Armed clashes between ethnic Albanian fighters and Yugoslav forces in the border region between Serbia proper and the province of Kosovo threatens to turn into a new flashpoint and raises the possibility of Nato troops operating inside Serbia. <br>The new trouble spot is the south-western corner of Serbia which is largely populated by Albanians. Former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army have started to operate in the border villages, carrying guns, wearing paramilitary uniforms and attacking Serb police in an apparent bid to provoke a Serb reaction and Nato help. <br><br>A Serb policeman died and three others were wounded on Saturday night when Albanian gunmen ambushed a patrol on the main road between Gnjilane and Bujanovac. The attack with automatic rifles and grenades occurred about six kilometres inside Serbia near the village of Konsulj. The police returned fire, killing an Albanian, according to the state-owned news agency, Tanjug. The incident followed explosions in Bujanovac the previous night. <br><br>Although General Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme commander in Europe, has warned Albanians that Nato does not want to see fighting, United States forces are taking no chances. They have started to build a mini-base right on the border line between Kosovo and Serbia proper, close to the village of Dobrosin, from where tanks and troops in an observation tower look down on the increasingly brazen street forays by guerrillas in broad daylight. <br><br>Albanian leaders in the Kosovo's main city, Pristina, as well as ordinary people in the region, say they are against cross-border violence for fear of reprisals against the 70,000 Albanians who live in southern Serbia and a new round of ethnic cleansing by Serb security forces. But evidence on the ground suggests that embittered and now demobilised guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army have started armed patrols and military training for local people. <br><br>In their first interview with journalists at the weekend, local gunmen described what they called "the little army in uniform which arose among people to defend ourselves". <br><br>There was a strange sense of deja vu as we made the encounter, just like two years ago when the world first became aware of the Kosovo Liberation Army itself - the whispered contacts, the trail on muddy roads behind a car, the walk on snow-covered fields and through coppices of dwarf oak, and finally the meeting in a village house with a group of half a dozen men with AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifles. <br><br>The difference this time was that instead of the red-and-gold shoulder badge with the Albanian eagle and the letters UCK (the Albanian initials for the KLA), they now wear badges saying UCPMB, the initials of Presevo, Medveda, and Bujenovac. These are three towns in southern Serbia, in the area the guerrillas call "eastern Kosovo". <br><br>Speaking the Swiss dialect of French, their leader, dressed in civilian clothes, said: "Our soldiers have not come from somewhere else. They are from this village and region. It was part of Kosovo originally, but the borders were changed after the second world war. People here must have the right to decide how and where they want to live." <br><br>The UCPMB was formed on January 26, he said, after Serb police entered the village of Dobrosin and killed Isa Saqipi, 31, and his brother Shaip, 35. They were innocently cutting wood, he insisted. "There have always been incidents but after that January event people began to reflect and organise," he said. <br><br>He acknowledged that half of Dobrosin's 2,500 inhabitants had fled across the border to Kosovo. The two broth ers' graves, a mere 200 yards from the barrels of the American tanks on the hill, are covered with wreaths. <br><br>Dobrosin lies just inside the five-kilometre-deep "Ground Safety Zone", which the Yugoslav forces accepted when they signed the agreement which ended Nato's bombing last June and authorised the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo (K-For). Local Serb police are allowed to operate in the zone, but Yugoslav army troops and special police with heavy weapons are forbidden. <br><br>Although US forces who control Kosovo's eastern sector send low-flying helicopters along the border line, they respect Serbia's sovereignty by not penetrating the buffer zone. But the ceasefire agreement has a major loophole. Negotiated in a rush as part of the package which put Kosovo under United Nations administration, it said any violation "would be subject to K-For military action" but did not specify what exactly might trigger a K-For response. <br><br>"If atrocities occur in the area, we will go in and take action. We're working on what the definition of an atrocity is," Major Michael Boehme, information officer Camp Monteith, the US base in Gnjilane, told the Guardian yesterday. <br><br>The K-For commander, General Klaus Reinhardt, along with Dr Bernard Kouchner, the top UN administrator and the American general in command of the eastern sector, were preparing detailed guidelines, he said.Gary Carrell, an American policeman who commands the UN police in the area, said his staff had held "preliminary meetings" with the Serbian police on the border in the last few weeks. <br><br>Albanians cross the border freely and the main aim was to prevent people involved in assassinations of Serbs from slipping away. "We're pretty sure the suspects in the killing of three Serbs in Kosovo last month were from Presevo," he said. But the plan for further meetings with the Serb police was vetoed by Jock Covey, the American who is deputy head of the UN administration. The Serb police, known as the MUP, won a fearful reputation among Albanians during last year's expulsions and killings. <br><br>It is hard to gauge what support the UCPMB has. Hundreds of people from the region have fled to Kosovo in recent weeks because of stepped-up Serb police action and alleged intimidation. <br><br>An inhabitant of Bujenovac, who has brought his family to Kosovo, said he spoke for many when he denounced the UCPMB. But he insisted on anonymity. "In Presevo it is not so bad, since the population is 95% Albanian. In Bujenovac where the Serbs are 40% it is much tougher for Albanians," he said. <br><br>Yugoslav officials agree that violence in the region is growing. General Vladimir Lazarevic, the commander of the Yugoslav Third Army, told a Belgrade newspaper recently that "the adverse political and security situation in Kosovo is spreading to municipalities bordering Kosovo". <br><br>But he rejected the notion that Albanians leaving the area for Kosovo were refugees. "This is a plan aimed at convincing the world that Serbia is expelling Albanians." He added that K-For wanted to provide a pretext for more drastic measures, diplomatic, political, and perhaps military.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbanian gunmen stir trouble in Serbia ``x951722121,26141,``x``x
``xThe New York Times <br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>PRISTINA, Kosovo, Feb. 27 -- Because of the risk to the soldiers, the Pentagon has refused to allow American troops to return to northern Mitrovica, the section dominated by Serbs in the divided town that has become a flash point of ethnic tension in Kosovo, senior United Nations and Western officials say. <br><br>Gen. Klaus Reinhardt of Germany, the commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping forces in Kosovo known as KFOR, said negotiations were continuing. <br><br>Asked directly in an interview here today whether the Americans had refused to send troops back to northern Mitrovica, General Reinhardt paused for a time and then said: "Your question comes a couple of days too early. We're working on this question." <br><br>General Reinhardt has pushed hard to internationalize the KFOR troops in Mitrovica, which is in the French zone of Kosovo. When American troops first entered the north to search for weapons a week ago, angry Serbs hurled snowballs, stones and bricks at them, and they finally withdrew. The soldiers were criticized for aggressive tactics such as breaking down doors. <br><br>The general said that because he did not want the Serbs to dictate who would patrol northern Mitrovica, he sent American and German troops back into the north a few days later, but at 5 A.M., to do a weapons search. <br><br>But officials here say the Americans, who are in charge of the tense eastern sector of Kosovo, do not want to send troops back to Mitrovica. General Reinhardt said many countries in the peacekeeping force that had refused his requests to help patrol Mitrovica in November and December were now willing to take part after violence this month killed at least 11 people, most of them Albanian. <br><br>"Today a lot of the restrictions on me that were in place in December are gone," the general said, praising the Swedes, Finns and Danes in particular for their willingness to take on the risks of Mitrovica. "We'll see when the Americans go back there." <br><br>Despite the Pentagon's reluctance, officials say that Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has been on the telephone almost daily with Bernard Kouchner, the head of the United Nations mission here, urging a solution to the Mitrovica issue. <br><br>General Reinhardt also said he had pressed the Americans hard in the last month to do a better job of securing Kosovo's eastern border with the rest of Serbia. The goal there is to prevent armed Albanians, some of them in uniform, from attacking targets inside Serbia proper, especially in the three-mile-wide demilitarized zone where Serbian troops are not allowed to enter, although the police are. <br><br>Asked why such armed groups -- offshoots of the supposedly dismantled Kosovo Liberation Army -- were allowed to enter Serbia from Kosovo, the general bristled. <br><br>"We're not allowing it," he said firmly, noting that KFOR had arrested six armed people on Saturday trying to go across the border. "I told people to arrest anyone who tries to go out of our sector into eastern Kosovo. We close down the border as much as possible. We recognized that something was brewing, and my instructions were to seal that border more hermetically before there is a real crisis." <br><br>American troops have now built watchtowers along the border with Serbia, near the towns of Bujanovac, Presevo and Medvedja, which have majority Albanian populations and which more radical Albanians refer to as "eastern Kosovo." <br><br>Armed Albanians wearing uniforms with shoulder patches like those of the K.L.A., but representing an organization dubbed the Liberation Army of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja, have been seen in the demilitarized zone. In response, the government of Yugoslavia put four more militarized police units into the area, alarming NATO officials. <br><br>The area is also known as an entry point for drug smuggling, and General Reinhardt said he was still asking capitals for specialized officers in drug interdiction. The United Nations police, badly under strength, has also requested officers with such expertise, but in vain. <br><br>The official Yugoslav press agency, Tanjug, reported today that a Serbian policeman and an ethnic Albanian guerrilla were killed on Saturday night and three Serb policemen were wounded in a shootout near the village of Konculj, when Albanians ambushed a police patrol with automatic weapons and hand grenades. <br><br>It was the third recent attack against the police in the area. The Serbian police said a bomb damaged the courthouse in Bujanovac on Friday night, in an attack they blamed on "Albanian terrorists." <br><br>Western officials have accused Belgrade of trying to destabilize Kosovo, while the Yugoslavs accuse KFOR of not stopping the infiltration of armed Albanians from Kosovo. <br><br>General Reinhardt said the Kosovo peacekeeping force was now operating more intensely to check the province's northern border with Serbia proper, above Mitrovica, to prevent the flow of arms and undercover police or intelligence officers into Kosovo from Serbia. <br><br>Danish and Belgian battalions are checking vehicles more vigorously, he said, and last week the peacekeepers began to use a computer at a checkpoint to register who goes in and out. Although Kosovo is formally part of Yugoslavia, KFOR says it has the right to deny entrance to suspicious people or to deport them. <br><br>"Normally the military does not do such work," General Reinhardt said. "But there is no point in complaining. This is an area of big concern for me, and I have sent officers with specialized training to assist in this job, and I have sent my deputy to supervise, and I'm feeling very comfortable" about the security of northern Kosovo. <br><br>The general said he had been geting most of the money and personnel he needed for his military operation, but that the NATO governments "that decided to get us here" were less supportive of the United Nations civilian administration here. <br><br>In particular, he said, the failure to send promised funding for the civilian budget and to send promised international police officers has meant that his troops must do a great deal more policing than they want to do, or are trained or equipped to do. With only 2,000 international police officers here, he said, considerably fewer than 800 are on the streets on any given day. <br><br>"We're missing 3,000 police officers," said the general, who has initiated joint patrols by his troops with the police. "But there's no use complaining. It won't change the situation, so I have to make the best out of it." <br><br>The lack of international prosecutors and judges also annoys him, and he acknowledged the reluctance of Albanian prosecutors and judges to convict other Albanians. <br><br>Last week, he said, two Serbs were killed and KFOR soldiers immediately arrested suspects, having tracked them with dogs, and found the weapons used. "They turned these guys over to the police and the prosecutor, and the prosecutor released them the same day," he said. "How can we enforce law and order if this takes place?" <br><br>General Reinhardt admitted with a degree of embarrassment that someone in Mitrovica had stolen his personal revolver while Albanians were cheering him last Monday, as he sought to defuse a large Albanian demonstration. Normally the weapon is secured to his holster on a cable, but the day before, the ring attaching the pistol and the cable broke, he said. <br><br>"People were touching me and pulling me and shaking my hands, and it just went," he said. "It happened. So what? For me the key thing was to prevent the crowd from becoming violent, and when we told them to go home, they went."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO General Hopes G.I.'s Will Return to Kosovo Town``x951722138,11822,``x``x
``xUNITED NATIONS, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Many Balkan peace efforts remain largely a "big holding operation" pending a change in the Belgrade regime, whose leaders have been indicted as war criminals, U.N. envoy Carl Bildt told the Security Council on Monday. <br>"We can neither make peace without Belgrade, nor can we talk about the different issues of the region as a whole without taking in Serbia," he said, briefing an open council meeting as Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy for the Balkans. <br><br>"But nor is there any way in which we can deal with those personalities that are indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) or their close associates," Bildt added, alluding to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and some of his aides. <br><br>Referring to the conflicts that have afflicted Bosnia, Kosovo and other parts of the Balkans in recent years, he said: "We are thus, in a certain sense, in a situation in which many of our efforts in the region can be seen as little more than a big holding operation until change in Serbia opens up the prospect of moving forward with a proper peace process as well as with the wider regional agenda of reform, reconciliation and reintegration." <br><br>But just waiting for a transition in Belgrade is not acceptable, since there might be further conflicts, said Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister. <br><br>"We must actively seek change, we must meet the provocations that are there and will come further, and we must actively try to prevent existing tensions from boiling over into open conflict," he said. <br><br>Referring specifically to the situation between Serbia and Montenegro, he said: "As long as there is no change of regime in Belgrade these two republics of Yugoslavia are set on a somewhat slow but very steady collision course." <br><br>Milosevic had "grossly misused the federal institutions and grossly violated the rights of Montenegro" within that federation, Bildt said. <br><br>That the leadership of Montenegro reacted, not by seceding outright but by proposing a reformed relationship between Serbia and Montenegro, was an indication of responsibility and statesmanship that should not go unrewarded. <br><br>Bildt said the larger issue in the region was "the conflict between the forces of integration and the forces of disintegration." <br><br>"The conflict is between those who favour, or at least accept, integration within their societies as well as between them, and those who favour, often in the name of extreme nationalism, disintegration within their societies and between the nations." <br><br>Looking at the region today, "we have to conclude that the forces of disintegration are still stronger than the forces of integration," he said. <br><br>A "true deal" would be one that met the minimum demands of everyone, but the maximum demands of no one, he said, adding that this was the essence of the 1995 political deal that resulted in a peace agreement for Bosnia. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBildt says Balkans await change of Belgrade regime``x951813098,26833,``x``x
``xPRISTINA (Reuters) - The United Nations warned on Monday of growing violence against Kosovo Serbs, including the murder of a physician and an anti-tank mine that destroyed a Serb bus.<br><br>A Serb community leader in the north of the troubled province accused Albanian militants of trying to provoke incidents between Serbs and the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo, while KFOR said it was keeping a sharp eye on the Serbian border, where diplomats say there has been a buildup of troops.<br><br>``Over the weekend, UNMIK police reported an increased level of violence against Serbs around Kosovo,'' said Susan Manuel, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).<br><br>Serb gynecologist Josef Vasic was shot dead Saturday in the eastern town of Gnjilane.<br><br>A Serb bus struck an anti-tank mine in the Serbian side of the tense northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica early Monday, wrecking the rear of the bus and leaving a crater in the main road to northern Kosovo.<br><br>French forces who control the area said only the driver and a ticket collector were aboard and neither was injured, but they said the mine had been deliberately set to cause damage on a road used not only by Serbs but also by KFOR.<br><br>Manuel said other less serious incidents, which caused a few minor injuries, included the use of hand grenades and other explosive devices in Gnjilane, Pecs, Mitrovica and other towns still occupied by Serbs.<br> <br>The attacks come at a time when the United Nations and KFOR are both trying to convince Serbs to stay in the ethnic- Albanian dominated province and to agree a plan to end the ethnic division of the flashpoint northern mining city of Mitrovica.<br><br>But Oliver Ivanovic, a leader of the Serbian National Council in Mitrovica, said the mine explosion showed that Albanian militants were trying to stir up trouble.<br><br>``They didn't succeed in causing trouble between Albanians and Serbs so now they are trying to provoke incidents between Serbs and KFOR,'' he said. ``I know that KFOR was the target and this was not done accidentally.''<br><br>Chief KFOR spokesman Henning Philipp said NATO forces in Kosovo were watching closely what diplomats have said is a buildup of Serbian troops along the border.<br><br>``What we are doing is monitoring the boundary...and controlling it,'' Philipp said.<br><br>Meanwhile, thousands of ethnic Albanians attended a ceremony in the Kosovo village of Likosane to mark the second anniversary of the first major clash between Serb police and guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. Says Kosovo Serbs Are Targeted``x951813122,58550,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br><br>Richard Norton-Taylor <br>Tuesday February 29, 2000 <br><br>The war crimes tribunal in The Hague yesterday began the trial of three Bosnian Serbs accused of the torture, rape, and murder, of thousands of Muslim and Croatian civilians at the Omarska prison camp, where western pictures of inmates in 1992 provoked international outrage. <br>In what prosecutors described as the first case to deal directly with "a system of concentration camps", Miroslav Kvocka, Milojica Kos and Mlado Radic were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for presiding over the atrocities at Omarska and other sites.<br><br>A fourth defendant, Zoran Zigic, a Bosnian Serb taxi driver, is accused of torturing and murdering prisoners.<br><br>The Australian prosecutor, Grant Niemann, told the Hague trbunal judges that "the images of skeletal malnutrition . . . sent shock waves around the world", when they were first broadcast.<br><br>Omarska was, he alleged, an integral part of the ethnic cleansing policy of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic: "This is about a government policy of persecution and ethnic cleansing. It was a crime committed on a massive scale," he said.<br><br>"The evidence will prove that thousands of Muslim and Croat detainees suffered and died because of their ethnicity, either directly at the hands of these accused or people under their authority," he said.<br><br>Serb forces swept through the Prijedor region of northern Bosnia, herding more than 6,000 Muslims and Croats into Omarska and the nearby Keraterm and Trnopolje camps, the tribunal was told.<br><br>Pointing to a replica of the Omarska camp, Mr Niemann described how new arrivals were beaten with batons and rifle butts and crowded into stiflingly hot rooms with no beds and meagre sanitary facilities.<br><br>Although the prison was predominantly male, several dozen women were held in the administration building. They worked as cleaners and were raped nightly by camp staff, he said.<br><br>Corpses accumulated out side an interrogation centre known as the White House and were dumped in graves in a meadow beside a razed mosque.<br><br>"We dug up those graves," said Mr Niemann, showing slides of exhumed bodies with what he called "blunt object injuries and bullet wounds to the head".<br><br>The prosecution say Mr Kvocka, 43, was responsible for much of what happened at Omarska as commander in June 1992 and later deputy commander. Mr Kos, 36, and Mr Radic, 47, said to be shift commanders, ordered guards to beat prisoners and sometimes participated themselves, prosecutors maintain.<br><br>Mr Zigic, 41, is accused of going on torture and murder rampages, forcing male prisoners to perform sexual acts with each other and to lie down on broken glass.<br><br>Of the 50,000 Muslims who lived in Prijedor before the ethnic war in Bosnia, only 6,000 remained after the conflict. The rest either fled or were killed, Mr Niemann told the tribunal. The Croatian population of 6,000 was cut by half. Those who remained have lived "in permanent fear and uncertainty".<br><br>In an opening statement, Mr Niemann told the tribunal that the evidence would prove "that the accused and others under their authority confined, beat, tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered many of the Bosnian and Croat detainees ... solely because of the victims' ethnicity".<br><br>He added: "It [ethnic cleansing] was certainly committed by more people than you see here today, by a large number of politicians, military police and loyal followers in the puppet entity . . . dangling on the strings of Slobodan Milosevic for the purpose of creating an ethnically pure greater Serbia."<br><br>Defence lawyers are expected to argue that their clients are scapegoats for the tribunal's inability to apprehend the alleged architects of that strategy higher up the military and political leadership.<br><br>Despite repeated calls from the Hague tribunal for their arrest, the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, remain free.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBosnian Serbs on trial for prison camp atrocities ``x951813151,19766,``x``x
``xBy Michael Roddy<br><br>KOSOVSKA MITROVICA (Reuters) - A Serb bus was blown up Monday when it struck an anti-tank mine placed on a heavily traveled road in the tense Kosovo city of Mitrovica, French KFOR peacekeepers said.<br><br>Lt. Col. Patrick Chanliau said the bus was empty except for its driver when it hit the mine near a Muslim cemetery in the Serb side of the town. There were no injuries.<br><br>Chanliau said the explosion, which completely destroyed the vehicle, had not been an accident.<br><br>``It is clear to us that this mine was not there yesterday,'' he said. ``It is a road that is used frequently so we would have to say that it was deliberate.''<br><br>Both KFOR and Serb traffic used the road, he said.<br><br>An official of the company operating the bus said it was a regular line. ``It takes kids to school in the morning and brings workers home at night.''<br><br>The official said apart from the driver there was also a ticket taker on the bus. The official Yugoslav Tanjug news agency reported there were two people in the vehicle, and that none of them was injured.<br><br>Chanliau said French forces who make up the bulk of the KFOR peacekeepers in Mitrovica were still investigating the explosion. He could not say if there was any link between the blast and the second anniversary Monday of a fight between Serbs and KLA guerrillas in Likoshan, 22 miles west of the provincial capital Pristina, a key date in the ethnic violence that has ravaged Kosovo.<br><br>Albanian Ceremony<br><br>Former KLA rebels were expected to hold a ceremony in Likoshan to commemorate the battle in which 24 Albanians and nine Serb policemen were killed.<br><br>KFOR peacekeepers were also on guard for any disturbance in Mitrovica, the city divided between Serbs in the north and Albanians in the south.<br><br>Chanliau said that during routine weapons searches Sunday French forces had recovered several arms near a monument to miners on top of a hill in the northern part of Mitrovica.<br><br>He said the cache included two Ak 47s, an automatic pistol, a hunting rifle and seven detonators. But otherwise Mitrovica, scene of ethnic violence three times this month, was calm.<br><br>``We cannot be too optimistic but we should not be too pessimistic. For the moment the city is calm,'' he said.<br><br>At a police station of the U.N. civilian police in the southern part of the city, officers said that recent reinforcements sent to help calm the situation in Mitrovica had almost tripled the number of police there.<br><br>``It's like Christmas,'' said officer Chip Duncan, adding the number of police had risen to 98 from 35 from various countries.<br><br>Duncan said that their impact might not be felt immediately on the streets of the rundown mining city because the officers would have to find their way around.<br><br>Albanian newspapers reported that some Albanian families who had left northern Mitrovica during the recent violence had returned to their homes on a one-by-one basis that was not part of an organized U.N. and KFOR plan to return some 70 families.<br><br>U.N. and KFOR officials said they were unaware of the returns and could not comment. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb Bus Blown Up by Mine in Mitrovica``x951813174,73882,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br><br>Kosovo: special report <br><br>Jonathan Steele in Pristina <br>Wednesday March 1, 2000 <br><br>An ambitious UN plan to reunite ethnically divided Mitrovice, in part by arresting paramilitaries and ringing the Kosovan city with checkpoints to control access by hardliners, has been scuttled because key Nato governments are not ready to mount foot patrols for fear of suffering casualties. <br>According to well placed sources, the French commander who runs the northern sector of Kosovo that includes Mitrovice, General Pierre de Saquis de Sannes, has not yet complied with an urgent request from General Klaus Reinhardt, the commander of the international peacekeeping force, K-For, to start "robust, dismounted, community-based operations". <br><br>Instead, Gen De Saquis de Sannes is continuing the less risky option of armoured vehicle patrols and static guard positions. <br><br>The damaging dispute has highlighted the chaotic chain of command within K-For, whose commanders prefer to take final orders from their national governments. <br><br>The glaring inadequacies in K-For's continuity have become such a sore spot for the force's command that General Silvio Mazzarolli, the Italian deputy commander of K-For, was hastily withdrawn to Italy a few days ago when he criticised it publicly. <br><br>Bernard Kouchner, the French former minister who heads the UN mission in Kosovo, has had frequent arguments with Paris. <br><br>Shocked by the violence of the past few weeks in Mitrovice, and determined to prevent the city's postwar division hardening into a partition, he has completed a four-stage plan which was shown yesterday to senior ethnic Albanian politicians in the joint administrative council. The plan has also been given to Oliver Ivanovic, the leader of the Serb national council in northern Mitrovice. <br><br>It aims to seal off the city with a few well controlled access points on the north and south sides to stop gun running by Serbs and Albanians. <br><br>Extra international police and troops would patrol regularly and conduct "intrusive" weapons searches in people's homes. <br><br>Street demonstrations would be restricted, and known extremists such as the Serbs who patrol the main bridge with walkie-talkies would be expelled from the city. The cafe Dolce Vita, where Serb hardliners gather at the northern edge of the main bridge, would be shut down. <br><br>The UN would assign several foreign judges under high security to convict and sentence trouble-makers and an extra detention centre would be set up. The later stages of the plan foresee a joint Serb-Albanian council for the reunited city. <br><br>UN officials feel the plan must be put into action fast and are angry with K-For's hesitation. "[Kosovo Liberation Army] pressure on K-For is very strong. It is making veiled threats for another march on the north, and this time to force their way through. K-For is not prepared to stop them properly," said one senior UN official. <br><br>The US has also not yet complied with the K-For commander's request for foot patrols in northern Mitrovice. Germany, too, is unwilling to supply police for the city. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNato derails UN scheme for Mitrovice ``x951901669,14425,``x``x
``xThe Washington Post<br> <br>By Roberto Suro<br>Washington Post Staff Writer<br>Wednesday, March 1, 2000; Page A18 <br><br><br>U.S. troops in Kosovo will stick to their own turf under orders announced by the Pentagon yesterday that sharply limit missions to assist the peacekeepers of other nationalities. <br><br>The new restrictions reflect concerns in the Defense Department and the White House over a violent encounter last week between a Serbian mob and American soldiers who had been sent to help French peacekeepers with a police action in the French sector, according to a senior military official.<br><br>"The issue here is, how often do we get dragged into a situation where we have to perform out-of-sector operations that can diminish our ability to operate within our own sector?" Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon said.<br><br>About 5,300 U.S. troops patrol the southeastern sector of Kosovo. French, Italian, German and British forces are in charge of their own sectors of the troubled Serbian province. The extent to which troops of various nationalities are available to reinforce each other has become a matter of both military and diplomatic dispute, as NATO peacekeepers contend with rising unrest while their own numbers decline.<br><br>The new orders came in a letter from Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to NATO's top military commander, U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark.<br><br>"The chairman made it clear that he doesn't think it's appropriate for American troops to go to out-of-sector operations on a regular basis to take up police work that should be done by the forces in those other sectors," Bacon said.<br><br>The still-classified letter was dated Feb. 20, Bacon said. That was the day when a battalion of 350 U.S. soldiers helped conduct a house-to-house search for illegal weapons in Mitrovica, a town in the French sector where Serbs and the ethnic Albanians who dominate Kosovo have frequently clashed. The Americans encountered a rock-throwing mob of protesting Serbs; and although no U.S. soldier was seriously injured, senior civilian and military policymakers felt the mission was risky and unnecessary, senior officials said.<br><br>Clark informed Washington about the mission but ordered it on his own authority, just as he had on two previous occasions when U.S forces went to the aid of peacekeepers in other sectors. Appearing before a congressional hearing yesterday, Clark defended cross-sector operations as essential in Kosovo.<br><br>Under the terms of Shelton's letter, however, U.S. troops will operate in other sectors only "on an extraordinary emergency basis," Bacon said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAmerican Troops in Kosovo Restricted to U.S. Sector``x951901695,74822,``x``x
``xRadio Netherlands<br><br>By our correspondent James Kliphuis, Budapest, 29 February 2000<br><br>Almost a year after NATO planes first started dropping bombs on Serbia and Kosovo, and eight months after the international community sent a peace force into Kosovo, ethnic tension - between Serbs and ethnic Albanians - has once again flared up in the region. Ethnic clashes in Mitrovica have been hitting the headlines. Especially when Serbs started pelting stones at KFOR troops wanting to search Serb homes for weapons. So far, there's been little interest in another conflict that's boiling over in three predominantly Albanian municipalities, just across Kosovo's eastern border - in Serbia proper, where KFOR has no mandate to proceed. <br><br>Recently, tension has been on the increase in southern Serbia near the eastern internal border with Kosovo. Over the weekend, a Serb policeman and an Albanian guerrilla fighter were killed in that area. KFOR, the international peace force, has no mandate there since it's just outside Kosovo. In the same region, but inside Kosovo - on the other side of the border - a Serb doctor was gunned down by an unidentified gunman on Saturday in the nearby town of Gnjilane. In this south-Serb border area, the towns of Bujanovac, Preševo and Medvedja have - like Kosovo - an ethnic-Albanian majority. <br><br>Spiral of violence<br>With the upsurge in tension, a sizeable number of Albanians have been moving from their homes in Serbia-proper into Kosovo: they don't feel adequately protected by Serbian police in the border region. There are reports that members of special Serb police units are active in the area on either side of the border. Also, there are claims that special forces left behind as `sleepers´ in the province when Serb police and Yugoslav army units pulled out of Kosovo last year, have been involved in the recent violence in Mitrovica. <br>On the other hand, there are reports that Kosovo Albanians, former members of the (disbanded) Kosovo Liberation Army, now belonging to the Kosovo Protection Corps, have been driving across the border into Serbia dressed in civilian clothes. To sum up, current developments in and near Kosovo are beginning to display an uncomfortable resemblance to the spiral of violence of early last year. <br><br>International presence<br>However, the big difference with last year is that the international community is now massively present on the ground in Kosovo with adequately trained and equipped military and civilian forces to enforce peace between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians. Alas, so far, representatives of the international community show little or no sign of really understanding what is going on under their very noses.<br><br>Speculation<br>The recent ethnic violence in Mitrovica - further west in Kosovo - which left at least eleven people dead, led to Western speculation that the tension had all been orchestrated by Slobodan Milosevic. While there is every reason to believe that Serb agents provocateurs are more or less permanently active in Kosovo, that is by no means the whole story. The Kosovo Albanians are just as adept in provoking ethnic clashes: a demonstrative march of tens of thousands of Albanians on the flashpoint Mitrovica can hardly be described as an effort to defuse the tension. <br>Slobodan Milosevic is still counting on the West getting tired of the Kosovo Albanians' lack of readiness to co-operate in building a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society in Kosovo. So far, the official line of the Western allies is simply to adopt an ever-harsher tone of voice when addressing either side. The question is how long this can go on.<br><br>Patience running out<br>In June, KFOR's mandate comes up for renewal. Then, the question will be asked whether there are any signs yet of a more durable peace in Kosovo, or whether the international peace force and the UN administration only serve to keep Serbs and Albanians apart. There are indications that here and there, patience is beginning to run out. It's already been noticed that the language of NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson, when he recently admonished Serbs and Albanians, bore an uncanny resemblance to the language NATO used in the runup to the air raids - now nearly a year ago``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMitrovica On a Downhill Road``x951901727,4425,``x``x
``xThe Times<br><br>FROM CHARLES BREMNER IN PARIS<br> <br>AN RAF air traffic controller has been blamed by French investigators for "forgetting" an airliner under his control and allowing it to plough into a mountain in Kosovo, killing all 24 aboard. <br>The alleged negligence of the RAF non-commissioned officer (NCO) was cited by the Accident Investigation Bureau as one of two main causes for the crash of the ATR-42 turbo-prop aircraft north of Pristina in November. The two-man Italian crew were also criticised for slipshod procedures. <br><br>Three Britons were among those aboard the French-registered aircraft. It was chartered by the World Food Programme from the Italian SI-Fly airline, and was carrying aid workers from Rome to Kosovo. Nicholas Evens, 34, a builder from Birmingham, and Kevin Lay, 36, a building supervisor from Winchester, who both worked for Tear Fund, and Andrea Curry, 23, a construction engineer from Armagh, who was on her first aid mission for Goal, died. <br><br>The investigators complained that Britain had refused permission to interview the NCO who was on duty - a claim that the RAF denied. The NCO, who was the sole approach control officer at the RAF-run airport, was not named, but the report said that he was aged 40, had qualified in 1990 and had had only five hours' training on the radar used at Pristina, and no experience in directing air traffic in areas of high terrain. <br><br>Yesterday the RAF denied that its air controller was to blame, and said that it was still investigating the crash. A spokesman added: "We allowed the French every opportunity to speak to him and have offered to help in their investigation." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRAF air controller blamed for Kosovo death crash``x951987706,3186,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia, Feb 29 (Reuters) - The Yugoslav army set up checkpoints near the Montenegro-Albania frontier on Tuesday, checking travellers' documents but allowing traffic to flow through a reopened border crossing. <br>The army declared on Monday that a 1997 decision to close the border was still in force, meaning, in effect, that last Thursday's reopening of the crossing point by the governments of Albania and Western-leaning Montenegro was illegal. <br><br>But the crossing itself remained open for traffic on Tuesday evening. <br><br>A Reuters reporter found that the Second Army, whose area of responsibility includes Montenegro, had set up two separate checkpoints near each other about two km (1.25 miles) from the Bozaje border crossing. <br><br>A few military policemen in bullet-proof vests and armed with automatic rifles manned the checkpoints, letting vehicles through after writing down the licence plate numbers. <br><br>Montenegrin police, seen as loyal to the republic's independence-minded leadership, were manning the crossing itself, checking luggage of those entering from Albania. <br><br>Around 300 people and 50 vehicles pass the Bozaje crossing daily. <br><br>On Monday, the army also denied Montenegrin media reports that it had raised its combat readiness in the republic following the reopening of the border. <br><br>The Montenegrin pro-government daily Pobjeda said on Sunday that soldiers and heavy weaponry had been deployed near the crossing, which the Yugoslav supreme defence council closed three years ago when Albania plunged into anarchy. <br><br>Montenegro, which is Serbia's last remaining partner in the Ygoslav federation, has distanced itself from Belgrade's policies since NATO's 11-week bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 over Serbia's repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. <br><br>It has increased its autonomy in finance and foreign policy, leaving the Yugoslav army as the last joint institution still functioning in both republics. <br><br>Last week, NATO's military chief, U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, described the situation in Montenegro as very tense and said the alliance was closely watching developments there. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugo army checkpoint by Montenegrin-Albanian border``x951987758,18820,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br><br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>OBROSIN, Serbia, March 1 -- Just across the boundary line from Kosovo, guarded more visibly now by American troops in watchtowers, armed Albanians wearing uniforms of a new branch of the Kosovo Liberation Army are training for a battle the West does not want them to have. <br><br>Their numbers and leadership are a mystery, but today fewer than 20 men, wearing a mixture of German and American fatigues, did exercises in a muddy field with their weapons, including a heavy machine gun. <br><br>On their arms they wear a cloth badge of red, black and yellow that looks exactly like that of the supposedly disbanded and disarmed Kosovo Liberation Army. The only difference is their name: the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, all towns in Serbia itself, although their populations are largely ethnic Albanian. <br><br>Their commander here would not give his name, but said he had been wanted by the Serbs since the mid-1980's. The men said they were all former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the guerrilla army of Kosovo Albanians that fought for independence from Serbia, and villagers said they were local people. <br><br>They are acting "to defend their country, their village and their land," said Zymer Zajidi, 30, a farmer. <br><br>Senior officials of the United Nations and the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, known as KFOR, say the men appear to be members of the Albanian rebel group who refused to turn in their weapons and now want to "liberate" what they call "Eastern Kosovo," where at least 70,000 Albanians live in the arc from Medvedja in the north to Presevo in the south. <br><br>By ordering the ambushing of Serbian police officers and sometimes the intimidation of Serbian farmers, the leaders of this new army "are hoping that the Serbs will retaliate with excessive force against civilian populations and create a wave of outrage and pressure on KFOR to respond," said a United Nations official. "It's explosive and dangerous, and we hope KFOR uses restraint." <br><br>Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, the German who commands the peacekeepers, said in an interview that he had pushed the Americans hard to seal the boundary between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia. And in fact, less than two weeks ago, the Americans moved checkpoints and built observation towers on the boundary line. <br><br>One overlooks this village from a hill, while listening equipment and American tanks line the ridge above Dobrosin. The Americans are now at the edge of a three-mile demilitarized zone in which the Serbian police can operate, but not Serbian troops with heavy weapons, a zone in which Dobrosin sits. <br><br>General Reinhardt is adamant in saying his troops will not support any new insurgency in Serbia. Still, the situation is not always so clear on the ground. An American sergeant first class, commanding this checkpoint, said, "We're just here to make sure the locals are O.K." But when asked what he could do if the Serbian police returned and the locals were not O.K., he shrugged and said, "There ain't much we can do, unless they shoot at us." <br><br>The soldiers can return fire, he said. Wouldn't that encourage the Albanians to fire on the Americans if the Serbs came, to make it seem as if the Serbs were shooting? He shrugged again. <br><br>The Americans now have serious checkpoints and towers along the three main roads into the area from Kosovo, officials said. But despite those, it was a simple matter to drive over primitive country roads of mud, ice and snow in the demilitarized zone in a four-wheel-drive vehicle and avoid any checkpoint, in a region that has for centuries been used by smugglers and drug runners. <br><br>The fighters were nervous today, even brusque, and would not give their names or allow photographs of their faces. <br><br>On Tuesday they shot up a car belonging to the office of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, which had come from Belgrade and apparently did not stop at one of their checkpoints. An Irish man was wounded in the leg, and the fighters, embarrassed and worried about a possible Serbian response, took the man and his Serbian interpreter to the Americans near the watchtower for medical help. <br><br>The fighters say their organization was born on Jan. 26, when two local farmers here, brothers named Isa and Shaip Saqipi, 36 and 32, were killed by the Serbian police as they were returning to the village from cutting wood in the hills. <br><br>The villagers say the Serbs of the militarized police were on an operation, with full uniforms, flak jackets and heavy weapons, including a tank. Some seven Serbian policemen were in the village and 40 more in the hills. <br><br>That was the last time the Serbian police have shown up here, but this village of about 1,500 now has fewer than 30 families living in it, the rest having fled into Kosovo, staying with friends and relatives in Gnjilane, Malisevo and Podgradje, where the Americans have another checkpoint. <br><br>"We live here with one eye open," said Halim Hasani, a teacher in the village. "We're always ready to flee." He said people were afraid now even to go shopping in Bujanovac, because the Serbian police had checkpoints along the road and sometimes turned the villagers back. <br><br>Asked if he thought the presence of the fighters might bring the Serbian police back to Dobrosin, he went silent, then said, "Possibly." He stopped, then added hopefully: "But they attack no one. They are only working to defend our land." <br><br>But sometimes these fighters do attack, and they are being disingenuous when they say their group was born with the deaths of the Saqipi brothers a month ago. The Serbian police have been complaining of attacks on Serbian villagers around Medvedja since the late summer, and United Nations officials in Pristina say the group has been active in Dobrosin at least since November. <br><br>In mid-January three Serbs were killed in nearby Mucibaba, closer to Presevo, and the Serbs moved in at least four units of the Interior Ministry's militarized police to the area. <br><br>Ambushes of policemen have intensified, with one killed and three wounded last weekend. One Albanian fighter was also killed in a shootout. And the Serbs say they found a bomb over the weekend in a courthouse in Bujanovac, which they blamed on "armed Albanian terrorists." <br><br>Attacks on more moderate or loyal Albanian politicians in Serbia have also increased, including the murder last month of Zemail Mustafi, the Albanian vice president of the Bujanovac branch of President Slobodan Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party. <br><br>And more Albanian civilians -- nearly 300, according to the United Nations -- have gone into Kosovo from Serbia proper since Friday. <br><br>"KFOR is being played with by these guys," said a senior United Nations official, who is assuming that their leadership is based in Kosovo and tied to parts of the supposedly disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army. In particular, the official says he believes that the leaders are associated with Rexhep Selimi, who headed the rebel group's ministry for public order and security. But no one seems to know for sure. <br><br>Lt. Col. James Shufelt, in an interview at the American military headquarters at Camp Bondsteel, said: "The concern here isn't that the Serbian police will come across, but that Albanian attacks on Serb police and army will inspire a response great enough to cause public clamor for a KFOR response." <br><br>His commander, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, said: "I don't believe we can ever fully seal the border between Serbia and Kosovo. But we have sent a clear message that any cross-border insurgency will not be tolerated or supported." <br><br>At the same time, he said, "we've gotten some very good feedback that the people of Dobrosin feel better because of our presence." <br><br>But perhaps emboldened, too. The fighters are carrying out exercises within sight of the American watchtowers, and say that once, when the Serbian police were near the village, American helicopters flew overhead and the Serbs withdrew. <br><br>Vahid Sylejman, 39, a villager, said he was sure the Americans would come to their rescue if the Serbs came again. "Why else are they there?" he asked, pointing to the tanks on the ridge. <br><br>Mr. Zajidi said: "We have a kind of protection from the Americans. If they were not on the hill, no one would be left in this village at all." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo Rebels Regrouping Nearby in Serbia``x951987791,22076,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br><br>WASHINGTON, March 2 -- The State Department said today that it was issuing a "wanted" poster of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, and two other men indicted on charges of war crimes. <br>Officials said the poster was part of an effort to arrest the men and hasten their trial by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. <br><br>Europe, especially Serbia, will be saturated with copies of the poster, in the hope that publicizing the prospect of up to $5 million in reward money will result in the men's apprehension. The reward itself has been on offer since June. <br><br><br>The two other men, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, former Bosnian Serb leaders, are wanted for their part in the massacre of 6,000 Bosnian Muslims in 1995. Dr. Karadzic is also wanted under a separate indictment for crimes that occurred earlier, in the Bosnian war. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic was indicted by the tribunal in May, a few days before he accepted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's terms for halting the alliance's air war over Yugoslavia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.S. Issues 'Wanted' Poster for Milosevic``x952079831,24014,``x``x
``xInternational Monitors<br>By Jolyon Naegele<br><br>Yugoslavia's smaller republic of Montenegro continues to face challenges in its bid to achieve sovereignty and self-determination. This week the Yugoslav army established control points and barricades near the recently reopened sole border crossing with Albania. RFE/RL correspondent Jolyon Naegele reports from Podgorica on the possibility of deploying international observers in Montenegro. <br><br>Podgorica, 2 March 2000 (RFE/RL) -- The idea of deploying several hundred international monitors in Montenegro came up on the sidelines of an international conference in Podgorica this week. The conference was convened as a dialogue between Montenegrin and Serbian pro-democracy politicians and activists to address constitutional differences.<br><br>Montenegro has been Serbia's increasingly unwilling partner in the Yugoslav Federal Republic, founded eight years ago after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Montenegro is now on the road to sovereignty, with an increasingly democratic legislature, new reform laws and its own Western-oriented foreign policy. But Montenegro is rump Yugoslavia's sole outlet to the sea, and a potential hard currency earner through tourism and maritime trade. Those industries brought in some $320 million a year a decade ago, but now are virtually nonexistent.<br><br>The head of one of Montenegro's three ruling pro-democracy parties, Social Democrat Zarko Rakcevic, says that as long as Montenegro fails to gain international recognition as a sovereign state, it will be unable to borrow on int. financial markets to rebuild its industry. Western support for Montenegro, he says, has been laudatory but devoid of investment.<br><br>"As far as we are concerned, by establishing its basic rights, Montenegro is not provoking Milosevic since this is our right to self-determination. Part of [our] society may want to live in a close community with Serbia. We have to do what is in our fundamental interest. But Montenegro cannot accept the task of democratizing Serbia."<br><br>Rakcevic says he hopes the international community changes its position toward Montenegro and accepts Montenegro's basic right to national self -determination -- the right to separate its fate from Serbia, as he puts it. That, he believes, would prevent a repetition of recent tragic experiences in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. He says Montenegro is the best example that Orthodox, Catholics, and Muslims can live together in harmony.<br><br>Rakcevic, a Montenegrin parliamentarian, says the solution is to take preventive action in the field of security by deploying observers before trouble starts: <br><br>"We want to say that if the international community really recognizes Montenegro as a positive example, please help us now. Please understand us now. We think that, for example, with 200 [international] monitors here, [Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic will decide completely differently."<br><br>Rakcevic says deploying monitors would be a clear sign to Milosevic to cease his destabilization of Montenegro, which has included an economic blockade and the setting up of Yugoslav TV transmitters on Yugoslav military bases. But Rakcevic warned that if the international community waits until after Milosevic puts military and paramilitary pressure on Montenegro, it will be too late.<br><br>A senior official with the international community's Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe, Finnish diplomat Alpo Rusi, told RFE/RL the international community is coming around to the idea that deploying monitors in Montenegro would make sense. <br><br>"I think, yes, it cannot be ruled out, and I would like to see this type of monitoring to be set up through the OSCE or otherwise in case it is commonly accepted. But it is in my own thinking a clear-cut view that this country should have now this type of instrument, like a monitoring mission. And we should discuss this matter further."<br><br>Rusi notes that although Yugoslavia is barred from the Stability Pact for now, Montenegro is in practice functioning as a member state of the pact. But he says that putting together a monitoring mission for Montenegro is not yet a part of the pact's official brief. <br><br>The UN deployed observers along Macedonia's border with Kosovo and Serbia more than six years ago, and their presence -- including that of several hundred U.S. soldiers -- is one of the reasons Milosevic never started trouble with Macedonia. <br><br>In contrast, however, the EU's deployment in 1991 of a European military monitoring mission in Croatia after the fighting and ethnic cleansing had begun -- while providing the West with military intelligence -- had little effect. Serbian forces soon shot down a mission helicopter. and the mission did little if anything to hold back the fighting. <br><br>Similarly, the presence of UN peacekeepers from UNPROFOR in Bosnia did not prevent the systematic destruction by Serbian forces of the areas that the UN had designated safe havens. Nor did it deter Serbian forces from carrying out the massacres of some 7,000 men near one of the so-called "safe havens," Srebrenica, in 1995. <br><br>Later, an unarmed OSCE mission in Kosovo was slow in deploying, never reached full capacity and was soon forced to withdraw after Serbian forces made its job impossible and the launching of NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia last Spring inevitable. Since the Serbian capitulation and withdrawal from Kosovo last June, the international community has failed to deploy anywhere near the agreed-upon number of NATO-led peacekeepers and UN civilian police in Kosovo. That is true despite the worsening situation in Mitrovica and along Kosovo's eastern border with Serbia. <br><br>So it is far from clear whether sufficient willingness can be developed to deploy observers in Montenegro. The issue poses many questions: Would the observers be armed? Would they stand firm or flee in the event of the likely Serbian provocation? And what would the justification for deployment be? Do humanitarian aid convoys bound for Kosovo really require the security of observers in Montenegro when their main obstacles are Kosovo customs agents just over the border. And what would the reaction be of the Yugoslav Second Army based in Montenegro, already in a heightened state of alert, and now manning fresh barricades along Montenegro's sole border crossing with Albania. <br><br>Based on the international community's record to date, a deployment of monitors in Montenegro is unlikely to be agreed upon before it is too late. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro: Pro-Democracy Politicians Address Pros And Cons Of ``x952079891,95586,``x``x
``xZAGREB, Croatia (Reuters) - Croatian and U.S. armed forces will carry out joint airborne maneuvers next week in a show of support by Washington for Croatia's new center-left government, officials said Friday. <br>The exercise, planned in the two months since a broad coalition led by Prime Minister Ivica Racan defeated the nationalist government of late President Franjo Tudjman, has clear political overtones in addition to military significance. <br><br>"The United States fully supports the new government ... and its move toward the Euro-Atlantic integrations," said U.S. Ambassador to Croatia William Montgomery. <br><br>The exercise comes after a series of moves -- including two visits by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright -- to demonstrate Washington's readiness to work with the new government whose proclaimed goal is joining the European Union and NATO. <br><br>It will include three to four days of combined flying operations during which groups of four to eight Croatian Air Force and U.S. Navy jets will fly low over rocky areas of central Croatia, said Cmdr. Pete Smith, U.S. Navy attache. <br><br>There will also be an exchange of crews with possibly a chance for American pilots to "ride behind" in Croatia's two-seat Russian-made MiG-21s and for Croats to do the same in the American aircraft, Smith told reporters. <br><br>Americans will take off from the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, the U.S. Sixth Fleet's command ship, off Croatia's southernmost port of Dubrovnik. <br><br>They will join Croatian jets above the northern port of Pula and fly inland toward the capital, Zagreb, at low altitude. <br><br> <br><br>NO MONTENEGRO LINK <br><br>Asked if the exercise had anything to do with the crisis in neighboring Montenegro, where new rifts have opened between the Belgrade government and the tiny republic's independent-minded government, Montgomery said: "This operation is designed totally and only to show our support, our desire to work closely with Croatia. <br><br>"In absolutely no way is it directed at any one country. These planes will be armed only with good will and nothing more." <br><br>Croatian Defense Minister Jozo Rados said the exercise had a great political but also military significance. <br><br>"We will demonstrate our readiness to carry out complicated tasks and acquire new experience," he said. <br><br>He said Croatia would seek to reduce radically its military personnel in the next four years, cutting the number of professional brigades and soldiers by 25 to 30 percent. <br><br>It will also reduce regular military service to four to six months from the current 12 months, to cut overall spending and redirect funds to modernize the army as necessary for joining NATO. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCroatia, US to hold joint airborne exercise``x952163431,29665,``x``x
``xBERLIN, March 2 (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said on Thursday he was concerned about indications of increasing tensions in the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro. <br>The Yugoslav army said on Monday a 1997 decision to close the small West-leaning coastal republic's border with Albania remained in force, in effect declaring last week's reopening of a Montenegrin border crossing illegal. <br><br>"We are very concerned about the situation but on the other hand I think our position is to be firm but calm and not to react to provocations," Fischer said after a meeting in Berlin with Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic. <br><br>The Yugoslav army has denied it had raised its combat readiness in the region after the Montenegrin pro-government daily Pobjeda said soldiers and heavy weaponry had been deployed near the crossing. A Reuters reporter who visited the crossing on Monday said there was no sign of an increased presence. <br><br>Montenegro, which with the larger Republic of Serbia now forms Yugoslavia, has distanced itself from Belgrade's policies since NATO's 11-week bombing of Yugoslavia last year over Serbia's repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. <br><br>Last week, NATO's supreme commander, U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, described the situation in Montenegro as very tense and said the alliance was closely watching developments there. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGermany's Fischer worried by Montenegro tensions``x952163451,35158,``x``x
``xThe Times<br><br>BY RICHARD BEESTON, DIPLOMATIC EDITOR <br><br> <br>A BOSNIAN Croat commander responsible for ordering the mass murder of Muslim villagers was sentenced to 45 years in prison yesterday, the longest term ever handed down by the international tribunal at The Hague. <br>General Tihomir Blaskic, 39, the most senior officer to be convicted of war crimes arising from the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, sat impassively as the sentence was read out. His wife, Rartka, collapsed in the public gallery and was led away sobbing. <br><br>"The crimes you committed are extremely serious," Claude Jorda, the French presiding judge, told Blaskic. "The acts of war carried out with disregard for international humanitarian law and in hatred of other people, the villages reduced to rubble, the houses and stables set on fire and destroyed, the people forced to abandon their homes, the lost and broken lives are unacceptable." <br><br>The single worst atrocity perpetrated under Blaskic's orders occurred at the village of Ahmici, where about 100 men, women and children were killed and their homes set alight by Croat forces rampaging through the Lasva Valley in the spring of 1993. <br><br>British troops then serving as United Nations peacekeepers in central Bosnia arrived on the scene shortly afterwards with British journalists, and documented the atrocities. <br><br>Eyewitness testimony provided by Lieutenant-Colonel Bob Stewart, commander of The Cheshire Regiment, and Martin Bell, who was then a BBC correspondent in Bosnia and is now an Independent MP, helped to win yesterday's conviction. <br><br>Colonel Stewart said yesterday: "I told Blaskic when I left Bosnia that I believed he would one day be tried for the crimes, and that has happened. It is not a closure of the whole episode. It is a start to going after everyone else who was responsible for the atrocities." <br><br>Russell Hayman, Blaskic's American lawyer, said that his client planned to appeal. Nevertheless, Carla Del Ponte, the UN war crimes prosecutor, is hopeful that the length of the sentence and the seniority of the convicted war criminal will send an important message to other commanders who have evaded the courts. <br><br>"It is a critical day for the tribunal," a spokesman for the UN prosecutor's office said. "This sentence promises to be the beginning of a phase at the tribunal where the sentences are taken very seriously." <br><br>The ruling at The Hague coincided with Washington's decision to issue "wanted" posters of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav President, offering a $5 million (£3 million) reward for information leading to his capture. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBosnian Croat jailed for 45 years by war crimes court ``x952163472,55089,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Stephen Castle <br><br><br>4 March 2000 <br><br>The United States is to post 10,000 "wanted" posters across Bosnia, offering rewards of up to $5m (£3.1m) for information leading to the arrest of the Yugoslav President and two other indicted war criminals. <br><br>To step up pressure on the Serb leaders, posters will be displayed in public buildings; alongside Slobodan Milosevic, the former Bosnian Serb political leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his military chief, Ratko Mladic, will be pictured. <br><br>All three have been accused by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia of genocide in the Bosnia war. <br><br>The reward has been on offer since May, when the Yugoslav President was indicted and the US said it would use unspecified means to publicise the offer in Serbia. It also applies to the other 27 people accused of war crimes. <br><br>Whether the US expects results or is simply trying to discomfort the accused remained unclear. <br><br>"We are putting a sharp focus on these three indictees because it is is time they should face justice for the heinous crimes for which they are charged," said David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war-crime issues. <br><br>The rewards programme was launched 11 years ago and focused until now on the arrest of terrorists who had killed Americans. <br><br>Yesterday's plans coincide with a shift in emphasis at the tribunal in The Hague, which is trying to focus on bringing to justice those who ordered atrocities rather then the foot-soldiers who carried them out. <br><br>Messrs Milosevic and Mladic are in Belgrade and thus beyond the reach of Nato's Stabilisation Force (S-For), though Mr Karadzic is in the Pale area, capital of the Bosnian Serb republic in the 1992-95 war. That could make him more vulnerable to arrest by S-For. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUS puts a $5m price on heads of Serb leaders ``x952163495,10009,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br><br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br>RISTINA, Kosovo, March 2 -- At the end of January, the director of the United Nations government in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, suddenly rushed off to Paris and Brussels. The reason, he explained in an interview here, was insolvency. <br>"We had 0.00 German marks in our bank account," Mr. Kouchner said, exaggerating only slightly. The entire United Nations mission established to administer Kosovo after the war last year was to run out of money on Feb. 3 -- it requires $325 million this year to pay workers, teachers and doctors, manage utilities and traffic lights, and pay police officers and prosecutors. <br><br><br>The French came up with an emergency transfusion of $3 million, and the Americans helped, and the deadline was extended to Feb. 23, officials say. Two weeks ago, at a Western meeting in Berlin, the bankruptcy date was March 3. <br><br>Now, with some $16 million in the bank, it is March 23. The same Western governments that belong to NATO and fought the war to drive the Serbs out of Kosovo are clearly reluctant to finance the day-to-day operations of the Western protectorate they installed to govern until local authority can be re-established. <br><br>"This is an absurd, humiliating and self-defeating way to run anything, let alone a project that embodies the prestige of NATO and the West," said a senior United Nations official who works for Mr. Kouchner. "Running Kosovo is hard enough without running around the world with a begging bowl." <br><br>Mr. Kouchner himself is livid on the point. "It's like being on a drip, a resuscitation bottle for the whole society," said Mr. Kouchner, a medical doctor who started Doctors Without Borders. "It keeps us barely alive month to month, but only if we reduce the dosage to the minimum for survival, so we don't collapse." <br><br>On Monday, Mr. Kouchner and Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, the military commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping forces, will report together on the state of Kosovo to the United Nations Security Council. <br><br>It is not expected to be an easy ride. Moscow and Beijing are particularly critical of NATO's management of Kosovo and its inability to prevent continuing ethnic violence and attempts at ethnic purging of the remaining Serb, Gypsy and Muslim Slav populations. <br><br>General Reinhardt is annoyed almost as much as Mr. Kouchner over such criticism and the ongoing problems with the mission. The difficulties of the United Nations-led civilian side -- its inability to pay people, find enough international police and prosecutors and jailers and judges -- means an added burden on his troops, who are already tired of playing cop on the beat. <br><br>"The problem for Bernard Kouchner is that he doesn't get the money to pay for what he knows he needs and wants for Kosovo," General Reinhardt said. "But the international community -- the same governments that decided to get us here -- doesn't give him what we know he needs, and it has a direct impact on my soldiers." <br><br>Officials here explain that governments seem happier to fund projects like post-war reconstruction. But governments do not like to fund other governments. "There's no glory in paying salaries," an official said. "The defense and foreign ministers who backed the war are not the finance and treasury ministers who have to fund the peace or the interior ministers who have to provide the police. They say, 'Not my money. Not my policemen.' " <br><br>The European Union in particular is very slow to get its pledged money through the bureaucracy and into United Nations bank accounts, the officials say. The Europeans have promised about $45 million for the budget this year, but it hasn't arrived. They have also promised about $340 million for reconstruction, a European commitment, but that money and the approval process for projects have also been extremely slow, officials say. <br><br>The total budget for the United Nations government here, excluding state enterprises like the electrical company and telephone service, which should one day earn money when they start charging citizens again, is about $240 million for this year. Including these state enterprises, the budget is about $325 million. Earnings this year from new customs duties, license fees and taxes that are being progressively introduced are expected to total $100 million. <br><br>But there will be an estimated budget gap this year of about $120 million that must be filled, and so far, governments have pledged about $90 million, still $30 million short. But they have delivered only a tiny fraction of what they've pledged, causing Mr. Kouchner to run around the world begging for cash. <br><br>Ironically, the sudden ethnic violence that began a month ago in the divided town of Mitrovica has shaken Western governments and allowed Mr. Kouchner to argue that the status quo is a recipe for disaster. It has also allowed him to ask more urgently for the promised international police and for more international prosecutors and judges -- at least 26 -- given the clear intimidation of local legal authorities by accused criminals and their apparent difficulty, in the current climate, of delivering ethnically unbiased decisions. <br><br>Mr. Kouchner, stung by criticism that there is no real system of justice or deterrence in Kosovo, plans a new court, to be headed by international judges with local participation, to deal with crimes stemming from ethnic hatred and the war. Local judges and prosecutors will deal with less sensitive, more ordinary crimes. <br><br>But even in Mitrovica, one international judge quit because of difficult living and working conditions, while another quit but has been convinced to stay. <br><br>The United Nations resolution authorizing the Western presence in Kosovo, No. 1244, comes up for renewal in June, and while Moscow and Beijing are unlikely to veto continuing the mission, they are expected to use the debate to urge closer consultation with Belgrade, which still maintains formal sovereignty over Kosovo. <br><br>Even the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, recently called the situation in Kosovo "very worrying," saying: "Bernard Kouchner and his team have done an admirable job. The situation is difficult. I know there has been some criticism. But I believe that, given what we inherited, he has done quite well." <br><br>In fact, Washington and London did not want the United Nations, but rather the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to run Kosovo. United Nations officials here now complain that they had barely 10 days' notice that they would run the province, a compromise worked out at the end of the war in the Security Council with Russia and China, which were negotiating, in effect, for President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. <br><br>The Anglo-Saxon dislike of the United Nations is one problem, officials here concede, a dislike somewhat confirmed by Mr. Kouchner's slow start. At the same time, one of his senior aides said, "there was no way to make a fast start without money or personnel, and money covers over a lot of mistakes, but we didn't have that luxury." <br><br>Mr. Kouchner has also been criticized for spending too much time negotiating with local politicians to win their cooperation in a form of shared executive. But the aide said: "With one-quarter the authorized staff and one-tenth the necessary money, there was no alternative" to cooperation with the powers on the ground. <br><br>Governments that promised officials, money and police officers -- and now promise judges -- were very slow to respond. And until recently, Mr. Kouchner was unable to pay salaries or pensions here -- simply low stipends, not even monthly ones, that barely kept people alive. <br><br>Even so, while local judges and lawyers are being paid about 300 German marks (about $165) a month by the United Nations, international agencies like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and aid agencies are able to pay local translators at least 1,000 marks a month, or $555, more than three times more. <br><br>There is also little money for needed garbage pickup, road repair and all the other services that the Serbian state once provided, however inefficiently. <br><br>Money is crucial, Mr. Kouchner said, then gave a weary sigh. "But unfortunately we can't buy tolerance." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N.'s Kosovo Chief Warns That Mission Is 'Barely Alive'``x952163516,1083,``x``x
``xFinancial Times<br>6 Mar 2000 09:26GMT<br><br>In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said in a statement that the arrest, the fourth in three months, was a warning to other suspects still at large that it is time to turn yourself in.<br><br>The Belgrade-based Beta news agency said the NATO Stabilisation Force in Bosnia (SFOR) arrested Prcac, 62, while he was driving with his wife and a neighbour. <br><br>According to the report, three SFOR vehicles surrounded Prcac's car, broke windows and pulled him out. Both he and the neighbour, Rado Mikanovic, were then driven to the SFOR base near the Bosnian Serb capital Banja Luka, Beta reported. <br><br>A spokesman for the SFOR peacekeeping force could not confirm the details of the arrest. <br><br>Prcac is one of a group of 19 Bosnian Serbs publicly indicted by The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for atrocities committed in mid-1992 against civilian prisoners held at Omarska camp. <br><br>Prcac was the deputy commander of the camp near Prijedor in northwestern Bosnia. <br><br>Dragoljub Prcac is accused of being criminally responsible for the acts of his subordinates in committing crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, rape, inhumane acts and unlawful detention in violation of the laws and customs of war, NATO said in a statement. <br><br>The trial began last week in The Hague of four other Bosnian Serbs accused of crimes against Moslems and Croats in three Serb-run camps in Prijedor. <br><br>NATO said Prcac was being held pending transfer to The Hague, where a Tribunal spokesman said he was expected to arrive late on Sunday. <br><br>This detention shows that the international community has not forgotten one of the most gruesome episodes of the war, and is determined that those responsible should be brought to justice in The Hague where they will receive a fair trial, Cook and Hoon said in a joint statement. <br><br>Of the 79 known indictees, 29 remain at large. We call on all those who know they are indicated to surrender themselves to the Tribunal, they said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFOCUS-NATO arrests Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect``x952339097,67842,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Serb police have tightened a blockade on trade between Serbia and the western-leaning Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, newspapers said on Sunday. <br>One of the papers, the Montengro-based Pobjeda, said police were even stopping Yugoslav army trucks carrying food for troops based in Montenegro from crossing, sparking angry exchanges. <br><br>Belgrade-based independent media said more goods were being blocked than before, but did not mention the army. <br><br>"Since the day before yesterday, according to unofficial information, procedures for the passage of trucks with goods through the control point at the border between Serbia and Montenegro became stricter," the Glas Javnosti daily said. <br><br>Montenegro, the last republic left with Serbia in Yugoslavia, has been inching away from the influence of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government in Belgrade since pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic was elected in 1997. <br><br>Montenengro legalised the German mark last year to try to escape inflationary trends in Serbia and Serb police retaliated by stopping certain goods, especially fuel, crossing the border. <br><br>Glas said that since mid-February only a certain type of wood, building material and sweets were allowed from Serbia to Montenegro. Since Friday even those were blocked, although aluminium and iron are still allowed into Serbia, it said. <br><br>Pobjeda said goods in private cars were also blocked. <br><br>"Pobjeda learned that not even army trucks carrying food for Yugoslav army units in Montenegro were allowed through. That's why, the source said, there were some unpleasant situations between the border police and army police at the crossing during an attempt to transport army rations to Montenegro," it said. <br><br>The Montenegrin government offered to pay troops based in the republic in German marks after its move to legalise them drove most Yugoslav dinars out of circulation there. <br><br>The condition was that the troops help overcome the trade blockade by bringing goods purchased in Serbia into Montenegro. <br><br>The military, whose leaders are thought to be loyal to Milosevic, publicly rejected the move, and it was not immediately possible to confirm whether any trucks had tried to cross the border with extra goods, or had indeed been stopped. <br><br>The blockade was the latest sign of tensions between the two republics, which recently flared over the Montenegrin government's decision to open a border crossing with Albania. <br><br>Belgrade said the decision was illegal and the army set up checkpoints at the crossing, checking travellers' documents but allowing traffic to flow through the crossing. <br><br>Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic told Saturday's Vijesti newspaper he had had several meetings with the commander of the Montenegrin-based Second Army to try to ease tensions but declined to say when or what was discussed. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb police tighten trade blockade with Montenegro``x952339150,17581,``x``x
``xThe Sunday Times<br><br>Tom Walker, Gornje Kusce <br><br>THE grave of Dr Josef Vasic is in the middle of a cemetery on a steep hill beneath the Orthodox church in Gornje Kusce. Heavy rains that washed away much of Kosovo's winter snow have reduced the flowers, cigarettes and apples left to comfort the doctor on his heavenly journey to a sodden mess. <br>For the beleaguered Serbs of Kosovo, the province has again become the grim land of eternal sacrifice celebrated in the epic poetry they hand down from generation to generation. <br><br>Six centuries ago it was the Turks who were rampant. Now, as Nato and the United Nations look on bewildered, it is the Albanians. Ethnic cleansing continues unabated and Vasic, a gynaecologist with three young children, was its latest victim. <br><br>One of two remaining Serbian doctors in eastern Kosovo's main city of Gnjilane, Vasic, 37, who had spent most of his professional life treating Albanian women, was gunned down in the street at 9.30am just over a week ago. <br><br>"I heard four shots," said his widow, Dragana. "He had already been beaten up once and had a grenade thrown at him. I didn't think it could happen a third time." <br><br>A few minutes later she knew the worst. Vencislav Grozdanovic, a biochemist who had been walking with Vasic from the clinic where they both worked, described how a dark-haired man in his thirties had shouted at them to lie down. <br><br>Grozdanovic instinctively ran. Behind him, Vasic shouted in fear before the shots rang out. <br><br>Apart from Nato-led Kfor peacekeepers, the only organisation fighting the losing battle to contain Kosovo's anarchy is the UN international police force. Their two commanders in Gnjilane, an American and a Russian, have admitted that little can be done to halt such cold-blooded assassinations. <br><br>If an Albanian wants to murder a Serb, UN sources say, he can do so with virtual impunity. Any attempt to find the perpetrator is lost in the conspiracy of silence that casts a depressing pall over a province in the grip of a powerful Albanian mafia. <br><br>Valeri Korotenko, Gnjilane's deputy UN police commander and a member of the elite Russian Spetznaz special force, has done what he can for the Vasic family. <br><br>Such was the fear of further attacks that the doctor could not be buried in Gnjilane. Under heavy Kfor protection, Dragana Vasic and the couple's daughters - Andriana, 3, Jovana, 5, and Jelena, 8 - along with the dead man's mother Ruzica and a few other relatives, were taken to Gornje Kusce, two miles to the north. <br><br>This is one of several villages that serve as havens for the Serbs. All have an Orthodox church or monastery, ringed by barbed wire and surrounded by a few hundred families. <br><br>After the funeral the Vasics returned under guard to their apartment block, where American soldiers are on permanent duty and UN police occupy the more vulnerable flats. <br><br>"There used to be 11,000 Serbs in Gnjilane, now there are about 1,000," said Korotenko's colleague, Commander Gary Carrell from Montana. "Quite frankly it's a very dangerous place right now." <br><br>Much of the UN organisation in Kosovo appears apathetic, but Carrell and Korotenko provide an uplifting example of international co-operation, their strength as a team drawn from serving together in Bosnia. <br><br>Carrell believes the "vast majority" of Albanians do not approve of the continuing murders, but are scared of speaking out because the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) extends its intelligence network through Gnjilane's chaotic and litter-strewn alleyways. <br><br>The UN had pinned much hope on training a local police force, which was supposed to have been multi-ethnic and conformed to international standards. The backbone of the force should have been former Albanian policemen sacked in 1989 by Slobodan Milosevic when, as Serbian president, he rescinded Kosovo's autonomy. <br><br>Carrell and Korotenko found the KLA deeply suspicious of such a force. Many former policemen, now in their forties and fifties, knew too much about the KLA for comfort. <br><br>Under the political leadership of Hashim Thaci, a man described by Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, as "Kosovo's Gerry Adams", the KLA made sure that its own men took the bulk of the new police posts. <br><br>It also created the so-called Kosovo Protection Corps (TMK) as a form of home guard. Carrell and Korotenko have little doubt that the TMK, which gave out 15,000 uniforms despite being limited to a maximum strength of 5,000, is merely the KLA under a different name. <br><br>They find some members arrogant and troublesome. "We suggested they could help clear the rubbish from the streets," said Carrell. "They said they were war heroes.", <br><br>About 20 Serbs have been killed in Gnjilane since Kfor entered Kosovo last June, and there are four or five attacks a week on those who remain. <br><br>Two weeks ago the UN police believed they had made a breakthrough when they arrested three teenagers with a stock of grenades. But one of Kosovo's newly appointed Albanian judges released them pending trial, even though they had failed lie detector tests. <br><br>The Serbs have not been the only victims of the anarchy: several Albanians who legitimately bought houses from fleeing Serbs have been shot by KLA fighters who believe they have a divine right to the spoils of ethnic cleansing. <br><br>With Pristina, the capital, in the grip of the criminals, there seems to be little hope for towns such as Gnjilane. The inhabitants of Gornje Kusce are escorted by Kfor on shopping trips two or three times a week. UN sources have criticised American troops for running weapons searches in the village. "They all have guns, otherwise they wouldn't still be there," said one official. <br><br>Last week there was a near-riot as the Americans ploughed through the narrow roads of the village. Groups of men shouted "Nato terror". The irony, however, was that without Nato protection the village would have emptied months ago. <br><br>Some diplomats have predicted that the few remaining Serbs in Kosovo's large towns will soon move north to Mitrovica, the one urban centre under Serbian control in the province. <br><br>Dragana Vasic is not interested. "Why swap one nightmare for another?" she said. "I have lost a beautiful and brave husband. I have nowhere to go." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbian doctor dies in Albanian 'cleansing' ``x952339173,59957,``x``x
``xROME, March 4 (Reuters) - Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini said in an interview on Saturday reprisals by Kosovo Albanians against Serbs were intolerable and Albanians were doing little to set up a civil administration in the province. <br>"Violations in Kosovo are not only being committed by the Serbs. No. Since the United Nations is in Kosovo, all the reprisals have been against the Serb population," Dini told Rome daily la Repubblica. "This is intolerable." <br><br>He said allied forces had won the war in Kosovo but had not yet managed to ensure security in the province and that would not happen without a civil administration which could take action against criminals. <br><br>"In this respect, I have to say there has been no great help by the Kosovo Albanians, from political figures (of the former Kosovo Liberation Army), even from (Albanian representative Ibrahim) Rugova or from those who speak of independence without actually knowing what it means to run a country," Dini said. <br><br>"They should be getting involved in constructing a civil administration instead of thinking about weapons, the struggle, the Albanians living in Serbia," he added. <br><br>Tensions between Albanians, who now comprise 95 percent of the population of some two million in Kosovo, and the remaining Serb community have caused several deaths and injuries in the past few weeks. <br><br>On Montenegro, Dini said Italy's view was in line with that of its allies that the Montenegrin government should be given economic and financial support. <br><br>"This is to prevent the internal situation from becoming disastrous and Montenegro taking a decision (to secede from the Yugoslav federation) which would be hugely destabilising for the region," he said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xDini says reprisals on Kosovo Serbs intolerable``x952339234,82079,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br><br>By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, March 6 -- Men in camouflage uniforms today raided the transmission center of the main nongovernment television station here, Studio B. Senior government officials intensified legal action against it. <br><br>Two employees were badly beaten in the morning raid on the Torlak transmission station, Studio B executives said. <br><br>Five assailants who were wearing police uniforms stormed the compound, tied up and beat the two workers and tore transmitter cables, causing Studio B to go off the air temporarily. Hours after the raid, Telecommunications Minister Ivan Markovic ordered Studio B to pay in eight days $850,000 for the use of its frequencies or face legal action. <br><br>This evening, a court fined the station $40,000 in a libel suit filed by a police officer. <br><br>The City Council owns the station, and it is controlled by the Serbian Renewal Movement of an opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic. <br><br>"The latest attack on Studio B is the attack on all free, independent and alternative media in Serbia," said the chief of the station, Dragan Kojadinovic. "This is the action that is meant to leave all of us without Studio B." <br><br>Mr. Kojadinovic said the station did not have the money to pay for using its frequencies. <br><br>Mr. Kojadinovic was fined $20,000 in the case. <br><br>The police officer, Branko Djuric, was accused on a Studio B program of involvement in a vehicular accident in October in which Mr. Draskovic was injured. <br><br>Mr. Draskovic has said the crash was an assassination attempt disguised as an accident. <br><br>The judge rejected Studio B's defense that it could not be held responsible for comments made by guests on live programs. <br><br>Mr. Kojadinovic met tonight with major opposition leaders in Serbia, accusing President Slobodan Milosevic's government of the "most brutal action" in its crackdown against the station. <br><br>A statement issued after the meeting called for an end to all pressure and threatened street protests if it continued. <br><br>In their own statement, the police denied that they had been involved in the raid and accused Studio B of "another malicious and incorrect report fabricated in that media house." <br><br>Pictures from the Torlak center, broadcast on the Studio B evening news, showed bloodstains on the floor of the transmission station. <br><br>The two workers who were attacked were taken to a hospital for treatment. One had his head bandaged. <br><br>Mr. Kojadinovic said: "The five attackers arrived in a police jeep with the siren howling. The workers believed that they came for an inspection and opened the gate, after which the beating began." <br><br>The transmissions were temporarily interrupted to 400,000 viewers and one million radio listeners. Another independent outlet, B2-92 radio, which broadcasts on a Studio B frequency, was also cut off. Some equipment also was confiscated. <br><br>The chief technician of Studio B, Dusan Markovic, said the attackers were obviously extremely skilled and able to distinguish which "cables belonged to independent media." Several state-run stations also have equipment and transmitters at the site. <br><br>The government may be trying to crack down on major independent news media ahead of local and federal elections this year. Studio B has broadcast programs that criticized Mr. Milosevic. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRaid Temporarily Cuts Off Anti-Milosevic TV Station in Belgrade``x952428162,22228,``x``x
``xThe Financial Times<br><br>By Evelyn Leopold - 7 Mar 2000 09:26GMT<br> <br>UNITED NATIONS, March 6 (Reuters) - Bernard Kouchner, the chief U.N. administrator for Kosovo, said it was time for talks on political autonomy and a draft interim constitution so all ethnic communities knew what their future would hold.<br><br>Kouchner said he asked the 15 council members to define what they meant by substantial autonomy for the Serbian province. <br><br>Until such a discussion begins, the Serb minority in Kosovo fears it is going to be pushed out of the province by ethnic Albanians, who in turn fear NATO will leave and they will be under Belgrade's control. <br><br>We need to start a very clear discussion about the future of all communities, Kouchner said. He said local elections -- to be held, it is hoped, in November -- needed to fit into an overall structure. <br><br>The council in June 1999 authorized a U.N.-led civilian mission and directed the NATO-led military, known as KFOR, to take over Kosovo after an 11-week NATO bombing campaign that forced Belgrade to halt the repression of ethnic Albanians. <br><br>Reinhardt, the commander in Kosovo, stressed that the relationship between ethnic groups throughout the province was intolerable and exacerbated by the continuing ambiguity over Kosovo's future. <br><br>He said efforts by his forces had been thwarted by a climate of impunity that allowed murders, looting, arson and assault. Both Reinhardt and Kouchner called again for more international police, of whom there has been a chronic shortage in Kosovo. <br><br>Judges and prosecutors have been added to the want list after the intimidation of local judges, many of whom have failed to sentence anyone. <br><br>One question that needed to be answered, Reinhardt said, was whether it was possible for a territory to function as an autonomous part of a sovereign state whose armed forces have just tried to oust 90 percent of the population. <br><br>U.N. officials said his office was expected to draw up an outline of what autonomy in Kosovo would look like and present it to the council for discussion. The body took no decisions during its consultations with Kouchner and Reinhardt. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. official calls for talks on Kosovo's future``x952428195,32690,``x``x
``xKOLOVRAT, Yugoslavia, March 6 (Reuters) - Huge queues of trucks formed on Serbia's border with Montenegro on Monday after Serbian police imposed a total blockade on the flow of goods between the two Yugoslav republics. <br>Montenegro's pro-West government said the blockade was designed to destabilise the smaller republic, which is gradually edging away from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian-dominated federation in protest at his policies. <br><br>About 50 trucks lined up at Kolovrat, which marks the administrative border line, and many more assembled in the town of Prijepolje four km (three miles) away. <br><br>Police set up a checkpoint nearly two years ago to control people and goods on their way to Montenegro but the first signs of a total trade blockade were reported at the weekend. <br><br>Officers searched all trucks, private cars and passenger buses on Monday. Trucks carrying consumer goods were not allowed through and any large quantities of merchandise were being confiscated from private car owners or bus passengers. <br><br>Montenegro's Pobjeda daily said over the weekend the police also stopped Yugoslav army trucks carrying food for troops based in Montenegro, sparking angry exchanges. <br><br>RESIDENTS REPORT SCUFFLE <br><br>Police were unavailable for comment but local residents reported they had heard of a scuffle breaking out on Friday when police refused to let through two fuel trucks for the army. <br><br>A bus driver carrying fruit to the Bosnian Serb republic via Montenegro said on Monday no produce was allowed to Montenegro. <br><br>"I've been here for 48 hours. The customs procedure was completed 72 hours ago, the deadline for shipping the goods out of the country has expired," the driver told Reuters. <br><br>The Montenegrin newspaper Pobjeda quoted the republic's trade minister, Ramo Bralic, as saying Belgrade's behaviour was politically motivated to provoke dissatisfaction in Montenegro and "discipline" its authorities for their links with the West. <br><br>"Raising political tensions and destabilising Montenegro is a permanent task of the Belgrade regime," he said. <br><br>Montenegro, the last republic left with Serbia in Yugoslavia, has distanced itself from Milosevic's government since President Milo Djukanovic was elected in 1997. <br><br>It legalised the German mark as a parallel currency last year to escape inflationary trends in Serbia. Serb police retaliated by stopping certain goods from entering Montenegro. <br><br>Montenegrin Economy Minister Vojin Djukanovic said a full economic blockade on Montenegro was "another show of madness of the Belgrade regime, which is deliberately harming Montenegro." <br><br>He told Pobjeda that Montenegro would not retaliate by closing its border to Serbia but would find alternative markets to secure its needs. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro protests as Serb police block border``x952428253,24035,``x``x
``xUNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Tuesday called for clarity on the future political status of Kosovo, saying he and the Security Council would take up the contentious issue shortly. <br>"We are operating in a very ambiguous operation, in a limbo, because the future, the political outline has not been defined," he told a news conference. <br><br>Bernard Kouchner, the U.N. administrator in Kosovo raised the controversy with the Security Council on Monday. Annan said he would touch on the question in a report next month that sought to define Kosovo's role in the Balkans. <br><br>"You can't deal with situation in Kosovo in isolation from the region," Annan said. <br><br>Kouchner, who plans municipal elections in Kosovo late this year, said the "substantial autonomy " promised for Kosovo had never been defined the Security Council's June 1999 resolution that created the U.N. civilian administration in the Serbian province <br><br>With no vision of the future, the Serb minority in Kosovo feared it would be pushed out by ethnic Albanians, who in turn feared NATO troops would leave and put them under Belgrade's control again. <br><br>U.N. officials said Kouchner's office planned to draft the proposals on where his mission is headed rather than wait for the council to do so. <br><br>Kouchner, however, made clear, that the U.N. would not advocate independence as some Kosovo Albanians are demanding, saying the "final status" of the province was not a matter for discussion at this time. But he said an interim constitution had to be drafted to define the future. <br><br>The council in June 1999 authorized a U.N.-led civilian mission and the NATO-led military, known as KFOR, to take over Kosovo after an 11-week NATO bombing campaign that forced Belgrade to halt repression of ethnic Albanians. <br><br>Yugoslavia, backed by Russia, has objected to many measures Kouchner has initiated, from a separate currency to collecting taxes, saying they impinged on Belgrade's sovereignty and represented a drift towards independence. <br><br>In a separate news conference on Tuesday, Yugoslav's U.N. envoy, Vladislav Jovanovic, who attended Security Council consultations with Kouchner, said the 15-member body ignored the main issues in the province. <br><br>Jovanovic said there had been no mention during the briefings of "ethnic cleansing, no mention of genocide, no invitation by Dr Kouchner to visit the camps of the 350,000 exiled Serbs, Romas and others...who are now displaced persons throughout Serbia and Montenegro." <br><br>Instead of addressing these issues, he said, Kouchner and NATO General Klaus Reinhardt had discussed such matters as the need for judges, financial resources, additional police, schools and hospitals. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAnnan calls for clartiy on Kosovo political future``x952502824,72264,``x``x
``xThe emergence of a KLA offshoot in Serbia sparks concerns of new instability.<br><br>Emma Daly<br>The Christian Science Monitor<br><br>DOBROSIN, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>A red car, no plates, screeches to a halt and discharges three men, armed, uniformed and angry - which is not unusual in Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia, save for the fact that these fighters are ethnic Albanians, members of the newest "liberation army" in the Balkans.<br><br>They are swift and determined as they relieve us of passports, press cards, notebooks, cameras - even a colleague, who offers to make the trip to their headquarters to explain our journalistic quest in this hamlet only 200 yards inside the boundary separating Kosovo from the rest of southern Serbia.<br><br>After an anxious couple of hours guarded by a uniformed soldier wearing the unsnappy patch of the "Presevo, Medvedje, and Bujanovc Liberation Army," the men return. "I am very sorry about what we just did," says Trimi, the commander. "But 1,000 [yards] away from us there is a Serbian position."<br><br>His anxiety, even paranoia, is understandable. His men have shot and wounded a United Nations aid worker who made the mistake of approaching Dobrosin from the direction of a Serb police checkpoint. The road had not been used since Jan. 26, when Serbian forces shot and killed two ethnic Albanian brothers.<br><br>The PMBLA fighters, panicked by the appearance of a white car with no markings, tried to halt the vehicle and then fired - only to find two foreign aid workers. They apologized, applied first aid, and ferried them to a nearby American base on the Kosovo border.<br><br>"We feel really bad about what happened," says Rrufeja, another PMBLA commander, two days later, by which time Dobrosin has become a mini-media mecca with dozens of hacks tramping through, seeking interviews with the new guerrilla group. "The car didn't stop, and the soldiers were scared, so they fired."<br><br>Such mistakes seem unavoidable when men with Kalashnikovs face one another across a narrow, undefined no-man's-land. Rrufeja, whose nom de guerre means "lightning," describes a recent shootout with Serbian police (one dead on either side) as another unfortunate mistake. "Our soldiers were monitoring the Serb forces, and by accident there was a confrontation," he says. But accidents, especially when fatal, can trigger dangerous reactions.<br><br>Although the PMBLA might be easily dismissed as no real threat to the Serb military machine - its very name an indication of the lack of a coherent geographical identity - the simmering tensions present a serious threat to the stability of Kosovo and by extension to the NATO and UN mission here.<br><br>Presevo, Medvedje, and Bujanovc, with an ethnic Albanian population of around 80,000, were once part of Kosovo - but swapped in 1950 for the Serbian-dominated town of Leposavic, now in northern Kosovo.<br><br>Which in turn is near another flash point: the divided city of Mitrovica, where French and Italian police on Friday fired tear-gas at a Serbian mob trying to block the return home of ethnic Albanian refugees.<br><br>Add the threat of possible secession by Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in what remains of Yugoslavia, stir it up with Mr. Milosevic's practice of consolidating power by fomenting conflict, and stand well back. These three fronts offer "the potential for Milosevic to make a fair amount of mischief for the international community," according to an experienced foreign observer in Kosovo.<br><br>Several thousand ethnic Albanian refugees from Serbia have already fled what they call "eastern Kosovo" for shelter in the international protectorate next door. More than 1,300 have registered with aid officials in Gnjilane so far this year and the past few days have seen a "dramatic increase," according to one foreign worker in the area, who declined to be identified.<br><br>Bekim Dauti of the International Rescue Committee, responsible for refugees in the Gnjilane area, says the agency finds new arrivals waiting outside the office every morning. They say Serbian forces are threatening ethnic Albanians and burning houses. "As some people say, it is going to be a hot spring," says Mr Dauti. "We need to be prepared."<br><br>Qefsere Xhemaili fled her home in a village near Bujanovc on Saturday and is now living with her husband and two children in a squalid collective center in Gnjilane, along with 325 other ethnic Albanians from Serbia. "One month ago, lots of soldiers came with tanks and they are still in the village, in the center. They are based there," she explains. "More than half the villagers have left.... Of course we are scared of a war, that's why we are here."<br><br>An influx of refugees from this narrow strip of Serbia is not going to spark a humanitarian disaster by Kosovo standards, says the foreign observer. But television pictures of US soldiers standing by and watching as civilians flee a scorched-earth campaign may not sit easily with Americans in an election year.<br><br>The PMBLA fighters wear US and German camouflage and new red-and-yellow patches with their logo and the Albanian black eagle. Many are veterans of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the rebel group that opposed federal Yugoslav forces during the killings and mass expulsions of majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, which led to NATO airstrikes last spring. It is clear they have received logistical aid from KLA comrades. The question is, how institutionalized has such support become in the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), which replaced the KLA?<br><br>Shaban Shala, a former KLA fighter, is the KPC commander in Gnjilane. Asked if the group is assisting comrades across the border, he replies: "Not legally."<br><br>Mr. Shala says he opposes any new conflict. "The Albanians there are not ready for a war," he says. "It is not in our interest. It is not in the interest of the international community, and they have urged us not to fall into the trap of Serbian provocations."<br><br>He adds, "We need free people who live freely wherever they are, Serbs in Kosovo and Albanians in Presevo." In Pristina, the Kosovar capital, there is concern that a new round of fighting could jeopardize the international effort in Kosovo. The line here is that locals in the border region do not support PMBLA fighters, since they fear a Serbian backlash.<br><br>In Dobrosin, civilians and soldiers argue over who is allowed to talk to visiting journalists, with the military trying (and failing) to exclude villagers. However, the constant refrain is: We will not leave our homes, we will defend our villages, by whatever means available.<br><br>In the rolling, wooded hills of the Presevo Valley, where small groups of refugees pick their way across the mountains to safety in Kosovo, there is a horrible sense of déjà vu. Our PMBLA guard is chatting about his family, his three brothers and one sister, all former KLA fighters. His sister, featured on a KLA sticker staring down the sights of a sniper rifle, is away finishing her university studies. But, he says, "I am afraid she will be back here very soon."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLatest Balkan hot spot: 'eastern Kosovo'``x952502879,94209,``x``x
``xBy Ron Synovitz<br>Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty<br><br>In the latest attack against Belgrade's independent Studio-B television, five masked men in police uniforms yesterday (Monday) sabotaged the station's transmission facilities. RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz examines Belgrade's increasing efforts to silence Serbia's independent electronic media. <br><br>Prague, 7 March 2000 (RFE/RL) -- Belgrade's political opposition is warning that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is trying to shut down independent broadcasters across Serbia.<br><br>The warnings follow a violent attack Monday on the transmitter of Belgrade's largest independent television station -- Studio-B -- by a group of men wearing masks and Interior Ministry police uniforms. A security guard and a Studio-B technician were seriously injured in the attack, and broadcasts were interrupted for several hours.<br><br>The Belgrade-based Association of Independent Electronic Media, known as ANEM, blames the attack on the Yugoslav government. ANEM says it is the first time since NATO air strikes last year that "blood has been spilled" because of Belgrade's repression of media.<br><br>Milorad Savicevic, deputy chief of the opposition Demo-Christian Party of Serbia, says the incident shows that Milosevic is determined to clamp down on independent media ahead of local and federal elections scheduled for later this year. <br><br>"It's clear that it is now the time for [a crackdown] against the electronic media. Until now, [Milosevic's government] has interpreted [last year's information] law as only pertaining to printed media. [But now] a dark cloud is moving over all the independent electronic media -- especially members of ANEM and others."<br><br>Belgrade's efforts to censor independent journalists have so far been based on a three-pronged strategy. Last year's restrictive information law gave authorities the legal power to silence press criticisms of Milosevic. Opposition transmissions have been jammed by the Milosevic regime for months. And recently, economic pressure increasingly has been employed as a tool of censorship -- including excessive taxes and licensing fees.<br><br>After Monday's attack, a Belgrade magistrate fined Studio-B about $10,000 for breaching the information law in a statement made during a live broadcast. Also yesterday, the Yugoslav minister of telecommunications threatened legal action against Studio-B if the station fails to pay $850,000 in licensing fees by next Tuesday (13 March).<br><br>Studio-B's editor-in-chief, Dragan Kojadinovic, says his station does not recognize the debt. He predicts that Belgrade's next step will be the closing of Studio-B's television and radio channels. Kojadinovic also alleges that yesterday's attack on the transmitter was the result of direct orders from the Milosevic government:<br><br>"It's obvious that one of the attackers was very well informed about the arrangement of the rooms and also the technical equipment. [After beating the security guard,] when they entered the transmitter room, they were surprised to find another man -- our technician -- and they started to beat him. Then they tied their hands and covered their heads with blankets so that they couldn't see what happened next [or recognize] who was the technical expert and who was disassembling the equipment."<br><br>Kojadinovic noted that the attackers only damaged and stole equipment used for broadcasts by opposition media. The attackers left intact all of the equipment used by pro-Milosevic state media.<br><br>Mirko Slavkovic, the Studio-B technician who sustained severe head injuries in the attack, told RFE/RL that he thinks the assailants were agents of the Yugoslav government:<br><br>"It all happened very quickly and it was very professionally done. It appeared that these men had been trained for something like this. So, they could be either ex-police, or active police, or simply people trained for such operations."<br><br>The Yugoslav Interior Ministry has denied that any of its officers were involved. The ministry says Studio-B chief Kojadinovic has fabricated a "malicious lie." The ministry has launched an investigation.<br><br>Studio-B is owned by the Belgrade city council and controlled by the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement led by Vuk Draskovic. The attack temporarily halted broadcasts to some 400,000 television viewers and 1 million radio listeners. Also cut off the air was another independent Belgrade broadcaster, B2-92 radio.<br><br>The incident has succeeded -- at least for now -- in bringing together members of Serbia's fragmented opposition. Draskovic's key opposition rival, Zoran Djindjic, appeared at a meeting with other opposition leaders at Studio-B headquarters Monday night. His presence was a rare conciliatory gesture emphasizing the concern that opposition parties share over the attack. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia: Attack On Studio-B Aims At Serbia's Electronic Media``x952502892,96288,``x``x
``xPRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) — Seeking to promote stability in the Balkans, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced plans Tuesday to open U.S. markets to imports from southeastern Europe and said democracy was key to resolving ethnic tensions in the region.<br>Albright also blamed many of the region's problems on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who she said had "betrayed the best interests of the Serbian people by starting and losing four wars" in the past decade.<br>"Certainly there is no future for Serbia under Milosevic," Albright said in a speech. "Democracy is the key to our strategy throughout southeastern Europe. Democratic governments are more stable internally, more likely to encourage ethnic tolerance and more interested in establishing closer economic and political ties with their neighbors and the West."<br>In hopes of promoting democracy, Albright, who is visiting the land of her birth, expressed hope that the European Union would honor pledges for billions of dollars in aid to the region.<br>"Meanwhile, the United States is implementing its own commitments," she said. "We are submitting legislation to Congress that would provide southeastern Europe with five years of duty-free access to U.S. markets."<br>She also said the Clinton Administration had made a $200 million investment credit line available to companies in the region and the U.S. government's Overseas Private Investment Corp. is forming a $150 million regional investment fund to encourage economic growth.<br>On Kosovo, Albright acknowledged that progress in reconciling Serbs and ethnic Albanians has been painfully slow.<br>"After all that has happened, we do not expect the rival communities in Kosovo to immediately join hands singing folk songs," she said. "We do insist they stop killing each other."<br>Thousands of ethnic Albanians were killed by Serb forces during Milosevic's 18-month crackdown against Kosovo separatists. Since NATO bombing forced the Serb troops to withdraw last spring, ethnic attacks and killings have been regular occurrences in the province.<br>She criticized extremists on both sides, including those among the ethnic Albanians "who perpetrate crimes against Serbs and other minorities." She said ethnic Albanian extremists "deserve strong condemnation and are doing a profound disservice to the aspirations of their people."<br>"There's also one government in Belgrade which is promoting confrontation and trying to undermine the prospects for ethnic coexistence," she said. "The policies of that government over the past decade have sparked the rise of extremism on both sides of the ethnic divide."<br>Albright said she was convinced that if given the choice, Serbs would follow the democratic path of other countries such as Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia, which broke away from Yugoslavia in the 1990s.<br>"We cannot impose a democratic solution on Serbia but we can encourage democratic change by helping the opposition to unite, assisting independent media and making clear that a democratic Serbia would be warmly welcomed and generously assisted by the international community," she said.<br>Following the speech, Albright was to meet with Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman and Foreign Minister Jan Kavan. She will also host a roundtable on women in politics before leaving early Wednesday for Bosnia-Herzegovina.<br>Since arriving Sunday, Albright has called for Eastern Europeans to play a stronger role in spreading democracy to Serbia, arguing that former Communist countries can offer insights into promoting liberty in corners of Europe where authoritarianism prevails.<br>Albright's father, Josef Korbel, was a Czech diplomat who fled with his wife and children to London as Germany took control of Czechoslovakia at the onset of World War II.<br>When the communists took over Czechoslovakia in 1948, the family migrated to the United States.<br>After the fall of communism here, the Czech and Slovak republics split into two countries in 1993.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbright calls democracy key to Balkan peace ``x952502912,16488,``x``x
``xThe Times<br>BY MICHAEL EVANS DEFENCE EDITOR<br> <br>THE Russian security and intelligence hierarchy used the services of a trusted Swedish financier to act as a secret go-between to persuade President Milosevic to end the conflict in Kosovo. <br>Peter Castenfelt, a financier with an investment company in London who had the trust of both the Russian Government and the security powerbase in Moscow, was considered to be the only man capable of making the Yugoslav leader understand that the Russians were not going to come to his aid. <br><br>Four days of secret meetings between Mr Castenfelt and Mr Milosevic took place in Belgrade before the official envoys, Victor Chernomyrdin, the former Russian Prime Minister, and President Ahtisaari of Finland, took over the negotiations to broker an agreement with the Yugoslav leader. <br><br>The crucial role played by the influential Swedish financier in the days leading up to Belgrade's capitulation to Nato's demands was kept in the background, as the focus fell on the peace mission of the two official envoys. <br><br>However, the significance of Mr Castenfelt's success in laying the foundations of the subsequent peace deal is highlighted in a documentary, Moral Combat: Nato at War, to be shown on BBC2 on Sunday, almost a year after the start of Nato's bombing campaign. <br><br>Mr Castenfelt, who was in the United States yesterday and was unavailable to comment, was selected for his mission after an arrangement between Germany and the Russian security forces. He was well known to all the powerbrokers in Moscow, having been appointed an official adviser on economic affairs to the Russian Government in 1993. He worked with Mr Chernomyrdin and also President Yeltsin. <br><br>The BBC documentary says Mr Milosevic believed that he had potential allies among the Russian military and intelligence services. The peace deal which the Russian security forces had accepted included two concesssions from Nato: that the United Nations would administer Kosovo and that the province would remain a part of Yugoslavia. On June 3, the Yugoslav leader backed down and agreed the deal, after the visit from the Swedish go-between. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSwedish role in Kosovo peace``x952601542,43114,``x``x
``x'They came out to burn villages when they wanted to, they hid when the weather was good'<br>The Guardian<br>Richard Norton-Taylor <br>Thursday March 9, 2000 <br><br>The conclusion in a secret US defence department report that Belgrade had a spy in Nato in the early days of the Kosovo conflict backs up suspicions raised at the time by other military sources and raises the question of how much it affected allied operations and the conduct of the war. <br>Nato commanders, not to say political leaders, became increasingly frustrated by their inability to destroy Serb units carrying out atrocities on ethnic Albanians, precisely the activity Nato's military action was designed to prevent. <br><br>Nato's initial targets - those which Belgrade knew about in advance, according to the US reports - were mainly fixed sites, including anti-aircaft missile emplacements and military barracks. <br><br>The Serbs were reluctant to "lock-on" their missiles to Nato aircraft since this would make them vulnerable to counter-attack by Nato pilots. However, allied pilots throughout the 78-day bombing campaign reported attacks from surface-to-air missiles, fired, it seems, without their base being identified. <br><br>The first phase of the Nato campaign did not include targets over Kosovo - indeed, it was assumed that Slobodan Milosevic would put up his hands before new targeting plans would need to be agreed. <br><br>It was known that Yugoslavia had built an extensive system of underground shelters for its troops, guns and aircraft - a relic of President Tito's era, in preparation for a possible invasion by the Soviet Union. Many of its camouflage techniques, including the use of dummy weapons emplacements, the Serbs had learned from the Russians. <br><br>General Nebojsa Pavkovic, commander of the Yugoslav army in Kosovo, tells the BBC's Moral Combat programme this Sunday: "We used other measures, too: camouflage, decoys, and it was mainly these that Nato aircraft destroyed." <br><br>Nato pilots found small mobile targets so hard to find that on some days they dropped half their bombs on so-called "dump sites" known to be empty. <br><br>General Mike Short, commander of the allied air forces, said: "The Serbs dictated the pace of events, they dictated the battle rhythm. They came out to burn villages when they wanted to, they hid when the weather was good." <br><br>The question is how much did access to Nato intelligence give the Serbs warnings of allied attacks on specific targets - possibly even enabling them to place Albanians in military buildings and military vehicles in civilian convoys in areas they knew were going to be attacked. <br><br>But Nato did not start to strike targets in Kosovo until later in the war. In the first weeks of the conflict Nato commanders were frustrated by something the Serbs could do nothing about. Bad weather persistently prevented British laser-guided "smart" bombs from identifying targets. <br><br>And Nato's mistakes - killing civilians in urban areas and on Kosovan roads and railways - occurred mainly in good weather. Critics of the bombing campaign also said mistakes were the inevitable result of Nato's policy of restricting its pilots to bombing from 15,000 feet or above - a policy dictated not least by political considerations, notably Washington's determination to avoid horrified public reaction to the sight of "bodybags" coming home. <br><br>Failure to identify targets on the ground in Kosovo led Nato commanders - after fierce arguments between member governments - to strike economic and industrial targets, including power stations and the Serbian television headquarters in Belgrade. <br><br>Military commanders, in the first few weeks of the war, were cautious about what their bombers had achieved. Swept on by the rhetoric of their political masters, however, they began to make claims which they were to regret. <br><br>By early May, Nato was claiming that its aircraft had destroyed more than 200 tanks and had cut off Serb forces in Kosovo from their supply bases. It portrayed a Serb army whose morale was crumbling from mounting casualties, shortages of food and fuel and lack of sleep, as it dispersed into smaller and weaker units to escape the relentless bombing. <br><br>After conceding that the initial war aims - which were to avert a human disaster, as George Robertson, then defence secretary, put it - had failed, Nato claimed it was progressively destroying the Albanians' tormentors. <br><br>Yet when the western media saw the Serb military withdraw from Kosovo in early June, they saw convoys of Serb tanks, armoured cars, guns, trucks and military equipment untouched by Nato's air assault. <br><br>Nato's bombing campaign, with thousand of sorties and the dropping of tens of thousands of bombs, including sophisticated precision weapons, succeeded in damaging just 13 of the Serbs' 300 battle tanks in Kosovo. <br><br>A Nato spy could have provided Belgrade with crucial information, but the implication of the secret US reports is that two weeks into the conflict he or she no longer had access to allied targeting secrets. <br><br>His or her presence would certainly have hit the morale of Nato's commanders. But he or she is unlikely to have had any impact on the later conduct of Nato's campaign. This was determined by broad political necessities and military shortcomings. <br><br>Nato's final tally of hits and misses<br><br>•Nato planes flew more than 3,000 bombing missions, for the loss of one plane to enemy fire, during the 79-day war from late March to June last year <br><br><br>•After 1,955 of those missions, pilots reported hitting their targets (some claims were duplicates) <br><br><br>•93 Yugoslav tanks were hit (out of a rough total of 600) - 26 of them "catastrophically" destroyed and 67 severely damaged <br><br><br>•153 armoured personnel carriers were hit (out of an estimated 600) <br><br><br>•389 artillery and mortar pieces were struck ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xHow the Serb army escaped Nato ``x952601571,72954,``x``x
``xNando Media<br>By KATARINA KRATOVAC<br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (March 7, 2000 8:15 a.m. EST <a href="http://www.nandotimes.com">http://www.nandotimes.com</a>) - Many Serbs want to leave Serbia, and, in the wake of the Kosovo war, Yugoslavia's main republic is ostracized by most of the world. Still, Chinese entrepreneurs are flocking to Belgrade. <br><br>For some, it is more than random migration. <br><br>The recent invasion of Chinese entrepreneurs seems to be instigated by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's influential Communist wife, Mirjana Markovic. On a 1997 trip to China, she reportedly was smitten by Communism there and was instrumental in prompting the influx of Chinese into Yugoslavia. <br><br>Undeterred by Serbia's ruined economy, Chinese tradesmen peddle everything from trinkets and toys to cheap clothes and rice noodles. Their efforts are resulting in Serbia's only business boom, producing a flurry of open-air markets, makeshift shopping malls and popular Chinese restaurants. <br><br>Sitting at his crowded stall in one of Belgrade's suburbs, Xiang Pin Rong's "boutique" - an ill-lit cardboard and glass cubicle - is legal. But most Chinese work without permits and are exposed to frequent police raids. <br><br>In the smoke-filled mall, Chinese vendors sip tea, talk on mobile phones and do their best to convince Belgrade residents to buy their merchandise. <br><br>Rong, 38, arrived here last September from Zhe Jian, 900 miles south of Beijing. With a wife and baby daughter in tow, Rong works six days a week selling bright-colored pajamas for $10 each and men's silk ties for $1.50. <br><br>His profit, a couple of hundred dollars a month, is a fortune in Serbia, where the average paycheck is less than $50 a month. <br><br>No statistics exist on how many Chinese have come to Serbia in the past year, prodded by Chinese television broadcasts about a "country of great potential." Belgrade police have registered 4,000, but estimates go as high as 40,000. <br><br>Visas are obtained easily in China. The main glitch, however, comes once a prospective tradesman arrives and aspires, for example, to own a shop, a notch above a street peddler. <br><br>Serbian law bars foreign nationals from real estate or commercial ownership. Therefore, the newcomer must strike a partnership with a local resident, including a sizable down payment. <br><br>Once that is established, families and relatives follow. <br><br>Myn Ce, 18, came last fall to study Serbian at Belgrade University, but spends five hours a day helping his uncle sell sneakers and wristwatches - Nike and Seiko knockoffs. <br><br>"I know it's poorer quality, but Serbs buy our gym shoes for only $15," Ce says. With a small Chinese-Serb dictionary in hand and almost-fluent Serbian, he interprets when nearby merchants and buyers get stuck on the language barrier. <br><br>"The only thing I cannot get used to is local white bread," he said. <br><br>Unlike Ce, other Chinese don't seem to object to Serbia's traditional pastry, baker Vica Sreckovic said. <br><br>"I was asleep on the job before they came. Now I can't stop working," Sreckovic said, smiling and greeting a crowd of Chinese customers. Business in his bakery, squeezed between two high-rises next to the Chinese market, has never been better. <br><br>Sreckovic says he owes it all to Milosevic's wife: "Thank her for bringing them!" <br><br>The Serb-Chinese friendship was sealed when NATO bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the alliance's campaign last year. The bombing set off a flood of pro-Chinese sentiment and drew promises of aid from Beijing. <br><br>In mid-December, Serbia announced that the Chinese had granted the republic a $300 million loan. Also, the governments agreed to an additional $10 million worth of Chinese humanitarian aid, including medical supplies. <br><br>Perhaps the brightest example of Chinese success here is the "Great Chinese," a floating restaurant on the Danube a mile from the bombed embassy. Above its entrance, the pagoda-style culinary temple flies both countries' flags and a portrait of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. <br><br>Owners Yang Zhanjun, 38, and his wife, Wang Weiying, stuck it out during the NATO bombing - and have no plans to go back anytime soon. <br><br>"As a child in China, I learned a lot about Yugoslavia," Zhanjun says. "Now I want to give something back to a culture I like so much."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xChinese entrepreneurs flock to Serbia ``x952601588,49721,``x``x
``xRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty<br>By Jolyon Naegele<br><br>Montenegro is edging itself out of the Yugoslav federation. RFE/RL correspondent Jolyon Naegele reports from the Montenegrin capital Podgorica that Western-oriented Montenegrins fear a crackdown by Belgrade may be imminent.<br><br>Podgorica, 8 March 2000 (RFE/RL) -- An eerie sense of foreboding is palpable in Montenegro's capital, Podgorica. <br><br>Yugoslav military police are an increasingly obvious presence. They drive by in vehicular patrols, and they have occupied most hotels on the road toward the ethnically Muslim Sandzak, a potentially explosive region that straddles the border with Serbia. Just as visible are Montenegrin police, zooming around Podgorica in a fleet of shiny new Land Rovers, and occupying those hotels in the Moraca valley and beyond not occupied by the army. <br><br>Serbian police imposed a blockade on the flow of goods between the two Yugoslav republics on Monday. Today (Wednesday), Montenegrin pharmacists say Serbia has cut off supplies of medicines. Montenegro has been moving ever farther from its larger partner in Yugoslavia since November, when it adopted the German mark as its currency. <br><br>Banner headlines in local newspapers in recent days allege that the Montenegro-based Yugoslav Second Army (under General Milorad Obradovic) is preparing for war, having heightened its battle-readiness and brought in more than 100 officers from Serbia. <br><br>The Yugoslav army has set up roadblocks near Montenegro's only border crossing with Albania at Bozaj, just southeast of Podgorica, and is conducting identity checks on travelers. The Yugoslav army has denied as "baseless and tendentious" allegations that its activities have anything to do with a Montenegrin-Albanian agreement two weeks ago (Feb. 24) to reopen the border crossing, which the federal government had kept closed for three years. <br><br>Montenegro's ethnic Albanian community has felt the heaviest impact of the Yugoslav army's heightened state of readiness. For the past week, the army has been patrolling Tuzi, a large town of ethnic Albanians between the Bozaj border crossing and Podgorica. One Tuzi resident told RFE/RL that soldiers have been stopping them to conduct identity checks whenever they leave their homes. <br><br>Montenegrin Justice Minister Dragan Soc dismisses the army's tactics as provocations. <br><br>"We want peace for our citizens and will protect them from attempts to unleash internal conflict. These are our primary goals. We have experience with these games. I see no special reason to be nervous." <br><br>Despite the justice minister's confidence, it remains unclear whether the Montenegrin government and police would be in a position to resist if the Yugoslav regime were to try to seize control in Montenegro -- perhaps through a coup or a declaration of martial law. Montenegrin news media say the Yugoslav army estimates that half the Montenegrin police force favors the Belgrade regime. <br><br>Equally uncertain is how the international community would respond, beyond the traditional statements of outrage and the inevitable tightening of sanctions. Several Western military analysts have predicted that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would try to seize control this month to oust the pro-Western Montenegrin government of Milo Djukanovic. <br><br>But those predictions came before a new hotspot flared in the past two weeks in near Serbia's southernmost border with Kosovo, an area ethnic Albanians call "Eastern Kosovo." <br><br>A cartoon over the weekend in the Kosovo Albanian daily "Zeri" shows Milosevic using one hand to twist the ear of an Albanian from "Eastern Kosovo" while lighting the fuse of a huge bomb labeled Montenegro behind his back with the other hand. The cartoon neatly sums up the present situation: The conflict on Serbia's border with Kosovo is merely a sideshow to the next Balkan powder keg Milosevic is expected to ignite -- Montenegro. <br><br>The head of one of Montenegro's ruling pro-democracy parties, Social Democrat Zarko Rakcevic, says Montenegro is being held hostage. <br><br>"We are prisoners on the one hand of international politics, and on the other of Kosovo and Serbia. Montenegro's position is extremely unenviable. In this situation we risk giving the pro-Milosevic forces in Montenegro the opportunity, since Montenegro is closed off, to defeat us with arguments full of demagogy and populism about bravery to reject a democratic pro-reform Montenegro." <br><br>The deputy speaker of Montenegro's parliament, Predrag Popovic, spoke to a gathering of pro-democracy activists from Montenegro and Serbia in Podgorica last week. In his words: "Relations between Montenegro and Serbia have never been worse in their entire history." Popovic says that what he terms "the dictatorship in Serbia" is the main obstacle to reforming the Yugoslav federation and establishing stability throughout southeastern Europe. In Popovic's words, "Montenegro wants integration and a joint state with Serbia, but neither with a Serbia in its current guise nor under the regime personified by Milosevic." <br><br>Popovic accuses the Milosevic regime of denying Montenegro its constitutional rights as an equal partner with Serbia and of forcing Montenegro out of the Yugoslav federation. He also accuses Milosevic of seeking to fabricate a conflict, saying Milosevic will blame the conflict on Montenegro and use force to suppress pro-democratic forces in Montenegro while claiming to save Yugoslavia. <br><br>The head of the European Movement in Serbia, a Belgrade-based NGO, describes the situation in Serbia as very tense. Jelica Minic says democratic forces in both republics are aware that, in her words, "it would be much better if Serbia and Montenegro meet in the EU as independent states rather than part in bloodshed." She says Yugoslavia is a house with rotten foundations. <br><br>Minic says that as Serbian opposition parties and NGOs try to consolidate their control at the local level in Novi Sad, Nis, Cacak and elsewhere, the result is a new federalization of Serbia, with local leaders acting increasingly independently of the government in Belgrade. <br><br>But Minic tells RFE/RL Serbs should not oppose independence for Montenegro if no other mutually acceptable solution can be found. <br><br>"If it is the will of Montenegrin citizens to have an independent state, that is something that Serbia should respect. If it is not the case, then new mechanisms should be provided, new institutional mechanisms, that would make citizens of Montenegro and citizens of Serbia satisfied with the new institutional setting of the future state or of the existing state." <br><br>Introducing such institutional mechanisms, however, is unlikely as long as Milosevic remains in power.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia: Military Presence Increases In Montenegro``x952601610,23577,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By Reuters<br>LONDON (Reuters) - NATO said Thursday it had no evidence that a spy in the alliance provided the Serbs with top secret details of the alliance's bombing raids against Yugoslavia during the Kosovo conflict last year. <br><br>The Guardian newspaper, citing unidentified high-level U.S. sources, said the spy had given Belgrade details of targets to be hit and precise flight paths. <br><br>NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said the fact that Yugoslavia had managed to bring down only two NATO aircraft during a 78-day bombing campaign suggested that the Serbs did not have access to secret information. <br><br>``There is absolutely no evidence that Yugoslavia had any kind of information to allow them to be more effective in shooting our planes down,'' Shea said. <br><br>``This is a rumor,'' he told BBC television. ``There is no beef (substance).'' <br><br>Shea said that if the United States really did have evidence of a spy within NATO during the bombing campaign that ended nearly a year ago, the alliance would have heard about it by now. <br><br>NATO was not actively looking for a spy because there was no evidence that one existed. ``We don't have anything to go on.'' <br><br>Shea said there was no evidence the alliance's operational planning had been compromised. <br><br>``NATO took extreme measures to make sure that its operational planning remained secret. Every couple of weeks the procedures were reviewed, we tightened up the distribution list ... to make sure that only those who really had a need to know were in the picture. We took great care.'' <br><br>The Guardian said an internal classified report drawn up for senior U.S. defense officials concluded the Serbs had access to NATO's daily orders for air raids and reconnaissance flights during the first two weeks of the bombing campaign which began last March. <br><br>It quoted the report as saying that by the end of the second week of the campaign, NATO started to change the way the orders about bombing raids were distributed. <br><br>The effect on what the Serbs appeared to know about NATO's bombing plans was immediate, the report said. <br><br>The Guardian quoted a senior NATO source as saying the alliance's supreme commander, General Wesley Clark, suspected early in the bombing campaign that Belgrade had a spy in the organization's Brussels headquarters. <br><br>``I know I've got a spy, I want to find him,'' Clark was quoted as telling colleagues. <br><br>The Guardian said the classified U.S. report would feature in a BBC television program to be broadcast Sunday.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO Denies Mole Alerted Serbs to Air Raid Plans``x952601629,61257,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Stephen Castle in Zagreb <br><br>10 March 2000 <br><br>The European Union will risk a confrontation with President Slobodan Milosevic today by giving an audacious display of support for Montenegro, the most independent element of the Yugoslav Republic. <br><br>Chris Patten, the European commissioner for external relations, plans to cross the Yugoslav border and go to Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital, for a series of high-level political meetings. While air space over Montenegro is controlled by Belgrade, its land borders are usually controlled by Montenegrin police, making a visit possible, although there was uncertainty last night about whether they would be kept open. <br><br>No Western politician has travelled to Montenegro since the Kosovo conflict erupted last year, and Mr Patten will couple his planned visit with the announcement of new aid. <br><br>The move came as the West offered assurances that it would help Serbia's junior partner if it came under attack. After a meeting with the United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, in Sarajevo yesterday, the Montenegrin President, Milo Djukanovic, said Ms Albright "reiterated the readiness of the Western democratic world to offer Montenegro help in its efforts to preserve peace and to defend itself". <br><br>The Western initiative comes amid concern that President Milosevic is seeking to destabilise Montenegro and fuel ethnic divisions both there and in southern Serbia. In response, the international community is determined to step up its support for Mr Djukanovic, while not encouraging him to try to break away from Yugoslavia – which it is feared would provoke another crisis. <br><br>"We believe Djukanovic deserves support for his desire to have a democratic Montenegro within Yugoslavia," Ms Albright said, admitting that his economy is under attack. <br><br>Brussels acknowledges that the Montenegrin government has been left in a catch-22 situation, as the West discourages it from breaking away from Belgrade for fear of the political consequences. But the lack of independence makes it technically impossible for Western institutions to give substantial macroeconomic aid. Today's announcement will therefore be centred on specific projects funded directly by Brussels, avoiding the need for governments to be directly involved. <br><br>On a five-day tour of south- east Europe, including Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia, Mr Patten has adopted a carrot-and-stick approach. Countries with failing economies and ineffective government have been urged to change before they can gain greater ties to Europe, while those making progress have been encouraged. Brussels argues that the most successful, such as Croatia, can act as "beacons". <br><br>Croatia hopes to open talks quickly on the first step for closer ties with Europe, a stabilisation and association agreement that will eventually lead to a free-trade area relationship. On Tuesday, Macedonia became the first Balkan country to start talks on this type of agreement. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xPatten's visit to Montenegro raises tension between EU and Milosevic ``x952679266,97075,``x``x
``xThe Times<br>BY MICHAEL EVANS<br>DEFENCE EDITOR<br><br>SECURITY at Nato's political and military headquarters during the early stages of last year's air campaign over Yugoslavia was so relaxed that it was open house for Serb eavesdropping operations, alliance officials have admitted. <br><br>Convinced that the bombing campaign would last only a few days before President Milosevic caved in, hundreds of officials from all the Nato countries had access to the top-secret target plans, and insecure telephone lines were being used to pass on sensitive information. The inadequate security precautions were admitted yesterday as Nato officials denied that an alliance spy had been leaking details of air campaign target orders to the Serbs during the 78-day operation. <br><br>The claim in a BBC documentary about the Kosovo crisis, to be shown at the weekend, was dismissed by Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, the Nato Secretary-General, and also by General Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander, who was in charge of the operation. The BBC referred to an "after action report", by General James McCarthy of the US Air Force, which said there must have been a leak in the first days of bombing because the Serbs appeared to know where raids would occur. <br><br>However, a spokesman for General Clark said there had never been any evidence that there was a spy in Nato. The problem, he said, was that, in the early stages of the campaign, there was a lot of sensitive information being passed around over insecure lines that could have been intercepted by the Serbs. He also said that people with cellphones were spotted standing outside Nato air bases in Italy and could have been sending back details of take-offs to Belgrade. <br><br>After a few days, he said, when it became clear that the bombing campaign was going to be a longer affair, security was tightened. The 600 people who had security clearance to read the "air tasking orders" were reduced to 100, he said. <br><br>Previous stories about a Nato spy, published in newspapers last August, claimed that Serb air defence units had been tipped off about the flight path of a F117 Stealth fighter that was hit by a surface-to-air missile. However, it was later confirmed that none of the flight plans involving American Stealth fighters and the B2 Stealth bomber was included in the Nato air tasking orders. <br><br>Jamie Shea, Nato spokesman, said the fact that only two Nato aircraft were lost in the campaign indicated that the Serbs had no warnings of imminent raids. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xOfficials admit Nato headquarters was open house for Serb eavesdropping``x952679309,69957,``x``x
``xBRUSSELS, March 10 (Reuters) - Tension in and around Kosovo will be a top priority item for U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and NATO and European Union officials during a series of meetings in Brussels on Friday. <br>No clear picture has emerged during Albright's nine-day trip to Europe of how the Clinton administration, which backed NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslav forces a year ago, will act if violence simmering on the line between Kosovo province and the rest of Serbia blows up into a new conflict. <br><br>"We are watching the situation very closely," a U.S. official said, echoing words of NATO's military chief, U.S. General Wesley Clark, though he was talking about the situation in Montenegro which is also giving cause for concern. <br><br>Worrying the officials were a blockade of Montenegro's border by Serbian police, arms finds which suggested Serb and Albanian illegal activity in Kosovo's boundary region and a build-up of forces on President Slobodan Milosevic's side of that area. <br><br>DODGED QUESTION ON PEACEKEEPER INTERVENTION <br><br>Albright, who meets Clark, NATO Secretary-General George Robertson and EU officials in Brussels before returning to Washington, dodged the question when asked whether NATO-led peacekeepers should intervene to defend ethnic Albanians who have come under pressure in areas under Milosevic's control. <br><br>While saying extremists on both the Albanian and Serb sides are to blame for the tensions, she has repeatedly said that the only government stoking them is the one in Belgrade. <br><br>A series of clashes just outside Kosovo in Serbia proper has prompted some diplomats to see similarities with the pattern of violence that spurred NATO to intervene last March. <br><br>Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, is also facing problems as its pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic told Albright when he met her in Sarajevo on Thursday. <br><br>He said after the meeting that the West was willing to help in the event of aggression from Yugoslav rulers in Belgrade but gave no details. So far, the United States and Europe have offered financial assistance including food aid. <br><br>Albright, who left for the Serb half of Bosnia immediately after the meeting, told reporters beforehand that she was concerned about the security of the whole region and supported Montenegro's bid for a democracy within Yugoslavia, adding: "Hopefully, at some stage, the rest of it will be democratic." <br><br>The U.S. official said the situation would be discussed at all of Friday's meetings, "Everybody's concerned," he said. <br><br>He would not be drawn on whether one possible explanation for the renewed tension was that Milosevic was trying to create an excuse to cancel elections which are supposed to be held this year. "I'm sure it's on people's minds," he said. <br><br>While offering financial support in return for reforms and privatisation such as that carried out by Bosnian Serbs in their half of Bosnia, Albright's message has been for opponents of Milosevic to stop fighting, for ethnic Albanians to stop killing Serbs in revenge in Kosovo and for political leaders to reform. <br><br>In frank comments about the state of Serbia's opposition, which recently failed to agree an anti-Milosevic protest plan, she said: "It's important to have an opposition leader, not four of them that disagree with each other." <br><br>A U.S. official said she was responding to the pessimism of her audience, a group of independent journalists in the Bosnian Serb city of Banja Luka who told her they did not see how the opposition could sort itself out. <br><br>The West slapped a fuel embargo on Belgrade for its role in conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and had hopes that discontent with Milosevic's rule this winter would touch off widespread protests which would remove him from power. <br><br>Albright said people in Serbia had to act, saying: "Somehow there has to be a critical mass and a call for revolt." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbright to see EU, NATO, discuss Yugoslavia``x952679354,10336,``x``x
``xBELGRADE (Reuters) - As the anniversary of NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia approaches, rumors are swirling here that more air strikes are imminent. <br>No one is sure where they come from, and few people have any clear idea why the alliance would bomb again, but the talk is widespread. <br><br>"There's not a conversation between friends and neighbors without mention of the possibility of new NATO bombs and missiles on our land," the popular daily Nedeljni Telegraf wrote this week under the headline "Will they bomb us on March 23?" <br><br>The paper said those "in the know" had decided on that date, the day before the start of last year's bombing, but did not explain why. <br><br>Fears of more air strikes have surfaced now and then throughout the nine months since last year's bombing ended. <br><br>In the past few weeks, however, they have been fueled by inter-ethnic tensions both within and near Kosovo, NATO's plans to hold military exercises in the province in March, and militaristic talk from the Yugoslav government. <br><br>Last week a new ripple spread through the capital when a local civil defense official said the air raid sirens would be tested, even though he added it would be done in "silent mode." <br><br> <br><br>GOVERNMENT, OPPOSITION BLAME EACH OTHER <br><br>The pro-government Politika newspaper seized on the comments, saying the fact that the official was a member of an opposition party proved the West was spreading the rumorsthrough its "lackeys" in Serbia to try to spread fear. <br><br>"The closer we are to the one-year anniversary of the start of the NATO aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the more aggressive its creator's psychological propaganda offensive becomes," it said. <br><br>"Western specialists in this field are endeavoring to create a psychosis of fear and panic, to increase the apathy and anxiety of the population, in short, to create an atmosphere similar to that of last spring," it said. <br><br>Alliance officials say they have no plan to bomb and are perplexed by where the rumors have come from. <br><br>Opposition politicians say the government is spreading them, to set people against the West and prevent them blaming their leaders for growing economic hardships and joining a new protest campaign due to start this month. <br><br>"The regime is deliberately stirring up those rumours," Vladan Batic, coordinator of the opposition umbrella grouping Alliance for Change, told a local television station in the central Serbian town of Cacak Wednesday evening. <br><br>"It is using a Cold War policy to spread fear and manipulate with threats. It is creating new hot spots, thus keeping people thinking only about that." <br><br> <br><br>MOBILIZATION FUELS FEARS <br><br>Natasa Kandic, director of a leading human rights group, the Humanitarian Law Fund, said the mobilization of army reservists in southern Serbia was adding to concern. <br><br>"Many people from Nis and Novi Pazar have been called up, but many people have refused," she said by telephone. <br><br>"In Kosovo everyone is speculating about a new war, here it is paranoia that NATO will bomb again," she said. <br><br>Army officials have denied any special call-up, saying reservists were being called for regular exercises. <br><br>NATO says it is concerned by the recent clashes between Albanians and Serbs, both in Kosovo and in Albanian-populated villages just inside government-controlled Serbia. <br><br>But while it says it is determined to prevent further violence within majority Albanian Kosovo, where it took over from Yugoslav security forces last June, it says it has no plans to intervene beyond the borders of the province. <br><br>The Alliance also regularly warns Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic against causing trouble in Montenegro, but the pro-Western republic, though tense, has seen no conflict. <br><br>"It is Serbs now who are being attacked in Kosovo," Sasa Mirkonic, general director of independent Belgrade radio B292, said in an interview. "So where would they bomb, Kosovo?" <br><br>Many minds in Serbia are fevered by 10 years of state media telling them the West is against them. For them the fact there is no evidence to back up the latest rumors is no obstacle. <br><br>Yugoslavia never showed off the dozens of NATO warplanes and captured pilots it said it had downed during the air strikes, but many people believe they were secretly given back in return for NATO promising not to bomb bridges in Belgrade. <br><br>Some have picked up even stranger stories. <br><br>"Surely you know why the Dutch hate us?" a Belgrade taxi driver said recently, stunned by his passenger's surprise. <br><br>"Because our bombers flew secretly to the Netherlands during the air strikes and destroyed their air force." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNearly a year on, Serbs fear new NATO air strikes``x952679379,25442,``x``x
``xMOSCOW, March 9 (Reuters) - A senior Russian general said on Thursday ethnic Albanian separatists had started a cycle of tension in Yugoslavia that could end with NATO-led KFOR troops moving into areas outside Kosovo. <br>Speaking at a news conference, Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov also sharply criticised the U.N. administrator in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, saying the Frenchman's decisions were aimed at accelerating the break-up of the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>"We are watching with alarm the strengthening of the separatist tendency, not just in the southern region of Serbia," said Ivashov, who heads the Defence Ministry's international relations department. <br><br>He said ethnic Albanian extremists wanted to annex a number of settlements in southern Serbia outside Kosovo. <br><br>Ivashov said some NATO countries, particularly the United States, were conniving in such attempts to stir up tensions in southern Serbia. He said there were similar moves in Montenegro -- Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation -- and the northern province of Vojvodina. <br><br>"Again we see the possible scenario of provoking disorder, police activity, concern on the faces of NATO politicians and generals and the deployment of KFOR, above all NATO, forces with the aim of strengthening the falling apart of the Yugoslav federation," he said. <br><br>"We see the NATO contingent preparing for such action in a concerted fashion," Ivashov added, noting NATO planned a major exercise -- "Dynamic Response 2000" -- later this month. <br><br>"It is becoming more tense and we do not rule out that as April approaches these tensions will manifest themselves." <br><br>Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic told reporters on Thursday afters talks with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright the West was willing to help Montenegro in the event of aggression from Belgrade. He did not elaborate. <br><br>Ivashov, who was one of the most outspoken critics of NATO's bombing campaign last year against Yugoslavia, said Russian troops cooperated well with NATO forces in KFOR on the ground. <br><br>But the general was less complimentary about Kouchner, head of the U.N. Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo. <br><br>"Artificial attempts are being made, particularly by the head of the U.N. mission, Mr Kouchner, to establish a situation in which de facto Kosovo province leaves the Yugoslav federation," Ivashov said. <br><br>Ivashov's comments echoed some remarks by Yugoslavia's envoy to the United Nations on Tuesday. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has also expressed his concern about rising tensions in the Balkans and the fate of ethnic Serbs in Kosovo. <br><br>Ivashov declined to comment on report in Britain's Guardian newspaper that a spy leaked secrets to Belgrade last year and that a Swedish businessman helped forge a peace deal. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRussian general questions NATO tactics in Kosovo``x952679405,12887,``x``x
``xSARAJEVO, March 9 (Reuters) - The West is willing to help Montenegro in the event of aggression from Yugoslav rulers in Belgrade, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said after talks with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Thursday. <br>The tiny republic is Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, but has been pulling away from Belgrade in frustration with the lack of economic or democratic reforms under Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>"Mrs Albright reiterated the readiness of the Western democratic world to offer Montenegro help in efforts to preserve peace and to defend itself in the event of possible aggression," Djukanovic told reporters without elaborating. <br><br>The West has imposed sanctions on Belgrade for its role in a decade of Balkan wars, and NATO fought an air war last year to force Yugoslav troops out of the province of Kosovo to end oppression of the ethnic Albanian majority. <br><br>Djukanovic said his republic was in no hurry to secede from Yugoslavia. But if it could not reach a deal with Belgrade about equal status in the federation and an opening to the West, he said, "Montenegro will continue on that road alone." <br><br>The president said he and Albright, on a two day-visit to Bosnia, shared concerns about the presence in Montenegro of Yugoslav troops loyal to Milosevic. <br><br>BORDER ISSUE <br><br>Last month the Montenegrin government reopened the border with Albania, but within days the army had set up checkpoints, saying its 1997 decision to close the frontier was still in force -- although it continued to let traffic through. <br><br>Djukanovic said the army was also contributing to Belgrade's increasing media pressure on Montenegro by letting its air waves be used for the transmission of illegal broadcasts from Serbia. <br><br>NATO's military chief, U.S. General Wesley Clark, said last month the situation in Montenegro was very tense and the alliance was closely watching developments there. <br><br>"We are hoping that after all the lessons (Milosevic) should have drawn from previous defeats in former Yugoslavia he will not be ready to start another war adventure," Djukanovic said. <br><br>"But we are not relying only on his rationality because we don't have a reason to believe in it." <br><br>If the Yugoslav army did try to act against Montenegro, he said "we will have the potential to protect ourselves." <br><br>"Of course, we don't think it is only a question for Montenegro," he said, adding that the West's security arrangements for southeastern Europe could be endangered. <br><br>"In this sense, I believe that the interests of Montenegro match those of the international community...and that we will succeed, with preventive diplomacy, in discouraging all those bent on destruction in the Balkans." <br><br>The Western-sponsored Stability Pact offers the region political and economic assistance in exchange for cooperation and reforms. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro says West will help if Belgrade attacks``x952679436,86821,``x``x
``xThe Sunday Telegraf<br><br>by Julius Strauss in Pristina<br><br>SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, the Yugoslav president, is planning a spring offensive against Nato by using three Balkan flashpoints to divide the alliance, according to intelligence experts.<br>This way, they believe, he hopes to avoid open military confrontation with the West and cause just enough internal mayhem to divide Nato to the point that it cannot offer a unified response.<br><br>By stoking Albanian-Serb violence in the divided city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, causing friction with the renegade government in Montenegro and using a resurgent neo-Kosovo Liberation Army movement in southern Serbia as excuses for further violence, Milosevic can expect to widen existing rifts in the alliance.<br><br>"He [Milosevic] knows that Nato will launch air strikes against him only if he directly attacks Kosovo. Any lesser escalation he is likely to get away with. I'm afraid he's brewing up a whole pot of trouble for Nato," said one intelligence officer.<br><br>It is now a year since Nato began its air campaign against Serbia but it has not proved effective in calming the Balkan flashpoints. In Mitrovica, violence is almost a daily event as Serbs and ethnic Albanians clash over control of the northern half of the city. French peacekeepers struggling to reintegrate it are coming under attack. Last week, more than a dozen were injured when Albanians threw grenades at them.<br><br>Television broadcasts depicting the alliance struggling to maintain control over three tower blocks there serve only to underline the frailty of the mission. Nato fears that the city is alive with Milosevic's agents. "No intelligence service in the world would walk out of a place like Mitrovica without leaving agents in place. Until they are activated nobody will even notice them," said the intelligence officer. <br><br>If Nato is in a muddle over Mitrovica, offering support for Montenegro is an even more divisive issue Milosevic has the infrastructure for a putsch. The Yugoslav army contains special forces units capable of seizing border crossings and important buildings, and loyalist cells in the republic are ready to be activated. A vociferous pro-Belgrade media campaign combined with the economic cost of a Belgrade-imposed trade blockade. are sapping support for Milo Djukanovic, the pro-independence leader.<br><br>After a meeting with the United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, last week, Mr Djukanovic said the West would come to his help if Belgrade attacked. That appeared to be wishful thinking. A defence analyst in London said: "There is no support at all for Nato intervention in Montenegro even if Milosevic does try to take over." Diplomats say only a fresh round of atrocities would bring the alliance in. <br><br>The thorniest issue for Nato, however, is the southern Serbian territory bordering Kosovo, which is dominated by Albanian-populated villages. In recent weeks ethnic Albanians have waged a small war of independence to "liberate" these areas. Parts of the Presevo valley are virtual no-go areas for Serbian forces.<br><br>So far, the Serb response to attacks on their police units has been muted. Belgrade has chosen instead to milk the incidents for propaganda value, accusing US forces who control the border area inside Kosovo of tacitly supporting Albanian extremists. Some of the disputed villages, however, are inside the three-mile demilitarised zone established by the UN. Diplomats fear that Milosevic's first move will be to breach this in the name of "clearing out the terrorists" - a move that would have widespread support at home and some sympathy abroad.<br><br>"The beauty for Milosevic is that in both Mitrovica and southern Serbia, the Serbs, to a degree, have right on their side. The Albanians are behaving terribly and Milosevic will cash in on that," said a Belgrade-based opposition journalist. <br><br>Nato already is fiercely divided, something that will not be missed in Belgrade. Most national contingencies in the peacekeeping force, Kfor, have placed restrictions on use of their forces. National governments are taking over more day-to-day control of their soldiers and the role of Gen Klaus Reinhardt, the Kfor commander, is being steadily eroded.<br><br>The most serious breach is between the Americans, who control eastern Kosovo, and the continental Europeans. With the approaching presidential elections, analysts believe that America is desperate to avoid confrontation and is searching for some form of exit strategy.<br><br>The divisions are likely to worsen next month when Eurocorps takes over Kfor command from Nato. "I cannot see the logic of sending in Eurocorps now. Nato is already divided and this will make it worse. America may simply want to bail out," said one Western diplomat. However, Nato may still have a little time. Milosevic is putting his own house in order, with a purge of independent media and a clampdown on opponents. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAllies divided as Milosevic fans flames of unrest``x952938598,63668,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br><br>Maggie O'Kane in Belgrade <br>Monday March 13, 2000 <br><br>International agencies fighting the drug trade are warning that Kosovo has become a "smugglers' paradise" supplying up to 40% of the heroin sold in Europe and North America. <br>Nato-led forces, struggling to keep peace in the province a year after the war, have no mandate to fight drug traffickers; and - with the expulsion from Kosovo of the Serb police, including the "4th unit" narcotics squad - the smugglers are running the "Balkan route" with complete freedom. <br><br>The peacekeepers of K-For "may as well be coming from another planet when it comes to tackling these guys," said Marko Nicovic, a lawyer and vice-president of the international narcotics enforcement officers association, based in New York. <br><br>"It's the hardest narcotics ring to crack because it is all run by families and they even have their own language. Kosovo is set to become the cancer centre of Europe, as western Europe will soon discover," he said. <br><br>He estimates that the province's traffickers are now handling between 4.5 and five tonnes of heroin a month and growing fast, compared to the two tonnes they were shifting before the Kosovo war of March-June last year, when Nato bombing forced Serbia's regime to pull out of the largely ethnic-Albanian province. <br><br>"It's coming through easier and cheaper - and there's much more of it. The price is going down and if this goes on we are predicting a heroin boom in western Europe as there was in the early 80s." <br><br>A heroin trafficker in Belgrade confirmed to the Guardian that since the war the Kosovo heroin dealers, most of them from four main families, are concentrating on the western Europe and US markets. <br><br>A kilo of heroin that is worth £10,000 in Kosovo or £20,000 in Belgrade can make £40,000 on the British, Italian or Swiss markets, said that 24-year-old heroin middleman. He expected the Kosovo route to grow: "There's nobody to stop them." <br><br>Only half the promised 5,000 policemen have arrived to join the peace operation in the province, which is now the main route for heroin flowing through some of the world's most troubled countries, Afghanisatan, northern Iran, the southern states of the Russian Federation, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kosovo and into western Europe and the US <br><br>"It is the Colombia of Europe," said Mr Nikovic, who was the chief of the Yugoslav narcotics force until 1996. "When Serb police were burning houses in Kosovo they were finding it [heroin] stuffed in the roof. As far as I know there has not been a single report in the last year of K-For seizing heroin. They are soldiers not criminal investigators." <br><br>Echoing this, an official at Nato in Brussels said: "Generals do not want to turn their troops into cops ... They don't want their troops to get shot pursuing black marketeers." <br><br>There is no evidence that the ethnic Albanians' Kosovo Liberation Army is involved directly in drug smuggling, but according to the British-based International Police Review published by Jane's they may be dependent on the drug families who, the Review says, partly funded the KLA's operations in Kosovo last year. <br><br>When drug squad chiefs from northern and eastern Europe met in Sweden 10 days ago, the Balkan route was the main issue, according to the head of the Czech narcotics agency, Jiri Komorous: "There are four paths of drug trafficking through the Balkans to western Europe and we have to improve our attempts to control the Kosovo Albanians." <br><br>The Kosovo mafia has been smuggling heroin since the mid-80s - but since the Kosovo war they have come into their own, according to Mr Nicovic: "You have an entire country without a police force that knows what is going on." <br><br>The Kosovo Albanian mafia is almost untouchable. "Everything is worked out on the basis of the family or clan structure, the Fic (brotherhood), so it is impossible to plant informers," said Mr Nicovic. <br><br>"Their diaspora have been in Turkey and Germany since Tito's communist purges so the whole route is set up. Now they have found the one country between Asia and Europe which is not a member of Interpol." <br><br>To Britain, he said, there are two routes: "By truck through Germany, Belgium and France and then via Dover - and also through Budapest, Poland, the Netherlands, then to Britain." <br><br>Responsibility for organising police work in Kosovo "is a grey area", said the Nato official, but "if organised crime goes on thriving it will have intenational ramifications". ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo drug mafia supply heroin to Europe ``x952938632,12933,``x``x
``xIn a week-long series Guardian writers examine how Nato won the war but may now be losing the peace<br><br>Kosovo: special report <br><br>Jonathan Steele in Pristina <br>Monday March 13, 2000 <br><br>The Zabeli family sits in their barn, warming themselves by a woodstove. Their makeshift home is comfortable compared with the tent where all 10 of them - grandparents, two grown-up children, one spouse and several toddlers - huddled through the winter. <br>"It was not until January, seven months after the end of the war, that we got timbers from a foreign charity and enough tiles to roof the damaged barn," says Sandik Zabeli, 63, the family's hardy patriarch. His handshake feels as though it could crush one of those timbers like a matchstick. <br><br>In the hierarchy of suffering around the Kosovan capital, Pristina, the Zabelis are above the bottom rung. "We're all healthy. No one in our family was killed," Mr Zabeli says. <br><br>Even tent life was better than the three months they spent in the woods last year after Serb forces burnt their home three weeks before Nato's air strikes began. "At least we don't have to run into the woods with the children any more," he says. <br><br>As the March 24 anniversary of the air strikes approaches, peacetime reconstruction remains pitifully slow. When international aid agencies poured into Kosovo with the tide of returning refugees, they found 50,000 houses totally destroyed, leaving close to half a million people without shelter. But after the billions of pounds spent on bombing, the tough message was that no one could expect rapid help for rebuilding. Families would get aid to make ready for winter only one room. <br><br>So all over Kosovo residents put transparent plastic across the windows of their barns and cow sheds, and blue tarpaulin on the concrete floors to keep out the damp. Kosovo's Albanians would be freezing but free. <br><br>Twenty miles away, a death notice with the faces of 14 Serb victims hangs on the kitchen wall like an icon, a perpetual reminder of loss. No postwar atrocity in Kosovo caused as much outrage as the slaughter of this group of Serb farmers heading for their fields near the village of Gracko last July. It exposed the weakness of K-For, the international peacekeeping force that entered Kosovo with the goal of providing security for all ethnic groups. <br><br>No one was hit harder by the massacre than Lyubica Zivic, who lost her two sons, leaving her daughters-in-law widows and their seven children fatherless. Dressed in black every day, the three Zivic women are prisoners in their village, like almost every other Serb in Kosovo. Once in total control, the Serbs have been reduced to a few dozen enclaves which they leave at their peril. Two-thirds of the 150,000 who lived in Kosovo a year ago have gone. <br><br>Gracko's horizons have shrunk. It is too dangerous for secondary school children to go to the nearest big town any more. Instead, they have their classes in the village primary school. A doctor makes a weekly visit, and those taken ill in an emergency have to be escorted in ambulances by K-For. <br><br>"We have only left here once since the tragedy," says a tearful Vesna Zivic. "To mark the half-year since they died, we went to the cathedral in Gracanica to light a candle." <br><br>Yet isolation and bereavement have brought no sense of reflection. They refuse to accept any wrongdoing to Albanians during the offensives by the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, and with their new fear has come hatred. <br><br>"I hate now. I didn't hate before," says Ms Zivic. "I hate every single Albanian thing; everyone, even a little Albanian child." Like a symbol of almost every group of Serbs still in Kosovo, the Zivic women are trapped but unrepentant. <br><br>A year after the Nato intervention, the question that recurs in almost every conversation is whether Nato won the war but is losing the peace. <br><br>"We will be facing two sets of critics," Nato's spokesman, Jamie Shea, told a conference in Pristina recently. "There are the revisionists who say that because Nato was unable to avoid causing some civilian casualties, and because only 2,000 Albanian bodies have been discovered in mass graves so far, the Nato campaign was not justified. The second group are the perfectionists, who complain that we haven't produced a multi-ethnic, democratic Kosovo." <br><br>His argument, of course, ignores the larger group of people who supported intervention but feel Nato governments' postwar efforts should have been more generous and efficient, just as the military campaign should have been conducted differently. <br><br>In the bluntest terms, the intervention achieved its goal of ending President Milosevic's ethnic cleansing and securing a Yugoslav military withdrawal. <br><br>"For the first time in their history Kosovars see soldiers who do not threaten them," says Veton Surroi, the publisher of the newspaper Koha Ditore. Like most Albanians, he is angry that the international community has failed to do more to improve their physical conditions. <br><br>As hundreds of thousands struggled through winter in the countryside in tents and cowsheds, others moved to Pristina to find shelter. But even there they shivered through repeated cuts in power and water, which had never affected the city under Serb rule. <br><br>At the mercy of criminals<br><br>Foreign governments have supplied fewer than half the 4,500 police they promised, leaving both Albanians and Serbs at the mercy of criminals. Even if UN police or K-For troops manage to arrest suspects, they tend to be released within hours. <br><br>"There are only 50 detention places in Pristina," complains a British officer. "If we find someone with illegal weapons, he's usually let out the next day. All we keep is the name and photo." <br><br>Of the 4,000 people arrested by K-For since June 3, 750 have been released. In hundreds of cases defendants are freed because Albanian prosecutors and judges are bribed or intimidated. Although the UN appointed some Serbs as prosecutors, none dared to take up the post. The obvious solution of appointing foreign judges was delayed for months. <br><br>The Albanians are in no mood to forgive the Serbs. Before the war, the two communities walked the same streets and used the same shops, although they went to different schools. Now the apartheid is total. Serbs and Albanians are split into separate areas and rarely see each other - few want to. <br><br>"The oppression is too recent. Hatred is much worse than a year ago," said a young translator. His father stayed in Pristina when half the city's population was expelled by Serb forces. What shocked him was the way one of their Serb neighbours changed overnight after Nato started its air strikes - he put on paramilitary fatigues and shot at their house. <br><br>Few Serbs admit that more Albanians suffered injustice or lost family members before K-For arrived than the Serbs have done since. "An equivalent number of people died on each side," says Aca Nikolic, a headmaster in Vrbovac. "We need someone to calm things down for us. I trust the international community to do it, but there will be a lot more casualties on both sides. It is the good people who will suffer." <br><br>• Police used force to shut down a radio and television station in south-eastern Serbia yesterday in what an opposition politician said was part of the authorities' heavy-handed preparations for elections. <br><br>About 30 officers raided the station in Pozega, 110 miles from Belgrade. "Every television, every radio station and every newspaper must be protected," the politician, Vladan Batic, said. "If we do not do so, tomorrow it will be too late." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRebuilding the Balkans: Too soon to forgive ``x952938658,9774,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Stephen Castle in Brussels <br><br><br>13 March 2000 <br><br>Strains over the funding of Kosovo's reconstruction could poison relations between Europe and America and lead to a serious transatlantic rift, according to Chris Patten, the European commissioner for external affairs. <br><br>Mr Patten defended Europe's record but warned that a continuing dispute with the United States about the EU's role in rebuilding the province could "contribute to a serious problem for our relationship". <br><br>Mr Patten pointed to some signs of progress in south-east Europe, particularly in Croatia and Macedonia, where reforming governments are in place. But five hectic days of travelling underlined the fact that Kosovo's fate is again testing the resolve and unity of the Western alliance. <br><br>Tensions over Kosovo surfaced in Sarajevo on Thursday when the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, referred to the "need for pledges to be fulfilled", apparently reflecting a widespread view in the Congress that the EU is being sluggish in releasing its promised cash. <br><br>Mr Patten, speaking on his flight home, said Europe was the biggest donor for reconstruction in Kosovo, with 360 million euros (£220m) allocated for this year. "There was an implicit bargain that, because of their military might, the Americans would [bear] the largest cost of the war and [Europe would bear] the largest share of the cost of the peace. I believe we are doing that but it's important to convince the Congress. <br><br>"We have to point out to the Americans that they are not always comparing like with like. Very often the figures that they present in the Balkans aggregate their economic assistance, their diplomatic representation, the cost of their military efforts. And that is compared with our development assistance. It's not fair." <br><br>EU-US ties are already tense, with several trade disputes pending and America increasingly suspicious about Europe's new defence initiative. Mr Patten warned against opening another front that could "contribute to a serious problem for our relationship". <br><br>"The EU and the US are still the principal champions of civilised values and it would be deeply damaging for the rest of the world, as well as for our individual interests, if we allow the debate about these issues to get out of hand and to poison or warp our overall relationship," he said. <br><br>European officials concede the complexity of EU procedures have hampered support for the UN administration in Kosovo and Mr Patten said his task was "to make clear that we are running our external assistance programmes as well as we can". This would, he said, help close the gap between Europe's ambitions and its delivery. "We are big players, we have big assistance programmes but we have even longer communiqués of good intentions." <br><br>Mr Patten said it remained "important" to talk to the Serbian opposition, "but the best thing we can do for the opponents of [President Slobodan] Milosevic is to demonstrate, by what happens elsewhere in their region, just how much he represents the forces of darkness". ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xPatten warns of transatlantic feud over Kosovo cash ``x952938679,63540,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>Serb general stands accused of planning the deaths of 7,000 Bosnians in the worst atrocity in Europe since the Second World War <br><br>By Stephen Castle in Brussels <br><br><br>14 March 2000 <br><br>A Bosnian Serb general charged with masterminding the murder of more than 7,000 people at Srebrenica in 1995 went on trial yesterday, accused of responsibility for Europe's worst atrocity since the Second World War. <br><br>The opening of the trial of General Radislav Krstic, the highest- ranking Bosnian Serb officer in UN custody, marks a significant new phase for war crimes prosecutors who aim to prove that the ethnic cleansing of the Balkans constituted genocide. Dressed in a grey jacket, black shirt and tie, Gen Krstic, 52, listened impassively as the case against him was outlined at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague. <br><br>The trial centres on one of the most notorious acts of savagery during the conflict – one that exposed the impotence of Dutch peace-keepers who had declared Srebrenica a UN designated safe area. <br><br>Prosecutors told of how the entry of Bosnian Serb forces led by Gen Krstic and commander-in-chief Gen Ratko Mladic into the enclave became the prelude to a pre-meditated massacre and the deportation of up to 30,000 Muslims. "The victors abandoned all sense of humanity and committed atrocities on a scale not seen since the Second World War," said the prosecutor, Mark Harmon, adding that 7,574 people were still listed as missing, presumed dead. <br><br>The victims were not combatants, he added, but unarmed men, many of whom were murdered with their arms tied behind their backs and their eyes hidden by blindfolds. "The manner in which these people perished is incomprehensible by all standards known to mankind." <br><br>The case is an important test for the tribunal, which has yet to secure a genocide conviction. It also puts the UN under the spotlight for allowing the massacre to take place. In recent weeks the tribunal has concentrated its efforts on senior officers deemed to be most responsible for the atrocities. Gen Krstic, the commander of the Bosnian Serb army's Drina Wolves, reported to Gen Mladic, and through him to Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader at the time, the indictment says. Mr Karadzic and Gen Mladic have been indicted for genocide, but remain at large. <br><br>Gen Krstic denies genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention. His defence, which argues that he was unaware of his soldiers' crimes because the chain of command was split, is expected to try to exploit the fact that few witnesses survived. <br><br>But yesterday the prosecutor argued that Gen Krstic was fully aware of the activities of immediate subordinates. The prosecutor described a phone call between him and one officer who "complained that he had 3,500 parcels to distribute and he had no solution, and he asked Gen Krstic for more men for the job". Mr Harmon added that "parcels" was code for Muslim men and "distribute" for murder. The prosecution painted a picture of a well-orchestrated massacre that required 50 to 60 buses, detention centres and digging equipment. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``x'Mastermind of Srebrenica genocide' goes on trial ``x953026875,86501,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br><br>Unexploded bombs: Kosovo tries to clean up after air strikes<br><br>Jonathan Steele in Pristina <br>Tuesday March 14, 2000 <br><br>The US is refusing to allow American troops to remove the thousands of unexploded cluster bombs dropped by Nato planes on Kosovo last year. <br>As the snows melt and the first planting season since the Nato air strikes approaches, Albanian and international officials fear that the death toll from bomb casualties will rise as farmers start to plough, children play in the fields and people go into the woods to collect timber for cooking. <br><br>Cluster bombs are far more deadly than landmines and around 10% failed to explode. But for fear of the "bodybag syndrome", whereby the bodies of US casualties are returned home in bags, the Pentagon has ruled that it will not order its professional disposal experts to defuse them. The job is being dumped on underfunded civilian teams, largely staffed by Albanians. <br><br>Each cluster bomb unit contains up to 200 weapons the size of a tennis ball canister. The unit opens up at about 2,000ft, unleashing a hail of the bomb canisters that swamp an area the size of four football pitches with lethal shrapnel. Designed as an anti-tank weapon, each bomb can also penetrate five inches of steel. <br><br>During the Kosovo war, US and British pilots were under orders to drop them from above 15,000ft to keep their aircraft safe from enemy fire. Hundreds of the bombs missed their targets. <br><br>"Nato gave us information about where they thought they dropped them. These were detailed grid references, but many turned out not to be correct," says John Flanagan, a colonel from New Zealand, who heads the UN's mine action coordination centre in Kosovo. "They may have intended to drop six bombs on one target and four go off somewhere else, as much as one kilometre from the intended spot." <br><br>The UN coordinates the work of several civilian demining teams. As well as falling wide, about 28,000 of the deadly canisters failed to explode. If they stay on the surface and can be seen, they can be detonated by putting an explosive charge beside them. But most go through the soil and are lying between 10cm and 20cm underground, ready to blast a tractor or a person who steps on one. When hidden, they are far harder to detect and dispose of than ordinary landmines. <br><br>"Nato doesn't want to create a precedent for cleaning up in post-conflict situations. They first made this clear in the Gulf war. [The Gulf war cleanup] cost $700m, but luckily the Kuwaitis could pay," Col Flanagan says. Kosovo, by contrast, is poor and much more heavily populated than the Kuwaiti desert. <br><br>"My personal opinion is that if they're going to use these kinds of weapons, they have to recognise there is a postwar environmental effect," he adds. <br><br>Traditional landmines are mainly used to defend fixed sites, and armies usually keep records of where they are laid so that they can be lifted later. Cluster bombs are attack weapons and inaccurate. <br><br>Since June, 54 people have already been killed by mines or cluster bombs in Kosovo; another 250 have been maimed. In the worst cluster-bomb accident, four children died near Gnjilane and one was seriously hurt when they threw a stone at the yellow canister lying in a field. Only 30% of Kosovo's arable land was used last year because most refugees came back too late to plough. This year, however, mine casualties are expected to rise in spite of efforts to make people aware of the dangers lurking in their fields. <br><br>K-For, the Nato-led international peace force, says it will lift mines and unexploded cluster bombs only if they obstruct its mission to provide security; in practice, this means those found on main roads or near K-For bases and buildings. <br><br>The non-governmental organisations' (NGO) disposal teams have destroyed 2,743 bombs so far, but that still leaves over 25,000. The US government and other Nato partners are paying for some of the NGO work, but every contract requires time-consuming lobbying and pleading for funds. It would be easier to use the Pentagon's trained weapons disposal teams, but cowardice among politicians and the consequences of casualties even in a volunteer army appear to preclude it. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xDeath lurks in the fields ``x953026911,14178,``x``x
``xDead city: Everyone is scared of Milosevic. They have lost everything - except hope <br><br>Maggie O'Kane in Belgrade <br>Tuesday March 14, 2000 <br><br>His mobile phone plays the Serbian national anthem when it rings; he presses the receiver with a hand the size of a T-bone steak. A Serb paramilitary, one of the feared "Tigers" who killed in Kosovo, he smothers the bay-blue handset with massive fingers. <br>"I'd like to find a nice girl and get married, but we have to wait until this is over and [Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic has gone," he says. <br><br>There is a sense in Belgrade that civil war may come to Serbia - Mr Milosevic and his praetorian guard of police and military against the people. Everyone is scared. <br><br>In this city, where random political assassinations are the norm, police consolidate their grip on power by breaking up protests, smashing TV transmitters and silencing the dissenters with fear. <br><br>"The crackdown started three weeks ago after he addressed the party congress. The message was clear: Don't start or else," says Natasha Kandic, a lawyer and director of the humanitarian law centre in Belgrade. She one of the few people prepared to speak out. "They have started arresting people. A young lawyer from my office was taken for an 'information talk' for two days, now he has resigned. I don't blame him - he has a young family." <br><br>A former police chief who claims to have been the head of internal security and a confidant of Mr Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic, confirms that the crackdown has started. "But it's going to get much worse. The elections may be coming, maybe not. He is cornered and he will fight to the end - his end or ours." <br><br>Even those hardened by years on the frontlines of the war under the Tigers' assassinated paramilitary leader, Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, are wary of the country's changing political climate. "When Arkan was alive, I felt some safety," says the former paramilitary soldier. "I didn't cry when my mother died, but when Arkan was shot, I felt it deep in my soul." <br><br>He joined Arkan when he was 19 after the army kicked him out for breaking his commanding officer's chin. In the pizza parlour in Republica Square, he dips into the waistband of his tracksuit and pulls out his gun; the handle is engraved with the Serbian crest. "Arkan didn't think it could happen to him. In Serbia, anybody could be killed. Some body could come and kill me right now." <br><br>Arkan, Mr Milosevic's protege who carried out the president's dirty work in Croatia and Bosnia, is just one of a number who died when the regime began to implode. <br><br>"Arkan had about 400 people working for him. He was making his money mostly from stealing cars in Germany and then selling them to the Middle East," the former police chief said. "Cars and cigarette smuggling, but he was killed because of the protection business and because the regime was nervous of him. He couldn't be controlled by them any more. He wanted too much protection money from too many. Four, or was it five, of them got together. It got sanctioned at the top and that was it." <br><br>He adds: "You in the west don't understand how it works. After 10 years [of war], crime, business and politics are webbed together in Serbia. They are intermingled in the grey zone. A hit like that doesn't happen unless it is approved from the top." <br><br>Belgrade is a place where even the Tigers are tired and scared. Last week, five armed men broke into the opposition's TV station and beat up a technician and a guard; the gang took the station's transmitters. It was the fifth station to be closed in Serbia recently, as the government attempts to stifle any voice of opposition. <br><br>The mention of the president's name draws fury everywhere. "Milosevic stole 10 years of my life with wars and all this shit," a taxi driver says. <br><br>Zoran, who also fought for Arkan in the Croatian and Bosnia wars, sits in the Stupida bar, near Belgrade's national theatre. "I will not fight again until I am fighting this regime," he says. "I can't live in my own country, everything is controlled by 200 people." <br><br>Milena Joksimovic, a 21-year-old student and activist echoes similar sentiments: "Everybody thinks it's going to end soon and we are all afraid of what is coming. But we are determined to fight. Now the only thing that is left in Pandora's box is hope." <br><br>Ms Joksimovic and her mother marched in protest against Mr Milosevic for 170 days in the southern town of Nis. "Everyone knows there is going to be a civil war now," she says. "We can smell it." <br><br>But in Belgrade people seem too worn out by poverty and sanctions to fight. "Milosevic's secret weapons have been sanctions from the west," says the police chief. "People are so tired out just trying to make a living that they can't think about organising against him." <br><br>On the third floor of a tiny street behind Republica Square, a weary gold merchant opens the door of his shop to another day of business. "Business is terrible," he says. "After nine years of sanctions, the people have nothing left to sell. I get women taking off their wedding rings and handing them to me. I tell them to think about it, but if they insist." <br><br>He takes out tiny black scales. "Your wedding ring, let me see - 18 carats, 2.3 grams - I'd give you DM24 [£12] for it. But it was your grandmother's? He smiles a practised smile. "There's a lot of sad stories out there, but I'm a businessman," he says. <br><br>On a Saturday night in Belgrade, a city of 2m people, having fun takes energy and money - two commodities that are in short supply. <br><br>Sasha Jortjevic spent £1m on his XL nightclub in Sarevejska Street, where he created a disco the size of a barn. A former captain of the Yugoslav basketball team, he made the money playing for three years in Barcelona. Last Saturday it closed down; the area that surrounds it is now dead. <br><br>"We are dead people in a dead city," said Alex Stenovic, 28. He knows that elections should be held this spring, but he, like almost everyone, does not expect them to happen. The opposition parties are so discredited that the mention of their leaders brings a snort. <br><br>"The opposition is slow," he says. "They have meetings on humanitarian aid and elections with representatives of the European countries, but people expect more." <br><br>Serbia's most famous journalist, Aleksander Tijanic, a government minister sacked by Mr Milosevic, wrote recently: "Serbia is now a great morgue in which the barely alive bewail the recent dead. Damned and despairing we stand in line and behind all success, wealth and power, the henchman is there. His judgment awaits." <br><br>"It could take another year," the ex-police chief says. "Milosevic still has the money he got from China and Panama and can keep things going for a while and pay off his police force. Then, there will be blood for 10 or 20 days and it will be over."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``x'Everyone knows there is going to be a civil war in Serbia now. We can smell it' ``x953026941,33901,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br><br>By JANE PERLEZ<br>ASHINGTON, March 14 -- In a sobering assessment of the deteriorating situation in Kosovo, a senior Pentagon official said today that the NATO-led peacekeeping operation, which includes American troops, had reached a "decisive moment." <br><br>The official, who just returned from a visit to the American sector in Kosovo, did not say that more American troops would be sent to Kosovo. But the situation is so precarious that "we're at ground zero," even though NATO-led troops have been in Kosovo since June, the official said. <br><br>By this, the official meant that the United Nations effort to restart civilian life was so weak in Kosovo that the American troops were still involved in chores that should be done by the police and the courts. <br><br>At the same time, an insurgency outside Kosovo's border in southern Serbia had sprung up, causing new problems. The official warned that the situation was so dangerous that American troops in Kosovo could end up in armed conflict with the ethnic Albanian guerrillas, this spring. <br><br>"This has got to cease and desist, and if not, ultimately it is going to lead to confrontation between the Albanians and KFOR," he said, referring to the NATO force. The official said troops could not keep peace between Serbs and Albanians within Kosovo and seal Kosovo's borders. <br><br>In order to seal just the 125-mile rugged border of Kosovo that the American troops are in charge of, "two to three times" more troops would be required, the official said. About 6,000 American troops are now stationed in Kosovo. <br><br>To get a better handle on what was happening in the Presevo Valley, just over Kosovo's border in southern Serbia, the official said the Pentagon was planning to send unmanned aerial vehicles, known as drones, for surveillance. <br><br>The official, who briefed reporters today, said he believed that about 500 Albanian insurgents organized into "8 to 10 elements" were in the "no-man's land" between eastern Kosovo and Serbia and in the Presevo Valley. <br><br>NATO military officials are concerned that the Albanians are making targets of Serbian policemen there, which could provoke a crackdown against the Albanians from the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic. This, they fear, could cause a possible repeat of circumstances that caused NATO's war last year over Kosovo: Serbian repression of ethnic Albanian civilians. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xPeacekeepers Are Overwhelmed in Kosovo, Pentagon Envoy Says``x953115441,65343,``x``x
``xBy R. Jeffrey Smith<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Wednesday, March 15, 2000; Page A24 <br><br><br>FLORENCE, Italy, March 14 –– Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo's new national guard engaged in illegal activities and human rights abuses during the force's first five weeks of operation this year, an internal U.N. report says. <br><br>The report by the U.N. human rights unit in Kosovo says the United Nations, NATO and ethnic Albanian leaders have failed to adequately supervise the Kosovo Protection Corps. The corps, established in January to provide humanitarian assistance and help clear land mines, is made up almost entirely of guerrillas from the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army.<br><br>The report says several members allegedly tortured or killed local citizens and illegally detained others; illegally attempted to conduct law enforcement activities; illegally forced local businesses to pay taxes; and threatened U.N. police who attempted to intervene and stop the wrongdoing. But there was no indication in the report that such actions were organized or ordered by the corps leadership.<br><br>The report, obtained by The Washington Post, was based on interviews with U.N. police officers, regional U.N. administrators and local residents. "Many said that the greatest human rights challenge looming in Kosovo" is whether corps members will abide by U.N. regulations and whether those "who violate the law will be punished," the report says.<br><br>The report was sent to the top U.N. administrator in Kosovo, French diplomat Bernard Kouchner. Susan Manuel, a spokeswoman for his office, said today that while "no one is denying the essence of the report, they are saying [the corps is] . . . raw material and the essence of the organization is just taking shape now."<br><br>Among the incidents cited in the report is the Feb. 11 arrest of two corps members suspected of killing an ethnic Gorani, a Slav who follows Islam, in the town of Dragas. It also cited the Feb. 16 detention of a corps member in Prizren for mistreating another Slav, and the suspension of two corps members in February for torturing several ethnic Albanians suspected of car theft.<br><br>Several ethnic groups in the region are Slavic, including Serbs, who are seen as enemies by ethnic Albanians.<br><br>In February, an ethnic Albanian man who sought to rebut an accusatory newspaper article written by a former Kosovo Liberation Army rebel was beaten by corps members in Djakovica, the report says. And other corps members in the towns of Istok, Pristina, Prizren, Dragas and Vucitrn have illegally demanded protection fees or tax payments, the report states. In three other cities, U.N. or NATO officials said they suspected corps members had participated in or helped organize public demonstrations--activities that are off-limits for corps members.<br><br>Since the report was completed at the end of February, U.N. police have said that corps members were involved in at least three assaults. During the arrest of one of these members by police based in Prizren, "the officers were surrounded by a mob attempting to drag them out of the patrol vehicle," a police report said.<br><br>The U.N. report covers the corps' activities during a five-week period in which the force grew from 45 to more than 500 members. By next month, the corps should reach full strength with 3,000 full-time members and 2,000 part-timers. Although the United Nations has issued a broad fund-raising appeal to support the corps, its operations have been sustained largely by U.S. and British contributions.<br><br>The protection corps was formed after the Kosovo Liberation Army agreed to disband last fall on condition that key members be transferred to a national guard-type force. While its official task is humanitarian, ethnic Albanian leaders have said the group is meant to serve as the nucleus of a future army should Kosovo gain its independence from Serbia. Kosovo remains a province of Serbia, the dominant republic in the Yugoslav federation, but has been under U.N. administration since June, when NATO's 78-day air war against Yugoslavia ended.<br><br>U.N. officials have praised some corps leaders for helping calm ethnically charged protests in the province that have threatened to turn violent. But they also said some ex-rebels who have joined the corps have been implicated in violent attacks on Serbs and other ethnic minorities and in the province's flourishing crime.<br><br>Many of the corps members are readily identifiable by their solid green uniforms, adorned with a patch in the Albanian national colors; a limited number are allowed to carry handguns. But the group's charter explicitly prohibits its members' involvement in law enforcement, a task the U.N. has reserved for trained police officers--both foreign and local--under U.N. supervision.<br><br>An oath of office and a new code of conduct effective this week for corps members require "the highest possible standards of discipline and conduct . . . without any ethnic, religious, gender or racial bias." Members also are barred from involvement in politics or political parties.<br><br>The report notes that corps commander Agim Ceku said in November that he would not tolerate criminal behavior and that offenders would be expelled. But "the time has come," it says, to hold corps leaders to this promise.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo Albanian Unit Is Accused Of Abuses``x953115483,74797,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br> <br>By Roberto Suro<br>Washington Post Staff Writer<br>Wednesday, March 15, 2000; Page A01 <br><br><br>A senior Pentagon official warned yesterday that U.S. troops in Kosovo this spring may have to fight their former allies, ethnic Albanian guerrillas who are rearming themselves and threatening cross-border attacks against Serbia. <br><br>"This has got to cease and desist, and if not, ultimately it is going to lead to confrontation between the Albanians and KFOR," said the official, referring to the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, which has dwindled to about 37,000 troops.<br><br>The stern warning came as State Department envoy James P. Rubin ended three days of talks in which he urged ethnic Albanian leaders to halt a rising tide of violence against Serbs, but apparently failed to win any concessions.<br><br>Worries that Kosovo might explode this spring were sounded yesterday in European capitals as well. "Today, we put the extremists on both sides on notice: We will not allow them to destroy the process of restoring stability and bringing reconciliation," said British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.<br><br>With increasing frequency in recent weeks, ethnic Albanian fighters have raked Serbian villages and homesteads with gunfire and have assaulted Serbs on the way to work or to marketplaces in an apparent effort to drive the remaining Serbs out of Kosovo. This marks a stark reversal of the situation a year ago, when Serbian forces conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Kosovo Albanians, driving more than 850,000 out of the province.<br><br>Responding to the ethnic Albanians' plight, NATO launched a bombing campaign on March 24 that lasted 78 days, eventually obliging Serbian forces to withdraw and allow about 50,000 NATO peacekeepers to move into Kosovo. While the province technically remains part of Serbia and the Serb-dominated Yugoslav federation, the United Nations has promised to help Kosovo build an autonomous judicial and administrative system. That has fueled hopes of independence among many ethnic Albanians, and U.S. officials now worry that those hopes are translating into an escalation of anti-Serb violence.<br><br>The senior military official who warned of possible combat between NATO and ethnic Albanians had recently returned from meetings with U.S. commanders in Kosovo. He said the Pentagon is particularly concerned about Kosovo Albanian guerrillas marshaling in a no-man's land in southeastern Serbia, just outside the U.S.-patrolled sector of Kosovo. The 5,300 U.S. troops in Kosovo have a "pretty slim" ability to police the 115 miles of border assigned to them, the official said.<br><br>In recent weeks, ethnic Albanian militants near the Serbian town of Presevo have skirmished with Serbian police. In response, the Yugoslav army has reinforced its presence in the region, and U.S. military leaders are increasingly worried about all-out violence on their doorstep.<br><br>More than 500 well-armed ethnic Albanians are active in the rugged hills of the no-man's land around Presevo, and their numbers are growing rapidly thanks to a well-financed recruiting campaign throughout Kosovo, U.S. military officials said. The guerrillas include elements of the now-disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, which conducted attacks on Serbian police in 1998 and 1999.<br><br>U.S. commanders in Kosovo are now assessing whether more troops will be needed to prevent a resumption of large-scale conflict between the ethnic Albanians and the Serbs, Pentagon officials said. In the meantime, as many as six unmanned surveillance aircraft are being dispatched to the U.S. peacekeeping contingent to help monitor guerrilla activities in the "ground safety zone," a three-mile wide buffer strip where neither the U.S. military nor Serbian forces are supposed to operate.<br><br>Pessimism over the situation in Kosovo is not universally shared within the Clinton administration. On a visit to Eastern Europe last week, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, the chief architect of the U.S.-led intervention on behalf of the Kosovo Albanians, insisted that conditions are improving in Kosovo.<br><br>"After all that has happened, we do not expect the rival communities in Kosovo to immediately join hands and start singing folk songs," Albright said in Prague. Nonetheless, she added, "those in the ethnic Albanian community who perpetrate crimes against Serbs and other minorities deserve strong condemnation and are doing a profound disservice to the aspirations of their people."<br><br>Last weekend, Albright dispatched Rubin, her spokesman and trusted aide, to seek cooperation from ethnic Albanian leaders in restraining the newly resurgent guerrilla forces. He reminded the Kosovo Albanians that the United States had come to their rescue after Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched a scorched-earth campaign against them. But as his visit ended yesterday, he had made no breakthroughs.<br><br>"First, there has to be a decision to recognize that there is a problem," Rubin said, citing his hope that ethnic Albanians will realize that they risk alienating their American defenders if they continue to conduct revenge attacks against Serbs in Kosovo and to launch raids into Serbia.<br><br>"Over time, as [ethnic Albanians] examine their choices here, they'll realize that their best friends are troubled," Rubin said at a U.S. Army base in the eastern Kosovo city of Gnjilane, according to the Associated Press.<br><br>U.S. officials remain hopeful that a majority of Kosovo Albanians will balk at the prospect of renewed violence, even if they desire independence. While the former fighters of the KLA were widely viewed as heroes at the end of last year's war, their popularity has since declined. A poll conducted for NATO last month by the Gallup organization found that less than 13 percent of the populace intends to vote for a political party formed by ex-KLA members, while roughly 45 percent plans to vote for the party of Ibrahim Rugova, a pacifist leader despised by the guerrilla army.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo Attacks Stir U.S. Concern``x953115520,12524,``x``x
``xBy PHILIP SHENON<br>The New York Times<br><br>WASHINGTON, Thursday, March 16 -- American troops in Kosovo carried out raids on the strongholds of ethnic Albanian guerrillas on Wednesday, capturing bombs and other weapons in the largest effort to date by American forces there to end the guerrillas' threat to the NATO-led peacekeeping mission, American officials said. <br>No one was reported injured in the raids, which were conducted in villages and guerrilla posts in the eastern sector of Kosovo, where the bulk of the nearly 6,000 American troops in the territory are stationed. It was unclear if the American troops fired their weapons. <br><br>The raids came a day after a senior Pentagon official told reporters here that the situation in Kosovo was deteriorating quickly and that American troops in Kosovo might end up in armed conflict with the Albanian guerrillas, who were supposed to have disarmed under terms of a cease-fire. <br><br>American officials said the raids were an effort to stop the guerrillas from using the American-patrolled sector of Kosovo as a launching area for cross-border strikes on Serbia, which in turn threaten to provoke clashes between the United States and well-armed Serbian forces under the control of President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Fresh violence was also reported on Wednesday in the divided northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica, where Serbs have called for a campaign of civil disobedience against the embattled United Nations and NATO administration. French peacekeepers in the city clashed with Serbian protesters, with at least 15 Serbs reported injured. <br><br>The capture of Albanian bombs and other weapons by the American troops will likely provide fresh rhetorical ammunition to President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, who has accused the United Nations and NATO of aiding Albanian terrorists. <br><br>"Instead of using their authority and impartiality to restrain terrorist gangs of Albanian extremists, we face the situation in which the terrorism is taking place under their auspices, and even being financed by United Nations means," Agence France-Presse quoted Mr. Milosevic as saying on Wednesday. <br><br>NATO announced the addition today of 1,100 troops in Kosovo to buttress its forces there. <br><br>The new troops -- -- 700 French and 400 Italian soldiers -- would beef up security forces in Mitrovica, scene of the most serious violence in recent weeks, NATO officials said. <br><br>On Wednesday, French troops tried to set up a secure zone around one of the bridges that divide the city and ordered the self-styled Serbian guardians of the bridge to leave their positions. <br><br>The Serbs, who sit outside a shop to prevent Albanians from crossing the bridge, left. But a crowd of 300 rapidly formed and began an angry jostling protest. <br><br>The troops dispersed the crowd with tear gas and percussion grenades. Pushed back, the Serbs attacked Western journalists and were barely prevented from lynching an old Albanian man in his apartment. French paratroopers in armored vehicles rescued him, struggling to bring him out bleeding through a lunging, pushing crowd. <br><br>The Associated Press quoted the chief surgeon at the Serb-controlled hospital there as saying that two Serbs, one of them a mother of three, each had a foot amputated as a result of injuries suffered when stun grenades fired by the French soldiers exploded near them. <br><br>The anger in the streets of the town was palpable on Wednesday. The so-called bridge guardians are tough young Serb men with walkie-talkies who prevent Albanians from crossing into the northern Serbian-dominated part of the city. Serbs say the force is necessary to prevent Albanians who are intent on attacking the Serbs and forcing them to flee the city, as they have elsewhere in Kosovo. <br><br>The French command has tolerated the guards because they are not armed. But Albanians and foreign-aid groups have complained that the men prevent the free movement of Albanians who live on the northern side of the bridge. <br><br>United Nations officials and the NATO-led security force are trying to form a secure zone around the bridges where both Serbian and Albanian residents can move freely and where outsiders are kept out. They proposed that one Serb and one Albanian assist French troops to check people who want to pass, but the Serbs refused. <br><br>In Washington, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright sternly warned ethnic Albanian leaders that the United States and other NATO peacekeepers were determined to defend the border against crossborder attacks on Serbian police. She told a Congressional panel on Wednesday that if the provocations continued, the Albanians would be "in danger of losing our support" . <br><br>The United States is especially concerned about armed bands of Albanians roaming the rugged Presevo Valley, seeking to launch strikes against Serb forces just across the nearby border. <br><br>While condemning the actions of the Albanian guerrilla leaders, Ms. Albright said that "the large majority of Kosovar Albanians are trying to put their lives together."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.S. Troops Seize Weapons From Albanians in Kosovo``x953206341,70269,``x``x
``xBy Christian Jennings in Mitrovica <br>The Independent<br><br>Nato Peace-keepers came under a hail of stones, rocks and bricks from hardline Serbs yesterday as they mounted an operation to break the deadlock in the racially divided city of Mitrovica. <br><br>French soldiers and policemen fired dozens of rounds of tear-gas as well as stun-grenades at an estimated 500 Serbs who had gathered to protest against French moves to block Serb access to an ethnically mixed area of Mitrovica known as Little Bosnia. At least six Serbs were injured, two seriously, as well as one French soldier and two journalists, one British and one German. <br><br>The operation began at 6am, when 250 French troops, accompanied by Italian and French police, stormed over the main eastern bridge in Mitrovica in armoured vehicles. Four "bridgekeepers" – as the unofficial Serbian security network in northern Mitrovica is known – were removed peaceably from their positions by the French, who then erected barbed-wire barricades outside Little Bosnia. <br><br>The Serbian response was not slow in coming. Led by a wave of women hurling stones and bricks, some carrying iron bars, a mob stormed the French troops, who responded by firing tear-gas and stun-grenades into the crowd. <br><br>"I will not let my children be used as targets," screamed one Serbian woman, while another claimed Nato peacekeepers had been deployed "to drive us from our homes". Oliver Ivanovic, the self-styled Serbian mayor of northern Mitrovica, shouted that Nato's K-For troops were intent on allowing "Albanian terrorists" into northern Mitrovica. <br><br>Two Serbs hit by French stun-grenades were taken to a Serbian hospital for "major surgery", according to hospital sources. The injured British journalist was named as Andrew Gray, from Lanark, Strathclyde, a correspondent for the Reuters news agency. He was taken to hospital with a broken nose and bruising. <br><br>Yesterday's operation followed assurances from senior Nato officials that they would not allow Serb-dominated northern Mitrovica to become a enclave where Albanians could not venture without risk of major injury or death. <br><br>Twelve Serbs and Albanians have been killed, and nearly 110 people injured, including Nato peace-keepers, in clashes in Mitrovica since the beginning of February. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFrench peace-keepers are stoned by Serb crowds in new clashes at Mitrovica bridge ``x953206395,13091,``x``x
``xThe Times<br>BY RICHARD BEESTON, DIPLOMATIC EDITOR<br><br>BRITAIN and the United States fear a "hot spring" in Kosovo this year, with the threat that Nato forces will be sucked into a new round of fighting between Albanian guerrillas and Serb military. <br>The area of greatest danger is the Presevo valley, called "Eastern Kosovo" by some because of its large ethnic Albanian population estimated at 70,000. A new guerrilla force - the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medveda and Bujanovac, known as the UCPMB - has begun deploying in the area, drawing on former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army and their weaponry. <br><br>While the offensive was at first dismissed as the action of a few extremists, the US military is convinced that the force represents a serious threat to Kosovo's stability. A senior Pentagon official was quoted in the American press as saying: "This has got to cease and desist and, if not, ultimately it is going to lead to confrontation between the Albanians and Kfor." <br><br>There are suspicions that the ethnic Albanian fighters were sent into action by senior figures in the KLA for two reasons. First, the area could become a useful territorial bargaining chip to offset the loss of the area of Kosovo north of the city of Mitrovica, where some 50,000 Serbs loyal to Belgrade are concentrated. Second, by flexing their muscles on Belgrade's ground, the Kosovo Albanians hope to provoke a military response from the Serbs and ultimately a Nato intervention. <br><br>The authorities in Belgrade have already sent troops to the area, supposedly for regular spring exercises. The build-up has persuaded some 15,000 Albanian civilians to flee. <br><br>A senior British source said yesterday that Nato was determined to prevent further fragmentation and would not just "sit on its hands" if fresh atrocities were committed. <br><br>A senior US commander echoed the warning, saying that, while Nato did not have a mandate outside Kosovo, it would not simply stand by if President Milosevic allowed his forces to go on the rampage. He predicted that the Serb leader was probably planning an unpleasant surprise for Kfor to coincide with the anniversary of the air campaign against Yugoslavia which began on March 24 last year. <br><br>As French-led forces struggle to maintain order in Mitrovica, and other troops are used to protect the pockets of Serbs elsewhere in Kosovo, the Nato forces in the east could be too thinly spread on the ground to prevent an escalation. Kfor currently has some 37,000 troops in Kosovo, with 1,000 reinforcements on their way. <br><br>But the vulnerable eastern sector, which includes a rugged administrative border that stretches for more than 100 miles, is patrolled by fewer than 6,000 US soldiers. To make matters worse, under last year's agreement on Kosovo, neither Kfor nor the Serbs can deploy in a three-mile-wide strip along the division. <br><br>The Pentagon estimates it would need three times as many soldiers to patrol the area properly, but further deployment of US troops is unlikely because of opposition in Washington to putting its soldiers' lives at risk. <br><br>"We're going to have to get through a long hot period in Kosovo," said a Nato officer. "But we are determined to stay there as long as necessary to see peace restored."<br><br><br><br>Crime initiative: Britain is to send 20 police and Customs officers to Kosovo to establish a criminal intelligence unit aimed at combating the powerful regional mafia. Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, said: "Without the rule of law and a firm signal of intent from the international community, we will not be able to put Kosovo back on its feet." <br><br>Evils of Milosevic beat psychiatrists <br>BY MICHAEL EVANS DEFENCE EDITOR<br> <br>NATO hired psychiatrists to fathom the mind of President Milosevic during last year's Kosovo crisis but were unable to do it, General Sir Charles Guthrie, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said yesterday. <br>The admission came during a meeting of the Commons Defence Committee when General Guthrie, attended by Kevin Tebbit, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, and Air Marshal Sir John Day, revealed some of the lessons learnt from the 78-day air raid campaign. General Guthrie told the MPs: "It was very difficult to get into the mind of Milosevic. I don't think anyone foresaw the brutality of the man." The MPs appeared to be aghast at this, in view of Belgrade's wars in Croatia and Bosnia. But Mr Tebbit said that the Yugoslav leader had been "relatively responsible" in seeking a peace deal in Bosnia - signed in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995, and the MoD had been surprised by his ethnic cleansing atrocities in Kosovo. General Guthrie added: "We didn't have to bomb Belgrade to achieve Dayton." <br><br>Mr Tebbit said that Nato had not fully anticipated the bad weather which had hampered its raids, or that laser-guided bombs used by the RAF would be ineffective through thick cloud. General Guthrie added that Tony Blair had been "within a month" of mobilising reserve troops for a forced entry of Kosovo when Mr Milosevic had conceded to Nato's demands last June. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNato fears Kosovo flare-up ``x953206425,41875,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Paul Lashmar <br><br>17 March 2000 <br><br>British security agents plotted to assassinate Yugoslavia's President, Slobodan Milosevic, in the early Nineties using an SAS hit squad, the intelligence historian Stephen Dorrill claims. <br><br>Mr Dorrill says that a secret MI6 file explored three options in which the Serbian leader could be killed during the Bosnian war. His book quotes claims by a former MI6 officer, who worked in the Balkans in the early Nineties, that an ambitious colleague who was responsible for developing and targeting operations in the Balkans had produced the file. <br><br>"It was approximately two pages long, and had a yellow card attached to it which signified that it was an accountable document rather than a draft proposal," the unnamed source claims. "It was entitled 'The need to assassinate President Milosevic of Serbia', and was distributed to senior MI6 officers, including the head of Balkan operations, the controller of East European operations, the security officer responsible for eastern European operations and the service's SAS liaison officer. <br><br>"The targeting officer justified the assassinating of Milosevic on the grounds that the 'Butcher of Belgrade' was supplying weapons to [Radovan] Karadzic, who was wanted for war crimes, including genocide," says the source. <br><br>Mr Dorrill claims in his book that United States and French intelligence agencies were considering assassinating Karadzic. Three scenarios were suggested by MI6. The first was to train a Serbian paramilitary opposition group to carry out the attack. This, the targeting officer argued, had the advantage of deniability but the disadvantage that control of the operation would be difficult and the chance of success low. <br><br>The second plan was to use the small cell of SAS/SBS personnel which conducts operations exclusively for MI6 and MI5. This team would kill Mr Milosevic with a bomb or sniper's bullet. The targeting officer thought that this would be the most reliable option, but would be impossible to deny if it went wrong. <br><br>The third plot was to kill Mr Milosevic in a staged road accident. In the end, no action was taken by MI6. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xHow the SAS was going to assassinate Milosevic ``x953289645,41927,``x``x
``xABCNEWS<br><br>S K O P J E, Macedonia, March 16 - Macedonia is bracing for yet another influx of ethnic Albanian refugees from Serbia. <br>In Macedonia and Kosovo, which border Serbia to the south, preparations have been made to receive a flood of up to 80,000 ethnic Albanian refugees from Serbia, within the next few weeks if necessary, according to security and aid officials in the region. <br> <br>Officials in Macedonia, a landlocked country that borders Serbia and Kosovo, believe a new conflict between Serbs and Albanians in Serbia near Kosovo will explode very soon, resulting in a new exodus.<br>But this time, unlike during the exodus hundreds of thousands during the Kosovo conflict, they plan to be prepared.<br>In case they're needed, the vital ingredients of refugee camps - tents, blankets, water purification plants, generators and latrines - have already been assembled, ready for immediate use. <br>High-Level Visits<br>Macedonia did its reputation no good last year when the world saw on TV tens of thousands of refugees stranded on its borders for days in the pouring rain, deprived of food and medical aid.<br>International organizations are working overtime to ensure this does not happen again.<br>Austria's Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner, current chair of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, visited Macedonia on Monday, the latest in a series of prominent guests including U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.<br>"We have to support Macedonia, a country which is struggling for stability in fragile surroundings, at different levels and in different ways," Ferrero-Waldner said after meetings with representatives of all the government and opposition parties. <br>Those ways include OSCE hands-on help to defuse potentially explosive ethnic problems, encouraging multilingual higher education, and making sure Macedonia's shattered economy gets help. <br><br>Early Warning, Early Help<br>The OSCE has also been working hard to get nations to promise help if Macedonia is confronted with another influx.<br>"The Macedonians learned their lesson last time. This time they will be prepared," said Robin Seaword, a British Foreign Office specialist who is deputy head of the Skopje mission.<br>An OSCE team is under a mandate from the organization to keep an eye on all of Macedonia's borders - to Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania and Kosovo - and warn when trouble threatens. Only eight strong, the international team is staffed by experts, some with intelligence backgrounds, delegated by their countries.<br>The Macedonian government is also keeping a close watch on the Serb border.<br>And close by, a new branch of fighters from what used to be the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army, the UCPMB, is attacking Serb police and military around two small Serb towns, Medveda and Bujanovic, mainly populated by ethnic Albanians. The attacks follow months of harassment by Serb police.<br>NATO's KFOR mission, confined by its mandate inside Kosovo, is also watching closely - convinced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will clamp down on the region soon, driving ethnic Albanians out.<br>"Some of them have already moved their families to Macedonia. That's a bad sign," said a visiting Irish military specialist from Kosovo who came in for the talks with the OSCE and the Macedonian government. <br><br>Delicate Ethnic Balance<br><br>Macedonia's delicate ethnic balance - around two-thirds Macedonian, one-third ethnic Albanian - makes the government extremely wary of taking in any more ethnic Albanians. Last time, it allowed them in from Kosovo only after third countries, including Britain, pledged to take some of them off their hands.<br>A corridor has been set up to sluice the refugees as quickly as possible through Macedonia to either Albania or Kosovo.<br>For that reason, the OSCE has about 20,000 tents prepared, figuring that even if there are four times that many refugees, they will be quickly moved elsewhere. Food, say experts, can be moved in quickly, as needed.<br>Macedonia wants to avoid too many refugees staying in their country, although they know that they cannot stop family members joining extended clans. Poor as they are, Macedonia's ethnic Albanians have a higher standard of living than those in Kosovo or Albania itself.<br>Currently, of the hundreds of thousands who fled to Macedonia last year, there are only around 13,000 left. They are in temporary housing, some staying with families. <br>The camps are gone - but they could be full again soon.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMacedonia Prepares``x953289745,27624,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>STUBLINA, Kosovo, March 16 -- American peacekeeping troops were holding nine men in detention today, <br>suspected of involvement in an insurgency across the border against the Serbian police. <br><br>The men were detained on Wednesday during the peacekeepers' raids on ethnic Albanian villages and strongholds along Kosovo's border with Serbia proper. Helicopters and about 350 infantry soldiers took part in the operation, which was reported to have gone smoothly, with no resistance by residents and no casualties. <br><br>The troops discovered 22 crates of ammunition and weapons, as well as uniforms and equipment for a sizable number of guerrillas in several locations. <br><br>The raids followed an intensive diplomatic effort by American officials to warn Kosovo Albanians against stirring up trouble in the border region and provoking a conflict with Serbian forces that could spill back into Kosovo itself. <br><br>The State Department spokesman, James P. Rubin, met this week with former Kosovo guerrilla leaders and political leaders from both Kosovo and the Presevo region in Serbia, telling them that the West would not come to their aid if violence escalated. Last year, NATO waged a 78-day bombing campaign to force Serbian forces out of Kosovo to end the repression of ethnic Albanians there. <br><br>Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and the NATO Supreme Commander, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, have also warned Albanians not to start an insurgency in southern Serbia, home to some 70,000 Albanians. The raids on Wednesday were clearly intended to reinforce that message and break up the incipient guerrilla network. <br><br>People in this border village, one of those that was searched extensively on Wednesday, took the treatment fairly meekly. They complained only of being made to stand out in the cold all day while the troops went through their houses and farm buildings. There were no complaints of rough treatment or about the purpose of the operation itself. <br><br>"It is their duty to check for weapons," said Rahman Osmani, 60, whose house was searched while his family was made to stand in the field. "We have nothing against that." <br><br>Only one villager, Zeqir Zeqiri, 36, was detained when a machine gun was found in a storeroom in the family compound. His brother said the weapon belonged to a cousin who did not live in the village. <br><br>Some Albanians have vowed to fight to defend Albanian villages in southern Serbia, and have until now been moving relatively freely across the long, porous border. Peacekeeping troops search cars and people moving along the main roads, but insurgents can also pass easily through the wooded hills. <br><br>Recently, armed guerrillas appeared in the village of Dobrosin, just 500 yards into Serbia from an American checkpoint on the border and close to Stublina. Wednesday's raids were aimed to cut off the guerrillas' supply and staging posts. <br><br>United States officials fear that an insurgency in the border region would give the Serbian police reason to attack the Albanians in Serbia, and start a conflict that could draw in NATO-led peacekeepers. Increased instability on the border and a flood of refugees into Kosovo would also aggravate the already volatile situation in the province. <br><br>Wednesday's haul of weapons and equipment provided evidence that the handful of guerrillas seen in Dobrosin have a larger backup organization. All raided sites were within a mile of the Serbian border. American military officials said that in addition to the crates of ammunition, they had found more than 200 uniforms, mortar tubes, hand grenades, a few rifles, mines, rucksacks, field rations, medical supplies, sleeping bags, explosives and fuses. <br><br>One location was on a remote hill top, where several buildings were protected by a minefield and appeared to be a staging post for fighters, an American military spokeswoman said. Four men were caught while trying to get away as troops closed in on the area. <br><br>The nine detained men are being held at the Camp Bondsteel, an American base in eastern Kosovo, and will appear before a magistrate who will decide whether they should stand trial, the spokeswoman said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xG.I.'s in Kosovo Hold 9 Suspected Anti-Serb Rebels``x953289779,98454,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic <br><br>18 March 2000 <br><br>"My husband is a perfect man... I love him because he loves me... Everything that hurt me in the past, hurt less when I was with him," Mira Markovic, wife of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, wrote in one of the more syrupy of her regular outpourings in a women's magazine in Serbia. <br><br>A year after the country they run was brought to its knees by Nato bombing, President Milosevic and his wife must rank as one of the most reclusive first couples in the world. <br><br>They never walk the streets of Belgrade, go to the theatreor movies. Former associates say that they "feel at their best when they are together or in a close circle of few dearest friends". The "friends"are usually chosen by Ms Markovic, who says that "all the others would let him down, except for those I choose for him". <br><br>The Milosevics' lifestyle reflects both their paranoia and their provincialism. The Serbian public never learned where the pair moved to after their residence in the salubrious Dedinje suburb of Belgrade was hit by Nato rockets last April. People who fell from their grace say that neither of them ever showed much interest in cosmopolitan Belgrade, although they moved to the capital in their student days in the early Sixties. <br><br>In return, Belgrade has little sympathy for them. Mira's shapeless, dark suits and her old-fashioned hair style are the butt of jokes. Malicious tongues say that the Italian surgeons who performed a face-lift and liposuction on Ms Markovic should be struck off. <br><br>Slobo and Mira were married 35 years ago, joined not only in matrimony but in the burning ambition of provincial communist cadres. Back in 1968, when she saw a portrait of then Yugoslav President Tito in a shop window in the Adriatic town of Zadar, Mira Markovic told a friend: "One day, Slobo's picture will be placed like this." Nowadays the unscrupulous rule of Yugoslavia's first couple is felt in all walks of life. In the last 10 years, Mr Milosevic has led the country into wars, economic collapse and international isolation. Ms Markovic's Yugoslav Left (Jul) party controls the remaining financial resources with an iron grip. <br><br>Both Slobo and Mira come from the provincial Serbian town of Pozarevac, 85 kilometres east of Belgrade. High-school sweethearts, both had isolated and unhappy childhoods, probably the basis for their strong devotion to each other. Pozarevac remains the only town they are attached to. Closest friends are invited there for weekends. <br><br>Belgraders sometimes compare the couple to the former Romanian dictator and his wife, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. Many predict that their rulemight end in the "Romanian scenario" – a chaotic uprising of a people who could stomach them no longer.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWhy devoted couple Slobo and Mira prefer to stay in ``x953374132,1452,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br>Guardian staff and agencies <br><br>An ethnic Albanian lawyer and his wife were brutally beaten in their flat in the Yugoslav capital Belgrade by four masked intruders, a humanitarian worker said yesterday. <br>Husnija Bitici, who defends Albanians held in Serbian jails, and his wife were attacked at their Belgrade home late on Thursday, said Natasa Kandic, head of the locally-based Humanitarian Law Fund. Mr Bitici's wife let the men in when they said they were neighbours. <br><br>Mr Bitici sustained serious head injuries and was operated on overnight, but doctors said his life was not in danger. His wife, with lesser injuries, is in intensive care. <br><br>Ms Kandic, who went to the Bitici flat as soon as she heard of the incident, said that there was blood all over the room and even human tissue on the floor. <br><br>Mr Bitici defended ethnic Albanians from Kosovo who were detained in Serbia, mostly on charges of terrorism or conspiracy against the state. <br><br>Most of them were arrested between March and June 1999, during Nato's air campaign over Yugoslavia's repression of the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo. <br><br>Ms Kandic said that Mr Bitici had been threatened by some Serb lawyers from Kosovo in an effort to stop him accusing them of taking huge bribes from the families of ethnic Albanian prisoners to secure their release. <br><br>Mr Bitici also defended a prominent Kosovo Albanian poet and humanitarian worker, Flora Brovina, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison last December, and one of five ethnic Albanian students in Belgrade who were charged with terrorism. <br><br>Ms Kandic's organisation estimates that 1,400 ethnic Albanians are still being held in Serbian jails. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbanian lawyer is beaten in Belgrade ``x953374153,88237,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By Reuters<br><br>MOSCOW (Reuters) - Serb opposition politician Zoran Djindjic said in a Russian television interview broadcast Friday that opponents of President Slobodan Milosevic would proceed with mass protests later this month. <br><br>``We are indeed starting a serious civil campaign to secure new elections and change in Serbia. The authorities are not allowing the necessary changes to go ahead,'' Djinjic said in an interview broadcast on ORT public television. <br><br>``We are one of the most isolated countries in the world. Our government cannot rule the territory it has...We want faster change and we can help speed it up with protests and demonstrations.'' <br><br>ORT said the interview, with Djindjic speaking by mobile telephone from Belgrade, had been conducted several days ago. <br><br>It said Yugoslav authorities had tried to prevent the tape from being taken out of the country and that it could not reveal how and through whom the video material had reached Moscow. <br><br>Russian authorities have publicly supported Yugoslavia and defended Belgrade during the 11-week-long NATO air campaign against Yugoslav targets last year. <br><br>Russia's lower house of parliament earlier in the day agreed to lobby the government to take a more active stand in helping Yugoslavia recover from the bombings. <br><br>Though Moscow contributed more than 3,000 peacekeepers to the NATO-led KFOR operation in Kosovo, it has expressed anger at KFOR's alleged failure to protect Kosovo's Serb minority from attacks by majority ethnic Albanians. <br><br>Djindjic's interview was broadcast as Serbian opposition politicians debated what action to take against the Belgrade government's shutdown of four local radio stations and three television channels in the past 10 days. Leaders are due to meet next week to decide on concrete days for planned protests. <br><br>Djindjic, leader of the Democratic Party, said the opposition was opposed to resorting to violence of any sort. ''As the opposition, we are used to repression, but in the interests of the country we reject violence,'' he told ORT. <br><br>``We believe that anyone coming to power should do so peacefully and not engage in reprisals. If we are given the chance to take power, we believe we will be supported by the army and police and no blood will be spilled on the streets.'' ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav Opposition Leader in Russian TV Interview``x953374168,29110,``x``x
``xA year after Nato's blitz began, his hold on power still blights economies across the Balkans <br><br>By Stephen Castle in Skopje, Macedonia <br>19 March 2000 <br><br>He lost the war, surrendered Kosovo and lives the life of an international pariah, but almost one year after Nato's bombing blitz began there is little doubt who remains the key political figure in the Balkans. Despite continued diplomatic and economic isolation, President Slobodan Milosevic still pulls many of the strings in the region. <br><br>Even his adversaries admit it. Returning from a visit to the region, Chris Patten, European Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, was in realistic mood as he gave his impressions of five days of travel through south-eastern Europe. One of the things that had struck him most was, he said, "the extent to which Milosevic is a malign influence from one end of the region to the other". <br><br>That fact is seen most starkly in Kosovo where Serbia's abilities to stoke ethnic tension in the divided northern city of Mitrovica became apparent during the past month. But Mr Milosevic's influence extends to the economic domain, even in the territory he was forced to abandon to the occupying forces of Nato. For example, EU experts in Pristina estimate that around 20 per cent of Kosovo's faltering electricity supply comes from the Yugoslav grid. Belgrade's historical role as the regional electricity network nexus means it can pull the plug on Kosovo, although – so far – that has happened only once, and briefly, through technical error. <br><br>But if Kosovo is the front line with Belgrade, the Milosevic factor applies much more widely throughout the region. After the Nato campaign the allies hoped his regime would be swept away, as demonstrations took hold. That hope has evaporated as Mr Milosevic's opponents have bickered and fallen victim to intimidation. <br><br>So the strategy has switched, with the West now devoting more of its efforts to promoting reconciliation and economic prosperity in neighbouring countries. The scope for progress varies and Bosnia-Herzegovina remains scarred by the ethnic meltdown of the 1990s and economically dependent on international aid. But the idea is to foster trade between countries within the region and to use positive examples – nations with pro-market, reforming governments such as Macedonia and Croatia –- as what Mr Patten calls "a beacon" to the others. In this way Serbia will be ringed with democratic, tolerant and multi-ethnic states boasting rising living standards and providing an invitation to the Serbs to throw off their yoke. <br><br>But can it work? To the south of Serbia, Slav-dominated Macedonia is the West's showcase success story, a country which, 10 days ago, became the first Balkan nation to sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with Brussels, bringing with it the promise of a free trade relationship with the EU. <br><br>But even here the policy has its limitations, imposed by that man in Belgrade. In the Macedonian capital, Skopje, the office of the president lies at one end of a grand, ante-chamber of Soviet-style proportions. Inside Boris Trajkovski explains how Macedonia's development has been stunted by the war which cut its links with Yugoslavia, traditionally accounting for 60 per cent of trade. Worse, when the conflict erupted last year Western investors fled, never to return. The mere threat of more instability in the region deters outside investment and Mr Trajkovski concedes that renewed ethnic unrest in southern Serbia could easily spill over into his territory. <br><br>Even the EU's ambition to promote trade between countries in the region looks rather lame. Albania has backed away from a free trade agreement and, as Mr Trajkovski put it "only Greece and Bulgaria are real partners". <br><br>In Montenegro, which remains technically part of Yugoslavia, the situation is worse still. The government in Podgorica has tried hard to follow the Western route, even though the country traditionally relies on Serbia for 60 per cent of its food. The opening of Montenegro's border with Albania produced a swift response from Belgrade, which placed police check-points on all routes between Serbia and Montenegro, effectively blocking imports. <br><br>Montenegro has a spectacular coastline but Mr Milosevic holds the key to the success of the country's tourist industry, a traditional big earner but vulnerable to instability. As the country's Prime Minister, Filip Vujanovic, put it, "by producing tension he prevents tourism and reduces the interest of foreign investors". As part of Yugoslavia (albeit a stubbornly independent one) Montenegro's ability to attract support from the outside world is compromised. Most lenders are forbidden by their own rules from advancing cash to anything but a sovereign state. Montenegro has been discouraged by the West from declaring independence for fear that this would give Belgrade a pretext to invade. <br><br>None of which suggests that President Milosevic's position is unassailable or that the West's strategy is wrong. But it does point to the fact that, as long as he stays in office, President Milosevic will be an obstacle to progress. <br><br>An indicted war criminal, the Yugoslav president must calculate that his best way of foiling his adversaries is through the de-stabilising use of violence or the threat of it. The result, says President Trajkovski, is a "domino" effect. "As long as Milosevic is in charge in Serbia, there will be no stability in the region".``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Revival hopes are dashed by Milosevic ``x953537697,9673,``x``x
``xPentagon braced for bloodshed after raids on guerrillas <br>Ed Vulliamy in New York and Helena Smith in Pristina <br><br>US troops should prepare for battle with the former soldiers of the Kosovo Liberation Army, officials in Washington are warning. <br>A year after Nato launched a bombing campaign to rescue the KLA, Pentagon commanders have formally alerted the US military that it expects to have to engage its former allies 'this spring'. <br><br>This comes as senior officials in the Defence Department continue to fight plans to send further reinforcements into what many consider a potential war zone. <br><br>The grim prognosis for the restive province has emerged days before the first anniversary of Nato's bombing raids against Yugoslavia after Slobodan Milosevic's refusal to negotiate over Kosovo. <br><br>It arises amid increasing tension between Washington and Nato commanders in Brussels over the peacekeeping operation in Kosovo. <br><br>US military officials and Western diplomats based in Pristina, Kosovo's edgy capital, say there is evidence that Albanian insurgents are bent on stirring trouble in southern Serbia, on the province's eastern boundary. They say they must be stopped now if bloodshed across the entire region is to be averted - not least in Macedonia, where conflict could easily trigger a much wider conflagration. <br><br>Diplomatic sources in Pristina warn that the extremists, who call themselves the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) - named after the three Albanian-inhabited towns in southern Serbia's Presevo valley - should expect more US raids on strongholds of ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the sort conducted last week. <br><br>Weapons, ammunition and a supply cache were seized in the raids, aimed at stopping guerrillas from using Kosovo's US-controlled sector as a launching pad for cross-border strikes on Serbia. Analysts believe some 800 men have enrolled with the well-armed UCPMB, formed to 'protect' an estimated 70,000 Albanians living in Serbia within 15 kilometres of the Kosovo border. <br><br>'There is scope for great trouble. The next three months will be crucial in determining whether Kosovo is going to be a short-term success or a millstone around the neck of the international community,' said one European Union diplomat. 'We should expect to see more operations by US troops against guerrilla camps in the coming weeks. Frankly Nato is very frustrated that it can't go into Presevo and ensure the peace, that all it can do is seal the border.' <br><br>Talking to The Observer on Friday, a Pentagon official said the 'personal security' of US troops would be among 'elements that need looking at' before any manpower boost. The official said the Defence Department is operating on the premise that 'an armed conflict situation with the KLA is much more likely now than has been the case'. One official just returned from Kosovo told US Defence Secretary William Cohen on Wednesday that the intervention was at a 'decisive moment' and back at 'ground zero' a year after it began. <br><br>The situation of US troops was 'precarious', said the official. 'This has got to cease and desist, and if not, ultimately it is going to lead to confrontation between ethnic Albanians and K-For.' <br><br>Other officials told the New York Times that 'troops could not keep the peace between Serbs and Albanians within Kosovo and seal Kosovo's borders'. They added that last week's raid by the US military on KLA command posts and arms caches was a 'first step' to rein in the Kosovo Albanians. 'This was the first time,' said one official, 'that we went after something like an organised military infrastructure as opposed to searching houses where we suspected someone was holding a rifle or two.' <br><br>'There is an old American saying that "when the wood creaks, out come the freaks", but there is no way we are going to tolerate any trouble this spring,' said a US officer. 'We are very serious.' <br><br>In Washington, however, the tough Pentagon talk is at odds with the cautious optimism of James Rubin, the US Under-Secretary of State who returned from Kosovo to say: 'We do not believe we are drifting towards a conflict with Kosovo Albanian insurgents.' Rubin believed there was a 'deep reservoir of respect, thanks and goodwill towards the United States' among ethnic Albanians. <br><br>Rubin did, however, qualify his words with a warning that 'it would be a grave mistake to challenge American troops'. <br><br>A senior Pentagon officer countered: 'We have now fired the first shot at the Albanian insurgents and insurgents have a tendency to carry a grudge. If they come to see us as an enemy then [the raid] will be seen as a turning point.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Observer : US faces war with ex-KLA ``x953537728,87258,``x``x
``xA HOSPITAL in Kosovo funded with British aid money has been accused of appalling standards of hygiene. The 2,000-bed University hospital in Pristina has almost no working showers, no hot water and lavatories that are blocked or overflowing, though millions of pounds have been spent on sophisticated technology. <br>Boxes of rubbish litter some stairs and corridors, a dangerous source of infection for patients because many contain blood-contaminated items such as used syringes. <br><br>In one of the most unhygienic wards lies Nagjije Bylykbashi, a 16-year-old girl suffering from leukaemia. Her pain-racked body is rigid. She is beyond hope and will be dead within a few days. The terrible hygiene in her part of the hospital is comparable with that of the overcrowded refugee camp where she endured the Kosovo war. <br><br>The hospital is the apex of health care in Kosovo. The Department for International Development (DfID) arrived eight months ago when the war ended to take over its administration and to fund supplies. <br><br>Tony Redmond, a retired National Health Service accident and emergency specialist, was appointed interim medical director. A team of British medical experts in paediatrics, surgery, medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology provide the administrative core. <br><br>DfID has spent £15m on health projects in Kosovo. Much of it has been directed at the hospital. The team is now preparing to move out, leaving the hospital in the control of ethnic Albanian doctors. <br><br>Redmond, who was appointed by the United Nations, acknowledged last week that there was a hygiene problem. He said he had provided cleaning equipment and cleaners to Albanian departmental heads. It was their responsibility to keep their departments clean, he said. <br><br>However, a senior Albanian member of the medical staff said: "We are doctors, not engineers and we do not have a budget to repair the bathrooms. It is the responsibility of the hospital administration to make such facilities work. Then we could keep them clean." <br><br>For all the British input, many parts of the hospital are a monument to indifference and neglect. In one room last week I saw three women's breasts from mastectomies that had been stored for days in empty plastic Coca-Cola bottles, which had been cut in two and filled with formaldehyde while they waited to go to pathology. <br><br>The lack of hygiene was the biggest complaint I heard from patients and Albanian staff. One told me of a cancer patient, a young man, who had died in his bed, smeared with his own excrement. <br><br>Others said it was impossible to wash babies in the paediatric unit except by pouring a bottle of water over them: the taps were broken and the basins filled with rubbish. Some patients even said they regularly discharged themselves to go home and wash, then returned to continue their treatment. <br><br>Albanian staff say they cannot accept that lack of money explains the wretched conditions. <br><br>This month more than £1.2m worth of high-technology equipment for the gynaecology, obstetrics and neonatal department began arriving. To many it did not seem to make much sense when patients in those departments could not wash themselves or their babies. <br><br>Redmond said running the hospital had been the toughest job of a career that had also taken him to Bosnia. <br><br>"When I arrived at the end of June the grass was waist high outside, nothing had been done, the dirt and filth were ingrained everywhere," he said. "It was appalling. There were liquefied corpses in the mortuary. We had to get rid of the packs of wild dogs roaming the grounds eating amputated limbs." <br><br>He said the Serbs had wrecked the place as they left, plundered it of equipment and dumped the contents of the hospital pharmacy down the sewerage system. <br><br>Meanwhile, Bylykbashi stares out at the world through eyes that are swollen as her retinas bleed. Her mother and her young husband are around her bed. The room is often filled with the sound of them weeping. <br><br>The kindest solution, everyone agrees, would be for her to be allowed to die free of pain and in dignity. <br><br>She cannot have dignity in a hospital whose ancient squat toilets are broken. She often screams in agony, as she did on Friday when I saw her, because morphine that could have alleviated her pain was locked in a pharmacy downstairs, for which nobody seemed to have a key. <br><br>A day or two ago she felt feminine and well enough to varnish her nails. Yesterday, her fists clenched, her face contorted by spasms, she waited bravely for the end. <br><br>Kosovo rebuilds among ruins of the war that never ends <br> <br>IN THE muddy streets of Pustasel, the villagers have little to celebrate as Nato marks the first anniversary of the start of its war in Kosovo. People are rebuilding, but it is hard to contemplate the aftermath of the campaign that gave ethnic Albanians freedom from Serbian rule without thinking back to the horror of the conflict, writes Jon Swain. <br>A year ago, as the warplanes of the world's most powerful military alliance streaked overhead, Serbian forces rounded up 106 men in a field at Pustasel and murdered them. The killers put out some of their eyes and cut off their ears. The youngest was a boy of 14 and the oldest was nearly 90. One of their victims was Fadil Krasniqi, a father of eight. <br><br>His wife, Nakije, was pregnant with their ninth child when he died. Her gaunt face looks out of the doorway of their shattered home in utter despair. "My mother has not spoken much since that day," said Fatmire, her eldest daughter. <br><br>Nakije, 42, who is having to cope with five daughters and four sons on her own, is still stricken with grief and scarcely comes out of her house. She has named her youngest, born six months ago, Fadil in memory of her murdered husband. <br><br>Next door, in a house with a broken roof, Shelqi Krasniqi is struggling to bring up three boys and seven girls. Her husband was also killed. "We want to rebuild our lives, but how can we?" she said. The echoes and images of the massacre replay constantly in her head. <br><br>Many of the men are buried in the centre of the village, an enduring reminder of the tragedy. Some were found on a rubbish dump miles away. <br><br>But others are still missing and the villagers plead tearfully to be told what has happened to their menfolk. Until they know the truth, there is a vain hope the men might be in Serbia, where hundreds of Albanians are still held in jail. <br><br>Kosovo is the focus of one of the largest humanitarian relief efforts per capita in recent history. The UN has brought in 60,000 home-repair kits, which have given shelter to an estimated 500,000 people. <br><br>The World Food Programme fed the entire population for a while and is still helping 900,000, about half of it. Some 60,000 stoves have been provided and 250,000 items of children's clothing. <br><br>But some vulnerable families seem to have fallen through the aid net, receiving no more than a few German marks a month and some flour and oil. "This is no life. This is like death," said one woman. "But we have to carry on for the children." <br><br>Many of the houses in Pustasel were burnt by the Serbs or badly damaged. Serving ice cream and soft drinks in the only shop, Verhan Krasniqi, 59, one of 13 survivors of the massacre, said the village had yet to come to terms with its grief. <br><br>"Forty of my friends are buried there," he said, gesturing towards their graves. "It is very hard for me to go outside to see them every day." <br><br>He nevertheless thought the sacrifice had been worthwhile, and pointed to children at a playground set up in the field where his friends were slaughtered as a sign of life renewed. <br><br>If the peace has been hard for the widows of Pustasel, it has been better for Imer Bakar. I last saw him a year ago, a gaunt figure hiding in the hills of northern Kosovo from the Serbs, who had driven him out of his village, Studenica, set it on fire and killed 35 people, including eight women they stuffed down a well. <br><br>Bakar has rebuilt his house and has recovered one of his three cows. He said that, without Nato, he could never have expected to return. <br><br>At Glina, where 101 men are still missing after a Serbian round-up, 22-year-old Hissene Krasniqi recognises that he is one of the luckiest to be alive. A year ago he was lined up and shot with 15 others. Four bullets hit him in the back, arms and legs. But when the executioners had left, he crawled out from the pile of corpses. He now wants to be a footballer. <br><br>International aid workers marvel at the resilience and enterprise of people who, a year ago, were refugees fleeing over the mountains to escape the forces of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president. <br><br>But as the struggle to rebuild lives goes on, another conflict has erupted, one that Nato and the UN do not have the means or stomach to fight. To do so would mean confronting members of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). <br><br>The KLA, led by Hashim Thaci, has been the predominant political beneficiary of the Nato occupation. The UN police picked up Thaci's brother in a nightclub recently with an illegal weapon, raided his apartment and found nearly DM1m under the bed. The family is allegedly deeply involved in petrol smuggling. <br><br>While Kosovo has no judicial system worthy of the name and virtually no police, the province has become a centre of criminality often linked to former members of the rebel group. There are rarely any witnesses, even to attacks in public. <br><br>About 400 Serbs have been murdered, tens of thousands have left and many of those left are living under siege or under Nato guard. Drug-dealing, prostitution and smuggling are rampant. The old criminal links between the Serbs and Albanians have been revived. Kosovo is Europe's gritty new hotbed of intrigue. <br><br>Underworld Albanian gangs and some Serbian war criminals rub shoulders even as western businessmen vie for a slice of post-war Kosovo's economic pie, and off-duty Nato soldiers try their luck with the girls in the pavement cafes. <br><br>"Business is business and the Kosovar Albanians are good business people, regardless of their hatred for us," said Dragan Kurvic, a paramilitary who served with the notorious Arkan, the warlord murdered recently in Belgrade. <br><br>Kurvic has teamed up with several powerful KLA members to smuggle scores of girls recruited from Moldova and the Ukraine into Kosovo to work in brothels that have sprung up since Nato's occupation. <br><br>In a rare interview given in Montenegro last week, the powerfully built paramilitary said that, in the past three months, he had spent 10 days in Kosovo organising shipments of girls. <br><br>His Kosovar Albanian contact had given him a "besa", or unbreakable promise, that he would be untouched. Kurvic named two former KLA members, a Czech, an Italian and two American soldiers who he said were involved in the prostitution racket. <br><br>"We are selling the girls to the Albanians for DM1,500 (£470) to DM4,500 each," he said. "First the Albanians tell me how many girls they need and for which military area. The Italians like tall and blonde girls, so I get them Ukranian and Russian girls. The Russian soldiers like dark girls. I assign Bulgarian and Moldovan girls to the Russians." <br><br>The UN police force in Kosovo, short on manpower, is aware of the sordid trade but does not regard it as a priority. "We hear the stories but we have no facts," said one officer in Pristina. "It is very dangerous. I want to finish my tour here and go home alive." <br><br>Trying to administer the still-traumatised and upended territory has proved harder and more complex than fighting the war a year ago. "The international community is bound to fail in Kosovo if it is not prepared to invest in the peace," a western diplomat said. <br><br>In Pustasel they say the future cannot be worse than the past. But diplomats warn that Kosovo may be sliding towards warlordism. <br><br>"There is one overriding philosophy - make what you can out of it as fast as you can," said one. "Imagine a spot of water and lots of crocodiles - that is what Kosovo is like today."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times : Filthy UK-aid hospital puts lives at risk ``x953537763,89568,``x``x
``xSAS troops have moved into Montenegro as western fears grow about the possible disintegration of what remains of Yugoslavia, writes Tom Walker. <br>The elite unit is preparing contingency plans for the removal of British nationals, and is learning the lie of the land in case there is a confrontation between forces loyal to pro-western President Milo Djukanovic and Slobodan Milosevic, his adversary in Belgrade. <br><br>Civil war in Montenegro, Serbia's tiny sister state in the Yugoslav federation, would almost certainly involve the West. Djukanovic has been told not to provoke the Yugoslav president. However, Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, has warned Belgrade that Nato would back Djukanovic in any showdown. <br><br>As Britain and America prepare the largest naval exercise since Nato's air strikes against the former Yugoslavia last year, Milosevic has tightened the economic blockade around Montenegro. The action is apparently intended to discourage Djukanovic from going for independence. <br><br>Military sources said it was "entirely natural" in such circumstances that the SAS would be relaying intelligence back to Britain. They added that four SAS officers entered Montenegro two weeks ago. <br><br>One diplomat said the sabre-rattling in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, along with the SAS presence in Montenegro, showed that western governments favoured pre-emptive action to avoid another conflict in the Balkans.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times : SAS is ordered to guard Britons in Montenegro ``x953537786,66317,``x``x
``xThe Washington Post<br><br>By Peter Finn and Roberto Suro<br>Washington Post Staff Writers<br>Tuesday, March 21, 2000; Page A17 <br><br>Under pressure from U.S. diplomats and peacekeeping troops, Kosovo Albanian militias are close to an agreement to suspend attacks against Belgrade security forces in Serbia, just beyond the U.S.-patrolled sector of Kosovo, according to U.S., NATO and Kosovo Albanian sources. <br><br><br>In exchange, the officials said, U.S. peacekeepers will agree to refrain from cracking down on ethnic Albanian fighters as forcefully as they did last Wednesday when more than 300 U.S. troops descended on five militia staging areas and arms caches, arresting nine alleged insurgents.<br><br><br>The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo already has authority to disarm and disband any nascent quasi-military groups. The agreement under discussion would for the first time extend the peacekeepers' influence to ethnic Albanians who are operating beyond Kosovo's borders, hitting targets in other parts of Serbia and threatening the peace there. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia.<br><br><br>U.S. officials said they hope the agreement will produce additional goodwill gestures, such as the surrender of some arms by ethnic Albanians. Also, the insurgents would be required not to appear in uniform, end recruitment and training activities and halt the movement of arms between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, sources said.<br><br><br>Last week's raids came after armed bands of ethnic Albanians stepped up attacks against Serbian police forces around the town of Presevo, just across the boundary between the U.S.-patrolled sector of Kosovo and the rest of Serbia. The insurgents are seeking to extend Kosovo's boundaries to include the Presevo Valley, which is in Serbia proper but is populated primarily by ethnic Albanians.<br><br><br>U.S. and NATO officials fear that the ethnic Albanian forays would give Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic an excuse to take military action in the Presevo area, which could draw U.S. forces into a new conflict.<br><br><br>U.S. and ethnic Albanian sources said they hope to have an agreement in place by Friday, the first anniversary of the start of NATO's 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia that came in response to Yugoslavia's repression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. The campaign ended when Milosevic agreed to withdraw his security forces and to allow a NATO-led peacekeeping force to take administrative control of Kosovo.<br><br><br>To mark the anniversary, NATO Secretary General George Robertson and U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who led the NATO campaign last year, are to visit Kosovo. Plans for $1.2 billion in reconstruction aid for Kosovo are to be discussed at a conference of donor nations in Brussels.<br><br><br>"Clearly, it would be very beneficial to mark the anniversary with an announcement that dispels the fear Kosovo is in for a hot spring and that the Presevo Valley is about to blow up," said a senior NATO official.<br><br><br>To secure an accord, the United States is simultaneously holding talks with Hashim Thaqi, the former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the disbanded ethnic Albanian paramilitary force; Ramush Hajradinaj, a former KLA commander; and leading ethnic Albanian figures from the Presevo Valley, U.S. and NATO sources said.<br><br><br>Thaqi and Hajradinaj reportedly are telling the insurgents and their sponsors in Kosovo that they need to suspend operations for tactical reasons so they are not perceived as aggressors. The potential agreement recognizes that the insurgents will likely resurface if Milosevic launches a major offensive in the valley.<br><br><br>"Milosevic has to be seen as the aggressor," said one ethnic Albanian source familiar with the discussions. He said the insurgents may try to keep their arms for "local defense" purposes but would have to retire the idea of forming a military force to "liberate" the Presevo Valley.<br><br><br>U.S. and NATO officials said peacekeeping troops would retain the right to seize arms in Kosovo, but that they would not pursue that goal with actions as aggressive as the raids last week if the ethnic Albanians suspend their activities. Moreover, if militia members turned in weapons voluntarily they would not face arrest, the officials said, but added that routine patrols and reconnaissance will intensify.<br><br><br>Just before last week's raids, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin met with ethnic Albanian leaders to warn them that continued activity in Presevo endangered international support for peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts in Kosovo. In parallel talks, U.S. officials began negotiations with local ethnic Albanian leaders on both sides of the border to seek an agreement to defuse the situation.<br><br><br>A senior figure in the former Kosovo Liberation Army familiar with the talks warned, however, that "this is the Balkans," and no agreement is final until it is sealed, and even then some of the highly factionalized ethnic Albanian forces may choose to ignore it.<br><br><br>In recent weeks, the village of Dobrosin, which lies in a valley below a U.S. military observation point on the Kosovo-Serbia border, has been used as a kind of boot camp by a militia group calling itself the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, which is known locally by its Albanian initials, UCPMB.<br><br><br>According to Capt. Eric McFadden, commander of the observation post, new recruits rotate in and out of the village. U.S. forces have observed them undergoing what appears to be basic training, including land navigation techniques, drill and ceremony, and physical fitness. There have been a number of clashes between Serbian and UCPMB forces, leading to a handful of deaths. Ethnic Albanians also said Serbian forces have killed 10 civilians, mostly businessmen, since January.<br><br><br>At the entrance to Dobrosin, which lies in a buffer zone between NATO and Yugoslav forces, two uniformed ethnic Albanians, carrying automatic weapons, guard a dirt lane that leads to a house that acts as the group's headquarters. U.S forces have seen armed guerrillas in uniform and an hour later saw the same people in civilian clothes cross the border back into Kosovo. McFadden said they question insurgents for 15 or 20 minutes, but are otherwise powerless to hold them even though they have visual evidence of their involvement with the UCPMB.<br><br><br>One morning this week about a dozen armed and uniformed men could be seen in the village. Some wore mismatched uniforms while other, more senior guerrillas wore all black uniforms, carrying automatic weapons, sidearms and hand grenades. U.S. forces said they have seen no heavy weapons in the area.<br><br><br>Finn reported from Pristina, Yugoslavia, and Suro from Washington.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo Albanians Close to Suspending Attacks``x953631919,95418,``x``x
``x<br>By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE<br><br>ELGRADE, Serbia, March 20 -- A Serbian businessman and former militia leader who was a well-known enemy of the assassinated warlord known as Arkan, was himself shot dead yesterday, witnesses said. <br><br>Branislav Lainovic, who had led Serb militiamen during the war in Croatia, was hit by two bullets, including one in the head, shortly after 4 p.m. near the Hotel Srbija, in southeast Belgrade, a doctor who was at the scene said. <br><br>Mr. Lainovic had been questioned by the police following the killing of Arkan, an ally of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia with links to organized crime whose real name was Zeljko Raznatovic, on Jan. 15 in Belgrade's Hotel Intercontinental. <br><br>Witnesses to the shooting were quoted by the Beta news agency as saying that they had heard gunfire and saw a young man in a red jacket running away from the scene. <br><br>Mr. Lainovic was a commander of the Serb Guard, a militia organized and financed during the war in Croatia by the Serbian Renewal Movement of the opposition leader Vuk Draskovic. He fought in Krajina, a region of Croatia where local Serbs created a renegade state in 1991. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFoe of the Warlord Arkan Slain in Belgrade``x953631940,79088,``x``x
``xNew York Times<br><br>By MARLISE SIMONS<br>HE HAGUE, March 20 -- The war crimes tribunal in The Hague took an important step in legal history today as it opened the first United Nations trial focusing exclusively on widespread sexual crimes against women during wartime. <br><br>The trial is based on accusations that during the war in Bosnia, soldiers committed gang rape and forced women to act as prostitutes and individual domestic and sexual slaves. <br><br>The women involved lived in Foca, a small town in southeastern Bosnia that was stormed by Bosnian Serb soldiers in the spring of 1992. No one has precise numbers on how many women were abused among Foca's 40,000 or so inhabitants, half of whom were Muslims. <br><br>But in the coming weeks, 10 Muslim women from Foca are expected to testify on the atrocities they suffered while held captive during the summer and fall of 1992. <br><br>The witnesses will come face to face with the three Bosnian Serb defendants, who have been charged with for crimes against humanity as well as violating the laws or customs of war. <br><br>As the trial opened today, the three defendants, Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic, stared blankly ahead or sometimes looked at their video terminals while maps of the area and photographs of places identified as "rape camps" and "quasi-brothels" were shown. <br><br>All three defendants have denied the charges. Although none of the victims were present, an unusually large number of women were in court today. The president of the three-judge panel is a woman, Florence Mumba. Both the prosecution and the defense attorney teams include women. And behind the thick glass wall of the public gallery, female lawyers and representatives of women's groups listened attentively. <br><br>"What happens here is tremendous progress," said Kelly Askin, an American legal scholar and author of the book, "War Crimes Against Women." "Some 200,000 women who were forced into sexual servitude by the Japanese in World War II never had any redress. Now we are seeing tremendous improvement in the jurisprudence for women." <br><br>Presenting the case, Dirk Ryneveld, a prosecutor, said, "This is a case about rape camps in Eastern Bosnia, whose uncovering in 1992 shocked the world. This is a case about the women and girls -- some as young as 12 or 15 years old --who endured unimaginable horrors as their worlds collapsed around them." <br><br>The crimes, he said, were an intrinsic part of the Serbian "ethnic cleansing campaign" against the Muslims of Bosnia, and he said that some of the soldiers told their victims that they would now bear Serbian babies. In his 38-page statement the prosecutor cited many examples of abuse. <br><br>The lowest estimates made by research groups hold that during the conflicts that followed the breakup of the Communist-era Yugoslavia, 20,000 women were raped, most of them Muslims. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBosnian Serb Trial Opens; First on Wartime Sex Crimes``x953631964,35735,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ "They'll bomb us again!" <br>A year after the start of the NATO bombing campaign, those words are on nearly everyone's lips in Yugoslavia. <br><br>It is a sign of the near-panic gripping the Serbs, faced with the threat of civil war, likely clashes in secessionist Montenegro and signs the country is sliding toward dictatorship. <br><br>NATO officials have repeatedly denied any plans to renew the airstrikes _ unless Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic makes an overtly aggressive move, such as attacking allied troops stationed in Serbia's troubled Kosovo province. <br><br>But Milosevic _ who has started four wars in the Balkans and lost all of them _ has a history of such actions, especially when he seeks to divert public attention away from the country's economic collapse and social decline, which threaten his grip on power. <br><br>"Where Milosevic is concerned, whenever one imagines the worst possible scenario, that's the one that happens," says Andrej Marjanovic, a psychologist. <br><br>He described the Serbs as "on the verge of collective paranoia," brought on by the tremendous fear engendered by the NATO airstrikes and the bleak and uncertain future they now face. <br><br>Fearing more airstrikes, people are stocking up on food, and men are planning escape routes over the border or hiding places to avoid the draft. Lines for visas in front of Western embassies are longer than ever. Authorities last week ran out of passport booklets because of the demand. <br><br>"There is no hope in this country," said a man in his early 20s who gave only his first name, Milan, as he waited in line for a visa outside the Austrian Embassy. "I don't want to live through another bombing hell, or let Milosevic send me to another senseless war." <br><br>Adding to the disquiet, air raid sirens have been tested in several Serbian towns and, according to opposition claims, the army recently issued over 100,000 draft notices for reservists, mostly in rural areas. Unconfirmed reports that the borders were closed for men of military age sent shock waves through Belgrade. <br><br>"The fact that a simple test of air raid sirens is enough to trigger general panic is a true sign that the psychological warfare against this nation has been waged successfully," said Ljubodrag Stojadinovic, a prominent independent media columnist. <br><br>The NATO airstrikes, begun one year ago Friday to force an end to Milosevic's crackdown against Kosovo Albanians, have failed to bring his downfall or shake his grip on power. <br><br>Coming on top of international sanctions, the 78-day allied bombing campaign _ which destroyed oil refineries and much of Yugoslavia's other infrastructure _ has given Milosevic a perfect scapegoat for the country's overall decay. <br><br>For Milosevic, the war against NATO and the United States is still being waged, and the enemies are all those who oppose his policies. <br><br>At a recent congress of his ruling Socialist Party, Milosevic launched one of his fiercest attacks on political opponents, calling them pro-Western "weaklings," "thieves," "colonizers," "toadies" and "cowards." <br><br>There are widespread fears in Serbia that Milosevic might start a civil war to preserve power, after being weakened by the country's deep economic and social crisis and the virtual loss of Kosovo. <br><br>"The regime is prepared to send police and other 'death squads' against Serbian citizens," said opposition leader Vuk Draskovic. "But a fierce response is being prepared by this impoverished nation." <br><br>Tensions in pro-independence Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, have grown so high that a clash between the Serb-led Yugoslav army and Montenegrin police seems inevitable. <br><br>A government crackdown against dissent in Serbia is in full swing, with independent media outlets heavily fined or banned and independent journalists threatened. Police have arrested and beaten up anti-Milosevic student activists and protesters, and opposition leaders are facing trials for speaking against the regime. <br><br>"All these are minor scuffles in comparison to what awaits us in the near future," said opposition leader Vuk Obradovic.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xA year after start of NATO airstrikes, Serbia still waging war``x953631991,72066,``x``x
``xPresident Slobodan Milosevic is making a remarkable political comeback. Now his regime is being tipped to win vital elections, reports Gillian Sandford, from Belgrade <br>KOSOVO: When NATO aircraft blasted the chemical industry in Pancevo, a town 12 miles from Belgrade, Zarije Kornel, a local opposition politician, remembers watching a terrified mother run from a sheet of toxic smoke. Cradling a child in her arms, the young women fled into woods, but the poisonous cloud followed her.<br><br>"How can I explain to her that the West, which caused this, is on her side?" Kornel asks.<br><br>It's a question that is not easy to answer, and yet it is crucial to both Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Serbian opposition leaders as vital elections approach. These polls must be held by October, according to the Yugoslav constitution, and could take place as early as May. The results may determine Milosevic's fate.<br><br>After 78 days of NATO airstrikes, and a winter made harder by Western sanctions, there is little support for the West in Serbia. "If the West had wanted to make Milosevic suffer, it has failed," says Zivko Tornjanski (53), a quiet, hard-working metal worker who makes drain pipes in his garage.<br><br>"Milosevic is not struggling. He lives well and has money. We are the ones who suffer," says Zivko, who lost his job at Pancevo's aircraft factory three years ago when Western sanctions imposed in the early 1990s began to bite. His wife, Jelena (52) an economist, has been without work for eight months.<br><br>Nationalist sentiment thrives in this environment. Immediately after the bombing of Yugoslavia, many people began to say openly they blamed Milosevic for 10 years of suffering and for the NATO air strikes. But the difficult winter appears to have reversed some of these sentiments.<br><br>President Milosevic is playing on this. His speech at the Socialist Party Congress last month talked of local governments that are "branch offices of some Western governments that took part in the bombing of Serbia". His words strike a chord in an already fearful population, for in cafes and street corners across the country, against the background of radio reports of NATO's Kosovo exercises, the only conversation is how long it will be before NATO bombs again. The turnaround in President Milosevic's fortunes is remarkable. By the end of June last year he had surrendered Serbia's religious heartland of Kosovo, lost the war and looked a defeated man. Roads, railway lines and bridges lay in ruins, discontent was rife and demonstrations rocked the provinces.<br><br>The collapse of his regime seemed inevitable - but it did not happen. "I believe the regime will win the elections," says one Belgrade taxi driver. "I have always been anti-communist, but I do not see this government being defeated now."<br><br>As the local poll deadline approaches, repression increases - all part of a deliberate strategy. In the last two weeks, seven opposition-owned local television or radio stations have been attacked, reducing the access of people in Serbia's heartland to non-government information.<br><br>"Independent media are being shut down. Mobilisation is in progress. Voter registration lists are being forged. Local elections will be called under these conditions," warns Vladan Batic, coordinator of the opposition umbrella grouping, Alliance for Change.<br><br>Legislation put in place over recent years has strengthened President Milosevic's hand. A university law has made appointment of academics dependent more on party loyalty than intellectual merit. The aim is to undermine a natural centre of revolt.<br><br>Dissenting judges have been reined in, newspapers are subject to escalating printing and paper costs, and a rigorous information law is used to levy punitive fines.<br><br>But President Milosevic's survival is also due to the failure of opposition leaders. After months of fighting, they finally agreed a January 10th pact on unity - but they have spent the last month squabbling over the date of a planned Belgrade rally and who will have the chance to speak.<br><br>Prof Vladmimir Goati, from the Belgrade Institute for Social Studies, criticises them for poor leadership. "There is a conflict between the regime and civil society going on in Serbia at the moment - and the opposition is acting as an observer," he says.<br><br>Last winter, against all odds, Serbia did not fall to its knees. In the cold months that followed the bombing, the country's skilled engineers repaired the electricity transmission system and most people had heat, light and power, virtually without a break. Serbia was backed by a new ally, China. Beijing reportedly provided Milosevic with $300 million in December and the Yugoslav Chamber of Commerce says Yugoslavia's oil debt to China, up to January, was $195 million. The Milosevic regime is embattled but is continuing the fightback it started last autumn. Before that, a European Union list of party stalwarts issued last summer blocked visas to Milosevic cronies. Analysts began to talk of a possible palace coup. Long-time loyalists were whispered to be talking to the West.<br><br>Businessman Boguljub Karic, owner of a Belgrade-based, proMilosevic TV station, moved to pro-West Mongenegro. Even Serbian President Milan Milutinovic was reported to be under house arrest. But then Milosevic reasserted his grip.<br><br>The public announcement of Milosevic's indictment for war crimes has dramatically sharpened the lines of conflict. It has ratcheted the pressure higher and curtailed his ability to travel - now he dare not set foot in Kosovo or Montenegro for fear of arrest.<br><br>But announcing the Hague charges carries a major risk. Prof Gaso Knezevic, an antiMilosevic lawyer and a member of the opposition Civic Alliance, says it has left Milosevic with no escape.<br><br>"Milosevic knows that if the opposition gains power, he will be sent to the Hague. So he can't stay here and he can't go abroad. He has nowhere to go. And because of this, I think there is a possibility of civil war."<br><br>Now spring is arriving, bringing with it border tension. The southern boundary with Kosovo and the border with Serbia's sister state, Montenegro, are both heating up. The atmosphere in Belgrade is uneasy and tense, an unruly chaos theatens.<br><br>In southern Serbia, armed Albanian extremists from Kosovo are moving onto Serbian territory from NATO-controlled Kosovo, threatening a new conflict that could draw NATO into war.<br><br>Within the federation, Serbia is tightening the screw on Montenegro, blocking cross-border trade and squeezing the economy of its sister republic, because of the desire for independence of its proWestern president, Milo Djukanovic.<br><br>One Western diplomat suggests President Milosevic may try to fudge the elections, for if these elections are scheduled, the stand-off between Serbia and Montenegro will be forced into the open, threatening a new war.<br><br>So, one year after the bombing, Slobodan Milosevic is dug in for the fight of his life. The price of power for him has, for 10 years, been the blood of Yugoslavia's people and the loss of territory. The elections will be telling, for in these desperate times, Milsoevic has less and less to lose.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Irish Times : Milosevic prepares for fight of his life ``x953715196,48427,``x``x
``xGENEVA, March 21 (Reuters) - NATO has admitted using depleted uranium weapons in Kosovo, exposing civilians, its own troops and aid workers to health hazards, a U.N. expert said on Tuesday. <br>But Pekka Haavisto, head of the U.N. Balkan environment task force investigating the use of munitions during the 70-day war, said NATO was still holding back crucial data on where and how it used depleted uranium weapons, which can contaminate land and water sources with radioactive and toxic particles. <br><br>The former Finnish environment minister said NATO's confirmation of its use of depleted uranium came in a letter from the Western military alliance's Secretary-General George Robertson to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. <br><br>In its letter, Haavisto said NATO disclosed having used 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition during some 100 missions throughout Kosovo by U.S. A-10 aircraft. <br><br>"It was really the Americans who were using depleted uranium in NATO," Haavisto said. "The question we now have today is whether it was also used in Serbia and Montenegro and other areas." <br><br>Haavisto accused the alliance of obstructing his team's work late last year by refusing to cooperate to help determine the extent of pollution caused by such weapons. <br><br>Accompanying the letter was a NATO map with areas marked where NATO said it had used depleted uranium weapons. Shells are tipped with depleted uranium to help them penetrate the thick armour of military vehicles or underground bunkers. <br><br>The marked areas were concentrated in Kosovo's west and southwest, close to the zones where Italian as well as German, Turkish and Dutch KFOR troops are based. <br><br>Depleted uranium-tipped weapons were used west of the Pec-Dakovica-Prizren highway, around the town of Klina, around Prizren and north of Suva Reka and Urosevac, Haavisto said. <br><br>"We can see from the map that depleted uranium was widely used in Kosovo. These were populated areas so the risks are greater," Haavisto said. <br><br>"Many missions using depleted uranium also took place outside these areas," he added. "If these types of weapons were used, people should have been protected and warned against the risks of toxication, especially children." <br><br>U.N. DEMANDS MORE INFORMATION FROM NATO <br><br>Haavisto said NATO information was not detailed enough for experts to do field assessment on health effects and measurements on possible contamination of land and ground water. <br><br>"The information provided by NATO and the map is not precise enough for a field assessment. We were not given the information we needed from NATO. We are in need of precise information on exact locations where depleted uranium was used," he said. <br><br>NATO officials were not immediately available for comment. <br><br>Haavisto said the use of depleted uranium in Kosovo was only one-tenth of that in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq -- after which there was an epidemic of cancers among Iraqis living near battlefields. <br><br>U.S. and British veterans of the Gulf War with Iraq have also blamed serious health problems among them on the use of such weapons. The link is denied by U.S. and British military authorities. <br><br>Haavisto said the World Health Organisation had promised to report on the effects on health of medium and long-term exposure to depleted uranium in Kosovo in May. <br><br>But the U.N. health agency has yet to produce a similar and equally controversial report demanded by Iraq over two years ago on health effects of depleted uranium used during the Gulf War. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABCNEWS: NATO admits it used depleted uranium in Kosovo``x953715215,74706,``x``x
``xBy DUSAN STOJANOVIC<br><br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- "They'll bomb us again!"<br><br>A year after the start of the NATO bombing campaign, those words are on nearly everyone's lips in Yugoslavia.<br><br>It is a sign of the near-panic gripping the Serbs, faced with the threat of civil war, likely clashes in secessionist Montenegro and signs the country is sliding toward dictatorship.<br><br>NATO officials have repeatedly denied any plans to renew the air strikes -- unless Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic makes an overtly aggressive move, such as attacking allied troops stationed in Serbia's troubled Kosovo province.<br><br>But Milosevic -- who has started four wars in the Balkans and lost all of them -- has a history of such actions, especially when he seeks to divert public attention away from the country's economic collapse and social decline, which threaten his grip on power.<br><br>"Where Milosevic is concerned, whenever one imagines the worst possible scenario, that's the one that happens," says Andrej Marjanovic, a psychologist.<br><br>He described the Serbs as "on the verge of collective paranoia," brought on by the tremendous fear engendered by the NATO air strikes and the bleak and uncertain future they now face.<br><br>Fearing more air strikes, people are stocking up on food, and men are planning escape routes over the border or hiding places to avoid the draft. Lines for visas in front of Western embassies are longer than ever. Authorities last week ran out of passport booklets because of the demand.<br><br>"There is no hope in this country," said a man in his early 20s who gave only his first name, Milan, as he waited in line for a visa outside the Austrian Embassy. "I don't want to live through another bombing hell, or let Milosevic send me to another senseless war."<br><br>Adding to the disquiet, air raid sirens have been tested in several Serbian towns and, according to opposition claims, the army recently issued over 100,000 draft notices for reservists, mostly in rural areas. Unconfirmed reports that the borders were closed for men of military age sent shock waves through Belgrade.<br><br>"The fact that a simple test of air raid sirens is enough to trigger general panic is a true sign that the psychological warfare against this nation has been waged successfully," said Ljubodrag Stojadinovic, a prominent independent media columnist.<br><br>The NATO bombing, begun one year ago Friday to force an end to Milosevic's crackdown against Kosovo Albanians, failed to bring his downfall or shake his grip on power.<br><br>Coming on top of international sanctions, the 78-day allied bombing campaign -- which destroyed oil refineries and much of Yugoslavia's other infrastructure -- has given Milosevic a perfect scapegoat for the country's overall decay.<br><br>For Milosevic, the war against NATO and the United States is still being waged, and the enemies are all those who oppose his policies.<br><br>At a recent congress of his ruling Socialist Party, Milosevic launched one of his fiercest attacks on political opponents, calling them pro-Western "weaklings," "thieves," "colonizers," "toadies" and "cowards."<br><br>There are widespread fears in Serbia that Milosevic might start a civil war to preserve power, after being weakened by the country's deep economic and social crisis and the virtual loss of Kosovo.<br><br>"The regime is prepared to send police and other 'death squads' against Serbian citizens," said opposition leader Vuk Draskovic. "But a fierce response is being prepared by this impoverished nation."<br><br>Tensions in pro-independence Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, have grown so high that a clash between the Serb-led Yugoslav army and Montenegrin police seems inevitable.<br><br>A government crackdown against dissent in Serbia is in full swing, with independent media outlets heavily fined or banned and independent journalists threatened. Police have arrested and beaten up anti-Milosevic student activists and protesters, and opposition leaders are facing trials for speaking against the regime.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS : Near-panic grips Serbs over fear of renewed air strikes ``x953715241,76790,``x``x
``xBy Peter Finn and Roberto Suro<br><br>Under pressure from U.S. diplomats and peacekeeping troops, ethnic Albanian militias are close to an agreement to suspend attacks against Belgrade security forces in Serbia, just beyond the U.S.-patrolled sector of Kosovo, according to U.S., NATO and Kosovo Albanian sources. <br><br>In exchange, the officials said, U.S. peacekeepers will agree to refrain from cracking down on militia members as forcefully as they did last Wednesday when more than 300 U.S. troops descended on five militia staging areas and arms caches, arresting nine alleged insurgents.<br><br>The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo already has authority to disarm and disband any nascent quasi-military groups. The agreement under discussion would for the first time extend the peacekeepers' influence to ethnic Albanians who are operating beyond Kosovo's borders, hitting targets in other parts of Serbia and threatening the peace there. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia.<br><br>U.S. officials said they hope the agreement will produce additional goodwill gestures, such as the surrender of some arms by ethnic Albanians. Also, the insurgents would be required not to appear in uniform, end recruitment and training activities and halt the movement of arms between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, sources said.<br><br>Last week's raids came after armed bands of ethnic Albanians stepped up attacks against Serbian police forces around the town of Presevo, just across the boundary between the U.S.-patrolled sector of Kosovo and the rest of Serbia. The insurgents are seeking to extend Kosovo's boundaries to include the Presevo Valley, which is in Serbia proper but is populated primarily by ethnic Albanians.<br><br>U.S. and NATO officials fear that the ethnic Albanian forays would give Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic an excuse to take military action in the Presevo area, which could draw U.S. forces into a new conflict.<br><br>U.S. and ethnic Albanian sources said they hope to have an agreement in place by Friday, the first anniversary of the start of NATO's 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia that came in response to Yugoslavia's repression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. The campaign ended when Milosevic agreed to withdraw his security forces and to allow a NATO-led peacekeeping force to take administrative control of Kosovo.<br><br>To mark the anniversary, NATO Secretary General George Robertson and U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who led the NATO campaign last year, are to visit Kosovo. Plans for $1.2 billion in reconstruction aid for Kosovo are to be discussed at a conference of donor nations in Brussels.<br><br>"Clearly, it would be very beneficial to mark the anniversary with an announcement that dispels the fear Kosovo is in for a hot spring and that the Presevo Valley is about to blow up," said a senior NATO official.<br><br>To secure an accord, the United States is simultaneously holding talks with Hashim Thaqi, the former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the disbanded ethnic Albanian paramilitary force; Ramush Hajradinaj, a former KLA commander; and leading ethnic Albanian figures from the Presevo Valley, U.S. and NATO sources said.<br><br>Thaqi and Hajradinaj reportedly are telling the insurgents and their sponsors in Kosovo that they need to suspend operations for tactical reasons so they are not perceived as aggressors. The potential agreement recognizes that the insurgents will likely resurface if Milosevic launches a major offensive in the valley.<br><br>"Milosevic has to be seen as the aggressor," said one ethnic Albanian source familiar with the discussions. He said the insurgents may try to keep their arms for "local defense" purposes but would have to retire the idea of forming a military force to "liberate" the Presevo Valley.<br><br>U.S. and NATO officials said peacekeeping troops would retain the right to seize arms in Kosovo, but that they would not pursue that goal with actions as aggressive as the raids last week if the ethnic Albanians suspend their activities. Moreover, if militia members turned in weapons voluntarily they would not face arrest, the officials said, but added that routine patrols and reconnaissance will intensify.<br><br>Just before last week's raids, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin met with ethnic Albanian leaders to warn them that continued activity in Presevo endangered international support for peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts in Kosovo. In parallel talks, U.S. officials began negotiations with local ethnic Albanian leaders on both sides of the border to seek an agreement to defuse the situation.<br><br>A senior figure in the former Kosovo Liberation Army familiar with the talks warned, however, that "this is the Balkans," and no agreement is final until it is sealed, and even then some of the highly factionalized ethnic Albanian forces may choose to ignore it.<br><br>In recent weeks, the village of Dobrosin, which lies in a valley below a U.S. military observation point on the Kosovo-Serbia border, has been used as a kind of boot camp by a militia group calling itself the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, which is known locally by its Albanian initials, UCPMB.<br><br>According to Capt. Eric McFadden, commander of the observation post, new recruits rotate in and out of the village. U.S. forces have observed them undergoing what appears to be basic training, including land navigation techniques, drill and ceremony, and physical fitness. There have been a number of clashes between Serbian and UCPMB forces, leading to a handful of deaths. Ethnic Albanians also said Serbian forces have killed 10 civilians, mostly businessmen, since January.<br><br>At the entrance to Dobrosin, which lies in a buffer zone between NATO and Yugoslav forces, two uniformed ethnic Albanians, carrying automatic weapons, guard a dirt lane that leads to a house that acts as the group's headquarters. U.S forces have seen armed guerrillas in uniform and an hour later saw the same people in civilian clothes cross the border back into Kosovo. McFadden said they question insurgents for 15 or 20 minutes, but are otherwise powerless to hold them even though they have visual evidence of their involvement with the UCPMB.<br><br>One morning this week about a dozen armed and uniformed men could be seen in the village. Some wore mismatched uniforms while other, more senior guerrillas wore all black uniforms, carrying automatic weapons, sidearms and hand grenades. U.S. forces said they have seen no heavy weapons in the area.<br><br>Finn reported from Pristina, Yugoslavia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWashington Post: Insurgents May Halt Attacks Into Serbia``x953715270,78469,``x``x
``xDave Moniz <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor<br><br>Maj. Tony Mattox was certain he would die. On a night as black as obsidian, the young fighter pilot was maneuvering his F-16 on an attack run over Belgrade, Yugoslavia.<br><br>He was supposed to launch a preemptive strike against a Serb defense battery. Instead, just before firing his missile, he noticed a defender had fired back. Within seconds, Major Mattox was pinwheeling through the darkness to dodge a fusillade of enemy missiles - not fully realizing the depth of his predicament until, at one point, he was flying upside down.<br><br>"This missile was so close, I thought, 'There's no way it's going to miss me,' " he recalls. "I waited for it to impact and remember thinking, 'So this is what it feels like to get shot down.' "<br><br>Mattox's recollections are among the memories of a group of fighter pilots who flew in the air war over Kosovo that began one year ago this week.<br><br>Speaking publicly for the first time, the pilots from South Carolina's Shaw Air Force Base tell a tale of death and derring-do, bravado and anxiety, that offers insight into what the Pentagon calls the "most-effective air operation in history."<br><br>The 78-day "war" was also one of the most unusual. It was a fight without ground troops or the grim aura of military funerals. The meaning of casualty-free warfare, carried out from the skies, will no doubt be debated for years to come at war colleges and policy seminars.<br><br>Is this the way all future wars will be fought? Or should the public know Kosovo was likely an aberration?<br><br>During the operation over Kosovo, America and its European allies lost just two planes. And not a single pilot. <br><br>A share of the credit goes to packs of missile-hunting Air Force F-16s and pilots like Mattox, who cleared a path for the waves of NATO jets that bombed strategic locations. And 24 of those jets were deployed from Shaw. In all, 40 pilots flew more than 1,000 sorties protecting NATO airplanes from deadly missile batteries.<br><br>The squadron from Shaw is, in fact, critical to the Pentagon's new style of warfare. The air war in Kosovo literally waited for the arrival of the South Carolina jets to swing into around-the-clock operations.<br><br>That's because no big air war commences without these fighters, which are specially equipped to take out enemy air-defense systems. Specifically, they have a high-tech targeting system that allows them to home in on enemy radar sites. If the enemy uses radar to target the plane, it locks on to the source of the signal and fires a missile.<br><br>Shaw's pilots fired more than 100 anti-air-defense missiles, but their mere presence often deterred Serb outposts from even turning on their tracking radars.<br><br>Still, the Serbs are believed to have fired about 700 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) at NATO planes. And Shaw's F-16 pilots describe a battlefield that was at times eerily calm and at other times crammed full of flak and missiles.<br><br>During the rougher times, Lt. Col. Steve Searcy, commander of the Shaw-based 78th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, says he was sure he would lose some of his F-16s.<br><br>But "no matter how bad it gets, we have to deal with it," Colonel Searcy says. "We're going to put our football helmets and snap our chin strap on tight."<br><br>The US military has gained a lot of experience in waging air wars during recent years. The successful 1995 Balkans air campaign over Bosnia was a prelude to last year's longer air war.<br><br>Moreover, Air Force planes have been able to perfect missile-hunting tactics over Iraq during the past nine years by enforcing United Nations sanctions.<br><br>Pilots also have an armada of different aircraft to respond to every situation. In addition to the missile-hunters, the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps bring aircraft to jam enemy radar, shoot down enemy fighters in the air, refuel other planes, and track the movement of enemy aircraft and troops.<br><br>During Vietnam, the US paid a dear price for its lack of sophistication. The Air Force and Navy lost more planes in a few hours than NATO lost during the entire Kosovo operation.<br><br>The mission of protecting US fighters and bombers in the 1960s and '70s fell to a group of dare-devil F-4 pilots known as "Wild Weasels."<br><br>Today, Air Force pilots perform these mission in fast, mobile F-16CJ models. Equipped with one of the largest engines in any fighter, the CJs can cruise at twice the speed of sound. The engine from one CJ model is more powerful than the entire Indy 500 field, and the F-16 is widely considered the world's most maneuverable fighter.<br><br>Nonetheless, it still can't outrun a SAM, which can fly up to three times the speed of sound.<br><br>While pilots don't like to talk about evasive-maneuver tactics - and some of it is classified - they have tricks to defeat SAMs. By pulling multiple G-force turns, they often can "defeat the missile's energy" and force it to explode a safe distance away.<br><br>To perfect the art of dodging missiles, pilots from Shaw train on a nearby bombing range that can simulate the electronic signatures of many missiles. Air Force pilots also undergo highly choreographed war games in the Nevada desert to learn to fight together.<br><br>That training paid off for Capt. Tom "Hatchet" Littleton on April 20 over Belgrade. Noticing a mesmerizing streak of white light below him, Captain Littleton knew he was in trouble. The Serbs had launched six SAMs at him and three other F-16s protecting US planes.<br><br>Quick evasive action spared Littleton from capture or death.<br><br>"The missile blew up near my airplane," Littleton says. "The big engine in my F-16 saved my life."<br><br>The training to make maneuvers like that - and NATO's enormous technological advantage - helped keep the casualty toll so low. Had some planes been shot down, the sight of dead and captured Americans could easily have eroded support for the war.<br><br>Since Somali rebels killed 18 Americans in 1993, the American populace has shown that it is unwilling to absorb high casualties in relatively small-scale wars. <br><br>Despite a number of near-misses in Yugoslavia, US planes did not fall from the sky.<br><br>Brig. Gen. Dan Leaf, who commanded Aviano Air Base during the war, never expected to be able to fly so many missions without losing any pilots. Says General Leaf, who flew frequent missions with lower-ranking pilots: "There is nothing that can describe the feeling of having your people plucked from the jaws of the enemy."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : Eye-to-eye with a new kind of war``x953796141,89726,``x``x
``xEthnic violence, economic paralysis and poor organisation threaten province's future, EU report asserts <br>By Stephen Castle in Brussels <br><br>Almost a year to the day since the beginning of Nato's air war to liberate Kosovo, Europe's leaders face a grim warning that the international community is failing to secure the province's future. <br><br>A starkly written paper by the European Union's most senior foreign policy officials argues that the United Nations is having "considerable difficulties" in Kosovo, that ethnic violence is "at high levels" and that the UN administration has "insufficient personnel and resources". <br><br>The document, prepared by Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy high representative, and Chris Patten, the commissioner for external relations, is to be presented to EU heads of government at today's Lisbon summit. It claims that a plethora of decision-making bodies involved with the Balkans means duplication, delay and ad hoc procedures. "The time has come", it says, "to take a fresh look at the situation and to develop a coherent strategy." <br><br>This unprecedented exercise in soul-searching is designed as a wake-up call for the EU's leaders as the Balkans slips down their list of priorities. Money is going into Kosovo – this year the EU expects to spend 360m euros (£221m) – and the international community can claim credit for averting a winter crisis, returning around one million refugees to their homes and reopening most hospitals and schools. So what is going wrong? <br><br>Ten minutes north of Pristina, Kosovo A is a coal-fired power station built in the Sixties with Russian technology. When in service, it belches out 1,000 tons of ash each day but for much of the time it does not work. The immediate problem is not the planned renovation of Kosovo A, but keeping it going. When, earlier this month, a technical fault stopped generation Kosovo A had two days' worth of coal left to burn. Western officials planned to recoup costs of power generation from consumers but in January, when bills were sent out for the first time since the war, only 3 per cent were paid. <br><br>The lack of a real economy is a familiar theme in Kosovo which, well before the 78-day bombing campaign began, was being reduced to near-collapse by Belgrade. Joly Dixon, the UN's deputy special representative in Kosovo, said: "From the economic point of view, we thought that we were coming into a society damaged by a relatively short war. What we found was an economy weakened over 10 years and with no administrative structure." <br><br>The big international presence has become the primary source of income. As well as those who have found work with the EU or the UN, many Kosovars have moved out of their homes to rent them to foreigners at exorbitant prices. <br><br>Meanwhile, lawlessness provides a fertile breeding ground for ethnic violence and a mafia-backed black market. A new chain of petrol stations, Kosovo Petrol, is springing up through the province and no one seems quite sure who owns it. One EU official said: "Perhaps its the mafia, [or it] may be linked to the old KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army]." <br><br>The Solana/Patten paper does not duck these issues. It says: "We must ensure that Unmik [the UN Mission in Kosovo] receives the necessary resources, in particular adequate financing, police officers, judges and prosecutors. Early progress on economic reconstruction and the development of a market economy is vital for continued Kosovar support for the international presence." <br><br>The paper calls for a streamlining of the West's Balkans initiatives and it argues that technical problems which have stopped Kosovo and Montenegro being eligible for international funding (because they are not independent countries) must be overcome. <br><br>All this could be a race against time, as the support of Kosovo's Albanians appears to be evaporating, which could make the province ungovernable. When Mr Patten met the Kosovo Transitional Council earlier this month, local politicians asked where the cash was going. One council member was blunter still: "The West was happy to pay for bombing this place", Ylber Hysa said, "but there is not the same willingness to rebuild it." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Europe's leaders warned of new crisis in Kosovo ``x953796161,11526,``x``x
``xJonathan Steele in Pristina <br><br>Serbian lawyers are reaping exorbitant sums to arrange for the release of Albanians from prisons in Serbia, in what appears to be a ransom racket supported by the government of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic. <br>Albanian families are making contact with the Serbian lawyers at a makeshift "prisoners' bazaar", which is held on Saturdays on the open road near one of Kosovo's borders with Serbia. <br><br>The lawyers take the names of the Albanian detainees, most of whom where hurriedly transferred to Serbia after the Kosovo war, in exchange for a telephone number in Serbia that the families can later ring to find out the price and an approximate release date. <br><br>The money, which the families hand over at the bazaar during a subsequent visit, far exceeds normal lawyers' fees: it is assumed that most of the fees go to judges and other Belgrade nominees. In a system as centralised as Serbia's, business on this scale must be pre-approved by the ruling Socialist party, which Mr Milosevic heads. <br><br>When the Yugoslav army and Serb police pulled out of Kosovo in June after 78 days of Nato bombing, they took thousands of Albanians with them. Most were being held for "terrorist" crimes. Their families call them hostages, but if Mr Milosevic originally intended to use them as a political bargaining chip, they now appear to be up for sale. Forty-two men were released from Serb jails in the first week of March. <br><br>"We collected DM105,000 [£33,000] to get seven men from our village out," said Isuf Berisha, 37, outside the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Pristina this week. His brother, Idriz, was in a group of 25 men who had been released from jail in Pozarevac, 40 miles south-east of Belgrade. <br><br>When the ICRC vehicles arrived shortly afterwards, wives, mothers and other family friends merged into a throng of hugs and kisses. They then set off to their villages in a noisy cavalcade of honking cars and buses. Some waved the Albanian flag, as though it were the end of a victorious football match. <br><br>Joy is rare in Kosovo now that the euphoria of the liberation from Serb rule has faded, but the prisoners' homecoming provided a brief fillip. <br><br>"Until midday yesterday, we didn't know we were going to be freed," Idriz said the next day. "We were taken from prison to the courthouse in Pozarevac. The trial only took five minutes. We continued to deny we were terrorists, but the judge gave us a 15-month sentence. As we had already spent 18 months in detention, he then released us." <br><br>Isuf interrupted his brother's story with a chuckle: "Actually, I was the one who was a fighter in the Kosovo Liberation Army. Idriz never was." <br><br>"We got out because of the money. If the money hadn't been paid, the trial wouldn't have happened and we would still be in prison. Three other men from the village haven't been released. They have already been sentenced, and if their families could find the money they would probably be released too," Idriz said. <br><br>Further down Dejne's muddy main street, Samedin and Myhedin Bytyqi, two brothers in their late 40s, were inspecting the damage caused to their home while they were in prison. <br><br>"I never expected it to be so bad," said Samedin, as he showed the storehouse that the family had converted into living quarters after their house was burnt down. "Our main problem now is getting used to the light," he said. "We were held in a dimly lit room all day and only had exercise for 15 minutes a week." <br><br>The exact number of Albanian detainees in Serbia is unclear. <br><br>The Serbian ministry of justice has published a list of almost 2,300 names and the ICRC has registered about 1,700 detainees. But Albanian human rights groups in Pristina claim there may be secret prisons and the number could be as high as 7,000. <br><br>Nato has been accused of failing to insist on prisoner releases when it negotiated the "military technical agreement" which led to the end of the bombing. <br><br>An unnamed Pentagon official was quoted recently as saying that Washington had decided to drop any mention of prisoners because it knew the alliance was desperate to stop the bombing. "It was a bare-bones document that we were confident the Serbs would accept," he said. <br><br>While the strategy may explain the omission to the west, in Kosovo it is of little solace. <br><br>"There is some realisation that this is not a statistical side bar - it is an open wound in Albanian society," said Nic Sommer, the ICRC press officer in Kosovo. "[But] a lot of trafficking is going on." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Serb lawyers get ransom for freeing Albanians ``x953796185,19921,``x``x
``xBy Andrew F. Tully<br><br>A new report by the International Crisis Group, an independent group of political analysts, warns that Serbia is planning a military takeover of Montenegro, its junior partner in the Yugoslav federation. The organization says the NATO must increase its military presence in the Balkans to keep Serbia in check. But as RFE/RL's Andrew F. Tully reports, there is little hope that NATO can act quickly -- if at all. <br><br>Washington, 22 March 2000 (RFE/RL) -- A private group of political analysts is recommending that NATO build up its military presence in the Balkans to prevent a Serbian takeover of Montenegro.<br><br>But Gareth Evans, the president of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), says he does not believe the member nations of the NATO can agree to act quickly or forcefully enough to prevent another war in the truncated Yugoslavia, which now includes only Serbia and Montenegro.<br><br>Evans, a former foreign minister of Australia, says the thrust of his report -- and the mission of the ICG -- is to prevent a crisis, rather than to react after the fact. He issued his report in Washington Tuesday.<br><br>And he says the West must act quickly, because there are signs that Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, the president of the Yugoslav federation, is preparing to move against Montenegro.<br><br>He cites recent Yugoslav army movements in and around Montenegro, and Serbia's economic embargo against its junior partner in the federation. And he notes that Milosevic has been cracking down on independent news media in Serbia.<br><br>Evans concedes that Milo Djukanovic, Montenegro's president, is not necessarily a perfect democratic leader. But he stresses that he has carefully kept his country's policies independent of Serbia, and for that deserves the world's support.<br><br>The ICG president says Djukanovic faces difficult choices. He says Djukanovic can proceed with a threatened referendum on independence, but that would only provoke Milosevic. He says he can keep relations with Serbia as they are, but that would put Montenegro in what he called "limbo." Or, Evans says, he can wait for Milosevic's successor and seek better relations. But he adds that Montenegrins may be too restive for compromise.<br><br>Evans president says Montenegro would be quickly defeated if Milosevic decided on a military takeover. Rather, Evans says it is time for the West to intervene. He says Western nations and institutions must give as much economic aid as possible to Montenegro to make it less dependent on Serbia. He also says Europe and the U.S. must increase their governmental and non-governmental presence in Montenegro to show Serbia that Montenegro is important on its own, not just as a part of the Yugoslav federation.<br><br>But he says the most important thing the West can do to prevent a fifth Balkan war in a decade is for NATO to increase its military presence in the region to make sure that Milosevic does not make war on Montenegro.<br><br>But Evans says he doubts NATO will act before yet another Balkan crisis breaks out.<br><br>"This is the dilemma, and this is the one [dilemma] that's shrieking out at us at the moment. It's only some form of catastrophe -- you know, full, frontal challenge, blood in the streets somewhere -- that will generate the response, which if it were generated now could avoid that reoccurrence occurring."<br><br>Evans attributes this problem to a variety of factors: a general election in the U.S., an American Congress that is at odds with the president, Bill Clinton, and the large number of governments in Europe that must agree to increasing NATO's military presence in the Balkans.<br><br>Jim Goldgeier is a professor of political science at George Washington University in Washington who specializes in NATO. He agrees in an RFE/RL interview that it will be difficult to get the alliance to act militarily to prevent a war in Montenegro.<br><br>"The problem right now is that NATO's already having enough trouble getting commitments from allies to put the forces that need to be put in Kosovo. And now to say, 'And now we need to do -- you know, have additional forces available to deal with a potential problem in Montenegro' is going to be -- you know, is going to make the situation that much more difficult."<br><br>Evans says NATO should not be concerned about being prepared to intervene militarily in what Milosevic would call an internal affair. He notes that this argument did not stop the alliance from attacking Yugoslavia last year over Kosovo. And he adds that Montenegro looks more like an independent state today than Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina did a few years ago. Goldgeier agreed.<br><br>"NATO has basically decided after last year that nothing's simply an internal affair in the Balkans. It already shattered that principle, and it can't go back -- it can't undo what it did and say, 'Well, it's not something we're going to worry about because this is part of Yugoslavia."<br><br>But Evans and Goldgeier agree that if the Western alliance does not act quickly, its air war against Yugoslavia last year over Kosovo -- and the peacekeeping efforts it is still conducting in the Serbian province -- will lose credibility with the rest of the world. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRadio Free Europe / Radio Liberty : Yugoslavia: Group Urges NATO To Block Serbs In Montenegro``x953796207,94505,``x``x
``xBy Richard Mertens<br>M A L A K R U S A, Yugoslavia, March 23 — The wheat sown last fall is beginning to turn green, and for the first time in two years, the women of Mala Krusa are preparing to plant the peppers and other vegetables that made this region famous throughout Kosovo.<br>But for this battered southern village, stripped of most of its men, spring is less a season of hope than of endurance. Today, a year after NATO began its three-month bombing campaign aimed at defending ethnic Albanians from Serbian repression and ethnic cleansing, Mala Krusa, like the rest of Kosovo, faces an uncertain future. <br>So far, attempts to establish law and order, cultivate a moderate civilian leadership, and heal ethnic divisions have largely failed.<br>When NATO airstrikes began on March 24, the alliance expected Yugoslavia to concede after a few days. Instead, the missiles only increased the fury of attacks, resulting in stepped up killings and mass expulsions. <br>Men and Boys Shot <br>Mala Krusa was among the first to suffer. On March 26, women and children were driven out of the village and, eventually, to Albania. The men and boys, witnesses say, were taken away and shot, their bodies set on fire. In all, more than 100 people disappeared.<br>“It’s very difficult without husbands and sons,” says Medije Shehu, who lost her husband and two sons in the attack. “Before the war, they took care of the family. Now we are only waiting to see who will help us.”<br>Today, among the shells of burned and ruined houses, families that have stuck through the winter are looking forward to the promise of reconstruction, to new homes and new beginnings.<br>“For my daughters there is a chance to have a job, to do something in the future,” Shehu says softly, her eyes reddening. But, she adds, “for me there is nothing.” <br><br>Few Say Life is Better <br>Like all of Kosovo, Mala Krusa has received considerable assistance with rebuilding. A German relief agency helped build roofs on some of the less-damaged houses, so that families like the Shehus had at least one warm room in which to spend the winter. Shehu also received a new wood stove, which is practically her home’s only furnishing. She has received regular supplies of food, a small amount of cash, and six chickens. This spring, the European Union begins what will likely be many years of reconstruction in Kosovo, and Mala Krusa is in the plans. <br>Few people in Mala Krusa can say their life today is better than it was in years past. But at least in the abstract, they can affirm the fruits of NATO’s intervention, however much it cost them.<br>While Kosovo technically remains a province of Serbia, it has been under de facto control of KFOR, the NATO-led protection force, and United Nations civil administrators since last June, when Yugoslav forces withdrew.<br>“We are free,” said Florim Hajdari, who fought with the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian force that opposed the Yugoslav military in Kosovo. “We’re free to go anywhere we want. We didn’t have that before.” Hajdari lost his father and five brothers in last year’s massacre. <br>But the blend of newfound freedom and past suffering has proven disastrous for the province’s remaining Serbs and dismaying for Western officials. Many ethnic Albanians have returned not only to reclaim the jobs and liberties once denied them, but also to exact vengeance against non-Albanians, who continue to flee.<br>“It’s wrong to think the bombing campaign ended the war,” says Bernard Kouchner, the top U.N. official in Kosovo. “The confrontation between men goes on. The hatreds are stronger.” <br>Serb Resentment of NATO Lingers <br>One year after NATO began its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia over spiraling violence against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, Serbia appears terrified that the alliance will take similar action again.<br>A destitute, elderly peasant woman waiting for spaghetti and bread at a Belgrade Red Cross soup kitchen is desperately worried. “Will NATO bomb? Will there be another war?” she frets. <br>Even the middle class is affected by memories of the airstrikes. “On Friday — the bombing’s anniversary — I will definitely look up into the sky,” says journalist Biljana Vasic, who works for the nongovernment magazine Vreme.<br>Resentment burns in the eyes of many here, even those who do not necessarily support Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. “Tony Blair!” exclaims a taxi driver, holding up his hands in disgust. “[British Prime Minister] Tony Blair and [Foreign Secretary] Robin Cook are as crazy as Slobodan Milosevic.”<br>U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is also a target of popular hatred. Some pro-government propaganda posters seek to link her with the opposition.<br>The struggle and poverty of many is evident along the capital’s longest road, Bulevar Revolucije, as it winds past the federal parliament to the center of town. Decrepit trams, crammed with passengers, ply the rutted thoroughfare. Black-market money dealers, with a wary eye out for police, exchange the local currency, the dinar, at 21 to the popular German mark; the official rate is 6.<br>Pensioners living on as little as 320 dinars a month (about $26) try to buy basic necessities. <br>But many have not received their pensions from the government for several months. On the side of the crumbling pavement, a host of stalls have sprung up. Workers whose state jobs have collapsed are selling alarm clocks, batteries, pens, notebooks, socks, T-shirts — anything that will earn them enough to get by.<br>The biggest draw along the boulevard is a cinema showing Sky Hook — a film about the NATO bombings. Ten out of the capital’s 30 cinemas are screening the film, which tells the tale of a bunch of fractious young Serbs who decide to rebuild a neighborhood basketball court after NATO missiles reduce it to rubble.<br>In the end they succeed in clearing the court and playing together, when another NATO strike reduces their effort to ruins and kills their star player.<br>The film shows Serbs as victims of an attack they are helpless to stop.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : Kosovo’s Hard Year``x953883204,37960,``x``x
``xPRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - NATO's military and political leaders arrive in Kosovo Friday to mark the passing of one year since the alliance launched the largest military campaign of its history. <br><br>U.S. General Wesley Clark and NATO Secretary-General Lord George Robertson fly into Kosovo to fete the success of NATO's intervention to end the Serb repression of Kosovo Albanians and fend off criticism that the mission caused as many security problems as it solved. <br><br>Last year's 78-day bombardment of Yugoslavia eventually forced President Slobodan Milosevic's forces to give up their iron grip on Kosovo, where Belgrade's police and army had oppressed the ethnic Albanian majority for over a decade. <br><br>But the attacks sparked a Serb drive to empty Kosovo of Albanians, forcing more than 800,000 people to flee, and intensifying a cycle of retributive violence and intimidation NATO is still struggling to contain. <br><br>After Belgrade capitulated in June a 40,000-strong NATO-led peace force arrived to restore order. But returning Albanians took the law into their own hands, driving out some 250,000 Serbs and others in a campaign of killing, looting and burning. <br><br>Most of Kosovo's remaining Serbs now live in rural ghettos under heavy NATO guard, a predicament that is ammunition for critics who say the alliance's intervention was misguided. <br><br>Clark and Robertson are likely to point out that life for the majority of Kosovans is now safer, more predictable and economically secure, a far cry from the near-anarchy prevalent in 1998 when Serb militias were fighting rebel Albanians. <br><br>They are also likely to warn Albanians they risk forfeiting international favor if they do not show more tolerance to Serbs. <br><br>``We all agree we live in a much better situation today than when we arrived,'' NATO's commander in Kosovo, General Klaus Reinhardt, said Thursday. ``Its not ideal. Nobody ever said it would be. There is a long way in front of us.'' <br><br>SECURITY RISKS REMAIN <br><br>NATO still faces serious security challenges on several fronts in Kosovo, an atmosphere of deep ethnic intolerance and the challenge of sustaining a lengthy mission, predicted to last at least a decade. <br><br>Clark and Robertson are due to visit the city of Mitrovica, Kosovo's driest tinderbox, whose new ethnic partition is a severe embarrassment to the NATO goal of fostering peaceful co-existence between communities. <br><br>There have been repeated clashes between ethnic groups, and with peacekeepers, as Serbs in the north of the city seek to block the return home of dispossessed Albanians. The Serbs fear an influx of Albanians from the south will force them to flee. <br><br>NATO is trying to create a city center security zone where both communities can mingle, breaking down mistrust. The idea faces strong Serb opposition that could easily turn violent. <br><br>Threats of instability elsewhere in Kosovo appeared to ease Thursday when a rebel Albanian group in southern Serbia said they would avoid confrontation with Serb military forces. <br><br>NATO had feared the rebels would try to drag the alliance into a conflict just across the boundary from Kosovo. <br><br>The two NATO leaders are also to visit an ethnic Albanian school, which has been rebuilt as part of the United Nations mission to revive democracy and civil society in the province. <br><br>The head of the U.N. mission, Bernard Kouchner, Thursday claimed only modest progress in rebuilding the province since the conflict ended nine months ago. <br><br>Public administration had been restarted and Kosovo largely disarmed, but intolerance and a lack of resources meant the justice system still barely functioned, he said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReuters : ATO Chiefs Visit Kosovo to Mark Bombing Anniversary``x953883304,82442,``x``x
``xBy Andrew Buncombe in Pristina <br><br>Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Nato's secretary general, and General Wesley Clark, the supreme commander of last year's bombing campaign against Serbia, will tour the divided city of Mitrovica today in a visit that underlines the West's failings in Kosovo. <br><br>On the first anniversary of the start of Nato's 78-day bombardment, the two men are due to visit the divided northern city during a three-stop tour of the province. K-For officials said one option being considered was to visit the northern half of Mitrovica, home of the city's Serb population. <br><br>Mitrovica remains Kosovo's flashpoint. Always a city of two halves, it is now split in the most abrupt terms with the river dividing the Serb and Kosovo Albanian communities. Bridges across the river, guarded by troops, have been the site of regular confrontations between the two groups such as the clash last month when British troops had to force back Albanian protesters. <br><br>Last night a K-For spokesman insisted it was not an issue if the Nato party did not visit the north of the city. "I do not think it is a big deal to them," he said. "They are not trying to make an issue of it. Their visit is more a statement that Kosovo remains very important to the West. Whether they pay a visit to the northern half will depend on the security assessment that is made tomorrow morning." <br><br>But whatever K-For may insist, many observers feel that if Lord Robertson and General Clark did not complete their visit it would represent the damning admission that nine months after Nato entered Kosovo there remain no-go areas in the province. <br><br>It would also underline what is widely regarded as the West's biggest failing in Kosovo since the "liberation" last summer – providing security for the province's Serb minority. Official figures suggest two-thirds of the estimated 300,000 Serbs who were living in Kosovo this time last year have now left because of fears for their safety, but the real scale of the exodus may be even greater. <br><br>"Absolutely one of the biggest failings of the West has been not to allow minority groups to continue to stay in their homes," said Paula Ghedini, spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The most recent UNHCR report on minorities in Kosovo concluded that the situation for such groups "remains precarious". Ethnic violence, it added, "represents a serious setback to the UN's efforts to promote freedom of movement and to protect minorities". <br><br>The divided city of Mitrovica has also divided Nato on how best it should be managed. While some senior K-For figures, including General Klaus Reinhardt, the commander of the international peace-keeping force, might like to see a move to reuniting the communities, others, including the French troops who control the city, appear to keep them apart. <br><br>No one doubts Mitrovica's ability to erupt into violence and there is a growing belief that the Serb gangs on the far side of the bridge are sponsored by Belgrade. The border with Serbia proper is just 30 miles away. <br><br>The UN is also aware of the particular potential for violence on today's anniversary. An internal memo given out to its staff yesterday and marked "For the widest possible dissemination" said they should be especially security conscious. <br><br>Yesterday, in what was interpreted as timely sabre-rattling by Nato, up to 2,000 troops streamed into the province as part of Operation Dynamic Response. K-For said the training exercise involving reserve forces was designed to "demonstrate Nato's resolve to maintaining a secure environment and deter external aggression". It denied any suggestions that it was being held in response to a particular threat. <br><br>* The Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, said in an article in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta yesterday that Nato's air war had only aggravated the situation in Kosovo. He wrote: "The Nato operation, launched under the invented pretext of protecting Albanians, only aggravated inter-ethnic tensions and most non-Albanians have [now] been purged from there." <br><br>Moscow also refused to send police officers to a UN force in Kosovo but said Serb security forces should be allowed back into the province. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Nato mission to Kosovo's divided city of bitterness``x953883328,33675,``x``x
``xRichard Norton-Taylor <br><br>The future of Kosovo is on a "razor edge between success and failure", a year after the western allies launched their air assault on Yugoslavia to drive Serbian troops from the province, Lord Robertson, Nato's secretary general, warned yesterday. <br>In a grim assessment of the outcome of Nato's 78-day bombing campaign, in which he compared EU forces to a "paper army", the former British defence secretary said that while much had been achieved, there was still "too much violence, too much revenge". <br><br>His intervention reflects the increasing concern in Nato about attacks on Serbs by hardline Albanians, and growing frustration about the failure to establish a semblance of civil order, more than 10 months after K-For peacekeepers entered the province. <br><br>He said that on a visit to Kosovo today to mark the first anniversary of the start of the bombing, he would deliver a "blunt message"to the ethnic Albanian majority there: "We did not do what we did last year, risking all those lives, to see it all washed down the Ibar river." The Ibar splits the divided city of Mitrovice. <br><br>Nato's bombing campaign cost between £2bn and £3bn, yet only a fraction of this amount is being spent on rebuilding the province. Washington says the US paid for the war and the EU should meet the bill for the peace, but the EU expects to spend just £220m on Kosovo this year. <br><br>"The sad reality is that we rise to the crisis in the military context. After that people are not willing to follow it through," Lord Robertson said. There was an "enormous gap" which no one was filling. Paratroopers and Gurkhas and the French foreign legion were directing traffic." <br><br>His wake-up call - directed to the UN as well as to Nato's European allies - coincided with a stark warning about Kosovo's future by Javier Solana, Lord Robertson's predecessor and now the EU's security supremo, and Chris Patten, the European commissioner for external relations. <br><br>The UN was experiencing "considerable difficulties" in Kosovo, with ethnic violence continuing at "high levels" and the civil administration there deprived of sufficient personnel and resources, they said. <br><br>In Belgrade, the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic laid a wreath on a memorial to mark the anniversary of the bombing. His government plans rallies and demonstrations today. However, the opposition leader Zoran Djindjic said: "There is nothing to celebrate; everyone has lost, Serbia most of all." <br><br>Faced with Washington's growing impatience at having to carry the military burden of European crises, Lord Robertson also delivered a devastating attack on the state of Europe's defences. "European credibility is on the line," he said. <br><br>The problems in getting the EU allies to provide reinforcements sought by Nato commanders, from a continent that had 2m soldiers under arms, highlighted "the scandal of having so many troops and so few of them deployable", as though they were "just a paper army", he said. <br><br>"The time for the peace dividend is well and truly over, because there simply isn't any peace," Lord Robertson said. "Kosovo was the fire alarm and it's still ringing." The European allies had survived the Kosovo campaign thanks to US high technology weaponry. <br><br>"Defence is not about national prestige or honour, or flags and bands, it is an essential insurance policy for future generations. Either [Nato] goes to the crisis or the crisis comes to us," with the prospect of more refugees, he said <br><br>Nato commanders have had to cajole the allies to maintain a K-For strength of 40,000 troops, of which Britain contributes about 3,300 - down from the 10,000-plus it provided at the height of the crisis last summer. Italy supplies 6,000 troops, the largest single contingent. <br><br>Lord Robertson reflected US scepticism about the EU's ability to achieve its pledge to field 60,000 troops within 60 days and sustain them for at least a year. <br><br>"European leaders put their own credibility very much on the line. The message I have been putting over is: 'I read your lips. Now you must deliver'," he said. He expressed concern in particular about Germany's plans to cut defence spending. <br><br>He echoed the views of Nato's military commanders by calling for a "civil rapid reaction force" of armed police under the authority of the UN or the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. <br><br>In Moscow, the Russian foreign ministry said it was withdrawing its agreement to send police to Kosovo, after repeated failures by the UN to respond to its offer. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian :Nato chief rings Kosovo alarm ``x953883353,29513,``x``x
``xBy Anne Swardson<br><br>BELGRADE, March 23 – Anyone who wants to know why Yugoslavia has not collapsed a year after NATO launched its intensive bombing campaign need only walk down Boulevard of the Revolution here in the capital. <br><br>For more than two miles, street vendors peddle underwear, French perfume, sweaters, lipstick, sunglasses, toilet paper, flowers, sneakers, software, diapers, toys and more. The goods are laid out on tables or the hoods of cars that are covered with dingy sheets.<br><br>Customers swarm to buy the products, not because they are good, but because they are cheap. And the sellers come not because they can prosper, but because they can survive. One vendor has sold children's socks off a automobile hood for seven years – a far cry from his days as a Serbian literature professor, but a living. "If you work, you can get by," he said.<br><br>Yugoslavia, too, is getting by. When the bombing ended June 10 after 78 days, imminent demise was widely predicted in the West: Punished by international economic sanctions, the economy would implode; discredited as a national leader, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would be forced from power.<br><br>Neither of those things has happened. In fact, many say the bombing has changed little and the war was simply a tragic diversion from what has been going on for a decade: the steady deterioration of living standards, basic freedoms and belief in government since the old six-republic Yugoslavia began to break up and Milosevic asserted his power.<br><br>"The war was an interruption in something that was a natural social evolution," said Snjezana Milivojevic, a communications professor who recently lost her job at a university because of her anti-government views.<br><br>Yugoslavia has been under various economic sanctions for the last eight years, primarily from the United States and Europe, but they have had little impact on everyday life. Despite an oil embargo, for instance, gasoline is not only plentiful but relatively inexpensive at about $1.10 a gallon. Businesses have found ways to obtain the parts and supplies they need. A gray market serves consumers' subsistence needs.<br><br>Milosevic, meanwhile, appears little nearer to being dislodged than he was before the bombing. As the opposition has remained weak and divided, he has shored up his power through his control over much of Yugoslavia's military and police forces, communications, finance and infrastructure.<br><br>After the war, "there was a tendency to believe that Milosevic was in a desperate situation and heavy pressure would force him out. This was not the case," said a European diplomat.<br><br>If anything, people here say, the bombing of Yugoslavia and the West's united stance against Milosevic gave him a renewed hold.<br><br>"As long as the Americans attack Milosevic, he can stay in power," said fruit vendor Rode Petkovic, who said he makes more money selling apples at 25 cents a pound than he did as an economist for a major retail company. "The population doesn't like being told whom to be for. If the Americans supported Milosevic, he would be thrown out of power."<br><br>On Friday, the anniversary of the day the first bombs fell, tens of thousands of people are expected to converge on Belgrade's central square to cheer what Milosevic today called the nation's "unbeatable" military. Churches will hold services to memorialize the 3,000 Serbian soldiers and civilians killed in the conflict.<br><br>Many of the demonstrators will come in on free buses and trains, pushed to attend by their unions or employers. School will be canceled to allow children to attend. Despite the official encouragement, the rally will serve as a reminder that even Milosevic's most ardent opponents were against the bombing.<br><br>"A year later, it's obvious the intervention was a mistake. It only strengthened the regime," said Ognjen Pribicevic, a political adviser to opposition leader Vuc Draskovic, head of the Serbian Renewal Movement.<br><br>Milosevic, 59, who has rarely been seen in public in the past year, ventured out today to lay a wreath at the Grave of the Unknown Soldier on Mount Avala.<br><br>"Everlasting glory to the heroes of the fatherland who died in the defense of the freedom and dignity of the people and the state against the new fascism," Milosevic wrote in the memorial book, according to the state news agency Tanjug.<br><br>In recent weeks, Milosevic's government has cracked down on local media, particularly on television and radio stations affiliated with municipal governments opposed to him. Some have had transmission equipment confiscated over nonpayment of fees and taxes, others have been fined for objectionable content. Some here think Milosevic is testing his authority six months ahead of expected elections, others think he is operating from paranoia.<br><br>But other than the media crackdown, the public knows little about what Milosevic does. He no longer resides in his palatial official residence, which has been repaired since it was bombed last year, and it is unclear where he lives. Some here call him and his circle of advisers the "black box"; one person who met recently with some members of the group calls them "very tough, very arrogant, frightened."<br><br>Still, Milosevic appears determined to stay in power and out of custody. Indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, confined within his own borders, his country subject to sanctions, he is immune to outside pressure.<br><br>"Milosevic is not fighting a political battle, he is fighting for his life, for his sheer survival. No international pressure can change this," said Lila Radonjic, editor in chief of TVNet, an independent producer. "Today, there is no a single threat that can be used against him. They have all been deployed."<br><br>No one here can envision what could spark Milosevic's departure, either through public dissatisfaction or political action. The opposition managed this week to agree to hold a large rally April 14, but the three major parties still cannot decide whether to offer a unified slate in the next elections.<br><br>Even as they squabble, Milosevic's opponents worry that the longer he remains in power and the more people become accustomed to living on the gray market, the harder it will be remake the nation's institutions and restore a normal economy when Milosevic eventually is gone.<br><br>The average wage here has fallen from $300 a month 10 years ago to $80 today. Industrialization has been reversed; the share of agriculture in the economy has doubled. People are losing skills and hope, while the gray market allows those with influence or weapons to grab a stake in the chaos that they will subsequently be reluctant to give up.<br><br>"People in the hidden economy are getting stronger, and they know that when the transition comes they will have to go back to work in the factories," said Goran Pitic, head of economic research for the Economics Institute.<br><br>In an interview today, federal Information Secretary Goran Matic said Yugoslavia has what it takes to put its economy back together. "I think the economic effects of the bombing can be overcome," he said. "We have resources: energy, food, transport. In the economic sense we are going to overcome all our problems."<br><br>For now, the economy continues to drag along. People are devoting more time and energy to survival, but those who wait in line for milk or bread can still buy it. Others can pay on the gray market.<br><br>"People are used to suffering. Greater suffering does not necessarily spell greater rebellion," said Ivan Vejvoda, executive director of the George Soros-financed Fund for an Open Society Yugoslavia. "Capacity for endurance is infinite here, and that's not good for political change."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWashington Post : Yugoslavia, Milosevic Keep Going After War``x953883436,42849,``x``x
``xHERCEG NOVI, Yugoslavia, March 24 (Reuters) - Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic accused Montenegro's western-leaning president on Friday of trying to stir fresh trouble in the country that could result in a new NATO intervention. <br>"Pushed against a wall of his failures and delusions, realising that he would soon be rejected by his present patrons because he proved to be incapable of playing the role given, (Milo) Djukanovic has begun his last and most dangerous game," Bulatovic told a rally in the coastal town of Herceg Novi. <br><br>"He is talking about Montenegro being threatened by the Yugoslav Army...In the interest of Montenegro he is preparing a clash between the army and the police," he said. <br><br>He claimed that a large number of new police troops were foreign mercenaries and that the police were funded from abroad. <br><br>Bulatovic, protege of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and leader of the main opposition party in the tense coastal Yugoslav republic, was addressing a protest in Serb-dominated Herceg Novi, a town of 28,000 people bordering Croatia, to mark the first anniversary of the start of NATO's bombing. <br><br>"Djukanovic's patrons from NATO have already said they would intervene militarily should his government be attacked...We will solve our problems alone, within the constitutions of Yugoslavia and Montenegro. Any military intervention will be treated as an aggression," Bulatovic said. <br><br>Montengro is the only republic left with Serbia in Yugoslavia. <br><br>In a speech in Belgrade earlier in the day, he accused the republic's pro-Western leadership of policies damaging to the people of Montenegro, who are increasingly divided into those who want to stay with Serbia in Yugoslavia and those who do not. <br><br>"These policies have not damaged Serbia or Yugoslav state institutions, but caused a total moral, political and economic catastrophe for Montenegro, whose people suffer the most, regardless of their political beliefs," he said. <br><br>Djukanovic has threatened to hold a breakaway referendum if Belgrade fails to agree to reform the Yugoslav federation dominated by Serbia and Milosevic. <br><br>Bulatovic's appearance in Herceg Novi was part of a campaign for a local ballot due in May, seen as a test of strength between his backers and Djukanovic's government, whose relations are becoming increasingly antagonistic. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro leadership stirs trouble-Yugoslav PM``x953983544,65245,``x``x
``x<br>The Times<br><br>FROM ANTHONY LOYD IN PRISTINA<br><br><br>A VISIT to Kosovo by Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, the Nato General Secretary, and General Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander, ended in humiliation yesterday. The planned trip to Mitrovica, to mark the first anniversary of Nato's air war against Yugoslavia, was cancelled at the last minute due to unspecified "operational reasons". <br>While spokesmen hurried to emphasise that the cancellation was simply down to travel delays, there was intense speculation that a deteriorating security situation led to the last-minute change in schedule. <br><br>Reacting to the allegations with characteristic indignation, Lord Robertson failed, however, to give any good reason for abandoning Mitrovica from the itinerary. "There were logistical problems in getting here," he said in Pristina, where he was taken to visit a local school. "There is no significance in not going to Mitrovica." <br><br>Privately though, there was considerable acrimony between the officialdom of Nato headquarters in Brussels and that of the Kosovo Protection Force (Kfor), as each blamed the other for the PR debacle. <br><br>"Brussels says that we suggested the Mitrovica visit be cancelled," one senior Kfor commander said. "Yet the sudden change in schedule came from them not us, and to say it originated in logistical problems just won't wash." <br><br>Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, has been a frequent flashpoint between the divided Albanian and Serb populations this year and has become a constant thorn in Nato's credibility. The town marks the frontier of Slobodan Milosevic's continuing influence in the province, with contiguous Serb-held access routes linking it with Serbia proper. <br><br>Fighting in the city in February led to more than 1,700 people fleeing their homes. Nine months after they arrived in the area the French have managed to do little more than bolster a series of barricades keeping the communities apart. <br><br>Just three days ago, the planned trial of a Serb accused of war crimes was cancelled because Kfor was unwilling and unable to provide security for the courthouse, which lies in a Serb-held zone, to function. <br><br>The violence has seen the city become a focus of division in the international community and a scene of constant dispute between UNMIK police officers and commanders from different national Kfor contingents over how best to pacify and unify the divided populace. <br><br>The French have fared particulary badly in terms of publicity. They have been accused of operating in a method overly sympathetic to the Serbs and devolved from the control of Kfor headquarters. <br><br>Yet only two days ago Kfor had been trumpeting the plans of Lord Robertson and General Clark to visit three Albanian apartment blocks surrounded by Serbs in the northern half of the city as a symbol of control and confidence. <br><br>"There's no reason why they should not go into the northern part," Colonel Philip Anido, a Kfor spokeman, said. "The Serbs live there in large numbers, but they are not in control of the north. <br><br>"General Clark and Kfor are not going to be intimidated by people who have agendas going against the wishes of the international community and the people." <br><br>When it came down to it, however, the world's most powerful military alliance singularly failed to make it happen and the gulf between their will and power in the north of the province lay as exposed as ever. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRobertson bypasses dangerous Mitrovica``x953983622,63478,``x``x
``x<br>The Times<br><br>BY MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR <br><br>Nato's five options <br>1. NORTHERN OPTION <br>The most politically sensitive and least realistic plan was to advance from Hungary into Serbia, with maximum air support, manoeuvring round Belgrade to reach Kosovo. But this would have meant taking on the whole Yugoslav National Army (JNA) and would have required up to 600,000 troops. <br><br>2. AIRBORNE OPTION <br>High on the list of priorities was to get thousands of airborne troops into the heart of Kosovo by helicopter and transport aircraft, many of them possibly by parachute, landing well beyond the ambush territory of the Kacanik Pass. Their role would have been to harrass the Serb forces, backed by Apache attack helicopters, and hold ground until the main armour arrived. <br><br>3. ALBANIAN OPTION <br>Using the main Albanian ports to offload troops and equipment, the Americans planned to build a highway into Kosovo, beside the existing minor roads, in a huge engineering project; then advance directly into the province. <br><br>4. KACANIK PASS OPTION <br>Despite the formidable challenge of advancing through the mountain pass, often through narrow tunnels, much of the armour would have had to take this direct route from Macedonia into Kosovo. But the advance would have been preceded by extensive special forces operations to secure the tunnels and bridges. <br><br>5. PRESEVO VALLEY OPTION<br>Copying the strategy used in the 1991 Gulf War campaign, the intention was to advance into Serbia to the east from Macedonia and then carry out a left hook into Kosovo. The Serbs were aware of this possibility and began deploying troops east of Kosovo. <br> <br>BRITAIN'S planning for a ground war against President Milosevic's forces in Kosovo was so far advanced that the Ministry of Defence had even worked out how many artillery shells would be required, according to military sources. <br>Underlining the pressures the British military were under to find resources for the potential battle, it was estimated that the division earmarked for battle in Kosovo needed to take the entire war reserve of 155mm artillery shells. The precise number of shells is classified, but it is clear that the planning of the Kosovo ground campaign forced the MoD to revise its strategy on ammunition stocks. War reserves were reduced under the previous Government's defence cuts. <br><br>One of the most alarming lessons for Nato from the Kosovo campaign, which began a year ago yesterday, was that most alliance members were not prepared or able to contemplate a high-intensity war with Yugoslavia. Senior MoD sources said yesterday that towards the end of Nato's 78-day bombing campaign, some alliance members were beginning "to come round" to the idea that a ground war might be necessary. But the Kosovo terrain and the prospect of high casualties remained key obstacles in the way of any consensus. British planners knew that a ground war against an army of about 30,000 Serb troops in defensive positions would lead to significant casualties. <br><br>Cabinet Office papers circulated to ministers reflected the fears of a high casualty toll, but Tony Blair supported the British military view that planning for a land campaign had to begin. One senior Army officer said that the ground war would have presented a greater challenge than 100,000 Russian troops faced in ejecting less than 10,000 rebels from Chechnya. The operation, he said, could have led to much higher casualties than the Russians had suffered. <br><br>One British source said the French had estimated that there could be 2,000 Nato casualties a day. Operation B Minus, as the campaign plan was codenamed, would have involved up to 175,000 troops, mostly American and British. <br><br>Britain told Washington that its maximum contribution was 54,000 troops and about 100 tanks. That would have required calling up the regular reserves and the Territorial Army. The Pentagon was confident that the US Corps of Engineers would be able to build new roads into Kosovo from Albania and the necessary infrastructure in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to bear the weight of armoured vehicles. <br><br>The US also planned to improve port facilities in Albania. "Whenever we expressed doubts about the scale of the improvements needed, the Americans told us not to make mountains out of molehills," one British military source said. <br><br>A small team of mostly American officers, under the overall command of General Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander, came up with five options: <br><br><br>Airborne: sending thousands of troops by helicopter and transport aircraft over the border mountains into the heart of Kosovo. <br><br>Presevo Valley: advancing from Macedonia into Serbia to the east of Kosovo and then swinging in a "left hook" to attack the Serb troops. <br><br>Kacanik Pass: driving armour through the mountain pass from Macedonia. <br><br>Albanian: advancing from Albania into Kosovo along a route constructed by American engineers. <br><br>Northern: assembling an army in Hungary and advancing into Serbia from the north. <br>The aim would have been to get all the troops into theatre within 90 days and to defeat the Serbs by the end of October, using a combination of the listed options. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBritain had detailed plan for ground war ``x953983644,22894,``x``x
``xThe Times<br>FROM CHARLES BREMNER IN PARIS<br><br>BAD blood between the French military and Bernard Kouchner, the French United Nations administrator of Kosovo, has emerged to embarrass the Government here after a bizarre street brawl in Paris between a gendarmerie colonel and officers of the military security. <br>The Monday night fist-fight, involving Colonel Jean-Michel Méchain and some of the eight-strong surveillance team, exposed a feud between the gendarmerie and France's army contingent in the Kfor Kosovo UN force. The gendarmerie, a military organisation and France's provincial police force, is supervising civilian security and criminal investigation in the French zone of Kfor. <br><br>Colonel Méchain, 46, was being followed by the Defence Ministry's security force because he was suspected, with a 27-year-old French-Albanian translator, of leaking military documents critical of M Kouchner. In one published memorandum to General Louis Le Mière, the French contingent commander, army officers complained that the UN chief displayed an anti-Serbian bias. The French military have long been held to have pro-Serbian sympathies. <br><br>The colonel, acting as legal adviser to the Kfor command, had made no secret of his anger against the military after superior officers refused a request by M Kouchner in February to second him to his staff as special adviser for the fight against organised crime. He was brought back to Paris that month. Like other gendarmerie members, Colonel Méchain had been critical of the legally questionable methods used by the military when arresting suspected KosovoAlbanian criminals. <br><br>The fight broke out in the 20th arrondissement of Paris after the colonel accompanied the woman translator to her home and challenged the surveillance team, which had been on his tail all day. Police arrested two military agents. <br><br>Alain Richard, the Defence Minister, said that the case was being investigated but the military had had good reasons to refuse Colonel Méchain's posting. "He showed a certain agitation against his own service," he said. Colonel Méchain said yesterday that he was seeking permission to publicise his version of the affair. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFrench feud boils over``x953983659,75280,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Stephen Castle in Lisbon and Andrew Buncombe in Pristina <br><br><br>25 March 2000 <br><br>Europe yesterday agreed to revamp its faltering efforts to revitalise the Balkans, giving a new role to its top foreign policy supremos and offering economic enticements to countries in the region to embrace Western reforms. <br><br>"We are going to open a new page," said Javier Solana, Europe's high representative for foreign policy, who, with Chris Patten, Europe's external affairs commissioner, was given the task of increasing Europe's impact. <br><br>The promises came as the Nato secretary general, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, admitted the international community was not doing enough in Kosovo to secure a lasting peace in which ethnic minorities were safe. "I am more than ever convinced that Nato's action was not only the right thing to do but that it was the only thing to do," he said. "I also know that the job is only half done. The conflict may be over but the peace is still to be won." <br><br>Lord Robertson and General Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme commander in Europe, cancelled a planned trip to Mitrovica yesterday, the divided city in the north of Kosovo which is the province's most serious flashpoint. <br><br>Lord Robertson denied suggestions that the trip had been cancelled because of security concerns. He called on all sides to forget the years of bitterness and take the "chance to break with the past". But he admitted that Serb leaders from Kosovo had declined to meet him. <br><br>On the first anniversary of the start of Nato's bombing campaign, European leaders meeting in Lisbon moved to stave off mounting criticism of the West's efforts in the Balkans by admitting the need to bolster their efforts. Tony Blair said the new measures "will allow us to get a better grip on that situation" which is in Europe's "back yard". <br><br>EU leaders said it was up to Europe to play "the central role" in supporting Kosovo, and agreed on the need for working "in a much more co-ordinated, coherent fashion". <br><br>Yesterday's action followed a controversial report by Mr Solana and Mr Patten – both of whom have recently visited South-eastern Europe – which was highly critical of Europe's efforts. Their joint document concluded that the West is having "considerable difficulties" in Kosovo, that ethnic violence is "at high levels" and that the UN's administration is dogged by "insufficient personnel and resources". <br><br>Now Mr Solana and Mr Patten have been asked to come up with a new and concrete set of proposals including measures to increase trade concessions offered to all Balkan countries except Serbia, and to step up assistance to Montenegro. <br><br>However heads of government sidestepped a proposal by the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, to grant another 5.5bn euros (£3.5bn) in aid in the 2001-2006 period. <br><br>With President Slobodan Milosevic's grip over Yugoslavia seen as the fundamental obstacle to progress in the Balkans, Europe repeated its plea to the Serbian people to "take their future into their own hands", to cast off their current leadership and "join the European family". <br><br>Brussels plans to step up economic assistance to Serbia's neighbours in the hope that President Milosevic will be ringed by pro-Western countries with rising living standards. <br><br>In Mitrovica yesterday, Nato peace-keepers tacked up signs to mark out a neutral zone on the northern, Serb-controlled side of the main bridge in the heart of the city. <br><br>The Nato-declared "confidence zone" now reaches from the southern, ethnic Albanian side of the main bridge across the Ibar river, to the opposite, Serb-controlled, bank. Serbs in northern Mitrovica are meant to allow free passage and communication between areas held by Serbs and ethnic Albanians. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xEU leaders agree to rewrite their script for Kosovo ``x953983675,45333,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br><br>Ian Black in Lisbon <br>Saturday March 25, 2000 <br><br>Sanctions against the Serbian regime will remain in force as long as President Slobodan Milosevic is in power, the European Union vowed yesterday. <br>In their toughest message yet to Belgrade, EU leaders, meeting in Lisbon on the first anniversary of the start of last year's war in Kosovo, made clear that there could be no place for an unreformed Serbia in a democratic Europe. <br><br>Pledging to support the country's opposition, the EU appealed to the "Serbian people to take their future into their own hands and reclaim their place in the family of democratic nations". <br><br>But Kosovo's continuing problems were dramatically underlined when the Nato secretary general, Lord Robertson, and the alliance's supreme commander in Europe, General Wesley Clark, abandoned a visit to the tense, ethnically divided town of Mitrovice. <br><br>In Lisbon, EU leaders gave Javier Solana, the union's foreign policy supremo, and Chris Patten, the British commissioner for external relations, the mandate to jointly oversee Balkan policy, in an attempt to end its poor policy coordination and aid delivery. <br><br>Earlier this week, the two reported that although resources and goodwill were plentiful, there was a lack of cohesion and excessive bureaucracy hampering efforts to help Kosovo and the front-line states around it. <br><br>Diplomats freely admitted that the EU's performance in the Balkans has left it open to damaging criticism from the US, which largely paid for last year's Nato air campaign and now expects the alliance's European partners to do more to help build the peace. <br><br>Tony Blair said as the summit ended: "In my view, the problems of Kosovo today are real. The international community needs to have more vigour and focus and, since this is in our own backyard, Europe has to take the lead." <br><br>He said the appointments of Mr Solana and Mr Patten "will allow us to get a better grip on that situation". <br><br>Mr Patten, who controls billions of euros worth of EU aid to the Balkans, said later: "All that is preventing Serbia from joining in our programmes in south-eastern Europe is Milosevic." <br><br>The summit also agreed to open EU markets to products from Balkan countries, partially in response to recent criticism from Washington. <br><br>An early test of the renewed commitment will come next week when the Balkan Stability Pact meets in Brussels, with renewed US pressure to deliver cash support for quick-start and medium-term infrastructure projects. <br><br>In Pristina, meanwhile, officers in the Nato-led K-For peacekeeping force said the schedule for Gen Clark and Lord Robertson's visit had been changed at the last minute for "operational reasons". <br><br>Violence in Mitrovice has been one of the biggest thorns in K-For's side since it moved into Kosovo last June. Any visit to Mitrovice, especially the Serb-dominated north of the city, would have raised major security concerns for two of the men most publicly associated with the bombing campaign. <br><br>Earlier this week, EU foreign ministers endorsed plans to lift a ban on air links with Yugoslavia but tighten financial sanctions to increase pressure on President Milosevic. <br><br>A visa ban on pro-Milosevic officials, business partners and cronies will be extended and their financial assets abroad will be frozen. <br><br>Robin Cook, Britain's foreign secretary, defended the record so far. "We have made more progress in getting refugees returned than we have yet managed to do in Bosnia," he said. <br><br>EU leaders also pledged to provide direct financial aid to neighbouring Montenegro "to ensure the survival of democratic government" in the place which is widely considered the most likely to see the next stage in the wars of Yugoslav seccession. <br><br>•The US state department has urged its citizens living or travelling abroad to exercise appropriate caution and avoid large crowds or gatherings because of the possibility of pro-Serbian demonstrations in the run-up to first anniversary of the war in Kosovo. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSanctions to remain until Milosevic goes, EU says ``x953983693,4104,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, March 25 (Reuters) - The Yugoslav army and Montenegro police agreed on Saturday to set up a joint checkpoint between the coastal republic and Kosovo in a bid to stop smuggling and terrorism spilling over from the province. <br>The move came despite Montenegro's campaign for greater republican autonomy which has raised tensions with Serbia, the dominant republic in federal Yugoslavia, and with the army which is dominated by Serbs. <br><br>"The joint checkpoint has been set up to prevent possible arms and drug smuggling and uncontrolled crossing of people and possibly terrorists from Kosovo into Montenegro," the army and the police said in a joint statement issued in Podgorica. <br><br>The checkpoint was established on the road that runs from the eastern Montenegrin town of Rozaje over mountains into the western Kosovo city of Pec. <br><br>The statement said the police and army agreed on concrete cooperation with local governments "towards securing peace and safety of the people of Montenegro and Yugoslavia." <br><br>The checkpoint was part of a previous cooperation agreement between Montenegro's police and the Yugoslav army signed in December, settling a dispute over control of a military section of the airport near Podgorica, capital of the republic. <br><br>Police in Serbia tightly control its administrative border with Kosovo, which has been plagued by smuggling and gangsterism since a U.N. administration, backed by NATO peacekeepers but underfunded and understaffed, took over the province last year. <br><br>NATO waged a 78-day air war against Yugoslavia in 1999, forcing Belgrade to withdraw from Kosovo Serbian security forces which had been fighting the province's rebellious ethnic Albanian majority. <br><br>Montenegro has been pursuing autonomy from Belgrade since its voters elected reformist President Milo Djukanovic in 1997. <br><br>Since the Kosovo conflict, pro-Western Montenegro has taken a series of steps to distance itself from leftist Serbia. <br><br>It has obtained self-rule in monetary and foreign policy. Last month, the Podgorica government opened two border crossings with Albania to boost cooperation with neighbours in line with demands posed under the Stability Pact for southeastern Europe. <br><br>The pact, a European Union effort at restoring stability in the Balkans, calls for closer cooperation among the countries in the region. <br><br>The Yugoslav army is the last federal institution still functioning in Montenegro. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugo army, Montenegro police set joint checkpoint``x954147338,74333,``x``x
``xBy AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE<br><br>PARIS, March 26 -- A French colonel suspected of leaking sensitive classified documents from the Kosovo peacekeeping force to the news media has been arrested, relatives said today. <br><br>Col. Jean-Michel Mechain, 46, was arrested on Friday by the French domestic intelligence service, his relatives said. He was the senior legal adviser to the French forces in Kosovo until five weeks ago. <br><br>According to press reports, he was recalled to France from Kosovo under suspicion of leaking sensitive documents that implied there was a concern among French officers that the chief of Kosovo's United Nations civilian administration, Bernard Kouchner, was biased against Serbs. <br><br>The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia last year was carried out after Serbian forces moved into Kosovo to put down a separatist rebellion by Albanians, who make up most of the province's population. <br><br>According to newspaper reports on Friday, Colonel Mechain and a Kosovo Albanian identified as his girlfriend were suspected of having leaked confidential military documents to the French press. The woman was reportedly a translator for the French commanding officer in Kosovo. <br><br>The newspapers said that Mr. Kouchner, who is French, had asked Colonel Mechain to take a job in his office, but the Ministry of Defense had refused "on security grounds." <br><br>Documents recently leaked to the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné and the news magazine Le Point suggested that many French Army officers in Kosovo were exasperated at what they saw as Mr. Kouchner's bias against Serbs. <br><br>Colonel Mechain was slightly injured on Thursday in a fight in Paris with members of the French military security service. The colonel, not in uniform, was walking alone through Paris when he spotted eight people, including a woman, following him. He approached one of them, and there was a scuffle. He was treated at a military hospital. He lodged an accusation of assault with civilian police officers. <br><br>Civilian detectives later arrested two men who were identified as officers of the military security service. The other members of the group were identified as military security operatives. <br><br>Under French law, military security is responsible "for the security and the protection of sensitive personnel, information, equipment and bases." <br><br>On Thursday, Defense Minister Alain Richard confirmed that the service had been following Colonel Mechain and that there had "been some kind of a fight, but it was difficult to say who attacked whom" and that "justice would take its course." <br><br>Mr. Richard said that Colonel Mechain had been recalled from Kosovo because "there were reasons for him not to remain there." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : French Colonel Faces Charges of Passing Kosovo Documents``x954147357,17046,``x``x
``xJon Swain <br> <br>FOR nearly a year Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, the wealthiest woman in Argentina, has had a wonderful obsession. It was to find a 13-year-old ethnic Albanian girl from a Kosovan village who had been maimed in the Balkan war and to give her the best medical treatment in the world. <br>De Fortabat, who is involved in philanthropic causes, had wept after reading in Buenos Aires a reprint of my Sunday Times story about the terrible injury inflicted on Hyre Jasharaj by a Serbian shelling attack. <br><br>A lump of shrapnel had hit Hyre's right arm and nearly severed it above the elbow as she sheltered with her parents in a garden in the village of Vrelle, northwest Kosovo, a year ago this week. She and her parents had fled there after Serbian attackers had burnt down their house. <br><br>Blood was pouring from Hyre's wound and her distraught father, Haxhi Jasharaj, carried her for more than a mile under Serbian shellfire to a makeshift hospital behind the lines. <br><br>There Dr Naim Loxha, a general practitioner, tried to save the arm, despite having had no experience in surgery. <br><br>In the end he had no choice but to amputate above the elbow, using a pair of pliers. He was compelled to perform the operation without anaesthetic because none was available. "It was terrible to operate on the child like that," Loxha told me when I arrived in Vrelle a few days later after trekking over the mountains from Montenegro. "It is something I never want to see again. But she was very brave." <br><br>Throughout the two-hour operation, Jasharaj stroked his daughter's cheek. She screamed softly. There was nothing he could do. Only when he had buried her severed arm outside in the garden and stamped down the earth did he permit himself to break down and weep. <br><br>"When I read this story I was moved to tears," De Fortabat said last week. "It was something terribly touching and sad and I could not forget it." <br><br>The story prompted her to donate $500,000 (£313,000) to the World Food Programme. It was the biggest private donation the agency had received and it was used to feed Kosovan refugees. <br><br>De Fortabat also appealed to Argentinians for more donations. "The story had a big repercussion at the time," she said. "Everybody read it and, when I made the appeal, people asked me if it was for the little girl. <br><br>"It is a wonderful, moving story of the fight of a man for his daughter and how well the doctors did to save her in the middle of such a disaster." <br><br>De Fortabat asked the World Food Programme to try to find Hyre, but in the chaos created by hundreds of thousands of refugees on the move from Kosovo, the organisation was unable to do so. <br><br>A few days after she was operated on, Hyre had nearly died. Her mother and two brothers carried her on a stretcher through the snow over the 7,000ft mountains to Montenegro in a desperate race to save her life. The wound had become infected after Loxha had tried to protect it with a piece of cloth, which he had crudely stitched round the stump with a needle and thread. <br><br>In a hospital in Montenegro, Hyre underwent more surgery, including a skin graft. The surgeon who performed the operation remembered her as being "remarkably brave". When the war was over, she returned with her family to Kosovo. <br><br>De Fortabat hoped that the girl would be traced, but she never was, even though the fighting was over and a huge international aid operation was stabilising Kosovo. She and her family moved back to their home village of Djurakovac, where they started rebuilding their lives, unaware that anyone - least of all a billionairess on another continent - was looking for them. <br><br>De Fortabat never gave up hope, however. Last summer, at the age of 72, she fractured her hip and it looked as if she would never walk again after an operation to repair it went wrong. But she found the strength to carry on by thinking all the while of what Hyre had suffered. <br><br>"I thought I would be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. But I thought about the little girl. I thought, 'You have lived a long life, a fantastic life. What is it for you to be in a wheelchair? You must accept accidents in life and take them philosophically.' And then I began to walk again," she said. <br><br>Her search for Hyre ended two weeks ago when news of De Fortabat's quest reached The Sunday Times in London. In a matter of days I had found Hyre in Kosovo. <br><br>I pushed open the door of the two-room flat where she lived with her parents, brothers and sisters. Her father jumped to his feet in astonishment. The last time I had seen him was in Vrelle almost a year ago when he was ashen-faced and in pain. He had been lightly wounded by the same shrapnel that had hit his daughter and was sick with worry about her. Now, at once, he recognised my face and embraced me like a lost friend. <br><br>"I never thought you would come back to find us," he said. "It was very hard seeing my child suffer like that and to bury her arm, but it was war and I know that there are many worse cases of suffering in Kosovo than hers." <br><br>When I explained that I had come because Hyre's story had been so moving that it had touched a chord across the world in Argentina and a woman wanted to pay for her to go abroad for the best medical treatment and a prosthesis, he broke down in tears. <br><br>He said that various humanitarian agencies had talked last year of providing her with a prosthesis, but nothing had come of it and they had almost abandoned hope of ever seeing her fitted with an artificial limb. Then, in an emotional but otherwise solemn moment, he announced that he would like to organise a traditional ceremony involving his relatives and the elders of the village to make me his brother. I said it would be an enormous honour. <br><br>Arrangements are now being made by the World Food Programme to fulfil De Fortabat's wishes. Once visas have come through, a process expected to take another month, Hyre, accompanied by her mother and father, both teachers, will be flown first to Switzerland, where they will meet their benefactor, and then to Bologna, in Italy, to the world-famous Rizzoli Institute where she will be given a prosthesis for her right arm. <br><br>All the costs will be met by De Fortabat, who controls one of Latin America's largest business empires and whose wealth was estimated by Forbes magazine in 1997 at $1.3 billion. <br><br>Although Hyre has learnt to write with her left hand and has been going to school in Djurakovac, her life has been blighted by her injury. <br><br>In Italy, thanks to De Fortabat, Hyre's amputation will be stabilised at last and she will be fitted with an artificial limb and trained to use it. For the first time in a very long while, she said a few words last week: "I feel just wonderful." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times : Story of hope as Kosovo war girl is found``x954147378,12600,``x``x
``xBy Andrew Buncombe in Velika Hoca <br><br>History sits heavily in the Serb village of Velika Hoca. In this ancient community close to Prizren in south-west Kosovo, there are 13 churches – stone-built, beautiful and full of priceless treasures. The oldest, the 12th century St Nicholas's, is said to date back to before the Serb Orthodox Church was granted autonomy from Greece. <br><br>The village itself, set deep at the bottom of a sloping valley, is thought to be at least 1,000 years old. As with many things here, no one really knows for certain. But history may be about to change for ever. The Serbs of Velika Hoca fear that after a millennium during which their ancestors occupied this village and farmed the land, they will be the generation that has to abandon it. At least 600 of the original 1,400 villagers have left within the last 12 months. They are unlikely to return. <br><br>"This is the most modern prison in the world. There is nowhere else like this ," said Vidosav Cukaric, 52, principal at the village primary school. "We cannot even go 500 metres outside of our village. Nato protects us, but only in the village. We have freedom but we cannot do anything." They are trapped. Surrounded by Dutch troops, it is virtually impossible for them to leave the village without serious risk of being attacked by Albanians. Even the 40 or so children who have passed primary school age can only go to secondary school in nearby Rahovec in an armed Kfor convoy. A truck picks them up and then returns them each day. <br><br>Apart from the teachers in the village school, no one has a wage-paying job. There is just one shop and the number of fields in which the farmers feel safe to work is not large. They survive on humanitarian aid. <br><br>So instead the people of Velika Hoca – one of the largest 100 per cent Serb communities left in Kosovo – spend their days idling away the time, sitting around in the village square, feeling increasingly resentful and bitter. Unlike the high-profile Serb community of Mitrovica, the Serbs of Velika Hoca receive no support from Belgrade. <br><br>"We feel terrible," said Mr Cukaric, sitting in the school staff room while the children thundered up and down in the playground outside. "We feel as though our own government has forgotten us. We feel we have been abandoned by everyone – by the Serb government, by Nato. The local people do not care for politics, all they care about is survival." <br><br>Mr Cukaric and the other teachers believe they may last another year in such circumstances before they will be forced to leave – the majority to Serbia, some to Montenegro. Unable to sell their homes in Velika Hoca and with only the most basic personal possessions, they would find themselves on the bottom rung of Serb society. <br><br>"People are leaving from day to day," he said. "When there are only a little number of people left and we feel unsafe we will be collected from here. If the international community is unable to solve the problems and create a multi-ethnic Kosovo in a year we have no hope to stay here." <br><br>What is happening in Velika Hoca has been happening across Kosovo since the United Nations Mission In Kosovo took charge last summer. Official estimates by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Office for Security and Co-operation in Europe suggest that two-thirds of the 300,000 Serbs that were living in Kosovo this time last year have left. The inability to offer a safe environment for minority groups is seen as Nato's biggest failure in the province. <br><br>The anger of Kosovo Albanians that has been directed towards the villagers of Velika Hoca (two young men were killed while wood-cutting on the edge of the village last October) may in part be based on the belief that these Serbs were responsible for the massacres in a number of nearby Albanian villages. The villagers here deny that, insisting they only fought to "protect the village". <br><br>Either way the reprisals continue. Father Milenko, the village's Orthodox priest, who still holds services in eight of its 13 churches, said that a fortnight ago a church in a village in which he used to celebrate the Slavic liturgy was destroyed. "When man is having problems, the church is having problems," he said. <br><br>For all this, the thickly-bearded Fr Milenko, who has worked in the village for almost 15 years, is one of the loudest voices in favour of staying. "I have never thought about it and I would like to see a man who can predict the future. I am here and I will be here," he said. <br><br>"Humanitarian groups should be doing their jobs. I think it is their job to help people, not to help people to leave. Today another family left – a grandmother and two children. I don't think they will ever come back. Their family has been here for 500 years." <br><br>There are those who agree with the priest. Sasa Goci, 26, used to work as a mechanic in Velika Hoca and the surrounding villages, importing parts from Serbia. Now, with no possibility of a job, he spends his time helping Fr Milenko and proudly showing the village's occasional visitors around its churches. <br><br>At St Nicholas's, up a track on the edge of the village, Mr Goci opened the heavy wooden door with a vast hand-made metal key that he said was the original. <br><br>Inside it was cool and silent and there were ancient fading icons hanging from the smooth stone walls. "I will never leave the village," said Mr Goci. "I cannot understand why anyone would." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : After 1,000 years, terror forces Serbs out of their Kosovo village ``x954147410,2059,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By John Lichfield <br><br><br>28 March 2000 <br><br>A bizarre series of events – including a Parisian street brawl between two kinds of police officer – ended yesterday with the accusation that a senior gendarmerie officer had leaked internal documents from the French peace-keeping force in Kosovo. <br><br>The officer, Colonel Jean-Michel Méchain, who appeared before an investigating magistrate yesterday, was involved in a fight in the 20th arrondissement of Paris last Tuesday in which he was kneed in the genitals. It emerged that his alleged assailants were seven men and one woman belonging to the military security agency, the DPSD. The DPSD agents were arrested by ordinary police. <br><br>Col Méchain had been recalled from a senior post with the French contingent of K-For, the Kosovo peace-keeping force, the week before last. He now faces a formal investigation into accusations that he leaked military memorandums which criticised his country's civilian administrator in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner. <br><br>The memos, reprinted in the national press, accused Mr Kouchner of being virulently anti-Serb and obsessed with military security. The French Defence Minister, Alain Richard, has promised a full investigation of the scandal, including the disputed events last Tuesday. Col Méchain says he was walking down the street in civilian clothes when he realised he was being followed by a group of eight people. He approached them to complain and was kneed in the genitals. <br><br>The local police crime squad arrested the "assailants" before discovering they were DPSD agents. The gendarmerie is part of the army. <br><br>Col Méchain asked to be released from his military vow of press silence and was, himself, arrested on Friday night. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGendarme accused of leaking K-For secrets ``x954230252,56868,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, March 27 (Reuters) - A senior Montenegrin delegation will travel to Brussels for a donors' meeting later this week in a bid to win 79 million euros of project financing, the Montenegrin government said on Monday. <br>Montenegro has previously only attended donors' meetings as an observer. <br><br>"We expect to obtain financial assistance for a series of projects worth 79 million euros. These include 15 million euros worth of quick-start projects the implementation of which would begin within 12 months," Ivan Saveljic, advisor to the Montenegrin foreign minister, told Reuters by telephone. <br><br>The coastal republic, a member of the Yugoslav federation, has won some relief from international sanctions in place against Belgrade for years over its role in regional conflicts. <br><br>Increasingly looking to the West for its future development, it has been pursuing autonomy from Belgrade since its voters elected reformist President Milo Djukanovic in 1997. <br><br>Since the Kosovo conflict, pro-Western Montenegro has taken a series of steps to distance itself from leftist Serbia and obtained self-rule in monetary and foreign policy. <br><br>The most immediate programmes included the reconstruction of a jetty in the Port of Bar and urgent reconstruction works on the road between Bar and Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. <br><br>The remaining 64 million euros would include financing of some major programmes, including a regional water supply line. <br><br>"Some of the projects have already been included in a list of projects to be offered by the European Investment Bank to donors in Brussels. The EIB agreed to finance some works at a European Union meeting in Lisbon last week. It has so far picked some projects, but funds have yet to be raised," Saveljic said. <br><br>Foreign Minister Branko Lukovac and Finance Minister Goran Ivanisevic will represent Montenegro, together with the chief of Montenegrin mission in Brussels Slavica Milacic. Saveljic, in charge of contacts with the Stability Pact, will also attend. <br><br>Lukovac told the Podgorica daily Pobjeda the republic would also submit programmes aimed at developing democracy, human and ethnic minority rights and measures to boost regional security as well as 20 million euros for small self-employment projects. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro seeks 79 mln euros from Brussels donors``x954230273,5071,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia, March 27 (Reuters) - An anti- smuggling agreement between Montenegro and the mainly Serbian Yugoslav army is an important step towards easing tensions between the country's two republics, both sides said on Monday. <br>The army and police announced on Saturday that they would set up a joint checkpoint to prevent smuggling and "terrorism" spilling over from Serbia's Kosovo province. <br><br>The agreement contrasted sharply with rhetoric from both sides in recent weeks which has stoked Western fears a new Yugoslav conflict could be in the making. <br><br>Montenegro, fed up with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's rule of the federation dominated by Serbia, has gradually implemented greater autonomy since pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic was elected in 1997. <br><br>This has raised tensions with Belgrade and the overwhelmingly Serb federal army, with each side accusing the other of trying to foment a conflict. <br><br>One of the parties in Djukanovic's ruling coalition said the customs agreement was a blow to Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, a Milosevic protege who leads Montenegro's opposition. <br><br>Djukanovic has accused Bulatovic of trying to destabilise Montenegro ever since he took over the presidency. <br><br>"This is obviously a slap in the face to Momir Bulatovic and proof that he does not control the army," Podgorica daily Vijesti quoted People's Party leader Dragan Soc as saying. <br><br>"This agreement is also a proof that the Montenegrin government is ready to tone down tensions, work towards stability and establish normal ties between the army and civilian institutions," Soc said. <br><br>The main opposition Socialist People's Party (SNP) also welcomed the deal but claimed the credit for itself. <br><br>"SNP has been telling the Montenegrins of the intentions of the regime to embark on the path of conflict. We believe that our invitation to take the road of understanding, dialogue and compromise...have contributed to this move and the public meeting between the police and the army," SNP vice-president Predrag Bulatovic told Vijesti. <br><br>The checkpoint on the road from the eastern Montenegrin town of Rozaje over mountains to the western Kosovo city of Pec, was set up on Saturday. <br><br>A Montenegrin Interior Ministry official was quoted as saying another one would be established on the road leading to Bozaj, a recently opened border crossing between Montenegro and Albania. <br><br>The Yugoslav army is one of the last federal institutions still functioning in Montenegro, which stepped up its autonomy moves after Belgrade's conflict with NATO over Kosovo last year. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro sees joint checkpoint as positive move``x954230303,78441,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>ODGORICA, Montenegro, March 27 -- The leader of Montenegro today accused the president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, of using the national army to try to force him from power. <br>The Montenegran president, Milo Djukanovic, said in an interview that relations with Yugoslavia were deteriorating. He accused Mr. Milosevic of recruiting a special army battalion that would be used to overthrow Montenegro's government. <br><br>Montenegro is the smaller of the two republics remaining in Yugoslavia, which is dominated by the other republic, Serbia. <br><br>Mr. Djukanovic's government has been cautiously drawing away from the Yugoslav government in Belgrade and is now feeling the pressure as Mr. Milosevic moves to counter that drift. <br><br>Under a tightened trade and economic blockade imposed by Mr. Milosevic's government, Montenegro, a small mountainous territory of only 650,000 people, is facing increased economic difficulties and shortages, officials there say. <br><br>It is also feeling the weight of the military. During the weekend, under pressure from Belgrade, Mr. Djukanovic said, his government agreed to allow the Yugoslav Army to join Montenegro's police at border posts with the separatist Serbian province of Kosovo and with Albania. <br><br>Prompted by the West, Mr. Djukanovic is trying quietly to draw his republic out of the international isolation that it suffers as part of Yugoslavia while avoiding open confrontation. But it has no security or economic guarantees from the West. <br><br>Mr. Djukanovic broke with Belgrade two years ago and has pursued democratic reforms and openness to the West. His refusal to denounce the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia and his willingness to provide refuge to Serbian opposition figures defined his break with Mr. Milosevic permanently. <br><br>At home he faces opposition from the pro-Milosevic Socialist People's Party. The parties will test their strength in June in local elections in two regions of Montenegro, including the capital. <br><br>Mr. Djukanovic described the agreement over border controls as a "gesture of good will." But it was greeted with skepticism by Montenegro's leading daily, Vijesti, in an article that outlined how little say Mr. Djukanovic has in how the military conducts itself in his republic. <br><br>Mr. Djukanovic said he opposed the creation of a special military police unit within the Second Army, which is based in Podgorica and numbers about 1,000 men, Montenegrins led by Serbs loyal to Mr. Milosevic. <br><br>"They are in fact a paramilitary unit and their party association is unanimous," Mr. Djukanovic said. "They are devoted to Mr. Milosevic. Over 50 per cent of them have criminal records. They are not being retained to protect the country, but to overthrow the government." <br><br>Mr. Milosevic is using the army in Montenegro to reassert control over the republic, he said, as he did during the NATO attacks last year when the Yugoslav Army tried to seal Montenegro's borders and impose controls equivalent to martial law. <br><br>"We resisted that, and we managed," Mr. Djukanovic said. "Now it is happening a second time, but we are not in a state of war. This is peacetime. The situation is rather tense, but we are not taking any risks to lay ourselves open to Milosevic, because if we did, we would give him an alibi for a fifth war in the Balkans." <br><br>Mr. Djukanovic's political opponents dismiss his accusations. "He is attacking the army and provoking it," said Pedrag Bulatovic of the Socialist People's Party. <br><br>Jabbing his finger scathingly at a newspaper carrying Mr. Djukanovic's photo, Mr. Bulatovic contended that the Montenegrin president had built up his own police force to confront the army. "This man has 20,000 police, 10,000 more than he should have," Mr. Bulatovic said. "The danger is that this guy uses these people to create a conflict." <br><br>Much of the agitation in Montenegro may be just talk, but many little incidents are nudging the republic toward confrontation. A disagreement between the police and the military in December over the police's plan to build a helicopter hangar at the Podgorica airport led the army to close the airport, forcing the police to abandon the plan. <br><br>In November the Montenegrin government made the German mark legal tender, saying it wanted to protect its population against inflation as the Yugoslav currency plunged. Belgrade reacted by stopping transfers of money and stepping up enforcement of its trade blockade of Montenegro. <br><br>The blockade is already hurting two of Montenegro's key manufacturers, Mr. Djukanovic said, and is causing shortages of food and medicine. <br><br>In the past Montenegro lived largely off its tourist industry thanks to the extraordinary beauty of its Adriatic coastline, but that income has plummeted during 10 years of war in the Balkans. <br><br>Opinion polls indicate mixed feelings about independence. In one recent poll, 45 per cent of those surveyed favored independence, 37 per cent were opposed and the rest undecided. <br><br>Mr. Djukanovic said that he would keep trying to forge a workable relationship with Serbia, but that he might have to lead his country to independence if Mr. Milosevic stayed in power. <br><br>For the moment, the republic's government has postponed a referendum on the issue indefinitely and is ducking around the provocative swipes from Belgrade. <br><br>A recent report by the International Crisis Group, a independent research institute, advocates stronger action from the West to provide more financial support to Montenegro, more evident political support and a commitment from NATO that it will meet any attempt to overthrow the government in Montenegro with a forceful military response. <br><br>Montenegro has received some economic support from the United States, but the republic's prime minister, Filip Vujanovic, said he recognized that security guarantees from NATO or the West were not forthcoming and that Montenegro would have to defend itself. Hence the large police force, he said. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Montenegrin Says Belgrade Is Using Its Army to Oust Him``x954230337,26272,``x``x
``xBRUSSELS, March 28 (Reuters) - International donors are expected to offer over one billion euros ($970 million) in aid to the Balkans which they hope will cement regional cooperation and make the Kosovo conflict the last of its kind. <br>Donors, who begin a two-day meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, will free up cash for projects stretching from Montenegro to Romania and repeat their message that Serbia could also benefit if it ditches President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Many projects aim to improve cross-border infrastructure, such as rail and road transport and electricity networks. <br><br>"All are designed to help countries cooperate together and to integrate them in the European mainstream," Catherine Day, a senior European Commmission official, told a news conference. <br><br>The Regional Funding Conference organised by the World Bank and Commission is the first since the Stability Pact for southeast Europe was set up in the aftermath of NATO's campaign to evict Serb forces from Kosovo last year. <br><br>The heart of the conference is a narrow list of "quick start" projects that need funding to get off the ground, but bigger political questions over the region's future are likely to dominate declarations at the meeting. <br><br>"Declining living standards, refugees, border disputes and security concerns in the region are all conspiring to create a cauldron of instability and potential conflict in Europe," the World Bank said in a preparatory report. <br><br>The report argued that successful reform may only be possible if the countries covered by the Stability Pact -- Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Macedonia and Romania -- were offered "a credible and predictable path to integration with European and global structures, particularly the European Union." <br><br>Walter Cernoia, European Investment Bank Director for Central and Eastern Europe, said the EIB would present a list of infrastructure projects for the coming years. <br><br>QUICK START PROJECTS <br><br>These will include quick start projects -- those which can be started within a year -- totalling 1.1 billion euros; near-term projects to start within 24 months worth 2.2 billion euros; and a further list of medium-term initiatives on which no figure had been put, Cernoia told Reuters. <br><br>The EIB said previously that longer-term rebuilding in the Balkans could cost around nine billion euros. <br><br>In a letter last week to donors, mainly the world's wealthier developed countries, the Commission and World Bank said they still needed to mobilise 400 million euros of the 1.1 billion euros quick-start programme. <br><br>The conference would also be asked to find 104 million euros for a similar 290 million euro quick-start programme for the private sector prepared by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). <br><br>The EBRD said on Monday it hoped donors would also provide 128 million euros for projects to be implemented by 2002. <br><br>Stability Pact coordinator Bodo Hombach will also seek support for programmes in areas like education, media, human rights, justice and home affairs. <br><br>Support for some projects has already started. <br><br>EU candidates Bulgaria and Romania on Monday signed an agreement for a new 190 million euro bridge over the Danube which is expected to get an initial five million euro boost from the conference. <br><br>More sensitively, the donors main website (www.seerecon.org) lists a planned road and port development in Montenegro, which is still formally part of Yugoslavia but which is being rewarded by the West for not bowing to Belgrade. <br><br>($1-1.029 Euro) <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBalkan talks seen unlocking one bln euros aid``x954313593,98973,``x``x
``xThe Times<br><br>FROM CHARLES BREMNER IN PARIS<br><br>FEUDING among French military and political leaders over their country's role in Kosovo was behind the jailing of a gendarme officer on charges of leaking military documents to the press, his lawyer claimed yesterday. <br>William Bourdon, the lawyer for Colonel Jean-Michel Méchain, was denouncing a judge's decision on Monday to hold him in the notorious Santé prison in central Paris on charges that he passed on confidential documents. <br><br>Published last month, these revealed such deep military distaste for Bernard Kouchner, the French United Nations administrator of Kosovo, that they have ignited a row about his leadership - and about the French military's behaviour in the province. <br><br>Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to offer Britain's support to the troubled UN mission when Dr Kouchner arrives for a one-day visit to London tomorrow. <br><br>The squabble has shed light on the hostility among senior officers in the French Kfor contingent towards the flamboyant politician and former humanitarian activist who has been the effective international governor of the Serbian province since last July. It has also embarrassed the Government by reinforcing the already widespread impression that the French Army, under fire for its handling of the conflict at Mitrovica, has pro-Serbian sympathies. <br><br>Dr Kouchner, a national celebrity before serving as Health Minister in the Socialist Government of the early 1990s, has been criticised by American and senior UN officials for his unorthodox ways and for what some see as his failure to impose his authority fast enough in the Serbian province. However, his standing has improved of late with the UN and Nato governments which accept that he has made the best of limited resources and what amounts to a "mission impossible". <br><br>A senior Western diplomat said yesterday: "He's being credited with making the best of a bad job." The New York Times last week attacked the international community for failing to hand over promised resources to help the French UN administrator. "Dr Kouchner began the year with insufficient funds for everything from doctors, teachers and local police to garbage collectors, water and gas workers and road repair crews. For now he is maintaining minimal service," it said. <br><br>The leaked military memos suggest that nowhere has the dynamic 60-year-old doctor as many adversaries as in his homeland. "Quite a few people would like to see him screw up in Kosovo," said one left-wing politician, commenting on Dr Kouchner's emotional, abrasive style. <br><br>The decision not to grant bail to Colonel Méchain for the relatively minor offence was a monstrous breach of normal practice, M Bourdon said. The colonel, who is denying the charges, was "hostage to a complicated settling of accounts, specifically a political-military score-settling", he said. <br><br>The murky case of the colonel became public after a street brawl in Paris last week in which the 46-year-old officer, newly returned from service with the French contingent with the Kfor, was involved in a fight with members of a surveillance team from the military security service. <br><br>The Defence Ministry suspects that the colonel, a legal specialist, leaked the documents as revenge for its refusal to let him take up an offer from Dr Kouchner to be his adviser on organised crime. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFrench colonel's arrest linked to Kouchner row ``x954313610,46346,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia, March 28 (Reuters) - The pro-Western president of Montenegro said on Tuesday Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic had two ways to extend his rule -- by seizing power in Montenegro or becoming president of an independent Serbia. <br>Milo Djukanovic, elected leader of the smaller of Yugoslavia's two remaining republics in 1997, said concern was increasing in Serbia over the future of Milosevic, who is cornered by a U.N. indictment for war crimes in Kosovo. <br><br>"As time passes, nervousness in Belgrade is rising because of growing political uncertainty over the future of the regime, that is of its main actor," Djukanovic told a news conference in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica. <br><br>"That regime...made us accustomed to bloody springs. We in Montenegro have no illusions that he would want Monetenegro to be spared," he said. <br><br>Milosevic's term as president of the two-republic Yugoslav Federation is due to end in the middle of next year. That post can only be held once and he has already served the constitutional maxiumum of two terms as president of Serbia. <br><br>If he loses power, however, he faces possible trial and imprisonment by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague. <br><br>Djukanovic, a former Milosevic ally who is now his most powerful foe, said Milosevic's only hope of extending his rule was to change the Yugoslav or Serb constitution. <br><br>DJUKANOVIC FEARS "COUP" <br><br>He said the first option would involve overthrowing him, something he has accused Milosevic of plotting ever since pro-Milosevic demonstrators in Montenegro tried to block his inauguration in early 1998. <br><br>"The Yugoslav president has two ways of remaining the head of the country: to overthrow the legal and legitimate authorities in Montenegro and bring in people loyal to him, after which he would change the Yugoslav constitution and ensure another mandate for himself, or to go back to the post of Serbian president, this time of an independent Serbia," he said. <br><br>Djukanovic, who has proposed reforms of the federation and threatened a referendum on independence if Milosevic does not respond, said the second option could be positive. <br><br>"In that case, Montenegro -- by developing democracy and a market economy and being integrated in developed European structures -- would be ready to develop the closest and best relations with Serbia," he said. <br><br>Western leaders fear Milosevic might try to destabilise Montenegro if he fears losing power. They have warned the Serb strongman not to interfere, while telling Djukanovic not to proceed with the referendum in order not to provoke him. <br><br>Djukanovic, who has moved towards autonomy step-by-step to Belgrade's dismay, said he had discussed regional stability with Western officials, but that there had been no concrete talk so far of deploying international observers in the republic. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic has ways to extend rule - Djukanovic``x954313632,79543,``x``x
``xBRUSSELS (Reuters) - International donors began meeting on Wednesday to pledge aid to the Balkans on condition countries in the region work to overcome their ethnic tensions. <br>The Regional Funding Conference organized by the World Bank and European Commission is the first since the Stability Pact for southeast Europe was set up after NATO's campaign to evict Serb forces from Kosovo last year and comes five year's after the end of Bosnia-Herzegovina's civil war. <br><br>Opening the two-day meeting, European foreign affairs commissioner Chris Patten repeated the West's message that Serbia -- while included in the Pact -- will not benefit from substantial aid while President Slobodan Milosevic is in power. <br><br>"While Milosevic is still in power the serious money stays in the vault," Patten said, describing the Serb leader as "a brooding presence, locking Yugoslavia into a bleak winter." <br><br>Montenegro's leader Milo Djukanovic said on Tuesday he believed Milosevic was sowing the seeds of a new conflict in the Yugoslav province, which is more pro-Western than Belgrade. <br><br>Patten promised Montenegro and Serbia's opposition movement, which was invited to the conference along with representatives of Stability Pact members Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Romania, the West's full support. <br><br>"Montenegro has taken a different path to Serbia. We are determined to give the Montenegrin people our support," he said. <br><br>PLEDGES TO TOTAL 1.8 BLN EUROS <br><br>Donors are expected to pledge at the meeting to support a "quick start" program of infrastructure and know-how projects to start by next March. <br><br>"We are looking to put together this quick start program, a total of 1.8 billion euros ($1.72 billion)," World Bank President James Wolfensohn told delegates. <br><br>Many projects aim to improve cross-border infrastructure, such as rail and road transport and electricity networks and effectively force the countries to work together. <br><br>The program consists of 1.1 billion euros of infrastructure projects drawn up by the European Investment Bank and a 290 million euro scheme to help the private sector prepared by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. <br><br>The balance is made up of support for Stability Pact initiatives in areas like education, media, human rights, justice and home affairs. <br><br>Officials said, however, the conference was being asked to find only a fraction of the total, which includes money pledged at a separate donors conference on Kosovo held last year. <br><br>The quick start program is also only part of a much bigger plan to support the region over many years. <br><br>Patten said on Wednesday that the European Union's contribution alone, including six billion euros already earmarked for EU candidates Bulgaria and Romania, would be 12 billion euros over six years. EU support for the quick start program would be 530 million euros, he said. <br><br>Wolfensohn said, however, any amount of aid would not help if the countries themselves did not carry out necessary reforms to legal, financial and governance structures. <br><br>($1-1.045 Euro) ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBalkan Donors Meet, Eyeing Quick-Start Aid``x954411820,77806,``x``x
``xTIRANA, March 29 (Reuters) - The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said on Wednesday she did not see Montenegro, Serbia's reluctant partner in the Yugoslav federation, becoming the next Balkan flashpoint. <br>Sadako Ogata, ending a two-week Balkan tour, said the UNHCR was building up emergency facilities in the restive region, but that she was cautiously optimistic the tense situation would not escalate like Kosovo last year. <br><br>Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said on Tuesday he believed Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was sowing the seeds of a new conflict in the Yugoslav republic, which is more pro-Western than Serbia. <br><br>"There are certain tensions in Montenegro, but I do not foresee the same scale of crisis happening there," Ogata told reporters. <br><br>"Population movement is very low and...is a very good indicator to foresee crises," Ogata added. There had been no refugee flow since Montenegro last month re-opened its border with Albania after three years. <br><br>Ogata thanked impoverished Albania for bearing the brunt of last year's refugee crisis when it took in 465,000 Kosovo refugees despite its own economic difficulties. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUNHCR says Montenegro not next Balkan flashpoint``x954411833,41607,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, March 29 (Reuters) - A bitter war of words between hard-line Serbia and its pro-Western sister republic Montenegro escalated on Wednesday when Belgrade urged Serbian-based Montenegrans to stand up to "separatists and traitors." <br>Milovan Coguric, a secretary at the federal defence ministry and a member of Montenegro's pro-Belgrade Serbian People's Party (SNP) opposed to the tiny republic's reformist, pro-Western leaderhip, also said charges against the Yugoslav army constituted "a hostile act." <br><br>He was speaking a day after Montegrin President Milo Djukanovic reiterated accusations that special Yugoslav army units were planning to overthrow him. <br><br>"Coguric called on Montenegrins living in Serbia to freely and decisively stand up against separatists and traitors of all colours," Yugoslav state news agency Tanjug said. <br><br>"Despite attempts at separatism and treachery by Montengran leaders, most Montenegrins have a right frame of mind," it quoted Coguric as saying. <br><br>Hundreds of thousands of native Montenegrins living in Serbia are thought to be loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, himself of Montenegrin origin. <br><br>Many people living in northern Montenegro, bordering Serbia, also have strong pro-Serb sympathies, stoked by the feeling they have suffered from economic reforms introduced by Djukanovic. <br><br>DJUKANOVIC SAYS BELGRADE PLOTTING HIS OUSTER <br><br>In an interview with the New York Times, Djukanovic accused Belgrade of building up a joint army-police battalion in Montenegro to be used as a strike force to overthrow his government. <br><br>"They are in fact a paramilitary unit," Djukanovic was quoted as saying, adding that it numbered around 1,000 people. <br><br>"They are devoted to Mr Milosevic. Over 50 percent of them have criminal records. They are not being retained to protect the country but to overthrow the government." <br><br>Coguric described Djukanovic's allegations as "a hostile act to brand an army police unit a paramilitary formation." <br><br>"That unit, which our best sons are serving in, is a bulwark against separatists and traitors in Montenegro and their mentors in the West who would like to realise their aims," he told Tanjug. <br><br>Djukanovic told a news conference on Tuesday that Milosevic, who is supposed to step down next year as Yugoslav president, could extend his rule by either seizing power in Montenegro or becoming president of a Serbia shorn of its southern neighbour. <br><br>Predrag Bulatovic, deputy head of the SNP, said it was Djukanovic who was trying to stir trouble by boosting his police force to the point where they were a virtual army. <br><br>Djukanovic has been at odds with Milosevic since 1997, when the Montenegran leader started pushing for economic and political reforms which were welcomed by the West, but strongly opposed by an increasingly isolated Belgrade. <br><br>Djukanovic has threatened to hold a referendum on independence from Serbia if Milosevic does not respond to his demands for reform of the federation. However he has failed to find backing for the move in the West, which fears another Balkan war. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBelgrade steps up war of words with Montenegro``x954411846,20348,``x``x
``xBRUSSELS, March 29 (Reuters) - European officials rallied round Montenegro on Wednesday, pledging to help Serbia's pro-Western sister republic withstand the destabilising influence of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br>The European Union's External Relations Commissioner, Chris Patten, said at the start of a two-day meeting of international donors for the Balkans "there are quite clearly attempts by Milosevic to destabilise Montenegro." <br><br>He said the EU was set on providing "adequate assistance" to Montenegro, despite the fact it is barred from receiving funds from international financial organisations such as the World Bank because it is part of Yugoslavia. <br><br>His concerns were echoed by Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero- Waldner, speaking in her capacity as current chairman of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. <br><br>"...We think we have to do something, because there's really great tension and if we don't do something there quickly, there could be a greater conflict," she told a news conference. <br><br>"I had my special representative go to Montenegro a good week ago. I can only say we see many signs that social unrest is being reinforced and that of course a civil war could break out." <br><br>Montenegro's leader Milo Djukanovic said in a newspaper interview on Wednesday he believed Milosevic was sowing the seeds of a new conflict in the tiny Adriatic republic. <br><br>Djukanovic said relations with Yugoslavia were deteriorating and accused Milosevic of recruiting a special army battalion to be used to overthrow his government. <br><br>Montenegro was one of the attendees at the donors conference, at which the international community is seeking to encourage countries in the volatile Balkans region to work to overcome ethnic tensions through the promise of cash. <br><br>Opening the two-day meeting Patten reiterated the West's message that Serbia -- while included in the so-called Stability Pact -- will not benefit from substantial aid while Milosevic is in power. <br><br>"While Milosevic is still in power the serious money stays in the vault," Patten said, describing the Serb leader as "a brooding presence, locking Yugoslavia into a bleak winter." <br><br>"Montenegro has taken a different path to Serbia. We are determined to give the Montenegrin people our support," he said. <br><br>EU leaders, meeting in Lisbon last week, said substantial aid was urgently needed for Montenegro "to ensure the survival of democratic government and to avoid another serious crisis in the region." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xEU, OSCE warn of destabilisation of Montenegro``x954411860,68422,``x``x
``xBy Philippa Fletcher<br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - A Russian-led tribunal sought to turn the tables on the West in Belgrade Wednesday by accusing NATO leaders of war crimes during last year's air strikes.<br><br>The tribunal, made up mainly of Communist sympathizers from the former East bloc, convened in the Yugoslav capital for a hearing on the 78-day bombing, launched over Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's repression of Kosovo's Albanians.<br><br>Its list of accused included President Clinton, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and leaders of Britain, France and Germany.<br> <br>Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, was asked to observe.<br><br>``We had no replies,'' Mikhail Kuznetsov, a Russian lawyer who presided over the tribunal, told the audience in the Sava congress center in Belgrade.<br><br>Opponents of Milosevic in Serbia said the composition and nature of the hearing, at which there was no cross-examination and the verdict was a foregone conclusion, only served to help NATO dismiss awkward questions about the bombing.<br><br>``Anyone who was here during the air strikes knows civilians were killed,'' Sonia Drobac an editor at the Glas Javnosti daily, told independent Belgrade radio B292. ``But this is a farce.''<br><br>Tribunal Lists Charges<br><br>After two days of debates, including witness testimony and speeches from around a dozen jurists, mainly from Russia but also from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Poland and Germany, the tribunal came out with its verdict Wednesday afternoon.<br><br>It said the accused had launched the bombing without declaring war and with no legal basis, and alleged it had deliberately targeted civilians, including children.<br><br>Listing a string of United Nations conventions it said NATO had violated, it demanded a criminal investigation of the accused and added that its conclusions would be sent to the United Nations and the Hague tribunal.<br><br>It also called for the disbanding of NATO, the dismissal of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and asked the countries involved to put their military and political leaders on trial.<br><br>The jurists were not optimistic their demands would be met.<br><br>``Our tribunal may be small but it represents heartfelt support for the people of Yugoslavia,'' Kuznetsov said.<br><br>NATO insisted throughout the air strikes that it was aiming only at military targets and took all possible precautions to avoid civilian casualties.<br><br>When the Washington-based Human Rights Watch said last month that 500 civilians were killed by the air strikes, NATO said its report constituted legitimate criticism but that its actions could not be compared with Serb violence in the province.<br><br>Some of the Belgrade tribunal's charges echo those leveled by the West against Milosevic, who was indicted by the Hague tribunal last May for alleged war crimes in Kosovo along with four close aides. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBelgrade War Crimes Tribunal Accuses the West``x954411874,14257,``x``x
``xBy DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press Writer <br><br>PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - NATO peacekeepers crossed into the no man's land just outside Kosovo's boundary for the first time Wednesday - a significant move aimed at checking reports of Yugoslav military activity in the 31/2-mile zone.<br><br>About two dozen peacekeepers moved into the no man's land about 12 miles east of Pristina to search for evidence of a tank and an armored personnel sighted Saturday. The fact-finding mission, led by British Brig. Richard Shirreff, came after NATO's governing body approved the move.<br><br>Merely stepping into the zone is a significant step for NATO, which has been patrolling Kosovo's administrative boundary with Serbia proper with ever-increasing intensity in recent weeks. Western governments are worried that cross-border tensions will suck peacekeepers into another conflict.<br><br> <br>Both Kosovo and the region right across the border are technically part of Serbia, the larger member of the Yugoslav federation led by Slobodan Milosevic. But Kosovo, which has a heavily ethnic Albanian population, has been under international control since last year's conflict between ethnic Albanians and Milosevic's Serb forces led to the NATO bombing.<br><br>The presence of Yugoslav military forces in the safety zone would break the agreement that ended NATO's 78-day bombing campaign in Yugoslavia last year.<br><br>There have been consistent reports of incursions into the zone where Kosovo and Serbia proper meet. Usually it was unclear whether those operating in the area were local police, which are permitted.<br><br>Earlier sightings of activity, however, did not involve tanks. The presence of even one would mark an escalation of tensions in an already hot region.<br><br>With a substantial contingent of peacekeepers looking on Wednesday, Shirreff's group first traveled to a Serbian police checkpoint, where they met a Serb delegation that accompanied them. The peacekeepers took photographs and looked for indications that undergrowth had been disturbed by tank tracks. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO Moves Into Kosovo Boundary Zone``x954411894,56032,``x``x
``x<br>By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer <br><br>WASHINGTON (AP) - Averting a showdown with President Clinton, the House refused today to require him to withdraw U.S. peacekeepers from Kosovo unless European countries deliver more of the aid they have promised for the Yugoslav province.<br><br>By a 219-200 vote, lawmakers rejected a bipartisan effort to use the threat of withdrawal to pressure the Europeans to deliver millions of dollars more for economic, humanitarian and policing assistance. Clinton would have had to begin withdrawing troops in June.<br><br>The vote came a year after the 78-day air war against Yugoslavia began, during which the U.S. flew about three-fourths of the bombing missions. There are 37,000 NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo, including 5,300 Americans.<br><br> <br>``The least they can do after we flew all those sorties ... is to simply keep their word'' and contribute more of what they promised, said Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio.<br><br>Opponents said the provision would have ended up giving Europeans the power to make decisions on U.S. troop deployments - and would have been rejected anyway by Clinton.<br><br>Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said Kosovo is a ``permanent dilemma'' for U.S. policy-makers. Speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Talbott said the administration is seeking ``the right mixture of priorities and values.''<br><br>If the United States came out flatly for independence, that could destroy what has been accomplished in the province, which remains part of Yugoslavia, he said. And the administration could lose the support it has among European allies.<br><br>Yet, Talbott said, if the United States appeared to be against independence and for putting Kosovo back in Yugoslavia, ``we would be wrong.''<br><br>Bombing of Serbia last year forced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw Serbian forces and special police from Kosovo, which is dominated by ethnic Albanians.<br><br>The proposal to threaten withdrawal was offered to a wide-ranging, $13 billion measure containing $2.1 billion for the costs of U.S. troops in Kosovo.<br><br>Had the restriction become law, the $2.1 billion would have been cut in half on June 2 if Clinton had not certified that the European contributions had been delivered. The remaining money could have only been used to withdraw the troops.<br><br>The bill also includes $1.7 billion to help Colombia's hard-pressed government battle drug traffickers and the leftist rebels who protect them. In several votes Wednesday, the House refused to cut those funds.<br><br>As the House worked on the spending bill, which would provide extra funds for this year, the Senate Budget Committee approved a $1.83 trillion budget for 2001 on a party-line 12-10 vote.<br><br>That Republican-written measure resembles a budget the House approved last week for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. It would cut taxes by at least $150 billion through 2005 and hold spending for many domestic programs next year to $290 billion, or 2.6 percent more than this year.<br><br>The Senate is expected to vote on the budget next week, and congressional leaders hope for final approval of a compromise version of the measure by mid-April. The fiscal plan does not need Clinton's signature and sets overall tax and spending targets, leaving details for later legislation.<br><br>House supporters of the Colombia aid package see it as a major step toward curbing drug supplies in the United States. U.S. officials say 90 percent of the cocaine and 65 percent of the heroin used in the United States comes from Colombian-grown coca.<br><br>On Wednesday, the House rejected, 239-186, an effort by Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., to delay, and perhaps eventually kill, $522 million of the Colombia aid. The roll call came after House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., who rarely joins floor debate, took to the well of the chamber to ask colleagues for the full amount of money.<br><br>Hastert said the aid ``is about our children, and whether we want our children to grow up in a society free from the scourge of drugs.''<br><br>Opponents said the package would risk involving the United States in what has been a long-running, bloody civil war that could continue for years. They also said U.S. resources should be directed more toward preventing drug use at home.<br><br>Clinton had requested $1.3 billion for Colombia, on top of $300 million already in the pipeline, but supported the House proposal.<br><br>The money is for training and equipping Colombian troops and police - including 63 helicopters - along with intelligence operations, incentives for farmers to grow other crops, and assisting neighbors Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.<br><br>As expected, the House added $4 billion to the overall bill for the Pentagon, including funds for upgrading helicopters and AWACS radar warning planes, equipment repair, and military housing and health care. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xHouse Averts Showdown on Kosovo``x954487757,13848,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, March 30 (Reuters) - Spring sowing in Serbia has been completed on some 200,000 hectares of a total planned area of around 2.3 million ha, despite some unstable weather spells, the state news agency reported on Thursday. <br>Tanjug quoted Serbian Agriculture Minister Jovan Babovic as saying that around 188,000 tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser have been secured for wheat fertilising which is in progress. <br><br>Sugar beet, planned on 70,000 ha, has been sown on some 25,000 ha so far, while contracts with producers have been secured for 57,000 ha. <br><br>Babovic said 86 percent of the planned 200,000 ha under sunflower have already been agreed. <br><br>Producers have signed contracts for 186,000 ha of soybeans, showing higher interest in the crop, Babovic said, adding it was initially planned on 110,000 ha. <br><br>The government has delivered 18.5 million litres of diesel fuel for agricultural works so far, or 65 percent of total needs, Babovic said. <br><br>Renewal and reconstruction of Azotara of Pancevo and Zorka of Sabac facilities will ensure that all domestic plants resume production of mineral fertilisers this year, he said. <br><br>Yugoslavia plans to produce some 700,000 tonnes of mineral fertilisers in 2000, of which 445,000 tonnes for spring sowing. <br><br>The goal is to employ all installed capacities in mineral fertiliser plants in the coming period, which amount to 1.32 million tonnes per year, Babovic said. <br><br>Domestic needs for mineral fertiliser are 900,000 tonnes while remaining quantities would be for export, he added. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbia spring sowing completed on 200,000 ha``x954487782,18780,``x``x
``x<br>U.S. Sending 125 Extra Reconnaissance Troops to Troubled Serb Province; Tanks, Artillery to Macedonia <br><br>W A S H I N G T O N, March 30 —The United States said today it was sending extra reconnaissance troops to Kosovo and tanks to Macedonia after rising tensions following the activity of ethnic Albanian guerrillas in southern Serbia.<br> Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said 125 special U.S. reconnaissance troops were being sent from Germany to help patrol the border between Kosovo and the Presevo valley in Serbia, where NATO commanders fear a possible resurgence of fighting between Albanians and Serbs.<br> He also said 14 tanks and six artillery pieces were being sent to a U.S. armored company in Skopje, Macedonia, partly to serve as a deterrent along the border with Serbia.<br> The reconnaissance troops will be added to a U.S. peacekeeping contingent of about 5,900 troops now in Kosovo, all assigned to the American sector of that troubled southern Serbian province.<br> Bacon said the order to transfer the troops and heavy armor was signed by Defense Secretary William Cohen on Wednesday night.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMore Troops to Kosovo``x954487804,68294,``x``x
``x<br>The Independent<br><br>By Christian Jennings in Pristina <br><br>31 March 2000 <br><br>Germany was sharply criticised by the United Nations refugee agency yesterday for "dumping" murderers and other criminals on Kosovo as part of a drive to repatriate 170,000 refugees to their devastated homeland. <br><br>Captain Wolfgang Wagner, of the German border police, based in Pristina, said two Albanian Airlines flights arrived from Germany on Wednesday with 160 deportees aboard. "Of this number, 50 had criminal backgrounds," he said. "They were all fingerprinted on arrival and then released. The whole criminal code was well represented on these flights." <br><br>Officials are particularly worried about the prospect of thousands of hardened criminals being added to Kosovo's explosive mix. <br><br>Some Albanians who fled the province in the past decade have been linked to organised crime syndicates operating across Europe. Kosovo Albanian mafias are believed to be active in the heroin trade, weapons smuggling and prostitution rackets. <br><br>German public opinion has been outraged by crimes committed by refugees and others from Kosovo and other Balkan provinces, but the country has long been the most generous in Western Europe in giving a safe haven to those fleeing civil war and economic privation. Germany has repeatedly demanded that its EU partners agree to a formal system of "burden-sharing", with quotas of asylum-seekers allocated to each country. But these entreaties have fallen largely on deaf ears, with the principal opposition to the Germans' plan coming from Britain. <br><br>Germany accepted by far the largest number of the exodus of refugees during the Bosnian conflict. <br><br>In Pristina yesterday, Peter Kessler, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said: "We're concerned at the deportation of these criminals without adequate police and judicial structures in place. We're also concerned ... when people are collected in the dead of night like this and we're concerned about the absorption capacity of Kosovo." <br><br>Germany says all convicted criminals from Kosovo willbe sent home as soon asthey have served their sentences. But it does not rule out the possibility that convicts might find their jail terms shortened, ostensibly for good behaviour, and flown back to Pristina. <br><br>Capt Wagner said some 300 convicts had arrived since last month, with 500 deportees without criminal records. Wednesday's returnees had been arrested in Germany between 2am and 8am that morning, flown to Kosovo, and then taken straight from the airport to the addresses of any available relatives in the province. <br><br>International organisations trying to keep the peace in Kosovo are perturbed. "These are exactly what this province doesn't need at the moment," said one European Nato official. "There's no workable justice system, no proper judges, a huge crime rate, and now they're dumping murderers on us." But Germany says it is not her problem. "Kosovo is not a German protectorate," said an Interior Ministry spokesman in Berlin. "We take the deportees back to Pristina. The rest is up to the local authorities." <br><br>These agencies are likely to be swamped because of inadequate information from Germany. <br><br>"We have no access even to the German criminal database," said First Sergeant Bernard Lux, of the the German border police in Pristina. "So we can't tell exactly what they have done." <br><br>The policy to repatriate Albanian refugees to Kosovo was agreed by European governments at a conference in the Finnish town of Taampere last October. Expelling large numbers of Kosovo Albanians from Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany, and an estimated 100,000 from Switzerland, was deemed a necessary measure as part of a crackdown on organised crime and a means of returning life in Kosovo to normal. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGermany deports 'murderers' back home to Kosovo ``x954487821,119,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>By Andrew Buncombe in Rahovec, Kosovo <br><br><br>1 April 2000 <br><br>The wine was red and, though it was chilled, as Qamil Cena poured from the clear, unlabelled bottle its flavour leapt from the glass. <br><br>"This one is from 1992. It is made from the merlot grape," said Mr Cena. "It is one of our best wines." <br><br>The year 1992 may have been a good vintage for the wine-makers of southern Kosovo, but it was also the one in which Mr Cena, a trained agriculturist, was forced out of his job. Like many Kosovo Albanians, Mr Cena, 36, a manager with the state-owned Orvin wine company, struggled to make ends meet after the authorities filled senior positions with Serbs. <br><br>He returned to work last summer – seven years after the war started. Now, nine months on, Mr Cena and thousands of other Kosovo Albanians have been reinstated. In such circumstances the renamed winery is preparing to make what may be its most memorable vintage yet. <br><br>But asked whether there are plans to have any special name for the wine, Mr Cena said: "First we have to produce the grapes and then we can think about it. We don't plan to have any special name for the wine but that could come later." <br><br>The wine industry of southern Kosovo has always been important but the Orvin wines were considered the best. Before the war, 80 per cent of the wine they produced – including cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay and riesling – was exported. <br><br>But that was then. Although the Albanian workers regained control of the winery, renaming it the less-than-roundedAgricultural and Industrial Enterprise of Rahovec (NBI Rahoveci), the future is full of challenges. <br><br>Last year the entire crop was lost during one of the coldest winters in living memory and so people were not able to work the vines. They expect only 30 to 40 per cent of their vineyards – 3,500 hectares – to produce grapes for this year's pressing. <br><br>There is also a shortage of necessary materials. The 600 workers are short of fertiliser and herbicide. With the exception of the wine labels, which they produce themselves, everything else – the bottles, the corks, the barrels of oak in which the wine is aged for a minimum of two years – must be imported. To add to their difficulties, a small area of the vineyards still cannot be entered because landmines left by the Serb forces remain. <br><br>But the enterprise – its wage bill now being paid by the United Nations, the new owner of former state-owned firms – cannot afford to fail. While 600 people are employed directly by the plant, up to 30,000 people are involved in the region's wine industry. <br><br>Many of these are employed on an ad hoc basis – helping with the harvest in September and October. But others own the vineyards that make up two-thirds of the total acreage providing grapes for the plant. <br><br>Among these owners are the brothers Bahtiar and Gazmend Tara, who this spring are cutting back the dead wood on their three hectares of vines. Their family of 11 depends on the grapes and other produce they can grow. <br><br>"We don't really hope for much of a harvest," saidBahtiar, his fingers furiously working a pair of secateurs. "Everything was frozen this winter so we don't expect great results. We will have to wait until next year." <br><br>The Rahovec workers believe the future lies in restoring the export agreements that Orvin had with a number of European countries, particularly with Germany. <br><br>In the meantime, for the workers at the plant, spring is a busy time of year and they intend to go on doing what they have done for many years – growing grapes, making wine. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo vineyards yield first taste of 'freedom vintage' ``x954581204,85372,``x``x
``xBy Fredrik Dahl<br><br>BANJA LUKA, Bosnia (Reuters) - Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic no longer has any influence on the party he founded a decade ago, according to Vice President Mirko Sarovic of Bosnia's Serb republic.<br><br>Sarovic, a leading member of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) set up by Karadzic in 1990, said in an interview that he had not seen the former Bosnian Serb leader for three years and did not know where he was.<br><br>``I think very, very few people know his whereabouts,'' Sarovic told Reuters Friday.<br> <br>Sarovic, speaking in the de facto Bosnian Serb capital Banja Luka, said there had recently been ``certain information circulating'' that Karadzic was in neighboring Yugoslavia.<br><br>Post-war Bosnia comprises two autonomous entities -- the Serb republic and the Muslim-Croat federation, each with their own governments and parliaments.<br><br>Karadzic has twice been indicted by the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes during the 1992-1995 Bosnian conflict, including the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of Muslim men in Srebrenica.<br><br>He and his former military commander Ratko Mladic remain at large more than four years after the war ended. Other reports have suggested he is hiding in eastern Bosnia, still politically controlled by Bosnian Serb hard-liners.<br><br>Observers Disagree About Karadzic<br><br>Political analyst James Lyon at the International Crisis Group think tank told Reuters this week he believed Karadzic remained influential and that many Bosnian Serbs regarded him as a folk hero.<br><br>But Sarovic, predicting that the SDS would do well in April 8 local elections, insisted the party had changed and now favored cooperation with the international community.<br><br>``Today we are working on building up quite a different structure of the party which is not headed by Radovan Karadzic any more, nor does he in any other way affect its way or its leaders.<br><br>``We want to build up a party which is open and which does not cause fear in anybody,'' he said. ``We are willing to fight to build up a completely new legitimacy of the party and a new image.''<br><br>Turning to the situation in Serbia, Sarovic said his party did not support Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, saying he had given up both Sarajevo and the northern port of Brcko during negotiations on the 1995 Dayton peace treaty for Bosnia.<br><br>But Sarovic also suggested that Milosevic was unlikely to lose power anytime soon, despite international isolation.<br><br>He described Milosevic's position as quite stable, adding that he was playing with the West. ``He is a great master in this kind of situation,'' Sarovic said.<br><br>``Any forecast that Milosevic will fall in a month, two or three is completely meaningless and can only be stated by people who do now know the situation,'' he said.<br><br>Sarovic also said it had been a political mistake to indict Milosevic for war crimes in Kosovo, saying he was now cornered.<br><br>``If he gives up power he knows he will be put on the first plane to (ICTY headquarters in) The Hague,'' he said. ``He is able to control power much longer than anybody in the West thinks.'' <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb Leader Says Karadzic Not Influential``x954581226,7104,``x``x
``xPARIS (AP) - A French officer in the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo was shot to death by a fellow French soldier, NATO peacekeepers said Friday. It was not immediately clear if the shooting was an accident.<br><br>The 29-year-old French lieutenant, whose name was not immediately released, was shot Thursday night in the ethnically divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica by a French soldier who had recently arrived in Kosovo, Lt. Fabrice Turco said.<br><br>The army spokesman said the attack did not appear to be linked to military affairs, although the reasons behind it were still unclear.<br><br>The soldier accused in the shooting had enlisted two years ago and served in previous missions abroad, said Lt. Col. Charles de Kersabiec, an army spokesman. The soldier, whose name was not released, was sent back to France for psychological reasons, he said.<br><br>The two men were talking privately when people nearby heard gunshots and rushed over, de Kersabiec said. The soldier immediately claimed responsibility.<br><br>French defense authorities in Kosovo have opened an inquiry into the shooting. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFrench NATO Officer Shot in Kosovo``x954581248,79155,``x``x
``xThe FT<br><br>3 Apr 2000 04:38GMT<br> <br>By Andrew Gray <br><br>GRACANICA, Yugoslavia, April 2 (Reuters) - International efforts to foster cooperation between Kosovo's ethnic groups got a boost on Sunday with a decision by Serb leaders to end a six-month boycott of the province's main postwar institutions. <br><br>Members of Kosovo's Serb National Council, meeting at a 14th century monastery complex south of the capital city Pristina, agreed to send representatives to two multi-ethnic bodies set up by the United Nations administration in charge of the territory. <br><br>We are ready to take our share of responsibility to participate in the political process, said Father Sava Janjic, an Orthodox priest who acts as the spokesman for the council. <br><br>The United Nations hailed the move, although it was hedged by several caveats. The representatives will only be observers and their participation will be reviewed after three months, by which time the Serbs want to see progress on issues of concern to them. <br><br>Another shadow over the decision was its rejection by leaders in the flashpoint city of Mitrovica, home to the largest remaining urban Serb population in Kosovo. They said they would take no part in the U.N.-sponsored bodies. <br><br>We hoped that they would join us in our common efforts because we think that unity is very much important in these days of suffering, Janjic said. <br><br>SERBS TARGETED IN WAVE OF ATTACKS <br><br>Kosovo's Serbs have been the targets of widespread intimidation and attacks by revenge-seeking members of the ethnic Albanian majority since the United Nations and NATO took over responsibility for the province last June. <br><br>Serbs say more than 200,000 members of their community have fled Kosovo in fear of their lives -- both during and after NATO's bombing campaign to end repression of Albanians by driving out Serb and Yugoslav security forces. <br><br>The Serbs quit the multi-ethnic bodies last September in protest at the violence and what they saw as an indulgent attitude towards Albanians by international authorities. <br><br>Bernard Kouchner, the former French cabinet minister running the U.N. administration, welcomed their decision to return. <br><br>Now the real work can start on setting up the administration of Kosovo, he said. This decision gives us a real possibility of building a united and tolerant society. <br><br>Janjic said the council was encouraged by statements from the United Nations and Western states about improving the conditions of Kosovo Serbs, many of whom are confined to enclaves heavily guarded by troops from the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force. <br><br>LEADERS WANT PROGRESS WITHIN MONTHS <br><br>Serb leaders would need to see progress on issues such as security and the return of Serbs who have fled to stay in the multi-ethnic institutions longer than three months, he said. <br><br>I am afraid, if there are absolutely no results after the three-month period, we would not be able to continue our participation within the interim administration, he said. <br><br>Under the decision, the Serbs will send Rada Trajkovic, a doctor and politician, as an observer to meetings of Kosovo's Interim Administrative Council, the highest-level body involving local people in the temporary administration. <br><br>The Serbs said they would also send three representatives to Kosovo's Transitional Council, a sort of mini-parliament set up by the U.N. to reflect the spectrum of Kosovo society, and leave another seat free for a representative from Mitrovica. <br><br>But Oliver Ivanovic, the Serb leader in the city which has been the scene of a string of violent clashes involving peacekeepers, Serbs and Albanians over the past few months, made clear he saw no reason to take part in the administration. <br><br>That would be a catastrophic move at this moment, he said. By joining this body, the Serb issue would be forgotten. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbs to end Kosovo boycott, with reservations``x954751553,54397,``x``x
``xThe Washington Post <br> <br>By R. Jeffrey Smith<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Monday, April 3, 2000; Page A08 <br><br>PRISTINA, Yugoslavia – Confronted by chaos, confusion, frustration and grief every day in postwar Kosovo, ethnic Albanian residents can walk to a news stand and find an easy way to make sense of it all. <br><br><br>Through the pages of a paper called Bota Sot, readers can enter a philosophically tidy, hate-filled world. It is a place where every Serb is born a demon, the concept of ethnic tolerance is a sure path to renewed repression by Belgrade, and Kosovo's foreign overseers are conspiring against all ethnic Albanians.<br><br><br>All Serbs "who are living today in Kosovo are criminals," the newspaper wrote last month. "Retaliation is a natural instinct," it said in January. Foreigners running the province are operating "in solidarity and open cooperation with the Serbian criminals," it asserted, with NATO peacekeepers even going so far as to stage attacks on Serbs so that the blame will be directed at innocent ethnic Albanians.<br><br><br>In the more than nine months since the United Nations took control of Kosovo, no other source of news has vexed Kosovo's international overseers as much as Bota Sot, Western officials here say. Daan Everts, who heads the local office of the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, has repeatedly denounced the newspaper for what he has described as its "vitriol and bile" and its "outright lies and slander" – words Western officials use more typically to describe the official media of Serb-led Yugoslavia.<br><br><br>But the newspaper, printed in Germany and Macedonia under the direction of a longtime Albanian nationalist, has proved immune to the criticism. Officials say that while the paper is read by only 15,000 of Kosovo's estimated 1.5 million residents, its inflammatory language is helping to undermine any hope of coexistence between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.<br><br><br>Wanting to encourage free speech in Kosovo, Western officials have been unable to find easy solutions to the issues raised by Bota Sot's invective. In February, largely because of Bota Sot, the OSCE and the United Nations imposed a new regulation banning the spread of "hatred, discord, or intolerance" whenever it seems likely to disturb public order. Violators can be fined and sent to jail for up to five years, but no one has been charged under the new statute, and Bota Sot has led the Kosovo Association of Journalists in a chorus of protest against the regulation.<br><br><br>Everts has been reluctant to take the extreme step of blocking distribution of Bota Sot, aides say, partly out of concern that to do so would smack of censorship and invite comparison with the recent government closures of independent media outlets in Yugoslavia. In the past 2½ months, Belgrade has shut down at least 10 independent television and radio stations and threatened or fined 20 others that diverged from the state-approved point of view.<br><br><br>Part of the West's dilemma in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia, is that Bota Sot is not the sole offender. Other ethnic Albanian news outlets sometimes present distorted accounts that rarely attribute provocative claims or seek a reply from those who are aggrieved. If Bota Sot is closed, where would the line be drawn?<br><br><br>Bota Sot, which means the World Today, was created in 1995 as "a paper where everyone could say what they want," editor-in-chief Teki Dervishi said. Asked if the newspaper has promoted hatred, he answered indirectly. "Hatred is a very subjective category. . . . Hatred was not created by an article, but by the historical experience of Serbian-Albanian relations."<br><br><br>There's little question that Dervishi's own experience with Serbs has been grim. In 1963, when he was 13, he was arrested by Serbian police for posting Albanian flags throughout the southern Kosovo city of Djakovica. He was sent to a notorious camp known as Goli-Otok on an otherwise uninhabited island in the Adriatic Sea that he describes as being "like Auschwitz."<br><br><br>Dervishi spent 3½ years there, he said, including eight months in solitary confinement, where he met only with an interrogator determined to pry loose the name of the adult who told him to put up the flags. "But that person did not exist," Dervishi said.<br><br><br>After his release, he bounced around several newspapers in Macedonia and Kosovo, serving as a theater critic and columnist. But editors found his views too radical. The editors "were for the democratization of Serbia to solve the problem of Kosovo," he says, dismissing the idea as absurd. "There has never been a ruler of Serbia that is democratic, and no Serbian intellectual ever said . . . good things about Albanians."<br><br><br>The irony of this blanket stereotype – a mirror image of what radical Serbs propound about ethnic Albanians – is lost on Dervishi, who adds that he does not trust West Europeans because historically "they are always on the Serbian side." He claims further that "French propaganda" is behind the idea that ethnic Albanians are forcing Serbs out of Kosovo, while numerous investigations conducted by U.N. police refute that assertion.<br><br><br>Dervishi persuaded Xhevdet Mazreka, a Kosovo travel agency owner who moved to Zurich in 1986, to put up the money for his newspaper, which now claims a staff of 20 in Pristina, the provincial capital, as well as correspondents in most Kosovo municipalities. In addition to its readers in Kosovo, the paper claims a daily circulation of 30,000 expatriates in Europe and the United States, giving it a large profile among a group of people that traditionally has been more radical than Kosovo's resident population.<br><br><br>Serbs are typically described as shkije in Bota Sot, a rude designation. But other deprecating adjectives – barbarous, brutal, blood-sucking – are also piled on. The paper has alleged, without substantiation, that 12-year-old Serbs are trained to plant land mines; that Serbs in Kosovska Mitrovica have castrated captive ethnic Albanians; and that the crash of a World Food Program plane in November was caused by Serbian artillery.<br><br><br>The paper consistently takes positions that many U.N. and OSCE officials say are racist. "Serbian children were born killers and as such will remain for all their lives," claimed one of the Bota Sot editorials that provoked outrage among foreigners here.<br><br><br>A series of OSCE reports on other ethnic Albanian newspapers notes that they indulge in such slurs less frequently, but often do "not bother to check rumors and dubious information or carry responses" from those who have been accused. The reality in Kosovo "is terrible enough," said one recent report, "but the press has done much . . . to inflame passions."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``x'Racist' Newspaper Riles U.N. In Kosovo``x954751583,49807,``x``x
``xThe Sunday Times<br><br>John Goetz, Berlin<br>and Tom Walker <br><br><br>A REPORT purporting to show that Belgrade planned the systematic ethnic cleansing of Kosovo's entire Albanian population was faked, a German general has claimed. <br>The plan, known as Operation Horseshoe, was revealed by Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, on April 6 last year, almost two weeks after Nato started bombing Serbia. German public opinion about the Luftwaffe's participation in the airstrikes was divided at the time. <br><br>Horseshoe - or "Potkova", as the Germans said it was known in Belgrade - became a staple of Nato briefings. It was presented as proof that President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia had long planned the expulsion of Albanians. James Rubin, the American state department spokesman, cited it only last week to justify Nato's bombardment. <br><br>However, Heinz Loquai, a retired brigadier general, has claimed in a new book on the war that the plan was fabricated from run-of-the-mill Bulgarian intelligence reports. <br><br>Loquai, who now works for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), has accused Rudolf Scharping, the German defence minister, of obscuring the origins of Operation Horseshoe. <br><br>"The facts to support its existence are at best terribly meagre," he told The Sunday Times. "I have come to the conclusion that no such operation ever existed. The criticism of the war, which had grown into a fire that was almost out of control, was completely extinguished by Operation Horseshoe." <br><br>Scharping reported in his wartime diary that he had received the intelligence report on Horseshoe from Fischer. But according to Die Woche, the German news weekly, the report was a general analysis by a Bulgarian intelligence agency of Serbian behaviour in the war. <br><br>Loquai has claimed that the German defence ministry turned a vague report from Sofia into a "plan", and even coined the name Horseshoe. Die Woche has reported that maps broadcast around the world as proof of Nato's information were drawn up at the German defence headquarters in Hardthöhe. <br><br>The Bulgarian report concluded that the goal of the Serbian military was to destroy the Kosovo Liberation Army, and not to expel the entire Albanian population, as was later argued by Scharping and the Nato leadership. Loquai also pointed to a fundamental flaw in the German account: it named the operation Potkova, which is the Croatian word for horseshoe. The Serbian for horseshoe is Potkovica. "A state prosecutor would never think of going to trial with the amount of evidence available to the German defence ministry," said Loquai. <br><br>Nato sources rejected Loquai's claims, but admitted it was impossible to prove the origins of the Horseshoe story. "There's never any absolute certainty about these things," said one source. "But the idea that there was nothing pre-arranged is counter-intuitive. <br><br>"Look at the speed with which the Serbs moved. It was systematic. Until we get into Belgrade and start tearing the files apart, we will never be certain - and that's never going to happen." <br><br>In Belgrade, government sources said several Yugoslav army officers had dismissed Operation Horseshoe as part of Nato's propaganda war. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbian ethnic cleansing scare was a fake, says general ``x954751607,90029,``x``x
``xBy The Associated Press, <br><br>RADOVAN KARADZIC: Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has been indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity and violating the customs of war during the Bosnian conflict.<br><br>In 1995, he was also charged with genocide for masterminding the slaughter of more than 6,000 Muslims in the U.N.-protected Srebrenica enclave in northeastern Bosnia.<br><br>During the 1992-95 war, Karadzic served as the first Bosnian Serb president. He was replaced by his deputy, Biljana Plavsic, in 1996 and was last seen in public that September.<br> <br>He fled his stronghold village of Pale, east of Sarajevo, and is believed to be hiding somewhere in Bosnia, in the French-controlled southeastern zone.<br><br>NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia have been reluctant to go after him, because he is reportedly heavily protected by armed personal security guards. Belgrade sources close to Karadzic say he has lost weight.<br><br>Before the war, Karadzic was a psychiatrist in Sarajevo.<br><br>If arrested, he could implicate Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who is widely blamed for instigating the Croatian and Bosnian wars.<br><br><br><br>RATKO MLADIC: Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic has also been indicted by the U.N. tribunal for crimes against humanity, violating the customs of war and genocide during the Bosnian war.<br><br>In 1991 he led Yugoslav troops in Knin, Croatia and one year later, assumed command of the forces of the Yugoslav army's 2nd military district, which effectively became the Bosnian Serb army.<br><br>Mladic led the Bosnian Serb military for the duration of the war, under Karadzic, with whom he shares an indictment for genocide linked to the massacre at Srebrenica.<br><br>He was ousted from his post in December 1996, and remains at large. Mladic has frequently been seen in Serbia, most recently last Tuesday, when he showed up - flanked by eight bodyguards - at a soccer match between Yugoslavia and China.<br><br>It is widely believed that Mladic lives in Belgrade's Dedinje district, where Milosevic also has his home. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMost Wanted UN War Crimes Suspects``x954828438,14980,``x``x
``xBy Dragan Stankovic<br><br>NIS, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - A defense lawyer's request for more time prompted a Serbian court Monday to postpone a sensitive trial of two ethnic Albanians on charges linked to an alleged massacre of Serbs in Kosovo in 1998.<br><br>The trial, based on accusations which Belgrade has said proved its crackdown in the province was justified, is now due to open Thursday in the southern city of Nis.<br><br>The defendants, Luan Mazreku and Bekim Mazreku, are among a total of 20 people alleged to have taken part in the kidnapping, torture and killing of Serbs in the village of Klecka, southwest of Kosovo's capital Pristina. <br> <br>Luan Mazreku's new attorney, Boro Nikolic, said Monday he needed more time to prepare the defense as he had only taken on the case Sunday.<br><br>In 1998, Serbian police said they found a brick-made furnace where bodies were allegedly burned with quicklime after they captured the village from separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas several months into the conflict.<br><br>Police took reporters to the scene shortly after the capture, in August, and stood by while Bekim Mazreku confessed he took part in a firing squad executing 10 people he said he had thought were Serbs.<br><br>A Kosovo Albanian human rights group called for an international investigation, saying there was no proof. A Finnish team of forensic investigators visited the site in late 1998. Their findings have not been made public.<br><br>Belgrade called on the international community to condemn the incident and have ever since complained that it, and another two cases of alleged mass murder of Serbs, were not treated with the same gravity as alleged killings of Albanians by police.<br><br>``Bekim Will Tell The Truth''<br><br>``Bekim told me he would defend himself by telling the truth,'' Bekim Mazreku's lawyer, Cedomir Nikolic, told Reuters, adding the defense would deny the prosecution on all accounts. ''Bekim is going to deny he committed the crimes.''<br><br>Monday's trial postponement was the second since mid-March, when the court said it had had to delay the trial after the two accused had given conflicting statements and had to be given separate defense lawyers.<br><br>A Belgrade lawyer monitoring the case said Bekim Mazreku and his namesake -- the two are apparently not closely related -- were not charged with actual execution, but with crimes against a Serb boy and girl among the Klecka group.<br><br>They are also charged with killing two compatriots in a different incident and attacks on Serbian police.<br><br>``The charge sheet says the defendants, both born in 1978, killed two ethnic Albanians, raped and tortured a Serb girl age between 12 and 15 and cut off an ear of an eight-year-old Serb boy,'' said the lawyer, who declined to be named.<br><br>The lawyer said the indictment did not mention Bekim's confession, but added that all evidence and statements would be heard in the trial. The lawyer said the defendants could change statements given in police custody.<br><br>In previous trials of Kosovo Albanians, the accused have rejected previous confessions, saying the had been given under duress.<br><br>If found guilty on all counts, the two defendants would face up to 20 years in jail.<br><br>Kosovo Albanians and the international community have accused Serbian forces of massacres and ethnic cleansing of the province's Albanian majority, especially during NATO bombings that forced Belgrade to let international peacekeepers in.<br><br>Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four of his closest allies were indicted last May by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for atrocities their forces committed in the province. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbia Delays Sensitive Kosovo Albanian Trial``x954828459,36910,``x``x
``xThe Washington Post <br><br>By Charles Trueheart<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Tuesday, April 4, 2000; Page A01 <br><br><br>PARIS, April 3 – French-led NATO troops burst into the Bosnian home of Momcilo Krajisnik, a former key Bosnian Serb leader, and arrested him early today on charges of genocide, making him the highest-ranking Bosnian Serb taken into custody in connection with Bosnian war atrocities. <br><br><br>The seizure of Krajisnik could for the first time give war crimes investigators a window into the highest reaches of the wartime Bosnian Serb leadership, which has been accused of displacing and executing thousands of Bosnian Muslims in an "ethnic cleansing" campaign that became a notorious hallmark of the 1992-95 conflict.<br><br><br>Krajisnik, who was flown to The Hague to stand trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, was speaker of the Bosnian Serb parliament during the war and later served as the Serbian member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency. As such, he had direct links to Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb president, who is still wanted by the war crimes tribunal, and to Gen. Ratko Mladic, who led Bosnian Serb military forces and is also on the tribunal's wanted list.<br><br><br>"Next to Karadzic himself, he's the most significant person we could hope to arrest," said Graham Blewitt, the tribunal's deputy prosecutor, in a telephone interview.<br><br><br>According to witnesses and news service reports from the scene, French and other Bosnia-based NATO troops arrested Krajisnik early this morning after surrounding his house in Pale, 15 miles southwest of Sarajevo, and blasting open the door with explosives.<br><br><br>"They took my dad away," Krajisnik's son Milos, 21, told the Associated Press.<br><br><br>"If they had only rung the bell I would have opened the door, but they threw a bomb," Krajisnik's 80-year-old father, Sretko, told the AP.<br><br><br>Milos Krajisnik said NATO troops tied up him and his 19-year-old brother and turned their faces to floor during the capture. The official Yugoslav news agency, Tanjug, said Krajisnik, a 54-year-old widower, was led away in his bare feet, clad only in pajamas. No injuries were reported in the apprehension, which brings to 39 the number of Bosnian war crimes suspects in custody after surrendering or being arrested on warrants issued by the tribunal. Fourteen have been sentenced.<br><br><br>Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who helped forge the 1995 Dayton accords that ended the war, hailed the arrest as a significant development in postwar Bosnia, which has remained in a de facto split among Muslim, Serb and Croat parastates.<br><br><br>"This removes the most visible public opponent" of the peace process in Bosnia, said Holbrooke. Krajisnik "is a racist, he is a separatist, and he supports murderers. . . . He was a living symbol that you can get away with murder."<br><br><br>Bosnian Serb leaders immediately criticized the capture, the Reuters news agency reported from Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. The vice president of Bosnia's Serb Republic, Mirko Sarovic, called it a blow to normalization among Bosnia's three ethnic communities on the eve of local elections scheduled for Saturday. In Belgrade, capital of Serb-led Yugoslavia, the Foreign Ministry said the arrest showed that NATO "continues its policy of genocide" against the Serbs.<br><br><br>Karadzic, who maintains a low profile in the Serb Republic, made no comment. Neither did Mladic, who was seen last week at a soccer game in Belgrade.<br><br><br>The high-profile arrest reflects the tribunal's tightening focus on prosecuting fewer suspects but more important ones – those accused of orchestrating mass killings rather than the men who pulled the triggers. Just a month ago, for instance, Bosnian Croat general Tihomir Blaskic was sentenced to a prison term of 45 years.<br><br><br>Krajisnik's "will be the biggest trial we've ever had to prepare for," Blewitt said. "The case we'll be presenting against Krajisnik is effectively the case we'd be presenting against Karadzic, although the indictment covers a narrower period of time, from July 1991 to December 1992."<br><br><br>To prove that Krajisnik was responsible for genocide, the gravest crime under the tribunal's jurisdiction, prosecutors will have to show that his actions were carried out with the explicit purpose of destroying an ethnic group – in this case the Bosnian Muslims – in whole or in part. Asked if prosecutors had evidence of genocide that constitutes a smoking gun, Blewitt said: "Yes."<br><br><br>"This is good news for justice and good news for the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina," said NATO Secretary General George Robertson, using the formal name for Bosnia. "To those individuals who remain at large, I will repeat . . . the net is closing."<br><br><br>The arrest was made on Bosnian Serb territory controlled by French forces just as France was weathering a new round of criticism that it has shown little zeal in detaining war crimes suspects there. All but a few of the arrests by NATO-led troops in the former war zones have been carried out in the British- and U.S.-controlled sectors.<br><br><br>Krajisnik had been the subject of a sealed indictment since Feb. 21, but his onetime power and stature had made him a likely target of tribunal prosecutors. "He was present at every meeting where political and military actions were decided upon that resulted in deportations, illegal arrests, ethnic cleansing and the deaths of thousands of Bosnians," said Paul Risley, a spokesman for chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte.<br><br><br>Like Karadzic, Krajisnik is charged with a wide range of offenses covered by the tribunal's mandate: genocide; complicity in genocide; crimes against humanity; violations of the laws and customs of war; and "grave breaches" of the post-World War II Geneva Conventions, which codified what are collectively known as war crimes.<br><br><br>Krajisnik was known as "Mr. No" because of his outspoken resistance to various peace proposals aimed at ending the war. Ultimately, he was a signatory to the Dayton accords. After the war, Krajisnik served in the rotating three-member Bosnian presidency and assumed much of the power that Karadzic was forced to relinquish in 1996 after his indictment by the tribunal.<br><br><br>An economist by training, Krajisnik also had been an executive of Bosnia's largest company, Energoinvest. In the years before the dissolution of the old six-republic Yugoslav federation, he served a brief jail sentence for embezzling state funds; during and after the war, he was alleged to have been active in the black market.<br><br><br>"One assumes the defense for this guy will be aggressive," Blewitt said. "We're talking high leadership here."<br><br><br>Special correspondent Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKey Bosnian Serb Figure Held in War Crimes Case``x954828486,98891,``x``x
``xBBC News<br><br>By Nick Wood in Kosovo <br><br>US officials have come under criticism over a raid by K-For military police on an Islamic relief organisation in Kosovo last weekend. <br><br>The police, who were acting on a tip-off from US officials, raided a house rented by the Saudi Joint Relief Committee (SJRC). <br><br>The operation followed fears of a possible terrorist attack on the US office in the province. <br><br>US security officials say they believe members of the SJRC are linked with Osama bin Laden, the man suspected of being behind the attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. <br><br>In a separate incident British soldiers blew up a suspect car belonging to an employee of the charity. <br><br>The owner had stuck an SJRC sticker to his windscreen. <br><br>Neither incident revealed any evidence that could link the group with any terrorist activity. <br><br><br><br>Suspicious photos <br><br>K-For officials say the operations were part of increased security measures introduced after two members of the group were supposedly seen taking photos near the US office and K-For headquarters in Pristina. <br><br>New vehicle checkpoints have been introduced in the area, and visitors to both compounds are obliged to enter on foot. <br><br>It is not the first time the US officials here have raised concern about the charity. <br><br>Before Christmas a warning was given of a possible threat to US citizens in Kosovo. <br><br>Secret document <br><br>In a document seen by the BBC in Pristina, US officials called on the UN police force in the province to undertake open surveillance of the group. <br><br>Marked "Secret: US office only - Release to UNMIK" the report names two former members of the charity. <br><br>It claims Adel Muhammad Sadiq Bin Kazem, and Wa'el Hamza Jalaidan, the Committee's former Director, are "associates of Osama bin Laden" and that Mr Jalaidan helped Mr bin Laden "move money and men to and from the Balkans". <br><br>The claims are being strongly denied by the group. <br><br>A spokesman for the group says they were "stunned" by the raids, and are awaiting an explanation from K-For. <br><br>They have also offered to open up all their files for K-For or police officials to look at. <br><br>Bad publicity <br><br>The Relief Committee works as an umbrella body for several Saudi NGO's including the Saudi Red Crescent, and has a multi million-dollar budget partly financed by the Saudi government. <br> <br>It works with the UNHCR and the World Food Programme, and has worked with K-For on the rebuilding of several schools in the province. <br><br>The group's Assistant Director, Faisal Alshami, said he was disappointed at what he saw was an attempt to paint his organisation in a bad light. <br><br>"We have spent a lot of money here, trying to help people, we really hope this is not an attempt to curtail our work" he said. <br><br>Privately some K-For and UN police officials say the US is highly concerned about "force protection", or avoiding US casualties, in the run-up to presidential elections later this autumn, and is reacting to even the slightest threats. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUS fears terrorist attack in Kosovo``x954920504,25121,``x``x
``xNIS, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - A man died Tuesday when he hit a leftover NATO cluster bomb while digging in his garden in southern Serbia, police said.<br> <br>Vladimir Jovanovic, 70, died in the explosion, Nis police said. The bomb was dropped by NATO in May during its 11-week air campaign against Yugoslavia's repression of ethnic Albanians in the Kosovo province.<br><br>Jovanovic's son Ljubisa told the state news agency Tanjug that his father was wounded in a NATO attack 11 months ago in the same area. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb Man Killed by Leftover NATO Cluster Bomb``x954920523,94273,``x``x
``xThe Washington Post<br> <br>By Anne Swardson<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Tuesday, April 4, 2000; Page A25 <br><br><br>NOVI SAD, Yugoslavia –– When the weekend weather is fine, residents here flock to the Danube River to stroll along the banks, play with their children and look at what NATO wrought during the bombing last year. <br><br>Huge pieces of three ruined bridges still lie in the water where they fell. The only means of crossing is a pontoon bridge, and the line of cars waiting to get on can stretch for a mile.<br><br>"We are suffering because of those who have chosen evil," said Mira Orcic, 60, who was returning home via the bridge after planting seeds in her family's garden across the river. The walk had taken an hour and a half.<br><br>For Yugoslavia, there are no greater symbols of the damage caused by NATO airstrikes than the three bridges of Novi Sad, once lifelines within a bifurcated city. Their destruction inconveniences tens of thousands of residents every day. Countries from Germany to Romania face hundreds of millions of dollars in losses because no ships or barges can pass through the debris here.<br><br>But the bridges also highlight another of Yugoslavia's tragedies: That they remain destroyed and the river blocked more than a year after the first span was destroyed April 1, 1999, is due in large part not to NATO or the West but to the political divisions that wrack this country.<br><br>Novi Sad and the Serbian region in which it lies, Vojvodina, are run by political parties opposed to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The government of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, is controlled by Milosevic loyalists. Quarreling, jealousy and maneuvering between the two sides are the biggest reasons for the lack of action in Novi Sad.<br><br>"The bridges are being used in a political battle between city hall and the regime," said Slobodan Beljanski, a local lawyer. "Regardless of which side you are on, you can see people suffer."<br><br>City officials say they were the first to try to rebuild the bridges. They came up with architecturally meritorious designs and planned to remove debris, said City Council Chairman Predrag Filipov. But the city doesn't have the $100 million to reconstruct all three bridges, and the Serbian government has refused to fund the city's plans.<br><br>Serbian officials also have blocked the city's efforts to reach beyond Yugoslavia to help get the bridges rebuilt. City officials had arranged to bring in Austrian engineers, for instance, but they were denied visas by the Yugoslav government in Belgrade.<br><br>City officials hope to get money from Europe, and they received some positive signs from a Balkan donor conference in Brussels this week. Bodo Hombach, coordinator of the international Stability Pact for the Balkans, said European financing is available to replace the pontoon bridge with a "humanitarian bridge." But the funds have not been definitely committed.<br><br>In the meantime, as elections approach, Milosevic and his allies in the Serbian government want Novi Sad citizens to see that they can replace the bridges. So Serbian officials recently began building a temporary drawbridge near the pontoon bridge.<br><br>"We don't need technical assistance," said Milos Bosaragin of Serbia's Information Ministry. "Our engineers and experts are doing the job without any problem."<br><br>Meanwhile, removal of the debris, estimated to cost $24 million, is not on Serbia's list of priorities. "Our starting point is that the Danube should be cleaned by those who blocked it," Bosaragin said. "We expect the European Union to pay all the costs of taking out the debris. We are not capable of undertaking this investment."<br><br>The EU is studying a proposal to pay for the cleanup and a decision is expected shortly.<br><br>In the meantime, the 350,000 citizens of Novi Sad make do. Before the bombing, this was a city that lived on both sides of the Danube. Residents of Novi Sad proper, on the south, crossed to the north to their country cottages and small gardens. Many of the 50,000 who live on the north side, an area called Petrovaradin, commuted to work in Novi Sad.<br><br>"Only after the bridges were destroyed did I understand how much I was connected to the other side of the river," said Orcic after her long walk. "My legs ache."<br><br>Still, she said, the pontoon bridge is an improvement from the months immediately after the bombing, when people could cross only on a barge-like ferry pushed by two motorboats. It was so crowded passengers occasionally fell off; the wait for one could last hours.<br><br>Transit wasn't the only thing halted when the bridges were bombed. The spans had also carried electric, gas and water lines. Novi Sad was without running drinking water for months.<br><br>Olivera Kakucka, 39, now spends three hours a day traveling from her home in Novi Sad to her clerical job at a hospital across the river and back.<br><br>"I'm sad because I spend less time with my kids and my family," she said. "I don't know who should clean it up. But when I go to work and see the wrecked bridges, I ask, 'Why did they have to destroy them?' "<br><br>The purpose of destroying all three bridges was, in part, "to have a psychological impact on the Milosevic regime and the military," said one NATO diplomat. At the time, NATO said the bridges could have been used as military supply lines to Serb-led Yugoslav forces in Kosovo, far to the south, but the main goal was "a sense of disruption in the overall command, control and communication systems, and a certain degree of military pressure by taking the conflict to Yugoslavia as a whole," he said.<br><br>That rationale is particularly galling to people here because Vojvodina has long opposed Milosevic. Like Kosovo, it was a fairly autonomous province of Serbia until Milosevic stripped it of local authority in 1989. It also is ethnically mixed and, say many here, tolerant of minorities.<br><br>"We don't understand why the people of Novi Sad had to pay the highest price for Milosevic's policies," said Dorde Subotic, spokesman for the Reform Party of Vojvodina. "We are very bitter."<br><br>Down at the river, Sanja Mastic and her husband were eating McDonald's hamburgers, wearing shirts with logos in English and drinking Coca-Cola as they surveyed the wreckage one recent day.<br><br>"To be honest, we felt really stupid when we realized what we were doing, drinking and eating these things and looking at this sight," Mastic said. "You can't escape American influence. We can forgive, but we can't forget."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBombed Bridges Divide Serbian City, Government``x954920549,95686,``x``x
``xNEW YORK (AP) _ The New York Times' correspondent in Belgrade has been banned from Yugoslavia for a year after entering the country without a visa, the newspaper's foreign editor said Tuesday. <br>Also banned in addition to correspondent Carlotta Gall was a photographer working for the Times, Andrew Edward Testa, said foreign editor Andrew Rosenthal. <br><br>"We're asking the Yugoslav government to reconsider this and rescind it," Rosenthal said. <br><br>Gall, a British citizen based in Belgrade, had been working in Kosovo when her visa expired more than a month ago, Rosenthal said. The Yugoslav government declined to renew it, he said. <br><br>She and Testa had traveled to Montenegro, which is part of the Yugoslav federation but apparently imposed no visa restriction. On Sunday, they were headed back to Kosovo by car when they missed a turn on a road. <br><br>They mistakenly entered Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic, where they were arrested, Rosenthal said. A magistrate accused them of entering Serbia without a Yugoslav visa, issued the ban and imposed a fine of about $160 for each. <br><br>Gall was released and allowed to travel back to Kosovo, said Rosenthal, and "she remains our Yugoslav correspondent." He did not immediately know Testa's whereabouts. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNew York Times correspondent banned from Serbia``x954920572,41836,``x``x
``xSerbs, 11 NATO Peacekeepers, Injured in Riot <br><br>By Alison Mutler<br><br>The Associated Press<br><br>P R I S T I N A, Yugoslavia, April 4 — Kosovo Serbs angry over the arrest of a Serb for illegal weapons possession clashed today with NATO peacekeepers, leaving 11 Americans and one Pole injured, the U.S. military said.<br> The independent Yugoslav news agency Beta said 14 Serbs were also hurt, including 10 who were struck by rubber bullets fired in an attempt to break up a Serbian crowd.<br> However, the U.S. military said it could not confirm the number of Serbs injured in the melee — reportedly involving shoving, clubs, dogs and rubber bullets — which began Tuesday in a southeastern mountain region near the Macedonian border. <br>Eight Hour Confrontation <br>At the Pentagon, spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Vic Warzinski said the confrontation lasted about eight hours before the crowd of Serbs who confronted a U.S. unit was dispersed and the U.S. and Polish troops left the scene.<br> Warzinski said the most serious injury to U.S. troops was a broken hand. A U.S. military spokesman in Kosovo, Capt. Russell Berg, said the other injuries were contusions and abrasions.<br> It was the highest number of injuries in a single incident to U.S. peacekeepers in Kosovo so far. The clash also marked the first major incident between Serbs and NATO peacekeepers since a tense situation in the enclave of Kosovska Mitrovica calmed down last month.<br> The NATO force is devoted largely to policing and disarming militants. But nine months after NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign forced an end to the Serb crackdown in Kosovo, and the pullout of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s forces, new violence in the region has thwarted efforts to establish normality in the Serbian province.<br> According to a U.S. statement, the trouble started when American military police and Polish soldiers of the 18th Air Assault Battalion seized two hand grenades in a Serbian house in the village of Sevce, about 40 miles south of Pristina.<br> About 150 Serbs surrounded the house and refused to allow the troops to leave.<br> Beta said several thousand Serbs from four villages in southern Kosovo set up the barricades after peacekeepers detained a Serb man in Sevce and took him to Camp Bondsteel, the main U.S. base in Kosovo.<br> According to the Beta report, Serbs from the villages of Gotovusa, Jazince, Sevce and Strpce massed near roadblocks a short distance away set up by Polish troops serving in the American sector, demanding that the man be released.<br> U.S. troops later brought him back to the barricade in attempt to ease the tension, saying he would be released in 48 hours under normal procedure, according to Beta. <br><br>Women Tried to Free the Man <br>Beta said, however, that several women attempted to wrest the man from the soldiers. The peacekeepers then released attack dogs to try to disperse the crowd. The villagers responded with clubs and dogs of their own, Beta said.<br> Beta said four Serbs and one peacekeeper were injured at Sevce and 10 Serbs were injured by rubber bullets fired at the barricade.<br> “Reinforcement units were sent to assist in dispersing the crowd,” the U.S. statement said. “Currently, 11 U.S. soldiers, one Polish soldier, and one translator have been treated for non-life threatening injuries. The number of injured civilians has not been confirmed.”<br> The statement gave no further details and no indication whether the injuries occurred at the house or the roadblock.<br> An estimated 10,000 Serbs live in the mountain area near the border, making it the second largest concentration of Serbs in Kosovo after Kosovska Mitrovica. <br><br><br><br> Peacemaking Efforts in Jeopardy <br>April 4 — NATO chief George Robertson said today that the alliance’s effort to instill peace in Kosovo is on the “razor’s edge between success … or failure” and he urged continued endeavors to rebuild the region ravaged by ethnic cleansing and war.<br> “A huge amount has been achieved to bring normality and peace and decency back to Kosovo,” Robertson said in a speech on the 51st anniversary of NATO’s founding. “But more, much more, still needs to be done.”<br> Since the 78-day NATO air war ended Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s systematic campaign of repression against ethnic Albanians in Kosovar last year, rebels have been disarmed, houses are being rebuilt, children have returned to school and police patrol the streets, Robertson told members of the news media at a luncheon.<br> “We are still on that razor’s edges between success … or failure — failure of political will, a failure to put in the right resources,” he said. “We have to succeed … for a whole series of reasons but most of all because we want to create a model … for what the international community can do in stopping evil and rebuilding a healthy, ethnic, democratic society.”<br> The United Nations took charge of running Kosovo after the war led to the withdrawal of troops loyal to Milosevic.<br> Critics have complained that the whole effort is moving too slowly, has failed to achieve ethnic peace and that Milosevic is still in power. Violence has flared and people are frustrated over a lack of progress in bringing those responsible for war atrocities to justice, among other things.<br> Robertson said authorities are working to “gradually, one by one” arrest those indicted for war crimes.<br> “It does take time because a lot of people are in hiding, a lot of people are in exile,” he said. “But we will arrest them when the time is right. … We will continue relentlessly.”<br> — The Associated Press <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xViolence in Kosovo``x954920601,89668,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br>Jonathan Steele <br>Thursday April 6, 2000 <br><br>American troops were forced to release a suspect, abandon vehicles and trek over a mountain path to escape stone-throwing Serbs in the latest humiliation suffered by international peacekeepers in Kosovo. <br>As full details emerged yesterday of the worst clash involving US troops since they arrived last June, it became clear that Tuesday's incident in an area close to the Macedonian border amounted to a fiasco. It also showed how well the Serbs have set up a network of vigilantes who can mobilise crowds at short notice. <br><br>The trouble started after US military police and Polish troops entered the isolated Serb village of Sevce to search the home of a man detained for illegal possession of two hand grenades. His neighbours quickly pulled logs across the only road out of Sevce and fighting broke out. <br><br>The Americans called up reinforcements but before they could arrive were forced to abandon their vehicles and trek through a narrow canyon to the next settlement, Jacinze. <br><br>"There were Serbs up on the sides of the canyon throwing rocks," Major Debbie Allen, a US spokeswoman, said. The mile-and-a-half walk took the soldiers two hours. <br><br>At Jacinze the peacekeepers joined up with the reinforcements who had arrived by helicopter, and there was fighting with some 300 Serbs. The peacekeepers fired rubber bullets and used stun grenades and dogs. In the melee, a Serb woman dragged the arrested man away from the troops. "The man escaped," another US military spokesman said yesterday, adding that the villages were now calm. The abandoned military vehicles and equipment were retrieved. <br><br>The incident follows a clash last month when stone-throwing Serbs, organised by men with walkie-talkies, forced US troops to cut short an arms search in northern Mitrovice. That was in the French sector of Kosovo, and the Pentagon later said that US troops would be confined to their own region in south-eastern Kosovo, except in emergencies. <br><br>Tension has been high between the Serbs and Americans because the US led the Nato air strikes, but there is mounting suspicion that the Serbs want to highlight the chaos in Kosovo during the US presidential campaign. George W Bush, the Republican front-runner, has hinted that he might withdraw US troops. <br><br>US efforts to restrain armed former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army from crossing into southern Serbia have also suffered a set-back. An agreement brokered by US diplomats with Hashim Thaci, the political leader of the now dissolved KLA, has broken down, and Albanian paramilitaries have again been spotted in Serbia by US monitors. <br><br>The gunmen claim they are defending Albanians from the threat of Serb repression, but their avowed aim is to join the region to Kosovo. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUS troops fled Serb mob and lost prisoner ``x955009892,44408,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - An opposition activist was abducted today in northern Serbia, shortly before a municipal assembly session in which he and other deputies planned to oust a mayor loyal to President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>The League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina, a strong opposition faction, said Jan Svetlik, a deputy in the local assembly of the northern town of Zrenjanin, was taken from his home by three unidentified men.<br><br>The abduction occurred just hours before a session of Zrenjanin's municipal assembly, where Svetlik had recently secured a majority of votes to retake control of the town's government, said League official Emil Fejzulahu.<br> <br>Fejzulahu said the abduction was a ``brutal way to decrease the number'' of opposition activists in the assembly and prevent the ouster of the current mayor, a member of the ruling Socialists.<br><br>The League and several other opposition parties had won 1996 local elections in Zrenjanin, 45 miles north of the capital Belgrade. But they lost control after the 1998 defection of four members who switched allegiance to Milosevic's Socialists, the party that dominates the central government and much of the country.<br><br>Recently, however, the four defectors announced they would return, bringing with them two Socialist deputies who decided to switch sides.<br><br>Today's session began with protests by the opposition deputies, who demanded Svetlik's immediate release.<br><br>The opposition also protested that the Socialist-dominated Zrenjanin government stripped their two defectors of their position as assembly members. The move was apparently meant to further diminish the opposition's narrow majority in the local legislature.<br><br>A crowd of several hundred opposition supporters gathered on the town's main square in protest. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xOpposition Serb Activist Abducted``x955009911,59813,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br>By The Associated Press<br><br>PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- NATO peacekeepers clashed with pitchfork-wielding Kosovo Serbs trying to attack a monastery where moderates who agreed to participate in an interim U.N. government had taken refuge. <br><br>A Serb man was shot in the leg when peacekeepers opened fire late Thursday on a crowd of protesters trying to break through a line of Swedish peacekeepers guarding the Gracanica monastery, said Maj. Philip Anido, a spokesman for the peacekeepers in Pristina. <br><br>The 16th-century monastery in the all-Serb village of Gracanica, about five miles southeast of Pristina, has become the unofficial base of the moderate Serbian National Council, led by Bishop Artijeme. <br><br>The council is seen by many of Kosovo's few remaining Serbs as pro-Western for agreeing Sunday to participate in the U.N.-led power-sharing body that includes ethnic Albanian and international representatives. <br><br>The injured Serb, who was not identified, was taken to a Russian military field hospital in the nearby town of Kosovo Polje for treatment. No further information was immediately available. <br><br>A Kosovo Serb man was arrested in the incident and the town was sealed off. Afterward, reporters saw several vehicles full of Serbs being escorted out of Gracanica, headed toward Pristina. <br><br>Since alliance troops entered the province last June after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign ended a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanians, thousands of Serbs have fled the province out of fear of revenge attacks. <br><br>Radical Serbs have increasingly accused the more moderate members of the dwindling minority of siding with the West. <br><br>The moderate Serbs are expected to attend the first meeting of the interim government as observers on March 12 when the top U.N. official for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, will be present. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb Wounded in Shoot-Out With NATO``x955099096,68010,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br>Activists' peaceful message could marginalise Serbia's divided opposition <br><br>Nick Thorpe in Belgrade <br>Friday April 7, 2000 <br><br>Along the walls of the Plateau, a student area just off the main pedestrian street in the heart of Belgrade, three young men with a bucket of glue, a paint-roller, and a pile of posters are moving rapidly along a wall. <br>On each poster is a clenched fist, the word Otpor, which means Resistance, and the slogan "Because I love Serbia." <br><br>Otpor, which was formed by a group of 15 friends at Belgrade University in 1998, has grown into a national network of activists with a simple message of resistance to President Slobodan Milosevic and his government. <br><br>It is the latest star in the opposition sky over Serbia - but one that is growing in importance so rapidly, that it threatens to eclipse the others. <br><br>It now claims between 5,000 and 10,000 activists in 102 towns across Serbia. <br><br>It has no members, only "activists", many of whom are still at secondary school. They shun the idea of leaders, and seek peaceful confrontation with the authorities by spraying graffiti, leafleting public places and staging colourful events, such as street theatre. <br><br>A basic condition of joining is the willingness to be arrested, and the authorities have been swift to oblige. There have been 300 arrests and 9,000 hours in police custody for activists so far, they say proudly. <br><br>A more sinister development is physical attacks on activists by groups of well-organised men in black leather jackets, who frequently disrupt opposition gatherings. <br><br>"We do not just represent resistance to Milosevic's regime," says Milja Jovanovic, a Belgrade activist. "But resistance to this whole . . . chaos that's been on our shoulders for the last 10 years." <br><br>We are sitting in Otpor's Belgrade HQ, a first-floor flat decorated mainly with the stencilled fist. Mobile and landline phones are ringing, and eager young men and women are bent over computer screens. <br><br>Ms Jovanovic has pigtails, wears the obligatory Otpor T-shirt, and is, at 25, old for the movement. The average age of activists is 20 to 21. <br><br>One year after the Nato air strikes, the authorities are keen to remind the public of Serbia's resistance to "the Nato aggressors" and to paint their domestic political opponents as Nato puppets. A rival poster campaign has begun in Belgrade, showing the Otpor fist clutching a wodge of dollars, beside pictures of the US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, and the former Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci. <br><br>Otpor's response is typically bold and provocative - to stage a commemoration for all the Serbian policemen who died in Kosovo. <br><br>But the actions of Otpor activists have also won them friends. <br><br>"Otpor now has a significant role in the political life of Serbia, particularly when we're faced here with such a weak and divided opposition," said Bratislav Grubacic, a respected political commentator. "Otpor is kind of a virus that might spread all over Serbia." <br><br>The next united opposition rally in Belgrade is due on April 14, although preparations were marred as usual by bitter recriminations between the two main opposition groups, the Serbian Renewal Movement, led by Vuk Draskovic, and the Alliance for Change. <br><br>Otpor activists have sharply criticised the opposition as well as the government. <br><br>"They're very young and radical towards everyone, including the opposition," said Ognjen Pribecevic, adviser to Mr Draskovic, "but their main target is Milosevic, and we accept this." <br><br>And for all the radicalism, the movement's efforts will soon swing to that most dull and necessary of democratic tasks - trying to persuade the electorate, especially the young, to turn out and vote in the local and federal elections due later this year. Otpor activists will not be standing themselves, but they will urge voters to choose opposition parties. <br><br>•Opposition councillors occupied a town hall in the northern Serbian town of Zrenjanin to demand punishment for the abductors of a colleague, a councillor said yesterday. <br><br>In a telephone call from the town hall, Bojan Kostres, of the opposition League of Social Democrats, said the councillors would remain in place until their demands were met. <br><br>They also wanted the reinstatement of two colleagues who were stripped of their mandate. The abducted councillor was freed after missing an important council session. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYoung radicals show a clenched fist to Milosevic's state machine ``x955099120,77599,``x``x
``xThe Washington Post<br><br>By Anne Swardson<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Saturday, April 8, 2000; Page A11 <br><br><br>KRALJEVO, Yugoslavia –– It looked, briefly, as if power had returned to the people. <br><br>Every night for a week in mid-March, about 5,000 residents massed in the center square of this town 75 miles south of the capital, Belgrade, and demanded that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic give back what he had taken away: their local television station.<br><br>The channel went off the air March 17, after inspectors from the federal Telecommunications Ministry confiscated a key piece of its transmission equipment. Because TV Kraljevo was opposed to Milosevic, the confiscation was seen as a political move. So the Kraljevans sang songs, chanted slogans, waved signs and made speeches.<br><br>On March 25, the government relented and gave the device back. Broadcasts resumed. Since then, TV Kraljevo has been beaming its message to 800,000 viewers undisturbed. Unlike many other towns where Milosevic has cracked down on independent media, Kraljevo, it seemed, had won.<br><br>But journalists and opposition leaders here now say the real victor, at least in the long term, was Milosevic. As soon as the device was returned, turnout at the anti-Milosevic rallies plummeted. The opposition-led city government tried to keep up the protests, but Kraljevans, apparently satisfied their demands had been met, stayed home.<br><br>"That's why I think Milosevic will survive," said Bosana Milosavljevic, a journalist with the media group that controls TV Kraljevo and the local newspaper. "His strategy [of returning the equipment] might convince some people, and others will be too apathetic. There is no real threat to his regime."<br><br>In recent months, Milosevic has launched a crackdown against Yugoslavia's independent media that is fiercer than any since he came to power a decade ago. Equipment has been confiscated, signals have been jammed, fines imposed. Newspapers, magazines and TV stations have been taken over or shut down.<br><br>But the true genius of the campaign, many here say, is that it is not universal and in some cases, such as that of TV Kraljevo, it is not irreversible. Milosevic is managing to muzzle many opposition voices and at the same time win public approval when he occasionally allows an independent outlet to keep operating.<br><br>"He's trying to silence the opposition media, but not completely," said Panayotis Vlassopoulos, Greece's ambassador to Yugoslavia and a keen observer of the local scene. "He's playing an equilibrium game."<br><br>The crackdown comes ahead of elections anticipated this fall and is particularly significant because much of the independent media is controlled by, or is on the side of, Yugoslavia's opposition parties. The opposition holds political power in 34 cities in Yugoslavia, including Belgrade. In many cases, it either owns or controls television stations and newspapers in those cities. If the opposition media are silenced, opposition to Milosevic is effectively silenced.<br><br>Many of the reports in the independent press that offend the regime appear to be standard fare by normal journalistic standards. They discuss Yugoslavia's economic problems, for instance, or print statements from opposition leaders. The opposition media, which receive significant funding from abroad, also cover their own woes, such as the confiscation of TV Kraljevo's equipment, which has not been reported in the state-controlled press.<br><br>The federal Information Ministry did not respond to questions about the crackdown. But Information Minister Goran Matic was quoted in news reports this week as saying "stories about closing down media are lies and manipulation. . . . Just as nobody can drive his car without license plates, in the information sector nobody can broadcast programs without respecting regulations."<br><br>And in fact, in many of the cases where the government has taken action against opposition media, a technical violation of one law or another has occurred. TV Kraljevo, for instance, was broadcasting on Channel 48 without a license--because its application for a frequency had never been acknowledged. The station had to pay $11,300 in fines to restore service and get a license.<br><br>"Milosevic is quite legalistic. He actually likes to do things by the books, to maintain appearances," said Liljana Smajlovic, a reporter with the magazine NIN. "He likes to give the impression of a functioning society."<br><br>The outcome Milosevic prefers, she said, is self-censorship: When NIN was sued recently for printing an interview with a dissident law professor and lost, the judge told the magazine's editor he could have saved the magazine trouble and money by not publishing the offending material.<br><br>In addition to the government sanctions, there are more frightening, anonymous, attacks. Slavko Curuvija, owner of a newspaper and magazine, was slain in Belgrade last spring; the case has not been solved. Transmission equipment was stolen from the opposition Belgrade station Studio B in January. This week, an unexplained fire in a building housing independent radio and television stations in Novi Sad killed a woman and injured seven others.<br><br>A law passed in October 1998 gives the government a wide range of power over what the media can say and do, and broadcast media regulations also give it authority to grant or revoke licenses.<br><br>Since the law was passed, 47 fines totaling $555,000 have been imposed on Yugoslav media, according to the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia. Two newspapers have been shut down and one taken over, and the equipment of several television stations has been confiscated.<br><br>"Offices of independent media organizations have been visited on a daily basis by financial police as a form of additional pressure," the journalists' association said in a March 25 report. "Their editors and staff are being continuously anonymously threatened or directly intimidated." To make it particularly nerve-racking, the rules are unevenly applied.<br><br>"You publish something one day and you think you'll be fined and aren't. The next day you publish a weather forecast and you get fined," said Gordana Susa, president of the association.<br><br>The editor in chief of Blic, Yugoslavia's largest-circulation newspaper with about 220,000 copies daily, cited a long list of ways the government has tried to crack down on his paper. Blic has been fined repeatedly. Its supply of domestic newsprint has been cut off--after prices for it were doubled by the government--and it has been denied a license to import more newsprint. The government forced Blic to roll back a price increase, made it reduce its ad charges by 30 percent and raised its fee to print at the government-owned printing plant.<br><br>"Their first desire is to drain as much money from us as they can," said the editor, Veselin Simonovic. "Then they want to force us to have such losses that we have to close down the newspaper and they can say they didn't force us to do it. I think this is the strongest oppression of the independent media since I've been working in it, which is 15 years."<br><br>So far, Blic is surviving by reducing the number of pages in each edition. Blic also hopes to start selling a separate package of ads with each paper to boost revenue.<br><br>"If the government goes after that," Simonovic said, "we will think of something else."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic's Media Muzzle``x955181534,3332,``x``x
``xThe Guardian<br><br>Anger in US as Canberra falls out of line by telling new ambassador to present himself to Yugoslav leader<br>Kosovo: special report <br><br>Christopher Zinn in Sydney and Owen Bowcott <br>Saturday April 8, 2000 <br><br>Australia has broken ranks with the west by sending a new ambassador to Yugoslavia and instructing him to hand his credentials to the head of state - President Slobodan Milosevic, who is charged with war crimes. <br><br>Charles Stewart, Canberra's new man, arrived in Belgrade on Tuesday. He replaces the outgoing ambassador, Chris Lamb, who left on February 15. A time and date for formal presentation of Mr Stewart's credentials is to be discussed with the Yugoslavian foreign ministry, a spokesman for the embassy said. <br><br>Canberra's decision has provoked anger in western capitals, where a policy of sanctions and diplomatic isolation are viewed as crucial in the attempt to make Serbia a pariah state and hasten the downfall of the Milosevic regime. <br><br>Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, is understood to have phoned Canberra to urge the administration to drop the idea. <br><br>The Foreign Office in London was reluctant to voice any concerns. A spokesman said: "Australian diplomatic representation is a matter for them. We are aware of it. It is not causing us any worry." <br><br>The only UN embargo in force against what remains of Yugoslavia - made up of Serbia and Montenegro - is a ban on arms sales. An EU ban on commercial flights was suspended in February; EU sanctions against oil sales and financial investments go on. <br><br>There is speculation in the Yugoslav capital that the improvement in relations with Canberra has its origins in missions that visited Belgrade to seek the release of three Australian workers from the aid organisation Care, who were arrested at the beginning of the Kosovo conflict and jailed on espionage charges. <br><br>Long meetings were held between leading figures in Australia's large Serbian expatriate community, government representatives and officials from Care, to win the men's release. Malcolm Fraser, a former Australian prime minister who is chairman of Care Australia, went to Belgrade several times to meet Mr Milosevic to lobby for the men's release; they were freed late last year. <br><br>Defending its present move, Canberra's department of foreign affairs and trade said the ambassador was needed to serve the large number of Australian citizens and dual nationals living in and visiting Yugoslavia; it did not signify support for the regime. <br><br>Mr Fraser insisted that no deal had been struck to secure the aid workers' surprise release: "There were no bar gains." Asked about other nations' refusal to renew diplomatic relations with Belgrade, he replied: "I could think of nothing worse for Australia than to be bound by European Union or Nato policy. We're an independent country, we need to make our own decisions." <br><br>EU and Nato states have so far avoided creating the spectacle of a western ambassador paying homage to Mr Milosevic, fearing it would boost his credibility. Mr Stewart's presentation of his credentials to the president is bound to be on Yugoslav TV and the press. <br><br>Other governments have avoided this by not rotating ambassadors or by bringing in a lower level of representative. <br><br>The US has no diplomatic post in Belgrade; the British, French and Germans have so-called interest sections hosted by other countries and confined to cultural, consular and commercial activities. <br><br>Italy is very keen to have a full ambassador to handle the substantial issues between Belgrade and Rome. It wants a deal where a new ambassador does not have to present him or herself to Mr Milosevic. <br><br>Under the Vienna convention, a new ambassador is only an ambassador-designate until his "letter of credence" is accepted by the head of state. So Mr Stewart will be Australia's new ambassador only when Mr Milosevic accepts him. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAustralian coup for Milosevic ``x955181555,63060,``x``x
``xBELGRADE (Reuters) - A deputy leader of the Serb opposition Christian Democrats was arrested Friday while trying to cross an internal Yugoslav border into Montenegro , the party said. <br>"Our vice president and well-known writer Svetislav Basara, was prevented from crossing into Montenegro after several copies of the party's newspaper were seized from him," a statement from the party said. <br><br>It added that police were detaining Basara with no explanation. <br><br>Serbia, an isolated senior partner in the Yugoslav two-republic federation, has been at odds with smaller, reformist Montenegro since 1997. <br><br>There has been almost no trade between Serbia and Montenegro for months, but Basara's arrest was the first case of a prominent Serbian opposition figure being detained at the border crossing. <br><br>Serbia's opposition and the Montenegrin leadership share similar views on the need for political and economic change. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb opposition leader arrested near Montenegro``x955181580,55636,``x``x
``x<br>The Times<br><br>FROM MARTIN FLETCHER IN THE HAGUE<br> <br>FIVE days after being seized from his home in a pre-dawn raid, Momcilo Krajisnik, the most senior Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect yet apprehended, appeared before an international tribunal yesterday to answer the charge of genocide. <br>As he did so, an adjacent court heard an old man, hiding his identity behind a screen, tell in harrowing detail how, while Mr Krajisnik was president of the Bosnian Serb parliament, Serb soldiers mowed down 1,500 Muslims in a field. The man was one of just five survivors. <br><br>Mr Krajisnik appeared in the dock flanked by armed guards, protected by bullet-proof glass, and wearing a three-piece suit sent from his home in Pale soon after French troops captured him in his pyjamas last Monday and flew him to The Hague. The public gallery was packed and a crowd watched the 30-minute hearing on television monitors outside. <br><br>The silver-haired right-hand man of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, stood scowling beneath his bushy eyebrows as a British judge, Richard May, read out the nine charges against him: genocide, complicity in genocide, extermination, murder, violations of the laws of war, wilful killing, persecution, deportation and inhumane acts. <br><br>After each, there was pause as Mr Krajisnik listened to the translation on headphones before firmly replying: "Not guilty." Otherwise, Mr Krajisnik spoke only to ask to make a statement. Judge May refused. His lawyer, Igor Pantelic, said later that Mr Krajisnik, who was in office during the 1992-95 Bosnian conflict, wanted to protest his innocence. <br><br>His client was "shocked" by his arrest. There was no precedent for the elected president being held responsible for the actions of military forces. The charges were "politically motivated". <br><br>As Mr Krajisnik was led away, the old man testified in the trial of Radislav Krstic, the Bosnian Serb general whose forces overran the Muslim "safe haven" of Srebrenica in July 1995 and killed 7,500 men in Europe's worst massacre since the Second World War. Speaking slowly and deliberately the man told how he and a busload of Muslim prisoners from Srebrenica were taken to a field where Serb soldiers made them line up and turn their backs. They were then raked by machinegun fire. Other busloads arrived and met the same fate. <br><br>"There were bursts of fire just cropping them down. You could hear the bullets hitting bodies and the earth falling around. I could feel it all," the man said. After each execution soldiers asked if anyone was alive. "Sometimes a voice was heard. A soldier came up with just one bullet, bop, bop and so on." <br><br>Two survivors tried to flee but were shot. One soldier told another: "We have made a genocide like it was in Jasenovac in '41", a reference to a Second World War camp where thousands of Serbs were killed by Nazis and their Croatian collaborators. <br><br>The old man lay motionless throughout the day until the soldiers left. He wanted to wait until dark but feared the Serbs would send bulldozers to bury the bodies and "they would cut me to pieces alive". He saw two other survivors making for nearby bushes so "across these bodies I ran 15 yards, trampling over them. I went into the bramble. "Nobody else stood up. Everybody else was dead." Asked how many died that day he replied: "Between 1,000 and 1,500." <br><br>As the Bosnian Serb member of Bosnia's post-war tripartite presidency, Mr Krajisnik met President Clinton, Tony Blair, the Pope and President Chirac of France. Today he languishes in a UN detention unit inside a Dutch prison near The Hague: a potent reminder to Mr Karadzic, Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb army chief, and other suspected Bosnian war criminals that in their own land they are not safe. <br><br>There are 39 Bosnians being held in the unit; Serbs, Croats and Muslims. They are not segregated. The irony is that three ethnic groups unable to share a country live quite harmoniously together when confined in one small building. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCaptured Bosnian Serb politician denies war crimes charges``x955181603,97154,``x``x
``xThe Independent<br><br>Legacy of war - As the snow melts, more young lives are shattered by the thousands of cluster bombs which Nato left behind <br>By Christian Jennings in Grmija <br><br>8 April 2000 <br><br>Kosovo's bleak winter has finally begun to lift, giving way to a tremulous spring. And in the last three weeks, three children have been killed and 13 seriously injured after they accidentally detonated some of the thousands of unexploded Nato cluster-bombs strewn about the woods, hills and villages. <br><br>"Everyone recognises that with the advent of spring there is an increased danger of incidents involving mines and unexploded ordnance," says Leonie Barnes, chief information officer at the United Nations' mine action co-ordination centre (Macc) in Pristina, the outfit that organises all mine-clearing and mine-awareness activities throughout Kosovo. <br><br>Above the public swimming pool at the Grmija recreation ground, west of Pristina, the snow is melting, revealing a car park littered with syringes, tangles of hastily discarded underwear, empty bottles of Montenegrin red wine, and dozens of used condoms. Next to one puddle lie six shiny brass cartridge cases, ejected from a 9mm automatic handgun. But as the daytime temperatures start to rise, more is being brought to the surface than the detritus of nocturnal lust. <br><br>"During the air-war, the hills around Grmija had concentrations of Serbian troops dug in," says a Macc official. "And there were 22 recorded Nato cluster-bomb strikes on this area alone." The swimming pool and picnic area, as well as the woods in Grmija, are being made safe by battle area clearance teams from Bac-Tec, a British organisation which employs former Army and Navy bomb disposal experts. <br><br>Twenty-two cluster-bomb strikes means 22 aerially launched bomb canisters, each containing 147 bomblets. Each of the 3,234 bomblets dropped on Grmija would normally explode on contact with the ground, in the air, or with a tank or armoured vehicle, depending on how it is fused. But there is a 10 per cent failure rate, which means that more than 300 bomblets, each the size of a baked-bean tin, capable of killing anybody within 15 metres, probably lie in the undergrowth. <br><br>"People in Kosovo haven't been able to see their fields since last year," says Dr Merkur Dobroshi, in the orthopaedic ward of Pristina University Hospital. "They haven't been able to move about, and now it's spring, and they will go out and discover what is waiting for them." <br><br>Lying in the beds in front of him, badly injured and disfigured, are Albert Bagraktari, aged 10, and his cousin, fromKlina, in central Kosovo. "At first I thought that there had been a power-surge and the TV had blown up," says Albert's mother as her son paws in agony at the bandages covering his eyes. "Then I realised it was the children, who had been playing with something." <br><br>The only person who knows exactly what they were playing with is in the hospital's intensive care unit. Gasmend, aged 11, was holding the device when it exploded, and doctors are trying to save his arms and legs. <br><br>Ms Barnes, of Macc, who was an ammunition technical officer in the Australian Army for 10 years, and later worked on mine clearance in Bosnia and Mozambique, said: "The problem now is the movement of the population over the countryside. People are impatient, they want to go out and see their fields, go to the forest to collect firewood. <br><br>"They don't see sometimes that they may have to wait another year before it is safe, before we've cleared." <br><br>Although Macc knows thelocation of more than 300 Nato cluster-bomb strike areas, involving some 3,000 cluster-bombs, the failure rate of 10 per cent means there are thousands of unexploded bomblets in a province half the size of Wales, as well as anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, booby-traps and other devices. <br><br>The population of Kosovo is lucky, however. So well co-ordinated is the mine-clearance operation, so ample the donor funding for demining organisations, and so well recorded the Serb minefields and Nato bomb-sites, that Ms Barnes sees an end to the problem. <br><br>"We could feasibly clear Kosovo in two to three years," she says. And by the end of this year, she hopes it will be possible for the people of Grmija to venture out for their walks and picnics without the risk of stepping on the legacy of last year's war. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xChildren reap Kosovo's spring harvest ``x955181625,16515,``x``x
``xTom Walker <br> <br>WASHINGTON has begun delicate negotiations with the government of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia aimed at re-establishing an American presence in Belgrade, diplomats have revealed. <br>They say that a relatively junior American diplomat could be in the Serbian capital as early as June, and that both sides have been anxious to re-establish links for some time. <br><br>The talks appear to contradict Washington's publicly stated policy of treating Milosevic's Serbia as a pariah state. The State Department reacted angrily last Friday to Australia's appointment of a new ambassador to Belgrade. <br><br>America and Britain broke off relations with Yugoslavia before Nato airstrikes began last March, and Washington was disappointed that not all nations in the western alliance followed suit. <br><br>Greece and Italy retained their contacts with the Milosevic regime throughout the crisis. Britain, France and Germany have all re-established "interest sections" since Nato and the United Nations took over in Kosovo. <br><br>The Clinton administration had believed Milosevic might fall from office because of Kosovo. It has felt increasingly uncomfortable as the Yugoslav president has not only held on to power but has also moved closer to China, which has become Serbia's biggest benefactor. <br><br>Determined not to be left out in the hub of a region where America wants to dictate international policy, Washington has used intermediaries from Russia and Greece to help pave the way for some rapprochement with Belgrade, diplomats said. Moscow is expected to send its new ambassador to Belgrade this week. <br><br>"We've been anxious to get an official presence there for nine months in the way that Britain has," said an American source. <br><br>"The first guy in will probably be a first secretary, and we won't be allowed much more than consular offices for the moment. But as soon as we get the green light, we're in." <br><br>Diplomats said Washington was anxious to keep Milosevic at arm's length, but wished to help Serbian officials become more involved in the running of Kosovo under the UN. <br><br>They also confirmed that basic American intelligence- gathering in Belgrade was rendering policy-making difficult. "They feel really disadvantaged at the moment. They've got no feel for it," said one European diplomat in the Serbian capital. "And the China thing worries them. Milosevic's wife is much too keen on the Chinese." <br><br>Any deal will probably involve the Yugoslav government being given access to its old embassy building in Washington. <br><br>The Croatian press suggested last week that William Montgomery, America's ambassador to Croatia, could become the first official to go to Belgrade. But Montgomery's office denied the reports, claiming: "We don't have relations, there is no embassy, no mission, no job." <br><br>A Yugoslav government source confirmed that an American diplomatic presence in Belgrade could bring mutual benefits. "It's much better to talk direct," he said. "There's a lot of bargaining going on at the moment."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times : America in talks to renew envoy links with 'pariah state' Serbia ``x955357955,61870,``x``x
``xMartin Kettle in Washington <br><br>One CIA officer was sacked and six others reprimanded yesterday as the American intelligence agency finally took the rap for the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade last year at the height of the Nato conflict with Yugoslavia over Kosovo. <br><br>George Tenet, the CIA director, acted against the seven employees last week after two internal agency reviews on the bombing, on May 7, which killed three Chinese citizens and injured more than 20 others. The attack plunged US-China relations into deep freeze and renewed doubts about the Nato campaign in several European nations. <br><br>Mr Tenet's decision, which was announced in an unusual public statement from the agency, follows 11 months of public and private Chinese government pressure for "severe punishment" of those responsible for the bombing. <br><br>The action has immediately sparked allegations in the US that President Bill Clinton's administration has used the agents as scapegoats in an effort to smooth relations between Beijing and Washington after Chinese officials refused to let the matter die. <br><br>The agents against whom action has been taken have not been identified. However, reports in the US yesterday said that the sacked agent was a mid-level career officer whose targeting error was blamed for the incident. <br><br>The others, said to include one senior official and four supervisors, received punishments varying from spoken admonitions to suspended promotions and pay awards. <br><br>The US has already apologised to Beijing and agreed to pay $28m (£17.5m) in compensation to the Chinese government, as well as $4.5m (£2.8m) to families of those who were killed and injured. <br><br>The CIA confirmed yesterday that its internal inquiries had concluded that the intelligence officers had intended to target the Yugoslav military supply headquarters, but wrongly identified the building housing the embassy. <br><br>"The evidence shows that this was clearly a tragic accident," spokesman Bill Harlow said in a statement. <br><br>Although Chinese - and, from time to time, some western sources - have claimed that the American attack was a deliberate act, the official Washington version of events which emerged within days of the attack has not substantially changed in the ensuing months. <br><br>The CIA says the bombing was caused when the now sacked officer mistakenly identified the military supply HQ on a street map on the basis of its address, 2 Bulevar Umetnosti, which was in fact several hundred yards away from the building housing the Chinese embassy. <br><br>The map on which the target was identified was a 1997 map that showed the Chinese embassy located at its earlier address in the centre of Belgrade. <br><br>After the location was wrongly fixed, it was discussed during three meetings among CIA officials, none of whom questioned the targeting procedure that had been used. The target details were then passed to the Pentagon and Nato, but were not queried there either. <br><br>The whole saga is particularly embarrassing for the CIA because this was the only one of 900 targets struck by Nato planes during the 78-day campaign that was wholly selected by the agency. <br><br>"The CIA lacked formal procedures for preparing and forwarding target nomination packages to the US military," Mr Harlow admitted. <br><br>However, as reported in the Guardian last year, in the week preceding the embassy bombing another mid-level CIA officer did voice doubts and objections to the identification of the target. <br><br>This agent called colleagues at the US military mapping agency in Washington with his doubts and also discussed the matter with the Nato taskforce in Naples, Italy, which was responsible for issuing instructions to B-2 stealth bomber crews about their night missions. No senior official intervened, however, and the strike went ahead. The officer who raised the concerns was officially praised - though not identified - by Mr Tenet in his official statement. <br><br>A lawyer for one of the reprimanded officers said yesterday that it was "manifestly unjust" to blame individual CIA officers when "the failure was systematic". <br><br>Roy Krieger said: "It's shameful that the CIA caved in to political pressure to provide scapegoats. The agency has already publicly admitted that the map provided to the officers contained errors without which the Chinese embassy would not have been mistakenly bombed. These officers were asked to improvise and did the best with the materials provided to them."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : CIA takes rap for embassy attack ``x955357977,1324,``x``x
``xBy MARLISE SIMONS<br><br>THE HAGUE, April 9 -- Confounding the many critics who long called the international tribunal here a mere fig leaf for Western shame, the court dealing with Yugoslav war crimes has just completed an extraordinary month. <br><br>It has opened the first United Nations trial ever to focus exclusively on sexual violence against women, including gang rape and the use of women as sexual slaves as part of a war strategy. <br><br>It has begun the trial of one of the top generals accused of being responsible for the carnage in 1995 at the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, probably Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II. <br><br>And on Friday, prosecutors brought before the court a top Bosnian Serb political leader who is charged with complicity in the genocide that the prosecutors say his people perpetrated against Bosnia's Muslims and Croats, but who not so long ago was accepted as a figure who could meet with Western presidents and prime ministers. <br><br>While problems remain, and the recent momentum is the result of slow shifts by Western governments and tribunal prosecutors themselves, the changes have engendered a rare sense of excitement in the sober high-security building on the outskirts of this Dutch city where judges are quietly testing and defining uncharted international laws. <br><br>Usually the building feels more like a subdued hospital for the Balkan heart, a place that tries to put patches on the wrenching pain of witnesses while lawyers haggle over legal remedies. <br><br>But last week, which began with the capture of Momcilo Krajisnik (pronounced mohm-chee-loh cry-ish-nik), the senior Bosnian Serb politician who was brought before the court on Friday, seemed to galvanize staff members and visitors. He is the highest-ranking Serb in the tribunal's custody. <br><br>"The momentum and the energy at the tribunal have been amazing," said Heather Ryan of the Coalition for International Justice, who has monitored proceedings on behalf of several human rights groups for almost two years. "I've not seen so much substance at any one time, at least in the public arena. The tribunal seems to have hit a new stride." <br><br>For Mr. Krajisnik's first appearance, at which he pleaded not guilty to all nine counts against him, the usually empty public gallery overflowed and hundreds crowded the lobby to follow the event on television monitors. <br><br>Other courtrooms here heard testimony of great moment. United Nations peacekeepers gave the most vivid accounts yet of the tense days in July 1995 around Srebrenica that led up to the alleged massacre by Serbs of perhaps 8,000 Muslim men. <br><br>Two Dutch peacekeepers at the trial of Gen. Radislav Krstic, one of the Bosnian Serb commanders at Srebrenica, for the first time publicly testified that even before the peacekeepers' forced departure, there had been blatant signs of impending slaughter. <br><br>One of the Dutch soldiers, Paul Groenewegen, detained by the Serbs at the time, said he believed that executions had been going on, as he heard repeated single gunshots for a whole day, "perhaps 20 to 40 shots" per hour. <br><br>Andre Stoelinga, another Dutch soldier, said he had seen clothes and shoes piled by the roadside and a truck loaded with blue and bloated bodies. "It's a smell I won't forget," he told the court on Thursday. <br><br>Those accounts are significant because they differ widely from past tribunal testimony by the Dutch commander, Lt. Col. Ton Karremans, who said that while the peacekeepers had no choice but to hand over the civilians under their protection, they had no reason to suspect the coming executions of the Muslim men. <br><br>Such details have long been known inside the Dutch government, but their disclosure has shocked the Dutch public. Politicians and newspaper editorial writers have demanded a parliamentary inquiry. <br><br>The drama now going on at the the tribunal, with young women sobbing as they speak of gang rape and senior political and military war leaders standing in the dock, can also be followed by more people in the Balkans, for whom these trials are most intended. <br><br>The new South East News Service for Europe, financed mainly by the European Union, has begun to broadcast regular live television and radio programs and summaries from the trials, allowing people in Montenegro, Bosnia and parts of Serbia and Croatia to follow the tribunal's many activities. <br><br>Several factors have contributed to the tribunal's new momentum. <br><br>Western governments, which long appeared to pay only lip service to the court, lauding its objectives but starving it of funds and intelligence, now find it more politically convenient to have their soldiers arrest important suspects, like camp commanders and Bosnian Serb and Croat generals. <br><br>British troops were the first to do so, after the election of a Labor government in 1997 that succeeded the Conservatives who were in power during the 1991-95 wars in Croatia and Bosnia. American, Dutch and German soldiers followed. <br><br>Court investigators, whose work has often been painfully slow, have also managed to speed up indictments as the body of evidence has grown. A third courtroom, added in late 1998, has helped. <br><br>But it took public complaints from Louise Arbour, the former chief prosecutor, for NATO countries to release more intelligence reports and to use peacekeepers to seize key documents in Bosnia. <br><br>It appears that Carla Del Ponte, the former attorney general of Switzerland who took over as chief prosecutor last fall, has now pressed France into greater action. <br><br>French troops were seen as providing a de facto safe haven for key suspects in their sector of Bosnia, which covers much of the Bosnian Serb republic in the eastern part of the country. <br><br>Mrs. Del Ponte, who gained a record for toughness as a prosecutor fighting organized crime, called on the defense and foreign ministers in Paris in January. On Feb. 29, when President Jacques Chirac of France visited the tribunal, she handed him a piece of paper with the names of three Bosnian Serbs in the French sector whose indictments she had just signed days before. <br><br>Tribunal officials will not identify the two others, but the third, Mr. Krajisnik, was the right-hand man of the Bosnian Serb wartime political leader, Radovan Karadzic, who was indicted by the tribunal in 1995. <br><br>Mr. Krajisnik was pulled out of bed by French troops a month after Mr. Chirac's visit to The Hague. By NATO standards, a month between indictment and arrest is a record time. <br><br>"Contrary to my predecessors, I've had no cooperation problems with France," Mrs. Del Ponte bluntly told Le Monde last week. <br><br>Insiders say it does not hurt either that the new tribunal president is French. Judge Claude Jorda took over from Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, an American, last fall. <br><br>Of course, the tribunal still faces obstacles. With 39 detainees in custody at special cells near The Hague, it now faces a bottleneck. The new government in Croatia, unlike that of the late President Franjo Tudjman, is eager to have indicted Croats face their day in court. It has already handed over a major war crimes suspect, Mladen Naletilic, after years of stalling by Mr. Tudjman. <br><br>There was some talk here last week about whether Mr. Krajisnik's arrest has sent Dr. Karadzic, the tribunal's most wanted political leader, across the border into Serbia, beyond the reach of NATO. <br><br>He is known not to be welcome in the circles of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, his onetime patron. But the capture of Mr. Krajisnik, a close ally, has left Dr. Karadzic more isolated. He is said to move from place to place, accompanied by bodyguards, in the French sector of Bosnia. <br><br>Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime military commander, who personally oversaw the capture of Srebrenica and like Dr. Karadzic has been indicted twice by the tribunal on charges of genocide, has long been in Belgrade. Twelve days ago he even appeared there at a match between the Yugoslav and Chinese soccer teams. <br><br>Some observers of the tribunal fear that the arrest of Mr. Krajisnik may have to be a surrogate for General Mladic and Dr. Karadzic, whose capture, if attempted, is likely to be far riskier. <br><br>Graham Blewitt, the tribunal's deputy prosecutor, said he was optimistic. "We see this new arrest as the precursor of the arrest of Karadzic," he said in an interview. "We want to believe that the French are going to comply with their promise, which is to detain the people who have been indicted in Bosnia." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : War Crimes Panel Picking Up Steam on Balkan Cases``x955358047,85915,``x``x
``xA year after the Kosovo air war, the result of NATO's efforts is a highly volatile mess <br>By Andrew Nagorski<br><br><br>Iri Dienstbier has the disturbing habit of speaking his mind. That's why, when I visited him in the 1980s in communist Czechoslovakia, the former journalist-turned-dissident stoked furnaces for a living. That's why, when Vaclav Havel named him the first foreign minister in a newly free government, he never learned the diplomatic art of obfuscation. And that's why, when he recently presented his conclusions on Kosovo as the special rapporteur of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, he was uncompromisingly blunt. A year after NATO's air war over Kosovo, he declared, the peacekeeping mission there has failed "to achieve a single goal: neither security for people nor freedom of movement, not to mention creating conditions for the development of democratic institutions in a multiethnic society." Driving his message home, he added: "The bombing hasn't solved any problems. It only multiplied the existing problems and created new ones."<br>This is a message Western leaders don't want to hear—and strenuously seek to refute. NATO Secretary General George Robertson, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and others have been making the case that the bombing did achieve its main goal: it allowed the Kosovo Albanians, most of whom were brutally driven out after the war started, to return home and begin the rebuilding process. If Albanians returning to their burned-out villages then resorted to violent reprisals that forced most of Kosovo's Serbs and Romas (Gypsies) to flee, these officials maintain, no one should be surprised. It would be unrealistic to expect that Kosovo can be turned into a tolerant, multiethnic society overnight, they say. Fair enough. But let's not kid ourselves: we didn't have a clear strategy when we blundered into the war in Kosovo, and we don't have any clear plan for what to do now. As demonstrated by last week's clash between U.S. troops and local Serbs in southern Kosovo that left several people injured on both sides, the result is a highly volatile mess. Increasingly, it's also a mess that threatens to sour Americans and Europeans on future military actions in the name of humanitarian ideals.<br><br>Just how bad is the situation on the ground? The earlier revenge-murder rate of 40 to 50 a week has dropped to four or five a week, but there are a lot fewer Serbs and Romas to shoot at. Crime, gangs and the heroin trade are all flourishing. Although they formally disarmed, some elements of the Kosovo Liberation Army have tried to export unrest into Albanian-inhabited areas of Serbia, and Slobodan Milosevic has continued to incite Serbs who remain in Kosovo. While U.N. and NATO officials desperately search for signals that the two communities will start tolerating each another, virulent editorials in Kosovo Albanian newspapers have proclaimed retaliation "a natural instinct" and called Serb children "born killers" who will never reform.<br><br>The international community has hardly risen to the occasion. Bernard Kouchner, the head of the U.N. administration in Kosovo, has few resources at his disposal so far. About 4,700 international policemen are supposed to be on duty there, but 2,000 slots remain unfilled. The EU has been big on promises and slow on delivery of its "stability pact" for the Balkans, which is supposed to provide a massive injection of economic aid. It was so slow in providing money for the staff of the economic reconstruction program, the EU's putative showcase, that Washington anted up the funds for 35 of the 45 staffers. The NATO-led peacekeeping force has dropped to 38,000 from 45,000 earlier, as nations have failed to fully replenish their original contributions.<br><br>The United States has only 6,000 troops in Kosovo, but they are in one of the hottest spots—the southeast sector where about half of the remaining Serbs are concentrated. This isn't an issue in the American presidential campaign yet. Unlike the Elián González case, Al Gore hasn't broken ranks with Clinton, and George W. Bush hasn't been pushing for a U.S. pullout. On Capitol Hill, though, some Republicans are already making such calls, grumbling that the Europeans should take care of the peace since U.S. fighters won the war. And if U.S. troops should get caught in a deadly fight with either the Serbs or Albanians there, all bets about keeping Kosovo out of the presidential race are off.<br><br>Most troubling is the fuzzy future status of Kosovo, which leaves it as a tempting target for extremists of any persuasion. The Rambouillet peace conference was doomed, in part, because it didn't address this issue. Albright got the KLA to sign the agreement by mentioning a referendum about Kosovo's status in three years, but with no explanation of what such a vote would mean. (Historians will have plenty of other Albright mistakes to ponder: her propensity for diplomacy by public ultimatum; her insistence on terms that not even a far more enlightened Serb government could have accepted; her bizarre claim of victory when only one side signed.) Today, NATO still insists on the fiction that Kosovo is a multiethnic autonomous province within Yugoslavia. It ignores the Albanians' push for independence and rules out partition, which is already happening, as a possible solution.<br><br>But it's time to get real, not ruling out anything that might work. Once goals are finally set, the Europeans need to exercise the leadership they keep promising by providing most of the resources and personnel necessary to meet them. The implications of success or failure will be enormous. Peacekeeping missions are proliferating in remote areas—East Timor, Sierra Leone, Georgia. Located in NATO's backyard, Kosovo should be easier. "If we can't turn the situation around in a tiny area with 1.7 million people who are mostly on our side, it's the end of humanitarian interventionism everywhere," argues NATO spokesman Jamie Shea. An overblown prediction, perhaps—but only a tad, I'd say.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNewsweek International : The Perils of Peacekeeping ``x955440745,82207,``x``x
``xBy Charis Owen and Paul Hunter, PA News <br><br><br>A desperately–ill two–year–old Kosovar boy arrived in Scotland tonight for a potentially life–saving operation. <br><br>Visar Zymberi, accompanied by his deaf–mute mother Sadije, left their home in Kosovo at 5am and finally touched down at Aberdeen Airport shortly after 9.30pm. <br><br>He suffers from a congenital oesophageal condition which means he can only swallow liquids. <br><br>Since birth he has been surviving on milk from his mother, who cannot hear or speak, and he will die if he does not receive appropriate medical treatment. <br><br>Administrative director of Aberdeen charity No Frontiers Bob Milne, who arranged the boy's journey to Scotland, said: "They are very, very tired and we are taking them to an address we have organised for them in the city. <br><br>"We'll take them to the hospital tomorrow to see what can be done for Visar." <br><br>The youngster was operated on three times during the first two months of his life, but his fourth operation was abandoned after the outbreak of war in the Balkan region. <br><br>Visar, who lost his father and grandfather during the fighting, comes from the mountain village of Prelofc in the Drenica Valley, which was one of the worst hit regions during the war. <br><br>Scottish charity workers discovered his plight at the end of last year during door–to–door visits in the area and No Frontiers, with the assistance of other members of the Scottish Charities Kosovo Appeal team, helped bring him to the UK. <br><br>A Territorial Army medical team from Aberdeen has carried out an in–field assessment of Visar's condition and reported back to medical experts inScotland. <br><br>Visar is due to be assessed by staff at Aberdeen Royal Children's Hospital who will decide how and where his needs can best be met. <br><br>Mr Milne said Visar's prospects were good if he received treatment, but he would die without help. <br><br>"This operation that we are assuming he needs is not some fantastic unheard–of operation. <br><br>"I wouldn't go so far as to say it is routine but the prognosis for the future is wonderful if he receives medical treatment of some sort or another." <br><br>He said the youngster had his first three operations in Belgrade, but in the current political and military climate it was almost impossible for his mother, an ethnic Kosovar Albanian, to take him back there. <br><br>He said: "You may as well go and have a party on the moon –it would be just as easy. If ever there was an innocent victim of war he is it." <br><br>Mr Milne said in Visar's area, about 95% of the houses had been damaged or destroyed in the war, and the family was currently living in a converted cow shed. <br><br>The United Nations has issued special passports to replace documents destroyed when their house was burned down. <br><br>Visar was accompanied by his mother and uncle, Nexhmedin, as well as interpreters and charity workers. The group flew from Skopje, Macedonia, via London Heathrow. <br><br>An appeal launched by No Frontiers in February to cover the expenses involved has already raise £6,300, but more is still needed. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Sick Kosovar boy flies into UK for treatment ``x955440775,80724,``x``x
``xBy Vernon Loeb<br><br>Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) said yesterday that the Central Intelligence Agency acted appropriately in firing the intelligence officer most responsible for the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade last year, but he questioned why other involved agencies haven't performed their own internal reviews.<br>"We're talking about a systemic breakdown here," said Goss, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "To pull one guy out of the system and say, 'This guy was the perpetrator,' was not the way it was."<br><br>CIA Director George J. Tenet fired the officer and reprimanded six managers, including a senior official, last week for errors that led them to mistakenly identify the Chinese embassy as their intended target, a Yugoslav arms agency, during NATO's 78-day aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia.<br><br>Goss said he believes the Pentagon should have also assessed its role in the tragedy, since officials at one defense intelligence agency, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), have already acknowledged failing to update databases listing the addresses of foreign embassies.<br><br>Goss also said the National Security Council should examine its role in the tragedy, having ruled out the use of ground troops and adopted a policy of nonstop bombing that clearly pushed targeting procedures beyond the breaking point.<br><br><br>IN PUBLIC: Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the supersecret National Security Agency, will make a rare public appearance on Capitol Hill Wednesday to talk about a most sensitive subject--the NSA's procedures for protecting the civil liberties of Americans whose communications are intercepted by the agency.<br><br>It's actually something Hayden likes to talk about in public.<br><br>At a recent appearance at American University's Kennedy Political Union, a student asked about the controversy swirling around Echelon, the code name for a worldwide surveillance network run by the NSA and its partners in Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.<br><br>"I heard about it," Hayden deadpanned.<br><br>He then explained that the NSA doesn't spy on Americans, doesn't ask its foreign partners to spy on Americans, and doesn't channel intelligence information to U.S. corporations.<br><br>"Let me emphasize this," Hayden said. "The Fourth Amendment . . . is supposed to protect unwarranted intrusions in your life all the time, especially when the government might still have the want or need to do it. We don't get close to the Fourth Amendment."<br><br>His public coming-out on the Echelon controversy was supposed to have been before the House Government Reform Committee, chaired by the pugnacious Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.).<br><br>Burton had agreed to investigate concerns of Rep. Robert L. Barr (R-Ga.) that Hayden and Co. may be routinely violating the civil rights of American citizens by intercepting everything from Internet traffic to cellular phone calls.<br><br>But Goss's committee ultimately became the venue for the Wednesday hearing, given its oversight jurisdiction over intelligence gathering programs. The panel promises to be a far less adversarial environment.<br><br>When Goss became embroiled with NSA lawyers last year over the agency's collection procedures, he was concerned they were being too restrictive in applying legal safeguards, not too loose.<br><br>Barr, a former CIA analyst, will be allowed to make a statement at the beginning of the session. He said he welcomes the committee's interest "in examining the serious problems now coming to light with 1970s laws regulating 21st century technology."<br><br><br>WHO'S LEAKING? At a closed committee hearing last week, CIA officials told Goss that they had referred more than 20 leaks of classified information to the Justice Department for investigation since last November, including one involving the agency's inspector general's report on former director John M. Deutch's home computer security violations.<br><br>More than a few at CIA headquarters believed the leak came from Capitol Hill, where the House and Senate intelligence committees had access to the review. Goss said he had looked into the matter and believes "the Hill may have been a little complicit" in offering expansive comments on the report. But he said he's satisfied no one on his staff was the leaker.<br><br>Vernon Loeb's email address is loebv@washpost.com ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWashington Post : Back Channels: The Intelligence Community ``x955440820,90886,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, April 11 (Reuters) - Serbia's parliament passed a law on Tuesday on the election of federal deputies that the opposition saw as a way of strengthening Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's grip on power. <br>The authorities defended the move as a necessary step to comply with constitutional law. Their opponents said it was designed to exclude Milosevic's political foes from the federal parliament, where they have threatened to try to impeach him. <br><br>The new law, which follows a ruling in November by the federal constitutional court that the previous one was illegal, was passed with 169 votes in favour, four against and one abstention out of 174 deputies present in the 250-seat parliament. <br><br>Opposition parties say the law gives the ruling parties, which dominate the Serbian parliament, effective control over who gets sent from there to the federal parliament. <br><br>"This law will ensure the election of a suitable delegation which will prevent any vote of distrust in the supreme commander (Milosevic)," Marjan Risticevic, of the opposition Vojvodina Coalition, told Reuters before the session. <br><br>Ratko Markovic, a Serbian deputy prime minister known as Milosevic's legal expert, disagreed, saying parties would be represented fairly as long as they turned up. <br><br>MAIN OPPOSITION BOYCOTTS SESSION <br><br>The main opposition Serbian Renewal Movement boycotted the session in protest at the authorities' refusal to hold a parliamentary inquiry into the deaths of four party officials in a car crash last year, a crash the party blames on the state. <br><br>"With this bill, Serbia has confirmed the priority of the federal legal system and federal institutions and its loyalty to the federal state," Markovic said. <br><br>His words were clearly directed at Montenegro, which launched a boycott of all federal institutions after its newly-elected deputies were blocked from parliament, where Serbia and Montenegro are meant to hold 20 seats each in the upper house. <br><br>Montenegro, which has been at odds with Milosevic since its people elected a pro-Western president in 1997, has also threatened to call a referendum on independence if the Serbia-dominated federation is not reformed. <br><br>Some in the West, where a U.N. tribunal has indicted Milosevic for war crimes in Kosovo, have been trying to encourage Montenegro to join with the Serbian opposition to try to oust Milosevic, with impeachment as one possible option. <br><br>However, some analysts say that even if Montenegro dropped its boycott, impeachment would be impossible because parliament is already weighted in Milosevic's favour. <br><br>They view the new law as a prelude to a possible change in either the Serbian or Yugoslav constitution to allow Milosevic, who is due to step down in the middle of next year, to stay in power. <br><br>Stevan Lilic, professor of constitutional law and an opposition leader, said the new law could be a trigger for a new Serbian constitution. <br><br>"Once they get a new constitution, the meter of a new mandate will start ticking for Slobodan Milosevic," he said, when the new law was first announced. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReuters : Serb parliament passes law seen boosting Milosevic``x955526570,64882,``x``x
``xBELGRADE (Reuters) - Several hundred people gathered in Belgrade Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the unsolved murder of a prominent journalist and publisher. <br>"Even today we do not know who murdered him, but we do know he was killed because of his words," a speaker told some 200 people packed into Belgrade's Media Center for a solemn commemoration ceremony for Slavko Curuvija. <br><br>Another crowd blocked a road in the city center to unveil a plaque saying Curuvija died for his "sharp and critical words." <br><br>Curuvija, the outspoken founder and owner of the daily newspaper Dnevni Telegraf and periodical Evropljanin, was gunned down outside his Belgrade apartment block the third week into last year's NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia. <br><br>Five days earlier, state television had broadcast a commentary by a pro-government daily accusing him of treason and of welcoming NATO bombs, something Curuvija's supporters have said amounted to a call for a lynching. <br><br>Opposition leaders said the murder was aimed at sowing fear among opponents of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>"In a country where the regime's only goal is to stay in power, the victims are guilty, any punishment is just and silence is the best response," prominent columnist Aleksandar Tijanic told the ceremony. <br><br>"Our eyes, so used to darkness, will take a long time to get used to the light," he added. <br><br>In the year since Curuvija was killed, police have released no details of their investigation. But Serbia's ultra-nationalist deputy prime minister said on Tuesday he was killed in a criminal showdown. <br><br>"He did not die as a journalist but as a criminal, in a clash among criminals," Vojislav Seselj told the Serbian parliament Tuesday. He did not elaborate. <br><br>A year ago, Curuvija, who had published articles extremely critical of Milosevic, seemed to have known he was in danger. <br><br>"They can only stop me if they kill me. After me, it will be everyone else's turn," Curuvija's colleague Mitar Jakovlevski quoted him as saying shortly before his death. <br><br>Serbia has seen dozens of unsolved murders in recent years, including the Serbian police chief and Yugoslav defense minister, who was gunned down in a restaurant in February. <br><br>Curuvija's daily was banned in 1998 for "spreading fear, panic and defeatism" about possible NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia over its repression of the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo. Both it and the weekly had previously been fined. <br><br>Both publications were re-registered in Montenegro, which unlike its larger partner Serbia favors liberal reform. When NATO started bombing in March last year, Curuvija stopped publishing to avoid subjecting his papers to war censorship. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReuters : Several hundred mark Serb journalist's murder``x955526745,15853,``x``x
``xThe fragile relations between Kosovo's bitterly divided communities have received a boost after a Serb representative attended a session of the province's interim government. <br>The move - which ends a boycott of over four months - is being regarded as a sign that they are ready to renew cooperation with rival ethnic Albanians.<br><br>The UN-supervised government meeting was attended by Bernard Kouchner, the UN administrator of Kosovo, as well as ethnic Albanian leaders Ibrahim Rugova and Hashim Thaci. Observing on behalf of Kosovo's moderate Serbs was Rada Trajkovic.<br><br>Kouchner appeared enthusiastic after the two-hour meeting, saying he expected Serb hardliners who oppose any cooperation with ethnic Albanians to eventually join the power-sharing body.<br><br>"It was the very beginning of something looking like the way to democracy," Kouchner said. "At the beginning it was a bit tense for Rada Trajkovic but some minutes after she became more open and it was a normal meeting.... They talked to each other like colleagues. The place of the Serbs is with us ... in the provisional administration of Kosovo." <br><br>Trajkovic also was upbeat. "We hope this will be the beginning for solving problems," she said, adding that one of the Serb community's chief goals was the return of Serbs who fled the province after the UN and NATO took over the running of the province when Yugoslav forces loyal to President Slobodan Milosevic retreated from Kosovo.<br><br>On Monday, a representative of Kosovo's Serbs outlined plans for some 20,000 Serbs to return to villages across the province that before the war had all-Serb populations and are not near ethnic Albanian settlements.<br><br>"I expect to come to meetings without an armed vehicle and escort," added Trajkovic, alluding to the security measures surrounding her appearance in Pristina, where no more than a few hundred Serbs are believed to remain. "This small wish of mine will be hard work for the international community." <br><br>Thaci described the atmosphere as "very good" adding that the ethnic Serbs and Albanians had to live together. The session was a rare positive development in Kosovo, where ethnic violence remains a near daily occurrence, with many victims Serbs targeted by ethnic Albanians seeking to get even for the nearly year-long Serb crackdown.<br><br>Tensions between ethnic Albanians, who make up more than 90 percent of the population and the estimated 100,000 Serbs remaining in Kosovo are still running high, almost a year after the NATO air war that led to the withdrawal of forces loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Discussed at the session were the return of Serbs to Kosovo, security issues, student elections, regulations on the electronic media and agriculture, said officials. The next session will take place in a week. The Serbs plan to decide whether to become full members of the council after three months.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xITN : Kosovo Serbs end boycott of government ``x955526774,71639,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, April 11 -- As hundreds of people today remembered a journalist executed on the street a year ago during the NATO bombing campaign, the Yugoslav authorities stepped up their campaign to intimidate and impoverish the independent press. <br><br>Many of those who came today to honor the journalist, Slavko Curuvija, were not great fans when he was alive. But with his death perceived as martyrdom, he has been transformed into a figure he himself would probably not recognize. <br><br>Mr. Curuvija, a publisher who had once been close to President Slobodan Milosevic and his wife, Mirjana Markovic, had turned against the regime. His killing was understood as a message to the independent press that overt criticism would not be tolerated during the war. <br><br>Today, in ceremonies at his grave and a downtown media center and at the unveiling of a plaque on the street where he was gunned down on Orthodox Easter as he walked with his wife, he was praised for defending press freedom and refusing to publish under wartime censorship. <br><br><br>The occasion was a chance for opposition politicians and journalists to show solidarity as the government continues a war of nerves and lawsuits against the press. <br><br>Today, the weekly magazine Vreme and its two top editors were fined a total of 350,000 dinars -- about $8,750 -- in a suit brought by the culture minister for a February article that said he arranged the firing of a theater director. <br><br>It was the first time that Vreme -- a magazine of opinion with a circulation under 20,000 -- had been fined under Yugoslavia's draconian Public Information Law, passed in October 1998. The first victims of the law were Mr. Curuvjia and his magazine, Evropljanin. Neither it nor his successful tabloid newspaper, Dnevni Telegraf, survived him. <br><br>On Monday, Studio B, the Belgrade television station that is the political opposition's main voice, was fined the maximum amount, 300,000 dinars, after a suit by a police official. The station's editor, Dragan Kojadinovic, was fined half that amount, also the maximum under the law. <br><br>But he said neither fine would be paid. "The government can now do whatever they want, but we will defend our rights," he said. <br><br>The law enables the government to indict, prosecute, convict and fine a newspaper or television station within 48 hours. <br><br>With the loss of Kosovo, the Belgrade authorities have stepped up their use of the law and applied it more broadly to radio and television stations, particularly those in the more than 30 cities and towns controlled by the opposition. The government has also started confiscating equipment if stations do not pay broadcast fees. <br><br>The intention is to drain the independent media of funds -- though some of the fines have been paid by foreign supporters like George Soros -- and to encourage self-censorship. <br><br>The government has also accused the independent media of being in the pay of the NATO countries that bombed Yugoslavia and that want to replace Mr. Milosevic. Journalists are being called traitors and "Gestapo underlings" by the Serbian information minister, Aleksandar Vucic of the nationalist Radical Party. <br><br>But Goran Svilanovic, president of an opposition party called Civic Alliance, says that the regime also intends to demonstrate the opposition's inability to defend the press that generally supports it. <br><br>"Milosevic shows his muscles," Mr. Svilanovic said today. "He's showing that he can do these things to the media and that we cannot protect them." <br><br>The regime has also used the courts to take over control of a popular evening tabloid newspaper, Vecernje Novosti, and the independent radio station, B-92, now reborn under the wing of Studio B as B2-92. It has repeatedly brought successful cases against the newspapers Danas and Glas Javnosti and against ABC Grafika, which publishes Glas Javnosti. The government has also rolled back small price increases for papers like the popular tabloid Blic, making it much more difficult to cover costs of increasingly expensive newsprint, and it is denying papers licenses to import newsprint. <br><br>Officials deny any campaign to muzzle the press. The federal information minister, Goran Matic, said last week that every station had to pay the broadcast fees it owes, as in any other country. "Stories about closing down media are lies and manipulation," he said. <br><br>Today, at a commemoration for Mr. Curuvija, a former spokesman for Mr. Milosevic, Aleksandar Tijanic, said that Mr. Curuvija "paid the full price for his words and his thoughts" and that all Serbs should consider how brave they had been since the killing. In a country where "politicians and criminals work the same stage," he said, the fact that Mr. Curuvija lies in the ground "does not mean that he is dead and that we are alive." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Belgrade Stepping Up Intimidation of Journalists``x955526796,62416,``x``x
``xBELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbian police Wednesday blamed foreign intelligence services for an explosion that damaged a branch of the ruling Socialist Party in Belgrade. <br>Col. Milenko Ercic, head of the capital's criminal police, said the Tuesday night blast was a terrorist act designed to create chaos ahead of an opposition rally against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic Friday. <br><br>"The throwing of the explosive device ... tells us about the increased activities of foreign intelligence services and their likely connections with certain opposition parties which would benefit from chaos on the streets of Belgrade," he said. <br><br>Opposition leaders denied any involvement and said the blast was a set-up by the state to raise tensions ahead of the rally. <br><br>Ercic said his officers had arrested three young men shortly after the explosion and confiscated an automatic weapon, ammunition and false identity documents from Hungary, Croatia and Montenegro from them, Beta news agency reported. <br><br>He gave no further details. <br><br>Vuk Draskovic, head of the Serbian Renewal Movement, said the government was trying to terrify its own people so it could cling to power despite growing public discontent with its rule. <br><br>"They now need to provoke something to blame others for the things they did," he told Reuters. <br><br>The opposition has been at pains to avoid clashes with the authorities during its eight-month-old campaign of street protests to try to oust Milosevic by forcing him to call free and fair elections which they believe they would win. <br><br> <br><br>FEAR OF VIOLENCE DEEPENS PUBLIC APATHY <br><br>But fear of violence after several instances in which police beat demonstrators last year was one factor leading to daily protests in Belgrade running out of steam. <br><br>The recently united opposition has called for a new mass rally in the capital for Friday, in the hope that by joining forces they will be able to attract a big crowd to the streets and add to pressure for a vote. <br><br>Branislav Ivkovic, a senior Socialist Party official and science and technology minister, told a news conference the rally organizers had arranged the blast on behalf of NATO, which bombed Yugoslavia last year over Milosevic's policy in Kosovo. <br><br>"This was an act of those who will Friday try to advocate a program that does not exist, whose only aim is to get into power and justify the NATO aggression," he said. <br><br>Ivkovic said he had left the local party office in the central Vracar district with his wife and children after a meeting with youth leaders minutes before the plastic explosive went off at 11:10 p.m. (5:10 p.m. EDT), blowing out its windows. <br><br>Dusan Cuckovic, of the youth branch of the Socialist Party, told Reuters he was in the building when the blast occurred. <br><br>Asked who might have been behind the explosion, he shrugged. "It's a struggle for the New World order. Our enemies are very well financed," he said. <br><br>The youth wing of the Democratic Party, a leading force in the opposition alliance that blames Milosevic for years of conflict, international isolation and economic crisis, said the incident could be used as a trigger for more violence. <br><br>"The question is who could profit from this incident -- the opposition that is getting ready for the rally, or the regime who could make it an excuse to severely punish 'foreign traitors' and 'fifth column'?" it said in a statement. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReuters: Serb police blame foreign intelligence for blast``x955614919,36654,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, April 12 (Reuters) - Serbia's President Milan Milutinovic had a heart attack over the weekend and underwent a triple bypass operation, a newspaper said on Wednesday. <br>A statement carried by the state news agency Tanjug on Monday had said only that Milutinovic, 57, had undergone heart surgery, adding that it was a "planned" operation. <br><br>A source close to Milutinovic confirmed the heart attack, saying it was the second he had suffered in recent years. <br><br>Both the paper and the agency said he was recovering well. <br><br>"President Milutinovic underwent the triple bypass surgery in the Centre after a heart attack and was operated on by cardio surgeon Reik Huskic," the independent daily Danas said, quoting "unofficial" sources. <br><br>It said Milutinovic had gone into the "Dedinje" clinic in Belgrade early on Monday and security was tightened that evening when Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had been expected to visit. It did not say if the visit took place. <br><br>Milosevic holds ultimate power over Serbia, which dominates the current two-republic Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro, but if Milutinovic had to step down over ill health, elections would follow that could weaken that power. <br><br>Serbia's constitution stipulates that the parliament speaker would step in for a maximum of two months pending early presidential elections, something Serbia's opposition has been calling for for months, along with a parliamentary ballot. <br><br>Milutinovic and Milosevic, along with three other top officials, have been indicted by a U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague for alleged atrocities their forces committed in the Kosovo conflict in 1998-1999. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReuters: Serbia's president had triple heart bypass - paper``x955614944,88133,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br>ELGRADE, Serbia, April 12 -- In a bizarre reversal, Yugoslav state television withdrew an invitation today for an opposition politician to appear on a live discussion program tonight on the ground that another opposition politician refused to appear. <br>The official Radio Television Serbia at first canceled the program altogether, less than an hour before it was to be broadcast live, then went ahead with the broadcast, but without Zoran Djindjic, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party. <br><br>In a labored explanation by the announcer, the station said that because another opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic of the Serbian Renewal Movement, had refused to appear, "we thought it would be advisable to ask them again at another opportunity." <br><br>Mr. Djindjic, who has not appeared on state television since 1994, agreed to take part as an opportunity to win publicity for the opposition, despite the topic of the program, "The Fifth Column," designed to portray the opposition as traitors in the pay of the NATO countries that bombed Serbia. Mr. Draskovic, who controls his own television station, Studio B, refused to appear because he did not want to let state television, "which is a medium of state propaganda, appear to be open and democratic," said one of his top advisers, Ognjen Pribicevic. <br><br>Coming just two days before a major opposition rally in Belgrade on Friday, the incident made the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic appear indecisive or even fearful of the impact that Mr. Djindjic might make. Opposition officials assumed that state television expected both opposition leaders would reject the invitation. <br><br><br>Earlier today, in an interview, Mr. Djindjic said he would answer all criticisms and invite viewers to come to the rally on Friday "to hear for themselves what these so-called traitors have to say." The puzzle was less why he agreed to appear, he said, "than why they decided to ask me." <br><br>The program went on with other scheduled politicians from each party of the governing coalition: Vojislav Seselj, the slashing leader of the nationalist Radical Party; Nikola Sainovic of Mr. Milosevic's Socialist Party (who has been indicted by the Hague tribunal for his role in Kosovo); and Milovan Bojic of the Yugoslav United Left party of Mr. Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic. <br><br>Mr. Seselj said that Mr. Djindjic was willing to come, "but this would have looked like the three of us were ganging up on this poor, lonely Djindjic," and that Mr. Draskovic "simply did not have the courage to confront his opponents." He added that when the two opposition leaders were ready to debate together, they should call, and "we'll carry on this political struggle with the force of our opinions through debate and not the lies and libels that Vuk Draskovic indulges in." Mr. Draskovic, Mr. Seselj said, "cannot be half fish and half girl." <br><br>Mr. Bojic said that the two opposition leaders, saying they were now united, had become a couple, and "it would not have been within the bounds of fair play simply to debate Mr. Djindjic." <br><br>But those explanations seemed lame, given that Mr. Djindjic was quite happy to appear without his opposition rival, Mr. Draskovic, who has himself not appeared on state television since he left the federal government last year, during the war. <br><br>The three politicians went on for two and a half hours to accuse the opposition of being in the pay of Washington and attacked the Serbs still in Kosovo for cooperating with the United Nations. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Belgrade TV Shuts Out a Milosevic Rival``x955614964,10015,``x``x
``x<br>By Christian Jennings in Pristina <br><br>13 April 2000 <br><br>Kosovo Albanians deported from Switzerland clashedviolently with United Nations police at Pristina airport yesterday in protest at their forcible repatriation. <br><br>UN police officers based at the airport struggled across the asphalt with some of the 15 Kosovo Albanians with criminal backgrounds who had arrived on a deportation flight from Zurich, alongside an estimated 45 Kosovo refugees deported because their requests for asylum had been refused. <br><br>"You are racists, I had a right to be in Switzerland," shouted one man, hands in plastic handcuffs, escorted by three police officers from the flight to an area where he was fingerprinted. Another man was forcibly restrained by seven policemen as hescreamed protests at having been deported. One officer was bitten by a deportee in the mêlée, the head of UN police at the airport, Lincoln Dinning, said. <br><br>An estimated 20 officers were involved in leading the deportees off the flight, which arrived just after midday, the first of four deportation flights from Germany and Switzerland to arrive yesterday at Slatina airport, Pristina. <br><br>Those on board were arrested in three cantons around Zurich and Berne, held in detention centres and then flown to Kosovo, accompanied by Swiss police. Switzerland will return between 20,000 and 35,000 Kosovo Albanians before the end of the year. <br><br>In conjunction with the International Organisation for Migration, the Swiss authorities have given Kosovo Albaniansillegally in Switzerland until the end of this month to register under a voluntary repatriation programme. If they have not registered in time, they will be deported. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Deported arrivals clash with UN police ``x955615019,10946,``x``x
``x<br>UN administrator Bernard Kouchner denounces the forced deportation of thousands of Albanians by Western governments <br><br>By Stephen Castle in Brussels <br><br>13 April 2000 <br><br>Governments are deporting tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians to Kosovo as the surge of generosity shown by the world in response to Slobodan Milosevic's repression of the province evaporates. <br><br>The deportations were denounced yesterday by Kosovo's UN administrator, Bernard Kouchner. "We don't want them to come back at the same time," Mr Kouchner said. "Some of the children are in school in these host countries. What about the forced returns?" <br><br>Of nearly 96,000 Kosovars officially sent to the West by the UN last year, almost 90 per cent have returned of their own accord. Western governments are now making efforts to get rid of the remainder. Some countries are sending back more than they officially took in, filling planes with thousands of others who made their own way out of Kosovo. International officials warn the abrupt influx could seriously destabilise the fragile peace in Kosovo. Germany, for example, has started deporting dozens of convicted criminals. <br><br>Under the United Nations' Humanitarian Evacuation Programme, a total of 95,927 people were rescued from Kosovo – rather fewer than the 134,482 that the UNHCR says have gone back. <br><br>The two biggest batches of returns so far were from Germany, which took in 14,689 last year but has sent back 25,109, and Switzerland which admitted 1,687 but has sent back 19,669. <br><br>The discrepancy arises because many Kosovars arrived at borders under their own steam, or had already been in the West before last year's fighting. But as one aid worker put it bluntly: "The policy of the governments towards refugees is getting tougher; they have no shame any more." <br><br>David Boratav, Kosovo officer for the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, argues that the most significant threat is not of mass forcible returns but of a gradual erosion of conditions in the host countries. <br><br>He said: "A lot of people are going to be put under pressure because of the cutting of benefits for temporary protected persons or the downgrading of their status – for example, in Germany, from the category of 'war refugee' to 'toleratedperson'. <br><br>"It is likely that most states are going to find ways of downgrading the status of refugees to the level that people will conclude that there is no option for them but to return." <br><br>The right of all those who fled Kosovo to apply for political asylum in the West is being undermined, Mr Boratav argues. "It is unacceptable, at the moment, for people to be returned to Kosovo in a forcible way." <br><br>What worries pressure groups is that the most vulnerable people will be browbeaten into returning. Several categories could be at physical or psychological risk, including those in mixed marriages, those who deserted from the Kosovo Liberation Army or those who disobeyed its injunctions. Victims of rape or sexual abuse may be particularly unwilling to return to the scene of the offence. <br><br>Jacques Franquin, spokes-man for the UNHCR, said: "We are not going to argue with the fact that Kosovars are returned by host countries. That was part of the deal. But we do want governments to consider cases on humanitarian grounds." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Kosovo refugees spurned by nations worldwide ``x955615115,25164,``x``x
``xCHRISTOPHER HITCHENS <br><br>Pristina/Gracanica, Kosovo <br>Clouds of blackbirds still do go wheeling and shrieking above Kosovo Polje, the bleak and windy site of the great Turkish victory over Serbia (and Albania) in 1389. The Field of Blackbirds itself is now surmounted by an ugly if imposing monument, on which is inscribed: "Those who have a Serb heart and do not come to fight for Kosovo will have neither male nor female children, crops or wine. They will be damned until they die."<br><br>Despite or perhaps because of its tribalism and bluster, this is a strangely unimpressive incantation: Millions of Serbs have had offspring--even female--and harvested the crops and the vintages without obeying the injunction. And the damned ones are those who fled Kosovo in abject terror and defeat, rather than face the consequences of what their death squads had done here. They saved neither honor nor territory. Today, the place where Slobodan Milosevic launched his terrible career with a demagogic speech to the Kosovo Serb chauvinists on the 600th anniversary of the battle in 1989 is guarded by soldiers of the UN. A few furlongs down the road, a jerry-built housing project, constructed for Serb settlers from the Krajina in an effort to shift the demographic balance a bit, is now occupied by Kosovar Albanian refugees.<br><br>A certain kind of Western intellectual, before the war in Kosovo, was addicted to saying that the province was Serbia's Holy Land or Jerusalem: a place of sacrifice and redemption and consecrated sites. Actually, what Kosovo was for many years was Serbia's West Bank or Gaza; a territory where the indigenous majority could be treated like dirt in the name of spurious ancient mythologies.<br><br>The Serbian Orthodox Church has had a lot to answer for here in helping to identify race and nation with faith and in promulgating an essentially fascistic view of the national question. However, the little town of Gracanica, just ten miles outside the capital of Pristina in the opposite direction from the Field of Blackbirds, affords a nice contrast. In this enclave of Serb inhabitants, and operating from the base of an exquisite little monastery dating back even earlier in the same fourteenth century, may be found Archbishop Artemije Radosavljevik and his secretary, Father Sava Janjic.<br><br>"Father Sava," as he is known, runs an extensive Kosovo-Serb website and describes Milosevic as "the cancer of Europe." He helped protect Albanians during the pogrom of last year, and has publicly accepted Serbian responsibility for the attempted erasure of the Albanian presence--Christian, Muslim and secular--in the province. Currently, he is battling to avert reprisals against the remaining Serb population. For this reason, he and his bishop logically and morally oppose the ongoing expulsion of Albanians from the Milosevic-dominated enclave in Mitrovica. As my comrade Stephen Schwartz so dialectically put it, the Serb extremists want to keep Kosovo part of Serbia; Father Sava wants to keep Serbs part of Kosovo.<br><br>This distinction is narrow but very deep. And it is not, by the NATO powers, well understood. Fourteen NATO armies and several UN contingents occupy Kosovo soil, as brazen an interference in anyone's "internal affairs" as could be found. Yet they do so under a mandate that proclaims the "territorial integrity" of federal Yugoslavia. When Bernard Kouchner, the French human rights activist and UN proconsul, speaks of political arrangements for the territory he is allowed to go no further than bromides about "autonomy." When elections are mentioned, as they are in a somewhat embarrassed tone, they are understood to be merely "local" and "municipal." (Incidentally, all tests of Kosovar opinion show that if real national elections were held they would be easily won by Ibrahim Rugova, the former leader of the civic and nonviolent resistance, and badly lost by the KLA.)<br><br>The absence of principle and direction is palpable and visible. All those army engineers and all that hardware, and almost a year later the power is out in the capital city as often as not. The roads are still pitted and scarred, the landscape is strewn with debris, the salaries of the international and humanitarian community seem to be paid ad hoc. The telephones don't work, even though Kosovo may become the first place in the world to have an all-cellphone network by the end of this year. This high-tech improvisation only emphasizes the other failures. However, Pristina does have a thriving subculture of bars, cafes, restaurants and clubs, and in one of these I met a senior European on Kouchner's staff. He carefully listed and answered my criticisms: The NATO countries had promised too much too soon; there was a crisis of high expectations among the Kosovars after what they had been through; the Serbian occupiers had sabotaged a good deal before running away; some important jobs had been given to incompetent KLA sympathizers in the first chaos of victory. But then, having performed his bureaucratic duty as an international civil servant, he said: "You live in Washington. Why not ask what half a day of bombing cost, compared to what we need here?"<br><br>I didn't quite know how to tell him that this irony--if it is an irony--is subject to diminishing returns. The American right was generally against the rescue of Kosovo in any case, while much of the left--including myself for a time--consoled and continues to console itself with the half-truth that intervention only made matters worse. In fact, the Kosovo war marked the first and only time in the twentieth century that ethno-fascism was stopped, and reversed, while it was still in progress.<br><br>The Albanian people, who were forcibly segregated from contact with the world for longer than any European population, are yearning to make up for the lost time. They seem to have picked the wrong election cycle in which to present their inconvenient selves, but all talk of our own "multicultural" values is vacuous while our regime splits the difference between Milosevic and Father Sava, or between Serbs in Kosovo and Kosovo in Serbia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Nation : Kosovo on Hold ``x955699782,56112,``x``x
``xBritain foots bill for repairs to prison destroyed by Nato air raids<br>Owen Bowcott in Istok <br><br>The blast patterns from exploding grenades are still visible on the bakery floor. Cell blocks and gate houses have crumpled under the impact of aerial bombardment. In a basement, a spray of dried blood stains the wall. <br>Istok prison, Kosovo's largest detention centre, was attacked repeatedly by Nato war planes during last year's conflict. More than 20 prisoners and guards were reported to have died during the air raids and it now appears that scores more may have perished when Serb forces opened fire on inmates gathering for a roll-call. <br><br>But in two months the jail is scheduled to reopen under the control of a new prison governor, from Northern Ireland. Britain's Department for International Development (DfID) is paying £700,000 to repair the severely damaged complex as part of its £110m expenditure on Kosovo. <br><br>There is a desperate shortage of prisons in Kosovo to hold both war crimes suspects awaiting trial, and the few people already sentenced. Anyone arrested for a serious crime such as arson is released, because there are only 280 places in smaller jails in Pristina, Prizren, Mitrovice and in the American Camp Bondsteel. <br><br>Istok will provide space for 500 inmates, who will mainly live four to a cell. The new governor, Billy Irvine, is a veteran of Northern Ireland's troubles, having served in the Maze and Maghaberry jails. <br><br>Istok will contain only ethnic Albanian men. Serb prisoners are already separated for their own safety and sent to the jail in Mitrovice. Women and young offenders go to a special unit in Prizren. <br><br>The DfID was initially sceptical about using resources to lock up people, but then officials became convinced that a functioning criminal justice system was essential for Kosovo to return to normality. Istok may not be the first foreign prison to receive British government aid, but it is the largest of such penal projects. <br><br>"The aim is to rebuild the prison as fast as possible," said Dr Mukesh Kapila, the head of the DfID's conflict and humanitarian affairs department, while on a visit to Istok. <br><br>The DfID's cash has been spent on a broad range of projects in Kosovo. New runway landing systems have been installed at Pristina airport, a hospital has been re-equipped, damaged electricity sub-stations are undergoing restoration and UK organisations are disposing of mines and unexploded bombs. This year the department expects to pay out at least another £30m towards the reconstruction of Kosovo. <br><br>Istok prison, which stands in the Drenica valley, appears on arrival to be almost in ruins. <br><br>Built in the mid-1980s, it contained more than 1,200 inmates by May last year. Most of them were ethnic Albanians who were arrested by Serb forces on suspicion of being members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. <br><br>"Repairing this is all part of getting law and order back to normal," said Mr Irvine. "It will be Kosovo's most secure unit and should create jobs for 380 prison officers. <br><br>"The staff, mostly local Albanians, will have to be re-trained. There are 4,000 outstanding criminal cases in Kosovo, so we will have lots of sentenced prisoners soon." <br><br>As reconstruction progressed, evidence emerged of killings of ethnic Albanian detainees by Serb forces. "A number of former inmates have shown up in recent weeks, having just been released from Serb jails. They all say they were here during a massacre before the bombing," said Mark Pauline a Canadian official. <br><br>"The bodies of 97 prisoners were found in a mass grave outside the prison. The international war crimes tribunal is investigating the murders of 173 people here. <br><br>"We were told they [the Serb guards] took all the prisoners out on to the sports field for a roll-call. Then they opened fire. The wall behind is pitted with bullet holes. Afterwards they went into the cell blocks, throwing in grenades and firing into air ducts where people were hiding." <br><br>Because of the bomb damage, some of which was inflicted by the RAF, not all buildings can be used. Prison visits will take place in the old gymnasium, and a hospital is being improvised. <br><br>The need to retrain prison staff is another problem. After 1989, Istok's ethnic Albanian guards were progressively dismissed - the last Albanian on the staff went in 1994 - and replaced by ethnic Serbs. <br><br>Since the defeat of the Yugoslav army last year, most Serbs have fled to Serbia, leaving mainly ethnic Albanians to be recruited. Their experience may be five to 10 years out of date but Mr Irvine and senior Canadian prisoner officers working alongside him hope eventually to return the institution to Kosovans. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Maze veteran helps bring back rule of law to Kosovo ``x955699813,71266,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, April 13 -- Serbia's political opposition, superficially united after months of squabbling and pressure from the West, will hold a major political rally here on Friday but with no hope of pushing President Slobodan Milosevic out of power anytime soon. <br>With unclear goals and few specific plans for what to do next, the opposition hopes the rally will give voice to the widespread dissatisfaction with Mr. Milosevic, but no longer expects to attain its original aim of forcing early elections at all levels. Still, opposition leaders say pressure for elections is the most efficient and least risky tactic they could find. <br><br>"We're pressing for early elections -- what else can we do?" said Ognjen Pribicevic, chief adviser to the dominant opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic of the Serbian Renewal Movement. "Our only weapon is elections, elections. This rally will be a big 'no' to the regime and to state terrorism and a big 'yes' to elections. But after a million quarrels, we will be united on stage for the first time since 1997." <br><br>The rally will call for elections with no expectation of having even local elections before autumn. And the organizers also don't expect the crucial Serbian elections, which will not take place until at least the summer or autumn of 2001 -- after the Clinton administration has left office -- to result in any quick or peaceful transfer of power. <br><br>Speaking privately, they say their main hope is that a good showing by a relatively united opposition -- say, 10 or more percentage points better than the ruling coalition in the Serbian elections -- would lead the Milosevic regime to finally crack apart. <br><br>Moreover, the rally will not erase the festering fissures within the opposition, and its central dilemma: while most Serbs don't like Mr. Milosevic, they don't like this generation of opposition leaders much either. <br><br>Even Zoran Djindjic, who heads the Democratic Party and has had a long-running rivalry with Mr. Draskovic, acknowledges that opposition leaders have a credibility problem that is rooted in political failure. <br><br>And new faces are also having a hard time. Mr. Djindjic's popular young deputy, Slobodan Vuksanovic, challenged him for the party leadership when Mr. Djindjic did not resign his post in January, as he had promised to do if Mr. Milosevic remained in office. <br><br>Mr. Djindjic, organizing a trip to Washington and a brief meeting with President Clinton just before the party convention, barely beat off Mr. Vuksanovic's challenge. Mr. Djindjic has since moved harshly to rid the party of Mr. Vuksanovic's main supporters. <br><br>"Djindjic staying contributes to the sense of a frozen political system, and a frozen political system is what Milosevic wants," Mr. Vuksanovic said. "People are very angry with the Milosevic regime, but they don't trust the opposition." <br><br>Radomir Diklic, who runs the independent news agency, Beta, says the opposition needs new faces and a change of generation, and notes that one such fresh face, 36-year-old Goran Svilanovic, is running advertisements to promote himself that way. "There's no energy, no self-confidence and lost credibility," Mr. Diklic said. "Maybe 80 percent of the population are unhappy with the present situation, but maybe 60 percent are not happy voting for this opposition." <br><br>The rivalry between Mr. Djindjic and Mr. Draskovic is legendary, and stems from their broken alliance in 1997, when the opposition won the last local elections and Mr. Milosevic's effort to rob them of the victory brought hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets every day for three months. <br><br>But Mr. Djindjic's efforts to overthrow Mr. Milosevic through daily rallies last summer and fall, after the loss of Kosovo in the war, were a clear failure. Mr. Draskovic's strategy to force the regime into having early elections on all levels -- local, federal and state -- has also failed. <br><br>"Our unity is produced by these two failures," said Mr. Svilanovic, the leader of the Civic Alliance, a small party in the Alliance for Change that Mr. Djindjic's party dominates and that Mr. Draskovic refused to join. <br><br>With Mr. Draskovic again dominant, the formally allied opposition announced on Jan. 10 that it would have a rally by the end of March to press for early elections. There was so much infighting about whether to have such a rally, who would speak, in what order and on what topics that Mr. Svilanovic said the other day that he was "ashamed" of the opposition. <br><br>With the rally now going ahead on Friday, April 14, the joke is that it will take place on the "45th day of March." But there are few hopes that it will have any major impact, unless it turns violent, and real concerns that it will simply disappoint normal citizens who will attend and want a clear strategy for change. <br><br>The rally is being held on the Square of the Republic, which will look packed with even 50,000 people. <br><br>"In January, the rally was part of our common strategy for early elections," Mr. Svilanovic said. "Then it became an issue on its own, without a strategy, to show unity. But it must be followed by some action to show people that we are alive." <br><br>Srdjan Bogosavljevic, a respected pollster who runs the Strategic Marketing and Media Research Institute, says that Mr. Milosevic "still has a lot to play for" in the vital Serbian elections. His polls show that 39 percent of the electorate are undecided and nearly 12 percent will not vote -- half the voters. Of the other half, the opposition is only 5 percentage points ahead of the ruling coalition. <br><br>And he points out that the nationalist Radical Party always wins more votes than the polls indicate, making the race now nearly neck-and-neck, with the regime in control of the main television station, which is the way most people get news. <br><br>"People are dissatisfied with Milosevic and want change," Mr. Bogosavljevic said. "But they also believe what they hear about the opposition leaders," who are labeled corrupt, traitors in the pay of NATO and worse in the official media. <br><br>Although many oppose him, Mr. Milosevic has earned some credit for keeping promises and getting the population through its first post-bombing winter. Despite widespread predictions from the opposition and NATO capitals that severe energy and heating shortages would occur because of bomb damage, Serbs were warmer this winter than the residents of Kosovo, where NATO and the United Nations administration had enormous trouble providing electricity. The government has rebuilt many of the highway and railway bridges NATO bombed and rebuilt or repaired many houses and apartments that were damaged. <br><br>The economy is in poor shape and the average monthly wage is now about $50, but the opposition has been incapable of capitalizing on the hardship or even laying out a coherent program for social and economic change. <br><br>"We know there are social and economic problems," said Goran Matic, the Yugoslav Information Minister. "But people also know we've worked very hard after the war to try to solve them, and in very difficult circumstances." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Serbia's Bickering Opposition Plans Rally Against Milosevic``x955699836,61962,``x``x
``xFor the past few months, political brinkmanship has put Montenegro at odds with partner Serbia.<br>Alex Todorovic <br><br>PODGORICA, MONTENEGRO <br><br>"Does this mean war?" The large graffiti message on a wall in downtown Podgorica, Montenegro's capital, captures the air of detached concern gripping this southern Yugoslav republic of 600,000 people.<br><br>On the surface, Montenegro doesn't appear especially troubled. Podgorica is filled with luxury cars and smartly dressed people lounging in always-full Mediterranean cafes.<br><br>But in contrast to the relaxed atmosphere on the street, local papers describe a republic on the edge of conflict. Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic and international Balkan experts have been sounding the alarm that yet another Balkan war is looming. As tensions rise between Serbia and its increasingly restive junior partner in what remains of Yugoslavia, so does the possibility of a dangerous confrontation between the Army and Montenegrin police.<br><br>Despite the strain, local analysts do not expect full-scale war. More likely, they say, are further incidents, such as the Army's brief seizure of Podgorica airport in December. The two governments are playing a high-stakes game of political brinkmanship that serves both of their interests as elections approach.<br><br> <br>It's easy to see signs of the tense standoff with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who faces the first major opposition protest in eight months today in Belgrade, and has made a career of exploiting crises outside Serbia to consolidate power at home.<br><br>Hotels once filled with tourists are serving as temporary barracks to the 20,000-member Montenegrin police force.<br><br>The two republics have been locked in a war of wills for two years, since Mr. Djukanovic beat a Milosevic ally in presidential elections. Since then, the only functioning Yugoslav institution in Montenegro is the Army. At 14,000-strong, it remains a significant presence.<br><br>Relations between Podgorica and Belgrade have grown increasingly testy since November, when Montenegro adopted the German mark as its currency, in a slap to the beleaguered Yugoslav dinar. A month later, Yugoslav troops briefly took over the airport in Podgorica in a dispute over a hanger. Observers interpreted the move as Belgrade muscle-flexing. In mid-February, the Milosevic regime began broadcasting state-controlled news to Montenegrins from a Yugoslav Army base, and in early March Serbia imposed an economic blockade on Montenegro, preventing trade between the republics.<br><br>The steady escalation has been accompanied by regular warnings from Djukanovic and other politicians that Mr. Milosevic is "preparing something" in the republic, from pro-Milosevic paramilitary groups to an Army-led coup.<br><br>"I take the war threat seriously," says Jim Hooper, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. "Milosevic is doing a classic 'operations stairsteps' pressure campaign - escalating the pressures against Djukanovic while trying to find the Western ceiling. Unfortunately, there is none. There is no security commitment from the West, and this will tempt Milosevic even more."<br><br>Though similar scenarios took place during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia - and during Kosovo's attempted split from Serbia - it may not in Montenegro. Unlike these conflicts, Montenegrins and Serbs share deep cultural ties and the same religion, making war an extremely risky venture.<br><br>Most local analysts do not think the situation will deteriorate that far. "Any effort by the Yugoslav Army to take control by force would pose a risk to Milosevic himself," says Slobodan Samardjic, an analyst at the Institute of European Studies in Belgrade. "Of course, it would be no good if the Montenegrin police provoked the Army in some way, but I don't believe anyone wants another war, and I don't think there will be one," says Belgrade military commentator Miroslav Lazanski.<br><br>For the moment at least, the high level of tension is proving mutually beneficial to both Djukanovic and Milosevic.<br><br>Montenegro has in recent weeks been in the international spotlight and received a significant stream of international aid, while Serbia struggles under a United Nations economic embargo. Djukanovic regularly meets with high-ranking Western diplomats, including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Montenegro received a strong show of support three weeks ago in Lisbon, Portugal, at a conference of European Union leaders. The recent donors' meeting of the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe was generous in handing out $65 million in aid to the tiny republic.<br><br>Milan Rocen, a foreign-affairs adviser to Djukanovic, says the US will give Montenegro approximately $89 million in 2000 through USAID and other programs. The EU donated $58 million in 1998-99, and more aid is coming, along with investment guarantees from the US and Germany.<br><br>More important than aid, however, is Djukanovic's political fortune.<br><br>Montenegro's political landscape is presently defined by the question of independence. There is no clear majority on the issue, according to opinion polls.<br><br>The compromise position, as represented by Djukanovic's ruling party, is for Montenegro to redefine its relationship in the federal government as equal partners with much larger Serbia. That is seen as impossible under Milosevic.<br><br>Djukanovic is in a waiting game until the situation changes in Belgrade or until support for independence reaches a critical mass. The results of municipal elections scheduled for June 11 will be a strong indicator of the republic's direction.<br><br>For Milosevic, a minor crisis in Montenegro could be a pretext for canceling elections later this year, or he could build patriotic support by pointing to "NATO stooges" across the border. Milosevic could even decide to let the republic go. Slovenia, for instance, broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991 with little resistance from Belgrade.<br><br>Although some Army commanders have made threatening statements to Montenegrin separatists, Milosevic said in a New Year interview that Montenegrins are free to leave if they wish. "He wishes to amputate those areas where he does not have absolute control. The question is how? For him, it's important that the responsibility is borne by someone else," says Dr. Samardjic.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : A test of wills in Montenegro``x955699976,68904,``x``x
``x<br><br>By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE<br><br>RISTINA, Kosovo, April 14 -- Assault rifles, handguns and grenades were among the arms seized in raids on the homes of Serbs and Albanians in the divided town of Mitrovica, the United Nations peacekeeping force in Kosovo said today. <br>Ten assault rifles, 2 automatic pistols, 11 hand grenades, 4 bayonets, 600 cartridges and a gas mask were seized in the raids in a multiethnic northern neighborhood, said a spokesman for the security force, Lt. Col. Patrick Chanliau. Five Albanians and three Serbs were arrested and handed over to United Nations police officers, Colonel Chanliau said. <br><br>The troops regularly search for weapons in Mitrovica, where Serbs and Albanians clashed violently in February. <br><br>In an interview to be published on Monday in Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, a moderate Albanian leader, Ibrahim Rugova, warned that Kosovo could find itself at war again if it was not granted independence. Mr. Rugova also backed the idea of a "greater Albania," raising fears that violence might spill out of the breakaway province into neighboring countries. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: U.N. Seizes Arms From Both Sides in Kosovo``x955787304,11718,``x``x
``x<br>Serbia's 'Vietnam Syndrome' - Flashbacks to the ethnic cleansing and genocide are driving some former policemen and soldiers to suicide <br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br><br>15 April 2000 <br><br>On his wedding day, Dalibor Andric walked out of the restaurant where his bride and their guests were waiting for the traditional marriage feast to start, and blew his head off with a single gun shot. <br><br>Dalibor was 23 and had served as a policeman in Kosovo during the Nato air campaign against Serbia. He never talked about his time in the province. His bride, Marija, told of how he used to wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and screaming. To all her words of comfort, his answer was "You will never know what I saw and did." <br><br>Like another Serb policeman, who came home from a football match and killed his wife before turning his weapon on himself, Dalibor is a victim of a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) now being widely reported among the police officers and military in Serbia. The affliction mirrors "Vietnam syndrome", experienced by American veterans of the Indo-China war. In Belgrade they call it "Vietnam syndrome – Serbian-style". <br><br>Early European victims of the syndrome were the many Yugoslav army recruits who were taken from Serbia proper, across the Drina river into eastern Bosnia, to remove the bodies of Muslim civilians killed during the war in 1992. After they removed the bodies with bulldozers, many ended up in the psychiatric ward of the élite Military Academy Hospital in Belgrade. <br><br>The Serbian public learnt of PTSD when, in 1995, a drunken young men entered the premises of a psychiatric clinic in Belgrade, asking for immediate help. After a while, the former Serb army volunteer lay on the ground, activated a hand grenade under his body and blew himself up. <br><br>According to experts, PTSD develops after severe stress, such as participation in or witnessing atrocities. It can arise several months after an event, or even years later. "It is always man-induced horror that causes PTSD," says Dr Srdjan Bokonjic, a Belgrade psychiatrist specialising in the treatment of Vietnam syndrome. "People who are unable to overcome deep trauma start constantly to relive a certain situation or event. Clinical symptoms of PTSD include nightmares, flash backs, aggressive behaviour, isolation from society. If not treated properly, it can lead to permanent destruction of the personality, alcoholism, drug addiction. The final outcome can be the most tragic – random killings and suicide." <br><br>So far, despite much anecdotal evidence of PTSD in Serbia's military ranks, there are no statistics on the disorder. Psychiatrists are reluctant to talk about the disorder, saying that it immediately brings politics into the conversation. Yet none of them denies that it can be linked to the questions many men who took part in combat asked themselves. <br><br>"It all explodes in your mind when you ask yourself, 'Why am I here? What is the purpose of this war? Look how humiliated and ashamed we are, leaving the Serbian holy land [Kosovo]'," said Milan J, 43, a Serbian army reservist. He spent three months in Kosovo, took part in evictions of ethnic Albanians but denies any involvement in atrocities. He admits that he feels manipulated by the army and is an angry man. <br><br>In a conservative society such as Serbia's, visiting a psychiatrist is considered a shame. But it is widely believed that many suicides among those who served in Croatia and Bosnia were a result of the disorder. "It would be interesting to know how many sought any help before committing suicide," Dr Bokonjic says. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: 'You'll never know what I saw.' Then he shot himself ``x955787329,9414,``x``x
``x<br>Saturday April 15, 2000 <br><br>More than 100,000 people filled Republic Square in central Belgrade yesterday to protest against the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic. <br>It was the first rally by all Serbian opposition parties in the capital since last August and a litmus test of support. <br><br>The high turnout will boost the beleaguered opposition leaders. Political analysts believe that because Belgrade is the intellectual and political centre of the country, it must provide the impetus for change. <br><br>The leader of the Democratic party, Zoran Djindjic, and his long-time rival Vuk Draskovic, head of the Serbian Renewal Movement, shared a stage to call for free and fair elections at all levels: local, republic and federal. <br><br>In their excitement, the protesters barely registered a moment at the start of the rally, when Mr Djindjic and Mr Draskovic shook hands unenthusiastically. <br><br>"The regime are the traitors," Mr Draskovic said. "They have betrayed everyone. They have made 1m citizens beggars." <br><br>Sixteen leaders of different opposition parties spoke during the course of the rally, which lasted for more than three hours. <br><br>"It is very important that so many people are here. It's a message to the opposition leaders that they have to stop their eternal bickering," said one doctor who attended. <br><br>Police kept a low-profile presence during the protest. A helicopter hovered overhead for a while and small groups of police stood a distance away, but offered no provocation. <br><br>Members of the student's resistance organisation Otpor walked for a day from the northern city of Novi Sad to attend the rally. <br><br>Protesters blocked key roads in the centre of the capital and young people waved flags of support for the main opposition parties. <br><br>At the time of the rally, the state-controlled television Politika was running a major movie marathon, showing films such as American Beauty, which many interpreted as an attempt to keep people at home. <br><br>Foreign journalists who attempted to enter Serbia to cover the rally were held at the airport and refused entry, according to the independent radio station B292. <br><br>Local radio also reported that a number of opposition supporters who were coming to the capital by coach were stopped by police, who delayed them by carrying out technical inspections of their vehicles. <br><br>The only non-government television station, Studio B, which tried to broadcast coverage of the rally, was jammed and went off the air when its transmitter suffered an unexpected power failure. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: 100,000 protest against Milosevic ``x955787363,57140,``x``x
``x<br> <br> PODGORICA, Montenegro (Reuters) - Two police officers and a patient, who has survived three previous attempts on his life, were wounded when an unidentified assailant threw a hand grenade through a Podgorica hospital window, police said Friday. <br>The two policemen, who were guarding a patient, underwent surgery immediately but were not in a critical condition, Slobodan Sekulic, a Podgorica police chief, told reporters. <br><br>"The patient, Mladen Klikovac, was only slightly wounded in the bomb attack," Sekulic said. The incident happened Thursday night. <br><br>Klikovac, who has the reputation of a loan shark, was under police protection after being shot in a Podgorica cafe Sunday by an unidentified attacker in the third attempt on his life, police sources said. <br><br>Two other patients in the same hospital room were unhurt. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReuters: Grenade blast injures three in Montenegro hospital``x955787382,99785,``x``x
``xFROM MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR, IN BRUSSELS <br><br>THE Eurocorps, which Britain used to deride as a FrancoGerman anti-Nato organisation, is to take over command of the Kosovo peacekeeping operation next week. <br>Although it will operate within the Nato structure set up in the Yugoslav province, it will be the first time that a purely European military headquarters will be given the opportunity to run a largely alliance mission. <br><br>When the Eurocorps, now consisting of troops from France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg, was set up in the 1980s, Britain refused to join, accusing Paris of trying to undermine Nato. Now, however, with Tony Blair pushing for a strong European security and defence identity, the arrival of a Eurocorps headquarters in Pristina is viewed by London in a different light. <br><br>There are still no British troops assigned to the Eurocorps, but a colonel will serve as a liaison officer with the new HQ in Kosovo and the 3,300 British soldiers in the province will come under its command. The previously Nato-led peacekeepers will come under the command of Lieutenant-General Juan Ortuna, of Spain, with Major-General Marcel Wirth, of France, as his deputy. <br><br>Although the Eurocorps headquarters is taking over from Nato's Landcent HQ, it will still operate within a largely alliance format, with most of the serving soldiers contributed by Nato members. <br><br>Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Nato Secretary-General, predicted yesterday that the handover would be carried out smoothly and he denied reports that General Wesley Clark, the American Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, who remains in overall charge of the Kosovo operation, had reservations about Eurocorps taking over the role. <br><br>The Eurocorps element of the headquarters staff in Pristina will comprise 335 military personnel. Nato sources said that the significance of the change was that although a non-Nato headquarters was moving into Pristina, it would have to rely on alliance troops. At the heart of the debate about the European Union's desire to act militarily on its own without the Americans has been the EU's acceptance that it will need Nato support to operate credibly. <br><br>In Serbia yesterday, hundreds of students set out from Novi Sad to join a a protest in Belgrade by up to 75,000 people against President Milosevic organised by the country's opposition. <br><br>In another development yesterday, Ibrahim Rugova, the moderate Kosovo leader, said in Berlin in an interview with Der Spiegel that Kosovo could find itself again at war if it is not granted independence. <br><br>The ethnic Albanian leader also backed the notion of a "Greater Albania", raising the spectre that violence may spill out of the breakaway province into neighbouring countries, including Macedonia. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times: Nato passes Kosovo baton to Euro force ``x955787412,18038,``x``x
``xUp to 20,000 women were raped during the Kosovan carnage. Now the victims are bearing children fathered by their Serb tormentors. In this harrowing dispatch, Helen Smith reports on the awful fate awaiting the offspring of conflict<br><br>He was a healthy little boy and Mirveta had produced him. But birth, the fifth in her short lifetime, had not brought joy, only dread. As he was pulled from her loins, as the nurses at Kosovo's British-administered university hospital handed her the baby, as the young Albanian mother took the child, she prepared to do the deed. <br><br>She cradled him to her chest, she looked into her boy's eyes, she stroked his face and she snapped his neck. They say it was a fairly clean business. Mirveta had used her bare hands. It is said that, in tears, she handed her baby back to the nurses, holding his snapped, limp neck. In Pristina, in her psychiatric detention cell, she has been weeping ever since. <br><br>'Who knows? She may have looked into the baby's face and seen the eyes of the Serb who raped her.' <br><br>The words are uttered coolly, undramatically, by Sevdije Ahmeti almost as a matter of course. Ahmeti, tireless human rights activist, mother and member of Kosovo's transitional government, does not want me or anyone to sensationalise this poor woman's plight. 'She is a victim too. She is just 20 years old and cannot read or write. She has been abandoned by her husband. Psychologically raped a second time.' <br><br>She reels off Mirveta's details from a thick, yellow notepad. 'She is repenting, of course, but the attitude that she is a cold-blooded murderer is wrong. Who knows what this poor girl has been through? Who knows why she didn't abort? <br><br>'There were marks, signs of bites and bruises over her body, her intimate parts. We want to protect her; we will try to get her a new lawyer.' <br><br>This is what Ahmeti does: she speaks for the estimated 20,000 women now carrying Kosovo's dark secret. The innumerable women who were raped, and impregnated, abandoned by family and friends. The women outcasts violated, tortured and left for dead; the 'touched' women, who have now heaped shame on the houses of their husbands. The women who see the war every day, in their minds, in their bodies, through their rape-babies. <br><br>It is Friday morning and there are snowflakes splattering the window panes of the Centre for Protection of Women and Children which Ahmeti set up in 1993. Women trudge up the hill on which the centre stands, daintily side-stepping the litter and carrion birds that defile so much of the province. <br><br>Sometimes, when they are feeling strong, they step inside. Sometimes, if Ahmeti is lucky, a woman will even tell her story. So far, 76 women, mostly young and beautiful, the daughters of eminent Kosovars and village elders (women targeted by the Serbs) have been mus tered enough courage to enter the centre. <br><br>For everyone who had come there, Ahmeti said you could count at least a hundred more. They are just the tip of the iceberg; the very few who have managed to break the 'metallic silence' that surrounds the issue of being 'touched'. <br><br>For rape is not a word that Kosovar women ever use. This is not Bosnia; there is no cosmopolitan Sarajevo. There is only provincial Pristina. In the villages and hamlets, where the Yugoslav police, military and Serb paramilitaries evidently ran amok, rape has yet to enter their ancient lexicon. <br><br>'These are simple women, women who have been degraded, disgraced, and will carry this trauma like a bullet for the rest of their lives,' Ahmeti murmurs, chain-smoking. 'Raped women all over the world find it hard to speak, here they can hardly do it at all. <br><br>'They rarely tell each other... we've had cases of suicide, the lunacy of women losing all access to their children if it gets out.' <br><br>Mirveta, the pretty infanticidal mother, is no exception. She is typical of the selection process pursued by the perpetrators, according to a Human Rights Watch report released last month. <br><br>As they tried to ethnically cleanse Kosovo, paramilitaries - often aided by masked Serb neighbours - systematically searched villages for girls of prime, child-bearing age. <br><br>It was about power and control, humiliation and revenge. And what better way to damage the enemy's morale than to hit at his family? 'Our society is a traditional one where Albanian men are brought up to see themselves as breadwinners and protectors,' Ahmeti points out. <br><br>'Once you touch the woman, you touch the honour of the family and you provoke the man to react. The Serbs knew this. Belgrade had, for years, put out propaganda that the only thing Albanian women could do was produce like mice. So daughters were gang-raped in front of their fathers, wives in front of their husbands, nieces in front of their uncles, mothers in front of their children, just to dehumanise, just to degrade.' <br><br>It is estimated by the World Health Organisation and the US-based Centre for Disease Control that as many as 20,000 Kosovar women (4.4 per cent of the population) were raped in the two years prior to Nato's forces entering the benighted territory. Numbers to match Bosnia, if not more. <br><br>But unlike Bosnia, where international organisations were located throughout the war, the province was on its own. If, as Human Rights Watch argues, politicians did not exploit the fate of the women (which would have been a way of drumming up support for the Nato bombing campaign), aid organisations also played it down. <br><br>'I think there was a deliberate policy to keep it quiet. We knew, in such a patriarchal society, where the perception of rape is so medieval, that it would probably cause a lot of social distress,' said Gamilla Backman, an adviser on violence prevention at the World Health Organisation. 'Making revelations just to shake mentalities might have had the opposite effect and made life even more difficult for victims brave enough to speak. <br><br>'The international community has got cynical about rape. Time has shown, with the women of Bosnia, how very little talking can achieve.' <br><br>By the time the province was liberated, hundreds of women who had been plucked from columns of refugees as they tried to flee the Serb onslaught were discovered wandering the hills, often disoriented, drugged, half-naked and half-crazed. <br><br>'There was always so much focus on the refugees who managed to get out and so little on the people who stayed inside - the 700,000 of them who suffered the real trauma,' said Ahmeti. <br><br>How many of these women then found themselves pregnant will remain a mystery. How many gave birth is almost impossible to determine because of taboo. <br><br>Local humanitarian groups, including the Red Cross, have estimated that 100 rape-babies were born in January alone. Innumerable others almost certainly came into the world on bathroom floors and kitchen tables, behind the high-walled homes of family clans who have vowed never to speak. <br><br>'Only God knows,' said Professor Skender Boshnjaku, Kosovo's leading neuropsychiatrist, who specialises in women's illness, 'how many have been born in secret. I know of children who are being brought up by their grandmothers, women who want to protect their daughters. These babies will know a lot of hate, they will not have a lot of love.' <br><br>The issue of babies 'born of violence' is not a subject Kosovars find easy to address. Boshnjaku concentrates on his shoes when the conversation veers in the direction of the rape-babies. Did he think I would be able to talk to some of the victims? <br><br>No, he said flatly. Albanian women did not talk about themselves. They did not talk about their feelings. They used language economically, usually to convey the essentials of their primitive lives. They were 'the property of men, to be bought, sold and betrothed before birth'. They are 'sacks to be filled,' he says, citing the Kanun, the medieval war-and-peace code of behaviour still adhered to in these parts. <br><br>'Ours was a society built on generations of hate. There are older Albanians who speak Serbian, but generally there was very little interaction between our people and the Serbs. And now,' he said, waving his hands desperately, 'there are these babies.' <br><br>Even Ahmeti, who hails from a family of open-minded, well-travelled intellectuals, finds the phenomenon of Albanian-Serb progeny un-comfortable. Some women will accept them, some will nurture them begrudgingly, some will reject them. But, she said, they will not be dumped in orphanages and they will not be left in baskets and boxes on the streets. <br><br>'They are innocent children, they are not to blame,' she said. 'People, here, will take them into their homes and married women will be able to cover up. Our hope is that they grow up without the guilt of their mothers.' The local authorities are about to start a television campaign appealing for prospective parents. 'It concerns me greatly that some are calling them "children of shame".' <br><br>But rape, I am told on my first night in Pristina, is worse than death. To be an Albanian who gives birth to a child sired by a Serb is to be sentenced to a living hell. <br><br>Pedric, who told me this, is young and worldly. 'If I were normal, I would keep the kid, accept my wife. But in Kosovo, in our culture, death is better than rape. I could not accept my wife. She would be dirty, evil, the castle of the enemy,' he booms. 'A lot of women have been very sensible. They have kept quiet about it, they have given birth at home and, if they are even more sensible, they do what that woman (Mirveta) did last month. They kill their scum-babies.' <br><br>Agron Krasniqi, a gynaecologist at Pristina's University Hospital, is also at the table. 'All of us, we were conducting abortions around the clock,' he said. 'Only a few weeks ago we had a woman who came to the hospital and said she was raped and could we help. She was six months pregnant. There are so many women like that...Women who couldn't physically make the journeys to hospitals and private clinics because they couldn't afford it or didn't dare tell their husbands. In this instance, there was nothing we could do. It was a terrible business, as terrible as the abandoned babies we've also got at the hospital.' <br><br>Abandoned babies? <br><br>'Yes, we've got eight new-born babies and a roomful in the paediatric ward. There are boys as well. In our culture, boys are usually never abandoned. It is fair to say most are the product of rape.' No one wants to talk about the abandoned babies; no one wants to associate them with rape. But there they are, on the second floor of the Pristina clinic in an airy room off a chamber lined with incubators. Babies less than eight weeks old lie in little plastic cases, the others in blue-and-white check-cloth cots. <br><br>The doctors have given them names which they have written in blue ink on plasters they have stuck to their beds. 'They have nothing. The least we can do for their dignity is give them names,' said Enser, the neo-natalist. 'We try to cradle them, hug them whenever we can, because we now know how important the first six months are in a baby's life. Before we didn't do it, and you could see the difference.' <br><br>Did the mothers ever return to claim them? 'Never,' he said. 'And we don't really have any idea who they are because they usually come alone, very early, around 5am so no one will see them and then they give us false names. An American woman, a midwife, came the other day. She wanted to adopt Teuta, our oldest one, but the authorities don't want any to go abroad, they want them to stay here.' <br><br>In the paediatric wing, there are 12 more abandoned children, all between six and 18 months. They are kept for most of the day in a small room, playing on plastic tricycles, lying on mattresses, sitting on nurses' laps. Some are dark, some blond, some obviously Slavic with give-away high cheekbones and broad faces. <br><br>When we open the door they come rushing out, tugging at the hems of our skirts, jumping up and down, beseeching to be held. 'They are lovely children,' said the nurse, apologising for her insistence that in the room, at least, we do not take any pictures. 'There are other rape-babies, you know, in other hospitals. There are some in Prizren and some in Pec.'Around Pec, Serb paramilitaries and the Yugoslav army appear to have acted with wanton abandon, raping women in barracks, public buildings and private homes. It is in Pec that the UN-sponsored International Rescue Committee has established the Women's Wellness Centre, one of only two international organisations in Kosovo specialising exclusively in violence against women. The centre has taken a holistic approach in its attempt to attract victims. And since opening six months ago it has run classes in English, sewing and art. <br><br>But getting these same women to tell their stories is another matter. 'We have a lot of cases of domestic violence, which is prevalent in this culture,' said Jeanne Ward, an American psychotherapist who has worked on similar programmes in New York. 'But so far absolutely no rape cases, although a great many women are suffering from depression, isolation, nightmares, flashbacks, all the symptoms of such trauma. Confidentiality is a big problem here and the social stigma is just so great. Kosovar women are afraid that if they are perceived to have been raped they will automatically be cut off from their families, children, everyone .' <br><br>'Let me tell you a story,' she said. 'I know of one woman who was raped and when it got out she was immediately dropped by her fiancé. The dishonour, he said, was just too much. Since she's been deflowered and is no longer seen as fit for marriage, her family have made her a prisoner. She is now a servant to the household.' <br><br>The centre's Albanian director, Lumnije Decani, interrupted. 'Jeanne is right,' she said. 'It will take time, but I'm sure women will come. They want to, I know, they need to talk, which is why we are going to install 24-hour hotlines. You should go to Belegu.' 'And Lubeniq,' said the American. <br><br>It was in Lubeniq that about 70 men were shot dead in the village square, after taking up arms to protect their women. They had heard about the mass rapes. And they were scared. Belegu lies in the middle of a plain and Lubeniq stands on a hill on the road that leads to it. They are both wretched places, polluted by violence and death. <br><br>We stop at Lubeniq on the way to Belegu to find children playing around their relatives' graves. 'My daddy is in there,' said Mentor Ukshinaj, pointing to the mound of earth bearing a wooden stump and the name of Hajdar Ukshinaj. 'He died protecting my mummy. He died in front of me.' <br><br>When we go to Belegu, the members of the first house, a fine stone building erected around a triangular courtyard, rush out to greet us. Beqir Zukaj, a proud man in a white felt cap who is the head of the extended family, did not mince his gestures. Outside his stone, high-walled house, he made thrusting movements and performed the charade of ripping off his wife's clothes. 'It didn't happen here,' he said. 'It happened in the big barn in the other end of the village.' <br><br>Sevdije Hoxha was there and she remembered everything. Hundreds of people had converged on Belegu from other villages on the plain and when the Serbs began to encircle them they hid in the barn. <br><br>We went to the barn and she showed us its big lime-coloured doors. 'They came, they separated the women from the men, they took all our documents and then they took away the young ones. They took them to the brick building here,' she said, pointing to the half-constructed red-brick villa next door. 'We had plastered some of the pretty ones with animal manure, to make them smell and look less nice, but they took them anyway. You could hear them scream, beg, shout. Many have never come back to their villages. They got on tractors, they went to Albania and from there, I think, they went abroad.' <br><br>The ones who returned to Belegu are broken. 'Broken lives, broken hearts,' said Imer Zukaj, who spent years working in Switzerland. 'There is one young girl here. She is 17 years old. She was raped by six Serbs, who pinned her down, cut her breasts. Whenever I, or any man, greets her, which is when we go to her home, she jumps in the air and screams. She is not well. She is on medication. She doesn't speak. Nobody, you know, will marry her, her life is finished.' <br><br>When I asked Ahmeti if I could meet some of the victims, she glared. Hers is the only organisation that has managed to reach out to women trapped in villages like Belegu; she is furious that more has not been done for them. <br><br>After last month's infanticide, WHO initiated a programme to sensitise doctors and nurses dealing with women about to give birth - to spot those who might want to reject their babies. Other than that, Ahmeti said, psycho-social support has been minimal. The women are outcasts. Some are war widows and many have no work, no family, no one to turn to. There has been almost no attempt to socialise, reintegrate or resettle them with therapeutic counselling. Or to provide witness protection so they may eventually give evidence before the criminal tribunal at The Hague. <br><br>'This is a torn society and there are so many things that have to be done, but these women's needs have really never been addressed. Wherever you go in Kosovo you bump into victims, but these particular ones gain nothing from talking. You just rape their psyche a second time.' <br><br>She is right, of course. In Kosovo, everyone at some stage has been a victim and you do not have to go far to bump into one. Seated in front of Ahmeti, interviewing her, is 29-year-old Luljeta Selimi, a journalist who trained as a gynaecologist (a profession never allowed to flourish under the Serbs). 'Please excuse my English. I used to speak it very well, but last April the Serbs arrested me helping a friend give birth. They kept me in water for nine hours, beat me until I fainted and then threw me on a rubbish dump. It was Gypsies who saved me and took me to Macedonia,' she said. 'You will never find these women. I have had to spend weeks in villages posing as a doctor, gaining their trust, staying at their homes.' <br><br>Selimi, it turns out, has collected testimonies from 200 rape victims; each case documented in black notebooks and on cassette. 'I want the world to know what happened to my country, to these women. Thousands of women who now have nothing.' <br><br>Over the course of the next week she brought me three victims; women who are young, educated and angry with the world. Angry that Nato did not intervene or send in ground troops earlier; that help has not been more forthcoming; that they have been left to drift, dependent on small kindnesses. They have come to me, because they could never have me go to them - it would raise too many suspicions. They are willing to talk because they want the world to know that they exist. They have lost their homes, they have lost their valuables (extorted by the rapists) but they are still the lucky ones. At least they have been spared becoming pregnant. <br><br>'They stopped our car as my husband, son and daughter were driving towards the Macedonian border on 22 March, two days before Nato intervened,' said the school-teacher from a hamlet south of Pristina. 'They were paramilitaries, some wore bandannas, some masks. <br><br>'They made us get out and walk over the hills and then _ and then they took me, they made me comb my hair and they did what they did. When my husband tried to stop them, they shot him dead. My children were there, watching.' <br><br>The two other women were similarly stopped, one as she tried to flee across the Albanian border, the other as she hid with her family in the forest, hours after the Serbs had torched their village in the middle of Kosovo. <br><br>Both were virgins before and both have avoided sex since. Both hardly leave their homes. And both have the saddest, most vacant eyes I have ever seen. <br><br>'So what do you think I should do?' asked the one with red-dyed hair, the one who was raped for hours in the forest. <br><br>I looked at her and thought: 'Yes, what next?' Here I am, privy to the most painful event this woman will ever endure and I have no ready answer; no relief to proffer, only the ability to make her, and the children of war, 'exist'. <br><br>Some names have been changed.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Observer : Rape victims' babies pay the price of war ``x955955284,43685,``x``x
``xBy Peter Finn<br><br>ISTOK, Yugoslavia, April 15 –– The United States is planning the first coordinated effort to resettle Serbs in Kosovo, despite the serious reservations of the U.N. refugee agency, which believes they cannot be protected from revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians, according to U.S., U.N., Serbian and Albanian officials in Kosovo. <br><br>The pilot project, which could begin as early as this summer, will involve about 700 Serbs forced to flee the province last year. U.S. officials said they hope it will bolster the standing of the moderate Serbian leadership within Kosovo, foster Serbian cooperation with the international community, and test the stated commitment of ethnic Albanian politicians to a multi-ethnic society.<br><br>The idea has gotten a cool response from U.N. officials. In an interview, Dennis McNamara, the Balkans envoy for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said, "We would be very happy to see the return of the Serb displaced population, but it's very difficult to be supportive or proactive on returns at this time.<br><br>"If we were going to promote or participate in this, the security conditions--housing, access to services, freedom of movement--would have to be in place," he said. "And the security conditions are just not there."<br><br>Nevertheless, the Americans are moving ahead with the effort. "Conditions are never going to be perfect, and there is never going to be a perfect moment," said one U.S. official. "This is something that has to start, even on a small scale."<br><br>No decision on a site has been made, but U.S. officials are leaning toward the village of Osojane, near Istok in northwestern Kosovo, which was visited by State Department officials last week. The village was inhabited by Serbs until last summer, when ethnic Albanian arsonists bent on revenge destroyed it shortly after NATO peacekeepers entered Kosovo.<br><br>Osojane, which would be rebuilt with U.S. funds, is being considered in part because the ethnic Albanian mayor of the region, Januz Januzi, supports the return of all displaced people to Kosovo. He has had an ongoing dialogue for the past six months with the one remaining Serbian enclave of 70 people in his area.<br><br>In addition, U.S. officials believe Januzi--a longtime activist who served nine years in a Serbian prison, helped found the Kosovo Liberation Army, and fought and was wounded in its guerrilla campaign against Serbian forces last year--has the standing to help sell the idea to the local ethnic Albanian community.<br><br>"People were very impressed with him," said one U.S. official.<br><br>Januzi said his history of commitment to the cause of Kosovo has so far inoculated him from local grumbling about his contacts with Serbs, but he cautioned that repatriation will fail unless Serbs who live or want to live in the area make some apology for the atrocities Serbian government forces committed against ethnic Albanians last year.<br><br>"I am for the return of Serbs," said Januzi, 42. "It is their right, but I don't want it to fail. For me, it will be easier to talk to Albanians and say, 'You should accept the apology and move on.' It would be a historic step, and I'm convinced Albanians can forgive."<br><br>Januzi noted that 29 Serbs returned to a village near Istok last November but fled again after 48 hours when 10,000 ethnic Albanians marched on them.<br><br>U.S. officials, although they would welcome an apology by the returning Serbs, don't view it as a prerequisite for starting the project. And because Osojane is a secluded village in a valley, they believe it can be adequately protected by NATO-led peacekeepers until conditions improve and allow Serbs to move freely in the province again.<br><br>There are very few ethnic Albanians living in the valley, which holds a series of sacked villages, but interviews with about a dozen people around Osojane indicate that residents are willing to accept the return of their Serbian former neighbors.<br><br>"People who didn't do anything can come back," said Takek Deskaj, 21, whose family home was burned.<br><br>"They wouldn't have any problem with us," said Lumnije Kerellaj, 32. "We might be a little afraid of them, but I think it will be okay."<br><br>The U.S. initiative gained momentum after Serbian Orthodox Bishop Artemije visited Washington in February. His church has been a long-standing critic of the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, but it and other moderate Serbian elements have been reluctant to cooperate with the interim U.N. administration in Kosovo because the ghettoized Serbian community remains angry that Serbs still have little guarantee of security in the province. In addition, Milosevic has tried to brand moderate Serbs who made contacts with U.S. and U.N. officials as traitors.<br><br>U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright urged Artemije to work with U.N. administrative bodies, which Serbs had been boycotting. In return for agreeing to participate in the U.N. institutions, Artemije asked for "visible signs" of progress for Serbs, including improved security, a radio station to get a moderate message out, and some effort to begin returning Serbs to their homes. Of the estimated 200,000 Serbs in Kosovo before the war, approximately three-fourths have fled since NATO peacekeepers arrived.<br><br>"Without people coming back, it's pointless to work on other issues with the international community," said the Rev. Sava Janjic, secretary to Artemije. "The future of Kosovo Serb moderates depends on returns. If this fails, we are dead."<br><br>Janjic also noted that he and the bishop have repeatedly condemned the violence that befell ethnic Albanians, expressed their shame and asked for forgiveness. But, he said, their efforts rarely are reported by the ethnic Albanian media. He said he was willing to restate the sorrow of Serbian moderates for the ethnic Albanian press if it would help people accept a multiethnic community.<br><br>"We don't hear each other," he said.<br><br>After Albright agreed to work on all three of the bishop's requests, a Serb finally attended the U.N.-sponsored Kosovo Transitional Council as an observer last month. Sava said he expects the Serb representative to take a permanent seat in three months if the U.S. repatriation project is clearly underway.<br><br>Last week, the State Department team toured the province to push the project forward and meet with ethnic Albanian leaders, including former KLA commander Hashim Thaqi, to inform them of their plans and get them on board publicly.<br><br>"I believe this needs support," Thaqi said in an interview. "Kosovo has its own institutions now, and we have an obligation to see the return of all Kosovo citizens, Serb and Albanian."<br><br>According to a U.S. official, however, Thaqi cautioned that it would be particularly important to carefully explain the process to ethnic Albanians. He also said the reconstruction of Serbian villages should be balanced with similar efforts for Albanians in the Istok area.<br><br>"This can be done," Thaqi said. "It will be difficult, but it's not mission impossible."<br><br>Most of those Serbs who will be resettled were original residents of the valley, although they may also bring friends or relatives with them, according to those familiar with the plan. U.S. officials rejected suggestions that ethnic Albanians should vet lists of those Serbs returning, but the United Nations is likely to check for suspected war criminals, officials said.<br><br>Even as the United States plans the resettlement effort, Serbs who have remained in Kosovo continue to fear for their safety and ask the U.N. refugee agency to evacuate, McNamara said. Hundreds of Serbs have been killed or have disappeared since the war ended; most, officials suspect, were targeted by vengeful ethnic Albanians.<br><br>Although the rate of killing has fallen in recent months--primarily because Serbs are now largely sealed off in guarded ghettos from Albanians--ethnic violence continues. Four Serbs were slain in the last two weeks, U.N. officials noted. McNamara said the current priority of the international community should be safeguarding those Serbs in Kosovo, not creating more Serb enclaves that would be at risk for attack.<br><br>The NATO-led peacekeeping mission, which comes under Spanish command on Monday, also is leery of the U.S. project, and it is unclear what troops would guard the Serbs brought back under the pilot program. The Istok area, including Osojane, is now patrolled by Spanish soldiers; it is unclear whether U.S. troops would also be brought in.<br><br>In any case, peacekeepers are likely to resist any large-scale resettlement of Serbs. Last week, officials here expressed astonishment when a NATO official in Brussels said that 25,000 Serbs could return to their homes in Kosovo this summer.<br><br>"No way," said one military official. "I don't know what hat that figure was pulled out of. Even something small, like the U.S. proposal, troubles a lot of people."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWashington Post : U.S. Plans To Return 700 Serbs To Kosovo``x955955316,44088,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN LEE MYERS<br><br>WASHINGTON, April 16 -- In the weeks before the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade last May, NATO was under tremendous pressure to escalate its war against Yugoslavia. The alliance's supreme commander demanded 2,000 targets in Serbia -- a number some aides considered arbitrary and too high for a country the size of Ohio. <br><br>Having begun the war for Kosovo with too few targets and the unrealistic hope of a quick victory, NATO had to scramble for new targets. According to a NATO official, the pressure was so intense that a cook and a motor pool worker with sufficiently high security clearances were drafted into NATO's targeting office in Mons, Belgium, to help with paperwork on potential missions. <br><br>In this atmosphere the Central Intelligence Agency submitted its first targeting proposal of the war. It was selected by its Counter-Proliferation Division, which had no particular expertise in either the Balkans or in picking bombing targets. The target was accepted, officials said, without further vetting by the military. <br><br>In fact, it was the Chinese Embassy. It was described in a secret document given to President Clinton for his approval as a warehouse that was headquarters of Yugoslav Army procurement. The document, provided to The New York Times by a military officer, included a satellite photograph, a casualty estimate and a description of the site. <br><br>The only thing that turned out to be accurate was the casualty estimate. The description of the target's relevance to the war was misleading and, one senior intelligence official said, it should have been apparent to any imagery expert that the building shown did not look remotely like a warehouse or any Serbian government building. <br><br>Ever since the bombing, Chinese officials have angrily accused the United States of a deliberate attack, while American officials have insisted that it was an error. <br><br>In an attempt to unravel what really happened, spurred in part by articles in two European newspapers suggesting that the bombing had been deliberate, The New York Times interviewed more than 30 officials in Washington and in Europe. <br><br>While the investigation produced no evidence that the bombing of the embassy had been a deliberate act, it provided a detailed account of a broader set of missteps than the United States or NATO have acknowledged, and a wider circle of blame than the government's explanation of a simple error of judgment by a few people at the C.I.A. <br><br>None of the people interviewed at the Pentagon, C.I.A., the State Department and the military mapping agency, or at NATO offices in Brussels, Mons, Vicenza, Italy and Paris said they had ever seen any document discussing targeting of the embassy, nor any approval given to do so. No one asserted that he or she knew that such an order had been given. <br><br>The bombing resulted from error piled upon incompetence piled upon bad judgment in a variety of places -- from a frantic rush to approve targets to questionable reliance on inexpert officers to an inexplicable failure to consult the people who might have averted disaster, according to the officials. <br><br>In retrospect, they said, the bombing, if not intended, could have been avoided at several points along the way. <br><br>Last week, 11 months after the fact, the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, dismissed a midlevel officer who put the X on what turned out to be the embassy. He also disciplined six other employees, saying that agency officers "at all levels of responsibility" contributed to the bombing. <br><br>The Pentagon has not conducted its own review but administration officials say the matter is now closed. China rejected Mr. Tenet's discipline as inadequate. <br><br>American officials have tried to explain how such a bizarre chain of missteps could have taken place in intelligence and military organizations that pride themselves on technological prowess. <br><br>"This was an error compounded by errors," said Under Secretary of State Thomas R. Pickering, who had the job of explaining the attack to the Chinese last year. <br><br>Even some NATO and American officials acknowledge that they cannot explain how or why so many mistakes occurred. <br><br>Chinese officials have been particularly suspicious since the attack actually hit the defense attaché's office and the embassy's intelligence cell. But what neither they nor American officials have disclosed is that the bombs, Pentagon officials said, were actually targeted throughout the building. At least one and maybe two of the bombs did not explode, the officials said. <br><br>Had the strike gone as planned, the embassy would have been demolished, the death and destruction far worse. <br><br>Even some of those who accept the American assurances that the bombing was accidental say they believe that blame has not yet been shared by all of those who contributed to the mission. <br><br>"It was a systemic problem," said Representative Porter J. Goss, the Republican from Florida who is chairman of the House's Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "It was not a problem just at the C.I.A. The fact of the matter is that, at least at the Pentagon, somebody should stand up and say it isn't just the agency's fault. To fire one person and let off all the other agencies -- including the White House -- isn't doing justice to justice." <br><br><br>The Rush to Target: A Chaotic Scramble to Meet the Demand <br><br>ATO's initial plan was to bomb Yugoslavia for two nights, with daytime pauses to allow President Slobodan Milosevic to agree to NATO's demands that he withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo. "You show them some lead -- boom! boom! -- and they'll fold," a NATO officer in Belgium said. "That was definitely the prevailing opinion." <br><br>American officials said they had always been prepared for a longer war, but when the bombing began on March 24, NATO had only 219 targets for all of Serbia, focused on air defenses and military communications. <br><br>On the first night, 51 of those targets were struck; by the third night, NATO had exhausted nearly half the original targets, even as Serbian forces began expelling Kosovo's Albanians en masse. <br><br>"We woke up to the fact that Milosevic wasn't going to come out on the front lawn with a white flag," the NATO officer said. <br><br>That realization touched off a scramble to find more targets. While diplomats wrestled over whether to begin bombing more politically sensitive targets, including those in Belgrade, NATO's military commanders, who for four decades had planned for war against the Soviet Union, found themselves grossly unprepared for the task of choosing targets for this kind of air campaign, the officials said. <br><br>The alliance had only two targeting centers, at the Joint Analysis Center in Britain and at the Air Force's European headquarters in Germany, both run by Americans. <br><br>Only Britain also contributed fully developed targeting proposals, and there were only two dozen of those, NATO officials said. <br><br>As the war continued, the American targeters were producing 10 to 12 new targets a day, while allied pilots were striking at twice that rate. <br><br>By early April, Lt. Gen. Michael C. Short, the alliance's air commander, kept raising the problem during NATO commanders' morning video conferences. "I'm running out of targets," he barked one morning, according to an officer who was there. <br><br>Gen. Wesley K. Clark, NATO's supreme commander, asked why he did not have 4,000 targets on his desk, a NATO officer said. By mid-April, General Clark halved his demand, and the Air Force's intelligence director for Europe, Brig. Gen. Neal T. Robinson, agreed. <br><br>According to several officials, the goal became an obsession -- derided by targeting officials as "T2K." Each morning, General Robinson briefed commanders on progress toward the goal. A month into the campaign, they still had only 400 fixed targets, not counting tanks and other weapons pilots were trying to hit in Kosovo. <br><br>General Clark declined to be interviewed for this article. <br><br>Picking targets is normally a painstaking process, involving reams of intelligence reports checked and rechecked against satellite photographs. By mid-April, NATO reached out to any military command with targeting expertise. <br><br>At that point, General Clark began to expand the scope of targets to include electrical grids and commercial facilities like tobacco warehouses and the Yugo automobile car factory. "You've destroyed virtually every military target of significance," an aide to General Clark said. "Now what do you do? You start looking for other targets." <br><br>Even so, by the end of the war, NATO had produced only 1,021 fixed targets. Of those, they bombed roughly 650. <br><br>Some senior officials played down the rush for targets, saying that as chaotic as the process was, there were ultimately very few errors in targeting. But officials in Europe and Washington maintained that as the pressure for targets intensified, proposals were not as thoroughly reviewed as they could -- or should -- have been. <br><br>Among those was the one received by fax from the C.I.A. <<br><br>The C.I.A. had provided information on scores of targets throughout the war, but it had not previously been asked to propose its own, Mr. Pickering and other officials said. Its history of picking targets has been checkered. During the Persian Gulf war, it sent bombers after a supposed intelligence bunker that proved to be an air raid shelter filled with women and children. <br><br>The agency has its own targeting cell, but it was the Counter-Proliferation Division, a small office whose focus was the spread of missiles and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, that proposed this target. <br><br>Officers there saw the war as an opportunity to destroy the headquarters of the Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement, long a concern because of its suspected involvement in smuggling missile parts to places like Libya and Iraq, intelligence officials said. <br><br>The directorate is an arm of Yugoimport, an ostensibly private corporation but one that like most industry in Yugoslavia is closely linked to the ruling elite around Mr. Milosevic. Several officials conceded that it had only a tangential relation to the war's objectives; the targeting document showed that experts estimated only civilian casualties inside, not military casualties. <br><br>"It had nothing to do with the war in the Balkans," an official said. "They were thinking, 'While we're bombing anyway, here's a target that should have a great benefit to the nation and what we're doing.' " <br><br>Other officials disputed that, citing intercepted radio transmissions and agents' reports that the directorate was organizing truckloads of spare surface-to-air missile parts, as well as artillery and mortar shells, for the Serbian forces. <br><br>Even so, when agency officials talked about the proposed target in at least three meetings, they spent more time discussing whether they could legally justify the attack under the international rules of war than they did about the location of the headquarters itself. <br><br><br><br>The division's officers had no specific expertise in targeting or the Balkans, the officials said. None of those involved have been identified, but officials said the officer who has received the most blame -- and was dismissed by Mr. Tenet -- was a retired Army officer who had been contracted to work in the division. <br><br>He had been told to locate the directorate's headquarters and set to work, according to a person familiar with his task. On April 9, he called the National Imagery and Mapping Agency in suburban Washington requesting a map of Belgrade. Using it and two tourist maps, the officer tried to pinpoint the headquarters, equipped only with its address. <br><br>A senior defense official said the address -- 2 Bulevar Umetnosti in New Belgrade -- came from a letter intercepted by intelligence officials, though the address was easily available, including from the directorate's internet site. <br><br>The NIMA map, produced in 1997, shows major buildings and geographic features. It does not specify street addresses, but it identifies major landmarks. It was designed, a senior intelligence official said, for ground operations, like the evacuation of personnel from the American embassy. <br><br>One of the landmarks on the map is the headquarters of Mr. Milosevic's Socialist Party, which is on a parallel street, Milentija Popovica, and which NATO bombed during the war. Knowing that address and the address of other buildings on that same street, the officer used a technique called "resection and intersection" to locate what he thought was the headquarters. <br><br>The method involves finding addresses on parallel streets and drawing lines to the targeted street on the presumption that numbering schemes are uniform. It is used for generally locating landmarks in a city for such things as search and rescue missions. "To target based on that is incomprehensible," one official said. <br><br>Having chosen what he thought was the directorate, the officer called NIMA on April 12 or 13 and asked for satellite images of the site, which he received on the 14th, officials said. At that point a NIMA analyst assigned the building a number -- 0251WA0017 -- from the military's "bombing encyclopedia," a worldwide compendium of potential targets and other landmarks. <br><br>According to the officials interviewed, the satellite images did not raise concerns. When Mr. Pickering, the under secretary of state, briefed the Chinese about the bombing last summer, he said there were no seals or flags that would identify it as a diplomatic compound. An incredulous Chinese official asked why America's satellites did not see it was an embassy. "Didn't you see the green tiles on the roof?" the official asked, according to an American who was there. <br><br>In fact, a senior intelligence official said, satellite images contained clues that should at least have prompted questions -- not necessarily that it was the embassy, but rather about whether it was the headquarters of a Yugoslav arms agency. <br><br>"It doesn't look like an office building," the official said. "It looks like a hotel. It's too nice a place. Given all the space around it, I didn't see external fencing that I would expect from a government facility." <br><br>The Review: An Immense Error, Perfectly Packaged <br><br>ompounding the mistake, according to the officials, was the initiative taken by the officer who located the target. He produced what one official called a "superficially perfect" proposal by downloading from the military's secure intranet a targeting form and filling it out -- complete with the "bombing encyclopedia" number, as well as eight-digit longitudinal and latitudinal figures. <br><br>Impressively packaged, the proposal prompted no questions. The C.I.A.'s assistant director of intelligence for military support, Brig. Gen. Roderick J. Isler, ultimately approved it, and it arrived at the European Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff appearing to be a more advanced proposal than it was, the officials said. <br><br>"This target came with an aura of authority because it came from the C.I.A.," said John J. Hamre, who recently stepped down as deputy secretary of defense. <br><br>Mr. Hamre said the Joint Chiefs never conducted a thorough review of the target. The reasons are not clear. Instead the chiefs received two proposals for the same target, one from the C.I.A. and another from European Command, which did not note that it originally came from the agency, and approved it. "They got false confirmation," an intelligence official said. <br><br>Agency officials said their officers had never intended the target to be viewed by the Pentagon as a complete proposal, but simply as a nomination. Instead, as one NATO officer put it, "it went through like a cog on an assembly line." <br><br><br><br>By April 28, 10 days before the bombing, planners in Europe had assigned the target, like every one in the war, a sequential number. It was No. 493, and the essential information about the target was boiled down to a single document to be presented to President Clinton and other NATO leaders. <br><br>This document identified the target as "Belgrade Warehouse 1," but under a heading called "linkage" called it the "HQ for the Federal Directorate Supply and Procurement." The objective was to "destroy warehouse and contents," which it went on to say would undercut the ability of Serbian forces to receive new supplies. <br><br>It also classified the possibility for collateral damage as "tier 3 high," which an official said referred to the likelihood of the impact of the bombs sending shards of glass flying considerable distances. That indicated analysts were able to distinguish the embassy's marble and glass structure. The directorate's headquarters was made of white stone. <br><br>Three red triangles on the image depict the points at which the bombs were to strike. The document also estimated that casualties would range from three to seven civilians, presumably those working inside, while the estimate for unintended civilian casualties, which also included those who might happen by at the time, ranged from 25 to 50. <br><br>The bombing, in fact, killed three and wounded at least 20. <br><br>Mr. Tenet has said that the C.I.A. proposed only one target during the war. Actually, the agency proposed two or three more, but after the embassy bombing, Pentagon officials refused to strike them. <br><br>In the end, despite its supposed value, NATO never did attack the intended target. <br><br>Allied Concerns: An American Goal: Keeping Secrets <br><br>s with most of attacks during the war, especially the strikes in Belgrade, planning and execution were done by Americans. In raids involving the stealthy B-2's and F-117 fighters, many details about the attacks were classified as "U.S. only," mainly for fear of revealing secrets about those aircraft. <br><br>After the war, some allies questioned the practice. The French Ministry of Defense's report on the war last November complained of military operations "conducted by the United States outside the strict NATO framework and procedures." <br><br>A senior NATO diplomat said the United States attacked 75 to 80 targets in this way. The Chinese Embassy was one of them. <br><br>The control of information limited the number of allied officers who might have been able to notice the targeting error. <br><br>Gen. Jean-Pierre Kelche, who as chief of the defense staff is France's top military officer, said that in spite of the restrictions on the military operations, all of the specific targets were reviewed by the political and military leaders of the major allies, including Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. <br><br>"It was supposed to be an arms storage facility," General Kelche said in an interview in Paris. "It's clear the nature of that target did not create any problems for me." <br><br>He said the unilateral American operations were a political problem, but not an operational one. He added, however, that the militaries of each country were responsible for reviewing those targets its forces were scheduled to strike. <br><br><br>When Mr. Tenet dismissed the officer blamed for targeting and disciplined six others, he singled out another for praise. That officer, also not identified, raised questions about the target, Mr. Tenet said. In the days before the bombing, he called analysts at NIMA and at the NATO headquarters in Naples to express doubts, Mr. Tenet said. <br><br>Memories of his objections vary, and other intelligence officials raised questions about them. The officer, who once worked in the same proliferation office involved in targeting the embassy, now works in the Technical Management Office, an operation involved in highly classified operations, officials said. <br><br>He had no authority to review targets, or even know what they were, but heard informally that the directorate was being targeted, officials said, adding that he then called the imagery analyst at NIMA. On that day, April 29, nine days before the bombing, he told the analyst that he had recently spoken to a source who confirmed the directorate's actual location, about 1,000 yards south of the embassy. <br><br>At that point, a senior intelligence official said, the NIMA analyst could have withdrawn the target's "bombing encyclopedia" number or alerted more senior officials. Instead, he promised to call the officer who had identified the target in the first place. <br><br>The NIMA analyst tried unsuccessfully to arrange a meeting between the two agency officers, who did not know each other, officials said. On May 3, the analyst produced six more images of the building and its surroundings, which confirmed to the skeptical officer that the target was not the directorate, the officials said. <br><br>At that point, he raised his concerns with military officers in Naples, but he did not make his questions official or sound grave enough to remove the target from the list, the officials said. Then, he left work for three days to attend a training session. <br><br>When he returned, on May 7, he learned -- again informally -- that the target was on that night's list. He called Naples a second time, through back channels, but spoke to a different officer, who informed him that the B-2 was already on its way from its base in Missouri, according to officials. <br><br>"It didn't really raise the panic you think it would have," a defense official said. <br><br>While Mr. Tenet commended the officer's efforts, another senior agency official was critical of the fact that the officer -- perhaps out of fear that he was acting beyond his responsibilities -- had never voiced doubts to the assistant director of intelligence for military support, who was in a position to have put a hold instantly on the target. <br><br>The Questions: No Indications of a Sinister Plot <br><br>ast year, The Observer of London, in conjunction with Politiken, a Danish newspaper, published articles suggesting that the bombing was deliberate. Their stories said that the strike had been intended to silence transmitters at the embassy being used for rebroadcasting communications for the Yugoslav armed forces or, later, by the Serbian paramilitary leader known as Arkan. <br><br>All of the officials interviewed by the Times said they knew of no evidence to support the assertion, and none has been produced. They said there was also no evidence that the Chinese had in any way aided the Serbian war effort, though one NATO diplomat said it was impossible to rule out the possibility that the Chinese shared information with the Serbs. <br><br>Officials rejected the idea that the Chinese Embassy was being used for rebroadcasting and said they did not suspect during the war that it was doing that. General Kelche said photographs taken after the strike showed ordinary antenna on its roof, not microwave dishes that would have been used in military communications. <br><br>The officials said that after the bombing they did learn a great deal about the embassy's intelligence operations, including the background of the three Chinese journalists who were killed and who American officials say were in fact intelligence agents. <br><br>"It is -- or was -- considered the major collection platform for Europe," a senior defense official said. "One could say it was a silver lining to the bombing, but it was not deliberate." <br><br>The European newspapers also said there had been a list of targets ruled off limits for air strikes that included the Chinese Embassy -- at its actual address, not the mistaken one -- and that the embassy at some point was removed from the list. <br><br>According to the officials interviewed by The Times, American commanders in Europe did maintain such a list of buildings, like hospitals, churches and embassies. The Chinese Embassy was on that list, officials said, but at its old address and was not removed. They said the embassy was also listed at the wrong address on a similiar list in Britain. <br><br>Roy W. Krieger, a lawyer who represents one of the supervisors who was reprimanded by Mr. Tenet, said neither his client nor any of the others intended to bomb the embassy. "No sinister conspiracy exists, only a systemic failure masquerading as a conspiracy," he said. <br><br>He criticized the punishment of the C.I.A. officials alone, even though the NIMA map contained a critical error and none of the Pentagon's data bases included information on the embassy's actual location. <br><br>"The C.I.A.'s action is even more troubling in the face of the refusal of the Department of Defense to even acknowledge its failures contributing to this tragic event," he said. <br><br>After the bombing, Mr. Hamre and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, conducted the Pentagon's review of the targeting, but it was never made public. Officials from the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused repeated requests to be interviewed, as did Air Force commanders, on orders from their Chief of Staff, Gen. Michael E. Ryan, according to a spokesman. <br><br>Mr. Goss, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said members of Congress had intensely questioned officials. In the end, he said he was confident in their assurances it had not been a deliberate strike.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Chinese Embassy Bombing: A Wide Net of Blame``x955955384,80263,``x``x
``xGillian Sandford, Belgrade <br> <br>AS OPPOSITION leaders plotting the downfall of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia promise a summer of street demonstrations, other Belgraders are predicting this weekend that the spark for the president's overthrow will come from more shadowy sources. <br>Milosevic, through his tactics of divide-and-rule and outright police brutality, defeated street protests in 1997 and again last year after Nato's bombing campaign. <br><br>"We need something else," said Ivan, a young student caught up in the euphoria of Friday's demonstration, which attracted more than 100,000 people and saw the rival opposition leaders, Vuk Draskovic and Zoran Djindjic, shake hands. "We need someone who's really prepared to take the fight to Milosevic." <br><br>Many are looking to an unlikely source for salvation: Maki, a subversive artist who, for a decade, has ridiculed the president and been beaten and imprisoned for his efforts. Having escaped from police guards while in hospital last month, Maki has been on the run. A master of disguise, he has given television interviews and regularly taunted the authorities. <br><br>"Milosevic's dictatorship cannot be tolerated any longer," he wrote in a letter last week that was read at a gathering to mark the anniversary of the death of Slavko Curuvija, a liberal newspaper editor assassinated in Belgrade during the airstrikes. "We have to stand up so our children won't have to face Milosevic's firing squad." <br><br>Maki, whose real name is Bogoljub Arsenijevic, gave an insight into his idea of social upheaval in July, when he led thousands of supporters in a bloody rampage through the streets of the socialist stronghold of Valjevo in central Serbia. <br><br>A few days after the violence, in which several policemen were hurt, he appeared in neighbouring towns urging revolt. His luck ran out in August, when he was ambushed by special police as he emerged from the office of Momcilo Perisic, a former army chief of staff who has now joined the opposition. <br><br>Maki was savagely beaten: his injuries, including a broken jaw and shoulder, cracked ribs and a perforated kidney, took months to heal. In the meantime, he was given a three-year jail sentence, but he clambered out of a bathroom window in hospital and slid 40ft down a lightning conductor to freedom. <br><br>Maki's tough upbringing has ensured him cult status. He was raised by his mother in a working-class slum near Valjevo's Krusik arms factory, fronted a rock band and held his first exhibition at 17. <br><br>He established his artistic reputation by painting frescoes in Orthodox churches, and chose his nickname by rearranging the Serbian spelling of Camus, his favourite writer. Despite his anarchic nature, Maki is deeply religious, lending him additional kudos in a staunchly traditional nation. <br><br>He hit the limelight in 1992 when he constructed a 7ft phallus and named it after the president. He followed this with Serbian Worker , a piece of excrement in a fish tank, for which he received a suspended prison sentence. Both exhibits were smashed to pieces with boot and truncheon. <br><br>Maki's most recent television interview was smuggled to a studio in Bijelina, across the Drina river in Bosnia, and broadcast on the internationally regulated Bosnian Serb state television. "Milosevic's regime is like a house of cards, which can be demolished in a day or two if the people of Serbia rebel," he promised. <br><br>"They could have sentenced me to 100 years in prison, but I knew I was going to escape and that no prison could hold me. I had been preparing for the seven seconds of escape for seven months in advance." <br><br>Maki added that he was so well disguised at a recent exhibition of his work in Belgrade that his wife, Snezena, failed to recognise him. <br><br>"While the rest of the opposition have no strategy and just argue among themselves, Maki is a grassroots idol," said one senior journalist. "In the end, people like him are the ones who will save this country." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times : Antics of an artist harry Milosevic ``x955955419,31356,``x``x
``xRichard Norton-Taylor <br><br>Moves towards closer European security and defence cooperation will get a boost today when Eurocorps, the French-sponsored multinational military grouping, takes over the running of the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo. <br>It is the first time in Nato's history that the alliance has entrusted an external operation to a unit which is not part of its integrated, US-dominated, command structure. <br><br>A Spanish general, Juan Ortuno, commander of Eurocorps, will take over K-For's headquarters in Pristina with a senior French officer as his deputy. He will command nearly 1,000 staff officers, including US, British, and Russian personnel. <br><br>The decision to give Eurocorps the task of controlling K-For after months of pressure from France and Germany has deep political resonance at a time when the US remains unhappy about EU plans for a European security and defence identity. <br><br>Eurocorps is a politically-driven creation from which Britain has kept its distance on the grounds that it is potentially divisive and more symbolic than militarily effective. Originally proposed by France, it now includes Germany, Spain, Belgium, and Luxembourg. It consists of 60,000 soldiers, based in Strasbourg, though it will contribute just 335 senior officers to the K-For headquarters, 30% of the total. <br><br>Eurocorps has never acted separately from Nato, and alliance officials insisted yesterday that K-For would remain Nato-led. K-For will revert to an integrated Nato command after six months. <br><br>The US remains sceptical about the EU's pledge to create an autonomous rapid reaction force of 60,000 soldiers, separate from Eurocorps, by 2003. Under this plan, the soldiers would be deployable within 60 days and be able to participate in peacekeeping operations for a year. Because of rotation needs, the plan would require up to 200,000 soldiers. <br><br>As Lord Robertson, Nato's secretary general, has pointed out, the European allies, with 2m mainly conscripted men and women under arms, had trouble fielding 40,000 soldiers for Kosovo. <br><br>The EU has agreed that its proposed force would be deployed in operations only after Nato has declined to do so. <br><br>Before the end of the year, the EU is due to hold its first "force generation" conference, where member states would be asked to make offers of troop numbers and equipment for the proposed rapid reaction force. <br><br>The US continues to express concern that the plan could be divisive, involve a new tier of bureaucracy, and that non-EU European allies could be excluded from decision-making. <br><br>The EU has recently set up a political and security committee and a military committee, as well as an international military staff attached to its Brussels headquarters. <br><br>The coming months will be decisive in helping to shape Nato's future, not least since France, keen to seize the opportunity for greater European independence in security affairs, takes over the EU presidency, on July 1. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Eurocorps to run Kosovo peace force ``x956048711,62352,``x``x
``xby Chris Oakes <br>3:00 a.m. Apr. 15, 2000 PDT <br><br>Domain-name hijackers are taking over hundreds of websites in a campaign that may be rooted in tensions among Balkan states, site owners and monitors say. <br><br>Individuals listing Serbian and Albanian postal addresses in recent weeks have exploited a weakness in registrar Network Solutions and appropriated names registered through the company, officials there said. <br><br>Domain takeovers enable the hijacker to control the server associated with a domain name, such as Viagra.com or Indianajones.com. Hijackers can then reassign the domain name to another Web server, or to no server at all, scuttling all traffic intended to go to the site. <br><br>This latest round of mass hijackings could be random hacking or part of a fledgling Balkan info-war, but since online identities can be easily spoofed, it's hard to know for sure. <br><br>Network Solutions spokeswoman Cheryl Regan confirmed that many domains had recently been "redirected" to a registrant listing an Albanian address, but refused to pinpoint the exact number of affected domains beyond "considerably less than 2,000." <br><br>WebDNS, a domain-name system-monitoring service based in England, reported Thursday that at least 50 domain names have been attacked since April 9, including Adidas.com, Jamesbond.com, Mafia.com, France.com, Italy.com, Spain.com, Slovenia.com, Croatia.com, Sarajevo.com, Kosova.com, Washington.com, and Bosnia.com. <br><br>"We have been in contact with owners of some of the domain names affected and have found the companies were either not aware of the situation or had been alerted by the fact services were failing," said WebDNS founder Alex Jeffreys. "Many had been in touch with Network Solutions and were in the process of having the domain re-transferred." <br><br>Among the victimized sites were those run by pro-democracy groups and other Web publications maintained by Serbian political opponents, such as Montenegro.com and Bosnia.com, both of which have since been returned to their owners. <br><br>Hijackers have targeted Internet domain names belonging to Montenegran pro-democracy activists and to news and information sites, said Montenegro.com owner Alex Obradovic, who runs Montenegro.com and related domains from Los Angeles. The sites provide updates on developments between Montenegro and its parent republic of Serbia. <br><br>Obradovic is convinced the hijacking is the work of hackers conducting an electronic attack on Montenegro, a Serbo-Croatian constituent republic bordering Serbia. Using electronic tracing tools, he determined that the Internet service hosting the hijackers is based in the Serbian capital of Belgrade. He says the possibility that hackers were dialing into the service's account from outside Serbia is "unlikely." <br><br>Network Solutions was able to return the domains to Obradovic before any changes were made, he said. But other Balkan-related domains, including Slovenia.com and Croatia.com have been hijacked for weeks and remain so, he said. <br><br>Late Friday, the Slovenia.com domain carried the message: "KOSOVO IS SERBIA Site hacked BYGreb-a-Thor and ScsiMaster.... Be happy if we hacked your site because we hack ONLY the best sites on the Internet!" <br><br>Obradovic suspects the hijackers are trying to undermine the spread of information in Montenegro and other republics as part of a propaganda war against opposition states. <br><br>Network Solutions' Regan would not comment on the possible info-war motive, nor confirm the likely geographical origins of the hijacking campaign. "We cannot address specifics of our active investigation of this domain-name attack," she said. <br><br>Regan said many of the hijacked domains had since been returned to their original owners. But a registry search early Friday showed that at least 50 domains still listed the hijackers' phony contact name, justdoit@megapost.net. <br><br>Later Friday the same search showed zero results, suggesting the company had disabled many of the hijacked records. <br><br>An assortment of random domains were caught in the attack as well, suggesting that the Balkan sites may be only a red herring in the campaign. <br><br>Among the other domains reported stolen was UnitedStates.com, which said two of its domain names were redirected to addresses in Serbia and then Albania. <br><br>But according to WebDNS, all of the hijacked accounts had one thing in common: They all were registered by Network Solutions. <br><br>The hijackers took advantage of the same weakness in Network Solutions' registration system that has plagued the company for months. <br><br>The Network Solutions technical or procedural glitch resulted in the temporary loss of a domain earlier this week owned by Web-filtering company Solid Oak Software. <br><br>Ongoing hijackings are not unusual, Network Solutions acknowledges, but the company said the numbers are typically small. <br><br>WebDNS's Jeffreys concluded that Network Solutions has serious security problems with database maintenance and changes, blaming it in part on the company's automated email system used to execute changes. <br><br>In response to the recent attacks, Network Solutions' only suggestion was for customers to invest in higher security. The company said early this week in response to the problem at Solid Oak that an overhaul of its registry system was a possibility. <br><br>"Emphasis needs to be made here that the domain names that had been attacked or "hijacked" were those whose registrants had subscribed to .... the lowest protection scheme available (by Network Solutions) for a domain-name record," Regan said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBalkan War in Domain Attacks?``x956048750,49111,``x``x
``xAs the province rebuilds, some see a rare chance to improve women's rights in a male-dominated society.<br>Richard Mertens <br><br>Igballe Rogova makes her way down a cold stairwell in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, carrying a box of food to a basement apartment.<br> <br>She braces herself for a difficult meeting.<br><br>An elderly woman answers her knock. Behind her, a young woman holding a child appears, then quickly retreats. The old woman leads Ms. Rogova into a room where her husband sits in the glow of an electric heater. There, the couple pours forth a stream of angry grievances against the young woman.<br><br>Their story is not uncommon. Serbs burned down their house in central Kosovo last spring and killed one of their sons, a fighter for the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian rebel force that opposed Serbian rule. The young woman is his widow, the child his two-year-old daughter.<br><br>The grandparents see their daughter-in-law as a burden and want her to leave. But they insist on keeping the child. What sounds unreasonable to Western ears is no more than tradition here allows. Albanian custom frees a widow to remarry, but gives any children to the father's family. The young woman refuses to go, however. She has all but barricaded herself in her room.<br><br>It is a wrenching predicament, not only for the family but also for Rogova, a women's-rights activist who spent much of the 1990s helping rural women in a mountain district of southern Kosovo. Today, she confronts a whole new set of problems.<br><br>"Every time, I say to people, 'This is temporary. We're going through bad times,' " she says after the visit. She can do little except try to calm the elderly couple.<br><br>Rogova is one of a small but growing number of local activists trying to improve the status of women in postwar Kosovo, as the devastated province rebuilds. Unlike much of the rest of Europe, Kosovo is still a mainly rural, peasant society that places heavy burdens on women but gives them few rights and privileges. A decade of Serb oppression and two years of armed conflict only made conditions worse.<br><br>At the same time, Kosovar women see this is as a moment of opportunity. Since the Yugoslav Army withdrew last June after three months of NATO airstrikes, Kosovo has been under the administration of the United Nations and KFOR, the NATO-led protection force. The end of rule from Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital, marked the beginning of a new order in the province, with the UN struggling to build a liberal democracy on the ruins of the old Communist system. Whether the new order will turn out any better is far from certain, but many women aspire to a greater role in it.<br><br>"There are so many things to do here, so many things to fight for!" exclaims Sevdie Ahmeti, director of the Center for the Protection of Women and Children, one of Kosovo's oldest and largest women's organizations. "I'm very optimistic. The younger generation has enough with suffering and pain. We have to energize them and proceed."<br><br>It's a big challenge. Jobs are scarce, especially among women, some of whom now find themselves in the unfamiliar role of breadwinner. Women's education has suffered, too. In recent years, many parents kept their daughters at home, worried for their safety but also feeling little need to educate girls. Meanwhile, domestic violence has increased, and Kosovo's feeble legal system can do little to curb it.<br><br>Kosovo is still largely a man's world, where men dominate both public and private life. Nowhere is this truer than in the countryside, where 60 percent of Kosovars live, many of them following a way of life that has all but disappeared in the rest of Europe. Here, the clan and the extended family remain the main units of social organization. Women are expected to stay at home, bear children - preferably sons - and obey.<br><br>And yet Kosovo also has many educated, professional women, including teachers, doctors, lawyers, and journalists. Women from this largely urban class are working to increase women's rights, to help girls catch up in school, and to teach women employable skills. Even villages produce exceptional women. Shpresa Shehu, a schoolteacher, helps run a women's center in Mala Krusa, where more than 100 men and boys died last spring, including one of her brothers.<br><br>"For me there is nothing, just to help people to start to live in normal conditions," says Ms. Shehu.<br><br>Kosovar women have a history of activism. Beginning 10 years ago, when Serb authorities fired ethnic Albanians from their jobs and shut them out of state institutions, women helped ethnic Albanian political leaders - mostly men - organize a parallel system of schools and health clinics. Some went further and started small projects that sought to teach women reproductive health, to protect them from violence, and in other ways improve their lives. It was guerrilla humanitarian work, and it took courage.<br><br>Rogova was one of them. In 1989, she was fired from her job as a foreign-film editor for state television. Together with her sister Safeta, an actress, she started an organization called Motrat Qiriazi (Sisters Qiriazi), named after two women who pioneered education for girls in Albania.<br><br>"In this way, we kept ourselves from getting depressed," Rogova recalls. "We thought that women, especially rural women, needed us. And we needed them, too.<br><br>In southern Kosovo she found women living "like 50 years ago." She started libraries, encouraged girls to go to high school, and helped set up health clinics.<br><br>Since then, Sisters Qiriazi has expanded to other parts of Kosovo. Rogova also spends time helping displaced women in Pristina, where she lives, bringing them food, blankets, yarn, and often a kind word.<br><br>Western organizations are trying to help too, funding centers where women can learn to sew, to use computers, or to speak English. They are setting up loan funds to help women start small businesses. The Kosovo Women's Initiative, with $10 million from the US government, is promoting organizational skills.<br><br>Elaine McKay, a consultant for the Women's Initiative, has also worked on behalf of women in South Africa and Southeast Asia. She says that Kosovar women lag behind their counterparts in such places. Moreover, she says, Kosovo's UN administration has until now "not shown more than a token interest in women."<br><br>But in some corners, the desire for change is powerful.<br><br>"I have this idea that is boiling in me," Rogova says, sitting in a popular cafe. "I can't wait to start - what do you call it? Cooperatives? Between village women, selling milk products, vegetable products, fruit products. They can do that. So many ideas I've got! I can't wait to go to a village and discuss them."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : Raising women's role in Kosovo``x956048826,82616,``x``x
``xJacky Rowland in Belgrade <br><br>The biggest mass trial so far of suspected former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army began in the southern Serbian city of Nis yesterday. <br>Traffic was halted in the city as the 145 Albanian defendants, who are charged with terrorist activities, were driven in three buses to the heavily guarded court. <br><br>The Albanians, from the Kosovan town of Djakovica, are accused of "organising and participating in terrorist and enemy activities" - including the killing of police officers - against Serbian security forces stationed in Kosovo last year. <br><br>The use of the words "terrorist activities" in the indictment indicates that the authorities consider the defendants - mainly young men - to be former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has since been officially disbanded. <br><br>Yesterday's proceedings were dominated by the taking of personal details from all 145 defendants: a task defence lawyers said would normally be carried out before the trial. Proceedings are expected to start in earnest today, with verdicts likely later this week. <br><br>The defendants were arrested in Djakovica, near the Albanian border, during Nato air strikes a year ago. They were among hundreds of Albanian prisoners held by the Serbian authorities in Kosovo until Belgrade ceded control of the province to Nato last June. <br><br>When the Yugoslav army and Serb police withdraw from Kosovo, they took with them more than 2,000 prisoners, mainly Kosovo Albanians charged with terrorism, and moved them to jails elsewhere in Serbia. <br><br>A number of prominent Albanians, including the paediatrician and women's activist Flora Brovina, and the student leader Albin Kurti have already been convicted of terrorism and sentenced to long prison terms at trials which drew criticism both locally and abroad. <br><br>The UN mission in Kosovo estimates that about 1,500 Kosovo Albanians remain in Serbian jails. International officials have called for them to be returned to Kosovo. <br><br>More than 20 lawyers are taking part in the defence of this latest group of Albanians, whose trial is being monitored by human rights activists. The lawyers say that the defendants were held from May to December without being informed of the reasons for their detention. <br><br>"This is a political trial through which the Belgrade regime is attempting to cover up the great tragedy it has provoked in Kosovo," said Natasa Kandic of the Humanitarian Law Centre in Belgrade. "These Albanians are innocent civilians who were not involved in armed actions and who were kidnapped on the streets of Djakovica." <br><br>The trial comes as Belgrade pursues a creeping clampdown on its opponents in politics and the media. The campaign is likely to be stepped up following an opposition protest rally last Friday for which more than 100,000 people turned out to demand an end to the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>The authorities are making full use of the malleable Serbian legal system to try to neutralise voices of dissent. <br><br>Opposition activists, former police officers and newspaper editors have all been brought to trial. <br><br>The criminal charges are intended to discredit opposition politicians, while heavy fines imposed on newspapers and broadcasters threaten to cripple financially the non-government press. <br><br>The control of public opinion in Serbia is vital, since local elections are due to be held by the end of the year. <br><br>The authorities have used telecommunications legislation to seize the equipment of a number of radio and television stations, and they are jamming the signal of the influential Studio B television channel in Belgrade, which is controlled by the opposition leader Vuk Draskovic. <br><br>Analysts in Belgrade suspect that President Milosevic may try to offer enticements to either Mr Draskovic or another opposition figure to break the newly established but fragile unity of the Serbian opposition. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : 145 Kosovans in mass trial for terrorism ``x956137277,43200,``x``x
``xBalkans: Critics say West turns a blind eye to corruption in Montenegro because of leader's anti-Milosevic stance.<br><br><br>By PAUL WATSON, Times Staff Writer<br><br><br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia--Montenegrins often quote the old saying that you can't choose your relatives but you can certainly pick your friends, and President Milo Djukanovic has done well with his choice of Dragan Brkovic.<br>Djukanovic, the West's closest ally in its campaign to topple Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, can't pay pensioners, civil servants and a growing police force in Montenegro--Yugoslavia's secondary republic--without tens of millions of dollars provided by the U.S. and European nations each year.<br>But thanks to a multimillion-dollar favor from Brkovic, a wealthy importer-exporter who just a decade ago was eking out a living selling auto parts for a state-run firm, Djukanovic has made sure that some of his most important supporters here live and work in luxury. <br>In the process, critics say, Brkovic and his foreign partners may end up controlling Montenegro's major industry: the state-run aluminum plant.<br>Djukanovic's opponents see that prospect as another sign of the spreading corruption and "crony capitalism" that have already resulted in allegations against the foreign minister and others--corruption they say Western governments have chosen to disregard because Montenegro is central to their strategy for containing Milosevic.<br>"But that behavior makes our people subservient," said Mirjana Vujanovic, a business economics professor who advises Montenegro's pro-independence Liberal Alliance. "Milo is a god now because he has the support of Western countries, and people are ready to accept him as a god. They think: 'Money will come. We don't have to work.' "<br>Djukanovic insists that he runs a clean government in Montenegro, which makes up, together with the larger republic of Serbia, what is left of Yugoslavia after a decade of war. A corrupt president couldn't survive politically as long as he has in a republic with only 630,000 people, he says.<br>"In such a society, everything easily and quickly gets found out," Djukanovic said. "And as you can see, in this society I have managed to survive for 10 years, and to win the elections."<br>In October, government ministers, judges, officials and academics moved into 54 apartments appointed with marble corridors, oak parquet floors, climate-control systems, intercoms and built-in closets. These are comforts rarely seen in a republic where the average worker takes home $85 a month.<br><br>One of Tiny Republic's Most Powerful Firms<br><br>The civil servants' rent-free units are in a complex built by Brkovic's Vektra, one of the most powerful companies in Montenegro. The complex also contains government offices furnished to what Brkovic calls "the most modern European standards." The ministers' proximity to work led opposition politician Dusan Jovanovic to ask in parliament whether they planned to show up in their bathrobes.<br>Brkovic insists that he is the one taking the bath on the 1996 deal. He received $1.6 million in cash and the right to collect $22 million in debt from the government-owned KAP aluminum mill, which hasn't paid its creditors for years. In exchange, he gave the government most of the new building, which he says is worth more than $50 million.<br>Brkovic founded Vektra in 1990, importing 1,000 Peugeot cars per year until 1992. His company also worked with the KAP plant, which soon became his main concern after the U.N. imposed sanctions on Yugoslavia in May 1992.<br>Brkovic said that because he helped the plant import raw materials and export its aluminum in violation of the sanctions, the plant owed him millions of dollars even before the 1996 deal. But after the deal, its debt to Vektra swelled to $57 million, Brkovic claims, making his company the plant's largest creditor. An audit by a French bank has put the firm's total debt at $201 million.<br>Brkovic says he saved the aluminum plant--which accounts for 53% of the republic's official economy, excluding government jobs and services--because he is a patriot. If Montenegro's biggest industry collapsed, Djukanovic's pro-West government would too, he says.<br>But so far, Brkovic says, he has received no money and no aluminum from the plant.<br>Nebojsa Medojevic, Montenegro's leading anti-corruption crusader, suspects that Vektra may be secretly cooperating with a foreign partner in a bid to take over the plant, where Brkovic was a janitor while a student in 1974.<br>In October 1998, the government signed a five-year contract with one of Brkovic's biggest foreign partners--Swiss commodities-trading giant Glencore International--to manage KAP. Three months later, Glencore hired the government's chief negotiator on the contract, a close friend of Brkovic, to be the plant's general manager, Medojevic says.<br>"Officially, the government is saying it will privatize KAP," Medojevic said. "But I'm afraid that the privatization has already happened. It's Vektra's privatization."<br>The sell-off to Djukanovic friends and their partners of other state-owned properties--such as seaside hotels, the renowned Niksic brewery and a profitable health spa--has prompted allegations of "crony capitalism."<br>Critics charge that people close to the president have used state-owned firms, such as freight shipper Zetatrans and tobacco company Duvanski Kombinat Podgorica, in a multimillion-dollar cigarette smuggling racket tied to the Italian Mafia.<br>In another case, Montenegrin Foreign Minister Branko Perovic was forced to resign in December after an Italian court summoned him and 26 others, including suspected members of the Mafia, to answer allegations of cigarette smuggling. Perovic insists that he will prove his innocence when the trial begins later this year.<br>Medojevic, the anti-corruption crusader, belongs to the G-17 group of independent economists, which is backing efforts to remove Milosevic. He thinks Djukanovic is weakening Montenegro at a time when it faces a possible war of secession against Yugoslavia by giving power to a new oligarchy instead of building a real democracy.<br>"In the Montenegrin case, transition means corruption," Medojevic said. "Montenegro today is very close to repeating the Russian scenario of 1992--unfortunately, under the instructions of the international community, especially from the United States."<br>With its mountain tracks and long coastline, Montenegro has always been well suited to trafficking in contraband. After the U.N. imposed economic sanctions against Yugoslavia and smuggling became a matter of survival, the republic became one big black market.<br>Analysts estimate that at least 40% of Montenegro's economy is based on smuggling goods such as stolen cars, tax-free cigarettes and drugs, with help from organized crime in Italy and Albania.<br><br>Black Market Cuts Into Tax Revenues<br><br>In part because smugglers and black marketeers don't pay taxes, Djukanovic relies heavily on foreign aid to pay the 58% of the population that depends on his government for salaries and pensions.<br>The U.S. government gave $55 million in financial aid to Montenegro last year, has approved another $55 million for this year and will add $35 million if Congress approves, said Vinka Jovovic, a media aide to Djukanovic. The European Union has donated $100 million since 1998, she added.<br>Medojevic says Montenegrins learned about breaking sanctions from Milosevic's circle.<br>"In the first days of the sanctions, the Montenegrin government was very confused, and guys from Serbia came and taught our guys about sanctions-busting--how to extract the hard currency savings from the citizens, how to organize big banks and so on," Medojevic said. "Around Milosevic there were experts; around Djukanovic there were just friends. It's a dramatic difference."<br>Brkovic, who describes himself and Montenegro's president as "just close family friends," insists that he met Djukanovic in 1993, long after Vektra got into the aluminum trade.<br>During a recent two-hour interview, Djukanovic dismissed the corruption allegations as chatter from evil people with too much time on their hands.<br>"I consider these to be provincial small talk and rumors," Djukanovic said. "There is a clear way for everybody to become rich: to be clever and willing to work. Unfortunately, these criticisms come from those who are not prepared to work but just to watch others work."<br>Most Montenegrins are paid in German marks as the government, on the advice of Johns Hopkins University economist Steve Hanke, tries to wean the republic from the Yugoslav dinar, which is practically worthless outside Serbia.<br>The "parallel currency" policy is fueling inflation, increasing the demand for foreign money to keep Montenegro stable enough to challenge Milosevic. Prices rose 45.6% in the last two months of 1999 alone, the parliament was told in February.<br>Foreign aid also is essential for Djukanovic's buildup of a police force needed, he says, to counter 14,000 Yugoslav troops based in the republic and about 900 Milosevic loyalists in the 7th Military Police Battalion.<br>In the three years since Djukanovic first split from Milosevic, the ranks of the Montenegrin police force have swelled sixfold to more than 15,000.<br>Opposition politician Jovanovic, a former financial police chief and director of public funds, says Djukanovic fired him in July 1997 because he insisted on investigating allegations of police links to tax evasion by a company called ASI.<br>The company, which Jovanovic claims was set up by men close to Djukanovic and the police, did a cash business in scarce imported goods, he said. Most of the buyers were in Kosovo, which is a province of Serbia.<br>"It was a sign that other similar companies could be formed. I was personally offered 3% of the trade of one of them [a cut of almost $50,000 a month] just to guarantee that they would not face the financial police," Jovanovic said.<br>The president's critics also claim that Aco Djukanovic, the older brother of the president, has profited from family ties.<br>Aco has a two-story villa with creamy white walls of marble in the village of Bijela. A camera watches over the front door, and a Doberman pinscher guards the private beach.<br>Milo Djukanovic's opponents claim the brother got rich from the cigarette smuggling trade by, for instance, requiring traffickers to fuel their speedboats--for double the market price--at one of two gas stations that he leased after the businesses were privatized.<br>Despite calls from the president's office, Aco Djukanovic was not available for comment. Milo Djukanovic said he had no doubt that his brother gained the gas station concessions through legal bids.<br>"I am not informed that he has achieved a significant wealth, or maybe he is hiding it from me," the president said. "And I know very well that he has been out of this [gas] business for the last seven or eight years.<br>"Everything else is a matter of his business operations that I am not involved in, and I am not interfering with, just like he's not interfering with mine.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLos Angeles Times : Accusations of Cronyism in Yugoslavia's Other Republic ``x956227005,26199,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ NATO warplanes used depleted uranium rounds on eight sites in Yugoslavia during the alliance's 78-day bombing campaign last year, a government report Friday said. <br>A team of Yugoslav experts made the study on the environmental effects of the NATO air strikes launched to stop President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo. <br><br>The report comes a few months after NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson confirmed that U.S. jets operating in Kosovo last year fired the armor-piercing depleted uranium rounds on numerous missions. <br><br>Robertson said the rounds were used when American A-10 ground attack aircraft engaged armored vehicles _ on about 100 missions in Kosovo. The military says depleted uranium is a dense metal that provides enhanced armor-piercing capability. <br><br>Some specialists believe the uranium rounds are environmentally harmful. But the U.S. Defense Department has defended the use of the uranium, saying the rounds contained no more health risk that conventional weapons. <br><br>The Belgrade study aimed to give specifics on all environmental impacts of the airstrikes. <br><br>The locations contaminated by the depleted uranium and described in the 75-page document include six sites in Serbia and one in Montenegro, Serbia's smaller partner in the Yugoslav federation, said Gen. Slobodan Petkovic, who presented the report for the Defense Ministry. <br><br>The eighth location is in Kosovo, Serbia's southern province. The region is now run by U.N. and NATO peacekeepers, preventing examination of the contamination by a Yugoslav team, he said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO used depleted uranium rounds Yugoslavia, government says``x956393976,64055,``x``x
``xThere are signs the Kremlin is distancing itself from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic who has, once again, backed the wrong horse.<br><br>By Daniel Sunter in Belgrade (BCR No. 134, 20-Apr-00)<br><br>A shift in Russian policy towards Serbia is becoming increasingly apparent since Vladimir Putin took over the helm at the Kremlin last month.<br><br>Even in the run-up to the presidential elections, observers in Belgrade and Moscow noticed that Putin never once mentioned the Balkans or Serbia during his campaign.<br><br>Goran Svilanovic, president of the Civic Alliance of Serbia (GSS), commented, "Shortly before the start of the election, the Russian embassy distributed Putin's electoral manifesto to all the political parties in Serbia. It was quite clear from this document that Moscow has no intention of abandoning its policy of co-operation with the West. Putin's victory is bad news for the Belgrade regime."<br><br>The Milosevic regime, on the other hand, invited the ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky for an official visit to Belgrade on the eve of the March 26 election. According to all the polls, Zhirinovsky -- who openly styled himself as a would-be dictator -- had no chance of winning the presidential race.<br><br>The Serbian opposition criticised Belgrade's decision to invite Zhirinovsky, stressing that Serbia should woo parties and leaders who represent mainstream Russian politics and not extremists or communists.<br><br>The Russian daily newspaper Kommersant wrote at the beginning of April that Moscow had taken a conscious decision to distance itself from the "hated" Yugoslav president. Russia, according to Kommersant, "has no wish to support the regime in Belgrade".<br><br>According to a well-informed source close to the highest echelons of the Yugoslav Army, Russia has also broken off its military and technical agreement with Serbia.<br><br>Aimed at restructuring and modernising the Yugoslav forces, the agreement was signed by Marshal Igor Sergeev, the Russian defense minister, and his Yugoslav counterpart, Pavle Bulatovic.<br><br>Although the source refused to comment further about the details of the agreement, he stressed that Russia had unilaterally put the project on ice.<br><br>He added, "The signal is crystal-clear. Putin's administration is sending out a clear message to the political and military leaders in Belgrade."<br><br>The move was also prompted by new controls on the Russian defence ministry which mean that it can no longer act as a separate entity. In future, it will be obliged to co-ordinate its activities with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.<br><br>A gas supply agreement between Russia and Serbia has also run into troubled waters. The Russian company Gasprom has decreased supplies threefold without informing Belgrade.<br><br>The latest developments have taken Belgrade officials by surprise. An anonymous official from the Oil Industry of Serbia (NIS) told Belgrade media, "I don't know why this has happened, we have not been informed by Russia. There have been no problems up until now."<br><br>The change in mood is all the more surprising because Russia is currently supplying gas to Serbia on credit, despite existing debts totalling more than $300 million.<br><br>Shortly after the gas crisis, Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov met with the Yugoslav ambassador in Moscow, Borislav Milosevic, the brother of President Slobodan Milosevic. He called upon the Yugoslav Federation to show greater flexibility towards the international community in solving the Kosovo problem.<br><br>Ivanov added that Russia supports UN proposals to give Kosovo greater autonomy within the federation and that Belgrade should play a leading role in the process of stabilising the Balkan region.<br><br>Sources in Moscow claim that, during the Contact Group summit at the beginning of April, Russia expressed solidarity with Western states over Serbian attempts to destabilise Montenegro. Russia took the side of the Montenegrin president, Milo Djukanovic.<br><br>Moscow roundly condemned the Serbian blockade of Montenegro, commenting that Belgrade's policies had served to aggravate an already complicated situation.<br><br>A Serbian government spokesman told IWPR, "Igor Ivanov's behaviour at the meeting with Bora Milosevic, compounded by problems with the gas supply and Russia's support of Montenegro have come as a real shock to Belgrade. Draskovic's invitation to Moscow was an even bigger surprise."<br><br>Vuk Draskovic, leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, SPO, opposition party, was the first Serbian politician to visit the Russian Federation following Putin's election victory on March 26.<br><br>A SPO spokesman said Draskovic met with officials from the Russian foreign ministry to discuss early elections in Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro as well as the lifting of sanctions against the Yugoslav Federation.<br><br>Draskovic later said that he had gained Russian support for plans to hold early elections at all levels. Ivanov stressed that Russia stands firmly behind the democratisation of Serbia and opposes any policies of terror and repression.<br><br>Belgrade was quick to react to Moscow's diplomatic manoeuvrings.<br><br>Milutin Stojkovic, defence committee president and a senior member of the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia, SPS, accused the Russian foreign minister of pandering to the United States government.<br><br>"If Ivanov's diplomacy represents nothing more than attempts to appease America, then Russian interests," Stojkovic told a Russian Duma delegation in Belgrade.<br><br>Some of Milosevic's more reckless ventures may have cost him Russian support. In the past, his policy towards Russia has been littered with misjudgments.<br><br>During the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, Belgrade voiced open support for the rebels who wanted to rebuild the Soviet Empire.<br><br>Then Milosevic decided to throw his weight behind Zhirinovsky, hoping that a nationalist regime in Russia would guarantee Serbia a nuclear arsenal of her own. At the time, the Serbian media buzzed with rumours of a secret weapon which Zhirinovsky had allegedly presented to the government.<br><br>After Zhirinovsky, Belgrade championed the Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who showed every sign of posing a real challenge to Boris Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential elections.<br><br>But there may be more pragmatic motives behind the shift in Russian foreign policy towards Serbia. Putin may be attempting to show the West that his relationship with Serbia is based on sound economic judgments rather than emotional and ethnic ties.<br><br>The Milosevic regime would therefore be forced to turn to the Far East and China in search of new allies.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIWPR : Putin's Victory is Bad News for Belgrade ``x956394000,69490,``x``x
``x<br>By defence correspondent Jonathan Marcus <br><br>The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has agreed to accede to the international convention banning the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. <br><br>According to a spokesman for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, that oversees the treaty, Belgrade deposited its instruments of accession with the UN Secretary General on Thursday. <br><br>The Yugoslav army is widely believed in the West to have a significant chemical warfare capability and now all stocks of such weapons will have to be destroyed. <br><br>The Yugoslav Government's decision to accede to the convention is a significant step. <br><br>It is the last country in Europe to do so and in due course, it will have to open up its chemical facilities - both military and many civil plants - to international inspection. <br><br>Nerve agents <br><br>Before the break-up of Yugoslavia, its armed forces had developed a significant chemical warfare capability with stocks of nerve agents and mustard gas, along with various other incapacitating chemicals. <br><br>The army of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia inherited the bulk of this programme, including production facilities and stocks of chemical munitions. <br><br>Yugoslavia's membership of the arms control regime will enter into force in mid-May, after which it will have some 30 days to submit a detailed declaration of its holdings. <br><br>Constructive relationship <br><br>The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the watchdog body that oversees the convention, will then organise the first base-line inspections. <br><br>The Yugoslav Government's decision will be broadly welcomed, not least by other south-east European countries. <br><br>It also represents a clear signal that at least in this area, Belgrade wants a more open and constructive relationship with the outside world.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBBC : Yugoslavia bans chemical weapons``x956394026,7531,``x``x
``xBy Peter Finn<br><br>PRISTINA, Yugoslavia – The sex-slave traffic in East European women, one of the major criminal scourges of post-communist Europe, is becoming a serious problem in Kosovo, where porous borders, the presence of international troops and aid workers and the lack of a working criminal justice system have created almost perfect conditions for the trade, U.N. police officials, NATO-led peacekeepers and humanitarian workers say. <br><br>In the past six months, U.N. police and troops here have rescued 50 women – Moldovan, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Romanian – from brothels that have begun to appear in cities and towns in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia. Police and aid workers say they fear that hundreds more, lured from their impoverished homelands with the promise of riches, may also be living in sexual servitude.<br><br>"These women have been reduced to slavery," said Col. Vincenzo Coppola, commander of a special unit of the Italian carabinieri, or national police, in Kosovo that has rescued 23 women on raids of brothels in Pristina, the provincial capital, and Prizren.<br><br>According to police sources and aid workers, the women – and some girls as young as 15 – were transported along a well-established organized crime network from their East European homelands to Macedonia, which borders Kosovo to the south. There, they were held in motels and sold at auction to ethnic Albanian pimps for $1,000 to $2,500. The pimps work under the protection of major crime figures in Kosovo, officials said, including some with links to the former anti-Serbian rebel force, the Kosovo Liberation Army.<br><br>The women, who had been stripped of their passports, as then were frequently held in unheated rooms with primitive sanitary conditions in Kosovo and forced to engage in unprotected sex, sometimes up to 16 times a night for no payment, according U.N. police officers who requested anonymity because of U.N. regulations limiting their ability to speak with reporters.<br><br>The undermanned U.N. police force here is hard-pressed to cope with a variety of criminal activities in this war-scarred province, and authorities and aid workers here have been slow to respond to the burgeoning sex-slave trade. Moreover, there are limited humanitarian resources available to protect those women who are able to seek sanctuary.<br><br>In addition, officials here said, the trade has flourished because of a lack of applicable law on both trafficking and prostitution and because some countries with military forces here have tended to dismiss the activity as simple prostitution. German peacekeepers in southern Kosovo, for instance, have taken a benign view of the phenomenon in part because prostitution is tolerated in Germany.<br><br>International aid workers are trying to convince them that these women are victims. "It's not classic prostitution," said one aid worker who has interviewed rescued women and is working on a draft U.N. regulation to punish people involved in the sex-slave trade. "They are not paid. They are never paid. Of the 50 women we have seen, not one has received a single deutsche mark, and they are often held in horrendous conditions."<br><br>According to authorities, the women were told that before they could keep any of their earnings, they first had to pay off the pimps for their purchase price. Often, however, they found themselves fined for such infractions as not smiling at customers, so there was no way they would ever have enough money to make the payoff. If they protested, the women said, they were beaten.<br><br>A number of the women appear to have contracted sexually transmitted diseases, officials said, and international groups here are attempting to obtain treatment for them either in Kosovo or as soon as they can return to their homelands. "This is a major problem, and it is going further underground because of police raids," said one international aid worker. "At first, it was very out in the open, and so-called nightclubs were popping up. But now it's moving into private dwellings, and I expect if we get a reliable phone network we'll soon see call-girl services."<br><br>International organizations here recently established a safe house to protect women who escape from the brothels until they can be returned home. But it is now full, with 21 women, and police have had to suspend raids on other brothels until they can repatriate some of the former captives.<br><br>International officials declined to allow a reporter to speak to any of the rescued women. But in bars in Pristina, Gnjilane and Urosevac, there are young Moldovan and Ukrainian women who describe themselves as "waitresses" seeking economic opportunity in Kosovo. "I can earn 400 deutsche marks [$200] a month," said a Moldovan woman at a cafe in Gnjilane, where beds are set up behind a dank front bar. Asked how much cash she had on her possession, the woman said only, "I'm okay," as an ethnic Albanian bar manager looked on.<br>According to the rescued women, the clientele varies from brothel to brothel, officials said. Some serve mostly ethnic Albanians; others cater to a mixture of ethnic Albanians and international workers. Peacekeeping troops – including Americans – also were customers, the women said. U.S. officials deny that American troops visit the brothels, pointing out that soldiers are confined to base when they are off duty.<br><br>The first case of sex-slave trafficking came to light in October – four months after NATO-led peacekeepers entered the province – when French police officers raided a brothel in Kosovska Mitrovica and found two Ukrainian women, ages 21 and 22, and two Serbian women, including a minor. The establishment was closed and the Serbs were released, but the French did not know what to do with the two Ukrainians, who had no travel documents, officials said.<br><br>According to sources familiar with the case, the French policemen detained the women at a military camp while they appealed, without success, to humanitarian organizations for assistance. After two weeks, fearful of a public relations disaster because of the presence of "prostitutes" at a military facility, The French policemen took the two women to the administrative boundary between Kosovo and Serbia proper and essentially expelled them. It is unclear what happened to them after that.<br><br>In November and December, further cases of enforced prostitution came to light when U.N. policemen visited a number of bars in Pristina – bars with such names as Totos and the Miami Beach Club – and removed women who appealed to them for help.<br><br>On Jan. 22, officers with the Italian police unit entered an establishment on the outskirts of Pristina called the International Club, where they were approached by women asking for help. The club, now closed, was a crude structure with a small bar and barren rooms in the back that were equipped with just a bed and a red light bulb. Some women were kept in an attic. The following night, the Italians raided the club and rescued 12 women, mostly Moldovans and Ukrainians, who appealed for sanctuary.<br><br><br>The Italians were criticized for conducting the raid without coordinating with the U.N. police and humanitarian organizations who then had to assume care of the women. But their efforts did lead to official recognition of the problem and the creation of the safe house in early February.<br><br><br>That has allowed international workers to interview the women and understand the process by which they were brought into the sex industry. In the last 10 years, according to women's advocacy groups, hundreds of thousands of women from the former Soviet republics and satellites have been trafficked to Western Europe, Asia and the United States. Kosovo, which had some local prostitution but no trafficking problem before the peacekeepers arrived after the Kosovo war ended last June, is just another new market, officials said.<br><br><br>Most of the women interviewed here responded to newspaper ads seeking "attractive women" to work in the West and, in fact, knew they would work in the sex industry. A small minority told police they had been kidnapped or were completely deceived when they applied for jobs in the West, including one Moldovan teenager who got pregnant in Kosovo, police officials said.<br><br><br>"The women we've spoken to left their countries of their own volition and basically knew they would work as prostitutes," said a U.N. police officer in Gnjilane. "But they thought they could earn thousands of dollars in some exotic location like Italy or Spain and then go home rich. Instead, they end up imprisoned here without a dime.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWashington Post : Sex Slavery Flourishes in Kosovo``x956561205,68239,``x``x
``xStephen Grey, Brussels <br><br>THE commander of a notorious Serbian prison camp in Bosnia was flown to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in the Hague yesterday to face trial over his alleged involvement in murder and torture. <br>Dragan Nikolic, the first suspect ever indicted by the court, was detained on Friday by members of Nato's 20,000-strong Stabilisation Force in Bosnia (Sfor). He is expected to appear before the court this week. <br><br>As the commander of the Susica camp for Bosnian Muslims near Vlasenica, Nikolic was indicted in November 1994 for allegedly killing eight detainees and torturing seven others. He is also accused of imprisoning 500 Bosnians and of orchestrating deportation in the summer of 1992. <br><br>The seizure of Nikolic, who was apparently living freely in the American sector of Bosnia, was expected to help stem criticism that Nato troops were failing to act strongly enough in arresting war crimes suspects. <br><br>It followed the arrest on April 3 of Momcilo Krajisnik, an ally of the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, by French Nato troops at his home in eastern Bosnia. Krajisnik is the most senior Bosnian Serb arrested and has been charged with every war crime on the tribunal's statute. <br><br>Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, his military chief, remain at large. Karadzic is believed to be in Bosnia, but Mladic lives in Belgrade, protected by President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Lord Robertson, the Nato secretary-general, said yesterday the arrests showed the organisation's determination to play its role in helping bring indicted war criminals to justice. "Those indicted war criminals who remain at large have no permanent hiding place," he said. <br><br>In a 1995 hearing at the Hague tribunal which confirmed Nikolic's indictment, one survivor of his camp described how two dozen Muslim women and girls disappeared without trace after conquering Serbs took them away. <br><br>One man was said to have been beaten so viciously his eye burst out of its socket. Guards threw him into an empty storage warehouse at the camp, where he died.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times : Serbian prison boss held over war crimes ``x956561225,22698,``x``x
``xHusnija Bitic, an ethnic-Albanian human rights lawyer living in Serbia, was almost beaten to death recently. He speaks to Gillian Sandford. <br>For more than 10 years, Husnija Bitic spoke out: defending Kosovar Albanians in controversial court cases, lambasting the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and arguing in Serbian courts on behalf of Kosovars charged with terrorism.<br><br>A lawyer, he fought for the rights of Albanians in Yugoslavia but always through legal, constitutional and peaceful means.<br><br>In 1989, he wrote an open letter to Slobodan Milosevic that was published in the Croatian newspaper Danas. He accused the President of fulfilling promises given to Serbs and Montenegrins but breaking promises given to Albanians.<br><br>The following year, he pressed criminal charges against Lazar Mojsov - a member of the presidency of what was then Yugoslavia - because Mojsov had proclaimed a state of emergency in Kosovo in 1990. Bitic's case was rejected by the local court and on appeal.<br><br>The death threats began in 1992: "in the post, in the mail, it was never the same voice," says Bitic.<br><br>Then last month, in the early evening, the knock on the door of his Belgrade flat finally came.<br><br>"Who is it?" asked his wife Sanija (51). "Your neighbour Vlada," came the response. She opened the door and was struck on the head as three masked men brandishing handguns barged in.<br><br>They went on attacking her. They hit her and pushed her several times against the wall. Then the men charged into the adjacent room where Husnija (60), was watching television.<br><br>"I saw two very big and strong men enter. They had leather jackets, black trousers and masks. They wore black gloves and had guns in their hands. `Lay down you son of a bitch', yelled one.<br><br>"I felt a kick in my head and then two or three of them jumped on me. I wasn't even able to see them because they covered my head. I tried to shout, `Help me! Help me!', but my head was smothered with a blanket and a pillow. My arms and legs were bound with a cord.<br><br>"I was beaten on my head with something really hard. I was beaten all the time and pushed from one wall to another wall.<br><br>"Then they broke my skull. I could feel it. I could feel the exact moment. Something warm began to seep down my body and then every resistance of mine was stopped. I was no longer able to do anything more. I think they thought that I was dead, and they left."<br><br>By the time he gained consciousness, Bitic was in hospital. Serbian surgeons had laboured for hours to save his life that night, Friday March 17th.<br><br>By the time the thugs had gone, he had a fractured skull, broken ribs and widespread bruising. For several days he could not feel sensations in his limbs.<br><br>His wife had several stitches to her head and was in deep shock. The walls of their apartment were covered with their blood.<br><br>Neither husband nor wife knew who attacked them, only that the motive was political.<br><br>A wallet containing 300 deutschmarks lay on the table untouched. And the men came prepared, with masks to conceal their identity and cord to bind their victim.<br><br>Three weeks after the attack, the injured couple are living in the flat of their children and Bitic is going to the hospital every other day for check-ups. He should still be in hospital, but medical facilities in Serbia are so bad that his doctors said he would be better at home.<br><br>Bitic says he does not know the motive for the assassination attempt. "It could be because of my political opinions - the biggest numbers of threats I have received are because of political issues," he says. "They were an attempt to keep me quiet.<br><br>"But I also think the attackers wanted to send a message threatening all Albanians through what they did to me."<br><br>Bitic was born in a tiny Kosovan village near the town of Suha Reka, but he came to study law at Belgrade University. He made his home in the cosmopolitan capital of Yugoslavia aged 23, and has stayed ever since.<br><br>The majority of his clients are Albanians, but Bitic stresses that he defends clients of all ethnic groups. "I am first and foremost a lawyer. It doesn't matter who is knocking on my door."<br><br>This year, however, much of his work has been dealing with cases of alleged terrorism against Albanians immediately before and during the bombing of Yugoslavia.<br><br>So there is another possible reason for the attempted killing. Many Serb lawyers have in recent months begun to represent Albanians taken into custody during the bombing and held in Serb jails. These lawyers are reported to have been paid very large fees by desperate Kosovar families who appear to believe that in this way they could secure release of their loved ones.<br><br>Whether the fees do oil the wheels of justice in Serbia is impossible to say. But the presence of an Albanian lawyer charging modest costs would be an encumbrance to those negotiating big deals.<br><br>Bitic has already handled about 60 cases of imprisoned Albanians in the year since the NATO attack. He has several ongoing cases that colleagues are currently conducting for him.<br><br>One of these is the defence of several Albanians who were among a group of students arrested during the bombing and charged with conspiring to commit a terrorist act.<br><br>The trial started in November and is ongoing. But, says Bitic, there is no physical evidence in this case against the group of students - and they don't even know each other. Bitic believes it is simply a trial to allow police to prove that they did something useful during the war.<br><br>Bitic vows that he will continue to speak his mind. But he is not sure how long he will remain in Belgrade.<br><br>The attack has left him more sombre about the dangerous road he travels and its consequences for his wife and children.<br><br>"My first priority is now my recuperation and the safety of my family," he says.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Irish Times : Rights lawyer pays price in Belgrade ``x956561248,56823,``x``x
``xMontenegrin president lashes out at Serbia's covert agenda.<br><br>Jonathan Steele in Bijelo Polje <br><br>Calling Slobodan Milosevic "evil" and "the worst leader in Serbia's history", the Montenegrin president, Milo Djukanovic, told a crowd of supporters here that Yugoslavia's strong man wanted a civil war in Montenegro. <br>"He knows he cannot mount direct aggression, so he wants to provoke clashes and have us shooting against each other, but we are trying to prevent that," Mr Djukanovic declared. <br><br>It was no coincidence that he chose a rare visit to this town on the border with Serbia for some of his toughest language yet in the three-year dispute between the two partners of the moribund Yugoslav federation. The town of Bijelo Polje is on the frontline in several ways. <br><br>While railing against international economic sanctions as unfair, Mr Milosevic recently slapped an embargo on virtually all trade with Montenegro. Bored police officers control a checkpoint just north of the town where the traditionally busy road is now almost empty. <br><br>Local shopkeepers complain that they have had to make strenuous and expensive efforts to find new supplies from Bosnia, Croatia or further afield. <br><br>The town has also become a potential military flash point since the Yugoslav army started to recruit Montenegrins from the pro-Belgrade Socialist People's Party (SNP) into a new paramilitary force, called the Seventh Battalion, headquartered in Bijelo Polje. <br><br>"It's a classic security police model of a paramilitary force," Mr Djukanovic said. "We know SNP activists check volunteers for their party loyalty so that they can have party troops who are not trained to defend the state but to overthrow democracy in Montenegro." <br><br>Many of the town's residents, half of whom are Muslim, are quietly slipping away to other places because they fear the force's potential for violence. <br><br>Vukoman Medojevic, the SNP chairman in Bijelo Polje, admits that the recruits to the Seventh Battalion come from his party's membership. "That's normal, because they support Yugoslavia and the federal army, while Djukanovic's supporters join the police," he says. "But the officers are not party members. The army belongs to the people." <br><br>Nevertheless, economic decline remains the main reason why people leave: employment opportunities have plummeted with the general collapse of the Balkan economies. <br><br>A picture of Tito, the wartime partisan leader who held Yugoslavia together for 35 years, hangs in the office of Dzemal Crnovrsanin, 51, the manager of a local supermarket. "People used to ask why I bothered to keep a dead man's portrait, but more of them now tell me they understand," he says. <br><br>Mr Crnovrsanin blames Serbia for the embargo. "I hope they realise it's useless. It's hurting them hard too. Countries at war often keep trading. Serbia slapped this embargo on, even when we are not at war. Milosevic and the SNP leader are punishing us because they lost the elections." <br><br>Despite the embargo, some of his fresh dairy produce, such as yogurt, has labels from Serbia. He admits that goods are smuggled across the border on back roads by pedestrians, or by bribing the Serb customs. But other products have to be driven round via the Serb-run entity in Bosnia. <br><br>The embargo was provoked by the Montenegrin govern ment's decision last autumn to bring in the German mark as a second currency alongside the dinar, Mr Medojevic says."If we are one country, we should have one currency. Now it's chaos." <br><br>But most Montenegrins favour the change, saying it has reduced instability. Salaries are usually paid in marks and the Yugoslav dinar has quickly become the currency of last resort; the federal army is the only major institution which pays its salaries and expenses in dinars. <br><br>The embargo surprised the Montenegrin government, which thought it could pay for its imports from Serbia with the dinars the army distributes. Now about 10% of the country's revenue is in dinars, which cannot be spent. <br><br>"We expected them to stop the clearing system but not the traffic in goods," said Dimitrije Vesovic, director of settlement operations at Montenegro's central bank. "It was the worst scenario, since it goes against their interest. If they have lost Kosovo, we thought it would be too much for them to go on to lose Montenegro as a market." <br><br>Despite the obstacles, Mr Djukanovic's officials claim to be optimistic that their gradual drive for independence is gathering strength. The next step will be the local elections in June, when they hope the SNP will lose more support, reducing Mr Milosevic's options still further.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : 'Milosevic is trying to provoke a civil war' ``x956561403,48070,``x``x
``x24 April 2000 <br><br>British soldiers almost ran out of weapons and ammunition during the 78–day NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, according to a government report obtained by the BBC on Monday. <br><br>The shortage of precision–guided munitions was described as "critical" in the National Audit Office draft report, the BBC said. Had the 1999 air war continued much longer, auditors said Britain would have run out of munitions. <br><br>The Ministry of Defense refused to comment on the draft report, which was due to be released in May. <br><br>The 97–page audit also criticised Britain for shipping outdated equipment and medical supplies to soldiers, the BBC said. Supplies of morphine, for example, were received months after their expiration dates. <br><br>Auditors noted that requests for secure radios during the operation were dismissed as "not relevant." <br><br>Overall however, auditors found improvements in the organization of food supplies, accommodation and financial administration, and the 3–month operation was deemed a success. <br><br>The audit office, the government's spending watchdog, reviews every British military campaign. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Kosovo forces almost ran out of ammo ``x956652626,94435,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Montenegro (Reuters) - The Yugoslav republic of Montenegro on Monday welcomed Albanian Foreign Minister Paskal Milo for a visit underlining its efforts to establish independent links with countries in the region. <br>Albania and Montenegro are due to sign a memorandum of understanding Tuesday. Montenegro has taken an increasingly independent line from Serbia, its much larger partner in the Yugoslav federation, since Milo Djukanovic was elected its president in 1997. <br><br>Milo met Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic and Foreign Minister Branko Lukovac for talks on joint initiatives and infrastructure projects as part of the EU-sponsored Stability Pact program for southeastern Europe. <br><br>Priorities in expanding economic cooperation would be in management of water resources, the power industry, ferrous metallurgy, trade, ecology and tourism, a government statement said. <br><br>In February, Montenegro reopened its border with Albania, shut down in 1997 after Albania plunged into anarchy. <br><br>Earlier this month, police in Montenegro agreed to cooperate with their Albanian counterparts in fighting crime. <br><br>Montenegro has expanded its network of trade and diplomatic missions abroad even as Serbia has imposed a trade ban to prevent Montenegro from reexporting cheap Serbian products to third countries. <br><br>Relations between Albania and the government in Belgrade remain strained over Kosovo, Serbia's ethnic Albanian-majority southern province, now under international administration. <br><br>Belgrade broke off diplomatic relations with Albania at the start of NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in March, intended to end Serb repression of Kosovo Albanians. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbanian foreign minister visits Montenegro``x956652643,63805,``x``x
``xBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br><br>ITROVICA, Kosovo, April 24 -- Relatives of 37 Serbs jailed in Kosovo protested outside a prison today, demanding that trials be held immediately for their family members. <br><br>The imprisoned Serbs began a hunger strike on April 12, protesting what they call "unbalanced prisoner treatment" at the hands of Western officials who are providing security forces here and trying to form a new civilian administration. <br><br>About 100 prisoners' relatives complained about the men being held indefinitely with little or no prospect of court action. <br><br>The prisoners reportedly began refusing food after having heard that a Kosovo Albanian prisoner was released this month. The man had been implicated in hurling a grenade, an incident that led to a battle between Serbs and Albanians in March that left 16 French peacekeeping troops and 24 civilians wounded. <br><br>Three Serbian doctors from Kosovo examined the hunger strikers today and said some displayed symptoms of extreme exhaustion. Two were hospitalized on Saturday in connection with their fast, said Ivan Soyois, a spokesman for the United Nations police. <br><br>One Serbian doctor, Dr. Stevan Baljosevic, said a prisoner was in critical condition. Mr. Soyois confirmed that he was ill. <br><br>Another spokesman, Bruce Loy, said on Sunday that the prisoners were eating biscuits and drinking coffee, tea and juice delivered by their families. <br><br>The prison is in Mitrovica, one of the tensest cities in Kosovo. It is divided by the Ibar River into the predominantly Serbian north and the Albanian south. <br><br>The security forces arrived in Kosovo after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign to force Yugoslavia to withdraw troops from Kosovo, a Serbian province where the overwhelming majority of residents are Albanians and where a separatist rebel movement had begun. The campaign was aimed at forcing President Slobodan Milosevic to end repression against the Albanians. <br><br>Serbs who remain in the province repeatedly accuse the security forces of bias for the Albanians. <br><br>Today, the NATO forces destroyed weapons and ammunition that had been confiscated or handed in since NATO arrived in June. The forces counted 13,000 rifles, 2,500 pistols, 500 antitank missiles, 30,000 explosive devices and 7.5 million rounds of ammunition to be turned into scrap metal. <br><br>The tension and violence continues, however. Four bodies were found on Sunday in a well in western Kosovo. On Saturday, a man was hospitalized with a gunshot wound in the Presevo Valley. <br><br>Western officials who are supervising operations here repeatedly express concerns about rising tensions in the Presevo Valley, an area along the Kosovo boundary with Serbia proper that has a predominantly ethnic Albanian population. The region lies just outside the territory involved in the NATO-led mission. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Serbs Call Imprisonment of Relatives `Unbalanced'``x956652672,12487,``x``x
``xBy Dragan Stankovic<br><br>NIS, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Seven members of a group calling itself the Serb Liberation Army went on trial Monday accused of planning an armed uprising in Serbia and plotting to kill Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Members of the group were arrested last December and charged with forming a terrorist organization in a village near the central Serbian town of Krusevac in July 1999 with the aim of toppling the constitutional order by force.<br><br>They have also been accused of plotting to kill Yugoslav Army Chief of Staff Nebojsa Pavkovic and seeking to restore the monarchy in Serbia.<br><br>At the opening of the trial in the southern Serbian city of Nis, one of the defendants, 27-year-old Yugoslav army lieutenant Boban Gajic, denied that the group had ever made any such plans.<br><br>``The only aim of the OSA is to defend Serb territories in Kosovo and protect the Serbian people,'' he told the court.<br> <br> <br>``As an officer, I know that any kind of uprising would never see the light of day, it would be quelled by the army and police overnight,'' said Gajic.<br><br>``I also know it is impossible to get anywhere near President Milosevic, let alone carry out an assassination attempt, especially not by a small group like ours,'' he said.<br><br>Mysterious Car Crash<br><br>The Serb Liberation Army, whose initials OSA mean wasp in Serbian, was first heard of in October when it claimed responsibility for the murder of four members of the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) in a mysterious car crash.<br><br>SPO leader Vuk Draskovic, who was lightly injured in the crash, said the authorities had ordered a truck driver to swerve into his convoy of cars and charged Milosevic's government with ``state terror,'' a charge it has hotly denied.<br><br>Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic hinted late last year that another group, called PAUK, or Spider, made up of Serb paramilitaries might have been responsible for the crash.<br><br>Matic said PAUK, which he accused of being sponsored by French intelligence, had also tried to assassinate Milosevic.<br><br>At Monday's trial in the town of Nis, Gojic admitted that he had written promotional texts for the Serb Liberation Army, including the one claiming responsibility for the car crash.<br><br>But he said they were written for marketing purposes only.<br><br>A second defendant, Milutin Pavlovic, admitted organizing the infiltration of small groups of armed Serbs into Kosovo after last year's NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia as a member of the group.<br><br>But he joined it only because of its aim to protect Serbs in Kosovo, which is now under de facto international rule following the NATO campaign.<br><br>After that ended hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians driven from Kosovo by Serb repression returned to the province, many seeking revenge against members of the ethnic Serb minority.<br><br>Many hard-line Serb nationalists were dismayed by Belgrade's handling of the war and its eventual loss of control over Kosovo, regarded by Serbs as the cradle of their culture and religion.<br><br>If found guilty, the defendants face 15 years imprisonment. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTrial of Serbs Accused of Bid to Kill Milosevic``x956652710,50316,``x``x
``x<br>PODGORICA, April 25 (Reuters) - Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic on Tuesday accepted an invitation to visit Albania, a sign of the coastal republic's growing diplomatic independence from the Yugoslav government in Belgrade. <br>The announcement was made shortly after the Montenegrin and Albanian foreign ministers signed two agreements aimed at boosting bilateral relations, an added snub to Belgrade which last year broke off diplomatic ties with Albania. <br><br>The invitation from Albanian President Rexhep Meidani to Djukanovic, a fierce opponent of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, was brought by Albanian Foreign Minister Paskal Milo during a two-day visit that ended on Tuesday. <br><br>Belgrade broke off relations with Tirana at the start of NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in March last year, intended to end Serb repression of Kosovo Albanians. Montenegro is Serbia's uneasy junior partner in Yugoslavia. <br><br>A Montenegrin cabinet statement said Djukanovic and Milo had agreed that a new age was opening in bilateral relations which would have broader positive effects in the region. <br><br>Montenegro, whose population of around 650,000 includes some 45,000 ethnic Albanians, has distanced itself from Belgrade since pro-western Djukanovic was elected president in 1997. <br><br>It has been trying to establish independent ties with countries in the region and to circumvent the international blockade of Yugoslavia under Milosevic. <br><br>The two accords signed on Tuesday, marking the end of 50 years of strained relations, were an economic, trade and cultural cooperation accord and a protocol on cooperation between the two foreign ministries. <br><br>"We have opened a new era in relations between our two countries and created the institutional basis for future cooperation," said Milo, the first Albanian foreign minister to visit Montenegro in 50 years. <br><br>Milo's reference to Montenegro as a country underlined Albanian support for the coastal republic's growing independence from Belgrade. <br><br>MONTENEGRO, ALBANIA PLAN PROJECTS <br><br>The two sides said they would work on joint projects as part of the European Union-sponsored Stability Pact for southeast Europe, including road, railroad and power projects. <br><br>"We rightly expect European countries, especially those behind the pact, to offer full support to programmes that we initiate," said Montenegrin Foreign Minister Branko Lukovac. Cooperation would expand to include tourism, education and health. <br><br>Another border crossing opening was also planned in the future. In February, Montenegro reopened its border with Albania, closed in 1997 after Albania plunged into anarchy, and earlier this month the republic's police agreed to cooperate with their Albanian counterparts on fighting crime. <br><br>The long history of strained relations between Yugoslavia and Albania centres on Serbia's treatment of its majority ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo. <br><br>Milo said Kosovo's future status remained to be resolved, while Lukovac said the province was part of Serbia and Yugoslavia. <br><br>"But a long time will pass during which the presence of international forces will be necessary in Kosovo," Lukovac said. <br><br>Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, now controlled by NATO-led international peacekeepers and U.N. administrators, want full independence from Yugoslavia. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro president to visit Albania``x956740687,32671,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>26 April 2000 <br><br>A human rights report today accuses the government of the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, of intensifying a crackdown on dissent, singling out student activists among the latest targets. <br><br>Human Rights Watch identifies several methods of repression by the Serbian government since the Nato war a year ago. One is the so-called informative talk, actually a form of interrogation, used by police to intimidate student activists from the Otpor (Resistance) group. <br><br>Otpor, born in 1998 in reaction to repressive laws curbing media freedom and university autonomy, operates between the traditional Serbian opposition and Mr Milosevic's autocratic regime. Kristina Peric, a student at the Academy of Arts, told The Independent Otpor is "an alternative to the regime and the opposition, because people trust no one any more. The regime is notorious, the opposition barely united". <br><br>She added: "People trust us because we are an authentic generation that does not remember Tito's communism. We grew up in the times of Milosevic. This generation can bring something new." <br><br>Otpor calls for resistance – to the regime, to stupidity, violence, civil war or poverty. Children sport Otpor T-shirts. Actors of the National Theatre recently ended a play by taking off their costumes to show their Otpor T-shirts. The group claims 20,000 registered activists, aged 16 to 70. They distribute leaflets or badges and stage actions that mock the official picture of Serbia. Its platform includes a demand that Mr Milosevic step down, free elections, the rule of law and democracy, and co-operation with the United Nations war crimes court which has indicted the Yugoslav President. <br><br>With the opposition calling for early elections, 480,000 young voters have come of age since 1997. "We'll organise a 'get out and vote' campaign, because so many can turn the tide in favour of the opposition" said an activist, Milan Samardzic. <br><br>Since 1991, 300,000 young and educated Serbs have emigrated to the West. "They support and finance us," Ms Peric said. "They want to return to a different Serbia." <br><br>Milena Stevanovic, walking in Belgrade with her granddaughter, said: "Resistance? They are irresistible." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Milosevic accused of waging war on student activists ``x956740712,5322,``x``x
``x<br>By Amra Kevic - 26 Apr 2000 08:26GMT<br> <br>BELGRADE, April 25 (Reuters) - The head of Yugoslav Airlines was shot dead on Tuesday by unidentified assailants, the latest in a series of high profile assassinations in the politically charged Yugoslav capital. <br><br>The body of Zika Petrovic, director of the airline since 1992 and a loyal ally of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, lay in the street after the shooting, which nearby residents said happened at around 9:30 p.m. (1930 GMT). <br><br>"I heard three or four dull thuds and a few minutes later my son ran in to say someone had been shot. When we came out four or five minutes later the police were already there," a middle-aged man from the building opposite told Reuters. <br><br>A man in his 20s said he had seen blood on the forehead and shoulder of the body, and had seen about eight bullet casings lying nearby. Another eyewitness said two men had opened fire on Petrovic and run away immediately afterwards. <br><br>"This is how they settle accounts among themselves. All it takes is one bullet. This is disgusting, this is terrible," said a young woman at the scene who gave her name as Milica. <br><br>Petrovic was the second top official to be shot dead in Belgrade in the past two months. In February, unknown assassins killed Yugoslav Defence Minister Pavle Bulatovic. <br><br>A few weeks earlier, Serbia's most notorious paramilitary leader, Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, was shot down in a Belgrade hotel. Several other underworld figures had been killed before then and others have been killed since. None of the killers have been found. <br><br>Born in 1939 in Milosevic's home town of Pozarevac in eastern Serbia, Petrovic trained as an engineer and joined Yugoslav Airlines (Jugoslovenski aerotransport or JAT) in 1968. He became director in 1992. <br><br>Like Bulatovic, he was known as a quietly spoken man who was loyal to Milosevic and kept a low profile. <br><br>The European Union last month lifted a year-long embargo against the airline imposed over Milosevic's repression of the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo province. <br><br>"This is very sad, he was a very nice man and was working hard to lift sanctions on JAT," said the middle-aged wife of a film director who said she knew Petrovic. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFinancial Times: Yugoslav airlines boss shot dead in Belgrade``x956740731,57308,``x``x
``xBy Robert McMahon<br><br><br>A UN Security Council mission back from Kosovo says the problem of missing persons is one of the main obstacles to reconciliation between Serbs and Albanians. And despite lingering differences over the visit of two council members to Belgrade, the head of the mission is hopeful the Kosovo trip will provide a badly needed boost to the UN mission there. RFE/RL's UN correspondent Robert McMahon reports.<br><br>United Nations, 2 May 2000 (RFE/RL) -- The trip by eight UN Security Council representatives to Kosovo was intended to provide insight into the challenges facing one of the United Nations' most ambitious operations. A report delivered yesterday (Monday) by the council team fresh back from Kosovo indicates that the council did gain a new appreciation for the work of the UN Mission in Kosovo, known as UNMIK. But the trip also showcased a fundamental difference among some council members concerning how to treat Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The Russian and Chinese representatives on the mission -- Russia's UN ambassador Sergei Lavrov and China's deputy ambassador Shen Guofang -- met with Milosevic in Belgrade before the mission started last Thursday (April 27). They were representing their nations, which are supportive of Yugoslavia in the council, but several of their council colleagues said the visit was inappropriate. <br><br>Milosevic has been indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia as a war criminal. UN resolutions call for all countries to cooperate with the tribunal. Ambassador Robert Fowler of Canada, last month's council president, expressed disappointment on Friday about the meeting with Milosevic. He was joined yesterday by U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and by the leader of the council mission to Kosovo, Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury of Bangladesh. <br><br>But Chinese diplomat Shen defended the visit. He told reporters yesterday it is necessary to engage Yugoslavia in order to help with the administration of Kosovo as laid out in Security Council resolution 1244, [which set up UNMIK]: <br><br>"It is very necessary for us to send a message to the government of Yugoslavia and in my view in order to implement Resolution 1244 we have to involve the government of Yugoslavia." Ambassador Chowdhury called the visit with Milosevic "regrettable." But he said the Russian and Chinese representatives fully participated in the council mission. <br><br>Russia and China were the only permanent council members on the Kosovo mission. Representatives from the other permanent members -- the U.S., Britain and France -- are taking part in a visit to the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo this week to assess conditions for UN peacekeeping operations there. In a news conference on Monday, Chowdhury said the Kosovo mission found three main problem areas. They involve cases of thousands of missing persons and detainees, tens of thousands of displaced people and refugees who have not been able to return to Kosovo, and the ongoing ethnic violence in the province. Chowdhury said that in virtually all meetings with Kosovo residents, the mission was faced with pleas about missing relatives and loved ones. <br><br>"It's a great humanitarian issue which needs our attention. The council cannot maintain credibility unless we address this issue. And I'm saying [this] about all missing persons, irrespective of ethnicity. This issue needs our attention." The mission's report says there is strong support for the appointment of a special UN envoy for missing persons in Kosovo. The UN Secretary-General recently appointed a similar representative to look into cases of missing Kuwaitis in Iraq, and Chowdhury says a missing persons envoy in Kosovo could function in the same way. The U.S.'s Holbrooke, speaking outside the council chamber yesterday, endorsed the idea of a missing persons envoy: <br><br>"I think the missing persons issue is of enormous importance in Kosovo. With thousands of people missing in a small population base, almost every family in Kosovo is directly affected by it. The emotions on this issue run as deep as any I've experienced in the Balkans in the last six years. "``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty : Missing Persons Issue Looms Large``x957337890,43133,``x``x
``xA nearly vacant hospital in Kosovo epitomizes the divisions between the remaining Serbs.<br><br>Richard Mertens <br><br>GRACANICA, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>Sasa Ivic is an anesthesiologist's assistant at a new hospital that opened five weeks ago in this Serb enclave in central Kosovo. The problem for Mr. Ivic is that there is no anesthesiologist to assist. And without an anesthesiologist, there can be no operations.<br><br>The hospital's operating room, with its gleaming tiles and shiny new machinery, sits dark and unused. Down the hall is a delivery room, but no obstetrician. The hospital has only three doctors, barely enough to stay open. <br><br>"We have patients, but we don't have doctors," complained Mr. Ivic. And not that many patients, either.<br><br>This near-vacant Serb hospital is a casualty of the growing struggle for power among the Serbs who have remained in Kosovo. It also illustrates how long the reach of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is. His Army and police were driven from Kosovo last June, but his regime continues to exert powerful influence from afar. The struggle is of deep interest to Western officials, who are trying to encourage leaders who are willing to work with them. So far they have not succeeded.<br><br>The Gracanica hospital was meant to be part of a much-larger effort by the international community to improve the living conditions of Serbs who still remain in Kosovo, and thus to encourage them to stay. Since NATO-led troops occupied Kosovo last year, half of the province's 200,000 Serbs have fled. Of the 100,000 or so who remain, most have retreated into all-Serb enclaves, where peacekeeping troops give them protection.<br><br>For political reasons, a hospital is badly needed. In purely medical terms, it's superfluous. Normally, seriously ill medical patients would go to the state hospital in Pristina, 10 minutes away. But since last summer, Serbs have no longer been welcome there. For anything that the local clinic cannot handle, Serbs have gone to a Russian military hospital about 15 minutes away, or traveled outside Kosovo.<br><br>Financed by the Greek government and Doctors of the World, the Gracanica hospital was meant to change this. But it was soon caught up in a different conflict than the one between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, this time among the Serbs themselves.<br><br>Serb doctors who might have worked in the new hospital were warned not to by the Yugoslav Ministry of Health in Belgrade. They were told they would lose their Yugoslav pensions and health insurance if they did. In some cases, says the hospital's medical director, Dr. Rada Trajkovic, they received personal threats. "They all want to work here," says Dr. Trajkovic. "They call me almost every day. But the [Milosevic] regime is threatening them."<br><br>The hospital is at the nexus of a struggle with at least three sides. On one side are moderate Serbs, including the leader of the Serb Orthodox Church in Kosovo, Bishop Artemije. These Serb leaders have expressed a willingness to cooperate with the West. They have frequent contact with the Western officials, including American officials like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. They have denounced the Milosevic regime and have tried to foster connections with Serbia's political opposition.<br><br>They are opposed in part by more defiant Serb leaders in northern Kosovo, where Serbs live in an enclave that adjoins Serbia proper and is virtually cut off from the rest of Kosovo. These leaders have less to gain by cooperating with Kosovo's UN administration. While their relation to Mr. Milosevic remains unclear, they have resisted Western efforts to integrate northern Kosovo with the rest of the province. <br><br>On the third side are Milosevic and the Yugoslav regime. In February, American and NATO officials accused Milosevic of using his police to stir up trouble in the town of Mitrovica. In fact, Milosevic's influence reaches almost everywhere in Kosovo where there are still Serbs. Kosovar Serbs read the regime's newspapers and watch its television broadcasts. Because Kosovo is still officially a province of Serbia, Kosovar Serbs also are eligible for Yugoslav social services. Because of Yugoslavia's dire economic conditions, such benefits are not generous. But the prospect of losing them, and of being cut off from the Yugoslav state, was one of the things that made Todorka Slavkovic, a nurse, think twice before she went to work at the Gracanica hospital.<br><br>"We're all afraid," she says. "But we want to work here." <br><br>The Kosovo Serbs have always been divided between those willing to cooperate with the West and those determined to defy it. But the split widened last month when the moderate Serbs, led by Bishop Artemije, agreed to participate in an administrative council made up of Kosovars and international officials. This council, formed late last year, is part of the United Nations effort to share power with local officials. Until recently, the Serbs boycotted it.<br><br>After the agreement, a mob of more than 100 Serbs attacked the 14th-century monastery in Gracanica where Bishop Artemije makes his headquarters. Church officials blamed the attack on extremists sympathetic to Milosevic, but it reflected a broader lack of support for Serb moderates. "We don't have any political influence," Bishop Artemije acknowledged recently.<br><br>The West is trying to change this. It is importing opposition newspapers into Kosovo and is trying to help moderate Serbs start a radio station. "This is a really important struggle, a struggle for truth, a struggle for the souls of people, who are in danger of being taken in by a very brutal regime ..." says the Rev. Sava Janjic, a spokesman for the bishop.<br><br>The West also is trying to help the moderates by showing Serbs that cooperating with the West yields results. Kosovo's UN administration has begun to offer special services to the Serbs, including buses that travel between the enclaves. It is giving more help to Serb schools and health clinics. "It's very important to be able to demonstrate that there are other Serbs willing to help them, that they don't have to depend on Belgrade," a Western diplomat says.<br><br>For now, Milosevic and the more defiant Kosovo Serbs have the upper hand. The primary-care health clinic in Gracanica is run by doctors still loyal to Belgrade. It is a dingy place, but it is amply staffed and busy. "A hospital is a good idea, for the Serbian people and no one else," Dr. Mice Popovic, the senior doctor at the clinic, says brusquely. "But it should work under the Serbian government and not under the UN."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : A new hospital but few patients``x957337938,17468,``x``x
``xBy Adam LeBor in Budapest <br><br>3 May 2000 <br><br>British diplomats are training a Yugoslav élite-in-waiting to oversee the country's transformation to a civil society after the Milosevic regime falls. <br><br>Senior Serbian figures in professional fields such as the military, law enforcement and academia are being brought to Budapest in neighbouring Hungary to design a blueprint for post-Milosevic Serbia, and prepare for the country's re-integration into Europe. <br><br>The New Serbia Forum, an initiative funded by the Foreign Office, focuses on key issues to shape the future Yugoslavia such as instituting civilian control of the military, punishment for those who committed atrocities under President Slobodan Milosevic and reconstruct- ing a stable economy. <br><br>Many of the Serb participants held senior posts in Yugoslavia before the country began to implode in the 1991 Croatian war of independence. Their refusal to participate in Mr Milosevic's nationalist drive forced them out of their jobs. <br><br>British officials want to prevent a repeat of the post-1989 transitions from Communist dictatorship of eastern Eur-ope's new democracies. <br><br>Sir John Birch, former British ambassador to Hungary, said: "In 1989 there was no action plan for a new democratic government and a lot of time was wasted arguing over inconsequential questions such as flags and anthems, instead of coping with the budget deficit or thinking about how to deal with people from the old regime. <br><br>"We are not a subversive organisation, talking about how to get rid of the Milosevic regime. We are looking at Serb solutions to Serb problems, with outside assistance, about what Serbia needs to reintegrate." <br><br>Forum participants, including Dr Miroslav Hadzic, a former colonel in the Yugoslav army, said they wanted to learn from other ex-communist nations. "It is very important for us to be in touch with modern democratic experts which have experience of issues such as civilian control of the army, in transition countries such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia," said Dr Hadzic, now a research fellow at a Belgrade institute. <br><br>The Western policy of isolation and sanctions had supported Mr Milosevic, by strengthening his position, said Dr Hadzic. "The Serbian people have no hope and without hope you cannot do anything. All sanctions should be lifted now and Yugoslavia should be admitted to all international organisations. <br><br>"The Serbs are paying the price of 10 years of a bad choice, and it is a high price." <br><br>Budapest, capital of Hungary, which borders three states of the former Yugoslavia – Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia – has long been a key meeting place for nationals of the south Slavic nations, now divided into independent states. <br><br>Bosko Colak-Antic, a former journalist with Tanjug, the Yugoslav state news agency, said: "We do not have free and open expression, to meet experts and clarify our attitudes and opinions. This [forum] brings together the élite of people who can express their opinions about what should happen after the fall of Milosevic." <br><br>Attending the forum is not without risks. Participants are often called in by the police on their return home and questioned. One Serb delegate said Belgrade officers asked him who he met, and what the forum was about, then verbally abused him. <br><br>The role of the army and the police in the transition to a post-Milosevic era is a key question. Analysts are not certain the army will support Mr Milosevic; nor can he rely on police. <br><br>But many analysts expect the end of the Milosevic regime to be protracted and bloody. Internationally isolated, its domestic support crumbling, riven by factions and threatened by armed organised crime gangs it unleashed during the Bosnian war, the regime is likely to end not with a whimper, but with a Serb Götterdämmerung. <br><br>One delegate said: "There is too much at stake for government circles and they have no way out. They will fight until the last drop of our blood."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Britain trains new elite for post-Milosevic era ``x957337959,69884,``x``x
``xGeneral sought stepped-up effort<br><br>By John Donnelly, Globe Staff,<br><br><br>TUTTGART, Germany - General Wesley K. Clark's career has been a succession of high notes: No. 1 in the West Point class of 1966, a Rhodes scholar, key peace negotiator in the Bosnia accords at Dayton, the NATO war hero who won the alliance's only war in Kosovo.<br><br><br>But bittersweet is this retirement. Clark stepped down yesterday as head of US European Command and its 109,000 US troops, and will leave his post today as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander. General Joseph W. Ralston, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, takes over both posts.<br><br><br>While a military band played the West Point march as Clark inspected the troops one final time, the decidedly subdued atmosphere was due to how Clark is leaving.<br><br><br>Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and General H. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had arranged for Clark to leave his post a few months early. The official explanation was that it was the doings of bureaucracy: Ralston's term as vice chairman had ended Feb. 29, and unless he was appointed to a new post within two months, he had to retire.<br><br><br>But Pentagon officials quietly acknowledge a different reason as well: that Clark for too long wouldn't take no for an answer as he argued several positions contrary to those held by top Defense Department brass. The most important disagreement centered on whether a limited air war against Serbia would force Serb troops from Kosovo. Clark wanted to use much more firepower, a decision that in hindsight was largely correct; his superiors, including President Clinton and many European leaders, often disagreed.<br><br><br>''Clark's incredibly bright, but he's stubborn,'' said a Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. ''His biggest error may have been he forgot who was boss.''<br><br><br>Both immediate bosses, Cohen and Shelton, shared the stage yesterday with Clark and Ralston. They spoke only kind words.<br><br><br>''No one should ever doubt either your service or your success,'' Cohen said to Clark. ''Faced with an adversary who manufactured a vicious humanitarian nightmare, you responded with compassion and speed.''<br><br><br>Since the war's end, Clark has spent most of his time trying to keep peace in Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians have carried out many revenge attacks against Serb villagers. But Clark said he is beginning to see some hope.<br><br><br>On Monday, he visited Kosovo and said there was an ''increasing sense of security, the indicators of recovery from strong-arm ethnic cleansing and even some first budding signs of willingness to tolerate ethnic differences and cooperate among ethnic groups.''<br><br><br>When the ceremony ended, Cohen departed almost immediately, skipping Clark's reception. The two men will see each other again today in Mons, Belgium, at the NATO command change.<br><br><br>Watching the ceremony yesterday was Jeffrey H. Smith, a West Point classmate of Clark's, a former general counsel to the Central Intelligence Agency and now a Washington lawyer.<br><br><br>''This was very emotional,'' Smith said later, his suitcoat off, revealing West Point cufflinks. ''I think of all those years, and all that has happened, and to see Wes succeed.''<br><br><br>Smith said he expected the four-star general to enter a second career after 34 years in the military.<br><br><br>''Knowing Wes, I think he would like to try something very different for a while,'' he said.<br><br><br>Clark declined to speak to reporters after the ceremony. A spokesman said it was traditional for the departing commander not to overshadow the new leader.<br><br><br>Ralston said he would now focus on NATO's relationship with Russia and the European Union.<br><br><br>''I think we have an opportunity to see what we can do with our relationship with the Russians and the Russian military,'' Ralston said. ''Perhaps we have a window of opportunity now with President Putin taking over,'' referring to the new Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xClark, NATO leader in Kosovo, retires from his US command ``x957435151,62978,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - The Serbian parliament Wednesday elected 20 members from the ruling coalition to the upper house of the federal Yugoslav legislature after the main opposition party boycotted the session. <br>The Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), the only opposition party with significant representation in the Serbian parliament, announced Tuesday it would not take part in the meeting. <br><br>That decision cleared the way for the coalition of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to choose its own members for the upper house, where Serbia and its tiny sister republic Montenegro have 20 seats each. <br><br>The SPO began boycotting the parliament earlier this year to protest the authorities' failure to track down those responsible for the deaths of four party officials in a mysterious car crash last October. <br><br>The party blames the deaths on the state. The authorities have denied any involvement. <br><br>In Wednesday's session, 188 deputies present in the 250-seat Serbian parliament voted unanimously for 20 deputies of the three ruling parties -- Milosevic's Socialist party, the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party and the Yugoslav Left. <br><br>The four seats in the upper house that belonged to the SPO were split between the Socialist party and the Radical Party, which now have nine seats each in the 40-seat chamber. <br><br>The Yugoslav Left of Milosevic's wife Mirjana Markovic will control two seats. <br><br>SPO spokesman Ivan Kovacevic said Tuesday that the exclusion of its deputies from the federal parliament would not change anything since the ruling coalition dominated parliament anyway. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbia ruling parties win Yugo parliament seats``x957435169,64019,``x``x
``xThe New York Times<br><br>By REUTERS<br><br><br>RISTINA, Kosovo, May 3 -- The United Nations refugee agency said today that it would suspend operations in the Serbian-dominated north of Mitrovica if attacks on its staff and vehicles continued. <br><br>Dennis McNamara, the top official for the office of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said the agency had been appalled by the latest outbreak of violence last weekend in the ethnically divided city in north Kosovo. <br><br>One refugee agency vehicle was destroyed, another was damaged, and a foreign staff member had to flee from a mob into an apartment building, a spokesman for the agency said. <br><br>Nine soldiers from the NATO-led peackeeping force, a police officer and four United Nations staff members were wounded in the rioting, Kosovo's international police said. Five vehicles belonging to international agencies were destroyed, and 22 were heavily damaged. <br><br>"If the thugs who led that violence continue to target the international community, including our agency and our partners, we would have no choice but to suspend our operations," Mr. McNamara said at a regular news briefing in Kosovo's provincial capital, Pristina. <br><br>"Maybe that's their objective, but we're not prepared to be sitting ducks in these situations," he added. <br><br>Mitrovica, a city divided into Serbian and Albanian dominated areas, is Kosovo's most dangerous postwar flash point. <br><br>Several serious clashes involving Serbs, ethnic Albanians and peacekeepers have broken out there in the last few months. <br><br>The violence on Saturday was not the first time the United Nations refugee agency had been the target of violence in Mitrovica, raising questions about the effectiveness of the security provided by the peacekeepers. <br><br>The north of Mitrovica is home to the last major urban concentration of Serbs in Kosovo. Serbs have fled from elsewhere in the province in fear of attacks by ethnic Albanians seeking revenge for years of state-sponsored Serbian repression. <br><br>At least 240,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians have left the province since June 1999 because of violence or threats by ethnic Albanians. <br><br>Many Kosovo Serbs are suspicious of international agencies because of the help they have given to members of the province's ethnic Albanian majority and because of NATO's bombing campaign last year that drove out Serbian forces. <br><br>Mr. McNamara noted, however, that the refugee agency's largest program in Europe is in Serbia, aiding Serbian refugees who have fled Kosovo and elsewhere as a result of the past decade's Balkan conflicts. <br><br>He said the agency appreciated that the peacekeepers had a difficult job in Mitrovica but made clear he hoped security would improve. <br><br>"We certainly realize their difficulties but we also depend on their implementation of their mandate to secure the environment," said Mr. McNamara, a New Zealander who has spent 24 years with the agency. <br><br>In Mitrovica today, more than 1,000 Serbs held a rally to demand the swift return of Serbian refugees to their homes. <br><br>Mr. McNamara also announced a program aimed at allowing Gypsies who have fled their homes to return. Many Albanians say Gypsies colloborated with the Serbs. But Albanian leaders have recently said that the entire Gypsy community should not be stigmatized. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. Agency Threatens to Suspend Operations in Kosovo Area``x957435193,25164,``x``x
``x<br>By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer <br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Three anti-government students have been arrested on charges of trying to kill associates of President Slobodan Milosevic's son following a fight between the two groups.<br><br>Dejan Randjic, head of the anti-Milosevic students' group Otpor, or Resistance, said the three - all Otpor members - were beaten up Tuesday evening at an outdoor cafe by employees of the ``Madonna'' disco club, owned by Milosevic's son, Marko. The incident occurred in the Milosevic family hometown of Pozarevac, 50 miles east of the capital, Belgrade.<br><br>The chain of events leading up to the fight at the cafe remained unclear, but Momcilo Veljkovic, one of those arrested, claimed Marko Milosevic's associates provoked one of the students.<br><br><br> <br>Veljkovic told the Belgrade-based Beta news agency that when he tried to persuade the Milosevic associates to leave his colleague alone, they hit him on the head. In the struggle that followed, Veljkovic said he grabbed a gun from one of the assailants and fought back.<br><br>The fight involved fists and pistol butts. Dozens gathered around to watch, some joining the brawl. There were conflicting reports on whether a gun went off once and who fired it.<br><br>Veljkovic and two others from Otpor were later detained by police and charged with attempted murder. One of the three was transported to a Belgrade clinic, suffering from a broken nose and head injuries, Beta reported.<br><br>``The fact that Veljkovic managed to snatch away the pistol he was being beaten with is now being used as pretext to charge the three Otpor members,'' Randjic said. He said all three had been transferred to Belgrade prison.<br><br>A local police statement said the three Otpor members were ``known as persons of delinquent behavior.'' Yugoslavia's information minister and a high-ranking Communist party official, Ivan Markovic, said a ``group of hooligans with Otpor's fascist symbol'' were the aggressors.<br><br>But Vukasin Petrovic, another Otpor leader, rejected Markovic's accusations and said Marko Milosevic and his associates in this town had ``frequently threatened and assaulted Otpor members'' even before the fight Tuesday night.<br><br>The back-and-forth accusations reached the national political level.<br><br>The opposition Democratic Party issued a statement saying the ``brutal terror by Marko Milosevic and his circle of associates ... has been going on for months,'' while Milosevic's ruling Socialists said the ``heinous attack by Otpor ... constituted a criminal act by people who daily plot all forms of terrorism, up to the murder of honest citizens and patriots.'' <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``x3 Arrested in Yugoslavia Fight``x957517959,3341,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, May 4 (Reuters) - Serbs are facing shortages of basic food items at subsidised prices, affecting especially vulnerable groups in the impoverished Balkan state, according to a U.N. agency report made available this week. <br>The U.N's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the state system of agricultural subsidies was failing because of insufficient resources to pay for it. <br><br>In real terms, funds for such subsidies have declined by almost 70 percent in the last three years, creating a situation where farmers are unable to cover production costs. <br><br>The government controls prices on some foodstuffs to curb inflation and maintain consumer purchasing power. <br><br>But, OCHA added, "the failure to back up the policy of strict price control with adequate subsidies has had serious consequences for consumers." <br><br>As a result, disruptions in the regular market supply of subsidised food items became a pattern last September with some basic goods disappearing from shops altogether, OCHA said. <br><br>By the end of 1999, milk had become impossible to find in shops, it said. Recently, there were also shortages of basic, cheap bread. <br><br>"The only solutions available to consumers are either to devote a lot of time to wait in a long queue early in the morning for subsidised food items or to buy expensive alternatives," it said. <br><br>SHORTAGES HIT POOR PEOPLE <br><br>OCHA said more than 70 percent of an average salary is needed to meet a family's monthly food needs at prices subsidised by the state. If they had to pay market prices, this cost would rise to 25 percent above the average salary. <br><br>"These examples show clearly how difficult -- and often unrealistic -- it is for average Serbian consumers to meet basic food needs, even at state subsidised prices -- let alone at free market prices," OCHA said. <br><br>Shortages of basic food items at low prices affect those who have no choice but to rely on subsidised food for survival. <br><br>"Realistically, the only way they can cope is by simply not consuming food items unavailable at low prices, such as milk, bread, sugar and oil," the report said. <br><br>"This will have an immediate negative impact on the nutritional situation of the vulnerable people," it said. <br><br>OCHA warned of worsening shortages as it said producers were unlikely to grow crops whose price is controlled by the state. <br><br>Yugoslavia, made up of Serbia and the coastal republic of Montenegro, has plunged into poverty over the last decade as a result of the bloody breakup of the old socialist federation. <br><br>Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, is under economic sanctions over its role in a series of Balkan wars in the 1990s, including an oil embargo and a credit and investment ban. <br><br>In a bid to boost agricultural output, the Serbian parliament on Wednesday introduced a new law penalising landowners who keep farms idle. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbs face shortages of cheap food - U.N. report``x957517983,23602,``x``x
``xBy DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press Writer <br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Twenty years after the death of Josip Broz Tito, graffiti scrawled on a Belgrade wall sums up the feelings many Yugoslavs have for the metal worker turned charismatic leader who kept the ethnically fragmented country united and prosperous for 35 years.<br><br>``The locksmith was better,'' it says in comparing Tito's tenure to that of Yugoslavia's present ruler, President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>When Tito died on May 4, 1980, at 88, Yugoslavia was a multiethnic, six-republic nation whose citizens could travel freely to the West. They earned salaries averaging about $500 a month - 10 times more than the current average wage in Serbia. Along with smaller Montenegro, Serbia now makes up what remains of the federation.<br><br>``Those times cannot be compared to the current situation: Today, we are a xenophobic country which only wishes to get rid of its leader who triggered this tragedy,'' Ilija Djukic, a former Yugoslav ambassador to Washington, said Thursday.<br><br>An ardent Serb nationalist, Milosevic presided over the violent breakup of the larger Yugoslavia, and is widely blamed at home for economic hardship and international isolation. But he managed to retain Serb loyalties for years by presenting the bloodshed as a battle for Serb survival.<br><br><br>Now, even that support seems to be drying up. Despite Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the Serbian province was lost, perhaps forever. Montenegro is threatening to secede, and the growing repression of Serb critics by the regime underscores the sentiment against Milosevic on his home turf.<br><br>By contrast, Tito, a Croat-Slovene, tightly controlled intolerance among Yugoslavia's ethnic nationalists and distributed power among its different ethnic groups. He clamped down on both Serb and Croat nationalists in the 1970s, purging them from power in the two main rival republics.<br><br>Still, those moves only checked nationalism instead of eradicating it, allowing it to break out in full fury in 1991, when the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia began. And though Tito's economic policies gave Yugoslavs a semblance of good life, they left the country with a $22 billion foreign debt.<br><br>Despite the fallout from his policies, even Serbs who resented Tito's stifling of their ambitions now look back with longing to the 35 years of his rule.<br><br>Portraits of Tito hang on the walls in many Serbian homes, restaurants or offices. Recent films praising the relatively good times under Tito were box office hits both in Serbia and Croatia.<br><br>Tito even topped a recent poll of popular public figures in Croatia's Vecernji List newspaper.<br><br>Notices commemorating Tito's death appeared in several newspapers throughout former Yugoslavia on Thursday.<br><br>``Twenty years have passed, with sorrow and misery in our hearts,'' said one in the Vecer newspaper, of Macedonia, another former Yugoslav republic.<br><br>Another, in the Sarajevo Oslobodjenje daily - set off with a photo of Tito in his trademark marshal uniform - said: ``Thank you for the happy childhood, carefree youth and the life worth living.''<br><br>``Ten years of war and destruction in former Yugoslavia show how Tito was right,'' said Gen. Stevan Mirkovic, Tito's former chief of staff. ``If he were alive, nothing like that would have happened.''<br><br>Despite his resurgent popularity, the scene was subdued Thursday at Tito's final resting place in Belgrade. For years after his death, up to 20,000 people a day followed the arrows and footpaths leading to the ``House of Flowers,'' Tito's marble tomb in the plush Dedinje district.<br><br>On Thursday, Tito's widow Jovanka and a small delegation of Tito's communist comrades were the only visitors laying flowers at the tomb. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMemory of Ex-Yugoslav Leader Lives``x957518004,91472,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Ron Synovitz<br><br><br>Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker (1989-92) says he doubts there will ever be a peaceful multi-ethnic society in Bosnia or in Kosovo. In an interview with RFE/RL, Baker -- a Republican -- is critical of U.S. foreign policy in the Balkans since early 1993, when the Democratic Party took over the Administration in Washington.<br><br>Prague, (RFE/RL) -- Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, a Republican, is critical of the Balkan policies pursued by Bill Clinton's Democratic presidency in the last eight years. <br><br>As secretary of state for president George Bush from 1989 to 1992, Baker was witness to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the start of Yugoslavia's disintegration. Baker also served as White House chief of chief of staff for both Bush and president Ronald Reagan. <br><br>In an interview with RFE/RL's South Slavic Service this week, Baker said Clinton's handling of crises in the former Yugoslavia has weakened the NATO alliance, damaged Washington's relations with Russia and China, and bogged down U.S. troops indefinitely in Kosovo and Bosnia. <br><br>"I'm not sure that you'll ever get a multi-ethnic society peacefully established either in Bosnia or in Kosovo. [Bosnia] is not a normal country and there's not a stable peace. We will be there for a very, very long time. What is the exit strategy? President Clinton told us we would be out of Bosnia by Christmas 1997, and we're still there. We will be in Kosovo for a very, very long time. You can argue that what we did [in Kosovo] was morally the right thing to do. It w-a-s the right thing to do. But there is no over-riding national interest, as far as America is concerned, with our intervention there." <br><br>Baker said he remains uncertain about how to resolve ethnic tensions in Kosovo and Bosnia. But he suggested that the answer in Kosovo m-a-y be to partition the province into Serb- and ethnic-Albanian controlled sectors: <br><br>"I don't know what the solution will be. The people in the region have been fighting each other for many, many, many hundreds of years. It may be that partition is the only solution. But we're certainly not successful in establishing multi-ethnic democracies." <br><br>Baker is particularly critical of the impact that intervention in Kosovo has had on U.S. foreign relations and upon the NATO alliance: <br><br>"I think that Kosovo has cost America tremendously in our relationships with other countries around the world. On balance, it has been a negative instead of a positive in the United States' relationships with other countries -- Russia, China, India. And our use of force in Kosovo with no international legal authority to bomb downtown Belgrade is resented and feared by many countries around the world. I think there were many wrong assessments involved in the Kosovo operation, not the least of which was taking the most successful security alliance in history, the NATO alliance as a defensive alliance, turning it into an offensive alliance and thereby weakening it significantly. I do not see NATO doing again very soon what it did in Kosovo." <br><br>Nevertheless, Baker said he thinks that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would be wrong to think that NATO will sit back idly if Serbian forces take steps against Milosevic's political rivals in Montenegro, the smaller of the two republics -- with Serbia -- that constitute the rump Yugoslavia. He said intervention in Kosovo and Bosnia show that Western warnings to Milosevic on Montenegro are serious threats. <br><br>"I think that [Milosevic] would ignore those warnings at his peril because the decision has been made, rightly or wrongly, to involve U.S. forces in the Balkans. And therefore, having made that decision in Bosnia and Kosovo -- not withstanding the lack of satisfactory results -- it would be easier to become involved were [Milosevic] to move against Montenegro. So I think the warnings are real."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia: Ex-U.S. Secretary Of State Critical Of Clinton's Balkan Policies``x957602427,45165,``x``x
``x<br><br>05/01/2000<br><br>By SAM HODGES<br><br>Register Washington Bureau <br><br>WASHINGTON — Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, recently traveled with eight other members of Congress to Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are part of an area of Eastern Europe known as The Balkans, after the nearby mountain range of that name. <br><br>It's a region of great natural beauty and variety, but also of centuries-old conflict between ethnic and religious groups. A key date is 1389, when the Turks, Muslims, overran the Serbs, Orthodox Christians, at the Battle of Kosovo. <br><br>Some argue that much of the region's history since then, and especially in recent years, can be understood as a resumption of that battle.<br><br>There's no dispute that Marshal Josip Broz Tito, an independent-minded communist, enforced a peace on the area as leader of Yugoslavia from the early 1940s until his death in 1980. <br><br>Since then, a number of factors - notably the alienating influence of Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic - have caused Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to declare independence from Yugoslavia. Only Serbia and Montenegro remain as Yugoslav Republics, and many in Kosovo, a predominately Muslim province of Serbia, wish for independence as well because of Serb persecution. <br><br>Each secession met with resistance from the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army. There was warfare throughout the early 1990s, most notably in Bosnia, where more than 200,000 people were killed, and many more became refugees. <br><br>The 1995 Dayton Peace Accords ended the fighting in Bosnia, but also determined that the country would be divided into a Muslim/Croat portion, and a Serb portion. <br><br>A NATO peacekeeping force, including about 5,000 U.S. troops, continues to enforce the Dayton agreement in Bosnia. <br><br>Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo had hoped that Dayton would determine a new future for them, separate from Serbia. That did not happen, so in 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army began attacking Serb targets. The Yugoslav military, at the direction of Milosevic, eventually retaliated by driving many ethnic Albanians from their homes. <br><br>The United States and other NATO countries attempted to negotiate with Milosevic, but his failure to accede to their demands led them to begin air strikes against Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999. The campaign lasted 78 days, until Milosevic agreed to pull his forces out of Kosovo. A NATO peacekeeping force entered there last summer and continues to enforce the peace. <br><br>Many of the hundreds of thousands of Kosovar refugees have returned to their homes. Now NATO forces are protecting local Serbs from reprisals. "What we're doing now is presiding over ethnic cleansing of the Serbs," Sessions said recently. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTrouble in Balkans dates to 1389 Battle of Kosovo ``x957602444,67220,``x``x
``x<br> <br>High-profile murders keep leading to Serb police <br> <br>By Zoran Stanojevic<br><br>MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR <br> <br> <br> <br> BELGRADE, — Police arrested Dimitrije Djakovic last week only hours after he allegedly murdered the man who foiled his attempt to rob the home of Serbia’s finance minister. Such efficiency stands out in Serbia’s police force — all the more so for coming at the end of yet another week of high-profile slayings that stand almost no chance of being solved. That’s because they all involved prominent Serbs with links to President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br> <br> AS APRIL drew to an end, Zivorad Petrovic, the head of JAT, Yugoslavia’s state airline, was shot at close range when he was getting into his car at his parents’ house. A few days later, Belgrade was treated to a Hollywood-style street chase and the shooting of Zoran Uskokovic, a man police believe was involved in the assassination of Zeljko Raznatovic, or “Arkan,” the Serb paramilitary commander gunned down in similar fashion in January.<br> Petrovic has have joined the long list of politicians, policemen, businessmen and criminals killed since 1991 whose assassins have never been found. In the past nine years, Serbian police haven’t solved a single murder involving a prominent citizen — even the deaths of their own top cop, Gen. Radovan Stojicic, and Yugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic.<br> A lack of manpower is hardly the reason for the Serb police’s backlog of political murders. With close to 100,000 policemen in a country of 8 million, if anything Serbia’s police force is bloated. But it spends much of its time on what might politely be called political errands and very little on pursuing politically sensitive cases.<br> <br>GOOD COP=BAD COP<br> “When some bum from (neighboring) Romania kills an old lady over five bucks, we manage to catch him in seven days,” a Serb homicide investigator told MSNBC.com.<br> The investigator said that senior officials never give approval to speak to suspects key to getting high-profile murder investigations off the ground. <br> <br> “It should be a regular procedure. You collect suspects, question them hoping someone may leak information which could lead to further investigation,” the homicide investigator said, speaking on condition of anonymity. But he said permission to detain suspects is never approved, and ambitious investigators are told by their bosses to “mind their own business.” <br> In Yugoslavia today, it is commonly assumed that insiders and government cronies settle scores with bullets and count on the president’s tight control of the police to keep them above the law. Milosevic — himself living under an international arrest warrant for war crimes during the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts — has his own interest in this kind of law enforcement. Indeed, the president’s police are crucial to the survival of his regime. But they know better than to cross the line into unfettered detective work.<br> <br>POLITICAL HARASSMENT<br> The police employ a range of tactics — like beating and detaining opposition members. But their proximity to several recent high-profile murders has many wondering how far they will go to keep Milosevic in power. <br> <br> Police are turning up in odd places: Paramilitary leader Arkan was in the company of a high-ranking police officer when he was shot in January.<br> The main suspect in the shooting is Dobrosav Gavric, an off-duty policeman arrested after the shooting, along with a police colleague who allegedly provided backup. The two men were — police sources told MSNBC.com — working for Zoran Uskokovic, a businessman with a criminal record who was himself shot dead recently after a spectacular car chase in Belgrade. His bodyguard, a policeman on sick leave, was also killed.<br> At a recent court hearing, Gavric, who was shot and wounded by one of Arkan’s bodyguards during the murder, admitted he was present at the scene but denied he was involved in murder. <br> <br>PRODUCT OF ECONOMY<br> It may be a coincidence that these officers were involved, or it may be a product of Yugoslavia’s crippled economy after 10 years of international sanctions. Serb police are poorly paid, so they often moonlight as security officers.<br> Yugoslav businessmen pay good money for “personal protection,” and generally those who need it are at risk. Police have become extremely popular after the new Law on Arms was enacted, banning almost everyone except police officers from carrying weapons. The result was a rise in the involvement of off duty policemen in criminal shootings.<br> “You start as a bouncer at bars and discos,” one policeman told MSNBC.com on the condition that his name not be used. “Such activities are illegal, and we hide it from our bosses. But they turn the blind eye unless someone files the report, which rarely happens. But some guys feel this is not enough and look for more fruitful engagements.”<br> <br>HIGH FLYER<br> The murder of Zivorad Petrovic has unleashed a new wave of rumors about who is behind the latest high-profile killing — and who will be next. <br> <br> <br> Petrovic’s death has stumped the rumor mill. He was believed to be a close and faithful friend of the Milosevic clan. He had all the right credentials — head of the state-owned airline JAT and born in Pozarevac, the hometown of Milosevic and his wife, Mirjana Markovic.<br> The day after his murder, officials blamed “terrorist organizations inspired by NATO” — a favorite culprit since the alliance’s Kosovo bombing campaign last year. The quick and predictable official response led many to conclude that Petrovic’s murder was less of a surprise for Milosevic’s inner circle that it was for the public. <br> <br>CHALLENGING MILOSEVIC<br> On the other hand, under Petrovic JAT was one of the rare profitable businesses in Yugoslavia and was scheduled for privatization in the coming months. Petrovic’s colleagues at JAT have spoken of his ambition to distance himself from the Milosevic regime — positioning himself for the “post-Slobo” world. Several Belgrade political analysts have deemed his murder part of a fight within Milosevic’s inner circle, a message to anybody whose dares to question Milosevic’s supremacy.<br> Petrovic’s funeral in Pozarevac was held on Yugoslavia’s National Day. Instead of attending his friend’s burial, President Milosevic held a lavish cocktail party for his close government advisers, the heads of the army and police, and foreign diplomats in Belgrade. With the exception of a few high-ranking officials, everyone had to pass through a metal detector.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBelgrade confidential ``x957602461,19509,``x``x
``xSerbia seems to be rebuilding faster than Kosovo <br>By Zoran Cirjakovic<br><br>Slobodan Milosevic was supposed to be in his final days. The Yugoslav strongman has lost every war he's started since he began fighting his neighbors nine years ago, and he's an indicted war criminal. In the last weeks of the Kosovo campaign, NATO bombers targeted Serbian infrastructure and key government-owned industries controlled by his cronies. At the time, many of his opponents predicted that his government wouldn't be able to provide the basic services necessary to sustain him in power for long. Some predicted that the destruction of Serbia's electrical network, in particular, would create hardship during the winter. With only the heat of their anger to keep them warm, Serbs would throw Milosevic out of office.<br>It has not turned out that way. If Milosevic lost the war in Kosovo, he's clearly winning the battle for survival in the Balkans. Not only did he manage to pull his army out of Kosovo largely intact, he supplied his people with electricity through the winter. In fact, Milosevic has gone on a rebuilding spree. He boasts that his government has rebuilt 38 road and railway bridges (out of 64 damaged or destroyed during the bombing), 470 housing units, eight schools, five hospitals and two animal farms. The state-run news agency Tanjug reports that 140,000 workers employed in 200 companies worked on the reconstruction, and the regime says rebuilding is underway at 76 more sites. The government-owned Zastava factory that makes Yugo cars and weapons, almost destroyed during the NATO bombing, recently announced that it produced 3,242 cars and 180 trucks in the first quarter of this year. Advertisements for the new Yugos appear daily, emphasizing Milosevic's "victory" more than the company's famously rickety autos.<br><br>Some of those reconstruction figures are suspect. But Milosevic's efforts in Serbia may well be outstripping what the United Nations is achieving in Kosovo. It took the United Nations till March to get Kosovo's postal system restarted, and parts of Pristina still suffer electricity and water shortages nearly a year after the war ended.<br><br>In surveys, Milosevic's approval rating, while lower than ever—17.2 percent in a poll last month—is still higher than all opposition leaders' combined. Meanwhile, the fragmented Kosovo Liberation Army isn't polling much higher among Kosovars.<br><br>How has Milosevic reasserted power and rebuilt—despite his nearly total isolation? Mainly by coercion and imposing "reconstruction taxes." He has also called in chits from rich industrialists close to the regime.The dictator, who recently indicated he doesn't intend to give up power, may also have injected some of his own money from offshore accounts. The Serbian state media, meanwhile, regularly reports on the achievements of "our builders."<br><br>Many Serbs, of course, find the propaganda laughable. "People still live very bad lives. Salaries are very small and pensions are late," says Zarko Korac, leader of the pro-Western Social Democratic Union Party. Still, he concedes, "There is always a tendency to underestimate Milosevic." Just about everyone—including NATO—always has.<br><br>With Josh Hammer in Pristina``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNewsweek : Milosevic, the Comeback Kid ``x957767340,69295,``x``x
``xBy JANE PERLEZ<br><br>WASHINGTON, May 6 -- For all the problems of Kosovo today, Veton Surroi, the publisher of the province's largest newspaper, reminds himself that things could be much worse. <br><br>"We could have well ended up like the Kurds and made good posters for Amnesty International," he said. "Or Kosovars could have ended up somewhere else, singing their own songs, getting drunk in cafes and remembering 1999 as a lousy year." <br><br>Instead, Mr. Surroi, who is viewed by many diplomats as a voice of reason in a traumatized corner of Europe, is trying to shape what he hopes will one day be a civil society. <br><br>Many officials in the international organizations that now run Kosovo -- which has few courts and a primitive economy -- wonder whether Mr. Surroi's goal can be achieved. Mr. Surroi, in an interview during a visit to Washington, insisted that it can, and that Kosovo must start now to shed its dependence on the United Nations, which runs the province's administration. <br><br>Mr. Surroi, who spent the duration of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia last year in hiding from the Serbs in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, is critical of the United Nations management of the province but says it is not going to get any better. <br><br>For example, the long promised United Nations police force of 6,500 is still only 2,500 strong -- in part, Mr. Surroi said, because some of the recruits had to be sent home because they failed shooting tests, did not know how to drive, or, in the case of several Americans, were so overweight that they could not walk more than 100 yards. Mr. Surroi dismisses as bureaucratic folly the import of high-tech German garbage trucks to pick up trash when it takes weeks to find fuel for them. <br><br>"We've reached the peak of United Nations might, Kouchner has spent all his magic," Mr. Surroi said of Bernard Kouchner, the chief representative of the United Nations in Kosovo. "There's not much more the United Nations can do, now is the time for transition." <br><br>So Mr. Surroi, who was in Washington to collect an award from the National Endowment for Democracy, did the rounds of Clinton administration officials and Washington reseach groups with a fairly simple message: Kosovo needs a constitution of its own to provide a legal framework to build democratic institutions in a society that has never known them. At the State Department, specialists in constitutions are beginning to write one, although the thorniest question of all -- whether Kosovo, which remains formally a province of Serbia, should or can move to independence -- is still open. <br><br>Even as Kosovo continues to count on outside forces for much of its existence -- on NATO for its security, on German banks for its currency, on the United Nations for its international relations -- its inhabitants, overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian, need to assume responsibility internally, Mr. Surroi said. A constitution is needed to help define what Mr. Surroi calls "self-rule" but not necessarily sovereignty. <br><br>For many Kosovo Albanians, the war last year was the culmination of many years of debate about how to separate from Serbia, from its dominant leader, Slobodan Milosevic, and from the federation of Yugoslavia, which includes Serbia and Montenegro, of which Mr. Milosevic is president. <br><br>Mr. Surroi argues that Kosovo can have its own constitution and define its borders as within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. "This is a kind of virtual reality, because I can't find anyone who considers the Federal Republic as a functioning state," he said, alluding to the fact that Montenegro has largely broken with Serbia politically, although the two remain together in the federation. <br><br>Mr. Surroi suggested that it is too soon to push for an independent state -- a goal of almost all Kosovar Albanians not shared by all Western nations and opposed by Russia. <br><br>Soon after the NATO bombing, when returning Albanians killed Kosovo Serbs and burned their homes, Mr. Surroi spoke out against the killings, appealing to his fellow Albanians not to force the remaining Serbs to leave. He was publicly denounced for his stand. <br><br>During several public talks this week, Mr. Surroi said that Kosovo still had far to go in moving toward tolerance. He argued that this was another reason for a constitution -- to establish individual rights. "You can't build tolerance on goodwill," he said. <br><br>For Kosovo to stand on its own feet -- and remove itself from its dependence on the overwhelming number of aid organizations that are tripping over themselves as they try to help schools and medical centers -- the economy needs to be legally defined. <br><br>Like Serbia, Kosovo was run as a socialist area. Now, there is a mixture of the old socialism, wild capitalism and strong-arm tactics by Kosovo Liberation Army fighters who believe that having been in the army gives them the right to expropriate property. "The result is not very encouraging, we have to settle the property issue," Mr. Surroi said. <br><br>Mr. Surroi is the first to recognize that criminality abounds in Kosovo although he rejects the argument that criminal bosses have taken control. The Kosovo Protection Corps, which is composed of former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the guerrilla fighters that battled Serb control of Kosovo until NATO won the war, is not a band of "angels," he said. But he disputes the notion that Kosovo has become an enclave for heavy drug trafficking. "Kosovars are involved in drug trafficking but not in Kosovo itself," he said. "Kosovo is not a good route." <br><br>There is hope in one small fact, he added. "Things are lousy in Kosovo, I know 100 places where I'd have a much better life. But this is a society that has been without courts, police, laws for 10 months, yet people still stop at the red light." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Voice of Hope in Kosovo Tells the U.S. of Goals``x957767360,8975,``x``x
``xFirm accused of human rights abuses wins million-pound Government deal<br>Antony Barnett, Public Affairs Editor <br>Sunday May 7, 2000 <br><br>A private military company accused of human rights abuses has been awarded lucrative Government contracts to clear unexploded mines and cluster bombs in Kosovo, The Observer can reveal. <br>The decision, taken by International Development Secretary Clare Short, has infuriated MPs, charities and anti-arms trade campaigners. <br><br>Since the end of the Kosovo conflict, the Government has awarded two mine-clearance contracts worth more than £1 million to Defence Systems, a London-based firm, founded by former senior SAS officer Alistair Morrison, which has been involved in a spate of human rights controversies. <br><br>United Nations' special rapporteur, Enrique Ballesteros, stated in a 1998 report that it was concerned about DSL's alleged 'mercenary' activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. <br><br>DSL's activities in Colombia, where it has been employed by BP to protect its multi-billion pound interests, have long been a concern to human rights organisations. In 1998 it was expelled from Angola for alleged 'illegal activities'. <br><br>DSL also recommended Sandline International - the firm involved in the arms-to-Sierra Leone scandal - to the government of Papua New Guinea when it needed mercenary help. <br><br>Labour MP Ann Clwyd, a member of the House of Commons International Development Select Committee, will raise questions in Parliament this week. 'Why are we giving taxpayers' money to a firm with a record like DSL so that it can make a profit out of clearing mines in Kosovo?' said Clwyd. 'I want to know what checks were done by the Government.' <br><br>Since April 1997, DSL has been owned by US security giant Armor Holdings, which sells body armour and riot control equipment. <br><br>Richard Lloyd, director of the UK working group on land mines, is concerned that firms like DSL are using land mine clearance as a way to gain respectability. <br><br>Lloyd said: 'The operation in Kosovo is highly sensitive. Aid organisations and charities are experienced and well-equipped to deal with this, but questions have to be asked about whether the same can be said of a militaristic private company with a dodgy track record.' <br><br>The Campaign Against the Arms Trade will also protest against the DSL contract. <br><br>DSL has used former British servicemen to offer protection against kidnapping, espionage and terrorism to multinationals operating in 'risky' regions. <br><br>Nigel Woof, Armor's vice chairman of marketing, dismisses allegations of human rights abuses against DSL. <br><br>He said DSL is not only used by private corporations but by the UN, human aid groups and Western governments to protect embassies. <br><br>Woof said: 'We have never, and will never be involved in mercenary activities. We are proud of what we do and operate a disciplined and ethical operation.' <br><br>However, accusations of human rights abuses have been hard to shake off. <br><br>It was alleged that DSL trained Colombian police in counter-insurgency techniques using ex-SAS personnel and fed intelligence on anyone opposed to BP to Columbia's 14th brigade - a group of soldiers with a record of atrocities including the massacre of 43 people in 1988. <br><br>A report by the Parliamentary Human Rights Group entitled 'The Business of Killing' said the main concern was that DSL passed on information on environmentalists and community leaders. <br><br>Both DSL and BP claimed the only training they gave was defensive. But documents obtained by the Guardian showed that a senior DSL employee, Roger Brown, was in charge of security for the 520-mile Ocensa oil pipeline in Colombia, in which BP is a major shareholder. <br><br>Brown was a key figure in a proposed pipeline protection project with the 14th Brigade and Israeli security company Silver Shadow, involving attack helicopters and the 'direct supply of anti-guerrilla special weaponry'. When this came to light, BP suspended Brown, who until recently continued to work for DSL. <br><br>DSL is one of five companies to be awarded mine-clearance contracts worth £13.5m in Kosovo. <br><br>A spokesman for the International Development Department said: 'We deplore the use of and training of mercenaries, but there was no evidence that DSL should not be granted the contract.' ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Observer : Anger at Kosovo mines contract ``x957767379,40658,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br>RISTINA, Kosovo, May 8 -- A well-known commander of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army was shot and killed today outside his home in the southern town of Prizren as he headed to work. <br><br>The reason behind the shooting of the former leader, Ekrem Rexha, was not immediately clear, although it was thought to be politically related given his years with the guerrilla army. The commander, who was better known by his war pseudonym, Commander Drini, had headed one of seven regional zones of the liberation army during its war against the Serb military and police forces. And he also had served on the army's general staff during the three months of the NATO bombing campaign. <br><br>In his years with the liberation army, Commander Drini was always aware that hard-line ethnic Albanian nationalists in Kosovo did not trust him or like the fact that he was ethnic Torbesh, or Muslim Slav. <br><br>His death also comes just three weeks after the killing of another former K.L.A. commander and hero, Besim Mala, who was shot dead in a dispute with a business associate here in the capital of Kosovo. The argument and shooting, in which both men died, was over the ownership of a cafe in downtown Pristina. <br><br>Nearly a year after K.L.A. guerrillas came down from the hills as NATO forces arrived and Serbian forces withdrew from Kosovo, old comrades in the liberation army are having major disagreements and even turning their guns on each other in local power struggles. And as the international administration in Kosovo prepares the province for local elections in October, many Albanians say they are afraid that a wave of political violence lies ahead. <br><br>The Kosovo Liberation Army was disbanded under an agreement with the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. Since then, several thousand of its members have joined the liberation army's civilian successor and new police force, the Kosovo Protection Force. Many of the liberation army's former leaders have gone into business or politics and have become powerful figures in the community, profiting from cafes and other businesses they seized as the Serbs pulled out of Kosovo. <br><br>After leaving the liberation army, Commander Drini had been working in the local administration in his hometown of Prizren as an environment and safety officer, and was thought to be aspiring to be the town's future mayor. <br><br>A professional soldier and a former officer in the communist-era Yugoslav People's Army, Commander Drini taught at the army's military staff college in Sarajevo. He fought in the Croatian army during that country's war and returned to his native Kosovo to join the liberation army in the late 1990's as the conflict there escalated.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Gunmen Kill a Former Leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army``x957855496,18081,``x``x
``xThe US plans to return Serb refugees to the Osojane valley as early as June.<br><br>Richard Mertens <br><br>OSOJANE, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>Little remains of this farming community in northwestern Kosovo. The houses are deserted, the windows smashed, the furnishings scattered or gone. Abandoned stoves sit rusting in the uncut grass. Last year's corn still stands in the fields, weathered gray as barn boards.<br>The 400 inhabitants, all of them Serbs, fled last June around the time NATO-led troops entered the province. Afterward, ethnic Albanians bent on revenge looted and burned their houses.<br><br>For miles along this valley, the view is the same. In two other villages and in the scattered houses in between, no one is left of the Serb families who lived here, farming the rich bottomland.<br><br>The United States government hopes to change this. For the past two months it has been working with Serb leaders in Kosovo on a plan to bring Osojane's inhabitants back, perhaps beginning as early as June. If the plan succeeds, it would be the first large organized return of Serbs since NATO-led forces occupied Kosovo 11 months ago. The Americans say it could prepare the way for other displaced Serbs to return to their homes.<br><br>But the plan is already running into resistance from people who think it is a bad idea. These include local Albanians, many of whom lost homes and family members in two years of fighting the Serbs. Some Western officials also believe it is too soon to bring Serbs back to Kosovo.<br><br>"Our great fear in these situations is always not to provoke a backlash," says Dennis McNamara, Balkan envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "If you get a backlash, you always set things back."<br><br>Pressures of warmer weather<br><br>The pressure for Serb returns has been mounting as warm weather returns to the Balkans. About half of Kosovo's 200,000 Serbs are thought to have fled the province last year. Most settled in Serbia proper, where they have not been welcome. Many want to go home, and Serb leaders in Kosovo are eager to help them.<br><br>"The Serbs are facing a grave situation," says Oliver Ivanovic, a Serb leader in northern Kosovo. "Time is not on our side. We are getting further away from a multi-ethnic Kosovo every day."<br><br><br><br>The American plan dates to February, when the leader of the Serb Orthodox Church in Kosovo, Bishop Artemije, discussed Serb returns with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Washington. After that meeting, a State Department official who is also a Serb Orthodox priest visited Kosovo. He made a dozen trips through the province and looked at scores of Serb villages.<br><br>Osojane stood out for many reasons. One was that the valley makes it easier to protect; there is only one road into and out of the village. But also, local Albanian leaders seemed to welcome the idea. The Americans were especially impressed by the Albanian mayor of the Istok municipality, Januz Januzaj, an intelligent, soft-spoken lawyer who was a respected commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army. In recent months Mr. Januzaj has probably done more than any other Albanian leader in Kosovo to reach out to ethnic minorities. He has gone so far as to visit villages where Gypsies, Slavic Muslims, and even Serbs still live. Many Kosovo politicians would find this unthinkable.<br><br>"In principle, I'm for the return of people who haven't committed any crimes," Januzaj says. "They are citizens of Istok, of Kosovo. If they want a future here, they can live here."<br><br><br>Local objections<br><br>But when other local people heard about the American plan, their reaction was swift and damning. "The people are completely against it," Januzaj grimaces. "This makes it more difficult for my position and the American position." He says local Albanians might accept Serb returns in "two or four years."<br><br>Albanian leaders also have imposed conditions on Serb returns that will be difficult to meet. One is that the Serbs apologize for crimes that Serbs committed against ethnic Albanians. They also want progress on one of the most emotional issues for Kosovo Albanians: the continuing imprisonment of more than 1,000 ethnic Albanians in Serbian jails.<br><br>In a few places in Kosovo, Serbs are already coming back on their own. But some Western officials say they are reluctant to encourage them to return to a situation where they need to be protected by armed troops. They say Serbs need enough security to move about safely and to have access to jobs, health care, education, and markets. This is lacking almost everywhere in Kosovo. Even the protection of Serb enclaves sometimes fails; two weeks ago, nine mortar rounds were fired into the Serb enclave of Gorazdevac.<br><br>US officials concede that bringing Serbs back to the valley will not be easy and that it may not be altogether safe. "There are risks attached to it," an official says. "But I think they can [return] .... I don't see that the average Albanian is going to object."<br><br>For now, political imperatives may be pushing other considerations aside. Serb leaders in Kosovo seem to be competing with each other to see who can bring back more people. The US hopes that the plan to return hundreds to Osojane will help Bishop Artemije and other moderate leaders win support among ordinary Serbs. At the same time, the bishop's rivals, including Mr. Ivanovic, say they have their own plan to bring back as many as 20,000 Serbs.<br><br>Recently, Spanish soldiers in the Osojane area have been trying to persuade local Albanians to accept the Serbs back. "They are very afraid, because they think Serb criminals will come here," says 2nd Lt. Jose Ortega, who was patrolling one afternoon in an armored troop carrier. "We're trying to tell them there will be no criminals."<br><br>He had already talked to Sabri and Beke Kelmendi, two brothers who have houses on one end of the valley, about three miles from Osojane. Last May, they say, Serbs killed both of their wives and one child in each family. Lately they have been working on their houses, which the Serbs burned. When the Spanish patrol passed, Sabri Kelmendi was replastering an inside wall. His brother's house was beyond repair, and workmen were digging the foundation of a new one.<br><br>"If the Serbs come back here, I won't stay," Mr. Kelmendi declared angrily as he paused from his work. "Not one Albanian person will stay here. All the Serbs in this region were paramilitaries. All of them were bandits. It's a bad idea."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : Going home again is difficult for Kosovars``x957855542,97060,``x``x
``xBy Peter Norman in Brussels<br><br>After months of hesitation, European Union finance ministers decided on Monday to provide E20m ($18m) of special budgetary assistance to Montenegro to support the Yugoslav republic's pro-western government. <br><br>Hailing the decision as "very, very good for the stability of Montenegro", Javier Solana, the EU's chief foreign policy representative, said the money would be dispersed in the coming weeks before important by- elections in two Montenegrin cities on June 11. <br><br>The European Commission will agree to a formal proposal to draw the funds from this year's EU budget on Wednesday so it can be adopted by foreign ministers on May 22. <br><br>Mr Solana said he hoped technical difficulties holding up E50m of guarantees for European Investment Bank lending to Montenegro could be ironed out by the next finance ministers' meeting on June 5. <br><br>Support for Montenegro has been a high priority of Mr Solana and of Chris Patten, the EU foreign affairs commissioner. Both men see the government of President Milo Djukanovic as providing democratic counterbalance within the federation to Serbia, which is led by President Slobodan Milosevic - an indicted war criminal. <br><br>In a meeting overshadowed by the weakness of the euro, ministers also: <br><br>• agreed that Jean Lemierre, the head of the French Treasury and chairman of the EU's influential economic and financial committee, should be the EU candidate to head the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. This is the international institution that helps development in the former Communist states of eastern and central Europe. EU diplomats expect Mr Lemierre will be elected EBRD president at the bank's annual meeting in Riga on May 21-22. <br><br>• approved an internal market directive laying down procedures for winding up bankrupt banks. The directive, which was first proposed in 1985 and delayed until the recent settlement of the UK-Spanish dispute over Gibraltar, must be approved by the European Parliament.<br><br>• told Austria to adopt a more rigorous budgetary policy. Meeting in the "Ecofin" council, the ministers from all member states including Austria urged Vienna to reduce public deficit targets when it next updates Austria's national stability programme.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Financial Times : Brussels plans Montenegro aid``x957856116,78331,``x``x
``xPOZAREVAC, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Serb police detained activists and journalists overnight in the hometown of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ahead of an opposition rally there, the independent Beta news agency said on Tuesday.<br><br>In the northern town of Novi Sad, police held the leader of the opposition League of Vojvodina Socialdemocrats (LSV), Nenad Canak, for questioning as he was on his way to the rally in the town of Pozarevac, a party official told Reuters.<br><br>Bojan Kostres, LSV deputy president, said police had stopped the car in which Canak and his bodyguards were travelling.<br><br>Beta said police had stepped up their presence in Pozarevac, where the rally was due to start at 3 p.m. (1300 GMT).<br><br>In Belgrade, opposition officials met to discuss the situation, and one source said the rally may be cancelled because of difficulties in getting equipment and supporters into Pozarevac, about 90 km (55 miles) from the capital.<br><br>``I expect the rally to be cancelled,'' the source said.<br> <br>A Reuters reporter said he saw police checkpoints on the Belgrade-Pozarevac road and that vehicles were randomly checked.<br><br>Trucks carrying equipment for the rally were held up at the entrance to Pozarevac.<br><br>The B2-92 radio station said police ordered technical checks on four buses getting ready to transport opposition supporters from Belgrade.<br><br>The opposition had scheduled the rally under the slogan ''Stop the terror, for free elections'' to protest against the alleged beatings of three anti-government activists in a Pozarevac cafe last week.<br><br>It hoped for a repeat of a rally in Belgrade last month which drew 100,000 people, but its officials have also warned that authorities may try to obstruct the demonstration.<br><br>COUNTER RALLY?<br><br> <br>Pozarevac authorities have announced an event earlier on Tuesday to mark World War Two Victory Day and the opposition fears this may be turned into a counter rally.<br><br>Of five people taken into custody overnight, two were activists detained last week on suspicion of attempted murder but released from jail on Monday, Beta said.<br><br>They were first arrested after an incident allegedly involving associates of Milosevic's powerful son Marko.<br><br>Opposition news media have been hit by a series of fines for their accounts of the May 2 incident in a Pozarevac cafe.<br><br>They say associates of Marko Milosevic beat up three members of the Otpor (Resistance) movement who were then arrested. The authorities blamed the Otpor activists.<br><br>After their release on Monday, the activists' lawyer, Borivoje Borovic, said legal proceedings against them had been halted for now.<br><br>But two of the three -- Momcilo Veljkovic and Radojko Lukovic -- were arrested again shortly after midnight (2200 GMT), about twelve hours after they were freed, Beta said.<br><br>Veljkovic's brother Mile -- a Beta journalist -- was also detained, it said. In addition, it said two journalists of the independent Danas daily who had arrived to Pozarevac to cover the rally had been arrested. It did not say why they were held.<br><br>Serb authorities have denounced Otpor as a fascist organization, calling them ``Hitler Youth'' and branding the opposition as ``foreign mercenaries'' plotting to destroy Serbia. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb Police Make Arrests Ahead of Protest Rally``x957949343,61766,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Pozarevac <br><br><br>10 May 2000 <br><br>Serbian oppoition parties were forced to cancel a protest rally in the home town of President Slobodan Milosevic yesterday after police arrested leading dissidents and blocked buses carrying supporters to the demonstration. <br><br>Instead, the ruling coalition of the JUL and FPS parties organised its own rally in support of the Milosevic regime, timed to coincide with the opposition protest. Schools and public buildings were closed for the day to allow as many people as possible to attend. <br><br>The opposition rally, with the slogan "Stop the terror – For democratic elections", would have been the first in years in Pozarevac, 50 miles east of Belgrade, a Milosevic stronghold known as the forbidden city. <br><br>A statement from opposition leaders in Belgrade that announced the cancellation of the march said: "It is a clear intention by the regime to instigate clashes, even civil war. The regime has done everything to prevent the rally." <br><br>The meeting was to protest at last week's beating of three anti-government student activists in Pozarevac who had clashed with close associates of Mr Milosevic's son, Marko. Had the rally gone ahead, more violence was expected. <br><br>Police were deployed early, in large numbers, at four checkpoints on the outskirts of Belgrade, stopping buses carrying opposition supporters. Four buses taking Serbian opposition leaders to Pozarevac were ordered to undergo "technical inspection" before being allowed to leave. <br><br>About 200 would-be protesters whose buses "passed inspection" were again stopped by police. They blocked traffic on the main highway leading to Pozarevac, demanding passage. They sat on the road, stopping hundreds of cars for about two hours before riot police moved them away. <br><br>Pozarevac has become something of a fortress town since Mr Milosevic's rise to power a decade ago. Besides housing Serbia's biggest jail for men and only prison for women, it is the base of the President's business empire. Many in the town see Marko Milosevic as a greedy bully who used his parents' position to make himself rich. <br><br>On 2 May, five friends and bodyguards of Marko demanded that a well-known local opposition activist publicly renounce membership in his party and join the ruling Socialists. He refused and a fight started. Two other opposition activists and a passer-by were severely beaten by Marko's entourage and arrest-ed. They spent a week in jail and were released on Monday. No charges were brought. <br><br>Momcilo Veljkovic, one of the freed activists, said Marko Milosevic showed up during the incident and told his friends: "Kill the bastards." <br><br>The attack brought protests from Serbia's opposition parties. Milosevic supporters countered with a smear campaign, calling the protesters "Hitlerjugend" (Hitler Youth), "fascists", "Nato mercenaries" and "creators of chaos that could lead to civil war". <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Milosevic blocks rally in his 'forbidden city' ``x957949393,37987,``x``x
``xBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br>ASHINGTON, May 9 -- The Senate Appropriations Committee voted overwhelmingly today to require Congressional approval for United States peacekeepers to remain in Kosovo beyond July 2001. <br><br>The 23-to-3 vote reflected widespread concern among lawmakers about an open-ended deployment of American soldiers, who make up 5,900 of the 37,000 NATO-led peacekeepers in the breakaway Yugoslav province. Sporadic ethnic violence lingers there, nearly a year after the end of the 78-day air war by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization against the forces of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. <br><br>The vote came as the appropriations panel approved roughly $8 billion for this year to keep American troops in Kosovo, help the government of Colombia battle drug traffickers, and assist victims of last autumn's Hurricane Floyd and other domestic natural disasters. <br><br>The White House budget chief, Jacob J. Lew, criticized the committee for coupling the money with other items the Clinton administration opposes, including environmental provisions and limits on the Justice Department's ability to pursue its lawsuit against the tobacco industry. <br><br>The provision threatening the withdrawal of troops from Kosovo was sponsored by Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, one of the most ardent protectors in Congress of its Constitutional powers, and by John Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee. <br><br>Senator Byrd argued that lawmakers had never approved or even debated whether American ground troops should be stationed in the region. His language would cut off funds for United States troops in Kosovo after July 1, 2001, without the consent of Congress. <br><br>Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, one of the three Democrats who voted against Mr. Byrd, said Mr. Milosevic would benefit if the provision becomes law because, "all the butcher has to do is wait until the U.S. withdraws." <br><br>The fate of the provision was unclear because the House narrowly rejected a similar amendment in March and the Clinton administration opposes it. The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Alaska Republican Ted Stevens, said that the White House national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, "is very upset about this." <br><br>Senator Byrd's language would also withhold 25 percent of the money for Kosovo in the bill unless President Clinton certifies by July 15 that European countries are living up to their promises to provide reconstruction money for the province. <br><br>Though the appropriations panel offered few specific details, some Senate aides estimated that the committee had approved about $1.2 billion for Colombia and about $1.8 billion for American forces in Kosovo, a bit less than Mr. Clinton had requested. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Senators Seek Vote in Congress on Extending Kosovo Mission``x957949418,60469,``x``x
``xGillian Sandford <br>Wednesday May 10, 2000 <br><br>Their symbol is the clenched fist of defiance and they are hungry for the overthrow of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br>Many young anti- Milosevic activists belong to the resistance movement, Otpor, whichburst on to the political scene in November. <br><br>Formed as an underground movement, Otpor now commands support from more than 20,000 young people across the country, particularly in university towns. <br><br>Activists claim that Mr Milosevic fears Otpor because of the movement's daring and energy. <br><br>The crisis in Serbia yesterday was sparked by the arrest of three members of the resistance movement, but it was just the latest incident in which Otpor supporters have deliberately provoked the regime. <br><br>Almost every week in recent months Otpor activists have organised actions: handing out leaflets, holding meetings or anti-Milosevic street theatre and pasting their clenched fist posters on walls across the country. <br><br>Almost every week, in response, men in plain clothes have attacked Otpor activists found with leaflets and posters. Police reg- ularly arrest them or call them in for what is termed "an informative talk". <br><br>One former student, who slipped through the police net to enter the town of Pozarevac yesterday, said: "I think that Milosevic believes that Otpor has become too strong. Otpor has become now a social movement not just a political movement." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Young Serbs provoke authorities ``x957949446,95259,``x``x
``xPRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Kosovo's Albanians and Serbs drew closer on the political front Wednesday but out on the streets thousands of ethnic Albanians demonstrated against plans to resettle Serbs in their region. <br><br>In a move hailed by a top international official as historic, Albanian and Serb politicians issued a statement in which each community condemned crimes committed against the other and urged all citizens not to resort to violence. <br><br>The leaders closed ranks at a meeting of a multi-ethnic council set up by the United Nations to foster cooperation after over a year of armed conflict that culminated in the 1999 NATO bombing to drive Serbian security forces out of Kosovo. <br><br>``This is the most important meeting we've had,'' said Bernard Kouchner, the French head of Kosovo's United Nations-led administration. ``This is, according to my opinion, the historic statement of the tenth of May.'' <br><br>The U.N. has been working for months to bring Serbs and Albanians closer after a decade of increasingly violent Serbian repression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, which has been followed by a post-war plague of revenge attacks on Serbs. <br><br>But a protest in the western town of Istok showed how far the United Nations and NATO, which took control of Kosovo last June, still have to go to achieve genuine reconciliation. <br><br>NO SPIRIT OF RAPPROCHEMENT IN THE STREETS <br><br>The demonstrators, marching just as the politicians in the capital Pristina issued their statement, carried placards with slogans such as ``Shed blood has not dried up yet,'' ``Don't hurt the wounds of Kosovo'' and ``Stop Serb colonies in Kosovo.'' <br><br>They were protesting against plans floated by Kosovo Serb leaders and U.S. officials to return Serbs to the area. <br><br>``We say this project should be stopped. Even talks about returning Serbs to Kosovo should be stopped,'' said Remzije Zeqiraj, the head of the committee which organized the protest. <br><br>A figure estimated at more than 200,000 Serbs and members of other minorities fled Kosovo during and after NATO's air war against the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic last year, fearing revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians. <br><br>Some international officials urge bringing the Serbs back to Kosovo quickly, anxious to avoid the charge that they waged war to prevent ethnic cleansing of Albanians but have done nothing about Serbs driven out of the Yugoslav province. <br><br>But others, including officials from the U.N. refugee agency, have said Serbs should not be encouraged to return at the moment because Kosovo is not yet safe enough. <br><br>Despite the presence of around 40,000 peacekeepers from the NATO-led KFOR force since last June, attacks on minorities or cases of harassment against them are still reported daily. <br><br>Protesters at Wednesday's rally, who appeared to number more than 2,000, said Serbs would not be welcome back until a host of conditions had been met, including the release of Albanians detained during the conflict and now in Serbian jails. <br><br>EMOTIVE PRISONER ISSUE <br><br>The issue of the prisoners is highly emotive for ethnic Albanians, who see it as unfinished business from the conflict. International agencies say at least 1,200 Kosovo Albanians are in Serbian jails. <br><br>Wednesday's statement by the Kosovo Transitional Council, agreed by all of the around 35 members present except one who objected on a technicality, demanded the handover of all ethnic Albanian prisoners by Yugoslav authorities. <br><br>``We are determined that all the citizens of Kosovo should live equally under a law which treats people equally,'' said Xhavit Haliti, an ethnic Albanian member of the council. <br><br>``The declaration of the Serb representatives who condemn the Milosevic regime and crimes committed in Kosovo is a good step forward, as is the joint demand for the release of Albanian prisoners,'' he added. <br><br>Also Wednesday, the Balkans envoy for a major international organization said ethnic Albanian leaders were willing to put another contentious Kosovo issue -- the final status of the territory -- on the back burner for the moment. <br><br>Albanians overwhelmingly favor independence for Kosovo, which at the moment remains legally part of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia although under de facto international rule. <br><br>But Kosovo Albanian leaders are now ready to settle for defining Kosovo's interim status for the moment, Albert Rohan of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said after talks in Vienna with ethnic Albanian leader Hashim Thaqi.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReuters : Old Kosovo Foes Move Closer But Still Far Apart``x958028240,47338,``x``x
``xPolice arrest demonstrators and seal off Pozarevac in an attempt to prevent opposition rally<br>Gillian Sandford in Pozarevac, Serbia <br><br>The home town of Slobodan Milosevic was the focus of a major clampdown on opposition to the rule of President Slobodan Milosevic across Serbia yesterday. <br>Police arrested an opposition leader, journalists and members of the youth resistance movement and set up checkpoints on all roads in and out of Pozarevac - where the Yugoslav president grew up and has a home - to prevent opposition supporters and political leaders arriving for a major opposition rally. <br><br>But around 100 members of the Youth Resistance Movement, Otpor, and other anti-Milosevic activists slipped past the cordon to interrupt a hastily convened counter-meeting set up by officials in Pozarevac's central square. <br><br>By mid-afternoon, it was the scene of an extraordinary stand-off, with the banner-waving anti-Milosevic protesters on one side and Socialist party officials from the city seeking to address 100 or so party stalwarts on the other. <br><br>A small group of men in black trousers, black leather jackets and sunglasses - the usual garb of men working as Milosevic family bodyguards - moved to within inches of the jeering protesters. <br><br>The demonstrators did not shift or back away, but continued distributing leaflets and brandishing their flags and placards, bearing the clenched fist symbol of Otpor. <br><br>One 23-year-old Otpor protester said: "We want to show our resistance to the system. Milosevic is afraid of the youth of Otpor. We have parents. We have relatives. We have so many people who know us and know we are not the terrorists which the regime calls us. We just want to live like ordinary people." <br><br>A hundred yards from the stand-off, the Serbian minister of the interior, Veljko Stoiljkovic, watched, as did several dozen young men wearing T-shirts with the Serbian national flag. It was as if they might be waiting for a signal. <br><br>Pozarevac is a haven for the Milosevic family and its enterprises. Marko Milosevic runs the Madonna disco, which has the reputation as the hottest nightclub in the Balkans, a cybercafe and coffee shop called Passage in the town. <br><br>Many of President Milosevic's friends from childhood in Pozarevac have become significant figures in his regime. The interior minister is among this group, as was Zika Petrovic, the recently assassinated head of Yugoslav Airlines JAP, who was gunned down in Belgrade just over a week ago. <br><br>Several domestic and foreign journalists and cameramen, who had also slipped into the town through the police cordon, watched as the stand-off continued. Every minute threatened to explode into violent confrontation, if either side made a wrong move. <br><br>The authorities had sought in every way to block the rally, held on Victory Day, which traditionally celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. A lorry taking stage and sound equipment into the town was stopped en route shortly after midnight yesterday, said Dra gan Curcija, an official from the opposition democratic party in Pozarevac. <br><br>An opposition leader, Nenad Canak from the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina, was arrested early yesterday morning on his way from Novi Sad to Pozarevac. <br><br>In Belgrade, opposition leaders held an emergency meeting after coaches they had ordered to take them to the rally failed to turn up or were sent back to Belgrade by police at checkpoints. <br><br>The non-government radio station B292 and the Belgrade television station Studio B, controlled by the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement, were taken off the air. Opposition leaders said they would hold a major demonstration in the capital within days to protest at yesterday's events. <br><br>The incident that sparked this crisis happened last week in Pozarevac, when three members of the Otpor movement became involved in a fracas with bodyguards of Milosevic's son Marko. They were arrested, held beyond the maximum legal detention period and appeared to have been beaten when they appeared before an investigating magistrate on Monday. <br><br>One, Radoje Lukovic, had a 10cm head wound, the other two were in bandages with bloodstained pads around their eyes, said their lawyer, Borivoje Bokovic of the Serbian Renewal Movement. <br><br>They had been released, but yesterday they were arrested again, with a freelance reporter for non-government media who works in Pozarevac and is a brother of one of the three.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Protesters defy Milosevic in his home town ``x958028260,87303,``x``x
``x<br><br>NIS, Yugoslavia (AP) - A Serb reporter who was detained by police for writing about alleged atrocities committed by the Yugoslav army in Kosovo was handed over to a military court Thursday and could face espionage charges.<br><br>Miroslav Filipovic, a reporter for Belgrade's independent Danas daily, was arrested Monday at his home in the central Serbian town of Kraljevo. On Thursday, he was transferred to the military court in the southern Serbian city of Nis, about 120 miles south of Belgrade.<br><br>``Mr. Filipovic has been brought to us and he is in detention ... under suspicion that he committed the criminal act of espionage,'' said Col. Vukadin Milojevic, who heads the court. A decision on whether to charge Filipovic was due by Saturday.<br><br> <br>Last month, Filipovic wrote about an alleged secret Yugoslav army intelligence report on soldiers' atrocities against Kosovo Albanians during NATO's 78-day intervention to stop a government crackdown in the Serbian province.<br><br>He wrote that the report included testimony from a Yugoslav army commander admitting he watched in horror as a soldier decapitated a three-year-old ethnic Albanian boy in front of his family. Another described how tanks in his unit indiscriminately shelled a Kosovo Albanian village before paramilitary police moved in and massacred the survivors.<br><br>Police inspectors searched Filipovic's apartment before arresting him, confiscating documents and articles.<br><br>Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's regime has been cracking down on independent media, banning and fining newspapers critical of his policies.<br><br>Scores of independent reporters and opposition activists were detained Monday and Tuesday, when the government launched a major sweep to block a planned opposition rally in Pozarevac, Milosevic's hometown.<br><br>In a further sign of the government's crackdown, a Pozarevac judge was removed from office and the local state prosecutor offered his resignation Thursday, after both officials had attended the opposition rally, the private Beta news agency reported.<br><br>Meanwhile, opposition parties announced another anti-government rally in the Yugoslav capital and more protests throughout Serbia, including Pozarevac. Opposition leaders said the protest in Belgrade, scheduled for Monday, was ``a matter of honor.'' <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb Reporter Handed Over to Court``x958122455,62230,``x``x
``x<br><br>Nick Thorpe in Novi Sad <br>Friday May 12, 2000 <br><br>The basement of the city museum in Novi Sad, Serbia, is thick with dust. The director, Djordje Gacic, opens the shutters to a view of the Danube and its bombed bridges. At the end of the vaulted room, the treasures of the Croatian city of Vukovar are stacked in cardboard boxes bearing the names of cigarette brands. <br>In one box is a black clay pot: "Four thousand years old," says Mr Gacic, an archaeologist. The glaze is crude but perfect, and the pot surprisingly heavy. <br><br>Other objects have fared less well on the journey from Vukovar to northern Yugoslavia in December 1991 and January 1992. Some boxes contain just ceramic fragments, and in another room is a large pewter bowl riddled with bullet holes. <br><br>"Of course, all these things should go back to Vukovar one day," says Mr Gacic. "That is where they belong." <br><br>The siege of Vukovar began in August 1991, following Croatia's declaration of independence from Yugoslavia. At the time the town had four museums. Their treasures included archaeological finds from nearby Vucedol, and the Bauer collection of mainly 19th century oil paintings. <br><br>There were also impressive private collections of paintings, as well as the ecclesiastical artefacts in the Franciscan monastery and the Serbian Orthodox Church of St Nicholas. <br><br>During the siege, many items were stored in the basement of the monastery. By the time the Croats defending Vukovar realised the importance of moving them, it was too late - all roads out were cut. The city fell to Serb forces in November 1991. <br><br>At this point, Serb and Croat versions of the story differ. <br><br>According to the Institute for the Protection of Monuments in Serbia, the items were moved to Serbia - mainly to Novi Sad - for their own protection. <br><br>"Vukovar was in ruins, we could hardly move for the rubble," says Marko Omcikus, an art historian from the institute who took part in the evacuation of the objects on lorries donated by the Yugoslav army, and in private cars. <br><br>The Croatian authorities accuse the Serbs of looting the museums, thereby flouting the 1954 Hague convention. According to Visnja Zgaga of the museum documentation centre in Zagreb, the Croats have not received a single direct communication from the relevant Serb authorities. She also says that inventory lists allegedly provided by the Serbs to a Unesco-Council of Europe fact-finding mission in 1995 never reached Croatia. <br><br>"According to the testimony of people who were transporting these objects, a lot of things didn't arrive where they were supposed to," says Ksenija Popovic, head of the cultural department of Novi Sad council. "Which means that during the transportation, there was an organised robbery, and every trace of these objects was simply lost." <br><br>Paintings stolen from elsewhere in what was Serb-occupied Croatia have been discovered on sale in Hungary and Germany. Ms Popovic believes that all the objects which have survived should be returned to Vukovar. But she fears that they have already become bargaining chips in a long list of unresolved property issues between Croatia and Serbia. <br><br>Tentative negotiations have taken place between the Croatian and Yugoslav foreign ministries on the subject. In 1998, it was agreed that "a future bilateral agreement on cultural cooperation" will be based on the registration and return to Croatia of cultural property. <br><br>The Serbs have since turned to Unesco with their own problem - the destruction or disappearance of Serbian Orthodox artefacts from Kosovo. <br><br>In the museum in Novi Sad, Mr Gacic points to two huge wooden doors. "When Nato bombed the bridges a year ago, these were blown off their hinges," he says. And the ancient pots from Vukovar nearly perished again. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Vukovar treasures gather dust in Serb basement ``x958122482,67638,``x``x
``x<br><br>Thursday, May 11, 2000<br><br>By Bill Steigerwald <br><br><br>It's the kind of trouble-making headline we should see more of from our important news magazines -- "The Kosovo Cover-Up."<br><br>It's not Newsweek's cover story. That honor belongs to a fluffier, more digestible subject, a feature on the "groundbreaking" digital tricks used to make Disney's $200 million "Dinosaur" movie that's coming out this summer. <br><br>But Newsweek should get extra credit this week for sticking it to the Pentagon for fudging (i.e., lying about) the effectiveness of the U.S.-NATO air war in Kosovo.<br><br>You remember Kosovo? Come on. That great American military victory a while back? <br><br>The nationally televised video game that saved the ethnic-Albanian Kosovars from being cleansed from the countryside by the Serbs so they could later ethnically cleanse the Serbian population? <br><br>The war in which, according to our trusty generals and Defense Secretary William Cohen, we "severely crippled" the Serb military by knocking out 120 tanks, 220 armored personnel carriers and about 450 artillery pieces? And we did it from 15,000 feet with smart bombs and without using or losing a single ground soldier? <br><br>The trouble is, as Newsweek shows and as some critics have been saying all along, the "air campaign against the Serb military in Kosovo was largely ineffective." <br><br>Quoting from a suppressed Air Force report, Newsweek's John Barry and Evan Thomas say the Air Force knew the high-altitude bombing was doing little damage but covered up the reports that proved it. <br><br>Why the lies and cover-up? Because the military was under political pressure from Washington to produce positive bombing results so no U.S. ground troops would have to go in.<br><br>Our great air victory, like the "genocide" that Serbian police and thugs were supposedly practicing on the Kosovars, turned out to be a big pile of allied propaganda.<br><br>It turns out that the Serbs lived up to their rep as masters of camouflage. They lost a lot of fake bridges, inflatable tanks and black logs attached to old truck wheels, but only 14 real tanks, 18 armored cars and 20 pieces of artillery.<br><br>It was the terror-bombing of civilians in Belgrade -- something the Air Force and its D.C. bosses do not like to issue press releases about -- that made Slobodan Milosevic cry uncle. His military machine was hardly scratched and, according to a Newsweek sidebar, the Balkan strongman is as entrenched as ever.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCovering the cover-up in Kosovo ``x958122531,21960,``x``x
``x<br><br>Ian Black in Brussels <br>Thursday May 11, 2000 <br><br>Russia attacked Nato for its Kosovo policy yesterday at the first meeting between senior military officers since relations were ruptured over last year's war in the Serbian province. <br>General Anatoly Kvashnin, the chief of the Russian general staff, complained before starting talks at alliance headquarters in Brussels that Nato was not doing enough to protect Serbs from attacks by ethnic Albanians. <br><br>"No positive signs can be seen in the situation," he said. "Nato is trying to present a better picture than actually exists." <br><br>Gen Kvashnin's remarks cast a cloud over what Nato had hoped would be the resumption of friendly relations with Moscow, and came amid Serb protests. <br><br>In Kosovo, Serbs demonstrated in the ethnically mixed northern town of Mitrovice, demanding speedy trials for jailed friends and relatives. <br><br>"We are aware of the problems regarding Kosovo's judicial system," the local Nato commander, French Brigadier General Pierre de Saqui de Sannes, told the protesters, alluding to a backlog of cases awaiting trial because of lack of personnel and inadequate legislation. <br><br>In Belgrade, the families of several hundred missing Kosovo Serbs held a march demanding that their loved ones be released or at least accounted for. <br><br>Several Serbs were yesterday reported wounded in a grenade and machinegun attack in Cernica, an ethnically-mixed town 20 miles south-east of Pristina. <br><br>Alliance leaders acknowledge that violence remains a serious problem in Kosovo, but insist there has been some progress in achieving peace. <br><br>Russia opposed the bombing of Yugoslavia and its relations with Nato were effectively frozen until February. <br><br>Russian troops serve alongside the Nato-led K-For peacekeeping troops, but Moscow remains on good terms with the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Meanwhile, the European commission yesterday announced a revamp of its aid efforts to Kosovo by cutting red tape and speeding up delivery. <br><br>Chris Patten, the external relations commissioner, warned that if the EU wanted to be taken seriously in foreign policy it must back up words with deeds. "We cannot go around making huge spending promises to people unless we put it in the budget," he said. "I'm embarrassed by the size of the gap between committed and spent aid." <br><br>The EU is footing half the bill for reconstructing Kosovo, because the US paid most of the cost of the war. Brussels will spend £464m in the Balkans in 2001, £203m of that in Kosovo and £23m in Serbia. <br><br>Earlier this week the EU announced it was giving an immediate £11.7m to Montenegro to bolster the stability of its pro-western regime. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRussia attacks Nato for neglecting Serbs ``x958122552,93843,``x``x
``x<br><br>Leading Serb Journalist Arrested For Critical Articles <br><br>By Sue Masterman<br><br>May 11 — Serb police have arrested a leading Serb international journalist and human rights activist who dared to put his name on highly critical articles which appeared abroad.<br> Miroslav Filipovic, 49, was plucked from his home in the southern city of Kraljevo earlier this week by police who also confiscated the hard drive of his computer, floppy disks, around 100 pages of documents, his passport, address book, business cards, diary and personal papers.<br> Wednesday the district court in Kraljevo referred the case to a military prosecutor. The police prosecutor claimed that they had evidence to charge him with espionage and spreading lies. If found guilty, Filipovic faces up to 15 years in jail. <br>Part of a Group Targeted by Milosevic <br>Filipovic is a respected correspondent of the Belgrade daily Danas who also works for Agence France Press and for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR). He is also a member of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, many of whose members have been targeted by the legal system controlled by President Slobodan Milosevic or physically threatened.<br> It is probably Filipovic’s work for the IWRP, one of the best sources of news from former Yugoslav regions, which has brought Milosevic’s wrath upon him. His latest report, published on Tuesday, was a stinging indictment of the way Kraljevo treats the fellow Serbs who fled from Kosovo and were forcibly settled there.<br> But it is probably a previous article, published in late April, entitled “Generals Jump Ship,” that led to his arrest. In it he describes how generals dismissed from the Yugoslav army by Milosevic because of their “questionable loyalty” have joined forces with Montenegro’s President Milo Djukanovic and his government. <br><br>A Sworn Milosevic Enemy <br>Djukanovic is a sworn Milosevic enemy. He is threatening to break out of the Yugoslav Federation in which Montenegro is the junior partner alongside Serbia. The United States and Britain have both warned Milosevic that any attempt by him to intervene in Montenegro could result in NATO counter-action.<br> Filipovic also reveals the results of a survey carried out within the Yugoslav army. “The results of the survey are devastating for Milosevic,” he says. He quotes the commander of a motorized unit as saying “I am sure that the majority of officers and soldiers will refuse to follow an order that might cause bloodshed in Montenegro.”<br> The journalist’s arrest is the latest in a spate of blatant attempts by Milosevic to muzzle the independent press by fair means or foul. More than 40 percent of the independent broadcasting media have been closed down, had their equipment stolen, or been hit by crippling fines. The regime also regularly jams broadcasts from regions where the opposition is planning or staging demonstrations.<br> Demonstrations and Deaths <br>On Wednesday some 10,000 Serb opposition protesters marched in the streets of the industrial town of Kragujevac, where 80 percent are out of work since NATO bombed the Zastava automobile plant and weapons factory.<br> There were 1,000 opposition demonstrators gathered in the Town Hall of Cacak, after police banned a street demonstration there.<br> Milosevic is most concerned about the emergence of a new opposition force, Otpor, a student resistance movement which is gathering support by the day. <br> Milosevic specifically attacked them in his Tuesday speech to mark World War II Victory Day. Calling them “the new Nazis” and “fascists,” he also described them as “little servants and bloody allies of the occupier who explain their treason as patriotic concern and patriotic moves.”<br> The day before, the opposition called off at the last minute a demonstration planned in Pozarevac, Milosevic’s home town, for fear that lives could be lost. <br> The demonstration was a protest against the beating up of local opposition members by a gang of thugs alleged to have been sent by Marko Milosevic, the Yugoslav President’s powerful son who owns the cafe where the incident took place. <br> Instead, local authorities loyal to parties lead by Milosevic and his wife Mira Markovic held a “street party.” Only 150 supporters turned up.<br> Milosevic is rarely seen in public these days. Three of his close associates, warlord “Arkan”, the Minister of Defence and the head of Yugoslav Airlines (JAT), have been gunned down in cold blood in Belgrade this year. None of the crimes has been solved. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xStifling the Press?``x958212742,60942,``x``x
``x<br><br>By ERIC SCHMITT<br> <br><br>ASHINGTON, May 12 -- The Pentagon and a bipartisan group of senators today criticized legislation that sets a deadline for withdrawing American ground troops from Kosovo, warning that the measure would undermine the NATO operation and embolden President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. <br>Earlier this week, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a provision to cut off financing for the troops after July 1, 2001, unless the next administration could win specific approval from Congress. The measure is attached to a military construction spending bill that goes before the Senate for a vote on Tuesday. <br><br>The legislation underscores the growing unease on Capitol Hill over America's open-ended commitment to the Kosovo peacekeeping mission, where 5,900 United States troops are serving as part of a NATO operation. <br><br>But today, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen warned in a letter that the provision "is counterproductive to peace in Kosovo and will seriously jeopardize the relationship between the U.S. and our NATO allies." <br><br>In the letter to Senator Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican who heads the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Cohen said that if the Kosovo language stayed in the bill he would recommend that President Clinton veto the legislation, even though it would reimburse the Pentagon for its expenses in Kosovo and pay for several important military construction projects. <br><br>Separately, 11 Republican and Democratic senators sent a letter to the Senate Republican and Democratic leaders, Trent Lott and Tom Daschle, echoing Mr. Cohen's warnings. "Enactment of this Kosovo provision would send the message to NATO that the United States is an unreliable ally, to Slobodan Milosevic that the United States is irresolute," the senators said. <br><br>Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who commanded the allied air campaign against Yugoslavia last spring and who stepped down as the NATO military commander this month, also opposes the provision. <br><br>"These measures would invalidate the policies, commitments and trust of our allies in NATO, undercut U.S. leadership worldwide, and encourage renewed ethnic tension, fighting and instability in the Balkans," General Clark said in a letter this week to Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. <br><br>The measure's two main sponsors, Senators John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, say the bill does not apply to American troops in Kosovo providing intelligence, surveillance or headquarters support. <br><br>They say they are merely exercising Congress's power of the purse. <br><br>The measure, which was approved in committee 23 to 3 in a bipartisan vote, would also require the White House to begin planning with European allies in advance of the American withdrawal. <br><br>The amendment would also withhold some Kosovo financing unless President Clinton certified by July 15 that the European allies were meeting their commitments for aid and reconstruction. <br><br><br>Senate opponents of the provision stalled a final floor vote on the bill until Tuesday afternoon, giving the administration time to marshal what is expected to be a fierce lobbying campaign next week. <br><br>The House rejected similar legislation in March. <br><br>On Tuesday, Mr. Cohen, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and perhaps Gen. Joseph Ralston, the new NATO military commander, are expected to address the senators' regular policy luncheons. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Pentagon and Several Senators Oppose Plan on Pulling Out G.I.'s in Kosovo``x958212759,68944,``x``x
``x<br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Joining forces to denounce their common foe, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Iraq's foreign minister on Friday issued a joint statement blasting the United States.<br><br><br> <br>Yugoslavia's state television quoted Milosevic and Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf Friday as saying the United States was the leader of ``hegemonism and NATO neocolonialism.''<br><br>Milosevic praised ``friendly relations'' between Yugoslavia and Iraq. The two officials said that ``Iraq and Yugoslavia are determined to defend their countries' freedom, sovereignty and territorial integrity,'' the television report said, quoting a joint statement.<br><br>Both nations were ``confronting the policy of dictate and power'' and thier stand was ``receiving increasing support in the world,'' the report said.<br><br>Milosevic has forged alliances with Iraq, Belarus, Cuba and some African countries since last year, when Serbia lost control of its southern Kosovo province following NATO's 78-day bombing campaign. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic Meets Iraqi Official``x958212800,23434,``x``x
``x<br><br><br>By RICHARD BOUDREAUX, Times Staff Writer<br><br> BELGRADE, Yugoslavia--Their end is dead serious, but their means are often prankishly comic. <br> Otpor, a student movement bent on ousting Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, carved up a big cake in the shape of Yugoslavia on Milosevic's birthday last year and served pieces to passersby, telling them that this is how his ethnic wars have dismembered the country. <br> On New Year's Eve, the activists gathered scores of revelers in this capital city and, at the stroke of midnight, sent everyone home with a party-pooping lecture. The master of ceremonies cited an "absence of anything to celebrate" under Milosevic's rule. <br> On Easter Sunday, the student activists mocked the regime by handing out brightly colored eggs. "It's hard, but watch out," they warned. "It'll crack." <br> For a populace tired of lost wars, international isolation and one-man rule, but also bored with traditional opposition parties, Otpor has struck an irreverent funny bone and gained thousands of followers, injecting new life into the struggle for control of Yugoslavia and its dominant republic, Serbia. <br> "The idea is to make protest creative and entertaining," said Vukasin Petrovic, 24, who helped start the movement 19 months ago at Belgrade University and is trying to overcome his generation's cynicism and apathy toward politics. <br> The clenched fist that is the symbol of Otpor, which means resistance, is painted on walls and printed on T-shirts across the republic. It's almost as ubiquitous this spring as the bull's-eye target that many Serbs wore a year ago, in defiance of North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombs, during the war over Serbia's Kosovo province. <br> Since last summer, Otpor activists in their teens and early 20s have staged hundreds of mini-demonstrations across the country, satirizing the man who has ruled Yugoslavia and Serbia for nearly as long as they can remember. They have helped prod their elders in Serbia's weak opposition parties into a loose, fragile alliance. <br> It is uncertain whether the alliance can stay together and beat Milosevic in the next elections, scheduled to be held in Yugoslavia by the end of this year and in Serbia in 2001. But Otpor has unsettled the regime, sharpening a struggle for the hearts and minds of 18-to-24-year-olds, who are the least inclined to vote. <br> Police have arrested hundreds of Otpor demonstrators, holding them for brief periods. Citing the group's support from the West, officials have branded its members foreign mercenaries. "Their ideology is American money," said Ivan Markovic, a Yugoslav Cabinet minister. "We must salvage the young from the claws of such militant groups." <br> The Yugoslav United Left Party, led by Milosevic's wife, has formed its own youth branch to counter Otpor. An attempt to force one Otpor member to join Milosevic's Socialist Party last week led to a confrontation in the president's hometown, leaving three other activists badly beaten and in jail and setting off a new round of anti-government protests. <br> "What scares the regime is a metaphysical thing," Belgrade political analyst Ivan Vejvoda said. "Seeing Otpor, they see a future that's not theirs. They see a generation of younger people who are willing to draw the line and feel they have little to lose." <br> Student-led protests have cornered Milosevic twice before during his 12 years in power: in 1991 and in the winter of 1996-97. But they lost steam both times after prominent student leaders joined mainstream opposition parties that feuded and splintered. <br> Speaking last month to 100,000 people at a rally of the reunited opposition, Otpor activist Vladimir Pavlov vowed that the student group will remain strong and independent. "Next time one of you betrays us, 100,000 of us will appear at your door," he warned. <br> Otpor's jesting style of protest evolved from the wit of speakers at the 1996-97 rallies. But Petrovic, the movement's intense, bearded co-founder, didn't smile and displayed little humor during an hourlong interview. Twice arrested, he's clearly not in it for the fun. <br> "We've learned from past failures that there should be no leaders," he said, insisting that Otpor's decisions are collective. "We can be led by an idiot or united around an idea. If we put individuals forward as leaders, they can be discredited. It's harder to discredit an idea." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLA Times: Light Touch to Deadly Serious Struggle ``x958212814,24484,``x``x
``x<br><br><br>From Gillian Sandford, in Belgrade <br>YUGOSLAVIA: A former Yugoslavia president, Mr Dobrica Cosic, whose nationalist ideas won him the title "the father of Slobodan Milosevic" has dramatically lent his support to radical young people in Serbia by joining the anti-Milosevic resistance movement Otpor. <br><br>Otpor - a youth and studentbased activist movement - has been gaining support across Serbia since it became public in November last year. It claims to have at least 20,000 members and organises protests that provoke and challenge the regime.<br><br>In recent days many leading regime officials, including the Serbian police chief, Mr Vlajko Stoiljkovic, have branded Otpor members as "terrorists" and "fascists".<br><br>Analysts say the decision of Mr Cosic (79) to join Otpor provides it with credibility and legitimacy because of his stature in the country. He is a renowned novelist and anti-fascist writer whose ideas have led many people to call him: "father of the Serbian nation."<br><br>Mr Cosic was sitting at one of his favourite restaurants in Belgrade on Tuesday morning when a student leader of Otpor, Mr Vukasin Petrovic (24), decided to approach him.<br><br>"I said, `Good Morning'. He immediately began praising us, saying that we were doing a good job. `You are the future of this country', he said to us. I asked him if he would like to join, and he said, `Yes, with pleasure'," recalls Mr Petrovic.<br><br>Mr Cosic later told local journalists: "My decision to join Otpor is to offer human and moral support to those young people who are motivated by patriotism, democracy and civilised behaviour and who do not want to accept the system that exists at the moment, and a society without hope. I believe that the movement Otpor does not only oppose the present situation but also fights for a free, prosperous and humane society."<br><br>Mr Cosic was among the authors of a memorandum written by academics of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts in 1986. This was highly influential in fomenting nationalist thought.<br><br>"His nationalist ideas provided a climate of opinion that Milosevic could then manipulate," says Prof Srbijanka Turajlic, a member of the Otpor Council - a group of respected advisers to the youth movement. But she welcomed his membership of Otpor.<br><br>Many liberals will be uncomfortable with Mr Cosic's membership of Otpor, because of his close past links with Mr Milsoevic. He was president from June 1992 to June 1993, at the start of the Bosnian war when Mr Milosevic was President of Serbia and some believe Mr Cosic could have sought to exercise the authority vested in his office to try to prevent it.<br><br>Mr Cosic's decision to join is important, says Mr Petrovic. "He was an anti-fascist fighter in the second World War and this is important because of our media war against the regime."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIrish Times: 'Father of the nation' opposes Serbian regime ``x958212830,96764,``x``x
``x<br>Government accuses opposition of planning assassination <br>Police hold down a man Saturday suspected of shooting and killing Bosko Perosevic, an ally of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br> <br> <br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, May 14 — The Yugoslav government announced a major crackdown Sunday on the country’s main opposition groups, accusing them of masterminding the slaying of a top official in President Slobodan Milosevic’s ruling Socialist party — on behalf of NATO. <br> <br><br><br><br> A DAY AFTER Bosko Perosevic, 43, head of the Vojvodina provincial government and chief of a Socialist Party branch there, was shot and killed while visiting a trade fair, the government claimed the anti-government student organization Otpor and the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement party were behind the attack and would be punished.<br> “All who perform activities against the state will be treated in accordance with the law and prevented. The time of their street actions is over,” Yugoslavian Information Minister Goran Matic said.<br> Police said in a statement that they were “beyond doubt” that the suspected gunman, Milivoj Gutovic, 50, was an activist with Otpor and the Serbian Renewal Movement. <br> Advertisement <br><br><br> The statement, carried by the official Tanjug news agency Sunday, said “posters and propaganda material of Otpor and of Serbian Renewal Movement, as well as brochures on terrorism,” were found in Gutovic’s home.<br> MSNBC reporter's notebook: Zoran Stanojevic's Belgrade Confidential<br><br> Gutovic, a longtime security guard at the Novi Sad exhibition venue, allegedly approached Perosevic at an agricultural fair Saturday, pressed a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. He was taken into custody immediately.<br> Both groups have denied the allegations and any connection with the gunman.<br> The Serbian Renewal Movement expressed condolences to Perosevic’s family and called Gutovic “a monster.”<br> Matic also claimed the NATO countries who launched a 78-day air attack against Yugoslavia last year were behind the killing. <br> <br><br> “This (slaying) was not the work of a single maniac, but an organized murder with a deep political background, with the aim to destabilize Yugoslavia,” Matic told reporters Sunday. “We are faced with a concept of active destabilization of Yugoslavia by the same who carried out armed aggression against our country.”<br> The government appeared ready to crack down on the rising dissent in Yugoslavia, which is impoverished and isolated after more than decade of Milosevic’s rule and three lost wars, as well as respond to NATO’s virtual control of the Kosovo province.<br> Matic said a number of arrests had been made already in connection with the slaying but would not specify how many. Asked whether opposition activists who are expected to hold a rally Monday in Belgrade would face arrest, Matic said: “That is correct.”<br> Milosevic attended a Sunday memorial for Perosevic, along with about 200 other officials.<br> “The NATO aggressors are now putting their weapons in the hands of their servants here, to do for them the dirty job, to spread fear and chaos,” Gorica Gajevic, the Socialists’ secretary general, said in a speech at the memorial. <br> <br> Gajevic called Otpor “ordinary NATO mercenaries” and promised that “Serbia will fight against them just as it fought back against any other evil.”<br> Otpor activists in Belgrade and Novi Sad called the government’s comments an attempt by Milosevic’s regime to halt their popular anti-government protests.<br> “We are a thorn in their side. They are trying to break us with this, but we will not give up our demands” for democracy and free elections, said Miroslav Kecman, an Otpor activist.<br> He added that at least Novi Sad police had called one Otpor activist for questioning. Earlier Sunday, an independent radio reporter and a member of the Serbian Renewal Movement were also detained in Novi Sad for questioning. <br> <br> <br> An Otpor activist in Belgrade, Ivan Marovic, told the Associated Press that a number of the groups’ activists have been arrested in several Serbian towns but that some were released after lengthy questioning.<br> <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAssociated press : Yugoslavia threatens crackdown ``x958378135,78231,``x``x
``x<br>AP <br><br>14 May 2000 <br><br>A top official of President Slobodan Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party was shot dead at an agricultural fair yesterday. The victim, Bosko Perosevic, was head of regional government for the northern Vojvodina province, and a firm supporter of Milosevic's autocratic policies. <br><br>He was touring the fair in the northern city of Novi Sad when a security guard at the fair compound approached him and fired at close range. died in hospital hours later. <br><br>The attacker, identified as Milivoj Gutovic, a 50-year-old who had worked at the exhibition for years, was caught after a short chase. <br><br>Belgrade-based Studio B Television reported that seconds before the attack Perosevic's mobile telephone rang and he moved away from his delegation to take the call. <br><br>At that moment, Gutovic approached him, pressed the gun to Perosevic's head and fired. Studio B said the attacker had known Perosevic for some years. <br><br>It was the latest in a series of high-profile shootings in which government officials, top businessmen and underworld figures have been assassinated. The general manager of the Yugoslav national carrier, JAT, was killed last month, the country's defence minister was shot dead in February and a known underworld figure, Zeljko Raznatovic-Arkan, was assassinated in January. <br><br>Earlier in the day, members of the opposition Democratic Party gathered at the exhibition gate to hand out party leaflets. Seven were arrested by the police, but were later freed after a group of 50 protesters gathered at the main jail in Novi Sad to demand their release. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIndependent : Milosevic ally is shot dead ``x958378154,76305,``x``x
``x<br> PINHEIRO DA CRUZ, Portugal, May 16 (Reuters) - The amphibious troop carrier carrying a multinational force hit the the beaches of Yellowland as NATO swung into action to impose peace with its warlike neighbour, Greyland. <br>On the shores were soldiers with horrific injuries. One had his arm blown off. The intestines of another were poking through a gash in his abdomen. In the hills, victims of ethnic cleansing awaited urgent evacuation. <br><br>From a distance, bikini-clad tourists looked on in mild amusement -- the soldiers were only pretending to be wounded, their mutilated limbs were made of plastic. The evacuees were local villagers. <br><br>They were taking part in operation Linked Seas 2000, a two-week NATO exercise that ended on Monday. <br><br>It was the first major land and sea exercise since the war in Kosovo and the first time NATO has practised deploying peacekeepers by sea on such a large scale. <br><br>Yellowland and Greyland are in southern Portugal, two imaginary countries at war over their borders. NATO has been called in to enforce a peace deal. <br><br>The operation involved some 12 NATO nations and five countries from outside the alliance. More than 30,000 military personnel, 80 warships, 11 special forces teams and 125 aircraft took part. <br><br>AN ARMED ENFORCER OF PEACE <br><br>The operation was an affirmation of the new role as an armed enforcer of peace that NATO is trying to carve out for itself. <br><br>Gone are the days of repulsing Warsaw Pact tanks across the plains of northern Europe, in comes the rapid deployment of forces to prevent human catastrophes. <br><br>Vice Admiral Luis Mota e Silva, NATO's Commander in Chief for the Southern Atlantic, said the idea was to train as many soldiers, sailors and airmen how to deploy peacekeepers from the sea, and deal with humanitarian problems when they arrive. <br><br>"There are things happening in today's world which are unacceptable. We should not accept that human beings are doing what they are doing to each other," he said. <br><br>Coming from mainly Spanish vessels off the Portuguese coast, troops landed near Pinheiro da Cruz in the south of the country and on the small island of Porto Santo. <br><br>Georgian troops were made up by their British counterparts with realistic looking wounds supplied by a film prop company. <br><br>And, for the first time, NATO used an entire civilian population as part of an exercise. <br><br>Inhabitants of Porto Santo were pressed into service -- as refugees: Yellowlanders who were victims of ethnic cleansing carried out by Greylanders. <br><br>CIVILIANS PRESSED INTO SERVICE <br><br>"Don't worry, your wife is safe," said one U.S. medic as he tended to the imaginary wounds of a Porto Santo resident who was bawling with particular gusto. <br><br>Further away, marines from the United States, Netherlands and Germany set up an entire refugee camp including a field hospital and registration post. <br><br>"Here, the forces are being confronted with what you would find in that kind of situation: injuries both physical and psychological," said Thomas Wilson, Commander of Standing Naval Force Atlantic. <br><br>"In the real world what you are seeing here might be applicable to disaster relief or perhaps missions similar to things that we saw on television in Kosovo." <br><br>Following a decade of conflict in the former Yugoslavia, the scenario for the operation is indeed familiar. <br><br>It pits the hardline republic of Greyland, led by a General Vulgar, against the pro-Western republic of Yellowland. <br><br>After months of fighting along the border, tensions between communities and ethnic cleansing, NATO is called in to police a U.N.-brokered peace deal. <br><br>And it has probably been followed closely in the Balkans. <br><br>The imaginary pro-western republic of Yellowland nestles in the underbelly of its foe, rather like the tiny republic of Montenegro, which sits uneasily beside its neighbour Serbia -- the target of a 78-day bombing campaign last year. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFEATURE-Greyland battles Yellowland in NATO exercise``x958467708,71532,``x``x
``x<br>Gillian Sandford in Belgrade <br>Tuesday May 16, 2000 <br><br>A Serbian opposition leader wearing a T-shirt with the clenched-fist symbol of the youth resistance movement warned President Slobodan Milosevic to "leave our kids alone" at a demonstration in the capital Belgrade yesterday. <br>"If you touch our children, you touch our future and this is the end. There is no step back after that," Zoran Djindjic, leader of the Democratic Party, said at the rally in Republic Square, attended by around 30,000 people.<br><br>The demand came as the Milosevic regime acted against students and activists from the youth movement Otpor (Resistance) after the weekend assassination of a senior government figure in the northern city of Novi Sad.<br><br>Opposition leaders called the demonstration after cancelling a rally in Pozarevac, Mr Milosevic's home town, last Tuesday, accusing the author ities of blocking access to roads and detaining activists and independent journalists.<br><br>It had been planned as a protest against the alleged beatings of three supporters of the Otpor movement in the town.<br><br>Student organisers admitted that they were disappointed with the turnout at yesterday's rally, which drew only a fraction of the 100,000 people who attended a rally in Belgrade on April 14.<br><br>Tension increased at the weekend after an unknown assassin shot Bosko Perosevic, a senior official in Mr Milosevic's Socialist party and head of the Vojvodina provincial government.<br><br>Official spokesmen blamed the murder on the youth movement, opposition parties and foreign governments.<br><br>At yesterday's rally, Branko Ilic, a 20-year-old member of Otpor, called for a minute's silence from the crowd as a mark of respect.<br><br>"For us Brako Perosevic is a victim," he said.<br><br>The police detained several activists at the weekend, but released them after questioning. They also issued wanted posters for the arrest of two Otpor members, saying they were sought in connection with Perosevic's murder.<br><br>The resistance movement dismissed the allegations. It said the two wanted youths were in Bosnia at the time of the murder and had been there for a month.<br><br>The Yugoslav information minister, Goran Matic, warned that the authorities would take action against Otpor.<br><br>It was not a registered organisation and would no longer be tolerated, he said. Members who continued with street actions would be arrested, he said, adding: "The time of street spectacles is over."<br><br>The assassination of Perosevic was caught on television. He received a call on his mo bile phone while he was attending an agricultural fair. He moved away from his official delegation to take the call and was shot at close blank range by a security guard.<br><br>The police gave chase and arrested the man.<br><br>Mr Matic said that the man held for the murder, Milivoje Gutovic, 50, was linked to the opposition.<br><br>He said police found Otpor propaganda in his flat, and manuals on terrorism.<br><br>"It has been firmly established that Gutovic is a member of Otpor, and according to his own statement, a member of the Serbian Renewal Movement with close ties to some of the party members and sympathisers," he said.<br><br>But the Democratic party said its local representative in the Novi Sad area knew Mr Gutovic.<br><br>It denied that he was an opposition supporter, saying that he was a supporter of Mr Milosevic's Socialist party.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Opposition rallies against Milosevic's clampdown ``x958467734,54775,``x``x
``xAlex Todorovic <br><br>BELGRADE <br><br>Sandra's bookshelf is filled with expensive art books and her CD holder overflows with the latest Western hits. A digital camera rests atop her dresser. The top drawer is filled with lingerie from Victoria's Secret.<br><br>Like most young Serbs, Sandra, who, did not want her real name used for this report, has virtually no income. But she can enjoy these small luxuries thanks to the Internet. You may even unknowingly have bought her a gift.<br><br>All of the goods in her apartment, except the computer, were ordered from US Internet sites, using stolen credit-card numbers. And although Yugoslavia is under an international embargo, the goods were delivered to Sandra's neighborhood post office. "Everyone at the post office knows how I got this stuff. It's no secret," she says.<br><br>After Sandra pays the customs tax - money she gets by selling some previously arrived goods or, she says, by bribing customs officials with part of the take - she goes home with little fear of being caught. The goods either get here or they don't.<br><br>Belgrade's educated urban youth say they are awash in goods stolen over the Internet; mostly books and CDs, but also computer programs, clothing, fine stationery, and less often, scanners, hard discs, CD "burners," or recording devices, and other computer accessories.<br><br>Internet thievery is a common problem in all developed countries, but in Serbia local authorities have little incentive to take notice. Yugoslavia has no official relationship with Interpol, the international police agency in charge of credit-card fraud. That has allowed Belgrade's youth to steal with impunity. It's one of the advantages of living in a pariah state.<br><br>And in a country where the average salary is less than $50 a month, the temptation is great.<br><br>While an accurate measure is hard to come by, Belgrade youths boast that tens of thousands of households contain goods purloined over the Internet. At Zsu Zsu cafe in downtown Belgrade, a group of young Belgraders recently spoke openly about their illicit activities. All are students, and spoke matter-of-factly on the condition that their real names not be used.<br><br>Seventeen-year-old high-school student Aleksa laughs when asked how many of his classmates have received goods from the Internet. "That's the wrong question," he says. "You should ask how many of my classmates have not stolen goods from the Internet.<br><br>The trend began two years ago, but picked up momentum after last year's NATO bombing campaign over Kosovo, which left Yugoslavia further isolated both politically and economically.<br><br>"The only negative consequence I've ever heard about is one local Belgrade DJ, who ordered all of his music and equipment over the Internet. He got a warning letter from the FBI," says Zarko, an engineering student.<br><br>Thieves can even write their own address when ordering goods with little fear local police will arrest them, they say. Still, "most of us actually write down the names of our aging grandmothers when ordering stuff, or a dead neighbor, just to be on the safe side," says Dejan, a law student. "You never know what will happen after the government here changes. I don't want to wind up on some list, then get arrested when I leave the country."<br><br>Not everything ordered comes through, but plenty does. "My good friend just received an A4 Compaq scanner," says Aleksa. "Suddenly my little collection of CDs seemed kind of stupid. Now I'm going after the bigger stuff as well."<br><br>Obtaining credit-card numbers can be done in a number of ways. The easiest is to find one posted at any number of hacker Web sites. The most popular method in Belgrade has been to use programs, available on underground search engines, that generate likely credit-card numbers based on a mathematical formula. From there, the would-be thief usually enters a pornography site, where the numbers are tested for validity.<br><br>"Penthouse I found to be the fastest site. Out of 100 numbers, I had a success rate of about 15 percent, and each number took a minute or less to run," says Dejan.<br><br>The merchant-verification system also has a huge loophole: The credit-card number and expiration date are all that matter. Any name can be punched in. Although more thorough verification is available, it costs more and most companies don't bother for minor purchases.<br><br>Once a thief has a few valid numbers, he or she can open an e-mail account under a pseudonym and go shopping.<br><br>The last and most important sleight of hand involves not writing "Yugoslavia" in the country field, but some adjacent state. Companies won't deliver to Yugoslavia as it is under international sanctions. Instead, would-be thieves write in Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, or Macedonia. "Some post office worker in Slovenia then gets annoyed and says to himself, 'Those Americans don't even know where Belgrade is,' then forwards the package," explains Zarko.<br><br>"Our biggest success has been Amazon.com," he boasts, to general agreement. "Things just keep on coming, like it's an endless birthday."<br><br>"It's much wiser to go easy on the purchases with any single number.... They track buying patterns on Amazon, and when someone looks like they're on a spree, the card is flagged," adds Aleksa.<br><br>While some of the youths expressed moral reservations about their exploits, others feel justified. "I think it's a way to get back at America for bombing us last year. Why should I feel guilty? VISA takes the hit, not the cardholder," says Zarko.<br><br>Sandra has an original way of dealing with the moral issue. "I buy some things for myself, then contribute to a charity. I recently gave $150 dollars to an environmental organization at the Eddie Bauer Web site."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : Hot outlet for Belgrade youth, Internet crime``x958467767,26742,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN LEE MYERS<br> <br> <br>ASHINGTON, May 15 -- On the eve of a Senate vote to set a deadline for withdrawing American troops from Kosovo, a General Accounting Office report released today said that prospects for lasting peace in Kosovo, Bosnia and other parts of the Balkans remained bleak and warned of the prospect of instability and even renewed violence. <br>The report, released by the House Armed Services Committee, credited NATO-led peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo for ending open conflict. But it said that little progress had been made toward creating peaceful, democratic governments committed to political and ethnic reconciliation. <br><br>The 90-page report is sure to provide support for critics of the prolonged American military operations in the Balkans. <br><br>American troops have served in Bosnia since that country's ethnic warfare ended in 1995, and now total 4,200. About 5,900 Americans have been in Kosovo since a NATO-led peacekeeping force occupied the Serbian province last June following NATO's air war against Yugoslavia, of which Serbia is the larger of two republics. <br><br>Last week, in a lopsided, bipartisan vote, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved an amendment setting a deadline of July 1, 2001, for withdrawing American ground troops unless Congress votes to give specific approval for an extension. The full Senate is expected to vote on the legislation on Tuesday as part of a larger military construction spending bill. <br><br>The report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said that forces opposed to peace continued to wield influence in the Balkans, inhibiting progress toward political stability. <br><br>The report's authors cited evidence of Serbian paramilitary units and former Kosovo Albanian fighters operating in Kosovo, as well as "small groups of armed thugs organized and controlled by extremist political leaders" in Bosnia, where Muslim, Croat and Serbian groups fought for control of the country for more than three and a half years. <br><br>In both Kosovo and Bosnia, which were once part of the former Yugoslavia, "the former warring parties largely retain their wartime goals," the report concluded. <br><br>While the report criticized political leaders in Kosovo and Bosnia for failing to embrace "political and social reconciliation considered necessary to build multiethnic, democratic societies and institutions," it also criticized the United Nations for failing to provide needed resources, particularly in Kosovo, where an international police force has been slow to get off the ground. <br><br>The report did not advocate an American or NATO withdrawal, as some members of Congress have called for. On the contrary, the report said that factions in Bosnia and Kosovo "would resume war if the NATO-led troops were withdrawn." <br><br>The report warned that the region could face "an escalation of violent incidents or armed conflict" over the next five years, not just in Bosnia and Kosovo, but also in Macedonia and in the two remaining republics of the former Yugoslavia, Montenegro as well as Serbia. <br><br><br>Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, a Republican who sponsored the Senate legislation with Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, a Democrat, said today that the report underscored the concerns that led him to propose the amendment on the American presence in Kosovo. <br><br>But Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and senior Pentagon commanders have mounted an intense campaign against the legislation, warning that it would undermine NATO's operations and embolden the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: U.S. Study Offers Grim Prognosis for Lasting Peace in Balkans ``x958467789,65416,``x``x
``xBy ERIC SCHMITT<br><br>WASHINGTON, May 16 -- Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, today sharply criticized a bill backed by Senate Republicans that would set a deadline for withdrawing American ground troops from Kosovo. Mr. Bush called the bill a "legislative overreach" that would tie his hands if he becomes president. <br>But the Senate majority leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, along with the bill's chief Republican sponsor, John W. Warner of Virginia, said they would push ahead with the measure. That sets up the first major foreign policy clash between Mr. Bush and congressional Republicans. <br><br>Until today, momentum seemed to be building among most Senate Republicans for the measure, which would cut off funds for the 5,900 United States forces in Kosovo by July 1, 2001, forcing their withdrawal, unless Congress authorizes an extension. <br><br>Many Republicans said they assumed that Mr. Bush endorsed the measure, which may be voted on as early as Wednesday. <br><br>But last weekend, opponents of the measure, including at least five Republican senators, warned Mr. Bush's top aides of the potential conflict. In response, the Bush campaign issued its statement. <br><br>"The Clinton-Gore administration has failed to instill trust in Congress and the American people when it comes to our military and deployment of troops overseas, but the governor does not believe this provision is the way to resolve the lack of presidential leadership," Scott McClellan, a spokesman for Mr. Bush, said. <br><br>"Governor Bush views it as a legislative overreach on powers of the presidency." <br><br>Top aides to President Clinton have recommended that he veto an $8.6 billion military construction bill if the Senate language is attached. The bill includes $4.7 billion for American military operations in Kosovo, anti-drug efforts in Colombia and other defense spending. <br><br>Defense Secretary William S. Cohen warned today that passage of the measure would send a dangerous signal. "If the United States were to mandate an artificial deadline for our departure, then I suspect that other members of NATO will do the same," he said. And that would lead to "the return to the kind of conflict we witnessed last year." <br><br>After Mr. Bush's views were made known today, splits quickly formed in the party line, and Republicans were casting about tonight to figure a graceful way out of the showdown. <br><br>"I agree with the governor," said Senator Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican. "He would need the flexibility of a newly elected president to make decisions with his own advisers." <br><br>Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, said, "We're putting that new president in a very difficult position, with no flexibility and no latitude on a very, very complicated issue in the Balkans." <br><br>Such opposition would likely kill the proposal, said Senator Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican who heads the Appropriations Committee, and who supports the measure. <br><br>But Mr. Lott said he still supported the measure. <br><br>Mr. Warner agreed, but said the floor vote would be close. <br><br>"Presidents are very protective of their prerogative, but what I'd say to him is that Congress has its own prerogative and it's the power of the purse," Mr. Warner said in an interview. <br><br>Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, said she would recommend pushing back the deadline to give the next president more time to work with the Congress. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : G.O.P. Step on Kosovo Draws Fire From Bush ``x958548574,2273,``x``x
``xBy DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press Writer <br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Police briefly detained 40 student activists opposed to President Slobodan Milosevic - some on suspicion of murder - as a top government official called Tuesday for a crackdown against Yugoslav opposition leaders and their followers.<br><br>Key opposition figures accused Milosevic and his aides of trying to foment civil war as a pretext to impose full dictatorial control.<br><br>``Civil war is being provoked by those who are conducting repression, those who speak the language of hatred, those who are arresting all those who think differently,'' said Nebojsa Covic, a former Milosevic ally turned opposition leader.<br><br>Police and government officials say the student group Otpor, or Resistance, was behind the assassination of Bosko Perosevic, a top official of the ruling Socialist party who was shot last Saturday in the northern town of Novi Sad. The government appears ready to seize on the killing to crack down on dissent fed by growing poverty and isolation during Milosevic's more than 10 years in power.<br><br>Serbian state television said Tuesday that police arrested 20 Otpor activists in the Novi Sad region on suspicion of being behind the Perosevic slaying. It quoted a police statement as saying that ``printed material and objects'' were found in their possession and that they were being investigated in connection with the killing.<br><br>Police detained another 20 Otpor activists in the central Serbian town of Valjevo Tuesday after they distributed the group's leaflets on the streets, opposition groups said.<br><br>Pedja Lecic, an Otpor activist from Belgrade, said that all 40 were later released.<br><br>The confrontation between Milosevic and his critics is increasing tensions in Serbia, the larger of the two remaining Yugoslav republics and Milosevic's power base. Unlike in Montenegro, the smaller Yugoslav republic whose leadership has turned away from Milosevic, Serbia's government remains loyal to the Yugoslav president, despite growing grass-roots opposition.<br><br>On Tuesday, Ivan Markovic, a spokesman for the neo-communist JUL party of Milosevic's wife, described an anti-government rally Monday as ``a gathering of terrorist leaders and their followers.'' He charged that the rally's call for an uprising against Milosevic's government actually was ``a call for the destruction of the country and its institutions.'' He linked the demonstrators to NATO, which last year bombed Yugoslavia.<br><br>``We are asking the appropriate authorities, above all the public prosecutor, to undertake all legal measures for the protection of the country and all its citizens,'' Markovic said in a statement carried by the state Tanjug news agency.<br><br>Opposition leaders said such calls for a crackdown could lead to a civil war between Milosevic's followers and opponents. The critics charged that Milosevic would then introduce a state of emergency that would ban basic civil rights and opposition parties and indefinitely postpone elections scheduled for later this year.<br><br>The Milosevic camp ``is ready to stay in power by all means, abandoning even the semblance of democracy,'' opposition leader Goran Svilanovic said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``x40 Activists Detained in Serbia``x958548627,20983,``x``x
``x <br>By Eric Pianin and Helen Dewar<br><br>The Clinton administration yesterday launched a campaign to thwart Senate efforts to impose a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Kosovo, as Defense Secretary William S. Cohen threatened a presidential veto and warned that lawmakers were harming prospects for peace. <br><br>The Senate could vote by midweek on a military construction bill including language that would cut off funds to keep U.S. troops in Kosovo beyond July 1, 2001.<br><br>The House is also likely to vote this week on a bipartisan proposal to begin withdrawing U.S. troops by April 1 unless President Clinton certifies that European allies are meeting their obligations for humanitarian, reconstruction and peacekeeping assistance.<br><br>Cohen said in a letter that the Senate measure would be "counterproductive to peace in Kosovo" and would "seriously jeopardize" U.S. relations with NATO allies. Meanwhile, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the former NATO commander, planned to meet with senators today to express his concern that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal "could give [Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic the victory he could not achieve on the battlefield," as Clark put it in a letter last week.<br><br>The brewing showdown reflects congressional displeasure with continued U.S. involvement in what many lawmakers view as a no-win peacekeeping effort following last year's NATO air war against Milosevic's forces.<br><br>The bipartisan Kosovo amendment, drafted by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) and attached to the military construction bill, would cut off funds for the 5,900 U.S. troops in Kosovo beyond July 1, 2001 unless Clinton or his successor obtains congressional authorization to keep them there. The bill contains emergency funds to replenish defense accounts diverted to the Kosovo war.<br><br>According to Warner, the amendment would provide enough time for the administration to develop an exit plan or for Congress to authorize the mission. "That is not cut-and-run," Warner said in a floor speech last week. "That is not undermining NATO. That is not sending a signal to Milosevic that the United States is turning its back."<br><br>But in his letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) yesterday, Cohen said that "while certainly more could be done, we should not lose sight of the fact that the Europeans are in fact carrying this burden" and that U.S. forces account for only about 15 percent of the peacekeepers in Kosovo.<br><br>Last week, 11 senators from both parties circulated a letter urging defeat of the Kosovo withdrawal language. The letter, drafted by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), ranking minority member on the Armed Services Committee, and John McCain (R-Ariz.), also a senior member of the panel, said tying NATO burden-sharing to funding of an ongoing mission was a "serious mistake" and would "send the message to NATO that the United States is an unreliable ally."<br><br>Clark put it even more strongly in a letter that the senators circulated. Steps called for in the proposal would amount to a "de facto pullout decision by the United States" that would "invalidate the policies, commitments and trust of our allies in NATO, undercut U.S. leadership worldwide and encourage renewed ethnic tensions, fighting and instability in the Balkans," Clark said.<br><br>Yesterday, McCain, an unsuccessful candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, told reporters, "I would hope the Republicans would consider that perhaps we may have a different president--a Republican president--in the White House next year. Do we want to set this kind of precedent?"<br><br>The House proposal, sponsored by Reps. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and others, will be considered in connection with the defense authorization bill for the next fiscal year. A similar initiative, which threatened withdrawal by next month, was rejected in March by a 219-200 vote. It has been modified to pick up more votes, including extending the deadline to next April and allowing the president to waive the deadline for up to 180 days.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWashington Post : Cohen Warns of Veto Over Kosovo Pullout Bill``x958548644,26366,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Zeljko Cvijanovic in Banja Luka and Vesna Peric Zimonjic <br><br><br>18 May 2000 <br><br>Serbian police officers yesterday accused the United Nations of paying mercenaries thousands of pounds to abduct suspected war criminals hiding in the former Yugoslavia. <br><br>The kidnappers were said to hunt down their former comrades in the Bosnian wars using intelligence provided by UN war crimes investigators. <br><br>The practice came to light after Dragan Nikolic, 43, a Bosnian Serb on trial for war crimes in the Hague, claimed he was kidnapped in Smederevo, 30 miles east of Belgrade. Serbian police arrested seven men and a woman yesterday who were allegedly involved in seizing him. <br><br>Police said the group received £31,000 for the kidnapping from unspecified "foreign services". One of those arrested is a policeman, while another was expelled from the force for an alleged attempted murder. <br><br>A Serbian police source confirmed that Mr Nikolic was abducted by two men who claimed to be police officers. They bundled him into a car boot and drove him to the border with Bosnia, where he was bound before being smuggled across the Drina river by boat and handed over to American S-For soldiers on 21 April. Mr Nikolic was indicted in November 1994 when he was identified as the commander of the Susica camp, near Vlasenica, where Bosnian Muslims were allegedly tortured, raped and executed in 1992. In a court appearance on 28 April, he pleaded not guilty to 80 separate charges – the highest number faced by any War Crimes Tribunal defendant. <br><br>But Mr Nikolic hopes that the circumstances of his arrest will lead to the case against him being dismissed. His defence counsel intends to prove that the former camp commandant was detained on territory which does not fall under UN jurisdiction. Nato claims he was apprehended by S-For troops in northern Bosnia. According to the tribunal's statutory code, prosecutors could be forced to release Mr Nikolic if the arrest is deemed illegal. <br><br>Mr Nikolic's lawyer, Howard Morrison, is also likely to refer to the case of Stevan Todorovic, who was arrested in south-eastern Serbia. Mr Todorovic claims he was abducted by members of the so-called Spider ring who are due to go on trial in Belgrade this month for the attempted assassination of President Slobodan Milosevic and other Serbian officials. <br><br>He says he recognised three Spider members from their pictures in a newspaper and is convinced they are the same men who kidnapped him in September 1998. <br><br>The Spider group is believed to have been working for the French and Serbian secret services simultaneously, initially recruiting Serbian veterans to fight for the ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seka in the former Zaire. <br><br>The Serbian police source said suspected war criminals across Yugoslavia were living in fear of the kidnappers. <br><br>The Chief UN prosecutor at tribunal in The Hague, Carla del Ponte, recently called for "creative ways" to arrest war crimes suspects who are "beyond the reach of S-For". The United States government has offered a reward of $5m (£3m) for the arrest of Mr Milosevic and his senior commanders in Bosnia.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Indenpendent: 'Bounty hunters strike inside Serbia to seize war crimes suspects' ``x958643953,72725,``x``x
``xBelgrade crackdown: Opponents of Slobodan Milosevic say the silencing of independent media marks the first step to a state of emergency <br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br><br>18 May 2000 <br><br>The full weight of the Serbian state cracked down yesterday against opponents of the regime, when dozens of police took over the premises of Studio B radio and television in Belgrade, silencing independent outlets serving half of Serbia. <br><br>An official statement read out on Studio B said the government decided to take over the station at 2am after it had "called for the violent overthrow of the legitimate authorities". The statement was signed by two deputy prime ministers: the ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj and Milovan Bojic, a leader of the powerful party of Mira Markovic, the Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's wife. <br><br>Mr Milosevic's government had been threatening a crackdown on opposition forces since Saturday's killing of a senior official, Bosko Perosevic, in the northern city of Novi Sad. Authorities have blamed the opposition but pro-democracy leaders deny the charges. <br><br>Dragan Kojadinovic, Studio B's manager, said there were no legal grounds for the takeover of his station and branded it "the beginning of a state of emergency". Vladan Batic, one of the opposition leaders, agreed, saying: "The government has imposed an informal state of emergency. This means the beginning of civil war in Serbia." <br><br>The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe condemned the move and called on Belgrade to stop repression of free speech. "It is almost impossible to comprehend that a European state at the beginning of the 21st century can act in such a totalitarian way," said Freimut Duve, the OSCE's representative for freedom of the media. <br><br>Studio B is controlled by local authorities in the capital, and run by the biggest opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement of Vuk Draskovic. The station planned to broadcast a news programme from the city hall yesterday, following a protest rally organised by the opposition. <br><br>The Serbian government held an emergency session following the seizure, amid speculation that it would announce a formal clampdown. But there was no announcement. <br><br>Studio B's offices are in a building which also houses the independent B2 92 radio station, the privately owned Blic daily newspaper, which has the largest circulation in Serbia, and Index Radio, popular with students. B2 92 had used some Studio B frequencies after the original B 92 was taken over by the government during the Nato air raids last year. <br><br>Music was being played on Studio B's radio waves yesterday, while films were shown on television. The only news broadcast was from the state-controlled Tanjug news agency. Media staff were told by plainclothes police officers "not to circulate" from their offices. <br><br>The last major event aired by Studio B and other independent media was Monday's opposition rally in Belgrade, called to protest against the government's obstruction of another demonstration that was to have been held last week in Pozarevac, Mr Milosevic's home town. <br><br>The broadcasting takeover followed a series of daily threats by top government officials against opponents of the regime after the killing of Mr Perosevic, who headed the government of the northern province of Vojvodina. <br><br>Ivan Markovic, a senior official of Mrs Markovic's JUL party, said Mr Draskovic and other opposition leaders were ready to pay "total obedience towards American führers of neo-fascism", with a programme of "terrorism and killings". ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb police close down last free television station ``x958643975,63762,``x``x
``x<br>BY BEN MACINTYRE <br> <br>THE US House of Representatives yesterday voted in favour of a proposal to withdraw US troops from Kosovo next year unless European nations honour their pledges of aid, despite warnings by the Administration that such a move could undermine regional stability and threaten Nato itself. <br>The measure, reflecting mounting unease in Congress over US missions abroad, requires the President to certify by next April 1 that Nato allies have fulfilled financial pledges for the rebuilding of Kosovo. Without such certification, the President would have 30 days to submit plans for the withdrawal of the 5,900 US troops in the region. <br><br>The Senate is considering an even stronger measure, to force the withdrawal of troops unless Congress explicitly authorises a decision to keep them in place. <br><br>The vote came just hours after Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, gave a warning that Congress was "playing with fire" by attempting to set premature deadlines for a Kosovo withdrawal. <br><br>William Cohen, the Defence Secretary, said a self-imposed deadline would encourage similar pullouts by European troops, threatening Nato. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times: Congress votes for Kosovo pullout``x958643992,92226,``x``x
``xBRUSSELS, May 17 (Reuters) - The European Union condemned Wednesday's crackdown on the independent media in Serbia and said it stood firmly behind opposition forces in their struggle for democracy. <br>EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana regretted what he called a denial of democracy. External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would ultimately lose his battle with the independent media. <br><br>"I deplore the cowardly crackdown on the independent media ...carried out under cover of darkness by Milosevic's henchmen this morning," Patten said in a written statement. <br><br>"Only a state which is terrified of the truth resorts to sending men in masks into television and radio studios; only a regime determined to try to cut Serbia off completely from the rest of Europe could conceive of behaving in this way." <br><br>He said modern technology meant truth could not be snuffed out easily and added: "Milosevic and his cronies will ultimately lose this battle; the tenacious independent journalists will win it." <br><br>The media outlets raided included Studio B, considered the most important opposition television channel. The Serbian authorities accused it of calling for their violent overthrow. <br><br>"The decision taken today to silence important voices constitutes a denial of democracy and a violation of the right of expression," Solana said. "The European Union supports the brave efforts of journalists, students and politicians in their struggle for freedom and democracy." <br><br>Montenegro's President Milo Djukanovic, a former Milosevic protege who has become a key opponent, said the move by Belgrade was "not an expression of strength but a sign of panic." <br><br>"Milosevic knows his political ratings are at their lowest in all his last 15 years," Djukanovic told reporters in Brussels after talks with Solana. But he cuationed that "this doesn't mean the end of the dictatorship is near." <br><br>Solana is planning to meet representatives of Serbia's independent media in Brussels on Friday, although it is not clear how many or who will make the trip. <br><br>The 15-nation EU has been trying to promote the democratic opposition in Yugoslavia and regards Milosevic as a major obstacle to democracy and stability in the region. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xEU condemns crackdown on independent Serbian media``x958644007,78356,``x``x
``x<br>Martin Kettle in Washington <br>Thursday May 18, 2000 <br><br>Senate Republicans who are pressing to set a date for the withdrawal of US troops from Kosovo have been ambushed by an unlikely alliance between President Clinton and the Republican presidential candidate, George W Bush. <br>The two political opponents have joined together in a last-ditch effort to prevent the passage of a bill which would cut off funds for the 5,900 US troops in Kosovo by July 1 2001, and which observers believe was on the verge of winning majority support in the Republican-controlled Senate. <br><br>The bill, jointly sponsored by the Republican armed services committee chairman, Senator John Warner, and the veteran Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, would pull the US troops out unless Mr Clinton or his successor obtains congressional approval for continued deployment. <br><br>The president would also be required to put forward a timetable for the transfer of responsibility for peacekeeping in Kosovo to European nations, and to certify that all Nato countries are paying their share for the operations. <br><br>The Byrd-Warner bill has been described as "a de facto pull-out decision by the United States" by the former Nato supreme commander General Wesley Clark, and is viewed with alarm in most European capitals. <br><br>Domestic political opposition to the bill has mainly come from Democrats, who are in a minority in the Senate, and from Republican Senator John McCain, who warned this week that the bill would "send the message to Nato that the United States is an unreliable ally". <br><br>Until yesterday, momentum had seemed to be growing for the bill, with most Republicans assuming that the plan had the support of Mr Bush, the Texas governor. But the Republican Senate leadership was taken by surprise by Mr Bush's statement this week that the bill interferes with the constitutional powers of the presidency. <br><br>"The Clinton-Gore administration has failed to instill trust in Congress and the American people when it comes to our military and deployment of troops overseas, but the governor does not believe this provision is the way to resolve the lack of presidential leadership," the statement said. "Governor Bush views it as a legislative overreach on powers of the presidency." <br><br>Senior members of the Clinton administration kept up the pressure against the bill yesterday. The plan to withdraw US troops was "playing with fire", the secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, said. "We are more than bookkeepers and spectators. We are leaders." <br><br>Meanwhile, the defence secretary, William Cohen, said that President Clinton might have to veto the bill, even though that would jeopardise $8.6bn (£5.76bn) worth of new defence spending projects contained in separate sections of the bill. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Bush and Clinton unite to block Kosovo pullout ``x958644042,54500,``x``x
``x<br><br>By ERIC SCHMITT<br> <br><br>ASHINGTON, May 18 -- In a victory for the Clinton administration, the Senate today narrowly rejected a measure to set a deadline for withdrawing American ground troops from Kosovo. Gov. George W. Bush of Texas had also criticized the measure, but even so 40 Republicans voted for it. <br><br>By a vote of 53 to 47, senators stripped a provision from a military construction spending bill that would have cut off funds for the 5,600 United States troops in Kosovo by July 1, 2001, forcing their withdrawal unless Congress authorized an extension. <br><br>In the last few days, several of President Clinton's cabinet officers waged an all-out campaign to defeat the measure, phoning wavering senators and sending military commanders to Congress to warn of the dangers to American troops and Washington's commitment to the NATO operation if the measure passed. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said he would recommend that Mr. Clinton veto the legislation if it passed. <br><br>The outcome was close enough, and important enough for the administration, that Vice President Al Gore presided over the roll-call, prepared to cast a tie-breaking vote if needed. "To have been forced to withdraw in this manner would have demoralized our allies and emboldened those in the region who favor violence as a solution to their disputes," Mr. Gore said in a statement. <br><br>Fifteen of the 55 Republicans voted for a Democratic amendment to strike the withdrawal language from the $8.6 billion military construction spending bill. At least two or three Republicans, including Thad Cochran of Mississippi, said they were swayed by the opposition by Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. <br><br><br>"I'm glad Bush said what he said because it showed this was not aimed at this president in particular," Mr. Cochran said in an interview. <br><br>Earlier this week, Mr. Bush criticized the provision, calling it a "legislative overreach" that would tie his hands if he became president. Today, a spokesman for Mr. Bush, Scott McClellan, said, "The Senate made the right decision." <br><br>The legislation revealed the restiveness in Congress over America's open-ended commitment in Kosovo and Bosnia, which so far has cost $20 billion. It also stoked the smoldering debate over competing prerogatives: Congress's constitutional power of the purse and the president's authority to send American forces to far-flung hot spots. <br><br>In several hours of heated debate today and on Wednesday, both sides accused the other of jeopardizing the safety of United States troops, America's commitment to its European allies and the long-term security of the Balkans. <br><br>"The intent of the amendment is to restore congressional oversight over the Kosovo mission," said Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the provision's chief Democratic sponsor. "Of course, the administration doesn't like it. They want a free hand to participate in military adventurism whenever and wherever they please. They don't want to hear a peep out of Congress." <br><br>But critics said imposing an arbitrary deadline for withdrawal would send a dangerous signal of uncertain American resolve to President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, and undermine the unity and morale of NATO's peacekeeping operation, which involves forces from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and other nations, in and out of Europe. They have been in Kosovo since NATO bombed Yugoslavia early last year to protect Albanians in the province. <br><br><br>A deadline "would precipitate a year of dangerous uncertainty and wavering commitment to our allies," said Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, a leading foe of the provision and sponsor of the amendment to kill it. <br><br>The 15 Republicans joined 38 Democrats in supporting Mr. Levin's decisive amendment, while 40 Republicans and 7 Democrats opposed it. <br><br>Mr. Levin's measure also eliminated a second contentious provision to withhold 25 percent of the military's funds in Kosovo this year, unless Mr. Clinton certified by July 15 that the European allies were meeting their commitments for reconstruction aid, police officers and food and medicines in Kosovo. <br><br>Without the presidential certification, the measure required that money could be spent in Kosovo only for an orderly withdrawal of American forces. <br><br>The defeated provision's chief Republican author, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, remained undaunted after today's vote. <br><br>He vowed to offer the provision on the European share of Kosovo aid as an amendment to the Pentagon's budget bill for fiscal year 2001 when that legislation reaches the Senate floor in the coming weeks. <br><br>On Wednesday, the House approved, by a vote of 264 to 153, an amendment on the European aid share similar to the Senate's. <br><br>But the House version gives the next president until April 1, 2001, nearly nine months longer than the Senate, to certify that the European allies are meeting their commitments. <br><br>The House version actually sets even higher standards than the Senate provision. Under the House measure, for instance, the allies would be responsible for 50 percent of reconstruction aid; the Senate version required at least 33 percent. The House version would require allies to pick up 90 percent of the new civilian police in Kosovo; the Senate version required at least 75 percent. <br><br>The allies are now providing 63 percent of the police and are close to providing 75 percent of basic human aid, the White House said. The United States has pledged 15 percent of the total financial support to Kosovo. <br><br><br>The director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Jacob J. Lew, said today that while the allies had made significant progress in increasing the proportion of their pledges, he could not guarantee that they would meet the targets by July 15. <br><br><br>Moreover, he said, the allies used different bookkeeping practices, which "could prevent certification of numeric burden-sharing shares." <br><br>"The rigid, mechanical burden-sharing tests contained in the amendment undermine the peacekeeping effort," Mr. Lew said in a letter to the Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota. "The commitment of American forces abroad should not rest on mechanical formulas and record-keeping technicalities." <br><br>It was unclear tonight whether Mr. Clinton's advisers would recommend that he veto any legislation containing just the burden-sharing requirements, and not the more onerous language about withdrawing troops. <br><br><br>But it seemed almost certain that the fight over American military involvement in the Balkans would not end with today's vote. <br><br>"We have no long-term plan for Kosovo," complained Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, who supported the deadline for withdrawing American forces. "We don't know how long we're going or how much it's going to cost. Commitments are not being fulfilled by the Europeans, and that's unacceptable." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Senators Reject a Deadline for Kosovo G.I.'s``x958728315,79335,``x``x
``x<br>FRAGILE OPERATION<br><br><br>Anti-American attacks are on the rise, as Congress votes this week to limit mission.<br><br>Richard Mertens <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor<br><br>VRBOVAC, YUGOSLAVIA <br> <br> <br>To the six US soldiers suddenly confronted on a narrow road in southern Kosovo, the crowd seemed to form in an instant. Angry Serbs roared up in cars and came running across the fields, a half dozen troublemakers quickly swelling to a mob of 75.<br><br>"People just came out of the woodwork," says Staff Sgt. Mark Williams, whose squad had responded to an explosion at a Serb house in Vrbovac. Then the unruly crowd began to hurl softball-sized rocks. "I tried to talk with them," says Sergeant Williams, of Clarksville, Tenn. "I said, 'I'm trying to help you guys.' But they wouldn't listen."<br><br>Hostile crowds are an occupational hazard of peacekeeping, but US troops in Kosovo have faced them with increasing regularity in the past two weeks, including the incident in Vrbovac on May 10.<br><br>"I think everyone anticipated that tensions would rise in the spring and summer," says Lt. Col. Lloyd Miles, commander of the area that includes Vrbovac, where American soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division are based. "You've got everyone out, the days are longer, and they've got nothing to do."<br><br>The unrest comes as pressure mounts in Washington to place limits on US participation in the NATO-led peacekeeping mission.<br><br>On Wednesday, the House of Representatives approved an amendment to a defense spending bill, that would cut off funding for the the 5,900 American troops in Kosovo, unless the president certifies by April 1, 2001 that NATO allies have fully funded police, humanitarian aid, and reconstruction programs in the Serbian province. The Senate was due to vote on a similar measure yesterday.<br><br>The Clinton administration fiercely opposes the congressional effort, and the presumed Republican nominee for president, George W. Bush, has also come out against it.<br><br>NATO Secretary-General George Robertson warned that an American pullout could cause severe harm. "The NATO presence in Kosovo needs to be decided on the merits of our being there - the job that we are doing and that we need to finish," he said in Brussels yesterday. <br><br>'A dangerous mission'<br><br>The recent violence has underscored not only the fragility of the peace in Kosovo, eleven months after NATO-led peacekeepers moved in to end the Yugoslav Army's terrorization and mass expulsion of majority ethnic Albanians. It also highlights the risks that American soldiers face as they struggle to keep order in an unpredictable and often volatile situation. Avoiding American casualties has been a major concern for US forces here, aware of an apparent zero-tolerance policy at home.<br><br>"It is a dangerous mission," observes Lieutenant Colonel Miles, of Fountain, Colo. "As we saw the other night, soldiers could be injured or killed when things get out of hand. There are extremist elements, and they're clearly working against the goals of the international community." Goals that include the difficult task of restoring a democratic and multiethnic Kosovo, reconciling the bitterly divided Serbian and ethnic Albanian communities.<br><br>Most of the recent trouble has centered around Vitina, a dusty market town with a mixed population. The violence has mainly targeted Serbs: houses blown up, an elderly man shot while fishing, an 8-year-old-girl and her parents wounded by gunfire in their yard. On Saturday night, five mortar shells fell on Vrbovac, one just a quarter mile from an American outpost.<br><br>But Serbs have lashed out at Albanians, too. Two weeks ago, a Serb mob in the village of Klokot, enraged by the killing of the fisherman, yanked ethnic Albanians from passing cars and set fire to the vehicles. More than a dozen Albanians were injured; some might have died, if American soldiers had not come to the rescue.<br><br>In both Klokot and, last week, in Vrbovac, Serb rage also turned on the soldiers. The Serbs say they are frustrated because the Americans are failing to protect them. "People in the village have been closed in for months," says Nenad Kojic, the mayor of Vrbovac. "They don't have freedom of movement, and now they don't have the freedom to sleep freely in their homes. People have been very, very angry."<br> <br> <br>The incident in Vrbovac showed just how angry. Williams says the villagers "seemed to think we wouldn't shoot them.<br><br>"To me, I didn't want to have to shoot someone if I could get all my people out safely. But the thought came across our minds," he adds.<br><br>"It seems there's a day and night attitude," adds Lt. Lou Bauer, of Windsor, Kentucky, whose platoon camps out at the Serbian Orthodox church in Vrbovac. "We've learned some Serbian words, like Dobar dan ("Hello")....They'll smile and wave. At night, when the bombs go off, they're quite hostile."<br><br>In February, Serbs in the ethnically divided northern town of Mitrovica - where French troops have faced hostile crowds for months - pelted US soldiers with rocks and snowballs during a multinational operation to search for weapons.<br><br>Afterward, American officials forbade US troops from returning to Mitrovica. But the recent trouble around Vitina, which seemed to start with the bombing of a Serb Orthodox church on April 29, has brought the largest spate of attacks directed against American soldiers.<br><br><br>Orders from Belgrade?<br><br>Even though the unrest has surprised no one, its causes are not altogether clear to military commanders and other Western officials. Some of it, they say, springs from longstanding grievances between Serbs and ethnic Albanians. It also comes at a time when Serbs who fled their homes last year, with the arrival of NATO forces, are talking about coming back.<br><br>"I'm sure whatever organization is behind it, is to discourage Serbs from returning, and to push the [remaining Serbs] out," Miles says. But officials also wonder about the hidden hand of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Local Serbs have refused to cooperate with the West and are thought to maintain close ties to the Belgrade government. Groping for explanations, officials speculate that some of the violence, including the bombing of empty Serb houses, may be part of an effort to discredit the NATO-led peacekeeping effort, or KFOR.<br><br>"I really don't know if all these explosions are made by Albanians," says Kurt Kraus, chief of the United Nations police in Vitina. "Maybe some ... are being made by Serbs, just for political reasons, so they can say, 'See, KFOR can't protect us.' " Local ethnic Albanians favor this explanation, and since no one has been caught, officials can't rule it out.<br><br>The recent unrest also has raised questions about American tactics in Kosovo. Vrbovac mayor Mr. Kojic says the Americans could protect his village better if they put more troops on the outskirts and fewer in the center.<br><br>In the meantime, Miles has warned his troops "not to get sucked in to the hate." The Army has reinforced its units in and around Vitina. It has increased the number of patrols and checkpoints. It has imposed a curfew over the whole area. But the Americans say they cannot, in the words of one captain, "put a soldier on every street corner." And although the beginning of this week was calm, no one really expects the violence to end soon.<br><br>"So many small things can set it off," Miles says. "It can also be quiet for a few weeks. There's no way to tell."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor: Angrier crowds facing US troops in Kosovo``x958728343,98109,``x``x
``x<br> <br> BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ B2-92, an independent radio station shut down by authorities as part of their sweeping crackdown against media not under central government control, has been a thorn in President Slobodan Milosevic's side since it went on the air under another name 11 years ago. <br>Then known as B-92 _ B as in Belgrade and 92 for the frequency used _ the station was first shut down in March 1991, during major anti-government clashes. A policeman and an opposition activist died in those confrontations, the first test of Milosevic's grip on power. <br><br>B-92 first went on the air May 15, 1989, the brainchild of students and journalists eager to test what they thought would be new freedoms amid weakening communist control in Yugoslavia. <br><br>Its FM frequency first covered only 30 miles around Belgrade. Still, B-92 quickly became the station of choice of those opposed to Milosevic's growing authoritarianism and policies that fed wars in Croatia and Bosnia, contributing to Yugoslavia's breakup. <br><br>In shutting down the broadcaster in 1991, the Justice Ministry said that B-92 had "provoked aggressiveness among the people." The station was allowed to resume operation the next day, after massive popular protest. <br><br>By the mid-1990s, B-92 had outgrown the confines of Belgrade. Using satellite and other modern communication methods, it expanded coverage to reach 60 percent of Serbia's listeners and organized a network of more than 30 local radio and television stations to fight government restrictions on the media. <br><br>In 1993, the station expanded into television, producing documentaries for distribution to regional broadcasters throughout the country. The Internet was harnessed in 1994 to provide news in Serbian and English on a Web site and vie free e-mail subscription. <br><br>By 1996, B-92 also was involved in publishing, television, CD and video production, running an Internet provider and staging forums on freedom of the media, as well as more traditional journalism seminars. <br><br>The government accused B-92 of receiving funds from foreigners and other "enemies of the state." <br><br>Mass demonstrations in 1996 over election fraud led to a new shutdown. Again, authorities backed down after strong international and domestic protest that saw tens of thousands of people massing in front of B-92's offices. Officials said the pause in broadcasting was caused by a malfunctioning transmitter. <br><br>Shrugging off continued criticism by the authorities, B-92 retained its critical voice, taking Milosevic and his associates to task for their disregard of democratic rules. Recognizing its courage, MTV gave B-92 its "Free Your Mind" award in 1998, and the International Committee to Protect Journalists declared it the best radio in the world in 1993. <br><br>The next clampdown was not long in coming. Days after the beginning of NATO airstrikes to force Milosevic to seek peace in Kosovo, authorities took over B-92's studios and offices on April 2, 1999, fired its staff and began broadcasting pro-government programs under the station's name and frequency. <br><br>It took months, but the broadcaster managed to get back on the air by August under a different name, B2-92, and frequency, using the signal of Belgrade's Studio B radio and television station, run by the anti-Milosevic political opposition. <br><br>On Wednesday, police in woolen masks took over Studio B television and radio B2-92 at the stations' headquarters in downtown Belgrade, as part of a sweeping crackdown on media that authorities claim are undermining the state. <br><br>Shortly after the takeover, B2-92 began broadcasts via satellite and the Internet from a secret location. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAP: Serbia's popular independent broadcaster struggles against all odds``x958728378,91960,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>19 May 2000 <br><br>Violent clashes between police and civilians in the streets of Belgrade last night left at least six badly injured. Police used rubber batons and tear gas against crowds protesting at President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on independent media. <br><br>Hundreds of police in riot gear closed in around nearly 10,000 people who had massed around the opposition-run city hall to hear staff from the banned TV station Studio B stage a public reading of the evening news from the balcony. Police vans and armoured vehicles charged the crowd several times. The protesters responded by throwing firebombs and stones. Some could be heard shouting "Kill yourself, Slobodan, and save Serbia." <br><br>Witnesses said police threw some protesters to the ground and beat them with truncheons. Sirens could be heard all over the centre of the city as the police pursued groups of demonstrators into side streets. Many took refuge inside the city hall, but those who could not get past the police were beaten. <br><br>The opposition leader Zoran Djindjic, one of those taking refuge in the city hall, said: "It is obvious that the regime's fuse is extremely short, and the use of disproportional force shows that Milosevic's fascist-communist coalition is in panic." <br><br>The trouble flared as anger spread at President Milosevic's decision to close down independent media, including the opposition-controlled Studio B station, which has maintained persistent criticism of theregime, and a number of small independent newspapers. <br><br>Violent protests were also reported from the southern Serb city of Nis last night as municipal authorities met to discuss the crackdown. As deputies from the ruling Socialist Party left a council meeting they were attacked and beaten with sticks. Earlier yesterday more than 10,000 protesters had gathered in Novi Sad, in the north of the country. <br><br>Opposition parties have used the independent media to criticise rising poverty in Yugoslavia and the country's isolation. The clampdown began after the murder last weekend of a prominent ruling party official, which was blamed on a student opposition group. <br><br>The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe condemned the media closures, while the Russian government expressed "serious concern" over the media crackdown. But the Serbian Deputy Prime Minister, Vojislav Seselj, said: "The state has waited too long to face the evil, and there is no more waiting. We won't allow American agents to come to power." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Clashes as 10,000 protest in Belgrade ``x958728401,16732,``x``x
``xBy PAUL WATSON, Times Staff Writer<br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia--Forced off the air by the state's seizure of their studios, Belgrade's independent broadcasters were reduced Thursday to reading the nightly news from a balcony of City Hall. <br>The news anchors had to pause each time they read out Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's name Thursday night, however, as a crowd of about 10,000 demonstrators below demanded the president's head. <br>"Slobodan, save Serbia!" the protesters chanted. "Kill yourself!" <br>Serbian riot police fired tear gas and beat protesters for the second night in a row after some in the crowd set fire to garbage bins and threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers who blocked a march through the city. <br>At least 12 people were treated for minor injuries after the skirmishes, which lasted more than an hour. <br>After months of anti-Milosevic protests, brief clashes with riot police have become more of a violent ritual than a sign of the long-awaited uprising that protesters repeatedly called for Thursday night. <br>The balcony news readings included a statement issued by Serbia's Interior Ministry police, which said four officers had been injured, two of them seriously, in the first night of recent unrest Wednesday. At least 60 injured protesters had gone to emergency rooms for treatment, the news reader also told the jeering crowd. <br>Opposition leaders told the crowd that they would hold daily demonstrations until Milosevic gives in to their demand for early elections, but they have made that rallying cry before, only to call off protests as interest lagged. <br>The latest confrontation with Milosevic--sparked by the Serbian government's seizure of Yugoslavia's main independent television and radio stations in the dead of night this week--has failed to draw crowds even half as large as several previous protests. <br>A leading critic of Milosevic, Serbian Renewal Movement chief Vuk Draskovic, was absent from Thursday's rally--even though the opposition-led Belgrade city government controlled Studio B television before it was seized. <br>Draskovic's main rival in the anti-Milosevic movement, Democratic Party chief Zoran Djindjic, attended but didn't speak. Instead, four minor opposition figures addressed the crowd. <br>Milosevic's increasing repression is "confirmation that we are in a state of emergency," said Vukasin Petrovic, a 24-year-old leader of the democracy movement called Otpor, or Resistance. <br>He accused Hadzi Dragan Antic, one of Milosevic's closest family friends and editor in chief of the state-run Politika publishing house, of "leading the war against" Otpor as head of a secret "crisis headquarters." <br>International condemnation of the Serbian government's seizure of independent broadcasters Studio B and Radio B2-92, including sharp words from the U.S. and European Union, fell on deaf ears in Milosevic's regime. <br>The government moved to silence the last independent broadcaster outside Belgrade that has a signal strong enough to reach the city--which is the capital of Yugoslavia and its dominant republic, Serbia--by jamming Radio Pancevo's transmission from a nearby suburb. <br>Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Seselj, who co-signed the decree authorizing Studio B's seizure, told a news conference Thursday that he hopes more independent broadcasters and print publications will be closed down. <br>Journalists at the popular independent daily newspaper Blic were allowed to return Thursday to their newsroom in the same office tower as Studio B. Seselj singled the paper out as one of the publications he would like to have closed. <br>Seselj, a former paramilitary commander who once pointed a handgun at a photographer in the lobby of parliament, repeated his charge that the independent media incite terrorism and are agents of the West, which went to war against Yugoslavia last year to force Milosevic's troops out of Serbia's Kosovo province. <br>"We will not allow American agents to come to power through terrorism and enraged street violence," Seselj told reporters.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Los Angeles: Belgrade's Closed-Down Broadcasters Go Low-Tech ``x958810610,68767,``x``x
``x<br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br> <br>BELGRADE, Serbia, May 19 -- The leaders of Serbia's political opposition finally emerged from their private meetings and spoke to their supporters tonight, telling a rally of fewer than 5,000 people that they would fly to Moscow next week and ask Russia to help moderate the policies of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic. <br>It seemed to some an odd gesture from the opposition, just three days after Mr. Milosevic's government seized the main opposition television station, Belgrade's Studio B, and silenced independent broadcasting in the capital, including radio B2-92. <br><br>Vuk Draskovic, leader of the main opposition party, the Socialist Renewal Movement, returned from Montenegro to appeal for calm, saying that "no television station or government authority is worth a single life." <br><br>Zoran Djindjic, leader of the Democratic Party, announced a large rally to be held in Belgrade a week from Saturday. "We will see who is bigger," he said. "We'll see if they send cordons of police against a million people." <br><br>But he made no mention of the plans he says he favors for widespread civil disobedience to protest government's moves against the independent media, and it seemed highly unlikely that a million people -- more than five times the size of Belgrade's biggest rally in the last two years -- would turn out here. <br><br>There were scattered clashes with the police the first two nights of these rallies, with up to 150 injured nationwide, including at least 4 police officers, and 40 people detained. But tonight, both sides seemed listless, and there was no confrontation. <br><br>Mr. Draskovic, appealing for peaceful resistance, said that he, Zoran Djindjic of the Democratic Party and Vojislav Kostunica, leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia, would go to Moscow, a traditional Serbian ally, late next week and hoped to see President Vladimir V. Putin. <br><br>Mr. Putin's government has promised Mr. Milosevic energy aid and loans, and recently was host to Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic and Defense Minister Dragoljub Ojdanic, who has been indicted on charges of war crimes in Kosovo. But Mr. Putin's government has also been host to Mr. Draskovic and high-ranking Serbian Orthodox leaders opposed to Mr. Milosevic in the past. <br><br>In an interview later, Mr. Draskovic said that Russia was the only country that could influence Mr. Milosevic and to which the opposition could appeal without being accused of toadying to NATO, which bombed Yugoslavia last year. <br><br>"After NATO's aggression against Serbia, the majority of Serbs are very, very disappointed by the fact that NATO, including our traditional allies, bombed our country without even a formal decision of Security Council of the United Nations," Mr. Draskovic said. "Our people don't accept so frankly initiatives from the Western countries who bombed us, and secondly, Russia opposes sanctions against our state and nation." <br><br>Mr. Draskovic hastened to say that he was not an enemy of the United States or Europe, but he urged them to stop suggesting new sanctions against Serbia in response to the seizure of Studio B, the station his party controlled until three days ago. "Serbia is now like a gulag," he said. "We need to break down the outer wall of the prison built by our American and European friends. After that, democracy will come more easily to Serbia." <br><br>The party of Mr. Milosevic's wife, the Yugoslav United Left, part of the ruling coalition, said today that it was preparing a new law against terrorism that is widely expected to be used against the opposition, including the student movement Otpor, or Resistance. <br><br>The new law is said to be largely based on the British law against terrorism used in Northern Ireland that allows detention without trial. Predrag Simic, a Draskovic adviser, said sardonically tonight, "We can now say that the regime is taking something from the West."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Serb Opposition Leaders Going to Moscow to Ask Putin's Help ``x958810649,72563,``x``x
``x<br> <br>BRUSSELS, May 21 (Reuters) - European Union foreign ministers meet on Monday to discuss issues expected to range from Balkans aid to EU enlargement and troublespots round the world. <br>The 15 ministers will also be briefed at monthly talks in Brussels on an EU trade deal with Beijing which removes the last big barrier to China joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO). <br><br>External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten will explain to the ministers a seven-year, 5.5 billion euro ($4.90 billion) funding plan for the Balkans and outline proposals to accelerate the delivery of overall EU aid. <br><br>"Things have become bogged down in member states' scrutiny of strategy and projects and procedures. Patten wants faster and lighter procedures," an EU diplomat said. <br><br>Yugoslavia remains a priority for the EU following street protests in Belgrade after a new crackdown on independent Serbian media by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>The Union underlined this by meeting Serbian journalists in Brussels last week, and the ministers are expected to review ways to support the independent media. <br><br>They are also due to underline their efforts to encourage democracy in Montenegro by accepting plans to provide it with 20 million euros, taking financing of the Balkan republic by the EU's executive Commission past 100 million euros since 1998. <br><br>The ministers are also expected to agree a common position on enlargement before the EU's next talks on Thursday and Friday with 12 countries trying to join the wealthy Union. <br><br>Some of the 12 are concerned the talks are going too slowly and EU diplomats doubt the first of them will meet their target date of 2003. Some diplomats are also concerned about the slow pace of talks on reforming the EU's institutions to ensure decision-making is not frozen when new members join. <br><br>Last week's deal with China marked success in another set of negotiations where progress had been slow. EU Trade Commisisoner Pascal Lamy will brief the ministers on the agreement and they are widely expected to back it. <br><br>The deal will cut tariffs on more than 150 leading European export items and open sectors of China's potentially vast market of nearly 1.3 billion people to foreign companies. <br><br>The ministers are also expected to discuss disputes with non-EU countries over the trade in bananas, a source of friction with the United States. <br><br>They will also review ties with Moscow before an EU-Russia summit on May 29, and discuss tensions in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and the Great Lakes region of central Africa. It was not clear whether they would discuss the situation in Fiji, where the prime minister has been taken hostage. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReuters: EU foreign ministers to mull Balkans, enlargement``x958982771,25585,``x``x
``x<br> <br>BELGRADE, May 21 (Reuters) - Yugoslavia has asked the European Union to lift sanctions against it, saying they are worsening the country's economic and humanitarian situation and destabilising the region, Belgrade media said on Sunday. <br>"Yugoslavia demands that the EU immediately abolish all sanctions imposed on it so far," pro-government daily Politika quoted a Memorandum of the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry as saying. <br><br>"The sanctions are unfounded, are worsening the economic and humanitarian situation in Yugoslavia, contributing to the instability of the region which cannot be in the interest of the EU or Europe as a whole," the memorandum said. <br><br>It was handed over to EU representatives in Belgrade who were summoned to the Foreign Ministry. <br><br>"EU sanctions against Yugoslavia and the policy of constant pressures on economic, political, media and other levels is part of continued efforts to destabilise Yugoslavia," the memorandum said. <br><br>The European Union last April tightened financial sanctions against Yugoslavia to increase pressure on President Slobodan Milosevic, who is viewed as the main obstacle to democracy. <br><br>The EU has pledged to keep selective sanctions hitting the Milosevic's regime as long as he stays in power but has promised to maintain support to the democratic opposition. <br><br>Independent economists and opposition leaders have also criticised the sanctions saying they hit ordinary people much harder than the government. <br><br>The memorandum said the exemption of Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, from EU sanctions was a "direct attack on Yugoslavia's constitutional order and the unity of the people and leadership of the country." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReuters: Yugoslavia asks EU to lift sanctions``x958982790,67458,``x``x
``x<br> <br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ A few thousand Belgraders gathered Sunday to protest the government's clampdown on nongovernment media, while police arrested more opposition activists throughout the country. <br>At least three activists of the pro-democracy student group Otpor, or Resistance, were detained, in addition to dozens arrested in previous days. <br><br>In Smederevo, 20 miles southeast of Belgrade, activist Marko Markovic was charged with "violating public law and order" after police arrested him for walking in the street wearing a T-shirt with the group's emblem, a clenched fist, the independent Beta news agency reported. <br><br>In Belgrade, about 3,000 opposition supporters gathered to listen to journalists from the banned Studio B television, whose reporters, after being kicked out of their premises by police on Wednesday, have begun reading their news from an open-air, make-shift studio in downtown Belgrade. <br><br>The latest crackdown against government opponents follows the recent assassination of a close aide to President Slobodan Milosevic. The government accused Otpor and a top opposition party of being behind the killing. <br><br>Otpor and the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement have denied the charges, but the regime ignored their pleas, closing down the opposition-controlled, Belgrade-based Studio B television as well as the popular B2-92 radio station. <br><br>The move triggered protests in Belgrade, which quickly erupted into violence, leaving more than 150 people injured and landing a few dozen in jail. <br><br>A top official from Milosevic's ruling Socialists, Uros Suvakovic, reiterated on Sunday the regime's pledge to "fight against terrorism" and opposition parties accused of working in the interests of NATO and other perceived Milosevic foes in the West. <br><br>"We must not be soft," Suvakovic declared. <br><br>The Socialists and their neo-communist allies, the United Left, which is led by Milosevic's wife Mirjana Markovic, have said they will introduce legislation in the coming days aimed at giving the regime even broader authority in suppressing opponents. <br><br>The opposition, which maintains contacts with west European countries and the United States, is now trying to secure some support from Moscow, which has traditionally been inclined to back Milosevic. <br><br>Yugoslavia on Sunday demanded that the European Union lift sanctions against it, expressing particular anger at the EU's selective approach to punish the Serb republic while sparing pro-western Montenegro, both of which are part of Yugoslavia. <br><br>The official Tanjug news agency on Sunday carried a message the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry sent to Brussels, protesting the ban on trade, financial and most other links between EU member countries and Yugoslavia, imposed for Milosevic's belligerent policies. <br><br>"This is continuing pressure aimed to destabilize Yugoslavia," which has "also inflicted great losses to Yugoslavia's neighbors," the statement said. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAP: Serbs demand free media amid continuing police arrests``x958982812,82183,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, May 20 <br>A student movement demanding sweeping political change is surging in popularity and is now a significant target for attack by the government of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>The movement, called Otpor, or Resistance, has given fresh energy, insouciance and an arrogant innocence to Mr. Milosevic's political opposition. Otpor has not been shy about criticizing opposition leaders for their lack of unity and credibility. <br><br>Loosely organized and without a clear leadership structure that could be subject to arrest, Otpor is intended to be difficult to repress. But it shows few signs of becoming a serious revolutionary organization. <br><br>Still, government officials are attacking the group as "fascist hooligans" and "terrorists." The officials are giving strong signals that Otpor will be a prime target of -- or at least the pretext for -- a sweeping new law on terrorism that could be introduced as early as Monday. <br><br>The law, said to be largely based on the emergency measures in force here during NATO's bombing war last year, could provide for detention without charges or limitations, restricting the rights of the accused. <br><br>At the moment, people can be detained for questioning for 72 hours without being charged, a measure the police have been using liberally against young Otpor activists all over Serbia. <br><br>During the war, the police could detain people on national security grounds for up to 60 days without trial, and the police were given the right to search people or property without warrants. The law under consideration would also authorize the police to confiscate all firearms, registered or not. <br><br>If passed in such a form, the law would create an informal state of emergency. It could be used against opposition politicians and also against independent journalists, whom the government accuses of working for NATO and the "enemies of the state." <br><br>Otpor spokesmen say more than 200 of their members have been detained in the last week throughout Serbia. They are often arrested at home in the early hours, questioned by the police for up to a day or more, threatened and sometimes beaten. <br><br>On Saturday another 34 Otpor people and eight opposition politicians were detained, questioned and later released. <br><br>"The regime senses the danger, that we don't care a lot about anything else other than taking them down," said Milan Samardzic, 23, a law student with Otpor. "We're not in it for power or money, unlike many of the opposition politicians. We just want change. The idea of resistance itself is very powerful." <br><br>Vukasin Petrovic, 23, a political science student and one of Otpor's steadily changing spokesmen, says that about 25,000 people have signed up to become members, and that the organization may be able to call on as many as 50,000 people. <br><br>More ask to join every day, Mr. Petrovic says, "and we're getting a little overwhelmed. Things are moving at a very quick pace." <br><br>Otpor started as a student response to a restrictive law on universities in October 1998. While many regard it as a movement of arrogant rich youths from nice families, its surge in popularity is a direct result of disappointment with this generation of political leaders, who have failed during the last decade to bring down Mr. Milosevic. <br><br>Otpor activists say they want to inspire the population and "guide" the political opposition, as a kind of monitor, to keep them unified. <br><br>"The opposition leaders have shown that they are very vain, and that their petty interests are more important to them than our larger interests as a country," Mr. Samardzic said. "We say we've seen through the regime and we're disappointed in the opposition. The opposition leaders don't seem to have a solution, and people don't trust them. But we do deserve the people's trust, at least so far." <br><br>During the last large opposition rally in Belgrade, on April 14, an Otpor member was on stage with leaders of political parties and said, "Our task is to secure your victory." He then warned them in vulgar terms: "Gentlemen, this time there will be no betrayal, because whoever betrays now is scum." <br><br>At a later rally, on May 15, many leaders including the Democratic Party head, Zoran Djindjic, wore Otpor T-shirts, bearing a fist, though in Mr. Djindjic's case he wore a stylish black sport jacket over it. It was also a gesture of solidarity with two young Otpor activists and a lawyer who had been beaten badly in Mr. Milosevic's hometown, Pozarevac, by bodyguards working for his son, Marko. <br><br>The case was important because two local judges and a prosecutor resigned, apparently over pressure from the government to bring charges of attempted murder against the young men, who asserted that they had not begun the fight. One judge who released them quit after they were rearrested. <br><br>The government has tried its best to impugn the organization. When Bosko Perosevic, a senior official of Mr. Milosevic's party, was slain in Novi Sad on May 13, the government announced that the 50-year-old killer was an Otpor activist and a supporter of the opposition figure Vuk Draskovic's party, suggesting that both were in the pay of Western intelligence agencies. <br><br>Both charges were denied, but the police said they had found Otpor leaflets in the killer's apartment. <br><br>"We're kind of like a marketing agency," Mr. Petrovic said, "promoting one idea, the idea of resistance as a habit of mind, a way of standing up in dignity. To me, dignity is very similar to resistance." <br><br>Otpor tries to provoke and mock the authorities with sometimes daily happenings and with slogans like "Bite the system." In the last three months, Mr. Samardzic said, Otpor has put up 400,000 posters and handed out two million leaflets and badges throughout Serbia. <br><br>Otpor insists that this is paid for solely with donated materials, labor and money from Serbs abroad. But the organization is also getting money and advice from the West through programs to "promote democratization" in Serbia. <br><br>After the seizure of the main opposition television station Studio B last week, Mr. Samardzic said he was appalled by the confused reactions of the opposition, especially Mr. Draskovic, the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, who remained in Serbia's sister republic, Montenegro, for two days before returning to Belgrade. <br><br>"The silence of the opposition has not just been strange, it's been a disaster," Mr. Samardzic said. "People assume Vuk is afraid. Well, so are we all. But he's not selling popcorn" -- he is a political leader. <br><br>Otpor is proposing a program of civil disobedience, of the kind Gandhi used against the British in India. When he is reminded that the Serbian authorities are not British and behave by different rules, Mr. Samardzic only shrugs. <br><br>Milan Milosevic, an analyst for the independent weekly Vreme, who is no relation to the president, said: "Otpor is important because they are a litmus test for popular feeling against the authorities. It is true that they are a judgment on the opposition, but no one sees them as a political alternative. They show no leadership or management. People make the Otpor fist to show the political leaders that they're not serious enough." <br><br>One opposition leader, Zarko Korac, a psychologist and university professor who heads the Social Democratic Union, says teachers are accustomed to being criticized by students. <br><br>Otpor matters, he says. "They have the energy and the innocence of youth, and they are uncompromising and unyielding," he said, noting that the government of President Suharto in Indonesia had been toppled by student demonstrations. <br><br>"These students feel they have no future, no employment," Mr. Korac said. "They can't travel and work. So they are fighting for their own future, which is also the future of the country." <br><br>Otpor's symbol, the fist, "is a clear, clean message," he said. <br><br>So clean that one of Serbia's most influential writers and briefly Yugoslavia's president, Dobrica Cosic, walked into an Otpor office this month and filled out a membership form. Mr. Cosic, a nationalist picked by Mr. Milosevic and then discarded by him, is blamed by some for helping to create the myth of Serbian sacrifices in Kosovo. A drawing by a noted cartoonist, Corax, showed Mr. Cosic scrubbing himself clean in a bathtub using the skeletal fist of Otpor. <br><br>Still, with signs pointing toward an attempted crackdown and even a ban on Otpor, the organization will need whatever help it can get. <br><br>Mr. Korac says such a crackdown on Serbia's children, like the seizure of Studio B, has cumulative consequences with the public. "It's like insults in a marriage," he said. "It adds up. It may not show right away on the streets, but it's building. People are very angry." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Student Movement Emerges as Popular Foe of Milosevic``x958982907,24072,``x``x
``x<br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br> <br> <br>ELGRADE, Serbia, May 19 -- The leaders of Serbia's political opposition finally emerged from their private meetings and spoke to their supporters tonight, telling a rally of fewer than 5,000 people that they would fly to Moscow next week and ask Russia to help moderate the policies of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic. <br>It seemed to some an odd gesture from the opposition, just three days after Mr. Milosevic's government seized the main opposition television station, Belgrade's Studio B, and silenced independent broadcasting in the capital, including radio B2-92. <br><br>Vuk Draskovic, leader of the main opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement, returned from Montenegro to appeal for calm, saying that "no television station or government authority is worth a single life." <br><br>Zoran Djindjic, leader of the Democratic Party, announced a large rally to be held in Belgrade a week from Saturday. "We will see who is bigger," he said. "We'll see if they send cordons of police against a million people." <br><br>But he made no mention of the plans he says he favors for widespread civil disobedience to protest government's moves against the independent media, and it seemed highly unlikely that a million people -- more than five times the size of Belgrade's biggest rally in the last two years -- would turn out here. <br><br>There were scattered clashes with the police the first two nights of these rallies, with up to 150 injured nationwide, including at least 4 police officers, and 40 people detained. But tonight, both sides seemed listless, and there was no confrontation. <br><br>Mr. Draskovic, appealing for peaceful resistance, said that he, Zoran Djindjic of the Democratic Party and Vojislav Kostunica, leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia, would go to Moscow, a traditional Serbian ally, late next week and hoped to see President Vladimir V. Putin. <br><br>Mr. Putin's government has promised Mr. Milosevic energy aid and loans, and recently was host to Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic and Defense Minister Dragoljub Ojdanic, who has been indicted on charges of war crimes in Kosovo. But Mr. Putin's government has also been host to Mr. Draskovic and high-ranking Serbian Orthodox leaders opposed to Mr. Milosevic in the past. <br><br>In an interview later, Mr. Draskovic said that Russia was the only country that could influence Mr. Milosevic and to which the opposition could appeal without being accused of toadying to NATO, which bombed Yugoslavia last year. <br><br>"After NATO's aggression against Serbia, the majority of Serbs are very, very disappointed by the fact that NATO, including our traditional allies, bombed our country without even a formal decision of Security Council of the United Nations," Mr. Draskovic said. "Our people don't accept so frankly initiatives from the Western countries who bombed us, and secondly, Russia opposes sanctions against our state and nation." <br><br>Mr. Draskovic hastened to say that he was not an enemy of the United States or Europe, but he urged them to stop suggesting new sanctions against Serbia in response to the seizure of Studio B, the station his party controlled until three days ago. "Serbia is now like a gulag," he said. "We need to break down the outer wall of the prison built by our American and European friends. After that, democracy will come more easily to Serbia." <br><br>The party of Mr. Milosevic's wife, the Yugoslav United Left, part of the ruling coalition, said today that it was preparing a new law against terrorism that is widely expected to be used against the opposition, including the student movement Otpor, or Resistance. <br><br>The new law is said to be largely based on the British law against terrorism used in Northern Ireland that allows detention without trial. Predrag Simic, a Draskovic adviser, said sardonically tonight, "We can now say that the regime is taking something from the West." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Serb Opposition Leaders Going to Moscow to Ask Putin's Help ``x958982928,40459,``x``x
``xThe Independent : Serb court jails Albanians 'held at random' <br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br><br>23 May 2000 <br><br>A Serbian judge wound up the country's biggest mass trial yesterday, convicting 143 ethnic Albanians on terrorism charges allegedly committed during the 11-week Nato air campaign against Yugoslavia. He sentenced them to a total of 1,632 years in jail. <br><br>Judge Goran Petronijevic gave 49 members of the so-called "Djakovica Group" 13 years each, 51 got 12 years, 20 got 10 years, 11 got nine years and 10 got seven years. Two juveniles were sentenced to seven years each in juvenile detention. All the accused denied the charges, saying they were arrested at random. They were rounded up in Djakovica in western Kosovo where hundreds of ethnic Albanians were ordered out of their homes by the Yugoslav Army (VJ) and police during April and May 1999. <br><br>The trial, denounced by human rights campaigners as a travesty of justice, was in Nis, 150 miles south of Belgrade, where several Kosovo courts moved after the Serb admin-istration withdrew from the province in June 1999. The civil rights group the Humanitarian Law Centre (HLC) described the trial as "an unprecedented event since the end of WWII", adding: "Never has such a large group been put on trial and charged unselectively with the same criminal offence." <br><br>Teki Boksi, one of the defence lawyers, said: "The sentences have nothing to do with what really happened. This was a political trial. These people were sentenced only because they were ethnic Albanians." <br><br>Mr Boksi said no evidence was presented to back the accusation that the accused formed units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The prosecution said they attacked Serb forces three times in April and May 1999, killing one policeman and two soldiers. <br><br>Judge Petronijevic said it was impossible to determine the individual guilt (of the defendants) and that "it was not necessary". Tests had established beyond reasonable doubt that those sentenced had used weapons, he said. <br><br>Mr Boksi said: "Most of the defendants are educated, urban people, one of them professor of mathematics at Pristina University. This trial is damaging and counterproductive, because its outcome will influence trials of Serbs in Kosovo. Tensions in Kosovo will not be eased by this." Dozens of Serbs are in Kosovo prisons, awaiting trial on war crimes charges. <br><br>"We expect the international community to put pressure on judiciary institutions in Serbia so the problem of this trial could be solved in a proper manner," Mr Boksi added. "Otherwise, its outcome can only help extremists on both sides."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Serb court jails Albanians 'held at random' ``x959066362,59789,``x``x
``xThe Christian Science Monitor : Wiring up the powerless<br>Susan Moeller<br><br>CAMBRIDGE, MASS. <br><br>The concept of "digital democracy" champions the Internet as a means by which all people can be given a voice. Taken literally, the creation of a digital democracy would institutionalize the fundamental human right of free expression.<br><br>In doing so, it would help establish participatory democracy and equitable global development.<br><br>Faith in the exponential expansion of technology and the West's economic interest in a stable world may make the notion of a digital democracy conceivable, but the idea's timeliness comes from two coincident political realities.<br><br>First, the end of the cold war and the increase in internal ethnic conflicts have given rise to a questioning of the value of the nation-state frame. Politicians, academics, and journalists have begun thinking about the world in terms that cross boundaries - terms such as globalization and human rights.<br><br>Second, the emergence of human rights as a critical component of Western foreign policy - even if it is often only a rhetorical one - has meant that there has been some shift in focus from the sovereignty of nations to the rights of individuals. Giving voice to the voiceless is not a frivolous understanding of the term human rights. As James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, has said: "Freedom of the press is not a luxury. It is not an extra."<br><br>For eight months last year, teams from the World Bank interviewed 20,000 poor people in 23 countries. According to Mr. Wolfensohn, those interviewed said what differentiated them from the rich was not just money. The poor most despaired of their lack of voice: "The inability to convey to people in authority what it is that they think. The inability to have a searchlight put on conditions of inequality."<br><br>Potentially, a digital democracy could give the currently disenfranchised a say in their own and the world community. But it is nowhere near to making good on that promise. According to Nua, an Internet consulting company, almost half the world's online users live in the US and Canada (136 million) and more people go on the Internet in Sweden (3.5 million) than in Africa (2.5 million).<br><br>Even in India, home to the largest middle class of any nation, only one-half of 1 percent of households have Internet access. The wired, like those software engineers President Clinton visited on his trip to India's Cyber Towers - South Asia's Silicon Valley - are citizens of the globe they're astride. The unwired are often isolated from their government services enjoyed by better-conncected citizens.<br><br>In virtually every nation, there are two new segments of society: the wired and the unwired, the information rich and the information poor. Simple and affordable access to phone lines are major impediments in a world where 2 billion people, according to Intel, have never made a phone call. On the other side of that equation, the Gartner Group and the Yankee Group both estimate that by 2003 there will be more than 1 billion mobile-phone users. Today, according to Intel, there are only 9 million Internet users in China, but there are 70 million cellphones there. These statistics give some credence to the belief, shared by Intel and others such as Chris Gent, chief executive officer of the European communications giant Vodafone, that most people's first interaction with the Internet will not be through a PC box, but with cheaper, hand-held mobile devices.<br><br>Yet global disparities are not solely linked to the availability and cost of telephone services, hardware, software, and Internet service providers. Another restriction on digital democracy is the lack of an incentive for potential users. What most of the people on the planet really need from the Internet is content - in the traditional sense of news and information - in a language they understand. It's one community in sub-Saharan Africa able to learn from the experience of other small communities elsewhere about how to allocate and administer scarce water resources. It's Belgrade's independent radio station B-92, denied access to the air during the war in Kosovo, able to tell its story and to find an even larger audience on the Web.<br><br>In this respect, the most valuable roles for the Internet in the global community are to serve as a free press for those who don't have one, and as a tool for multilateral communications for those who lack an essential telecommunications infrastructure. If a muzzled press or the absence of a free press is an abuse of human rights, expanding the reach of the Internet and the community of Internet users is human rights work. Building a digital democracy can be both a human rights goal and a business investment plan. Privileged countries can work to expand those opportunities for the voiceless and the powerless. This spring, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave $50 million to Save the Children to support a global campaign to save the estimated 5.4 million newborns who die every year. In addition to launching and expanding health programs, the money will also fund a global information campaign to both increase local understanding of the causes of infant deaths and raise awareness of the social, as well as the political and economic costs of those deaths.<br><br>The wired among us can pressure the e-world and now the mobile world to decide that helping to connect the powerless is not only an ethical assumption of global responsibility, but is also, ultimately, a pocketbook issue.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : Wiring up the powerless``x959066405,71233,``x``x
``xThe New York Times : U.N. Aide in Kosovo Faults NATO on Unexploded Bombs<br><br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>PRISTINA, Kosovo, May 22 -- One boy was killed and two other children were seriously wounded by a cluster bomb on Sunday, and a United Nations official said today that NATO had delayed the marking and removal of its unexploded bombs. <br><br>Since refugees returned to Kosovo in June, more than 100 people have died in mine and bomb accidents, and hundreds have been wounded. An estimated 40 percent have been the victims of cluster bombs. <br><br>One cluster bomb releases up to 200 bomblets that scatter over a wide area and should explode on impact. But explosives experts have found that there is a high failure rate, as high as 20 percent in some areas, and the bombs lie on the surface or often dig into the earth. Children and farmers often find the bright-colored, shuttlecock-shaped bombs. <br><br>NATO did not provide detailed information on the airstrikes that dropped 1,392 cluster bombs on Kosovo until two weeks ago, nearly a year after the conflict ended, said John Flanagan, program manager of the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center. It coordinates civilian organizations clearing mines and unexploded ordinance across Kosovo. <br><br>"It was definitely frustrating," Mr. Flanagan said. "Ten months after the conflict finished, we are just getting to grips with the information, and it shouldn't be like that." <br><br>Teams that search for unexploded mines have been able to mark only 60 to 70 percent of the cluster bomb sites so far. That much could have been accomplished earlier if the teams had the information on the airstrikes, he said. <br><br>The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo has also failed to meet its commitments to survey and mark the bombed areas, he said. "It became clear that we did not have all the information, and the marking was not done," Mr. Flanagan said. "Sometimes the first we knew of a strike area was when there was a casualty." <br><br>Another sore topic has been whether depleted-uranium munitions were used in the air campaign in Kosovo. NATO finally admitted in February that such munitions were used. Last week the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, wrote to the NATO secretary general, George Robertson, asking for detailed maps showing where those strikes were made in Kosovo. <br><br><br>Mr. Annan asked for precise areas of the strikes and for assistance to undertake "systematic radiation measurements and sampling." He also asked for help in preventing damage from the munitions. <br><br>While there is some debate about the danger of depleted-uranium debris, there is no doubt about the danger of cluster bombs, which has shocked both peacekeeping soldiers and civilians working to render the mines harmless. "Cluster bombs almost always cause multiple casualties, and it is nearly always young people who get injured," Mr. Flanagan said. "We did not anticipate the number of them used and their attractiveness to kids." <br><br>Refugees in the camps were not warned of the dangers of cluster bombs, he added, and even soldiers under the NATO command were not always well-informed. In the 10 1/2 months before April this year, there were 478 casualties in Kosovo from mines or bombs, and 100 of them were fatalities, Mr. Flanagan said. With the arrival of spring, the casualty figure has climbed again, to 15 casualties in April. Four teams are concentrating on clearing cluster bombs and hope to clear the 333 known sites of bomblets this year. <br><br>But the bomblets from a single bomb can scatter over a large area. When he applied directly to the United States military, Mr. Flanagan said, he finally received vital details like the direction of attack of the plane and wind conditions. <br><br><br>He blames the structure of NATO and of the peacekeeping force as much as anything for the delay and lack of help. Under their mandate, peacekeepers have restricted themselves to clearance they judged essential to their mission, and they have left the mine clearance to civilian teams financed by the United Nations. <br><br>"A lot of work was done, and then there was a line drawn in the sand," Mr. Flanagan said, alluding to the fact that many military explosives experts were pulled out, even while cluster bomb sites remained unmapped and uncleared. "They could have made a significant dent in the situation."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : U.N. Aide in Kosovo Faults NATO on Unexploded Bombs``x959066440,75798,``x``x
``xThe Independent : Serb court jails Albanians 'held at random' <br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br><br>23 May 2000 <br><br>A Serbian judge wound up the country's biggest mass trial yesterday, convicting 143 ethnic Albanians on terrorism charges allegedly committed during the 11-week Nato air campaign against Yugoslavia. He sentenced them to a total of 1,632 years in jail. <br><br>Judge Goran Petronijevic gave 49 members of the so-called "Djakovica Group" 13 years each, 51 got 12 years, 20 got 10 years, 11 got nine years and 10 got seven years. Two juveniles were sentenced to seven years each in juvenile detention. All the accused denied the charges, saying they were arrested at random. They were rounded up in Djakovica in western Kosovo where hundreds of ethnic Albanians were ordered out of their homes by the Yugoslav Army (VJ) and police during April and May 1999. <br><br>The trial, denounced by human rights campaigners as a travesty of justice, was in Nis, 150 miles south of Belgrade, where several Kosovo courts moved after the Serb admin-istration withdrew from the province in June 1999. The civil rights group the Humanitarian Law Centre (HLC) described the trial as "an unprecedented event since the end of WWII", adding: "Never has such a large group been put on trial and charged unselectively with the same criminal offence." <br><br>Teki Boksi, one of the defence lawyers, said: "The sentences have nothing to do with what really happened. This was a political trial. These people were sentenced only because they were ethnic Albanians." <br><br>Mr Boksi said no evidence was presented to back the accusation that the accused formed units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The prosecution said they attacked Serb forces three times in April and May 1999, killing one policeman and two soldiers. <br><br>Judge Petronijevic said it was impossible to determine the individual guilt (of the defendants) and that "it was not necessary". Tests had established beyond reasonable doubt that those sentenced had used weapons, he said. <br><br>Mr Boksi said: "Most of the defendants are educated, urban people, one of them professor of mathematics at Pristina University. This trial is damaging and counterproductive, because its outcome will influence trials of Serbs in Kosovo. Tensions in Kosovo will not be eased by this." Dozens of Serbs are in Kosovo prisons, awaiting trial on war crimes charges. <br><br>"We expect the international community to put pressure on judiciary institutions in Serbia so the problem of this trial could be solved in a proper manner," Mr Boksi added. "Otherwise, its outcome can only help extremists on both sides."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Serb court jails Albanians 'held at random' ``x959152442,21166,``x``x
``xBelgrade Seeks Foreign Policy Initiative<br>By Philippa Fletcher<br><br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslavia's isolated government sought to seize the diplomatic initiative from its opponents Tuesday, saying relations with Russia and China were thriving and ties to the West could be restored.<br><br>The Foreign Ministry also said the government would press ahead with measures designed to stop what it called attempts to stir unease in Serbia, where political tensions have increased sharply over the past week.<br><br>Opponents of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic said Tuesday that they had received an official invitation to visit Moscow on May 29. They want support from Belgrade's traditional ally in their struggle against the government, which has shut opposition media and made dozens of arrests in recent days.<br><br><br>Assistant Foreign Minister Nebojsa Vujovic declined comment on the proposed visit, which follows a Moscow trip by opposition Serb leaders from Kosovo and signs that Belgrade's other fellow-Orthodox ally, Greece, is also courting the opposition.<br><br>``This is a private matter and we are not using our diplomatic channels for private matters,'' he told a briefing. There was no immediate word from Moscow on the visit.<br><br>Vujovic said the government's good relations with Moscow had been proven by a recent visit there by Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic and Defense Minister Dragoljub Ojdanic.<br><br>He hailed Russia's decision, confirmed Tuesday, to boycott the meeting of a council in charge of observing the 1995 Dayton peace accord that ended fighting in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Russia refused to participate because Yugoslavia was not invited.<br><br>Vujovic also said Li Peng, the head of China's National People's Congress, would soon visit Belgrade, but did not say when.<br><br>HELP FROM MOSCOW?<br><br>The West has cut almost all official links with Belgrade since last year's conflict over Kosovo, during which a United Nations tribunal indicted Milosevic and four aides for alleged war crimes committed in the province by Serb forces.<br><br>Moscow played a key role in persuading Milosevic to allow international peacekeepers into Kosovo and thereby end almost three months of NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.<br><br>Opposition leaders hope Russia will now help them to oust the Serb strongman.<br><br>``It looks as if besides the fight for democracy in the squares, streets and in the free press, a quiet and invisible but just as fierce fight is being waged on the diplomatic field,'' Predrag Simic, adviser to opposition leader Vuk Draskovic, told Reuters.<br><br>In Moscow, Milosevic's brother Borislav, Belgrade's envoy to the Russian capital, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying he did not see anything serious or unnatural in Russia maintaining contacts with Serb opposition leaders.<br><br>Moscow would never support calls for the overthrow of the Yugoslav authorities, Interfax quoted the envoy as saying.<br><br>Belgrade has accused Western governments of using the Serbian opposition to foment tensions within Serbia, which dominates what remains of Yugoslavia, to oust Milosevic.<br><br>Vujovic said that the government was preparing to stop what it calls ``terrorist activities'' and the opposition calls legitimate dissent.<br><br>``There is an action going on initiated within the government structure to introduce legislation which would stop and prevent terrorist activities,'' Vujovic said, without elaborating.<br><br>Vujovic said that Yugoslavia was against Western governments, not people, and relations could improve if they dropped sanctions, compensated for the bombing and stopped interfering. Without that, he said, there could be no peace.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBelgrade Seeks Foreign Policy Initiative``x959152469,1470,``x``x
``x <br>FLORENCE, Italy (Reuters) - One year ago NATO was beginning its third month of bombing to force Serbian security forces out of Kosovo and, as its leaders later admitted, was starting to feel desperate about the outcome. <br>Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ultimately gave way without forcing NATO to mount a land invasion. <br><br>But he remains in power, posing a direct and immediate threat to NATO credibility and the stability of the southwestern Balkans. <br><br>This corner of Europe represents NATO's greatest investment, and Milosevic its biggest risk factor. <br><br>Alliance foreign ministers who meet for regular talks on Wednesday in Florence are expected to issue a fresh warning to the Serbian president to stop oppressing those rising numbers of his own people who want a change to democracy. <br><br>But there is no obvious threat, such as bombing, to back that demand up. <br><br>And having been indicted for war crimes and kicked out of the leaders' club in which he used to negotiate such issues, Milosevic has nothing to lose. <br><br>"Ministers will likely lay down some markers for the Serb dictator," said a NATO envoy ahead of the Florence conference, a twice-yearly gathering. <br><br>But what NATO could or would do to prevent Milosevic from systematically silencing his political opponents is unclear. <br><br> <br><br>PRESSURE POINTS <br><br>With over 60,000 troops deployed in Kosovo and Bosnia, the 19-member alliance has bound itself to a policy of limiting the reach and suffocating the regime of Milosevic through sanctions. <br><br>Some NATO leaders call his ham-fisted closure of independent media a sign of panic in a crumbling power structure. <br><br>But privately, alliance officials and diplomats fear he still has many dangerous cards to play. <br><br>In what it calls a policy of deliberate vagueness, NATO has warned Belgrade it would "not remain indifferent" to any bid, military or otherwise, to oust the pro-Western government of Montenegro, Serbia's little sister republic in Yugoslavia. <br><br>What that means is not clear. But it does not have the unmistakable edge of the military intervention threats that NATO issued over Kosovo in early 1999. <br><br>Some observers believe NATO allies were unnerved by how close they came to an all-out ground war in Yugoslavia last year and have no appetite -- and no consensus of 19 -- to wade ashore for a fight in mountainous, ethnically divided Montenegro. <br><br>A move by Milosevic to disrupt the June municipal elections in the Adriatic republic, however, could trigger a scenario that puts NATO to the supreme test. <br><br>But even short of such a major showdown, which some analysts argue he can ill afford, Milosevic can inflict pain at points in and around Kosovo in hopes of wearing down Western resolve. <br><br>Others say the past 10 years teaches that there is no predicting what Milosevic thinks he can or cannot afford. <br><br> <br><br>AIR OF ABSTRACTION <br><br>So while NATO tries to go about its business of post-Cold War modernization and adaptation to new threats and new European aspirations, it must have one eye looking over its shoulder for a new threat from Belgrade. <br><br>Against such a menacing background, with alliance prestige as well as flesh-and-blood troops on the line each day, some topics on the agenda in Florence have an air of abstraction. <br><br>Ministers will discuss the European Union's planned rapid reaction corps and how it is to mesh with NATO, and the United States' proposed national missile defense and how it might be achieved without derailing key arms-control treaties. <br><br>Both are projects only lately off the drawing board, postulating abstract crises and threats as yet unknown. <br><br>But they at least appear amenable to logic and negotiation, while with Yugoslavia those routes seem closed. <br><br>Even formal reconciliation between NATO and Russia, through the presence of Foreign Minister Ivan Ivanov in the Fortezza da Basso conference hall, comes under Yugoslavia's cloud. <br><br>The West's satisfaction at his acceptance was negated by its anger at Russia's provocative reception of Yugoslav Defense Minister Dragoljub Ojdanic in Moscow this month. <br><br>A senior alliance diplomat said NATO partners "remain outraged" at Russia's decision to host an indicted international war criminal with full honurs, and failure to arrest him. <br><br>NATO efforts to determine exactly where "new hope" Russian President Vladimir Putin stands on Milosevic are continuing, NATO sources said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic casts shadow over NATO business``x959152493,29839,``x``x
``xBy Anne Swardson<br>Wednesday, May 24,<br><br><br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia –– On most soft spring nights, as leisure-seeking Montenegrins stroll about their dingy capital, a lanky figure in a suede jacket and blue jeans can be spotted around midnight at a secluded sidewalk cafe. <br><br>Watched over by three discreet bodyguards, President Milo Djukanovic is barely noticed by most passersby as he and his wife, Lidija, sip soft drinks and chat with friends. Relaxed and calm, he does not look like a man who has pulled his republic back from the brink. But he has.<br><br>A year ago, as NATO bombs rained on Yugoslavia, this part of the country seemed ready to explode. The campaign was directed primarily at Serbia, Montenegro's larger partner in the Yugoslav federation, and hardened the divide between the Western-looking Djukanovic and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. But NATO also targeted Montenegro, and many citizens here were furious with the West. European and U.S. officials feared that Milosevic would try to inflame the discord in Montenegro and topple Djukanovic.<br><br>Today, however, Djukanovic's hold on power appears stronger than ever, and his plans to turn his republic toward the West are moving forward swiftly, experts here and abroad say. In the past few months, Montenegro has adopted the German mark as its currency, an act of economic audacity that infuriated Milosevic. In retaliation, Milosevic imposed a blockade between Serbia and Montenegro, but Djukanovic has overcome many of its effects, in part through a generous and largely unconditional infusion of Western aid.<br><br>With Djukanovic more secure, the United States and its allies are beginning to point to Montenegro as a Balkan beacon, a model of how to develop a market economy that will spark political change elsewhere in the region. If Montenegro can prosper under Western sunshine--and with Western funds, including $55 million from the United States this year--perhaps its more recalcitrant neighbors will see the light, the thinking goes.<br><br>"We support the democratic and market-oriented reforms of the Djukanovic regime as a model and stimulus for similar reforms throughout the former Yugoslavia," said Ambassador James Dobbins, senior U.S. policy adviser on the Balkans.<br><br>In an interview recently, Djukanovic said what more and more people around here believe: In all probability, he can outlast Milosevic, and will be around to secure Montenegro's future when the Yugoslav leader is gone.<br><br>"Time works for us; it is on our side," he said. "We are aware that over the long term, we are sure winners in the war against Milosevic."<br><br>In the short term, however, a serious Serbian threat looms. About one-third of Montenegro's 680,000 people favor retaining an alliance with Serbia--that is, they support Milosevic and the Yugoslav federation, opinion surveys show. Others want complete independence just as firmly, and find Djukanovic too conciliatory, which could be costly for him in local elections in two major cities next month.<br><br>In addition, Milosevic has as many as 20,000 soldiers posted inside Montenegro and on its borders, including paramilitary forces believed to be far better trained and equipped than Montenegro's rapidly growing police force of some 15,000.<br><br>All of which leaves Montenegro's future in question. The Yugoslav government never answered a Montenegrin proposal last August to restructure the constitutional relationship between the two republics. Djukanovic had promised to hold a referendum on independence if the proposal was not answered in six weeks, but now, nine months later, he says there is no hurry.<br><br>Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Djukanovic is reshaping Montenegro to conform to the West's image. It is a world of contradictions, a place where government officials talk of joining the European Union while corruption and black-market activity run rampant. The streets are filled with BMWs and other expensive cars, while the average monthly wage is about $75. Foreign investors dream of hotels filled with tourists on the spectacular rocky Adriatic coastline, yet the little business privatization that has occurred so far has been limited mostly to those with government connections.<br><br>Montenegro has, however, made progress against some of its traditional ills. More than 20 alleged Italian organized crime figures have been extradited from Montenegro to Italy to face charges related to cigarette smuggling. The former foreign minister, Branko Perovic, is facing smuggling-related charges as well; he resigned last year and says he will go on trial in Italy to prove his innocence.<br><br>And the impact of the Serbian border blockade may not be as severe as first thought. Montenegro has ensured adequate supplies of essential items by importing meat from Slovenia, milk from Croatia and bottled water from Bulgaria, among other items. Goods also continue to flow from Serbia: On two recent days, the border checks were largely a formality and even loaded trucks were permitted to pass in both directions after being examined.<br><br>Many small merchants who have traditionally crossed the border to peddle their wares still do so, just more carefully. Goran Rakonjac, for instance, now uses horse-drawn farm carts and travels back roads to haul the soft white cheese produced at his family farm in Serbia to market in Bijelo Polje, 15 miles away in Montenegro. He used to simply throw the cheese in his car and drive it over; now, the process is more time-consuming and less convenient, but he can still make money.<br><br>"It's the two sides that are struggling for power, and it's the population that suffers," Rakonjac said as he sipped a beer at a border watering hole after a successful day at market.<br><br>Djukanovic says additional Western aid is needed to prevent the blockade from doing more damage. Western aid also helps counter the effects of Montenegro's impossibly tangled government budget and economic system. In addition to the $55 million that the United States will give to Montenegro this year, it also will provide government guarantees for private investors. The European Union plans to give about $36 million in similar direct financial support and is expected to approve $45 million for a new bridge and highway in Podgorica, the capital.<br><br>What worries experts here, however, is that the largely unconditional Western aid will give Djukanovic little incentive to unravel Montenegro's tradition of cronyism. The arriving funds from Western nations pay not just for bridges and tunnels, but for pensions and other benefits--allowing Djukanovic to continue to pass the largess to the well-connected, some say.<br><br>"Montenegro does not have a lot of time to waste as far as reforms are concerned, and reforms can only be imposed with the help of the international community," said Slavko Drljevic, general manager of a commercial bank and a former finance minister. "They should publicly request conditions and the government should publicly answer."<br><br>Djukanovic said privatization here "is transparent and consistent with Western rules. . . . From the first day, we have had British and European consultants." As for Western financial aid, he said, "Every cent of the assistance we have received has been spent for the purposes for which it was intended."<br><br>According to U.S. officials, Djukanovic is making progress in reshaping his tradition-bound republic, but technical advisers are watching the situation and offering advice, and more conditions will probably be laid down as the amount of aid to Montenegro rises. Experts say, however, that Montenegro's key strategic position induces the West to be perhaps a tad less picky about Djukanovic and his policies than if circumstances were otherwise.<br><br>As Nicholas Whyte of the Center for European Policy Studies, a Brussels-based research organization, put it: "Obviously a lot of bad habits have been learned over the last 50 years and some officials in the government have done well through unorthodox means. But our perception is that the political will to reform is genuine and strong."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWashington Post : Montenegro Seen As Beacon of Hope``x959152572,72103,``x``x
``x<br> FLORENCE, Italy (AP) _ NATO welcomed Russia back to the table Wednesday after a yearlong estrangement over Yugoslavia, but not without some tough talk on Moscow's relations with Belgrade. <br>The meeting in Florence was Russia's first ministerial-level session with NATO since the alliance's 78-day air war against Yugoslavia a year ago. Moscow staunchly opposed the bombing campaign, but later joined the allies in a peacekeeping effort in Kosovo. <br><br>Moscow has sent mixed signals on Yugoslavia. It opposed Belgrade's sanctions against the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro. But earlier this month it played host to the Yugoslav defense minister, Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic, even though he has been indicted by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague for war crimes in Kosovo. <br><br>The U.N. Security Council resolutions require Russia to arrest war crimes suspects who enter its territory. <br><br>"The United States joins other allies in insisting that such an incident not be repeated," U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Wednesday. <br><br>Ivanov blamed the failure to arrest Ojdanic on "an internal, technical hitch," and said the issue was being addressed. <br><br>At the same time, Albright and others praised Russia for returning to security talks with the alliance. <br><br>"I'm glad the NATO-Russia relationship is getting back on track," said NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson. "Of course we're not going to agree on everything, and some of the talking will be tough. But we are talking." <br><br>Ivanov told reporters that it would take time to repair relations. "It's much easier to destroy than rebuild," he said. "A year ago, mutual trust was undermined." <br><br>The Russian foreign minister sharply criticized the U.N. war crimes tribunal, which he said was too "politicized" and dominated by the United States and Western Europe. <br><br>Differences over a proposed missile shield for America also led to frank exchanges among the 19 NATO foreign ministers. Albright tried to allay European fears about the proposed National Missile Defense, or NMD, saying the shield would not weaken the military alliance between Europe and the United States. <br><br>"There will be no decoupling, no reducing America's enduring commitment to this alliance, its citizens, its territory," she said. <br><br>The Russians and Chinese, however, oppose the U.S. plan. And despite Albright's assurances, the Europeans still worried that the missile shield would upset the balance on global arms control. <br><br>"We are asking Clinton to reflect before his decision on the repercussions of NMD on the entire world system," French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine told reporters. "There could also be consequences on proliferation." <br><br>The Clinton administration has not yet decided whether to go ahead with the program _ which would include setting up a small number of interceptors to knock down incoming missiles from rogue states. There are serious doubts about whether the system would even work. <br><br>Albright, however, offered the allies a gift in perhaps the biggest shift in U.S. arms export policy since the end of the Cold War. The program to streamline and ease export restrictions would make it easier for NATO countries, as well as Japan and Australia, to buy sophisticated U.S. arms, she said. <br><br>It could also boost business for U.S. defense contractors, who now sell NATO countries about $10 billion worth of weapons a year. <br><br>A senior U.S. official said the program was aimed at encouraging a "trans-Atlantic defense industrial base" and closing a technology gap between the United States and Europe that became painfully obvious during the Yugoslav air campaign. <br><br>As the ministers met Wednesday, several peaceful anti-NATO demonstrations took place in Florence, including one that attracted several thousand people. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO scolds Russia for visit by Yugoslav war crimes suspect``x959243953,20983,``x``x
``xSHKODER, Albania, May 23 (Reuters) - Montenegro said on Tuesday that growing cooperation with Albania was not a sign it was seeking to split from Serbia and it would be up to its citizens to decide on independence. <br>Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic, leader of Serbia's uneasy pro-Western partner, told reporters after meeting Albanian Prime Minister llir Meta that the small coastal state wanted to work with neighbouring Albania despite Belgrade's objections. <br><br>Belgrade severed diplomatic ties with Tirana after Albania sided with NATO forces which bombed Serbia to force an end to repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo last year. <br><br>"Our cooperation with Albania is not a sign of a project for an independent Montenegro. Our project envisages the right of the Montenegrin people to decide about their future together with Serbia or independently," Vujanovic said. <br><br>"This could also be to the benefit of a democratic Serbia. But the stance of the present government in Belgrade does not seem relevant to us," Vujanovic said through an interpreter. <br><br>Vujanovic said the political situation in Montenegro, which has adopted the German mark as its currency, was stable and predicted that Montenegrins would back democratic reforms in local polls on June 11 in the capital Podgorica and Herceg-Novi. <br><br>"Our road towards Europe is clear. If Serbia wants to, it can come on board. If not we shall go it alone, but the citizens of Montenegro will decide." <br><br>Vujanovic and Meta agreed to boost cooperation in transport, trade and telecommunications. They re-opened a border crossing in February three years after it was closed when Albania descended into anarchy after investment schemes collapsed. <br><br>Inaugurating a fibre optic link between the Albanian and Montenegrin phone systems, Vujanovic placed the first symbolic call to his office. <br><br>In addition to boosting water, rail and air transport with Montenegro, the two leaders backed joint projects to clean up Shkoder lake which they share. <br><br>Up to 300 Albanians cross daily into Montenegro, some of them bringing back cheaper goods that have helped reduce prices. <br><br>Vujanovic said trade was restricted by the Yugoslav army, which polices Montenegro's frontier. The prime ministers also agreed to step up the fight against trafficking of prostitutes and drugs. <br><br>Vujanovic said Montenegrin ethnic minorities in Albania and Albanian ethnic minorities in Montenegro should help promote cooperation between the two countries.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro increases Albania ties despite Belgrade``x959243976,8080,``x``x
``xBELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslavia lashed out at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague Wednesday, denouncing an invitation to cooperate as "extreme arrogance." <br>"I will not agree under any conditions or at any cost that a single Yugoslav citizen be extradited to the so-called Hague tribunal. We do not recognize it, it is an illegal body," Yugoslav Justice Minister Petar Jojic said Wednesday. <br><br>Jojic was reading a response to a letter from tribunal chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte of April 26 which he said had asked Yugoslavia to help the tribunal and "to hand over certain Yugoslav citizens and others and transfer them to the Hague." <br><br>The United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four other top Yugoslav Serb officials a year ago for alleged war crimes in Kosovo. <br><br>"Indicting top officials in Yugoslavia and Serbia is aimed at breaking up the federal state and its member republic and separating Kosovo from Serbia," Jojic said. <br><br>JOJIC USES STRONG LANGUAGE IN RESPONSE <br><br>Jojic, a member of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party, called Secretary of State Madeleine Albright "the illegitimate mother of this inquisition body" and Del Ponte and her predecessor Louise Arbour "symbols of prostitution." <br><br>"To the whore Del Ponte, self-proclaimed prosecutor of the criminal Hague tribunal," his letter began. <br><br>"You (del Ponte) are participating in the criminal project of the destruction of the Serb people and its national being." <br><br>He said the tribunal had resorted to deceit, organized abduction and force in arresting suspects, citing the arrest of Bosnian Serb General Momir Talic at a conference in Vienna and the recent arrest of another indictee inside Serbia. <br><br>Serbian police have arrested eight local people allegedly involved in the kidnapping of Bosnian Serb Dragan Nikolic "Yankee" in Smederevo, southeast of Belgrade, accusing them of being "mercenaries" and charging them with terrorism. <br><br>Jojic called on the court to prove its impartiality by indicting Western leaders for crimes committed against the Yugoslav population during NATO's March-June bombing campaign, saying more than 2,000 civilians had been killed. <br><br>The Washington-based Human Rights Watch in February said 500 civilians were killed during the air strikes. <br><br>Jojic also criticized the court for not indicting Kosovo Albanian leaders for alleged genocide against Serbs and other Non-Albanians in Kosovo. <br><br>NATO-led forces and United Nations administrators took control of Kosovo last June after Yugoslav security forces pulled out of the province. More than 150,000 Serbs and other minorities have fled Kosovo to Serbia since then in addition to thousands who fled to neighboring Montenegro. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia Lashes Out at War Crimes Tribunal``x959244005,98961,``x``x
``xThe New York Times : Opposition in Disarray as Belgrade Cracks Down<br><br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br>BELGRADE, Serbia, May 25 -- The leaders of the democratic opposition in Serbia are divided about how to respond to the government's seizure of the main opposition television station, undercutting their credibility and damaging the image of unity they are trying to project to voters and the West. <br>There are sharp internal arguments about the dangers of confrontation with Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president. Some leaders favor a more systematic program of civil disobedience, including hunger strikes. Others press for a negotiated settlement with Mr. Milosevic that might bring early elections under fairer conditions. <br><br>The seizure of the television station, Studio B (including Radio B2-92's transmission facility in Belgrade), and the continuing attack on the independent print media have also opened new divisions about the wisdom of taking part in local and federal elections when they are called, probably this autumn. <br><br>The smaller parties grouped in the Alliance for Change generally favor going to elections in any conditions. But the largest opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement of Vuk Draskovic, now says in internal debates that it would be impossible to take part in elections under these conditions, say political leaders who spoke on condition of anonymity. <br><br>In general, these leaders say, Mr. Draskovic -- who had sworn to defend Studio B, which he controlled and which was lavish in its coverage of him and his party -- is opposed to any plan of confrontation that would give Mr. Milosevic a further pretext for a general crackdown. Already, the government says it is drafting a new law on terrorism that could be used to detain individuals for 60 days without charges. It is also drafting a new law banning foreign financing for nongovernmental organizations here, which tend to promote democracy, human rights and civil society. <br><br>The popular student movement, Otpor, or Resistance, is pressing for civil disobedience, including the blocking of roads and a halt to urban services like water, electricity, transport and garbage collection. <br><br>Fearing student unrest, the Government today ordered all universities to end the spring semester on Friday, a week ahead of schedule, and banned student gatherings on campus. In protest, student leaders have called a major rally for Friday. <br><br>Earlier in the week, Zoran Djindjic, leader of the Democratic Party, the largest within the Alliance for Change coalition, issued a call for civil disobedience. <br><br>Mr. Draskovic is allied to the Alliance but is not a member. He is said to be concerned for two reasons. First, that a tired, depressed, poor population will not follow the political opposition's call to arms, and second, that a growing crisis would favor the Serbian deputy prime minister, Vojislav Seselj, the head of the nationalist Radical Party, while Mr. Draskovic apparently believes that a deal, with Russian pressure, may still be possible with Mr. Milosevic's Socialists. <br><br>But some other leaders believe that Mr. Draskovic is simply afraid to lose control over Belgrade and its lucrative concessions, and that he would rather do a deal with Mr. Milosevic, still hoping to succeed him, than confront him and risk arrest. "He's trading Studio B for kiosks," one leader said bitterly. <br><br>Mr. Draskovic, Mr. Djindjic and Vojislav Kostunica of the Democratic Party of Serbia, are scheduled to travel to Moscow on Monday to seek Russian support. They intend to ask the Government of President Vladimir V. Putin to press Mr. Milosevic for the return of Studio B and early, democratic elections on all levels, said a Draskovic adviser. Predrag Simic. <br><br>"Moscow has leverage over both the regime and the opposition and is in a good position to mediate," Mr. Simic said. <br><br>In a meeting on Monday, opposition leaders disagreed even about the wisdom of having the large rally in Belgrade they announced for Saturday. The rally will go ahead, but the opposition leaders say they have no agreed plan of action to announce there. <br><br>"It's the worst of both worlds," one leader said. "Some argued that if we're not willing to fight hard with civil disobedience, using local city councils under our control, then we should just cancel the rally and say so, and then put our resources into preparing for elections. But we're going ahead with the rally with nothing new to say." <br><br>The problem for the opposition is also its strength. There are 16 leaders from a wide variety of parties of varying size. Inevitably, joint decisions are "lowest common denominator," another leader said. <br><br>But given that Mr. Draskovic controls the largest party, with the most votes, any concerted program of civil disobedience or electioneering is less likely to succeed without him, said a leader of the Alliance for Change. <br><br>Alliance leaders, who generally favor a more robust challenge to the regime and participation in elections under almost any circumstances, are considering whether to distance themselves from Mr. Draskovic. That might help them refurbish their credibility with some in the electorate, but it would also weaken the image of unity that voters, who generally dislike the Milosevic government, find attractive. <br><br>A third opposition group, led by former army generals and government officials who have broken with Mr. Milosevic, is trying to distance itself from the squabbling. <br><br>The Clinton administration and the European Union have pressed the opposition to stick together. After last summer's efforts to oust Mr. Milosevic through daily rallies failed -- rallies Mr. Draskovic opposed -- the West came to a consensus that elections were the best way to undermine Mr. Milosevic. <br><br>But the seizure of Studio B and increasing pressure against the independent daily newspapers Blic and Glas Javnosti have made Mr. Draskovic question the idea of taking part in any elections. While such a position could change -- elections haven't been called -- his position is a reversal of 1997, when Mr. Djindjic boycotted Serbian elections against American advice and Mr. Draskovic took part, validating the vote. <br><br>"People have made it clear they don't want civil war," said a Draskovic adviser. "Free and fair elections are the best means to overthrow Milosevic." <br><br>But one Alliance leader said, "This is another gift for Milosevic." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Opposition in Disarray as Belgrade Cracks Down``x959322350,9341,``x``x
``xThe Los Angeles Times : Milosevic Muzzles Yugoslavia's Media; the World Can Help It Speak <br>Balkans: Nations can contribute cash, training and expansion of Web capacities to keep the press independent. <br>By ANNA HUSARSKA<br><br>MOSCOW--While Russian President Vladimir V. Putin offers precious moral and material support to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic--$32 million worth of oil and a $102-million loan--the notoriously disunited Serbian opposition leaders seem to be implying that they have a special channel to Moscow (where the Yugoslav ambassador is no other than Milosevic's brother, Borislav). <br>On Friday, Vuk Draskovic, the leader of one of the main opposition parties--the Serbian Renewal Movement--suggested that he and two other opposition leaders may travel together to Moscow to request "Russia's assistance in curbing terror against Serbia's citizens." The Russian Foreign Ministry is denying any knowledge of an invitation extended to the Serbian opposition. <br>Draskovic is known to have turned his coat so many times that perhaps one should not take his words too seriously. It may be more constructive to concentrate on the "together" aspect of the supposed trip. This is obviously a result of the recent crackdown in Serbia, which so effectively concentrated the minds of the opposition. Indeed, it seems that Milosevic decided to go full steam ahead with eradicating the democratic-minded media. <br>The takeover last week of Studio B television was the boldest move so far, although it was not surprising. In fact, it is rather logical. Milosevic thrives on conflict and, having lost the last three wars in the former Yugoslavia, he went after the Fourth Estate. <br>It is also a clear sign that he is afraid or at least disturbed by free media, which is his way of recognizing their importance. <br>The end result of the crackdowns is that the opposition in Serbia, weak as it may be, is left almost voiceless. This would seem to be the case for the independent television and radio stations--Studio B, Radio B2-92 and Index Radio--raided by police on May 17. Police also padlocked the newsroom of Blic, the most popular independent daily, which was housed in the same building. (Journalists have since been allowed to return.) <br>Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Seselj put it rather bluntly when he expressed his satisfaction that Studio B was taken out of "the hands of a criminal gang," which he claimed "plundered it and provoked terror." He added that "the state has been waiting too long to face this evil. Now there is no more waiting; that evil must be nipped in the bud." <br>Well, the print, audio and electronic media are well past the bud stage. Serbian journalists are vulnerable but not hopeless. After being shut down, the staff of Blic worked on the premises of two other nongovernment dailies and produced the paper for the next day, in a reduced size and with a reduced print run, but there it was. <br>As for Radio B2-92, it probably is going to simply speed up its contingency plans. It is worth recalling that the veteran radio station survived an earlier government takeover (when it was called B-92) in the beginning of the NATO action against Yugoslavia. In this case, B2-92 concentrated on its Web site and satellite transmissions. <br>Repairing the damage done to the coverage by independent-minded television may prove the most difficult. But here the neighboring freer parts of former Yugoslavia can offer a helping hand. Plans were already well-advanced to cover the whole, or almost whole, of Serbia with broadcasts from Republika Srpska, the Serbian part of Bosnia; the satellite program of Montenegro TV has a special news program employing well-known Serbian anchors. <br>Serbs protested the attack on their media by staging street protests. They participate in small and dwindling numbers, but in greater numbers than when their president waged three wars in their name against non-Serbs. <br>Those who protest (and those who think, "Why bother, if nothing will change") need outside support. The international community should spare no effort in helping them with cash and training. This should include backing the nonstate printing facilities, even tiny ones, inside Serbia and outside, expanding the Web and satellite capacities for independent-minded radio and boosting the transmission signal for television broadcasters in Montenegro and Republika Srpska that carry news for Serbian audiences. This aid should be given discreetly, if possible through former East Bloc countries, so as not to put a stigma of collaboration-with-the-enemy on the recipients. The training, too, can be done by the anciens combatants from Czechoslovakia, Hungary or Poland. <br>This would be a new incarnation of the East European common market, and it also would help prevent more violent forms of know-how--such as terrorism--from creeping in as Serbs are plotting how to get rid of Slobodan and gain "sloboda," which is a long-forgotten word meaning freedom. <br><br>Anna Husarska Is the Senior Political Analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, an Independent Watchdog Group``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Los Angeles Times : Milosevic Muzzles Yugoslavia's Media; the World Can Help It Speak ``x959322386,60149,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, May 26 (Reuters) - Yugoslavia's Second Army held military exercises on Friday in Montenegro's Podgorica airport -- the scene of a tense stand-off with the pro-Western republic's police last December. <br>The state news agency Tanjug said the exercises were staged by the army's special anti-terrorist unit and were part of regular army activities, citing Major General Momcilo Radevic, deputy commander of the Second Army which covers Montenegro. <br><br>"These young men are ready to resist all forms of terrorism at any given moment," Radevic said. <br><br>An eyewitness in Podgorica said the airport remained open during the exercises. There were no indications of tension with the republic's police, who staged joint exercises with the army earlier this month to show tensions had eased since December. <br><br>The Belgrade government last week pledged a crackdown on what it calls "terrorism" organised by the West to destabilise the country. Officials have accused the Serbian opposition and Montenegrin government of carrying out Western orders. <br><br>Opposition activists have called on troops to stay neutral in their dispute with the authorities in Belgrade. <br><br>The Yugoslav Army General Staff on Friday joined senior government officials to say they would do whatever was necessary to uncover "terrorist activities" intended to reduce the army's combat readiness or wreck the constitutional order. <br><br>ARMY COMPLAINS OF PRESSURE <br><br>"The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Army are exposed to considerable pressure and open threats, as well as terrorist activities initiated by foreign and domestic enemies," said the army statement quoted by Tanjug. <br><br>Montenegro, the junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, has taken steps to distance itself from Serbia since NATO's 11-week air war on Yugoslavia in 1999, conducted to force Belgrade to end its repressive policies in Kosovo. <br><br>The West and the Montenegrin authorities have accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of stepping up pressure on Montenegro by increasing the military presence there. <br><br>The army has dismissed the claims and Yugoslav officials have said it is Montenegro that is stoking tension by building up its police force. <br><br>During the December stand-off between the Yugoslav army and Montenegrin police, the airport was closed for a day. Tension rose over jurisdiction over the airport, which has military and civilian areas side by side. <br><br>The two sides later agreed to cooperate to reduce tension. <br><br>Radevic said the army would not hold planned exercises in June which would have coincided with sensitive local elections "so that regular military activities are not used for political purposes by political parties." <br><br>The election will test the strength of Montenegro's pro-Milosevic opposition and the pro-Western Montenegrin leadership, which has threatened to hold a referendum on independence if Belgrade does not agree to reforms. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav army holds exercise in Montenegro airport``x959414670,67708,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Serbia's government ordered an early closure of Belgrade University for all classes, allowing students in only for exams, a news agency reported.<br><br>The independent Beta news agency quoted sources at the university as saying the order came from Serbia's Minister for College and University Education, Jevrem Janjic.<br><br>``In a note marked 'urgent' sent to all rectors and deans, Janjic ordered that after May 26 it was no longer allowed to extend classes or hold any supplementary lessons,'' Beta said Thursday.<br><br>It added Janjic informed the deans that any kind of ''assembly or events'' at the schools were banned, and that the deans would be held responsible for any breach in the regulations.<br><br>``Students will be allowed to enter schools only on the day of their exams and will not be able to use libraries,'' said the order, as cited by Beta.<br><br>The move was seen as an attempt to counter students' plans to gather and organize a general university strike.<br><br>A source close to the student-based Otpor (Resistance) movement told Reuters that at a student rally scheduled for Friday in downtown Belgrade Otpor planned to call for a start to the strike.<br><br>``This closure is an attempt to prevent that,'' the source who requested anonymity said.<br><br>The government has branded Otpor a terrorist, fascist and illegal organization that it said was behind the murder of a top Yugoslav official Bosko Perosevic on May 13. Hundreds of Otpor members have been detained, some beaten and jailed.<br><br>The opposition Democratic Party of Serbia described the move as ``draconian,'' adding that it ``destroyed what last crumbs of autonomy our universities used to have,'' Beta reported.<br><br>``Deans have been reduced to petty clerks, whose primary task is to defend the regime, rather than classes, students and science,'' the party said.<br><br>Meanwhile, 15 lecturers in the Drama School started a strike Thursday to protest ``the beatings of students.''<br><br>``We inform you that we won't be able to conduct exams in June or enroll new students until the thugs who beat students leave (the university) and are prosecuted,'' the lecturers said in an open letter carried by Beta.<br><br>In the southern city of Nis, some 2,000 students assembled outside the Medical School and then took a protest march to the central police station, where police stopped them and refused to take a letter explaining the Otpor was not a fascist organization. No incident occurred.<br><br>Over the past few days students, Otpor members at several Belgrade colleges staged separate protests ahead of the big rally Friday. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb Government Orders Early Closure of University``x959414694,4602,``x``x
``x<br>By Jovana Gec<br>Associated Press Writer<br>Friday, May 26, 2000; 8:59 AM <br><br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia –– Thousands of students, outraged by the impotence of opposition leaders, marched Friday in the capital, demanding an end to the "tyranny" of President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br><br>The students voiced frustration over the opposition bickering that has enabled Milosevic to survive politically for the past decade despite Yugoslavia's disintegration and loss of Kosovo province last year.<br><br><br>Marching outside Belgrade's City Hall, which is run by the opposition, the students chanted slogans calling on opposition leaders to come out and explain their strategy.<br><br><br>"Ten years is too much out of a lifetime to be spent in the hell of tyranny," the students said in a manifesto. "We call on all to end this shame."<br><br><br>The students, led by the Otpor, or Resistance, movement, said Friday that over 700 of its activists have been detained for questioning in recent months.<br><br><br>About 4,000 students, chanting "Kill yourself Slobodan and Save Serbia!" outlined their demands at the Belgrade rally.<br><br><br>They included a call to allow a "peaceful transition of power" and a demand for those "responsible for Serbia's demise to leave."<br><br><br>"There must be no silence – silence is complicity," the statement said.<br><br><br>The students urged the opposition "by personal example to give impetus to a wide national rebellion against state terrorism."<br><br><br>The opposition has called a mass rally for Saturday in Belgrade in what will be a major test of strength, but the students were skeptical.<br><br><br>"It's the final moment for the opposition to come to its senses and not waste time," said Branko Ilic, an Otpor leader. "We will come to the rally to see whether the opposition has any plan."<br><br><br>In a rally in the southern Serbian city of Nis, one opposition leader, Goran Svilanovic, criticized his colleagues, saying they failed to respond adequately to the government takeover of Belgrade's Studio B television last week.<br><br><br>"If we do not resist now, they will come into our houses, burn them and chase us away," Svilanovic told about 3,000 people.<br><br><br>Fearing a student uprising, the government has ordered university classes to end by Friday – a week early – and banned all gatherings on campuses across Serbia.<br><br><br>The Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church endorsed the students' demands and called for the release of all detained and an end to government violence, the independent Beta news agency said.<br><br><br>Later Friday, the independent daily Danas was fined about $50,000 in a libel suit filed by Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Seselj, an ultranationalist leader who has called for even tougher measures against free media.<br><br><br>An editor in Danas, Rasa Savic, said the daily was given 24 hours to pay the fine.<br><br><br>Several hundred people attended the ninth consecutive evening protest against last week's government takeover of Belgrade's Studio B television.<br><br><br>At the rally, Studio B journalists read their news in an open-air makeshift studio on the balcony of the Belgrade City Hall.<br><br><br>Two hours later, independent Index radio – the only nongovernment radio station still heard in Belgrade – was overpowered by a stronger signal playing folk music at the time of the station's main evening news.<br><br><br>Meanwhile, the Yugoslav army, which is controlled by Milosevic, urged a crackdown on "external and internal enemies." The latter term is used to describe the opposition.<br><br><br>The Yugoslav Left, a party led by Milosevic's influential wife Mirjana Markovic, accused the opposition of trying to split the country through "terrorism."<br><br><br>Meanwhile, police detained and questioned more than a dozen opposition and Otpor activists in several Serbian cities.<br><br><br>In Milosevic's hometown of Pozarevac, police arrested 11 people, including a priest, as they attempted to visit an opposition activist jailed there since May 2.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post: Yugoslavia Students Protest Milosevic Regime``x959414726,44994,``x``x
``x<br> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton extended U.S. sanctions against Yugoslavia on Thursday, saying it still represented an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to U.S. national security. <br>The sanctions were imposed in April 1999 in response to Yugoslavia's crackdown on the ethnic Muslim minority in Kosovo. The sanctions impose a general ban on all U.S. exports to and imports from Yugoslavia, including Serbia and Montenegro. <br><br>An exception is agricultural products and medicine and medical equipment subject to safeguards to prevent diversion to military or political use by the Yugoslav government. <br><br>"This situation continues to pose a continuing and unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy interests and the economy of the United States," Clinton said in documents sent to Congress notifying them of the extension of the sanctions for another six months. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReuters: Clinton keeps U.S. sanctions on Yugoslavia``x959414754,14593,``x``x
``xMilitary sale to Slovenia flouted Tory foreign policy<br><br>Blaz Zgaga and Antony Barnett <br>Sunday May 28, 2000 <br><br>Britain flouted its own foreign policy by approving the sale of millions of pounds worth of military equipment to a former Yugoslav republic only days before the outbreak of the bloody Balkans war, The Observer has established. <br>Eight days before Slovenia became the first area to break from the unified Yugoslavia in 1991, a British firm delivered communications equipment to the Slovenian forces to help them fight the Serb-led Yugoslav army. <br><br>The revelation that this deal was approved by the Conservative Government will embarrass former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, who was the principal architect of the West's policy of supporting a unified Yugoslavia. He had warned the republics to stay in the federation. <br><br>Until now, Germany has shouldered the blame for the Balkan tragedy by prematurely recognising the breakaway republics of Slovenia and Croatia. Britain's help to Slovenia casts a new light on events. <br><br>Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who sits on the House of Commons International Development Select Committee, said: 'These revelations show once again that the export of military equipment from Britain needs to be much more rigorously scrutinised.' <br><br>After Slovenia declared independence, the Yugoslav army began its military offensive against the 'rebel' republic. The ensuing 10-day war signalled the start of the conflicts that ultimately killed hundreds of thousands. <br><br>Three months after Britain exported military equipment to Slovenia the United Nations imposed an arms embargo on the region. <br><br>The Observer has obtained details of the multi-million-pound contract between the Slovenian Defence Ministry and Racal, the British defence and communications group. A fax dated 29 May, 1991, from one of Racal's military subsidiaries, Racal Tacticom, to the Slovenian Defence Ministry lists four batches of tactical military communication equipment worth £5 million. <br><br>Racal's communications network played a vital role in helping Slovenia beat the Serb-led Yugoslav forces. The equipment arrived on 17 June, eight days before the war of independence began. <br><br>Janez Jansa, then Slovenian Defence Minister, praises Britain for its role in his memoirs. He writes: 'The government of one of the more decent Western states has, on our request, officially approved the export of mili tary radio stations with secure data transmission to Slovenia.' <br><br>One senior source at Racal Defence Electronics confirmed that it had delivered the equipment after it received an export licence from the Department of Trade and Industry. He said the contract was with the 'regional government' of Slovenia, and the export was for 'the purpose of national defence'. <br><br>Misha Glenny, a Balkans expert, said: 'If the British Government was fully aware of this, it would imply that the Government was covertly operating in contradiction of its stated policy and aims. It would also shift some of the responsibility carried by Germany.' <br><br>The former Slovenian Defence Minister's book also claims that the British Embassy in Belgrade learnt that the Yugoslav air force was planning to shoot down a Slovenian aircraft due to carry the equipment to its new owner. According to Jansa, the British tipped off the Slovenians, who decided to send the cargo by road. Government sources in Slovenia confirm that the aircraft that was to have delivered the shipment was a passenger plane owned by Adria Airways, the national airline. The jet was to have flown from Gatwick to the capital Ljubljana, in central Slovenia. <br><br>Suggestions that the British Embassy in Belgrade knew of the military shipment and warned the Slovenians are strongly denied by Sir Peter Hall, who was ambassador in Belgrade. He said: 'These allegations of British Embassy involvement are without foundation... I had no, absolutely no, knowledge of any military equipment being sent from Britain to Slovenia. Indeed, given the great tension in the region at the time I would be surprised that any such equipment would have been sent at all.' <br><br>The Observer contacted Lord Hurd and Peter Lilley, who was then Trade Secretary, with details of the arms shipment. Both declined to respond. A spokesman for the Blair Government refused to comment, saying it needed permission from Racal to give details of any export licence. <br><br>Lord Owen, the EU peace negotiator in Bosnia, said: 'I am surprised that such sales took place, particularly as the British Government, the US and Nato's view was to keep the Federation of Yugoslavia together. But this equipment was not aggressive - it was radios not guns. I think it sails close to the border but does not cross it.' <br><br>Blaz Zgaga works for the Slovenian daily 'Vecer'.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Observer: British deal fuelled Balkan war ``x959596571,62294,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br> <br>MITROVICA, Kosovo, May 27 -- The French commander of this volatile town, Gen. Pierre de Saqui de Sannes, told a visiting United Nations Security Council delegation recently that the place was calm. <br><br>Minutes later, before the visitors had even left town, the first stones were thrown in a weekend of street violence that left six French soldiers and one United Nations police officer injured, several buildings burned and dozens of foreign cars damaged. <br><br>It is the nature of Mitrovica, the last town in Kosovo with a significant presence of Serbs, to explode without warning, and no one knows better than the general. In February, on his second day in the job, the town exploded in the worst night of rioting that the NATO-led forces, known locally as KFOR, has seen since foreign troops arrived in Kosovo in June. <br><br>Three months later, as he prepared to hand over the job to another French general, General de Saqui de Sannes conceded that the situation remained extremely delicate and that there was no guarantee against further violence. <br><br>"I cannot stop another attack occurring in north Mitrovica," he said in an interview. "There are a number of extremists on both sides. It could happen again." <br><br>Foreigners who are working here complain that despite 2,000 troops, including a contingent from the French Foreign Legion, and several hundred international police officers, the forces are still not in control of either the Albanian-dominated southern part of Mitrovica or its northern Serbian enclave. <br><br>"KFOR and the U.N. have been unable to become the ruling power here," said a senior officer who works for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. <br><br>"They have never been the governing authority, except on paper." <br><br>Former members of the now disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army rule the Albanian side, and the Serbs are in charge in the north, the officer said, adding, "There is a climate of complete impunity here that has to be changed." <br><br>Some changes have been instituted since the violence in February and March, with troop reinforcements arriving and the appointment of a retired American general, William Nash, as the new regional administrator. General Nash, who has experience as a peacekeeper in nearby Bosnia, has injected a certain dynamism into decision making. <br><br>After the violence, he had a stream of people attend meetings in his office and reintroduced joint police and military patrols, a recognition of the poor cooperation that has existed. <br><br>From the street, Mitrovica's divisions look uglier than ever. The boundaries between the Serbian northern district and the Albanian areas are now defined by coils of razor wire and sandbagged checkpoints. In the name of security, the troops have reinforced the divisions between the two. <br><br>Some Albanians expelled in February have returned to a designated zone around the Ibar River, the waterway that divides the Serbian and Albanian districts. The Albanians returned under armed protection and now live behind armor and barbed wire. <br><br>The United Nations high commissioner for refugees estimates that 60 percent of the estimated 2,000 who fled in February have not returned. <br><br>Izet Jaha, 72, an Albanian, has French soldiers watching over him from an observation post in the house next door. "While KFOR is up there," Mr. Jaha said, "we can take our socks off while we sleep. If they were not here, none of us would be here." <br><br>The Serbs also feel insecure, distrustful of the peacekeepers and the United Nations, while fearing that a mass influx of Albanians into their district would force them to flee. Dusko Prodanovic, a Serbian bank manager who lives a block from the dividing line, said that the increased security was "just a charade" and that he saw little prospect for peace. <br><br>"I think the Albanians hate us so much that they do not want to live with us," Mr. Prodanovic said. <br><br>"The Americans are just waiting to expel us," said his wife, Bosanka. <br><br>If the Albanians suffered more directly from the violence in February, the Serbs have lost out overall, said a member of the O.S.C.E. office here. "The Serbs have lost a lot in these last three months," she said, adding that if the violence had been planned, it was a mistake. <br><br>"They managed to expel a few hundred Albanians," the member said. "But the reaction of the international community was very strong against them." <br><br>After trying to negotiate with the Serbs to return the Albanians and establish a safety zone, General de Saqui de Sannes did it by force. He also used force to push back from one bridge the Serbian thugs who keep watch on the river to deter Albanians from crossing to the northern side. <br><br>"We showed that we will not accept partition, and the Albanians feel that," the general said. "Now we must show that we will also not accept that Serbs be pushed out." <br><br>General Nash arrived last month with a mission to prevent the partition of the city and the northern Serb-dominated part of Kosovo. His goal has already shifted to returning the Serbs to Kosovo. <br><br>"The issue we now face today is not partition, but the prosperous and safe return of Serbs to their homes." the general said in an interview. <br><br>But violence simmers on. After the outburst on April 29 that followed the Security Council visit, one additional elderly Albanian couple was evicted from an apartment in northern Mitrovica. And the Serbian bridge watchers remain in charge on the main bridge, threatening Albanians and, sometimes, foreigners. <br><br>The international forces have failed to arrest anyone for the killings in the riots in February and the damage on April 29. Police cells are full of petty criminals and drug addicts, but the general conceded that arresting the real troublemakers "could spark a bigger problem." <br><br>The approach has raised questions about the determination of the French troops to enforce order. In the smaller Serbian enclave of Gracanica, by contrast, Swedish troops move in forcefully to arrest troublemakers immediately in commotions. <br><br>A Swedish soldier recently shot one man in the leg to deter an attack, and several men have been expelled for three months, said a Swedish officer. "You have to show them force," the officer said. "Otherwise they don't stop."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Departing French General Sees Few Guarantees in Kosovo``x959671842,7031,``x``x
``xBy Joel Blocker <br><br>Prague, 29 May 2000 (RFE/RL) -- Our selection of subjects touched on by Western press commentary today and over the weekend ranges across the entire continent of Europe -- from Russia in the east through Serbia in the center to Northern Ireland in the west. There are comments both on Russia and, some days before President Bill Clinton's visit to Moscow, on U.S.-Russian relations. Analysts also look at the latest crackdown on the independent press in Serbia by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, and discuss the weekend's agreement by Ulster unionists to resume autonomy in Northern Ireland. <br><br>NEW YORK TIMES: <br><br>In an editorial yesterday, the New York Times found Russian President Vladimir Putin's new tax plan, in the paper's word, "promising." It wrote: "Though Russia's new president has yet to chart a clear course on most domestic fronts, he made clear last week that he intends to move aggressively to mend the economy, ending years of meandering policies. The Putin government," the editorial went on, "asked parliament to replace the country's progressive but largely dysfunctional personal income tax with a simple flat tax." <br><br>Putin, the paper argued, "is right that tax rates are too high. A destructive competition to raise revenue rages among Russia's local, regional and federal authorities. Indeed, local officials often help businesses hide their local tax payments so that local governments can avoid sharing the proceeds with Moscow as the law requires. Russia," the editorial states, "has created the worst of all tax worlds: high rates and little revenue." <br><br>The paper said further: "It will not be easy to make the flat tax and other reforms work. Corruption and bureaucratic incompetence will not disappear overnight. But Putin is starting his economic reform in the right place. If Russia can get its tax system in order and the Kremlin can begin to count on a steady source of income for government programs," the New York Times concluded, "the country can at last begin to deal with some of its chronic problems, including a failing health care system, erratic law enforcement and the poverty of millions of elderly citizens." <br><br>LOS ANGELES TIMES: <br><br>On Sunday,the Los Angeles Times wrote of what it called "missile insecurity," one of the chief contentious issues between Washington and Moscow today. The paper's editorial said: "High on President Clinton's agenda when he meets with President Putin in Moscow next weekend is a proposal to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile, or ABM, Treaty. It would allow the U.S. to deploy a national missile defense -- known often by its acronym NMD -- system designed to protect all 50 states against limited missile attacks."<br><br>The editorial argues that pushing ahead with NMD could mean scrapping the ABM treaty, inviting a new arms race, and souring relations with the U.S.' European allies, who see NMD as destabilizing. The paper then goes on to suggest that, in its words, "NMD could threaten rather than improve national security, especially if it leads China to expand its strategic missile force and develop countermeasures that it could sell to such states as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. These are the very countries," it notes, "whose so far nonexistent intercontinental missiles NMD is supposed to deter."<br><br>"Moscow," the editorial says further "-- which retains thousands of nuclear warheads -- might be convinced that a missile defense system using no more than 250 interceptors wouldn't affect the strategic balance. But China, which has only 20 long-range and now largely obsolescent missiles, could see a security threat." But, it concludes, "what surely should be apparent is that the bigger the U.S. missile defense system, the less inclined Russia will be to downsize its nuclear stockpile. This supposed security enhancement could well leave the U.S. farless secure than it is now." <br><br>WASHINGTON POST: <br><br>In a news analysis for the Washington Post today, correspondent Steven Mufson says that the idea that there are "rogue" states that threaten the U.S. is itself increasingly being questioned by U.S. and European security analysts and officials. He writes: "The existence of such a threat has become an article of faith, widely accepted by the Clinton administration and some of its Republican critics, but questioned by some policy experts here and by many abroad." <br><br>Mufson goes on: "When President Clinton visits Moscow next weekend for his first summit meeting with President Putin, rogue states will be the ghosts at the negotiating table. Fear of their still- theoretical capabilities has made winning Russia's agreement for a limited U.S. missile defense the Clinton administration's top priority in Russia policy, overshadowing the war in Chechnya, economic reform and future NATO expansion." He adds: "Critics of the theory of rogue states say the allegation that these countries are irrational or suicidal is more questionable. Their leaders appear to be very concerned about self-preservation, and the U.S. has successfully employed diplomatic as well as military initiatives to engage or contain them."<br><br>Mufson sums up: "Yet fear of rogue states remains widespread. Many policy-makers warn of letting concern about small rogue states prompt the shredding of major accords, like the ABM Treaty that the administration is trying to persuade Russia to amend. But national missile defense remains an alluring prospect for those worried about preserving America's latitude for action in a crisis, when a small country with nuclear missiles might threaten to use them." <br><br>POLITIKEN: <br><br>Turning to events in Serbia, the Danish daily Politiken says today: "Serbia's free media are being assaulted on a daily basis by President Slobodan Milosevic, whose means of preserving the power are becoming increasingly dictatorial. But," the paper adds, Serbia's "relatively independent media continue doing their best to stand up to the propaganda put out by state-controlled organs." <br><br>"Still," the editorial goes on, "none of the independent media have much faith in the ability of Serbia's organized political opposition to win the increasingly aggravated internal conflict, in which Milosevic's desperate power plays are continually making economic conditions worse." Nor, the paper argues, is there must hope "that any outside help for the independent media is forthcoming."<br><br>"The West," it says, "has supported freedom of speech in Serbia -- but mostly with words and resolutions. True, it has helped set up some TV stations and radio stations and transmitters. Yet none of these have had much effect. To make things work, Serbian voters must be approached in a much more direct fashion by the West." The editorial sums up: "It remains unclear how long Milosevic will be able to stay in power. But the message from Serbia is nonetheless unequivocal: the fight is worth fighting, and it will be fought." <br><br>GUARDIAN: <br><br>Britain's daily Guardian sees additional dangers in Yugoslavia today. The paper says: "The renewed fighting in the Presevo valley, in southern Serbia, between Yugoslav army units and ethnic Albanians is one of several recent reminders that the situation in the Balkans, nearly a year after the 'liberation' of Kosovo, remains volatile." The editorial lists other outstanding problems: <br><br>"The final status of Kosovo, a de facto UN-NATO protectorate but still sovereign Yugoslav territory, is nowhere near being resolved. In Serbia, the indicted war criminal Milosevic has been conducting a crackdown on what his regime describes as 'Western-backed terrorists.' This instability, which extends to Montenegro and is intensifying ahead of scheduled local elections which Milosevic's party is expected to lose, has been exacerbated by a spate of unexplained assassinations of Milosevic associates and the continuing economic dislocation caused by NATO bombing and Western sanctions."<br><br>The paper then hones in on Serbia: "The potentially explosive situation," it writes, "and its worrying implications for overall, European-led efforts to bring lasting political and economic stability to the Balkans, will be on the agenda in Moscow today when Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, and Antonio Guterres, the Portuguese prime minister whose country holds the EU presidency, are due to meet President Putin. Russia remains," it says, "deeply ambivalent about methods employed by the West to force democratic change in Serbia." <br><br>The Guardian concludes: "After their Moscow summit, Mr. Prodi and Mr. Guterres visit Washington on Wednesday to meet President Clinton. They will doubtless seek -- and receive -- assurances about the U.S.'s Balkan commitment. But, increasingly, a lame-duck Clinton is not in a position to deliver. Europe has to find a way to get out of this Russian-Chinese-American squeeze. The only person it helps is the deeply undeserving Slobodan Milosevic." <br><br>Finally, several papers today praise Saturday's accord by Northern Ireland's Ulster Unionist Party that will allow what is called "devolution" -- that is, the granting of autonomy -- to move forward in the province. <br><br>IRISH TIMES: <br><br>The Irish Times calls it "a good result for Trimble," recalling that it comes "two years and one week after the electorate -- North and South -- overwhelmingly ratified [the Belfast Agreement that provides for the province's autonomy]."<br><br>The editorial goes on to say: "With the path now cleared for the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement, it must be acknowledged that the British government's decision to suspend the Northern institutions last February has been, in some measure, vindicated. If the controversial suspension had not happened," the Irish Times sums up, "the IRA would not have come forward with its, Mr. Trimble would not have been in a position to go back to his party for endorsement, and the principle of guns-for-government would still be in deadlock. It is now imperative that all aspects of the Belfast Agreement are honored in the letter and the spirit." <br><br>AFTENPOSTEN: <br><br>In Norway, the daily Aftenposten writes in an editorial: "Northern Ireland begins a new chapter of its history today as its government is meeting for the first time since it was suspended by London in February. The meeting," it notes, "was made possible after Trimble on Saturday got the support he needed to conduct negotiations with what the Irish Protestants call their arch-enemy: the Catholic Sinn Fein [the IRA's political arm]. Still," the paper concludes, "there is continuing skepticism whether the Northern Ireland political process, now resuscitated, will bring its people closer to the long-lasting peace they have desired for so long." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRFE/RL: Western Press Review: From Russia To Serbia To Northern Ireland``x959671867,747,``x``x
``xBy Alexandra Poolos<br><br>Serbian opposition leaders visited Moscow hoping to gain Russia's help in their struggle with the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. So far the visit has had one tangible result -- Russia has urged Milosevic to restore independent radio and television Studio B to opposition control. Alexandra Poolos looks at the results of yesterday's visit and what can be expected in the future from Russia. <br><br>Prague, May 30 (RFE/RL) -- Serbian opposition leaders returned to Belgrade from Moscow this morning full of high hopes. Zoran Djindjic, Vuk Draskovic, and Vojiskav Kostunica went to Russia to campaign for support in their struggle against the authoritarian policies of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his crackdown on independent media. After meeting with low-level Foreign Ministry officials and members of the Duma, the trio left with a Russian Foreign Ministry statement calling for the return of an independent status to the radio and television broadcaster Studio B. <br><br>The Russian Foreign Ministry statement, however, is nothing new, but rather only a slight escalation of what has already been said. A ministry statement issued before this visit had expressed Russia's "grave concern" over Belgrade's crackdown on independent media. That earlier statement said: "Freedom of expression and freedom of media are inseparable parts of the democratic process." <br><br>It still remains unclear whether the opposition delegation managed to achieve their most important task -- generating Russian sympathy for their goal of deposing Milosevic.<br><br>After his meetings with Russian officials, Draskovic said that Russia is the only country that can help them to deal with Milosevic.<br><br>"If there is any voice today that has to be respected, it is the voice of Russia."<br><br>But will Russia use that voice to help the Serbian opposition? <br><br>Some Serbian opposition officials say they believe that Russia is moving to align itself with their concerns. Predrag Simic, an adviser to Draskovic, told RFE/RL that Russia has a lot to gain from criticizing Milosevic: "Russia has more -- say -- balanced interests in the Balkans. Because only supporting Milosevic would threaten the escalation of the crisis. Because the Serbian government is now very keen to use violence to suppress voices of dissent of the opposition, and that might restart...the cycle of the Yugoslav crisis."<br><br>Simic believes that Russia has a good incentive to criticize Milosevic -- preserving peace in the Balkans. He says that if Milosevic continues with his crackdowns, it may lead to a break with Montenegro, which could trigger another Yugoslav war:<br><br>"First, Russia does have a way to influence officials in Belgrade to stop the violence and to return an independent status to Studio B. Second, we do believe Russia is interested in preserving the Serbian-Montenegrin Federation and preserving stability in the Balkans. And third, we believe that Russia is talking to the Serbian opposition not only on behalf of itself but on behalf of the international community."<br><br>Russian analysts say that Moscow stands most to gain by remaining an ally of Serbia. That's why, they say, Russia is staying friendly with both sides in Serbia, both the Milosevic regime and its adversaries. They point out that, while showing lukewarm support for the opposition, Russia is also shoring up its overall support of Serbia and minimizing its criticism of Milosevic. <br><br>Viktor Kremenyuk is deputy director at the U.S. and Canada Institute in Moscow, a foreign-policy research organization. Kremenyuk says that Russia sees Serbia as its one true ally in the Balkans and in Europe:<br><br>"The general Russian line is that Serbia is a Russian ally and that Russia has a strong commitment to help Serbia out of this crisis. There was a kind of shaky balance between the commitments of Russia toward NATO, because of the Russian participation in KFOR, and the commitment of Russia to Belgrade. So I think that currently, I think the Russians feel they have to work more closely with Belgrade rather than NATO."<br><br>In the past, Russia has consistently supported Milosevic. Moscow opposed NATO's air campaign last year, and has recently said it is prepared to extend a $100 million loan to Yugoslavia to repair damage from the bombings. Earlier this month, Russia hosted Yugoslav Defense Minister General Dragoljub Ojdanic, a man who has been indicted for war crimes by the Hague-based tribunal. <br><br>Kremenyuk says that Russia ultimately believes it must continue to deal with Milosevic. <br><br>"Milosevic is acceptable because he is the recognized leader of Serbs and the Russians have no choice. They cannot say they don't like Milosevic and are not going to work with him. As long he is Yugoslav president, the Russians have to work with him. But that doesn't mean that the Russians will go as far as not to have any contacts with the opposition."<br><br>In short, according to Kremenyuk, Russia is walking a fine line. If Moscow openly supports Milosevic, he says, the crackdowns in Serbia could get worse. That would help escalate opposition and popular protests, and increase the possibility of the Yugoslav leader's ultimate fall. But, Kremenyuk says, if Russia criticizes Milosevic, it will then be demonstrating support for a West-leaning, anti-government movement.<br><br>Thus the safest policy -- and the one Russia seems to be following -- is to say as little as possible. Such a policy, Kremenyuk notes, will help Russia retain Serbia as an ally no matter what occurs. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia: Russia Plays Both Sides In Serbia``x959759293,57695,``x``x
``x<br><br>Area patrolled by US troops<br><br>By Danica Kirka, Associated Press, 5/30/2000 <br><br><br>RISTINA, Yugoslavia - An attacker shot and killed a 4-year-old Serb boy and two men in an eastern Kosovo village patrolled by US peacekeepers, NATO officials said yesterday.<br><br><br>The attack Sunday in the village of Cernica, 28 miles southeast of the capital, Pristina, also injured two men, said Captain Russell Berg, a spokesman for American forces stationed in Kosovo. The men were being treated at the US military hospital at Camp Bondsteel.<br><br><br>The attacker, thought to be ethnic Albanian, remained at large, Berg said.<br><br><br>The killings provoked widespread Serb protests, including a threat by moderates to withdraw from an interim government administered by the United Nations with both Serb and Albanian representatives.<br><br><br>The Serbs rejoined the council only last month after a monthlong boycott.<br><br><br>''It is high time we reconsidered where our participation in the administration ... is leading us,'' said Momcilo Trajkovic, a representative of Serb moderates.<br><br><br>The attacker, armed with an automatic weapon, opened fire on a group of Serbs gathered in a store in Cernica, killing 4-year-old Milos Petrovic, said Lieutenant Scott Olson, a spokesman for US forces at nearby Camp Monteith.<br><br><br>The boy's grandfather, Vojin Vasic, 60, and Tihomir Simjanovic, 45, also died in the attack.<br><br><br>US peacekeepers were only a few hundred yards away, but didn't see the attack, Olson said.<br><br><br>''They heard the gunfire and ran in that direction,'' he said.<br><br><br>The soldiers evacuated the wounded to a hilltop near the local Serbian Orthodox Church so a helicopter could land and ferry them to the hospital. The three died before the helicopter's arrival, Olson said.<br><br><br>The slayings were the latest in a series of attacks on Serbs by ethnic Albanians seeking to get even since the end of the Serb crackdown in the province nearly a year ago. Violence - or fear of attacks - has led tens of thousands of Serbs to flee Kosovo.<br><br><br>Less than 100,000 Serbs now live in Kosovo, down from 200,000 before the outbreak of fighting last year between Yugoslav forces and ethnic Albanian rebels that led to NATO intervention and the deployment of international peacekeepers.<br><br><br>The top UN official in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, denounced the attack, saying that only the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic stands to gain by unrest in this southern Serb province.<br><br><br>''What can possibly be gained by killing a child?'' he said in a statement.<br><br><br>NATO said a person reported by Serb media to be a suspect in the shooting had turned himself in to authorities, but peacekeepers said they had not yet determined whether the man could be described as a suspect or a witness.<br><br><br>About 600 villagers, almost all those in Cernica, attended the burial of the three last evening, the Serbian news agency Beta said.<br><br><br>The attack occurred just as US peacekeepers were attempting to set up a meeting between the community's ethnic Albanian and Serb leaders to work out problems and build trust.<br><br><br>It was the third time such a meeting was close at hand only to be shattered by violence.<br><br><br>Protesting the killings, more than 1,000 Serbs rallied in the divided northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica, briefly blocking traffic near the main bridge that divides the town into Serb and Albanian neighborhoods.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``x3 Serbs are killed in Kosovo village ``x959759311,60250,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia, May 30 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic of Montenegro said U.N. war crimes indictees will not be arrested in the republic if this could provoke conflict or bloodshed, local media reported on Tuesday. <br>Vujanovic was responding to reports that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague, would visit the pro-Western Yugoslav republic at odds with Belgrade for the last several years. <br><br>Predrag Bulatovic, vice-president of Montenegro's opposition Socialist People's Party, has said it had invited Milosevic to visit Montenegro and that he had accepted. <br><br>Vujanovic's government pledged to cooperate fully with the tribunal. But he said no one really expected Montenegro to arrest Milosevic or Defence Minister Dragoljub Ojdanic, also indicted for alleged Kosovo war crimes. <br><br>"This would clearly provoke internal conflicts, and it would make no sense to expect such a thing of Montenegro and absolutely no one is asking us to do this," Vujanovic told Montena television carried by Montena-fax news agency. <br><br>"Montenegro would not receive him (Milosevic) as a man who is leading a democratic and reformist project but as a man who is conducting a policy of dictatorship damaging to the Serb people and Serbia, and to us who are in a union with Serbia." <br><br>He said he did not believe Milosevic would actually visit. <br><br>Vujanovic accused some Yugoslav federal army commanders of being alienated from the people's interests and acting as if they were the military wing of Belgrade's ruling party. <br><br>"They are acting as if they were listening to a political order from Belgrade and not a professional order the army has to carry out," Vujanovic said. <br><br>The army conducted anti-terrorism exercises last week at the Montenegrin capital Podgorica's airport, the scene of a tense stand-off with Montenegrin police last December. <br><br>In an interview with Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti on Tuesday, Yugoslav army chief of staff Colonel-General Nebojsa Pavkovic said the military would answer any attack against its troops, family members and facilities wherever it might happen. <br><br>"The troops will respond with all means available, especially against those who may order such attacks," he said, rejecting accusations that the army was politicised and was siding with the authorities in Belgrade. <br><br>But he said Milosevic was the supreme commander under the constitution and any attacks on him would be taken as attacks on the army itself. <br><br> <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro cannot arrest indictee Milosevic ``x959759353,45589,``x``x
``xPARIS, May 30 (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac proposed on Tuesday a summit between the European Union and the democratic countries of ex-Yugoslavia and reminded Belgrade it could join the club if it also respected the popular will. <br>In a major speech on French foreign policy, Chirac also urged EU members to forge ahead with a common defence and consider a new rapid reaction force for southern Europe. <br><br>Speaking to defence experts and parliamentarians from the Western European Union, he also criticised the United States for planning an anti-missile defence system that he said would rekindle the arms race and undermine Europe's own security. <br><br>Speaking about France's priorities for its EU presidency in the second half of this year, Chirac said he wanted to make Europe "a key player in the world" while maintaining the essential role NATO played in Europe's defence. <br><br>Aides said the summit could be held later this year, possibly with prominent opponents of President Slobodan Milosevic representing present-day Yugoslavia. <br><br>"A summit between the European Union and the countries of ex-Yugoslavia which are most advanced in their democratic evolution would allow us to clarify objectives and revive a stalling process," the president said. <br><br>"The aim would be to support recent developments in Croatia, welcome the efforts taken by Macedonia, note progress made in Bosnia, to encourage them to go further...and to remind Yugoslavia the door will be open to it as well as soon as it joins this movement." <br><br>Chirac also mentioned Montenegro, the Yugoslav republic whose government is committed to democratic change and has threatened a referendum on independence if Belgrade blocks its reforms. <br><br>CHIRAC WANTS MORE DECISIVE BALKAN STRATEGY <br><br>Aides said Montenegro might also attend the summit if the right way to describe its participation was found. Montenegro and its bigger partner Serbia make up the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>Stressing that Europe's common defence policy should first concern security on its own continent, Chirac said: "We should have a more decisive strategy for the Balkans. <br><br>"We should tell these countries more clearly what we expect of them and what we are ready to do to help them." <br><br>Recalling its role in the Kosovo crisis last year, Chirac said the EU -- which has already pledged to boost its rapid reaction forces to 60,000 troops by 2003 -- should create a separate force specially for crises in southern Europe. <br><br>EU states should also declare by year's end how many troops, command infrastructure, transport craft and intelligence facilities they were ready to commit to the common effort. <br><br>"Defence seems to be an issue that is quite naturally given to reinforced cooperation among a restricted number of states which want to go faster and further than others," he said. <br><br>He welcomed recent decisions by EU states to opt for the Airbus A 400M as the future European military transport plane. <br><br>EU members could also pool resources to develop the satellite centre of the Western European Union, a defence forum due to be incorporated into the EU, into a full European system of satellite intelligence, he added. <br><br>The French leader took the opportunity to reiterate his opposition to U.S. plans for a missile defence system which he said would "put into question the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, one of the pillars of strategic stability in the past 30 years." <br><br>"As allies and friends, we must convey to the United States our conviction that questioning this treaty would risk damaging efforts for non-proliferation and resume the arms race." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xChirac wants EU summit with ex-Yugoslav states``x959759390,61113,``x``x
``x<br><br>A crackdown left Serbia's opposition in disarray, but student group has a plan.<br><br>Alex Todorovic <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor<br><br>BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>Over the past decade, the only thing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic could count on with any certainty was that Serbia's divisive opposition would inadvertently help him stay in power.<br><br>This golden rule of Belgrade politics is once again proving true. Some opposition leaders and analysts say a recent government crackdown is aimed at marginalizing and dividing the opposition ahead of coming elections.<br><br>If so, the effort appears to be working. A severe crackdown that began May 17 with the takeover of Studio B, Serbia's largest opposition-controlled television station, and was followed by the arrest of hundreds of political activists and police violence on Belgrade's streets, served to drive a wedge into the multiparty opposition.<br><br>The Alliance for Change, a broad coalition, wanted to confront the regime through massive civil disobedience. But the Serbian Renewal Movement, led by Vuk Draskovic, backed away, even though it lost the most in the government action: The party controlled Studio B.<br><br>With his party dominating Belgrade's city government, Mr. Draskovic also stood the most to lose, opposition leaders say privately.<br><br>"Draskovic was worried that the next step in the government crackdown would be the takeover of city government, which would result in the loss of the few scraps of bread his party receives," is the bitter assessment of one opposition leader, who insisted on anonymity.<br><br>The only thing moderate and radical elements could agree on was a weekend visit to Moscow, where they unsuccessfully lobbied the Russian government to withdraw support for the Milosevic regime. The lack of decisive action left Serbia's democratic movement disheartened. Attendance at nightly antigovernment rallies dwindled to embarrassingly low numbers, then were called off altogether on May 29.<br><br>All is not lost for Serbia's opposition, however. Many people see the greatest hope for change in Otpor (Resistance), a student movement founded in 1998. The group's logo, a clenched fist, has become a popular symbol of placing national interests above opposition squabbles.<br><br>The fact that the group is relatively new, has no cult-of-personality leaders, and doesn't seek political power, has made it popular.<br><br>At a protest on May 27, euphoric chants and applause were reserved for Otpor activist Nemanja Nikolic, who berated the handful of opposition leaders standing on the stage behind him.<br><br>"Leaders, you've wasted one week on vain rallies. You must tell people what you are going to do," Mr. Nikolic yelled.<br><br>"Serbia's united opposition is just a conversation forum. Anyone who listened to the opposition leaders could see there will be no united strategy," said Zarko Korac, another opposition leader.<br><br>Frustrated with the lack of coherent strategy, Otpor is proposing an incremental plan for peaceful civil disobedience. Though more popular than any opposition party, Otpor has yet to prove that such a loosely organized group can inspire a serious campaign against the government. <br><br>Just in case, legislators may take up a "law on terrorism" - reportedly drafted by Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic - that would give the government lavish legal power against its most dangerous political opponents, notably Otpor. Government-controlled media frequently refer to members of the group as "terrorists," claiming they are funded by the West with the goal of destabilizing Yugoslavia.<br><br>Opposition parties are waiting to see whether the law is just a threat or whether it will really be passed, perhaps as early as this week.<br><br>The apparent collapse of the opposition's hard-won unity is the most serious threat facing the democratic movement. Western diplomats spent months convincing opposition leaders to unite in order to defeat Milosevic in elections due later this year. They finally did so in January. Opposition leaders admit breaking their alliance was and is one of Milosevic's key goals.<br><br>Independent opinion polls show that a united opposition would be much stronger at the ballot box than as a group of separate parties.<br><br>But the different wings of the opposition cannot agree on fundamentals, such as in which elections to participate and under what conditions.<br><br>Nobody expects the vote to be fair, but leaders such as Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic say support for the ruling coalition is so low that it's impossible to fudge the numbers that much.<br><br>Government officials have indicated that municipal and federal elections will be scheduled this fall.<br><br>The federal elections will eventually determine Milosevic's political fate: Two chambers of the federal parliament pick the Yugoslav president.<br><br>Milosevic's term expires in July 2001, and the Constitution bars him from serving another term. He has also filled the constitutional term limit as Serbian president. But few expect Milosevic to relinquish the reins of power, especially given his indictment for war crimes by the international tribunal at The Hague, Netherlands, over Yugoslavia's mistreatment of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.<br><br>Sinisa Nikolic, a lawyer and constitutional expert for the Democratic Party, says the most likely scenario is for Milosevic to be chosen as prime minister, a position currently occupied by Momir Bulatovic.<br><br>As former opposition parliamentary representative Vlatko Sekulovic puts it, "In the end, none of this really matters. He could run a tire service and remain in control."<br><br>Mr. Sekulovic and other observers believe the recent crackdown was "a training exercise" for the coming elections.<br><br>"We all know that he has to steal the elections if he wants to remain in power, but he doesn't want another 1996, when hundreds of thousands of people were on the streets for months. The police brutality was a way of telling people things have changed since then," says Sekulovic.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor: Looking ahead to elections, Milosevic sets the stage``x959759512,79174,``x``x
``x<br>RAGUJEVAC, Serbia, May 24 -- Velimir Pajevic, a pediatric surgeon, says that the average size of the craniums of newborns here is one centimeter smaller than in 1991, a result of declining nutrition. <br><br>Kragujevac, the capital of Serbia in the early 1800's, is a city of nearly 200,000 people, built around the Zastava car and munitions factory, said to be the first factory built in the Balkans. <br><br>But after a decade of war, sanctions and decline, about 60 percent of those of working age are not working, said Branislav Kovacevic, president of the Sumadija Coalition, a regional opposition group in this traditional heartland of Serbia. <br><br>Zastava, which employed 40,000 people 10 years ago, now employs 4,000, officials here say. Some 20,000 people are officially unemployed, while 35,000 others are on "paid leave" from Zastava and its associated companies. <br><br>Branko Vuckovic, a reporter and editor with Radio Kragujevac, said the city used to be the Serbian Detroit. "Now it's the Serbian Gdansk," he said, referring to the Polish shipbuilding city, where Solidarity was born, that no longer makes many ships. <br><br>He gestured to the remains of a few espressos and mineral waters on a cafe table. "That's about 100 dinars," he said, or about $2.50 at the unofficial rate of exchange. "Those on paid leave from Zastava are paid 350 dinars a month -- just three times what's on this table." <br><br>The government is repairing part of Zastava bombed by NATO during the war, and says it has plans for greatly expanded car production. But few here believe such assertions, saying the only future for the factory is an assembly arrangement with a more modern car company, currently impossible because of international sanctions. <br><br>Life is so hard here, for so many, that this is known as "the valley of the starving." Of course, that is an exaggeration, since many city dwellers get by because of their connections to the land, said Borivoje Radic, head of the city's Executive Council and a member of the Democratic Party. <br><br>Yet life has rarely been harder here, he says. The city is also home to at least 20,000 refugees, 15,000 of them from Kosovo and the rest of them Serbs who fled from Bosnia and Croatia. But the city's annual budget, given the decline of the country's currency and economy, is now only a fourth of what it was in 1997, Mr. Radic says -- the equivalent of $4 million, down from $16 million. <br><br>So there is plenty of anger here, in one of the most important towns for Serbia's democratic opposition, some 90 miles south of Belgrade. Here the opposition coalition built in 1996 and called Zajedno, or Together, remains together, unlike that in Belgrade, where the Democratic Party of Zoran Djindjic and the Serbian Renewal Movement of Vuk Draskovic are usually at daggers drawn. <br><br>"If it weren't for the opposition leaders in Belgrade, Milosevic would not be in power," Mr. Kovacevic said. "People no longer believe in the people on the stage of those rallies." <br><br>Here, about 2,000 people a night gathered to protest the seizure of Studio B in Belgrade, the main opposition television station, while the crowd of protesters in Belgrade itself, 10 times larger in population, had shrunk to fewer than 700. <br><br>Part of the problem is that Studio B was perceived as a propaganda organ for Mr. Draskovic, much as state television serves the interests of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, and did not serve as a true public-interest station. <br><br>Here, there is a full complement of news, with Radio B2-92, which lost its frequency in Belgrade, available, as well as opposition television news and documentaries. A local FM station broadcasts the Serbian-language programs of Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, the BBC and Deutsche Welle all day long. "People here are well informed," Mr. Vuckovic said. <br><br>A local opposition weekly, The Independent Light, said Serbia was "on the razor's edge," but described Belgrade as "deaf, blind and anemic," a pun on the association of independent broadcasters, or ANEM, whose broadcasts can no longer be heard in the capital. But it is also a commentary on the general view of Belgrade from here, which is of well-off, cynical, corrupt politicians and citizens who are largely indifferent to the fate of the nation. <br><br>"Belgrade is a great disappointment," Mr. Radic said. "You can't expect to defend Studio B from here. If they dared to take TV Kragujevac, we couldn't avoid a serious conflict." Like Studio B, TV and Radio Kragujevac are owned by the city, which is run by the opposition. <br><br>In fact, four years ago, the Serbian authorities tried to seize control of the television here. Up to 50,000 people gathered around the station, which had been occupied by the police. People cut off electrical power to the building and threatened to invade it; a deal was done and the station was left alone. <br><br>It would be the same now, Mr. Vuckovic said. "In Serbia, we say that when you show your teeth, the government retreats. But when people are undecided, then they just go faster." <br><br>But as everywhere in Serbia there is more talk of revolution than signs of it. <br><br>"Here, the situation is highly explosive," Mr. Radic said. "It would only take a spark." Mr. Vuckovic agrees, saying, "It's like a small room full of gas fumes." <br><br>But the phlegmatic Dr. Pajevic thinks that the reality is far different. <br><br>There is less of a sense of revolution here than of passivity, anxiety and alienation. People are still afraid to lose what little they have left, and they mistrust the desires and capacities of the Belgrade leaders of the opposition. <br><br>Dr. Pajevic, the surgeon, says the right analogy is surgical, not military. "We're far from an explosion," he said. "What you have here is anesthesia, anesthesia and hopelessness. There is so much disappointment in the opposition, many people won't even vote." <br><br>People live day to day, he said, scraping by on friends and gray market trading. Few pay their electricity bills, but the government does not insist, a form of social pacification. "Our boss plays nice like that," Dr. Pajevic said, laughing. And while the independent newspaper Blic is available here, for eight dinars, "for the same money, people will buy bread and milk for their kids." <br><br>Vesna Pajevic, the doctor's wife, is a city official in charge of social welfare issues. A former member of Mr. Draskovic's party, she became disgusted with its hierarchy and joined the Democratic Party instead, which has also disappointed her. <br><br>"The credibility of the opposition is dropping even here, where the coalition continues," she said. "There is too much corruption and not enough clear goals and strategies. People need to see that we are working for them." <br><br>The biggest mistake of the opposition, Dr. Pajevic said, was to win local elections four years ago and take power. "These guys were practically jobless, and now they've got cars and salaries and cell phones and things to lose," he said. "They've become fat and happy. People wonder if they really do want change. People think that both the regime and the opposition want to keep the status quo." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Serbia's Detroit That Was: In Distress and Angry``x959759536,38396,``x``x
``xIntroduction<br><br>Local elections are to be held in Podgorica and Herceg-Novi, two of Montenegro's 21 municipalities, on 11 June 2000. Their significance is wider than the simple question of who governs the two local authorities, for these will be the first elections in Montenegro since the victory of the "For a Better Life" coalition (DZB) under president Milo Djukanovic in general elections in May 1998. For this reason the results will be widely interpreted as a comment on the performance of Djukanovic so far, and a barometer of the political mood in the republic as a whole. <br><br>The government did not want to hold these elections at this time. They were caused deliberately by the pro-independence Liberal Alliance (LSCG), who broke off 1998 local coalition agreements with the DZB in September 1999. The significance of these two localities is that they are the only places in Montenegro where the LSCG hold the balance of power. In most other municipalities either the DZB governs alone (11) or the Socialist People's Party (SNP) governs alone (4) or with allies (2). Exceptions are Ulcinj, where the Albanian parties Democratic Union of Albanians (DUA) and Democratic Alliance (DS) hold most of the seats, and Plav where the DZB is strongest but Bosniak and Albanian parties hold the balance. <br><br>The Liberals gave as the reason for breaking off the coalitions that they were unhappy with the way the DZB was running the municipalities, that pre-election claims had not been honoured. But they also felt - and it is universally believed that this was the real reason for forcing the elections - that the cause of Montenegrin independence was gaining public support, and that the Liberals' poll ratings were recovering from a bad result in 1998 - this is in essence the "change of public mood" referred to by LSCG leaders. The Liberals assert that there is little to choose between the two main opposing blocks in Montenegrin politics (DZB/SNP), and that a strong LSCG is the best guarantee of honest and principled government. So the LSCG hopes that a good result for them will put pressure on the government to move faster towards the long-mooted referendum on Montenegro's status, but also bring better, more open government at all levels. Still, with no chance of winning their best hope this time is to re-enter coalitions with the DZB, but from a position of increased strength and influence. <br><br>For the government, it will be useful if it can gain enough votes to govern the two municipalities without the LSCG. But its main need is to show that the support they it gained in 1998 is holding up. Politically DZB does not need to win either Podgorica or Herceg-Novi outright, since the Liberals have made it clear they will not work with the SNP, but it does need to be able to show that in the republic as a whole support for the reformist, internationalist course the DZB has followed is not crumbling. <br><br>For the pro-Yugoslavia SNP the stakes are higher still.2 The government only needs to hold on to the level of support it already has, but the SNP must do better than in 1998. Victory in either election would strengthen the party's claim that its true support is much higher than published polls suggest, and that the government does not enjoy the support of a majority of voters. It would also give the SNP for the first time a municipality in the southern part of the country, important symbolically to show that their support is not confined to the highlands. Herceg-Novi looks the easier target, but Podgorica is the bigger prize: an SNP victory there would be a major embarrassment to the government. Even a close failure in Podgorica coupled with victory in Herceg-Novi would give the party a platform from which to call insistently for early general elections.3 But clear defeat in both places would demonstrate that voters still have faith in Djukanovic, that the pro-Yugoslavia and pro-Milosevic message is not gaining support. <br><br>European Union (EU) support for Djukanovic could hardly be clearer: commenting on a new package of EU aid on 8 May 2000, the EU's head of Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana called it an "excellent decision, bearing in mind important elections in Montenegro in June."4 EU Commissioner Chris Patten made a high-profile visit to Podgorica on 15 May. Americans by contrast have been keeping quiet and out of sight, but no-one doubts their support for Djukanovic. <br><br>Electoral procedures give a slight advantage to coalitions over friendly parties running separately.5 Pre-election coalitions function as a single party, but if no one list wins enough seats to govern outright there can be post-election coalitions or alliances. Whoever can command most votes in the municipal council becomes mayor, usually but not necessarily the head of the list which received most votes. The head of the party list carries an important responsibility as, in effect, the leader and public face of that party's campaign. But, as in other list systems, the head of the winning list is not obliged to become mayor; having won the election he can hand over the responsibility to a colleague. Thus the election campaign does not automatically determine who will become mayor, but it does determine the balance of forces in the municipal council, which in turn elects the mayor. <br><br><br>Podgorica<br><br>The republican capital Podgorica had a population of 152,025 in 1991, some 24.7 per cent of the total. In 1998 there were 118,603 registered voters; for the forthcoming election 111,6066 - the city has not shrunk, but the new laws on voters lists have led to the removal of many ostensible voters unable to produce documents proving their entitlement to vote. In 1998 the turn-out was 73 per cent, and over 86 per cent of those who voted chose either the DZB coalition or the SNP. The result was close enough to leave the LSCG with the balance of power, but left no room for marginal parties: <br><br><br>Votes Per Cent Seats <br>DZB 40118 46.33 27 <br>SNP 34866 40.26 23 <br>LSCG 6454 7.54 4 <br>SNS 1789 2.07 <br> <br>DUA 1604 1.85 <br> <br>SRS 791 0.91 <br> <br>SKJ 620 0.72 <br> <br>ZS 240 0.28 <br><br>The DZB thus needed LSCG co-operation in order to function as a local government, though the combined opposition could not outvote it. Following the Liberal withdrawal of co-operation and subsequent stalemate, since February this year Podgorica has been governed by a three-man board appointed by the government, one from each coalition member, replacing the elected mayor Mihailo Buric. The head of this board, Dr Miomir Mugosa, Minister of Health in the DZB government and a popular Podgorica politician, has since been named as the DZB candidate for mayor, and will be first on the DZB list. The SNP showed how seriously it is taking the elections by placing at the head of its coalition list Predrag Bulatovic, one of three party vice-presidents and easily their most popular public figure. The LSCG is fielding its party president Miroslav Vickovic. <br><br>There is a significant settlement of Albanians at Tuzi, enough to determine the outcome of several seats. Altogether Albanians make up around 8 per cent of the population of Podgorica.7 There used to exist a separate municipality of Tuzi but it was extinguished in 1957. The main Albanian nationalist parties, DUA and DS, are in coalition ("Zajedno za Malesiju" - "Together for Malesija" - that is, the Tuzi area) calling for the restoration of municipality status, which would give them another local authority to run in addition to Ulcinj - the DUA leader, Ferhat Dinosha, is a Tuzi man. The DZB resists the idea, not least because the balance of forces in Podgorica is so close, and many Albanian voters in 1998 supported the DZB rather than their own nationalist parties. If the Albanians vote for the DUA/DS coalition this time it will certainly be harmful to the DZB vote, although the Albanians would be much more likely to support DZB than SNP in a post-election coalition: if they are lucky enough to hold the balance of power they will seek to make municipality status for Tuzi the price of their support. <br><br>Herceg-Novi<br>Herceg-Novi is a coastal town on the border with Croatia: it is the centre of a municipality which includes several small tourist resorts and a shipbuilding and repair yard at Bijela. Its 1991 resident population of 27,593 was 4.5 per cent of the population of Montenegro, but it has grown from an influx of refugees during the last decade. In 1998 there were 21,465 registered voters; now there are 22,018.8 Its economy is heavily dependent on summer tourism and so has suffered, along with the rest of the Montenegrin coast, from international isolation and perceptions of insecurity which deter tourists. As a result facilities have fallen behind the standards which modern tourists expect, so that new investment will be needed before the market can revive. A few kilometres across the border in the Dubrovnik area tourism is picking up rapidly, with tour operators flying in groups from all over Europe. Herceg-Novi meanwhile does what it can with the domestic market. The area gets much of its water supply from neighbouring Croatia, and there are chronic problems of paying for it: supply was rationed by daily cuts during April and again in the second half of May, though this time because a supply tunnel was closed for annual maintenance. <br><br>The municipality also contains the Dr Simo Milosevic Institute, a specialist hospital which used to attract patients regularly from abroad. The Institute became a national issue after it was part-sold in privatisation to the ICN company of Milan Panic, a Yugoslav-American businessman actively involved in Serbian politics in support of the democratic opposition. It was sold in early 1998 by direct deal rather than international tender, which the opposition SNP and LSCG contend contravened the law. They also say the sale was well under market price. This was the subject of a debate in parliament in February 2000, and the SNP has since launched a court case accusing the government of criminal handling - this court case is opportunely timed for the election campaign. <br><br>Such a place, whose future depends on opening up to the outside world, looks like natural territory for the Djukanovic government. But in fact the voters of Herceg-Novi in 1998 spread themselves very widely and produced the closest result in any of Montenegro's 21 municipalities. Turn-out was 72 per cent:9 <br><br>Votes Per Cent Seats <br>DZB 5953 38.19 (without SDP) 15 <br>SNP 5050 31.67 13 <br>LSCG 1157 7.42 3 <br>SNS 916 5.81 2 <br>ZOKZ 377 2.41 <br> <br>Independent 311 1.99 <br> <br>SDP 309 1.98 <br> <br>SKJ/KCG 275 1.76 <br> <br>Savings 197 1.26 <br><br>This gave the resulting alliance between DZB and LSCG a bare 18-17 majority until the Liberals broke the alliance - unlike in Podgorica, the DZB needed active support from the LSCG to avoid being outvoted by the opposition. In terms of the coalitions in 2000 the voting blocks are: DZB 5953 (excluding SDP), pro-Milosevic Yugoslavia bloc 7010; so the SNP alliance has a real chance at least to gain the largest number of votes and seats - winning power is harder since the Liberals will ally with the DZB if necessary to keep them out, but even then the 1998 numbers argue a close result. Of course with such a tiny number of voters, interpretation of results becomes hazardous and extrapolation risky. And 1998 was a turbulent time. But if there is, as the SNP claim but published polls contradict, even a slight drift in support towards the Yugoslavia bloc, it should be enough to give them Herceg-Novi outright. <br><br>Nowhere else along the coast did the SNP do nearly as well last time. One reason for the strong performance of the SNP in Herceg-Novi is suggested also by the significant minority vote for the Serb nationalist parties SNS and SRS.10 Herceg-Novi is home to a sizeable group of Serbs and Montenegrin-Serbs displaced from Bosnia and Croatia in 1991-2. These resettled populations tend to be embittered by their experiences and so are natural supporters for the nationalist message. Not all of them have a vote, but their numbers are swelled by Serbian pensioners and army veterans who settled voluntarily in the area - Herceg-Novi was anyway a traditional destination for Serb migrants from Hercegovina. Even in 1991 31 per cent of the population identified themselves as Serbs, much higher than in any other municipality in Montenegro. Impoverished pensioners nostalgic for better days in the old Yugoslavia are a natural constituency for the SNP. <br><br>The category "Yugoslav" in the 1991 census too accounted for 5243 citizens of Herceg-Novi, much more than in any other municipality - in terms of the current debate this is misleading, since at the time this designation usually denoted moderate citizens either of mixed parentage or unwilling to identify with a particular ethnic group. The term has since fallen into disuse, though these people will tend not to vote for nationalist parties now. <br><br>Recipes for reviving the tourist industry divide along traditional lines. The government version is that a policy of openness will in due course attract investors and tourists and secure a long-term future. The SNP version is that government policies have alienated even the Serbian tourists who used to come, as well as cut off the shipyard from federal help and pushed up prices. The remedy, as usual, is to return to better relations with Serbia, to preserve such tourism as is possible under current conditions. The SNP policy has the advantage that it could bring results quickly, but the tourist industry remembers the free-spending Germans and Britons of the past, and knows that the SNP cannot bring them back. <br><br>The DZB candidate for mayor in Herceg-Novi is Bozidar Maric, a doctor, though the head of their list is Stanko Zlokovic, head of the boat yard at Bijela. Zlokovic has a higher public profile and was considered a more likely vote-winner, but he does not want the full-time job of mayor. The incumbent mayor, Dragan Jankovic, will not stand again after four years in the post. The Yugoslavia coalition are putting up local SNP party leader Djuro Cetkovic. The LSCG candidate is new local party leader Budimir Katuric, while the SDP list is headed by veteran Miodrag Marovic, a retired Serbian journalist and publisher. <br><br>Parties and Coalitions<br>In Podgorica the DZB will fight as a coalition just as it did in 1998. At first the coalition was to be called "For Podgorica" but the name was later changed to the old formula: "For a Better Life - Milo Djukanovic". But this does not mean that all is harmonious within the government. On at least two recent occasions, over the privatisation of the hotel "Mogren" in Budva, and over Easter greetings to the Montenegro Orthodox Church (see section V(b) below), there has been a difference of approach between its two most powerful leaders, President Djukanovic and the Speaker of the Assembly Svetozar Marovic. Why Marovic should be seeking to mark out for himself a separate political space is a subject of much speculation in political circles, but two facts about him are possibly relevant: consistently in opinion polls he is rated the most popular politician in Montenegro (his position as Speaker allows him to appear conciliatory without taking responsibility for unpopular decisions); and he is the one top politician in Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) towards whom the SNP feel reasonably friendly. In particular the personal relationship between Marovic and the SNP's Predrag Bulatovic is co-operative.11 Remembering that DPS and SNP leaders were until 1997 colleagues in a common DPS, speculation abounds, based on no evidence but mainly historical and personal background, that the tectonic plates of Montenegro's political alignments have not yet settled durably. <br><br>Among the DPS's coalition partners the People's Party (NS) seem quite solid, though whether it has yet picked up any support after a change of leadership and a political relaunch is dubious.12 The Social Democratic Party (SDP) is playing Hamlet as usual. While reconfirming the party's presence in the coalition in Podgorica, leader Zarko Rakcevic proclaimed that he considered the Platform Proposal13 dead, in explicit contradiction of the official government position. In Herceg-Novi, also as in 1998, dislike between DPS and SDP runs deep and the SDP has chosen to campaign separately, leaving the DPS and NS to fight alone.14 Given the SDP's miserable solo vote in the town in 1998, this behaviour on their part appears quixotic. However, the local party attributes its poor result last time to a lack of preparation (it left the DZB at a late stage in the campaign), and says it is are confident of winning one or two seats this time.15 Other local parties are prepared to admit that the SDP are better organised than in 1998, and ought to perform to around their national level of support (7-10 per cent). <br><br>The SNP is in coalition with several parties whose Serb nationalist identity is more extreme than their own: with Vojislav Seselj's Serbian Radical Party (SRS), with Mira Markovic's Yugoslav United Left (JUL) and with the indigenous Serb People's Party (SNS).16 Three other very small communist or nationalist parties have also joined.17 In 1998 terms at first sight this looks like a better idea in Herceg-Novi, where the SNS and SRS mustered 13 per cent between them, than in Podgorica, where their combined vote was 3 per cent - but in fact if those few votes had gone to the SNP it would have gained one more seat at the expense of the DZB: as it was the SNS and SRS votes produced no seats and so were effectively wasted. <br><br>The coalition will have a different name in the two places. In Herceg-Novi it is simply "Yugoslavia Coalition - Momir Bulatovic". In Podgorica it is "Yugoslavia Coalition - Momir Bulatovic (Predrag Bulatovic)". This ungainly title can be seen as a straightforward attempt to capitalise on the popularity, or at least general acceptability, of Predrag Bulatovic as a mayoral candidate. Less charitably it can also be taken as an assertion that Predrag Bulatovic is tied into the Momir Bulatovic effort, to forestall any suggestion that his growing popularity is any kind of threat to the party leader. Predrag's visit to Belgrade on 19 May 2000, and pictures of him posing stiffly with Momir Bulatovic and Slobodan Milosevic in Dan the next day, rather feed this impression - Milosevic cannot surely believe that his open support can make the SNP any stronger. <br><br>But the coalition will complicate the interpretation of results as far as the SNP are concerned, since the profile of the coalition as a whole is more radical than that of the SNP alone. While nationalist and radical voters will be secured, marginal voters discontented with the government might not be attracted by this alternative. JUL is a particular embarrassment, since the party attracts almost no votes in Montenegro, and such a close identification with Mrs Milosevic uncomfortably raises the question of whether the "Yugoslavia block" will actually work for Montenegro or indeed only for Serbia. A good result would be unambiguous. But a bad result could be interpreted in too many ways: unattractive coalition, general loss of support for the SNP, rigging by the government. In public the SNP will certainly justify failure in terms of cheating by the DZB (from this point of view a good performance by the LSCG will be the worst outcome for them, since the DZB could not seriously be accused of cheating in favour of the LSCG). But behind the scenes the party will face a painful debate. <br><br>The LSCG too is not without problems. The rise in its support, which accompanied the prominence of the independence issue in late-1999 and early-2000, seems to have halted as political tensions have subsided a little into the spring. Not only that, but the original decision to break up the coalitions had dramatic effects on the party, particularly in Herceg-Novi where there was a bitter split resulting in the expulsion of several members including the local party leader. The rebels disagreed with the leadership's "autocratic" (their word) handling of the issue. Nationwide some of them have split off to found their own party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Although this development is irritating for the LSCG, the new LDP may have trouble finding an electorate of its own and will probably not be much of a threat to the LSCG vote, at least this time. In Herceg-Novi, where disaffected Liberals have preferred to join the SDP, it is not even standing. The LSCG is as eager as the SNP to accuse the government of rigging; after all, it is a card which cannot lose - it can either excuse defeat or make victory the greater. The Liberals tend to be perceived by non-supporters as a single-issue independence party, though they themselves are annoyed with this image and prefer to be seen rather as anti-authoritarian democrats offering a complete alternative to the "DPS/SNP Establishment". <br><br>The Albanian coalition in Podgorica is described in section II above. This coalition will not stand in Herceg-Novi, where the Albanian community is tiny. In Podgorica there is a further coalition of two small Serb nationalist parties under the title "Serb Agreement" (Srpska Sloga), who are unlikely to win seats. These are the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and Serb People's Radical Party (SNRS). The LDP and yet another Communist party - the SKJ/KCG who also stood independently in 1998 - are also standing. In Herceg-Novi a group of citizens are standing as an independent list, as in 1998. <br><br>Issues<br>A. Free and Fair?<br><br>As a result of a new law on voters' lists, passed by parliament in March with both SNP and DZB support, the qualification for eligibility to vote in these elections will be one year's residence in the municipality.18 The number of voters at any one polling station is limited to 1000. <br><br>While agreeing that the new law is fair, the SNP have been warning that the DZB will abuse its position of power and control over structures to manipulate the elections unfairly. As mentioned above, in this they are supported by the LSCG - these two political opposites often sound similar when attacking the government. The accusations are several: (1) that the government is capable of various electoral malpractices including addition of false voters to voting lists; (2) that government media will support the DZB (a confusion of state and party interests); (3) that the DZB will use government money in its campaign; (4) that the large police force will be used to intimidate voters. <br><br>Warnings of government malpractice arise from allegations left over from the 1998 elections, including: breach of the period of silence just before voting day, over-long opening of some polling stations, disappearance of voting boxes. None of this has much impressed the public. But voting lists have been a particular concern. The central voting list is maintained by the Secretariat for Development (razvoj) in Podgorica, while local lists are under the control of the municipal secretariats for administration (uprava), under approval of the mayor. At an early stage in the campaign on 4 April 2000 the SNP called for the elections to be postponed, on the grounds that the government had failed properly to implement the new law on voters' lists, by not publishing changes to the 1998 lists in due time. The SNP claimed to have information that, for example, there existed 1500 voters with the same ID card number. The Secretariat for Development replied that it was doing its best in the short time-frame imposed on it by the new law and indignantly denied the existence of any false voters.19 The SNP repeated on 5 May accusations that government organs were either incompetently or maliciously failing to meet deadlines and provide full information about lists.20 In Herceg-Novi the local SNP has been complaining fiercely that the municipal electoral commission has decided not to open polling stations in three villages which voted heavily for SNP in 1998, the commission replying that the villages are too small (under 100 voters each) to merit their own posts. But on the whole one has the impression that the government machinery has done an honest if flawed job with the limited resources at its disposal. <br><br>The roles of state TV/radio and the government newspaper Pobjeda were the subject of a parliamentary debate concluding in a consensus on 27 March that state media would give equal time to all competing parties/coalitions in the election campaign. Opposition parties expressed scepticism that the agreement would be honoured, while the government pointed out how open and democratic Montenegro was in comparison to Serbia, where such an agreement would be unthinkable. Montenegro TV is governed by a multi-party board; an attempt to remove the head of the station by the SNP, LSCG and (strangely) NS on 29 March failed.21 In general the opposition parties have no difficulty in getting their statements broadcast on government media, though undeniably as in most countries the activities of government figures receive more publicity. <br><br>In support of the claim that the government might use state funds in its campaign, the opposition has cited the busy road works and face-lifting now going on, particularly in Podgorica. Since transport is a leading local issue, the government (it is alleged) is trying to create an illusion of progress to deceive voters. The government respond that city improvements are a normal function of government, and that the timing of current works coincides with spring weather which makes them easier to carry out. Western voters would probably be surprised that so much was being made of what would seem to them normal electioneering by the party in power. <br><br>Police plots to undermine the opposition have not yet been a serious feature of the election campaign. On 24 March, when Momir Bulatovic held a rally in Herceg-Novi, graffiti slogans in favour of Milosevic appeared all over town. The SNP indignantly denied responsibility and accused the authorities of organising the graffiti to discredit the party. Nothing came of the incident, and some of the graffiti are still there, unnoticed on the walls. There was a brief controversy over the identity of a man who carried a large portrait of Slobodan Milosevic at two SNP rallies - interestingly the SNP clearly wished to dissociate itself from this man.22 Later the SNP blamed police disinformation for the prominent publicity given to a reported split in the party over the Yugoslavia coalition, but the accusations had a routine feel and were not pursued.23 The Liberals in particular are prone to talk of pressure being brought to bear on groups of voters by police or DPS activists, but have found it hard to provide evidence. <br><br>The presence of an OSCE team of observers, as in 1998, who will be following all aspects of the electoral process including media coverage, will provide a welcome independent viewpoint on the process, minimising both the temptation for any party to corrupt the fairness of the election, and the likelihood that any attempt would go undetected. Also, just as important, the observers will reduce the scope for cries of foul to cover up any party's embarrassing defeat. It is helpful in this respect that the local OSCE office has built up good relations with the opposition parties as well as with the government. <br><br>However the OSCE presence in 1998 did not prevent complaints from the opposition. This time too both the SNP and LSCG are convinced that the elections will not be fair - that even if there is no illegal malpractice the government's control over money, media and police presents a less-than-level playing-field. The SNP has not ruled out the possibility of a boycott but have not so far floated this possibility in public - wisely since it would immediately dominate the agenda. <br><br>B. National Issues24<br>Contentious national issues have been few so far in a quiet spring. The economy ought to be the big issue but has not taken off. It is the area where most people feel the effects of government policy most strongly, and where the government is most vulnerable during a period of shaky reforms and readjustment from dependence on supplies from Serbia. Voters however seem phlegmatic about the continuing difficulties, seeing them as a continuation of problems stretching back ten years. <br><br>Instead corruption looks like occupying most of the opposition's time. A major parliamentary debate on privatisation in April left the impression that no-one liked the government's handling of privatisation so far, and even that an air of dishonesty hung over parts of it. The SNP, backed up by the LSCG, has done all it can to spread the image of Montenegro as a corrupt state run by a corrupt government under a corrupt president but it is not working for them: voters appear cynical about their politicians, but on the whole do not believe the SNP would be any better if it was in power, and do not take the Liberals seriously as a possible government. As noted above, the SNP has launched a court case against the government over one privatisation - in Herceg-Novi. <br><br>Another arm of the SNP campaign to expose alleged government corruption involves questioning what has become of all the overseas aid supposed to have been coming into Montenegro in recent years. The SNP newspaper Dan has run a major series on this, supported up by statements by Predrag Bulatovic in parliament. It is true that the effects of much of the aid are not visible to the average citizen, and the government is caught between asserting that there has been plenty of aid (so showing that its policy of international engagement is successful, but remaining vulnerable to accusations of "where is it?") and between its own criticisms that donors have been slow to implement their promises (so fuelling SNP accusations that Western donors are poor friends). However it is also true that the SNP accusations try to have it both ways, saying in effect (a) the West gives no aid, only promises; (b) the government are corruptly misusing Western aid to win the local elections.25 <br><br>An immense fuss was created by President Djukanovic's decision to send Easter greetings to the Montenegro Orthodox Church as well as its Serbian counterpart, provoking an apoplectic response from the latter and leading pro-Yugoslavia parties to accuse him of promoting separatism - if he had not sent both greetings he would have come under equal attack from the separatists. This is a no-win issue for Djukanovic: his government and even his own DPS party are divided on this issue but it is unlikely on its own to have influenced many voters. <br><br>The SNP and its allies are still laying immense stress on the "NATO aggression" against Yugoslavia in 1999, which leads them into passionate criticism of the United States. No one doubts that they feel very strongly about this, and that it is a rallying-point for supporters, but it is not gaining any new votes. <br><br>C. Local Issues<br>Individual issues are discussed above in the sections on the two municipalities. A further question is, how large a part have these local issues played in the election campaign and the minds of voters? The campaign in Herceg-Novi seems more likely to be influenced by local factors than that in Podgorica. There are a number of clear local issues, even if these are not actually soluble at local level: how to get and pay for water, what kind of tourists to try to attract, and privatisation of the Simo Milosevic Institute (section III above). In Podgorica the hottest local issues seem to be traffic and parking <br><br>D. Personalities<br>In a campaign without contentious issues, personalities may make the difference. This helps the DZB because of the "Milo" factor: apart from committed SNP and LSCG supporters, the public at large has great respect for the President.26 Prime Minister Vujanovic also has a good reputation, and Mugosa, the DZB candidate for mayor of Podgorica, is a popular local personality. With these strengths the DZB will be disappointed and surprised if it does not retain at least its 1998 vote, and will be hoping for outright victory at least in Podgorica. <br><br>The SNP does not have the personalities to give popular appeal to its message. It has staked everything on nominating Predrag Bulatovic for Podgorica: he is the SNP politician with the best image among uncommitted voters, and if he cannot attract new votes it is safe to say that no SNP politician could. A good result would be a personal triumph for him, but a bad result could not be blamed on him. Behind the inevitable public calls of foul play and rigging which would attend an SNP defeat, a more likely focus of discontent is the party leader Momir Bulatovic, who is already deeply unpopular with neutrals and identified with the Belgrade establishment rather than with Montenegro interests. <br><br>The Liberals face the same difficulty, that their leaders are loved within the party but not much outside. Their chances of increased support ironically ride on pro-independence sentiment, even though they are trying to run a campaign based on better and cleaner government. <br><br>The Belgrade Angle<br>Official Belgrade is also taking an interest in the election results. The natural hope of the ruling group around President Milosevic will be for an SNP victory: if the SNP is growing stronger then maybe the inconvenient Djukanovic government will fall through lack of popular support, offering the prospect of future SNP government in Montenegro, harmony between the republics at the federal level, and slightly simplifying the question of federal elections which ought to be held this year. This perhaps explains why JUL leader Mira Markovic and SRS leader Vojislav Seselj have joined forces with the SNP to help them gain victory - such "help" is not unambiguously helpful, as discussed above. Apart from this, the Serbian and federal authorities have not yet done much to interfere in the elections beyond sustaining the usual barrage of anti-Djukanovic comment in official media.27 The Belgrade authorities could publicly write off defeat for the SNP as DZB manipulation of voters' lists and media. Victory for the DZB would not be welcomed in Belgrade, but there is no sign yet that it would lead to any anti-Montenegro measures in addition to those already in force. <br><br>Bad relations between the federal army (VJ) and the Montenegro government provide an uneasy background to the campaign. Rumours of VJ exercises on the eve or day of the elections have been first asserted then denied, and VJ generals and Djukanovic continue to issue hostile statements - on Djukanovic's side this may be partly from a calculation that keeping alive fear of the VJ may keep wavering voters with the DZB. Meanwhile off-duty soldiers in uniform sit peacefully unarmed in street cafes, looking as if deliberately unthreatening. <br><br>Conclusion<br><br>Local elections in mid-term are often seen as an opportunity for voters to punish the government for the problems of life in general, and the results are not taken too seriously. That will not be the case in these two elections, where all parties accept that the result is of crucial importance for the immediate future of the whole of Montenegro. Whatever the results of these two campaigns, interpretation will be complicated by familiar problems: <br><br>Have the voters passed a verdict on the general performance of the government, or only on local issues and personalities? If the same trend result is observed in both elections this question will be easier to answer. The fact that Podgorica is at stake is relevant here, for the two municipalities together account for around 30 per cent of Montenegrin voters. But the elections remain local elections, and not formally a plebiscite upon the policies of the Montenegrin government. <br><br>Do the voters really care about the result - that is, are they taking the elections as seriously as the politicians and outside observers? Local elections are traditionally cursed with boredom from voters, and if many stay away then victory will simply go to the party best able to motivate its committed support. The size of the turn-out will be important in judging the meaning of the results. After such a pervasive campaign, anything under around 60 per cent would be a victory for apathy. <br><br>How can the SNP vote be analysed? Has the "Momir Bulatovic" coalition helped or harmed it, or merely resulted in a neutral agglomeration of the votes which would naturally have gone to the coalition partners anyway? <br>Nonetheless the results will be eagerly scrutinised at home and abroad for signs about which way public opinion in Montenegro is tending. For this reason it can fairly be said that these elections are much more important to the professional politicians than to the people. In the absence of any other indications except contested opinion polls, these two elections will be the only formal commentary upon two years of DZB government in Montenegro. They will be a very imperfect commentary, but will nevertheless become a basis of political debate for the rest of the year. It is thus useful to speculate on the consequences of various possible outcomes: <br><br>The government needs as a minimum to retain its 1998 level of support. Defeat in Herceg-Novi would be bad but could be survived; defeat in Podgorica would be much tougher to explain away. It could try to attribute a bad performance to local factors, but it would be damaged, vulnerable to accusations from the opposition that it clings to power without popular support. Early general elections would enter the political debate: such an appeal would be resisted by the DZB majority in parliament, but even within the coalition (never a completely happy family) tensions could rise. On the other hand a good performance - better than the 1998 result, with either election won outright - would keep the government on track and strengthen the ruling coalition. <br><br>The SNP needs to win one election, preferably both. A narrow defeat in Podgorica would be honourable but even that would require an increase in the support given in 1998 to the combined opposition coalition partners. They will attribute any bad result to government manipulation of voters' lists and media but internally could enter a period of severe crisis: were the coalitions harmful, or is the SNP generally losing support? Even the leadership of Momir Bulatovic could come into question. But a good performance would give heart to the whole party and provide a platform for a call for general elections and a sustained attack upon the government's record. <br><br>The Liberals want to use the elections to prove they are a serious force growing in strength. Independence is not the main campaigning issue this time but its cause will be advanced if the LSCG does well. Their minimum objective is to continue to hold the balance of power in both places, but if they fail to increase their votes and seats they must regard their campaign as a failure. They can blame a bad result on government rigging, whether there is any or not, or the split within the Liberal family, and claim it does not affect the strength of the independence movement. But a good result for them will have its effect on the SDP too (remembering that the SDP is running alone in Herceg-Novi), and thus may influence the governing coalition a little more towards calling the referendum so long discussed. <br><br>Two elections for local authorities are a fragile base for such sweeping claims by any party. But these elections have dominated the political agenda in the spring of 2000, and have taken on a significance out of proportion to the importance of the powers at stake, almost as though a mock general election were in fact taking place. For better or for worse, these elections will set the tone of political debate in Montenegro for the rest of the year. <br><br>Prediction<br>In 1997-1999 there was a trend of increasing support for the anti-isolation and pro-Western agenda of the DPS under president Djukanovic. The 1998 election established clearly that Djukanovic had successfully carried the electorate with him away from Momir Bulatovic, so that since then Djukanovic has represented the Establishment, meaning the perceived natural government. This is a powerful built-in advantage, and an outside observer has no evidence that that support is waning. On the contrary, the SNP's pro-Yugoslavia message suffers a new blow with every assassination in Belgrade, every new move by Milosevic to strengthen his hold on power. The Liberal recovery after their disaster in the 1998 elections seems to have stabilised for now. Polls indicate that few voters are moving between the three main party blocks, so the campaign is for a relatively small number of uncommitted or apathetic voters. <br><br>In Podgorica the government does not need many extra votes to win the municipality. It has the momentum to achieve this, but the Albanian vote may go nationalist, and it may be a close thing whether the Liberals still hold the balance of power. <br><br>In Herceg-Novi a more volatile (because smaller) electorate is harder to call. The SNP has a solid block of support but is not attracting new voters. No-one knows how the nationalist vote (SNP allies) is holding up but the NATO bombings of 1999 do not seem to have strengthened it. Younger voters, to judge from turn-out at public meetings, favour the DZB/SDP and LSCG. The result could be a win for no-one: neither government nor SNP coalition clearly dominant, with the Liberals (and SDP) holding the balance with representation which has increased, but not by as much as they hoped. <br><br>Appendices<br><br>Glossary of Political Party Acronyms and Alignments<br><br>Government bloc: <br>DZB "Da Zivimo Bolje" (For a Better Life) - Montenegro's governing coalition, comprising:<br>DPS Democratic Party of Socialists (under President Milo Djukanovic)<br>SDP Social Democratic Party (Zarko Rakcevic)<br>NS People's Party (Dragan Soc)<br><br>Pro-Yugoslavia bloc ("Yugoslavia - Momir Bulatovic" coalition):<br>SNP Socialist People's Party (Momir Bulatovic)<br>JUL Yugoslav United Left (Mira Markovic, wife of Slobodan Milosevic)<br>SRS Serb Radical Party (Vojislav Seselj)<br>SNS Serb People's Party (Zelidrag Nikcevic)<br>KPJ Communist Party of Yugoslavia<br>NKPJ New Communist Party of Yugoslavia<br>RSL NP Left Radical Party - Nikola Pasic<br><br>Pro-independence (but mutually hostile):<br>LSCG Liberal Alliance (Miodrag Zivkovic)<br>LDP Liberal Democratic Party (Bozidar Nikolic)<br><br>Albanians in coalition "Zajedno za Malesiju" in Podgorica only:<br>DUA Democratic Union of Albanians (Ferhat Dinosha)<br>DS Democratic Alliance (Mehmet Bardhi)<br><br>Minor Serb parties: (Srpska Sloga)<br>SDS Serb Democratic Party<br>SNRS Serb People's Radical Party<br><br>Independent Communist:<br>SKJ/KCG Yugoslav Communist Alliance/Montenegro Communists``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xICG: Montenegro's Local Elections: Testing the National Temperature``x959853696,52608,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia, May 31 (Reuters) - Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic's security adviser was shot dead on Wednesday by an unknown gunman in the capital of the pro-Western Yugoslav republic. <br>The body of Goran Zugic lay in the yard of a high-rise apartment building near the city's main marketplace. Police had cordoned off the area but declined any comment. <br><br>One person standing nearby said he had heard fire from an automatic weapon at around 11 p.m. (2100 GMT) and had come out to find Zugic, who lived in the apartment block, lying dead near his car. <br><br>Several top officials and underworld figures have been assassinated in mysterious circumstances in Serbia this year, including President Slobodan Milosevic's Defence Minister Pavle Bulatovic, a Montenegrin shot dead in a Belgrade restaurant in February. <br><br>But it was the first such killing in Montenegro, Serbia's increasingly reluctant junior partner in the two-republic Yugoslav Federation led by Milosevic. <br><br>Djukanovic, who began edging Montenegro away from Milosevic's influence after he was elected Montenegrin president in 1996, is the Serb strongman's most powerful rival. <br><br>There was no way of telling immediately whether Zugic's killing was politically motivated. But it is likely to raise tensions between Belgrade and Podgorica, which are already high. <br><br>Djukanovic has regularly warned of a possible coup against him and threatened to hold a referendum on independence if Milosevic refuses to reform the Serbia-dominated federation. <br><br>Milosevic's government in Belgrade accuses Djukanovic of acting on Western orders to try to break up what remains of Yugoslavia. <br><br>Western leaders, fearful of another Balkan conflict, have advised Djukanovic not to push ahead with an independence vote, while warning Milosevic not to provoke tensions in Montenegro. <br><br>On June 11, the republic is set to hold local elections in two towns, Podgorica and Herzeg Novi. They are seen as a test of strength between Djukanovic's pro-Western government and its main opponents, who are backed by Milosevic. <br><br>Zugic, 39 this year, had headed the police force in the coastal town of Herzeg Novi before joining the presidential team. He was married with a daughter and son. <br><br>"This is terrible. It's the first time something like this has happened in Montenegro," said a woman at the murder scene. <br><br>Another woman living nearby said she had heard two rounds of muffled automatic gunfire -- first two or three bullets then four or five. <br><br>"The gunman had short, dark hair," said a young man who had said he had seen the assassin leave on foot.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xREUTERS : Montenegrin president's security aide shot dead``x959853718,45019,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia, June 1 (Reuters) - The murder of the security adviser to pro-Western Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic sent shock waves through the volatile Yugoslav republic on Thursday. <br>Goran Zugic, considered one of Djukanovic's closest and most reliable allies, was shot dead on Wednesday evening in the courtyard of his apartment block in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica. <br><br>The murder followed a series of mysterious assassinations of officials and underworld figures in Serbia, the dominant republic in the Yugoslav Federation led by Slobodan Milosevic. But it was the first such killing in Montenegro. <br><br>"We are terrified by the murder of Goran Zugic," Miroslav Vickovic, leader of a liberal opposition party, told Reuters. <br><br>"We are terrified but not surprised. For a long time we have been warning that Podgorica will inevitably became a second Belgrade. Both Serbia and Montenegro have lost the thin line between politics and crime," said Vickovic, president of the Liberal Alliance of Montenegro. <br><br>Police and government officials declined immediate comment on the assassination, which an eyewitness said had been carried out by a lone gunman with an automatic weapon. <br><br>Some people saw a connection with Milosevic's ruling coalition in Belgrade, which is trying to reassert itself by taking part in local elections in Montenegro due on June 11. <br><br>"This just had to happen when JUL arrived in Montenegro," a man in his 60s told Reuters, referring to the neo-Communist Yugoslav Left party led by Milosevic's powerful wife that has allied with Djukanovic's main, leftist opponents for the vote. <br><br>Officials in Belgrade were not immediately available for comment. <br><br>ZUGIC LED POLICE DURING PRO-MILOSEVIC PROTESTS <br><br>The June 11 local elections in Podgorica and Herzeg Novi are seen as a test of strength between Djukanovic's pro-Western government and its main opponents, who are backed by Milosevic. <br><br>Before becoming national security adviser in 1998, Zugic was in charge of the pro-Djukanovic police force in Podgorica during violent demonstrations in January that year by pro-Milosevic groups seeking to stop Djukanovic from coming to power. <br><br>Djukanovic began edging Montenegro away from Milosevic's influence after he was elected Montenegrin president and is now is the Serb strongman's most powerful rival. <br><br>There was no way of telling immediately whether Zugic's killing was politically motivated. But it is likely to raise already high tensions between Belgrade and Podgorica. <br><br>Djukanovic has regularly warned of a possible coup against him and threatened to hold a referendum on independence if Milosevic refuses to reform the Serbia-dominated federation. <br><br>Milosevic's government in Belgrade accuses Djukanovic of acting on Western orders to try to break up what remains of Yugoslavia. <br><br>Western leaders, fearful of another Balkan conflict, have advised Djukanovic not to push ahead with an independence vote, while warning Milosevic not to provoke tensions in Montenegro. <br><br>"This is terrible. It's the first time something like this has happened in Montenegro," said a woman at the murder scene. <br><br>Another woman living nearby said she had heard two rounds of muffled automatic gunfire -- first two or three bullets then four or five. "The gunman had short, dark hair," said a young man who had said he had seen the assassin leave on foot. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro shocked by killing of president's aide ``x959933711,95555,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Two weeks after seizing a nongovernment TV station, Slobodan Milosevic's administration lashed out again Thursday by taking over an opposition-run public transport company in the capital. <br>The decision to take the Belgrade City Transport company from the hands of the opposition-run municipal authorities followed a four-day strike by private carriers which brought public transport in the capital to a virtual halt. <br><br>"The incapable and irresponsible municipal government in Belgrade has blocked all vital public services in the capital and created a complete chaos," a government statement on the takeover said. <br><br>"The total collapse of public transport in Belgrade has jeopardized living and working conditions of all the citizens, as well as functioning of enterprises, schools, hospitals," said the statement carried by the official Tanjug news agency. <br><br>The takeover was part of a campaign by President Milosevic's government to discredit the opposition ahead of municipal elections due by the end of the year. <br><br>Two weeks ago, the government seized Belgrade's main Studio B television and B2-92 radio. The move triggered few days of protests but also revived traditional differences between Serbia's opposition leaders who could not agree on what to do in response. <br><br>The mild response to the media takeover obviously encouraged Milosevic to move against the transport firm. <br><br>In a sign of further rift among Milosevic's opponents, key opposition leader Zoran Djindjic admitted Thursday that "opposition unity so far has been mostly rhetorical, and even that has been jeopardized." <br><br>Serbia's opposition leaders _ formally united in their struggle to oust Milosevic _ have been unable to mount a credible challenge to the autocratic president, who has moved to silence critics and independent media. <br><br>"The regime is continuing with violence which is destroying the legal order," warned Belgrade's deputy mayor Milan Bozic. "We fear this government act could have much more serious consequences then it seems at first." <br><br>Announcing the takeover of public transport company, Milosevic's spokesman Nikola Sainovic said "the work (of the transport company) involved a lot of criminal deeds." <br><br>The opposition took control over Belgrade and dozens of other Serbian cities at municipal elections in 1996. When Milosevic's allies tried to annul the opposition victories, they triggered more than three months of street protests. <br><br>In the past four years, Milosevic's government has sought to undermine the opposition rule in Belgrade and other cities. The capital's private carriers went on strike last Monday after the government refused to allow a rise in prices of the transport tickets. <br><br>For four days Belgrade residents hitchhiked or competed for available taxis to get to work or return home. Shortly after the government session on Thursday, the private carriers were back in the streets. <br><br>Also Thursday, an inspection team was dispatched to the offices of the Belgrade's own transport company which has been brought to the verge of bankruptcy after years of Serbia's economic decline and the lack of funds to maintain vehicles or import spare parts from abroad. <br><br>In Yugoslavia's other republic of Montenegro, a senior official accused Milosevic's federal government of complicity in the slaying of the national security adviser in the republic's pro-independence leadership. <br><br>Rifat Rastoder, a deputy speaker of Montenegro's parliament, said the killing Wednesday of Goran Zugic was an attempt to create conditions in Montenegro that would allow Belgrade to impose a state of emergency. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic's government delivers another blow to foes``x959933736,52724,``x``x
``xGillian Sandford in Belgrade <br>Friday June 2, 2000 <br><br>Tension was high in Montenegro yesterday after a security adviser and close friend of the Yugoslav republic's pro-western president was assassinated outside his home. <br>Police roadblocks throughout the capital failed to catch the gunman who ambushed Goran Zugic, 39, late on Wednesday night outside his home in the capital, Podgorica. <br><br>It was the first Serbia-style assassination in the country and comes ahead of crucial elections in the towns of Herceg Novi and Podgorica that are viewed as a vital test of the pro-west and pro-Belgrade forces in the republic. <br><br>The murder of Zugic is a blow to the president, Milo Djukanovic. Zugic was one of his closest friends, and was best man at his wedding. <br><br>A gunman with an automatic weapon shot Zugic in the head a number of times at 11pm on Wednesday night. Police sealed off the area soon after and have declared that they will try their utmost to solve the killing. <br><br>"It was a classic politically motivated assassination with all the characteristics of a series of murders in Serbia," said Rifat Rastoder, deputy speaker of Montenegro's parliament. <br><br>"It is a direct and desperate attempt to transfer Serbia's shotgun policies to Montenegro and create conditions for the imposition of a state of emergency and dictatorship" by [Yugoslav president Slobodan] Milosevic's regime, Mr Rastoder added. <br><br>Mr Djukanovic is at odds with Mr Milosevic. Montenegro is seeking autonomy or outright independence from Yugoslavia because of Mr Milosevic's autocratic policies. <br><br>Montenegro's opposition leader, Miroslav Vickovic, said that in both Serbia and Montenegro "the thin line between politics and crime has disappeared". <br><br>In Serbia, the Milosevic administration yesterday took over a municipal bus company in the opposition-controlled capital. The decision to take away the Belgrade City Transport company from the hands of the municipal authorities followed a four-day strike by private carriers which brought public transport in the capital to a virtual halt. <br><br>A government statement on the takeover carried on the official Tanjug news agency said: "The total collapse of public transport in Belgrade has jeopardised living and working conditions of all the citizens, as well as the functioning of enterprises, schools and hospitals." <br><br>The takeover is part of an ongoing campaign by Mr Milosevic's government to discredit the opposition ahead of Serbia's municipal elections, due by the end of the year. <br><br>The victims of gangland-style killings in Serbia this year include the warlord Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic; the defence minister, Pavle Bulatovic; the head of Yugoslav Airlines and a close ally of Mr Milosevic, Zika Petrovic; and a senior official of the ruling party, Bosko Perosevic. <br><br>According to the Belgrade daily Danas, Zugic was born in Montenegro but grew up in Bosnia and Herzegovina and was a police officer there before returning home in 1992. <br><br>He was made chief of police in Herceg Novi and in 1995 took up the same post in Podgorica. The elections there are to be held on June 11. <br><br>His death follows statements by officials of Montenegro's pro-Belgrade opposition party that Mr Milosevic would visit the small Yugoslav republic. <br><br>Few believe that will happen, but one analyst said the reports had destablised Montenegro because it highlighted the vulnerability of Mr Djukanovic's party's pro-western wing. It would be virtually impossible to arrest Mr Milosevic, he said, without triggering massive turmoil. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Killing of president's aide shakes Montenegro ``x959933767,17440,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>Belgrade was accused yesterday of masterminding Montenegro's first political murder after the senior security adviser to President Milo Djukanovic was shot on his doorstep with an automatic rifle. <br><br>The murder of Goran Zugic has heightened simmering political tensions between the governments of Mr Djukanovic and the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Until yesterday, police had remained silent on Wednesday night's assassination in Podgorica, described by the Montenegrin media as a "political killing". They quoted witnesses who saw a young man with short black hair flee on foot after the killing. <br><br>Montenegro, unlike Serbia its senior partner in the federal Yugoslav republic, had not experienced assassinations of prominent underworld or political personalities, regular events in Serbia. <br><br>The warlord Zeljko Raznatovic (Arkan) was killed in Belgrade in January, the defence minister, Pavle Bulatovic, the following month, the Yugoslav Airlines general manager Zika Petrovic in April and the leader of northern Vojvodina's provincial government, Bosko Perosevic, was shot in Novi Sad last month. Mr Milosevic's government blames the killings on its opponents, the "lackeys of the West" but the Serbian opposition has denied involvement. <br><br>Mr Bulatovic was in thepro-Milosevic opposition party in Montenegro. Rifat Rastoder, a deputy speaker, said his killing was "a classic politically motivated assassination with all the characteristics of the murders in Serbia". He added: "It is a direct and desperate attempt to transfer Serbia's shotgun policies to Montenegro and create conditions for the imposition of a state of emergency and dictatorship." <br><br>Tensions are high between Montenegro and Serbia over Mr Djukanovic's steps to move the republic towards autonomy, or even independences. Mr Milosevic's government has accused Mr Djukanovic of acting on Western orders to break up what remains of Yugoslavia. <br><br>The tiny republic of Montenegro has responded to the build-up of the Yugoslav Army by creating a stronger police force, highly loyal to Mr Djukanovic. Mr Zugic had served as head of police in the coastal town of Herceg Novi. <br><br>On 11 June, early local elections in Herceg Novi and in Podgorica are seen as a trial of strength between Mr Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists and the Socialist People's Party, which has the backing of Mr Milosevic. <br><br>Last Sunday, Socialist People's Party officials said Mr Milosevic had accepted an invitation to visit Montenegro. TMr Djukanovic's party called it as "political provocation". <br><br>In Belgrade, transport has been chaotic since Monday, when private bus owners went on strike over price caps imposed by the central government. The government said it is now taking control of transport from the city's opposition-led authorities. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Belgrade is accused of Montenegro murder ``x959933789,73415,``x``x
``xBy BARBARA CROSSETTE<br><br>UNITED NATIONS, June 2 -- The United Nations' chief war crimes prosecutor said today that there was no basis for a formal investigation into whether NATO committed war crimes during the bombing of Yugoslavia a year ago. <br>"Although some mistakes were made by NATO, I am very satisfied that there was no deliberate targeting of civilians or unlawful military targets by NATO during the bombing campaign," the prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte of Switzerland, told the Security Council. She said a detailed statement on her decision would be released as early as next week. <br><br>A parliamentary commission from Russia, Yugoslavia's strongest international supporter, and Western lawyers working for the Yugoslav government had brought allegations of NATO war crimes to the tribunal last year. Several rights groups have also raised questions about NATO attacks on civilian targets. <br><br>The 11-week NATO bombing campaign was intended to stop Yugoslav repression of Albanians in Kosovo, the Serbian province now under the administration of NATO and the United Nations. <br><br>Among the NATO actions taken to the Balkans tribunal by critics alleging war crimes were an airstrike on a passenger train crossing a targeted bridge; the bombing of a Serbian television center; killing of refugees in a convoy mistaken for soldiers; the use of cluster bombs that can fragment over a wide area, in one case hitting grounds of a hospital; and the use of depleted uranium in weapons. There were also more general allegations of genocide and deliberate environmental destruction. <br><br>"I am now able to announce my conclusion, following a full consideration of my team's assessment of all complaints and allegations, that there is no basis for opening an investigation into any of those allegations or into other incidents related to the NATO bombing," Ms. Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney general, told the council. She did not discuss the allegations themselves. <br><br>The Balkans war crimes tribunal, based in The Hague, has played down the importance of these charges since they were first made public late last year. Officials have said that the tribunal was formed to charge individuals, not institutions or organizations, with war crimes. NATO officials have answered or dismissed the charges, but have said errors were committed. <br><br>Among these they include the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. American officials subsequently said that the bombing was an accident resulting from the use of outdated maps and incorrect intelligence information, but China has rejected this explanation. <br><br>Ms. Del Ponte, also chief prosecutor of a war crimes tribunal for Rwanda, conducted only an informal study of the allegations against NATO, officials said. She has been more deeply involved in formal charges against Yugoslavia's president, Slobodan Milosevic, who was indicted by the tribunal last year. <br><br>But she told the council that she felt she had to examine the allegations against NATO because it was her "obligation and responsibility" to look into all complaints. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. War Crimes Prosecutor Declines to Investigate NATO``x960022155,96693,``x``x
``x<br><br>Russia: Will the Russian leader continue to shill for the Yugoslav dictator or back the Serb people and democracy? <br><br><br>By EDWARD P. JOSEPH<br><br> Is the new president of Russia a democrat or an autocrat? The recent crackdown in Serbia provides a vital opportunity for President Clinton to find out during the summit with Vladimir V. Putin. <br> Facing a third major internal challenge to his rule, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has responded with unprecedented ruthlessness. Media have been crippled, universities shut down and journalists and members of the opposition arrested. The strategy appears to be working. In April, more than 100,000 Serbs protested the regime, and a student-led resistance seemed poised to evolve into a mass movement. In late May, barely 20,000 turned out. <br> Nevertheless, Milosevic is by no means assured of remaining in power. Political parties, opposition municipal governments and independent media survive, even in weakened form. The treasury reportedly is again thin on foreign reserves, which Milosevic depends on to buy police loyalty and to shore up the currency. And his indictment by the Hague tribunal guarantees his international isolation. <br> Milosevic needs friends, and his most reliable one these days is Putin. Before he put his foot down on dissent, Milosevic dispatched two top ministers to Moscow. Buoyed by pledges from Putin's government, the crackdown began shortly after their return to Belgrade. The timing of the visit was no coincidence. (Russia later apologized for failing to arrest the Yugoslav defense minister, who also is indicted for war crimes.) The next week, Russia boycotted a major meeting of states overseeing the Bosnia peace agreement in solidarity with banned Yugoslavia. <br> Throughout the Yugoslav drama, Russia has played apologist and protector of "misunderstood" or endangered Serbs locked in ethnic conflicts. But no such pretext exists for Moscow's current shilling for Milosevic. His conflict this time is not with Bosnian or Albanian Muslims, but with his own people--fellow Orthodox Slavs. And Russia's support for Serbia, unlike its policy in Chechnya, is not an "internal matter" insulated from scrutiny. Bereft of cover, Putin must either stand with the Serb people or with their disastrous dictator. <br> Clinton should ask him to choose. The decision is hard for Putin, but not because of any sentiment of "Slavic brotherhood." Moscow backs Milosevic precisely because he is a thorn in the side of Washington. He keeps NATO off-balance and out of Yugoslavia. Keen to control the pace and extent of further NATO expansion, Moscow leverages its influence over Belgrade to get its voice heard. <br> Not even Milosevic can last forever, and Putin is shrewd enough to hedge his bets. He did the minimum for visiting Serb opposition leaders last week, permitting them a modest reception. But the minimum is not good enough. Moscow must insist that Milosevic cease all intimidation of independent media and opposition figures, as well as hold fair elections. If Russia "was, is and will remain a European country," as Putin stated to European Union leaders, then it should take a firm stand against Serbian repression. <br> Doing so neither weakens Russia's role as protector of Orthodox Yugoslavs nor turns it into a servant of the West. Ironically, backing the forces of democratic change could heighten Moscow's influence in post-Milosevic Yugoslavia. Politically, Putin can afford it. Russia's pro-Serb Duma overwhelmingly voted him sweeping new powers. Further, standing with the Serbian opposition would define Putin as the Russian leader determined to join in defense of fundamental freedoms agreed to in the 1975 Helsinki accords on human rights. This would be a bonus for Putin, who is suspect for his own centralizing and anti-democratic tendencies. <br> Confronting Putin squarely on Serbia also will serve notice of Washington's determination at a time when Putin and Milosevic may doubt NATO consensus and EU toughness. Indeed, failing to press Putin on the issue could reinforce the perception of hesitancy, encouraging Milosevic to try out his options. He could go on "good behavior" to try and bamboozle Europe into easing sanctions and letting him continue to rule. Or he may resort to his favorite ploy: provoking a crisis so as to turn all internal opponents into "traitors." <br> Clinton should disabuse Putin--and through him, his client--of any question about our resolve or our willingness to entertain any option but Milosevic's departure, preferably through fair, constitutional elections. The two leaders may come to an impasse over Serbia, but that is no reason to skirt the issue. Better a clear statement of difference than a fuzzy compromise. A healthy U.S.-Russian relationship can only develop if unclouded by illusions. And the more transparent Russian intentions toward the Balkans become, the less effective Russian advocacy for Milosevic's cause will be. <br> At the summit, Clinton should let Putin choose what his Russia stands for: dictatorship or democracy. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLA Times: His Stand on Milosevic Can Define Putin ``x960202278,63924,``x``x
``xBERLIN (AP) _ Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met Saturday with President Milo Djukanovic of Montenegro, signaling U.S. support for the smaller of the two republics that make up Yugoslavia. <br>Albright offered her sympathy for the slaying of Goran Zugic, the national security adviser in the independence-minded republic, a senior U.S. official said. <br><br>It was the first slaying of a prominent Montenegrin official after a series of high-profile killings in Serbia, and Rifat Rastoder, a deputy speaker of Montenegro's parliament, has accused the Yugoslav government of complicity. <br><br>Djukanovic is at odds with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and is seeking autonomy or outright independence from Belgrade. <br><br>Albright and Djukanovic also discussed Yugoslav actions against the media and the general situation in the area, the State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbright meets with President Djukanovic in show of support``x960202295,70055,``x``x
``x<br>Peter Beaumont in Pristina <br>Monday June 5, 2000 <br><br>The United Nations mission in Kosovo was plunged into new difficulties yesterday as Serb leaders withdrew from the province's interim administrative body and demanded effective self-rule in their own strongholds, in protest at killings of Serb civilians by Kosovan Albanian extremists. <br>As the security council prepares to meet next week to review the first 12 months of the mission in Kosovo, Serb leaders announced that they would be sending a delegation to New York to demand amendments to resolution 1244 - the mandate for the UN effort - to protect Serb rights in Kosovo and allow the establishment "of functional self-rule" in areas occupied by Serbs. <br><br>In addition, moderate Serb leaders say that they have already asked European officials in the region to send anti-terrorism experts to back up the Kosovo protection force and the UN's international police force. <br><br>The statement by the Serb national council, meeting at the ancient monastery of Gracanica, comes amid disillusionment among many officials serving with the UN mission over the resurgence of ethnic violence and organised crime in Kosovo, and the apparent unwillingness of senior officials to take on the ethnic Albanian leaders suspected of involvement in both. <br><br>The Serbs' decision is doubly embarrassing for the UN mission, which is preparing to mark the first anniversary of its mandate this weekend and has been making strenuous efforts to persuade Serbs to share its vision of a multi-ethnic democratic society. <br><br>But the Serb community is angry about an eruption of violence in the last week that has left eight of their members dead in four incidents. <br><br>The most recent took place early last Friday, when a car hit an anti-tank mine which had been planted overnight on a British-controlled road a few miles from Pristina. Two men died, and a woman and two children were injured. <br><br>The decision to withdraw from the Albanian dominated administrative council is also a blow for Bernard Kouchner, the head of the UN mission, who had recently managed to persuade moderate Serbs, backed by the Serbian Orthodox church, to attend the council as observers prior to full involvement. <br><br>It comes amid a campaign for voter registration for the region's first local elections, scheduled for the autumn. While more than 250,000 ethnic Albanians have been persuaded to register, only a few thousand of the province's remaining 95,000 Serbs - from a community originally numbering 250,000 - have registered to vote. <br><br>Following the meeting yesterday, Father Sava, a moderate Serb leader who has backed Serb involvement in Kosovo's nascent democratic process, indicated that many Serb leaders wanted to end cooperation with the UN, rather than suspending their involvement until the security council meets. <br><br>"The international community has got to decide whether Kosovo is going to be a lawless place or move towards being a democratic society," he said. "At the moment, the international community is not really prepared to take the lead against Albanian terrorism or confront the problem of organised crime." <br><br>He added: "We are aware of the efforts that are being made to protect Serb people, particularly in the British sector which seems determined to work in an even-handed way. But in the last two months of our cooperation with the UN administration we have seen a resurgence of organised crime all over Kosovo." <br><br>The rise in the violence and intimidation against the remaining Serb community comes despite intense efforts to make Serbs feel secure. Many Serbian villages south of Pristina have been turned into virtual fortresses, protected by checkpoints, watch towers and constant helicopter and ground patrols. <br><br>However, despite a ratio of one peacekeeping soldier for every three Serbs in Kosovo, the Nato-led troops have been powerless to prevent the latest outbreak of violence. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Serbs spark crisis for UN in Kosovo ``x960202318,35934,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Steve Crawshaw <br><br><br>4 June 2000 <br><br>Miroslav Filipovic, a 49-year-old journalist from Kraljevo in southern Serbia, is currently in a military prison awaiting trial on charges that could land him with a sentence of up to 15 years. His crime? In a report for the respected Institute of War and Peace Reporting, he revealed details of unhappiness among Yugoslav army officers about atrocities committed by their forces in Kosovo last year. The IWPR report – published as part of its online newsletter, Balkan Crisis Report – describes their anger at what they had witnessed. <br><br>Mr Filipovic's story, which was also published in the Independent, caused particular offence, with its talk of "sickening atrocities". Worst of all from the regime's point of view, the evidence came from an internal army report, showing that many officers were shocked at what they had seen. According to informants, the research was aimed at gauging morale, at a time when President Slobodan Milosevic seems to be weighing up the possibility of launching yet another war, this time against the small, pro-Western republic of Montenegro. <br><br>When Mr Filipovic was called in for questioning, the civilian court could find no reason to hold him – so he was handed over to the military court. That court announced last week that it is holding him pending further "investigations". His chances of receiving a fair trial are not high. Mr Filipovic, who also reports for Agence France Presse and Belgrade daily Danas, is accused of "collecting data important for the country's defence and providing them to a foreign organisation which does intelligence work" – in other words, the IWPR. But as he points out: "If one wants to spy, one does not publish under one's byline." <br><br>Traditionally, Serbia has had none of the straightforward censorship – a sour-faced man in a suit, flicking through the page proofs – of the kind that existed throughout eastern Europe before the collapse of Communism. Instead, journalists who put their head above the parapet can do so – at their own risk. It is only then that they are shot down – sometimes literally, as with newspaper editor Slavko Curuvija, who was assassinated last year. To nobody's surprise, the killers were never found. <br><br>The regime has sharply turned up the heat in recent weeks, even as protesters have again come out on the streets. Security troops have occupied the offices of the opposition television station Studio B and of Radio B2-92 (a reborn B-92, a popular radio station forced off the airwaves during the war). Vojislav Seselj, the quasi-fascist deputy prime minister, said that the TV station had been "transmitting calls for the violent overthrow of the legally elected government". <br><br>The authorities have been especially unsettled by growing support for Otpor ("Resistance"), a student movement, which is popular not least because it is unconnected with the leaders of the opposition parties, whose bickering among themselves alienates many potential supporters. <br><br>One of the regime's favoured techniques for keeping the media out of its business has been to find legal excuses – an alleged problem with a tenancy agreement, or a "technical problem" – to close a newspaper or radio station. What is new is a spate of legal actions: three papers and a dozen TV and radio stations have been forced to close after losing expensive libel cases brought by government officials. <br><br>The Beta news agency received a hefty fine after reporting a statement by Otpor calling for the information minister to reveal the identity of the killers of Mr Curuvija. <br><br>The aim of the current crackdown seems to be to make it impossible for people across Serbia to know how much opposition there is in different parts of the country. When it is quiet, the regime leaves the media unharrassed. Journalist Gordana Igric, now associate editor at IWPR, argues: "It's definitely worse than before. Now there's no day and no place where they don't arrest somebody." <br><br>The continuing defiance of journalists is particularly heartening at a time when much of Serb society lives in apathetic despair. In a future democratic Serbia, Miroslav Filipovic and his colleagues may be recognised as heroes . Even now, it is clear that locking him up can do the regime little good. Nor do the bullying tactics appear to have much effect, even where they hurt most. Mr Filipovic has two student children, a son and a daughter. Both of them hope to be journalists, too. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independet: Milosevic increases intimidation of opponents and gags on press ``x960202337,50014,``x``x
``xGordana Igric risks her life returning to Pristina, where speaking the wrong language can be a fatal mistake being Serbian, or even Bulgarian, can get you murdered <br><br>6 June 2000 <br><br>A column of vehicles is stuck for hours on the Kosovo-Macedonia border. Hamdi, an ethnic Albanian taxi-driver from Macedonia, keeps harking back to the good old days of the former Yugoslavia, of Tito and the times "when those foreigners didn't spark quarrels among us". He uses a language we both speak – Serbian. <br><br>Yet when he parks his car in front of Pristina's Grand hotel his lack of English and my uncertain fluency in Albanian are threats to our lives. <br><br>Hamdi knows speaking Serbian here could attract the attention of young Albanians gathered at the town centre. Someone in the long column of taxis could hear him, remember him and brand him a traitor. <br><br>The day before I decided to come here, young Albanians stopped a car in Pristina to ask the driver for identification. When they found he was Serb he was killed instantly. One Bulgarian UN worker foolishly responded to: "What time is it?" from young Albanians in Bulgarian, a language dangerously similar to Serbian. He was murdered. So, that's why Hamdi, crimson with embarrassment, whispers words of farewell. <br><br>In recent years, I was one of the people whose job was finding victims and witnesses to crimes by Serbian police. They searched me regularly at their checkpoints as a traitor and their Albanian victims mistrusted me for being Serbian. <br><br>In the centre of Pristina, at first glance everything looks the same. Even the staff of the Grand, a former centre of Serbian journalists and police informants, wear the same old-fashioned black uniforms. <br><br>This time I have to mask my Serbian identity. I sleep in the room of my English colleague, who arranged things so I did not have to show my red Yugoslav passport and compromising name. <br><br>When I use the phone at the reception I speak English. But the taxi drivers and shopkeepers know me, and my whole being rebels against the new madness. I was embroiled in my private battle for two weeks to travel here, as I made my preparations for securing in advance a flat and a driver. <br><br>Nearly all my friends and colleagues told me the trip was madness. The K-For peacekeeping force refused to grant me security, as if this was not the basic task of these troops. <br><br>Three times I called the mobile phone of my former driver from Pristina, who had driven me so many times. Each time he answered and immediately hung up on hearing my voice. <br><br>Later, when I got to Pristina, he sent me a message of apology – urging me not to get angry, as he could not dare answer in Serbian while he had a passenger in his taxi. Probably the truth was that he could not really accept to be my driver, out of fear. <br><br>Where should I stay? I suggested to an Albanian ex-colleague that I bring a sleeping bag and sleep in the office. He refused awkwardly. Someone would find out, he said, and throw a bomb into the office. <br><br>I opted for the most unpalatable choice. I phoned a close friend who had stayed in my house in Belgrade many times. I had the uneasy feeling I was "collecting payment" for that friendly gesture and getting him deeper into danger. I told him I was coming and wanted to see him. I said I had nowhere to sleep. Silence greeted me. <br><br>A couple of days later, when I met him in a Pristina restaurant, he told me with an unnatural expression that he did not wish to live in this city. And that he was humiliated. <br><br>The same expression, a seal of shame about what your national community is doing in your name, was one I carried for a long time in Kosovo. <br><br><br>Gordana Igric works for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : A word out of place costs lives in Pristina ``x960277055,66933,``x``x
``xLISBON (Reuters) - Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said Monday the killing of one of his top advisers pointed to mounting pressure by the Yugoslav government of Slobodan Milosevic against his pro-Western policies. <br>While he stopped short of openly blaming Milosevic or his allies for the murder of Goran Zugic, gunned down outside his home in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica last Wednesday, Djukanovic said the death was clearly politically motivated. <br><br>"It is not only my impression but the impression of the general public in Montenegro that this was a political murder," he told a news conference after meeting Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama. <br><br>"This (the killing), and not only this, leads us to conclude that the repertory of destructive measures against Montenegro will not only go on, but will become enhanced," he said through an interpreter. <br><br>Montenegro, the reluctant partner of the far larger Serbia in the Yugoslav federation, faces local elections later this month widely seen as a test of strength between Djukanovic's government and backers of Milosevic in Montenegro. <br><br>But despite the efforts of the Yugoslav authorities, who in turn accuse the Montenegrin government of being a puppet of the West, Djukanovic said he would not be deflected from his pro-democratic, pro-European stance. <br><br>He reaffirmed that he was ready to call a referendum on independence unless Milosevic agreed to institute democratic reforms in the federation. But he set no deadline, saying Montenegro was prepared to be patient. <br><br>"We think time is on our side. We do not want to make any rash move and provoke Milosevic into a fifth Balkan war," he said, referring to the series of conflicts over the past decade that have shrunk the territory of the former communist state. <br><br>Djukanovic, who was visiting Portugal in its role as current president of the European Union, said that while the EU had stepped up assistance to his struggling republic, more was needed. <br><br>"It is very important that Europe's support should be generous and enhanced," he said. <br><br>In particular, the president said Montenegro needed the cooperation of international financial institutions, such as the European Investment Bank (EIB). <br><br>Gama noted that the EU had recently increased the flow of financing to Montenegro and was also studying how to make it easier for the EIB to raise its lending.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegrin leader warns of more Serbian pressure``x960277075,67208,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- After three years of virtual independence, Montenegro faces elections that will measure the strength of the Yugoslav republic's pro-Western leadership and its rivals who support Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>The test comes Sunday when voters in the capital of Podgorica and coastal town of Herceg Novi choose municipal officials. Although the elections are local, the outcome will have major implications for all of Yugoslavia since one-third of Montenegro's voters live in the two cities. <br><br>A strong showing by President Milo Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists would reaffirm popular support for his pro-Western policies and solidify his grip on power despite opposition from Milosevic and his allies in Montenegro. <br><br>Djukanovic faces an intense challenge from the Socialist People's Party, headed by Yugoslavia's prime minister and Milosevic ally, Momir Bulatovic. A strong showing by Bulatovic's party would raise questions whether Djukanovic can resist pressure from Belgrade or continue policies which have made Montenegro all but independent of Yugoslavia. <br><br>More is at stake than simply mayoral and city council posts. <br><br>``This is the right time to get rid of this government of traitors,'' Bulatovic said at a recent rally. He accused Western powers of ``trying to destroy the historic brotherhood of the Montenegrin and Serbian people.'' <br><br>Since taking office in 1998, Djukanovic has steered a difficult course between Montenegrins who remain loyal to Belgrade and those who want the republic of 600,000 people to declare full independence. <br><br>Both sides have their own armed forces. Djukanovic controls the republic's 20,000-member police force, which is equipped with an array of weaponry. The pro-Milosevic Yugoslav armed forces maintain an army group in Montenegro along with naval forces since Montenegro is Yugoslavia's only outlet to the Adriatic Sea. <br><br>Those troops, estimated at 25,000, constitute the most important remaining symbol of federal authority, albeit a strong one. <br><br>While federal army troops rarely venture outside the barracks, the pro-Djukanovic police are always present on the streets, stopping cars and checking identity papers of anybody remotely suspected of being a possible troublemaker sent by Belgrade. <br><br>Those measures did not help Djukanovic's top security adviser, Zoran Zugic, who was shot dead last week outside his apartment in Podgorica. No arrests have been announced, but many Montenegrins suspect Milosevic's regime played a role. <br><br>Within days of the assassination, Djukanovic met with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who reiterated American support to his government. <br><br>Meanwhile, the election campaign has brought out hardline supporters from both the pro and anti-Belgrade camps. The rhetoric suggests that the two camps are so far apart that they may be irreconcilable. <br><br>``Yugoslavia is dead,'' says Miomir Mugosa, Djukanovic's close aide and his party's candidate for Podgorica mayor. ``We are not separatists. We simply cannot tie our future to the war crimes suspect, to the man notorious for spreading death and destruction.'' <br><br>The pro-Milosevic camp ridicules Djukanovic's promises of a ``better life'' for Montenegrins and his links to foreign governments. <br><br>``It has been a better life, but only for a small majority in the government and their clans,'' says Predrag Bulatovic, the pro-Belgrade camp's candidate for Podgorica mayor. He is no relation to Prime Minister Bulatovic. <br><br>The mayoral candidate Bulatovic says that the fact that international sanctions against Yugoslavia do not apply to Montenegro is a proof that ``the United States and NATO, the powers that just want to use Montenegro to accomplish own interest in the region.'' <br><br>Bitterness among the pro-Belgrade supporters grew after last year's NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which included targets in Montenegro. <br><br>After the bombing, Djukanovic took a major step toward independence by introducing the German mark as the alternative currency. The Yugoslav dinar has since become obsolete. <br><br>More than $100 million of Western loans and aid have come to Montenegro over the past three years while Yugoslavia's main republic, Serbia, languishes in international isolation. <br><br>Mugosa praised the government's market reforms and efforts toward privatization, criticized as a sham by opponents. He pointed out that the average monthly salary in Montenegro is $110, compared to less than $50 in Serbia. <br><br>``We need peace to accomplish our projects, we need stability and the trust of the international community,'' Mugosa said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Associated Press : Montenegro Vote To Test Independence``x960277171,55221,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic's younger brother has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in an attack that seriously injured an opposition politician, newspapers said Tuesday. <br>News of the arrest followed an outraged statement by the victim's Liberal Alliance party, which will run against Djukanovic's pro-Western coalition in local polls Sunday that could help decide the fragile Yugoslav republic's future. <br><br>Djukanovic's main opponent is the Socialist People's Party backed by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who wants to reverse the autonomy Djukanovic has introduced in Montenegro, seen by the West as a model of ethnic tolerance compared with Serbia, its bigger partner in the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>The smaller Liberal Alliance party, which is campaigning for Montenegrin independence, said Liberal Zoran Klajic had undergone surgery after the attack, in which it said he was hit on the head with a pistol. <br><br>An official at the hospital in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica said by telephone Klajic's condition was stable. <br><br>The papers quoted a statement issued by the Podgorica court through the government saying Aco Djukanovic had been arrested along with Vladislav Jabucanin "on suspicion they had committed a criminal act in the Hotel Montenegro." <br><br>Tuesday, a lawyer for the younger Djukanovic issued a statement in his name in which he said he had given himself up to police 10 minutes after the incident, which happened in the early hours of Monday morning. <br><br>He said he had been provoked by a stream of insults from Klajic, with whom he had long been at odds, and that he had been unaware he was a member of the Liberal Alliance. <br><br>"I am very sorry for what has happened but I believe that all honest people will understand that there is a threshold of personal dignity under which a man simply can not go. Especially if he is as a citizen ready to suffer all legal consequences in a regular legal procedure," the statement said. <br><br>The Liberals alleged the attack was political and stemmed from its criticism of Milo Djukanovic's government, which has steered a cautious path toward independence, winning praise from the West but criticism at home over alleged corruption. <br><br>The younger Djukanovic, a 35-year-old businessman whose business activities are a source of furious speculation in Montenegro, accused the Liberal Alliance of using Klajic to deliberately provoke him for electoral purposes. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegrin President's Brother Arrested in Assault``x960369161,29971,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ A top aide to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on Tuesday claimed that the CIA was behind the slaying of an adviser to Montenegro's pro-Western president. U.S. officials called the charge absurd. <br>Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic is at odds with Milosevic's government over economic and political issues. Montenegro and Serbia make up Yugoslavia. <br><br>Some officials in Montenegro have accused Yugoslav authorities of complicity in the killing of National Security Adviser Goran Zugic a week ago. Zugic was one of Djukanovic closest associates. <br><br>Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic, who has repeatedly accused Western governments of plotting against Yugoslavia, said Zugic was killed so the CIA could blame Milosevic's authorities for the murder. <br><br>To back up his claims, Matic offered reporters what he said was a transcript and a sound clip of telephone conversations between two Americans working in the region. <br><br>There was no was to verify the authenticity of the Matic's claims. Without mentioning the Zugic killing, the speakers in the clips spoke of " ... it was professional ..." and " ... mission accomplished." <br><br>U.S. and Montenegrin officials dismissed Matic's charges as ridiculous. <br><br>"That is nonsense," commented CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield in Washington. <br><br>Echoing that reaction, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker called Matic's alleged evidence "absurd, completely false." <br><br>Montenegrin Interior Minister Vukasin Maras called the taped transcript an "unskillful setup." <br><br>Maras said the accusation was an apparent attempt to discredit Montenegro's leadership _ which maintains strong ties with the U.S. administration _ ahead of important municipal elections in the republic Sunday. <br><br>Zugic's death marks the first slaying of a prominent Montenegrin official after a series of high-profile killings in Serbia. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb aide accuses CIA of killing Montenegro's security adviser``x960369184,57531,``x``x
``x<br><br>Jonathan Steele <br>Wednesday June 7, 2000 <br><br>British troops yesterday fired into a crowd of Serb civilians, injuring three, after they surrounded Brigadier Richard Shireff, the commander of the British sector of Kosovo. <br>The incident, which is one of the worst since Nato-led troops entered Kosovo exactly a year ago, occurred as Serbs gathered to protest against a drive-by grenade attack at a crowded market in the monastery town of Gracanica, close to Pristina. <br><br>The grenade attack, which wounded five shoppers, touched off a melee. Serbs began stopping Albanian cars on the road through the town, setting five vehicles alight and injuring two drivers. <br><br>Hearing of the incident, Brig Shireff rushed to the scene but was almost set upon. The Nato spokesman, Captain Jo Butterfill, said his bodyguards had felt threatened and fired into the crowd. <br><br>Brig Shireff later met Father Sava Janjic, a leader of the moderate Serb faction, to try to ease tensions. Serbs said they began stopping vehicles after Swedish troops stationed in the town failed to block the car which carried out the grenade attack. <br><br>"It was thrown right in front of K-For [Nato peacekeepers]," said Dragan Stojanovic. "How come they weren't able to stop that car? Aren't they ashamed?" <br><br>The Serb national council said the grenade attack was only the latest "wave of organised Albanian terrorist groups seeking to expel Serbs from Kosovo". <br><br>"We have repeatedly told K-For that the market in Gracanica is a dangerous site ... but Nato has found no solutions for the problem," Fr Janjic told the private news agency, Beta. <br><br>Unlike most Serb communi ties in Kosovo which have been reduced to isolated enclaves, Gracanica straddles a key main road connecting the capital with the southeastern city of Gnjilane. <br><br>K-For maintains roadblocks for spot-checks on traffic, but the peacekeepers usually wave vehicles through without searching them. Serbs often set up their own roadblocks to deter Albanians from driving through the town. <br><br>The incident comes two days after the Serb national council walked out of the UN-led government of the province in protest at a spate of attacks on Serbs in the last fortnight. Eight Serbs, including a four-year-old boy, have been killed. <br><br>The increase in violence against Serbs comes as two Serbs have gone on trial in the town of Mitrovice, in northern Kosovo, accused of committing war crimes during the conflict last year. The men, one of whom is being tried in his absence, are accused of expelling Albanians from the province and burning their homes. <br><br>The international community agreed to speed up the trials of suspected war criminals after Serb prisoners staged a hunger strike to protest against their detention for weeks without trial. <br><br>At the height of the hunger strike as many as 1,000 local Serbs gathered outside the jail every day. <br><br>The top international official in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, was only able to break the deadlock over the hunger strike by giving in to almost all the prisoners' demands. He persuaded them to give up their protest in return for prompt trials before an international judge. <br><br>An international judge is presiding over the hearing, assisted by a panel of lay judges made up of two Serbs and two Albanians. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : British open fire on Serbs in Kosovo clash ``x960369205,39678,``x``x
``x<br>By Robert Fisk <br><br><br>7 June 2000 <br><br>Only five days after Nato was "exonerated" by the International War Crimes Tribunal for its killing of civilians in Yugoslavia last year, Amnesty International today publishes a blistering attack on the Alliance, accusing it of committing serious violations of the rules of war, unlawful killings and – in the case of the bombing of Serbia's television headquarters – a war crime. <br><br>The 65-page Amnesty report details a number of mass killings of civilians in Nato raids and states that "civilian deaths could have been significantly reduced if Nato forces had fully adhered to the rules of war". <br><br>Legalistic in nature but damning in content – the document reminds readers that Amnesty repeatedly condemned Serb atrocities against Kosovo Albanians – the report highlights inconsistencies and obfuscation by Nato's official spokesmen. Although Nato told Amnesty that pilots operated under "strict Rules of Engagement", it refused to disclose details of the "rules" or the principles underlying them. The report says: "They did not answer specific questions Amnesty International raised about specific incidents ..." <br><br>Amnesty records that Nato aircraft flew 10,484 strike missions over Serbia and that Serbian statistics of civilian deaths in Nato raids range from 400-600 up to 1,500. It specifically condemns Nato for an attack on a bridge at Varvarin on 30 May last year, which killed at least 11 civilians. "Nato forces failed to suspend their attack after it was evident that they had struck civilians," Amnesty says. <br><br>When it attacked convoys of Albanian refugees near Djakovica on 14 April and in Korisa on 13 May, "Nato failed to take necessary precautions to minimise civilian casualties". <br><br>The report says Nato repeatedly gave priority to pilots' safety at the cost of civilian lives. In several investigations of civilian deaths, Amnesty quotes from reports in The Independent, including an investigation into the bombing of a hospital at Surdulica on 31 May. The Independent disclosed in November that Serb soldiers were sheltering on the ground floor of the hospital when it was bombed but that all the casualties were civilian refugees living on the upper floors. <br><br>Amnesty says: "If Nato intentionally bombed the hospital complex because it believed it was housing soldiers, it may well have violated the laws of war. According to Article 50(3) of Protocol 1, [of the Geneva Conventions] 'the presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character'. <br><br>"The hospital complex was clearly a civilian object with a large civilian population, the presence of soldiers would not have deprived the civilians or the hospital compound of their protected status." Some of Amnesty's harshest criticism is directed at the 23 April bombing of Serb television headquarters. "General Wesley Clark has stated, 'We knew when we struck that there would be alternate means of getting the Serb Television. There's no single switch to turn off everything but we thought it was a good move to strike it, and the political leadership agreed with us.' <br><br>"In other words, Nato deliberately attacked a civilian object, killing 16 civilians, for the purpose of disrupting Serb television broadcasts in the middle of the night for approximately three hours. It is hard to see how this can be consistent with the rule of proportionality." <br><br>On 17 May last year, Nato's secretary general, Javier Solana, wrote to Amnesty in response to its "grave concern" over the TV bombing, stating that RTS (Serb Radio and Television) facilities "are being used as radio relay stations and transmitters to support the activities of the ... military and special police forces, and therefore they represent legitimate military targets". <br><br>But at a meeting with Nato officials in Brussels early this year Amnesty was informed that Mr Solana's reference "was to other attacks on RTS infrastructure and not this particular attack on RTS headquarters." <br><br>The US Defense Department, Amnesty recalls, justified the television station bombing because it was "a facility used for propaganda purposes" and Amnesty itself says that Tony Blair "appeared to be hinting [in a subsequent BBC documentary] that one of the reasons that the station was targeted was because its video footage of the human toll of Nato mistakes ... was being re-broadcast by Western media outlets and was thereby undermining support for the war within the alliance". <br><br>Of the Nato destruction of the train at Gurdulica bridge on 12 April, Amnesty says: "Nato's explanation of the bombing – particularly General Clark's account of the pilot's rationale for continuing the attack after he had hit the train – suggests that the [American] pilot had understood that the mission was to destroy the bridge regardless of the cost in terms of civilian casualties ..." <br><br>Nato had not, Amnesty adds, "taken sufficient precautionary measures to ensure there was no civilian traffic in the vicinity of the bridge before launching the first attack". Amnesty quotes the Nato spokesman James Shea as admitting that the video of the train shown to the press at the time was speeded up (to three times its original speed) because Nato analysts routinely reviewed tapes at speed. <br><br>Mr Shea, Amnesty says, "said that the [Nato] press office was at fault for clearing the tape for public screening without slowing it down to the original speed". <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Nato 'deliberately attacked civilians in Serbia' ``x960369223,23995,``x``x
``xPRAGUE, June 7 -- In an extensive report that infuriated NATO leaders, Amnesty International said today that NATO violated international law in its bombing war over Yugoslavia by hitting targets where civilians were sure to be killed. <br><br>In particular, the human rights group said that NATO's bombing of the Belgrade headquarters of Radio Television Serbia, on April 23, 1999, ''was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime." Sixteen people died in the predawn attack, nearly all of them technicians, security workers and makeup artists. <br><br>NATO has defended the bombing as an attack on the "propaganda machine" of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. <br><br>International law forbids direct attacks on civilians and civilian targets and requires all feasible precautions to prevent civilian deaths. In some cases, Amnesty said, NATO failed to take sufficient precautions to minimize civilian casualties. The number of civilian deaths from NATO air strikes "could have been significantly reduced if NATO forces had fully adhered to the laws of war," the report said. <br><br>Amnesty also condemned a NATO attack on a bridge at Varvarin on May 30, 1999, in which at least 11 civilians died. "NATO forces failed to suspend their attack after it was evident that they had struck civilians," the report said, and it criticized NATO for ordering its pilots to fly so high that they could not take proper precautions against bombing civilians. In particular, the report criticized the bombing of convoys of Albanian refugees near Djakovica on April 14 and Korisa on May 13. <br><br>The report was released less than a week after Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor for the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, told the United Nations Security Council that her investigation had found no basis for charging NATO with war crimes. Mrs. Del Ponte said that although "some mistakes were made by NATO," she was "very satisfied that there was no deliberate targeting of civilians or unlawful military targets." <br><br>Still, some tribunal officials said privately that they hoped their report would cause NATO countries to review their rules of engagement in order to lessen the chances of civilian casualties. <br><br>NATO's secretary general, Lord Robertson, called Amnesty's accusations baseless. He said that NATO "made every effort to minimize civilian casualties." NATO's mistakes, he said, were few and should be weighed "against the atrocities that NATO's action stopped." <br><br>The report by Amnesty does not try to weigh the violations committed by Serbian officials and forces; rather it tries to hold the members of NATO up to the highest standards of international law and behavior. <br><br>The Amnesty report is similar in its findings to a detailed report by Human Rights Watch in February. Of the 500 or so Yugoslav civilians killed in Serbia and Kosovo by NATO bombs, half died because of NATO violations of laws and practices on protecting civilians, said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, in a telephone interview from New York. <br><br>Amnesty was scathing about the bombing of the television station, which went off the air only briefly. "NATO deliberately attacked a civilian object, killing 16 civilians, for the purpose of disrupting Serb television broadcasts in the middle of the night for approximately three hours."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Rights Group Says NATO Bombing in Yugoslavia Violated Law``x960448528,62490,``x``x
``xUBLI, Yugoslavia, June 8 (Reuters) - In the morning, Serb folk music rang through the village of Ubli as people gathered to hear politicians promise to defend Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia as a bastion against the West. <br>Later that same day, a different group brought rock music and pledges to free the last republic still left with Serbia in Yugoslavia from the isolation brought by Milosevic's rule. <br><br>The first group offered visitors a slug of strong alcohol and a doughnut. At one point a military helicopter appeared and circled over the sun-baked sports pitch, prompting frantic cries of "Slobo" "Slobo" before flying off again. <br><br>The second brought promotional badges and a large number of tough-looking police who maintained a studied indifference when some drunken locals slung insults and waved their fists. <br><br>The morning's audience was mainly families and pensioners, rural people, unhappy with the present, nostalgic for the past and scared of the future. In the evening it was the young, confident, urban crowd that filled the small village hall. <br><br>On Sunday both groups will have their say in whether Montenegro should keep heading West as it has done for the past two years or turn back towards Belgrade. <br><br>The vote is for the local councils in just two municipalities -- Podgorica and Herzeg Novi -- in a republic whose entire population of around 650,000 would fit into one large suburb of a major world capital. <br><br>VULNERABLE <br><br>Those capitals will be watching, because after the four wars that have ripped through former Yugoslavia in the past decade, many people fear Montenegro could be next. <br><br>U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made clear which way she would like the vote to go last weekend by meeting Montenegro's pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic in Berlin. <br><br>Washington distributed $11 million in aid last month while the European Union said it had approved 55 million euros ($52 million) of assistance. <br><br>Milosevic, for his part, says Montenegro would be better off with Serbia and has put his Serbian ruling coalition in coalition with Djukanovic's main opponents the Socialist People's Party (SNP), in a bloc called Yugoslavia. <br><br>The International Crisis Group think-tank said there was a slight chance the bloc could win in the coastal town of Herzeg-Novi but that support for Djukanovic, who has edged Montenegro away from Serbia in the past two years, was solid. <br><br>"On the contrary, the SNP's pro-Yugoslavia message suffers a new blow with...every new move by Milosevic to strengthen his hold on power," it said in a pre-election analysis. <br><br>Western diplomats and many Montenegrins fear Milosevic -- cornered by a U.N. war crimes indictment and facing growing public discontent at home, could try to stir trouble in the republic to bolster his position. <br><br>Last week those fears grew when Djukanovic's national security adviser was shot dead by an unknown gunman, although Montenegrin officials have not said directly whom they blame. <br><br>SNP officials say neither they, nor Serbia, represent any threat to Montenegro, and it is the West that is stirring by encouraging Montenegrin autonomy. <br><br>They also say that if the SNP loses the election it can only be through fraud, something they said more than two years ago about Djukanovic's election as president. <br><br>Then they staged violent protests to try to stop his inauguration. But now the appetite for violence seems small. <br><br>"I don't think there are that many people prepared to contest the election results," said a Western diplomat visiting Montenegro, adding that while the election might not be perfect it was likely to be fairer than most in the region. <br><br>ELECTION IS TEST OF STRENGTH <br><br>Sunday's vote is more likely to test the faultlines running through Montenegro's dramatic, mountainous landscape -- poor versus rich, old versus young, Serb versus Montenegrin and army versus police -- for a possible fight. <br><br>Milosevic who, due to Djukanovic's stealthy moves towards autonomy, controls the army but little else in Montenegro, is keeping people guessing as to whether and when it might start. <br><br>Just as on Saturday, the military helicopter fooled the crowd into thinking he was on his way, so recent tough words and military exercises by the army in Montenegro have worried many that he may be prepared to use it against Djukanovic's government. <br><br>But just as the helicopter clearly did not bring him, so most analysts doubt he feels secure enough about the army's loyalty to take on Djukanovic's well-armed police. <br><br>Instead, Belgrade seems to want to push the republic towards holding the referendum on independence which Djukanovic has been threatening for almost a year -- something that would inevitably spark tensions among ordinary Montenegrins. <br><br>"We can hardly wait for the Montenegrin people to decide," Ivica Dacic, a top official of Milosevic's Socialist Party, told a news conference during a visit to Podgorica on Sunday. <br><br>That is also what Djukanovic's other opponents, the Liberal Alliance, want, although, as bitter critics of Milosevic, their motivation could not be more different. <br><br>They provoked Sunday's elections in the two towns by pulling out of coalitions with Djukanovic because they thought their pro-independence, anti-corruption ticket could win them enough votes to push the government towards a plebiscite. <br><br>But with a opinion polls showing big splits in the mainly Slav republic between those seeking independence and those who either are Serb, or feel a close affinity with their Serb neighbours, a referendum would be risky. <br><br>The West is advising firmly against and hopes the Montenegrin government, which already has its own economic and foreign policy, will remain strong enough to resist pressure to rush towards a plebiscite. <br><br>"We will have our own Montenegro," Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic told the evening crowd in Ubli at the weekend to loud cheers. "But not at the cost of bloodshed."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABCNEWS : FEATURE-Vote tests strength of Montenegrin change``x960448554,85954,``x``x
``xMOSCOW, Jun 8, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) The Russian and Albanian foreign ministers will discuss the troubled situation in Kosovo Thursday, but the encounter signals no shift in Moscow's pro-Serbia policy in the Balkans, analysts say.<br><br>Albanian Foreign Minister Paskal Milo's three-day visit to the Russian capital at the invitation of his counterpart, Igor Ivanov, comes 10 days after a high-level delegation from the Yugoslav opposition.<br><br>It secured only lukewarm support from Moscow for demands that Belgrade strongman Slobodan Milosevic end a crackdown on opponents, although Russia did back the return of seized opposition-run television station Studio B.<br><br>"I don't see any significant efforts to break with Milosevic and establish some working relationship with Albania," commented Yevgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation.<br><br>Russia, which fiercely opposed last year's NATO air campaign to force Milosevic to accept broad autonomy for Kosovo, accuses the West of promoting independence for the majority ethnic Albanian province.<br><br>It also protests that nothing has been done to protect Kosovo's dwindling Serbian population, whose plight strikes a deep chord in fellow-Orthodox Russia.<br><br>After a meeting with Milo on Wednesday, the speaker of Russia's State Duma lower house of parliament, Gennady Seleznyov, warned that unless Serbian rights were respected "there will never be peace there (in Kosovo)."<br><br>Moscow accuses former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighters of being behind widespread violence against Serbs, which flared again last week, killing eight people and provoking a Serb boycott of the UN-backed joint administration.<br><br>In turn Russian peacekeepers that serve in the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo are widely distrusted by ethnic Albanians who see them as supporters of the Belgrade regime.<br><br>Yugoslavia is a traditional Russian ally.<br><br>Two Russians have been killed since the start of the peacekeeping operation last June.<br><br>In Serbia itself, Moscow has not abandoned its long-time support for Milosevic, an indicted war crimes suspect, even if it recognizes that it must keep contacts open with the opposition, say analysts.<br><br>During his visit to Russia last month, Yugoslav opposition leader Vuk Draskovic was refused a meeting with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, although a junior minister did receive him for talks.<br><br>"Russia is not so happy with Milosevic. He is a notorious figure, but I don't see that Russian foreign policy is looking for an immediate replacement for Milosevic," said Volk.<br><br>"There are people at the top who openly or secretly support Milosevic," he added.<br><br>This was illustrated in May, when Washington sharply criticized Moscow for allowing Yugoslav Defense Minister Dragoljub Ojdanic, another indicted warcrimes suspect, to visit the Russian capital.<br><br>The Russian foreign ministry denied any prior knowledge of the visit, and the authorities later explained that Dragoljub had been invited to Moscow by the defense ministry by mistake.<br><br>The same month, Moscow granted Belgrade a 102 dollar million loan after a visit by Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic.<br><br>Alan Rousso, director of the Carnegie Endowment think-tank in Moscow, commented: "There does appear to be some sense that the Russians are looking for ways not to disagree directly with the West, over Kosovo and in general over policy on Yugoslavia.<br><br>"But it doesn't look very much as if they're willing to make too many sacrifices in their support for Serbia in order to propitiate relations with the West," he added. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAgence France Presse : RUSSIA HOSTS ALBANIAN FM, BUT NO SHIFT IN MOSCOW'S BALKANS POLICY``x960544114,39297,``x``x
``xBy JEFF CHU<br><br>Legend has it that Montenegro won its name - which means "black mountain" - through prowess in war. Centuries ago, its foes chose the name to commemorate huge losses at the hands of those who ruled this part of the Balkans. Today, Montenegro often appears in the news with the words "tiny" or "little" before it. The junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, it is overshadowed by Serbia and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. But if history is any guide, Montenegro remains a formidable force, with a reputation for beating not only the odds but also its enemies. <br><br>Perhaps Montenegro's raw beauty compelled Slavic immigrants from northern Europe to settle in this region of snow-covered peaks and deep green gorges. Whatever the reason, Montenegrins have guarded their autonomy fiercely since they arrived in the 7th century. A victory over Byzantium in 1042 secured autonomy, and Montenegro was the only state in the region to fend off the Ottoman Turks as they swept through southern Europe in the 1300s. The Turks tried again, repeatedly, in subsequent centuries. Each time, the Montenegrins held on, and strategic alliances - first with Venice, then with Russia - helped maintain self-rule through the 19th century. This tenacity was not lost on the world; Alfred Lord Tennyson praised the "race of mightier mountaineers" in his 1877 poem "Montenegro." <br><br>The 20th Century brought humility in war for a country that had never known defeat. In the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars, Montenegro was on the winning side. But while it gained more territory, it lost many men. When World War I erupted the following year, the country joined, its thinned ranks fighting alongside those of neighboring Serbia. Austria occupied Montenegro in 1915, when Serb-led forces protecting the region fled to Greece. The Allies quickly declared their solidarity with the defeated Montenegro. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George promised, "The Allies will do justice to the heroism of the Montenegrins." The Allies did win the war, but Montenegro did not regain sovereignty. When Austria retreated in defeat in 1918, Serbia moved in, purportedly to secure Montenegro's stability for a transitional period. <br><br>Serb sympathizers within Montenegro had different ideas, orchestrating a union of the two countries with the approval of Serbia's king. The unpopular move sparked the Christmas Uprising of 1919. Thousands of Montenegrins died in the consequent guerrilla war, which continued until 1926. Thousands more fled Montenegro, resettling in other parts of Europe and the United States. Many who stayed joined the fledgling Yugoslav communist movement, which preached equality at a time when Montenegrins were feeling marginalized and neglected. <br><br>The communists took control of Yugoslavia after the end of World War II. Many Montenegrins were rewarded for their loyalty with positions of power. True to their heritage, they held particularly prominent posts in the military. Montenegro itself was promoted from a mere administrative region to full-fledged republic in the new Yugoslav federation. <br><br>Montenegro proved loyal to the federation, even after Tito's death in 1980 (TIME, May 19, 1980) and the radical political shake-ups a decade later. In the country's first multi-party elections in 1990, Montenegrins showed staunch support for the ruling communists. Montenegro alone joined Serbia in protesting the secession of Slovenia, then Croatia, and finally Bosnia and Herzegovina, staying in the truncated Yugoslavia even after the other republics split. <br><br>But many Montenegrins were deeply critical of Serbia, particularly with regard to the war with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Montenegrin units even withdrew from the Yugoslav army in protest. Sanctions against Yugoslavia decimated the Montenegrin economy and largely ended the flow of tourists to Montenegro's beaches and ski resorts. Discontent grew in the mid-1990s as the federal government did little to rejuvenate the still-ailing economy. <br><br>Elections in 1997 were a turning point. Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic captured the federal presidency. But in Montenegro's own presidential election, voters chose Milo Djukanovic, a pro-Western candidate, over Momir Bulatovic, a staunch Milosevic ally. (TIME, June 15, 1998) Once in office, Djukanovic embarked on reclamation projects, taking back much power from Belgrade and easing Montenegro out of federal institutions and relationships. (TIME, Winter 1998-99) <br><br>While Djukanovic has publicly said that Montenegro remains committed to the federal Yugoslavia, his actions suggest a more independent future for his country. Milosevic has made clear his feelings on the matter. In early 1999, he reminded Montenegrins that they are still Yugoslavs, calling up all draft-age Montenegrins for military service and discarding an earlier pledge that no Montenegrins would fight in Kosovo. While Montenegro largely escaped NATO bombing during the conflict, Milosevic's broken promise and a steady stream of refugees tested loyalties in the republic, eroding his still significant base of support. Polls in mid-1999 showed that 60% of Montenegrins would vote for independence if given the chance. (TIME, Aug. 23, 1999) <br><br>Despite pressure from Belgrade, Montenegro has stayed its independent course, maneuvering itself into a state of semi-sovereignty. Its repositioning may not yet be done. The West has heaped praise on the Djukanovic administration, with the E.U. pledging millions of euros in economic aid for Montenegro. President Djukanovic has expressed his gratitude for the willingness of the E.U. and the rest of the world to "reaffirm the will of Montenegrins." Centuries ago, that hardy will won Montenegro its name and reputation. Soon, it may win back independence as well.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTIME : MONTENEGRO HAS ALWAYS STAUNCHLY DEFENDED ITS SOVEREIGNTY, A PROCESS THAT ENDURES IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR IN KOSOVO``x960544137,50698,``x``x
``xBELGRADE (Reuters) - The Yugoslav army Thursday accused Montenegro's police of setting the scene for conflict and said the republic's authorities had joined a Western campaign against Yugoslavia and its armed forces.<br><br>The accusations, in an army statement carried by the state news agency Tanjug, coincided with tensions between the pro-Western coastal republic and Serb-dominated federation ahead of local elections in two Montenegro's towns.<br><br>``The Montenegrin leadership, the authorities and police wholeheartedly joined a Western psychological propaganda and media campaign aimed at our country and the Yugoslav army,'' the statement said Thursday.<br><br>But, it added, the Montenegrins, ``aware of the historic moment and responsibility for the future, will pull their strength together in order to recognize who is who in the Yugoslav reality.''<br><br>Montenegro's President Milo Djukanovic has been at odds with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic since 1997, pushing for democratic and economic reforms in Yugoslavia and threatening a referendum on independence if Belgrade does not comply.<br><br>Djukanovic is facing early local polls in the capital Podgorica and in the coastal town of Herceg-Novi after the Liberal Alliance party pulled out of his local coalitions in order to campaign on a pro-independence ticket.<br><br>Pro-Milosevic parties in Montenegro formed a coalition for the polls and have been campaigning vigorously, accusing Djukanovic of treason and of trying to secede from Serbia.<br><br>Last Friday, the Montenegrin Finance Minister Miroslav Ivanisevic said he saw no risk the army would try to overthrow his government that has edged away from the federation dominated by Milosevic, himself of Montenegrin origin.<br><br>``We are fully aware that top officers of the Yugoslav army are completely loyal to Mr. Milosevic,'' Ivanisevic told reporters in Brussels, but added he ``would say the Yugoslav army would not be used in Montenegro for a coup d'etat.''<br><br>The army has also denied it was doing anything else in Montenegro but its regular duties stipulated by the federal constitution and said it posed no threat to the republic.<br><br>But Thursday, it listed a number of examples of what it called ``measures, acts and preparations set to provoke incidents, conflicts and clashes with members of the army in order to cause the international community condemnation and reactions.''<br><br>The statement said that Montenegrin police were arming and exercising a reserve in the towns of Cetinje and Herceg-Novi, while in the towns of Tivat, Bar and Ulcinj the reserve was made up mostly of ethnic Croats and Albanians.<br><br>``In addition, Montenegro's police have enormous forces in other security centers formed on the basis of political and national criteria,'' the statement said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReuters: Yugoslavia Says Montenegro Prepares for Conflict``x960551688,43407,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia, June 9 (Reuters) - The most popular leader of the pro-Serb opposition coalition in Montenegro said it would not contest the results of Sunday's local elections unless it had proof of major violations. <br>Predrag Bulatovic -- striking a more moderate note than other members of the coalition backed by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic -- said there had already been irregularities by Montenegro's pro-Western government but they were not crucial. <br><br>Many supporters of the coalition in the tiny Balkan republic have written the polls off in advance. A radical member of the coalition told its final pre-election rally on Wednesday that a "lava of evil" would flow over Montenegro if his party deemed the results to be unfair. <br><br>Bulatovic played down the prospect of unrest. But he alleged the polls were not democratic because the government of Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic had used Western funds to boost its campaign. <br><br>Djukanovic's government has been cautiously edging Montenegro away from the Yugoslav federation, of which it is part along with sister republic Serbia. <br><br>The West, which sees Djukanovic's government as a model of democracy and ethnic tolerance compared to Milosevic's rule in Serbia, has made no secret of its support for him and has approved funds to support his reforms this year. <br><br>LEADER SEEN OVERSHADOWED BY MILOSEVIC <br><br>"Despite all that, we decided to take part in the elections because we managed to correct some of those irregularities. Others remained but for now they cannot have an important influence on the results of the elections themselves," Bulatovic said. <br><br>He said the Yugoslavia coalition led by the Socialist People's Party, of which he is deputy president, would take a view on the poll once official results come out on Wednesday. <br><br>"If there are no facts to prove the election has been stolen, I will be the first to give a positive judgment on these elections regardless of the result," he said. <br><br>He said if his coalition won as much as previously or more it would be an affirmation of its pro-Yugoslavia stance. <br><br>"For me the stabilisation of the political situation in Montenegro is the main thing and it is less important who wins. The most important thing is that there is no stealing." <br><br>Analysts say that while Bulatovic is influential among his party's supporters in Montenegro, he is beholden to Milosevic. They point to leaked television footage of Milosevic ticking Bulatovic off at a recent meeting in Belgrade. <br><br>Bulatovic said the footage had been misused and that the Montenegrin government's regular warnings that Milosevic is threatening to destabilise the republic were just a ploy to get funds from the West. <br><br>He also raised the prospect of a change in political allegiances within Montenegro after the poll but would not elaborate. <br><br>Bulatovic said he had good relations with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is sending 60 international observers to monitor the polls. <br><br>He noted his role in calming tensions between the Yugoslav army, which is controlled by Milosevic, and Djukanovic's Montenegrin police during last year's NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia over Kosovo. He said he believed peace would prevail. <br><br>"I am totally convinced that the era of protests and of issues being resolved in a forceful and undemocratic way is behind us," he said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro opposition leader on more moderate line``x960626266,82475,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia, June 9 (Reuters) - Montenegro holds early local elections on Sunday that will test public support for its pro-Western leaders' cautious moves away from Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia. <br>The ruling coalition faces a challenge from both ends of the political spectrum: a pro-Yugoslavia bloc that wants to restore Milosevic's control and a smaller party that thinks the tiny, mountainous republic should split quickly away from Serbia. <br><br>Closely watching the polls will be the West, which approves of President Milo Djukanovic's step-by-step approach, sees his government as a model of ethnic tolerance for its neighbours and fears another bloody Balkan conflict if it is destabilised. <br><br>The polls concern only two municipalities, the Montenegrin capital Podgorica and the coastal town of Herzeg Novi. Their combined electorate totals less than 150,000, but the two main contestants see it as a much wider struggle. <br><br>"This is a struggle between democracy and dictatorship, a struggle between integration and isolation, a struggle between economic progress and economic collapse," Djukanovic told an election rally this week. <br><br>His main foes, a bloc made up of Montenegro's Socialist People's Party (SNP) and all three members of Milosevic's ruling coalition, say they are fighting for Yugoslavia and Serbdom against a Western plot to break up the two-republic federation. <br><br>"Yugoslavia is very threatened by the separatist tendencies of the regime in Montenegro," Predrag Bulatovic, deputy president of the SNP, told a news conference this week. <br><br>Djukanovic was elected president of Montenegro in late 1997 amid fierce opposition from the SNP, which later staged violent demonstrations against his inauguration alleging election fraud. <br><br>Since then he has edged Montenegro away from Milosevic's government in Belgrade, winning exemptions from the Western sanctions imposed over the Serb strongman's role in the violent disintegration of Socialist Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. <br><br>MONTENEGRO IS SEMI-SOVEREIGN <br><br>The coastal republic now has its own foreign policy and took control of the economy late last year when it legalised the German mark alongside the weakening Yugoslav dinar, to the fury of Belgrade which imposed a trade blockade on the Serb border. <br><br>Montenegro controls some of its other borders, has its own, loose, visa regime and a large and well-equipped police force. <br><br>Units of the Yugoslav army, whose commanders are loyal to Milosevic, are still based in the republic and its soldiers control part of the main airport and some border posts. <br><br>Troops have occasionally been involved in stand-offs with the police, most notably over control of the airport in December, but incidents have so far been resolved peacefully. <br><br>The international community is anxious that Sunday's voting in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica and in Herzeg Novi on the Adriatic coast should be seen to be fair. It has sent around 60 observers to monitor the vote in some 250 polling stations. <br><br>Voting starts at eight a.m. (0600 GMT) and ends at nine p.m. (1900 GMT). Full preliminary results are due on Monday morning. <br><br>The opposition Yugoslavia bloc has said it will decide after official results come out on Wednesday whether to contest them. <br><br>Most analysts predict Djukanovic's coalition will win in Podgorica but say the many pro-Yugoslavia pensioners and war veterans in Herzeg Novi will make that a close race. <br><br>Djukanovic's other main opponents, the Liberal Alliance, provoked the poll by withdrawing from government-led coalitions in the two towns to try to capitalise on what it sees as a pro-independence mood and discontent with government corruption. <br><br>If it wins the balance of power, it says it will try to force Djukanovic to set a date for a referendum on independence, something he has so far avoided due to fears of unrest among a mainly Slav population that is deeply divided on the issue. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegrin poll to test anti-Milosevic government``x960626381,62661,``x``x
``xResults of Sunday's elections could herald further Balkan breakup.<br><br>Alex Todorovic <br><br>PODGORICA, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>Apart from the machinegun toting police, the scene on Montenegro's streets these days resembles more of a post-game party than election campaigning. Flag-waving revellers drive through town honking horns, with pictures of their favorite politicians festooned on the hoods of their cars.<br><br>That could change soon. The rumor in Podgorica, Montenegro's capital, is that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic may make an unprecedented surprise visit today to bolster his beleaguered supporters in this junior partner in what remains of Yugoslavia. Such a trip would greatly intensify the strained atmosphere. Observers say Mr. Milosevic's gambit is to destabilize the electoral process.<br><br>It's been more than four years since Milosevic visited Montenegro, and Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic once threatened that he would have the Serb leader arrested for war crimes if he came to the republic.<br><br>Sunday's local elections are being viewed as a referendum on the policies of Mr. Djukanovic, a pro-Western leader who is in a three-year standoff with the Milosevic regime. And polls show his coalition is out in front.<br><br>Montenegro has steadily distanced itself from Serbia - and last year proposed to Belgrade to redefine its relationship in a co-federation with equal status.<br><br>Meanwhile, Djukanovic's To Live Better coalition faces an opposition on two fronts. The Yugoslavia Coalition wants Montenegro to remain a part of Yugoslavia and generally supports Milosevic while the Liberal Alliance of Montenegro wants Montenegro to separate from Yugoslavia as soon as possible.<br><br>Both the Liberals and pro-Yugoslav parties say the election process is tainted, that the Djukanovic government is rife with corruption, and that the West is ignoring the issues because Djukanovic serves Western interests in the Balkans.<br><br>Western nations have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Montenegro's economy, allowing Djukanovic to build a 20,000-strong, well-equipped police force to check the 15,000 Yugoslav soldiers stationed in Montenegro.<br><br>Djukanovic relies on foreign aid to pay the republic's massive public payroll. Western policy is to make Montenegro an example of ethnic tolerance and democracy that other Balkan countries may emulate. But critics from both the left and right say that, despite the flowery democratic rhetoric, Montenegro is far from achieving any such ideal.<br><br>The opposition coalitions charge that the Djukanovic government has sold off state-owned companies to friends and family. There have also been longstanding claims of government ties to cigarette smuggling and black marketeering, notably by Djukanovic's brother Aca.<br><br>Aca Djukanovic is currently under arrest, after severely beating a Liberal politician in Podgorica's main hotel last week. Although the incident was personal rather than political, reports of the president's brother waving a gun in a hotel lobby only added to the family's thuggish image.<br><br>Djukanovic has repeatedly denied allegations of wrongdoing. Yugoslav Prime Minister and staunch Milosevic ally Momir Bulatovic referred to Djukanovic as "the admiral of the smuggling fleet" at a rally on Wednesday night.<br><br>"This democratic process here is demoralizing. Out of pragmatic political reasons, the West is using a double standard in its support of Djukanovic. He should be going to court, not elections. We can't honestly call crime democratic reform," says liberal mayoral candidate Miroslav Vickovic.<br><br>In recent days, the crisis between Montenegro and Belgrade intensified with the shooting death of Montenegro's national security adviser, Goran Zugic. While Yugoslav officials point the finger at the CIA, both Montenegro leaders and the US State Department dismiss the claim, and many suspect that the Milosevic regime is behind the slaying.<br> <br>The Yugolsav Coalition's mayoral candidate for Podgorica, Predrag Bulatovic, said recently, "There are two core issues facing Montenegro. Will it be ruled by criminals? And the other is Montenegro's relationship to Yugoslavia. We think that at least two-thirds of citizens want to live with Serbia."<br><br>The Yugoslav Coalition also presses the point that Djukanovic remained silent during NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia - which ended one year ago - calling him a traitor to the nation. The Liberals have been "antiwar" from the beginning.<br><br>The opposition claims that the election process is flawed. Liberal Alliance activists found irregularities in at least 10 percent of the voting rolls. "These elections will not be fair. They didn't fulfill a large part of the election law. Despite that, our party decided to participate in elections," Mr. Bulatovic said in a recent speech.<br><br>Meanwhile, the government insists that the election process is sound. "I think the election process has been correct. They're justifying their loss ahead of time," says Bozidar Jaredic, Montenegro's minister of information.<br><br>Mr. Jaredic says that Serbia is trying to negatively influence the campaign, specifically the claim by Goran Matic, Yugoslavia's minister of information, that the CIA was behind the recent assassination of Djukanovic's security advisor.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : Montenegro tests limits with partner Serbia``x960626404,22747,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br> <br>PODGORICA, Montenegro, June 11 -- Local elections held in Montenegro today, closely watched as a barometer of this small republic's future, suggested that it remains perilously divided between following the West, or staying with President Slobodan Milosevic and Serbia. <br><br>Ostensibly, voters in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica, and in the seaside town of Herceg Novi, were simply electing new mayors and local assemblies. <br><br>In fact, the vote was effectively a poll on who wants to stay with Mr. Milosevic and Yugoslavia -- which now consists only of Serbia and Montenegro -- and who prefers the more independent course of Montenegro's leader, Milo Djukanovic. <br><br>Western ministers and diplomats have leaned heavily on Mr. Djukanovic in recent months to avoid a complete break with Belgrade and to postpone any referendum on independence. It is also not clear that the president and his ruling coalition would win sufficient support; opinion polls indicate a fairly even split among Montenegro's 600,000 people between staying with their traditional allies, the Serbs, and breaking all ties with Mr. Milosevic. <br><br>Both outsiders and residents of this small republic fear any outright rupture with Belgrade would cause another in the series of Balkan wars that have erupted since the old Communist Yugoslavia began splitting apart a decade ago. <br><br>Early unofficial results suggested that the situation remains sharply divided. Mr. Djukanovic's coalition -- "For a Better Life" -- apparently won the majority of the 28 council seats at stake in the capital, Podgorica, but was losing to the pro-Yugoslavia coalition in Herceg Novi. That slip, if confirmed, would a strengthen Mr. Milosevic's allies and could eventually tempt Belgrade to challenge Mr. Djukanovic's hold on power. <br><br>Violence has already begun to color the politics of Montenegro, where the atmosphere remains uneasy 10 days after a close aide of Mr. Djukanovic was killed in what appears to have been a political assassination. <br><br>The Yugoslav army presence in Montenegro remains a persistent cause for concern for the government as do political supporters of Belgrade, who have threatened to take to the streets if they lose today's ballots. <br><br>Few local issues were raised during the boisterous flag-waving rallies this last week. <br><br>The government coalition kept to its familiar slogan and the name of the president, offering a program of democratic reform and openness to Europe and the West and a hint towards independence. "We have never sold our authority, and will never sell our country," Mr. Djukanovic said at a rally in the capital last week. "That's what we want for Montenegro and our future." <br><br>The pro-Belgrade opposition, led by the Yugoslav prime minister, Momir Bulatovic, and the local leader Predrag Bulatovic (no relation to Momir), ran with the simple message "Yugoslavia." <br><br>Predrag Bulatovic has emphasized that Montenegro and Serbia are equal partners in the union, yet he has been forced into a coalition with both the most radical Serbian nationalist party and its leader, Vojislav Seselj, and the leftist party run by Mr. Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic. Both that alliance and televised footage of his meeting with Mr. Milosevic in May to discuss these elections undermined Predrag Bulatovic's claim to equal partnership. <br>The small Liberal Alliance, which caused these elections by withdrawing from the government coalitions in both cities, has slipped from view behind the larger parties. The most vocal supporter for independence, and a critic of the Djukanovic government, it hoped to win a larger part of the vote in new elections, but has been drowned out by the greater confrontation with Belgrade. <br><br>Today, voters in the capital were clear about their choice. Supporters of the government said they voted for democracy, for modernity, openness to the West and a future inside Europe. "It is the only choice with perspective," said one student who gave his name only as Aco. <br><br>"I voted 'For a better life.' No one wants to live worse," said Milisav Miuskovic, a school janitor, quoting the government coalition slogan. <br><br>Supporters of the pro-Belgrade coalition were often reluctant to talk to a Western journalist or declined to give their names. When they did, their arguments were direct. <br><br>"I voted for Momir," said Rada, a saleswoman who declined to give her full name. "I am for Yugoslavia, I do not want to separate from Serbia. The people will not let it happen." <br><br>Mr. Djukanovic appeared confident and relaxed, driving himself to his local polling station in the city and walking in with his wife and only a small security detail. <br><br>Yet the campaign has not been an easy ride for him. Goran Zugic, his close friend and security adviser, was shot dead outside his apartment on May 31 in an attack that shook the political establishment and the public who turned out in huge numbers for Mr. Zugic's funeral. Diplomats based in the region suspect the hand of Belgrade and say the killing amounted to an attack on the president himself. <br><br>But trouble has also surfaced from other directions. Mr. Djukanovic's younger brother, Aco, caused a scandal when he was arrested for his involvement in beating of a man in the lobby of Podgorica's main hotel. The man, a liberal politician, was admitted to hospital with a serious injury from a pistol butt to the head. <br><br>"They are taking the law into their own hands," Miroslav Vickovic, the liberal leader and candidate for mayor, said of Mr. Djukanovic and his supporters. "They think they can do anything." <br><br>The Liberal Alliance has also criticized the Djukanovic government for its slowness on promised reforms, murky privatization deals and widespread corruption. The government has managed to attract financial support from the West and now questions are being asked as to where that money has gone. <br><br>"Talk to people and ask them about privatization and they will tell you it is all illegal stealing," Mr. Vickovic said. <br><br>"We have no audit office, no parliamentary control of the budget. The government has no culture of public interest. The problem is the lack of institutions and controls over the government," said Nebojsa Medojevic, an independent economist. <br><br>Rather than address those criticisms, Mr. Djukanovic and his political allies chose to clean up Podgorica, pouring money into several civic projects such as placing new benches in the parks and new garbage bins in the streets. <br><br>Critics of the government charge that it is effectively using Mr. Milosevic has a useful excuse for any inefficiencies or failures. <br><br>A presidential aide, Miodrag Vukovic, said that the government neither wanted nor needed these elections. "Montenegro has plenty of problems without them. We are involved in two conflicts, an internal Montenegrin conflict between democrats and conservatives, and a second conflict between Montenegrin democracy and Belgrade dictatorship," he said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Montenegro Election Seen as Barometer on Tie to Serbia ``x960798940,9606,``x``x
``xGillian Sandford in Belgrade <br>Monday June 12, 2000 <br><br>Security forces were on alert yesterday during elections in Montenegro that pitted supporters of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, against backers of the pro-western government in a state that is teetering on the brink of war. <br>The polls come after days of heavily policed rallies in the capital, Podgorica, and the coastal city of Herceg Novi.<br><br>Although the vote is for local governments in the two cities, it is viewed as a key test of opinion in the only republic still left alongside Serbia in Yugoslavia.<br><br>The pro-Milosevic party has joined with hardline parties to form a Coalition for Yugoslavia and the pro-west forces are grouped under the For a Better Life coalition, whose main party is that of the pro-western president, Milo Djukanovic.<br><br>After casting his own vote, Yugoslavia's prime minister, Momir Bulatovic, accused the US and the EU of spending £12.5m in Montenegro with the "aim of buying votes".<br><br>Mr Bulatovic, a close aide to Mr Milosevic, was referring to large amounts of international aid that have enabled Mr Djukanovic's government to pay salaries double those of state employees in Belgrade.<br><br>"What is happening now is really indecent," Mr Bulatovic said. "We see foreign centres of financial and political power pouring money in and giving false promises."<br><br>Tension increased on the eve of polling when the Yugoslav army chief of staff, Nebojsa Pavkovic, said Montenegro was "supported by foreign factors", adding that "destructive forces in the country are trying to break its unity".<br><br>He added: "We send a message to all of them, including their commanders, that the Yugoslav army is united, qualified for combat and has proven experience. We will prevent civil war at any price."<br><br>The pro-Milosevic bloc has made allegations of ballot-rigging and warned that if it loses, it will not accept the result lying down.<br><br>Belgrade controls the state's military forces, but Mr Djukanovic's government controls the police, who have received western aid and training.<br><br>Analysts say a vote for the Milosevic bloc will symbolise a vote for the Yugoslav Federation, but a vote for the Better Life coalition is a vote for a referendum on independence.<br><br>"To some extent, these elections have nothing to do with local issues," said political scientist Srdjan Darmanovic, of the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights.<br><br>"They decide on who will rule the capital - and in any country that is important."<br><br>The elections also give a third of the 600,000 population the right to vote, "so act as a kind of mini-referendum", he said.<br><br>Both cities are marginal constituencies and the elections come half way through the presidential term of Mr Djukanovic, and half way through the term of the republic's government.<br><br>Opinion is deeply polarised, Mr Darmanovic adds. At a rally last week the mayoral candidate of the pro-Milosevic bloc in the capital promised full employment and pledged that hundreds more apartments would be built. Predrag Bulatovic added that he would talk to the west, but not as a servant.<br><br>One 35-year-old mother said she was backing the pro-Milo sevic bloc "because of Kosovo", adding that she wanted to ensure that Yugoslavia reclaimed Kosovo and that Montenegro "does not go next".<br><br>The Milosevic bloc has accused the government of corruption. According to the analyst Nebojsa Medojevic, Mr Djukanovic's government has more influence in ordinary people's lives than any government in the last 20 years.<br><br>"The government controls everything in Montenegro. If the ruling coalition gets more than 50% of the votes, I think we will see repression here, because it will be a sign that people like a dirty, primitive, corrupted government," he said. "My government exercises power without responsibility."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Montenegrins vote in test for pro-west leader ``x960798961,53762,``x``x
``xBy RICHARD BOUDREAUX, Times Staff Writer<br><br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia--Montenegro's men in blue are usually honest and well behaved. But there are so many of them--one in 32 citizens is a cop--that even admirers of President Milo Djukanovic say he's creating a police state. <br>The Western-backed leader has built up his 20,000-strong force as a security blanket while steering Montenegro cautiously away from Serbia, its sister republic in the Yugoslav federation led by President Slobodan Milosevic. <br>Whatever sense of protection that the built-up police force gave to independence-minded Montenegrins, however, was severely shaken last month when an assassin gunned down Djukanovic's top security advisor outside his home and vanished into the night. <br>Montenegrin officials suspect that Milosevic's secret service, operating from a Yugoslav army base in Montenegro, carried out the hit to remind the restive republic of its vulnerability. The slain aide, Goran Zugic, 38, had overseen the rapid expansion of Montenegro's uniformed force. <br>The May 31 slaying in this easygoing provincial capital stunned Montenegrins, who are calling it the first assassination against their independence movement. It has raised the level of tension in the campaign for municipal elections today that are seen as a midterm test for Djukanovic's defiant, pro-Western course. <br>"It looks like a terrorist act against democracy and against the security of the people," said the Montenegrin leader, looking grim and upset at a recent memorial service for his aide and close friend. <br>The service drew about 10,000 people, twice the number at Djukanovic's closing campaign rally Thursday night. Hundreds of police were on hand for the rally, and a score of plainclothes agents surrounded the tall, popular president as he waded through the crowd. <br>Djukanovic, who took office in January 1998, has refused to recognize Milosevic's authority and dropped the Yugoslavia dinar in favor of the German mark. Milosevic retaliated with a trade blockade between Serbia and Montenegro, but Djukanovic has overcome many of its effects through infusions of Western aid--$55 million from the United States and $19 million from the European Union this year. <br>The Western largess has enabled Montenegro to meet basic human needs while recruiting, training and equipping a loyal police force. The force is needed, Montenegrin officials say, to counter 14,000 Yugoslav troops based in the republic and about 900 Milosevic loyalists in the 7th Military Police Battalion. <br>As police chief in Podgorica, Zugic once put down an anti-government riot by unarmed Milosevic supporters. Later, as security advisor, he had the task of neutralizing Serbian secret service and paramilitary threats in Montenegro. <br>Yet the lawyer-turned-cop was traveling alone the night he died. <br>Officials said he was shot three times in the head as he was locking his black Audi A8 a few steps from the door of his apartment building on a still-busy street here just after 11 p.m. Police set up checkpoints and detained hundreds of people for questioning but reported no arrests and no leads. <br>Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic accused the CIA last week of planning the killing to make it look like Milosevic's work and aggravate tension between Serbia and Montenegro. He charged that Montenegrin Interior Minister Vukasin Maras, Zugic's rival in the security hierarchy here, also was involved in the plot. <br>The CIA denied any role, and Maras dismissed the accusation as the product of an "insane, sick and tragic mind." <br>Noting that four close Milosevic allies have been slain in Serbia this year, Rifat Rastoder, deputy chairman of Montenegro's parliament, said the killing here was "the first, most direct attempt to spread the politics of the gun from Serbia into Montenegro, to create conditions for a possible state of emergency." <br>Two pro-Milosevic parties from the ruling coalition in Serbia have teamed with allies in Montenegro's Socialist People's Party to try to oust Djukanovic's forces in today's municipal elections in Podgorica and Herceg Novi. Milosevic's supporters are a relatively strong minority in both cities. <br>Both sides are going all out in what they call an electoral test of the republic's identity. Opposition leader Predrag Bulatovic has accused Djukanovic of betraying Yugoslavia and taking orders from U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Djukanovic calls Bulatovic a puppet of Milosevic and says Montenegro has the choice of joining Europe or remaining part of a pariah state. <br>The Montenegrin leader is also under attack by the small Liberal Alliance for refusing to declare outright independence and for building an oversized police force with the alleged aim of intimidating his democratic critics. <br>"Djukanovic is building a private Praetorian Guard," said Miroslav Vickovic, a Liberal Alliance leader. "Does anyone have the illusion that these policemen could defeat the Yugoslav army? With such a force, only one thing is certain--that our president will be the last to die." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Loa Angeles Times : Montenegrin Advisor's Slaying Adds to Tension Ahead of Today's Vote ``x960799042,82619,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Serbia, June 12 -- Li Peng, head of the Chinese Parliament, denounced NATO today for its 1999 air war on Serbia in an address to Yugoslavia's Parliament, saying the American-led alliance had violated the United Nations charter. <br><br>Mr. Li, the most senior foreign official to visit Belgrade since the bombing campaign, also met with President Slobodan Milosevic, who was indicted by a United Nations tribunal for war crimes said to have been committed by his forces last year in Kosovo, the Serbian province. State television said the two leaders discussed strengthening relations and developing economic ties, but gave no details. <br><br>The report on the meeting, which took place on the day the United Nations marked its first year in charge of Kosovo, harshly criticized the United Nations and NATO-led peacekeeping presence. It said the minority Serbs in Kosovo were being subjected to "genocide," adding that international forces should leave and Serbian troops should return to ensure a secure environment. <br><br>NATO bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days to pressure its security forces to end a crackdown on ethnic Albanians seeking self-rule in Kosovo. <br><br>Mr. Li said in his speech that NATO's air campaign was flagrant interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. "This constitutes a violation of the purposes of the U.N. Charter and the universally recognized norms governing international relations and poses a serious threat to stability in Europe and peace in the world," he said. <br><br>Mr. Li visit was widely seen as a sign of support to President Milosevic, who has been ostracized by the West and faces growing opposition at home with local and federal elections due later this year. <br><br>China, with Russia, strongly opposed the NATO bombing, during which missiles hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese. Mr. Li called the embassy bombing "a gross violation of China's sovereignty." And he said the Kosovo issue remained unresolved, referring to the ethnic violence that has continued to plague the province despite the arrival of the NATO-led peacekeeping troops on June 12 last year. <br><br>Frozen out by much of the world as punishment for its role in a series of Balkan wars in the 1990's, Belgrade has turned to China, Russia and other non-Western countries for support and help in rebuilding its shattered economy. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xREUTERS: Chinese Official, at Yugoslav Parliament, Denounces NATO``x960883458,21102,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Podgorica, Montenegro <br><br>12 June 2000 <br><br>Political allies of President Slobodan Milosevic have accused the European Union of buying votes in yesterday's local elections in Montenegro. <br><br>After casting his own vote, Yugoslavia's Prime Minister, Momir Bulatovic, accused the EU and the United States of spending 40 million German marks (£13m) in Montenegro with the "aim of buying votes". <br><br>International aid that has poured into Montenegro has enabled the government of President Milo Djukanovic to pay state employees salaries twice what their counterparts in Belgrade receive. <br><br>Mr Bulatovic said: "What is happening now is really indecent. We see foreign centres of financial and political power pouring money in and giving false promises. These are the first elections that the US and the European Union are trying to buy. This quasi-democratic government has no real support among the people." <br><br>Mr Bulatovic and his Socialist People's Party have been the main opponents of Mr Djukanovic, with a campaign attacking the government's pro-Western politics as "treason". Mr Bulatovic said that he and his party would be ready to accept the results of the elections "if they were democratic, correct and fair". <br><br>Huge numbers of voters turned out in the Montenegrin capital and the coastal town of Herceg Novi yesterday and President Djukanovic's supporters seemed confident of winning support for policies that have given the republic virtual independence from the central government in Belgrade. <br><br>Both Mr Djukanovic and Mr Bulatovic have apartments in the same building and both voted at the same polling station, two hours apart. Mr Bulatovic showed with his wife Nada and an entourage of bodyguards to be greeted by the mild applause of several elderly women. In contrast, Mr Djukanovic drove his own car, accompanied by his wife, Lidija, and was greeted with cheers. <br><br>In Podgorica, the turn-out was expected to reach 80 per cent by the time polling stations closed at 9pm. Hundreds queued from 8am, patiently waiting to cast their votes, despite the fierce heat. <br><br>Since winning presidential elections in 1997, Mr Djukanovic has co-operated with the West, and made himself a foe of Mr Milosevic in the process. The official Belgrade media often calls him a "lackey" of the West. There are fears that the Yugoslav military, which is loyal to Mr Milosevic and has 25,000 men stationed in Montenegro, could disrupt the elections. <br><br>But on Friday Admiral Milan Zec, the commander of the Yugoslav Navy, which is based in Montenegro, said: "The full truth is that there is no intention, order, preparation or mood to endanger Montenegro. We completely respect the democratically pronounced will and choice of the people."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Milosevic allies accuse EU of buying votes ``x960883481,71566,``x``x
``xJonathan Steele <br>Tuesday June 13, 2000 <br><br>Yugoslavia's president Slobodan Milosevic has won an important political victory in Serbia's sister republic of Montenegro after voters strongly backed his supporters in a key local election and rebuffed proponents of independence. <br>In a poll seen as a partial referendum on the republic's future the 'Yugoslavia Coalition' took control of the coastal town of Herceg Novi from the pro-western government of President Milo Djukanovic, gaining 19 seats compared with the 13 they had before. <br><br>Since becoming the republic's leader three years ago Mr Djukanovic has broken with Belgrade, introduced the German mark as an official currency and no longer recognises the federal government. <br><br>He has won strong backing from the United States and European Union, although they do not support outright independence and have urged him to be cautious in not going so far as to risk civil war. <br><br>The Yugoslav army has a powerful garrison in Montenengro which has regularly flexed its muscles by taking control of border points and issuing conscription notices to prominent anti-Belgrade journalists and politicians. <br><br>Mr Djukanovic has created a paramilitary police as a counterweight and both sides accuse each other of preparing for civil war. <br><br>The preliminary results from Sunday's poll show the polarisation of society but will reinforce Mr Djukanovic's cautious approach. His party did well in elections in the capital Podgorica and gained an extra seat - to give it a total of 28 in the 54-seat council - while the pro-Belgrade SNP lost one. <br><br>The big losers in both places were the pro-independence Liberals who provoked the elections by walking out of coalitions with Mr Djukanovic. They expected the tensions of the last two years would have strengthened the case for immediate secession. But they lost ground. <br><br>The pro-Serb forces tend to be concentrated in inland cities closer to the Serbian border but Herceg Novi has always had a high proportion of Serb migrants from Bosnia and Hercegovina. Since the collapse of Tito's Yugoslavia, the new headquarters of the Yugolav navy are nearby. <br><br>Mr Djukanovic, who had earlier predicted victory in both towns, put a brave face on the result. "Today we can say for sure that Montenegro is marching on a stable, democratic, reformist path and that no one can distract it from that path," he said. "Our victory in Podgorica is much better and greater than our defeat in Herceg Novi," he added. <br><br>Predrag Bulatovic, a leader of the pro-Belgrade block, said afterwards the vote proved that the people of Montenegro, who are mainly Orthodox Slavs, wanted to live with fellow-Slav Serbia. <br><br>"In this election the citizens showed they were for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," Mr Bulatovic said, adding that the victory in Herceg Novi meant his party, already strong in the north, now held one-third of Montenegro's 21 municipalities. <br><br>The next dilemma for Mr Djukanovic's government is whether to take part in the federal elections which President Milosevic is likely to call later this year. To his chagrin, Western governments have been urging the Montenegrin leader not to boycott them. <br><br>"The international community should conduct a more careful analysis", Miodrag Vukovic, the President's legal adviser, complained recently. "The federal elections are just another of Milosevic's manipulations. If we reject them, he will accuse us of being separatists. If we take part, we will be repudiating all our previous statements." <br><br>After Sunday's poll results the dilemma has become more acute.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Election boost for Milosevic divides Montenegro ``x960883497,69268,``x``x
``xWill Milosevic let Montenegro slip away? <br><br>By Joshua Hammer<br>Newsweek International, June 19, 2000 <br><br>Milo Djukanovic was not his confident self. As the 38-year-old president of Montenegro strode along Freedom Street in downtown Podgorica, hundreds of policemen formed a tight cordon around him. The charismatic leader and foe of Slobodan Milosevic climbed onto a brightly lit stage before 5,000 cheering young supporters. Bodyguards lurked on the platform and in the audience. Djukanovic, a former basketball player who towered above his security force, sounded tired. But there was no mistaking his meaning as he broached the explosive subject of formally separating from Yugoslavia. "Montenegro knows what it wants and how to reach it... without waiting endlessly," he said.<br>Djukanovic has reason to be concerned. Last Sunday's local elections in Montenegro were the leader's first real political test since he broke from Serbia, Montenegro's larger partner in the rump Yugoslav federation, in 1997. Djukanovic's party was expected to win the vote, a victory that should embolden him to move closer to the West and to his ultimate goal of independence. But it's a dangerous game. The regime in Belgrade is unlikely to let Montenegro slip away unchallenged, and it has 20,000 Serb troops on Montenegrin soil to enforce its will. The threat of violence was made clear on May 31, when Goran Zugic, Djukanovic's top security adviser, was gunned down outside his home in Podgorica. The motive and assassin remain unknown, but the killing shocked Djukanovic, who mingles with locals and often drives himself around town. "This is an attempt to show Djukanovic how far Milosevic can reach," says Deputy Prime Minister Dragisa Burzan. (The Serb Interior minister blamed the hit on the CIA.)<br><br>Djukanovic's political rebirth is one of the Balkans' more remarkable transformations. An avid communist under Tito, he was an early ally of Milosevic and a Serb nationalist. As Montenegro's prime minister in 1991, he helped recruit volunteers to shell Dubrovnik. But Djukanovic began to question Milosevic after international sanctions and war shrank Montenegro's economy by 80 percent in the 1990s. He broke from Milosevic in 1997; two years later, when NATO began bombing Yugoslavia, Djukanovic welcomed Kosovar Albanian refugees and attacked Milosevic's expansionism. Since then, Djukanovic has inched further toward independence. A well-armed force of 20,000 police now stands eyeball-to-eyeball with the Serb Army. Last fall Djukanovic replaced the Yugoslav dinar with the German mark as the republic's currency. Milosevic responded with a blockade, but generous Western help has prevented economic collapse. The United States poured $55 million into Montenegro last year, and the European Union has given tens of millions more.<br><br>Despite the tensions, almost nobody in Montenegro expects Milosevic to go to war now. "Slobo has his hands full in Belgrade right now," says one Western diplomat in Podgorica. Milosevic's best hope is that Djukanovic will damage himself politically, creating a climate for a coup. But Djukanovic is moving cautiously, recognizing that declaring independence outright might force Milosevic to move against him. "When we feel the situation is stable, we'll organize a referendum and go for it," says the deputy prime minister. As last month's assassination shows, stability may still be a long way off.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Newsweek : Djukanovic's Dangerous Game ``x960883514,33840,``x``x
``xBELGRADE (Reuters) - The head of the Chinese parliament, Li Peng, laid a wreath Tuesday at the gate of Beijing's Belgrade embassy to commemorate the three people who died when it was bombed during last year's NATO air strikes.<br><br>Li, No. 2 in the Communist Party hierarchy and the most senior foreign official to visit Belgrade since the NATO campaign, went to the ruined building on the third and final day of his stay.<br><br>He described the attack on the Chinese embassy as ``evidence of the barbarian character of the NATO action, headed by the United States,'' Yugoslavia's state news agency Tanjug reported.<br><br>It said Li was ``visibly shaken'' as he viewed the damaged building.<br><br>In a speech to the federal Yugoslav parliament Monday, Li denounced the embassy bombing as ``a case of grave international wrongdoing seldom seen in the history of diplomacy and a gross violation of China's sovereignty.''<br><br>The attack on May 7, 1999 sparked violent anti-NATO demonstrations across China and brought relations with the United States close to breaking point.<br> <br>The deserted embassy building in the New Belgrade district of the capital appears to have been untouched since then.<br><br>NATO and the United States say the bombing was a mistake caused by shoddy targeting. Washington apologized to China and agreed to pay $28 million in compensation.<br><br>The visit by Li was widely seen as a sign of support for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, indicted as a war criminal ostracized by the West and facing growing opposition at home.<br><br>State media gave full coverage to Li's meetings Monday with Milosevic and other senior officials. Milosevic presented him with the Order of the Great Yugoslav Star for developing and strengthening bilateral friendship, state media reported.<br><br>Li left Belgrade Tuesday afternoon, traveling to Slovenia before continuing to neighboring Croatia Thursday.<br><br>NATO bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days to force Belgrade's military and police into ending a harsh crackdown on ethnic Albanians seeking self-rule in the southern Serbian province, Kosovo. China, along with Russia, strongly opposed the NATO war.<br><br>Isolated by much of the world as punishment for its role in a series of Balkan wars in the 1990s, Belgrade has turned to China, Russia and other non-Western countries for support and help in rebuilding its shattered economy.<br><br>In 1997, Milosevic and his Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin signed an agreement on friendship and cooperation.<br><br>In December, China was reported to have extended a $300 million credit to finance reconstruction of the economy of Serbia, the main republic in Yugoslavia alongside Montenegro. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReuters: China's Li Lays Wreath at Bombed Belgrade Embassy``x960971713,2822,``x``x
``x<br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Podgorica <br><br>13 June 2000 <br><br>Deep political rifts look likely to remain in the tiny Yugoslavian republic of Montenegro after voters handed the pro-Western coalition of President Milo Djukanovic a victory in the capital but a defeat in the coastal town of Herceg Novi. <br><br>Sunday's local polls involving one-third of the electorate were seen as a test of Mr Djukanovic's pro-independence policies, which have distanced Montenegro from Belgrade. Mr Djukanovic's supporters celebrated into the early hours yesterday as it became clear his coalition had won in Podgorica. But their jubilation was tempered when results showed that the winner in Herceg Novi was the coalition of the Yugoslavian Prime Minister, Momir Bulatovic, strongly backed by the Yugoslavian President, Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Mr Djukanovic told his supporters not to despair at the Herceg Novi results: "It is clear that Podgorica has voted for the European Montenegro, the only future for our country." <br><br>Many are unsurprised with the outcome in Herceg Novi, which is home to many retired Yugoslavian Army officers. The town also has a big Serbian refugee population that fled the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Serbia is the dominant republic in the Yugoslav Federal Republic, which also includes Montenegro. <br><br>Mr Djukanovic has warmed up relations with neighbouring Croatia, reopening a border crossing and broadening cooperation with the nearby Croatian resort of Dubrovnik. But he is likely to clash with Herceg Novi's new mayor, Djuro Cetkovic, who, in line with his Belgrade patrons' animosity towards Croatia, based his campaign on promises to oppose such co-operation. <br><br>The results will be officially proclaimed tomorrow. Complete but as yet unofficial results for Podgorica show Mr Djukanovic's coalition obtained 28 out of 54 seats in the city council. Mr Bulatovic's pro-Milosevic coalition won 22 seats, while the small Liberal Alliance of Montenegro will hold four seats. <br><br>In Herceg Novi, Bulatovic's coalition won 19 out of 35 seats in the municipal council, while Mr Djukanovic's coalition won 14. Two seats went to liberals. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro's rifts remain after pro-West party's poll success ``x960971745,37276,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Christian Jennings in Pristina <br><br>13 June 2000 <br><br>Thundering into the southern Kosovan town of Prizren one year ago, German Nato tanks ran into a roadblock manned by defeated, humiliated and violent Serbian Interior Ministry Police. <br><br>The German tanks ground to a halt. A group of journalists approached the Serbs. "Where," we asked them, "can we come and find you once you've left Kosovo and gone back to Serbia?" There was laughter among the group of slab-faced policemen in their blue and black camouflage uniforms. <br><br>Words in Serbian were exchanged as one drew a hunting-knife and approached. "You won't forget my address," one man said to me, smiling only with his mouth, "if I carve it right into your face." <br><br>A year later along the same road, the leaves on the lime trees are flagging in another scorchingly hot Kosovan summer, the Serbs have left, the Albanians are sporadically killing many of those that have remained and Nato and the UN are 12 months into their most testing mission. <br><br>In a destroyed province beset by ethnic violence, organised crime, political uncertainty, poverty and an extreme lack of socio-economic development, the head of the UN Mission in Kosovo, Dr Bernard Kouchner, called the first year of the mission a "success" yesterday. Dr Kouchner, who is, in effect, the governor of the Serbian province where 40,000 international peace-keepers are now deployed, said: "For the UN people the Kosovo mission is a success. We are building a modern democratic society, but the international community needs time, we are here for some years." <br><br>The UN Security Council's resolution 1244, which mandated the establishment of the UN Mission in Kosovo, or Unmik, continues unchanged, but members of the Security Council in New York have made plain to Dr Kouchner that their continued backing for the mission is dependent on his and Nato's ability to bring to anend the ethnic violence in the province. <br><br>A small, crude explosive device was discovered outside the UN headquarters in Pristina on Saturday. Two Kosovo Albanians were shot dead and one wounded yesterday near Cubrilj in central Kosovo, while eight Serbs have been killed and more than 20 wounded in the past three weeks. In his end-of-year report, the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, said that of some 330 serious ethnic crimes, including murder, rape and kidnapping, that have taken place since January, about 65 per cent have been against the Serbs and other ethnic minorities. <br><br>Dr Kouchner urged the ethnic Albanian majority and the remaining Serbs in the province yesterday to vote for "substantial autonomy" in local elections set for October. <br><br>One international officialin Pristina said: "This is asticking point for the Kosovo Albanians. They want independence, we're saying 'hold on,' we need to develop democracy and institutions." But other Western analysts display a more cynical approach. <br><br>"Democracy?" asks one UN international staffer. "We're 15 light years away from it – these people couldn't run a bath." The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe is overseeing voter registration for the elections. It is seriously behind schedule, with more than 500,000 people still due to register in less than a month. <br><br>Crucial in the voting process are the thousands of Serbs who have fled from the province in the past year. Dr Kouchner says simply that they "must vote if they want to be part of the future of Kosovo". Voterregistration points have therefore been opened along Kosovo's boundary with Serbia and tentative plans are under way to encourage Serbs to return to Kosovo, under the protection of Nato. <br><br>The UN refugee agency says it may be "premature" to encourage Serbs to return, even supported by Nato troops. Under constant armed attack by hardline Albanians, Kosovo's remaining 80,000 or so Serbs have been forced to live in Nato-protected enclaves, such as Gracanica and the ethnically divided flashpoint of Mitrovica. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Democracy in Kosovo needs time, warns UN ``x960971776,11544,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade and Steve Crawshaw <br><br>15 June 2000 <br><br>A military court in the southern town of Nis yesterday indicted a 49-year-old Serb journalist, Miroslav Filipovic, for espionage and spreading false news. <br><br>Filipovic worked from the central Serbian town of Kraljevo, 100 miles south of Belgrade, as a correspondent for the independent daily Danas, Agence France Presse news agency and the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting. <br><br>Mr Filipovic's wife Slavica expressed shock at the charges against her husband, and insisted: "There is not a single reason for my husband to be where he is." <br><br>Mr Filipovic was arrested in his apartment on 8 May, under the orders of the local court in Kraljevo. The police also took away the hard disk from his computer as well as several dozen pages of printed-out stories. <br><br>In a matter of days, Kraljevo civil court transferred the case to the military court in Nis, which did not bring charges against him at that time and released Filipovic on 12 May. <br><br>"I'm not a spy. All the stories I've written were printed under my name and spies do not do such things," Filipovic said when he left the military prison in Nis. <br><br>Ten days later, a new investigation was opened and Mr Filipovic has remained in custody since then. If found guilty on both counts – espionage and spreading of false news, he faces a minimum of three years and a maximum sentence of up to 15 years in prison. <br><br>The article that appears to have roused the particular anger of the authorities documented the shock felt by members of the Yugoslav armed forces at what they had witnessed during the Kosovo conflict last year. The article was written for the IWPR, and was later republished by The Independent. No military secrets were contained within the story. <br><br>Anthony Borden, executive director of IWPR, said yesterday: "Miroslav's only crime has been to pursue serious reporting at the highest level. He has shown unique courage in covering topics at the heart of Yugoslav politics." The IWPR called on the Yugoslav authorities to "respect the rule of law and behave according to international norms and standards". <br><br>There has been a strong crackdown against the media in Serbia in recent weeks and months. Broadcasters have been closed down – including the opposition Studio B television studio and the independent B2-92 radio station – and newspapers have been forced out of business by the use of the law or punitive fines. <br><br>It is still not certain that the court will press ahead with the charges. Colonel Vukadin Milojevic, president of the military court in Nis, said that the case was now handed over to the court by the military prosecutor. It is up to the court to "start criminal proceedings", and to decide whether Mr Filipovic will stay in prison while awaiting trial and during the trial itself, if the trial goes ahead. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Journalist charged with spying ``x961056258,74452,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br> <br> <br>HERCEG NOVI, Montenegro, June 13 -- The mayor-elect of this town apologized the other day for his appearance and hoarse voice, a result of a hard-run election campaign, and immediately launched into a long explanation of the cap on his desk and the typical Serbian wedding at which it is worn. <br><br>The mayor-elect, Djuro Cetkovic, a local leader of the Socialist People's Party, had just orchestrated a political victory for the Serbs of Montenegro and in turn for the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Mr. Cetkovic's pro-Belgrade coalition defeated the Montenegrin government coalition in local elections here on Sunday, giving Milosevic supporters control of 7 out of 21 municipalities in this republic, the junior partner, with Serbia, in the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>The loss of Herceg Novi is a blow for the Montenegrin leader, Milo Djukanovic, who strongly opposes Mr. Milosevic and is trying to draw his republic out from under the Milosevic sway. The government held on to the capital, Podgorica, but its defeat in Herceg Novi, on the coast, gave a lift to his opponents at home and in Belgrade. <br><br>Mr. Cetkovic had clearly been celebrating, and his supporters said they were already looking forward to federal elections later this year. <br><br>Herceg Novi has always been the most closely contested of municipalities and the swing in the election result from the previous local government was small. The pro-Serbia coalition won 19 of the 35 seats, an improvement on the 17 it and its coalition partners held previously. The government coalition dropped to 14 seats, from 15, and its former coalition partner, the Liberal Alliance lost 1 of its 3 seats. <br><br>But these elections were more important than the local issues and voters and politicians alike have taken the results as important indicators for the future. "My face hurts from forcing a smile to show I don't mind," said the local Liberal Alliance secretary, Panto Pavicevic. <br><br>Sitting despondently in a cafe, he and the local party chief, Budimir Katuric, acknowledged that they had been outclassed by the good organization of the pro-Belgrade coalition headed by the Socialist People's Party, known as the S.N.P. <br><br>"A lot of young people did not come out to vote, and they are usually our supporters," Mr. Katuric said. "But 100 percent of the S.N.P. people came out, so they did not throw away a single vote." <br><br>There is no doubt that the liberals and the government party blundered badly. The Liberals withdrew from the coalition and forced these elections, hoping to increase their vote, but clearly misjudged. Mr. Katruic even admitted that the new results giving the the Socialist People's Party a majority are a truer reflection of local society. <br><br>The government paid the price for its poor performance over the last two years in the eyes of the people of Herceg Novi, and for allowing corruption to flourish, enriching a small elite while ordinary people have seen their standard of living plummet. <br><br>"There were some mistakes made by our party and people are weighing it up," said Zarko Mandic, head of a local school and member of the government party, the Democratic Party of Socialists. "It is a step backwards and the government must take it as an important lesson." <br><br>The Serb leader, Mr. Cetkovic, judged it right. His coalition had been weakened by its divisions in the last elections, he said, and this time they presented a united front. <br><br><br>The election centered on the fundamental preoccupation in Montenegrin society, whether to stay, or split from Serbia. That single issue is felt particularly acutely in Herceg Novi, a predominantly ethnic-Serb town. <br><br>Most people interviewed in Herceg Novi today, workers, pensioners, office workers and businessmen, said they had voted for the pro-Serbia coalition in order to stay within Yugoslavia. Few seemed to care about Mr. Milosevic himself but voiced fears of being cut off from Serbia. <br><br>"I voted for Yugoslavia," said Nenad Susic, a businessman and owner of a confectionary business. "My closest friends are in Serbia. There is no one here who does not have ties with Serbia. We are for integration, not disintegration." <br><br>Many complained that the Montenegrin government was already moving away from Serbia, cutting them off from family, friends and business partners through its economic policies. The introduction of the German mark as the main currency has brought higher prices and in turn caused Serbia to impose a trade blockade which has hurt ordinary people, they said. <br><br>"I personally voted for change," said a restaurant owner, Seka, who asked that her full name not be used. "My thought is that Montenegro is too small for independence, but the feeling is that the government is taking us that way. Serbs are finding it more difficult here. We lived here mostly on Serb tourists and now they are not coming." <br><br>Herceg Novi, with about 42,000 people, has a high proportion of ethnic Serbs, although the breakdown between Montenegrins and Serbs is murky since many people are actually vague about their origins. Mr. Katuric, the Liberal Alliance leader, estimated the divide as 50-50. The Serbian leader, Mr. Cetkovic, suggested the Serb element was over 90 percent. At least 9,000 Serb refugees from wars in neighboring Bosnia and Croatia have also swelled the district population over the last 10 years and have been given the right to vote. <br><br>Mr. Cetkovic is a passionate defender of the Serbs and can trace his family roots here back 300 years. He says that virtually all of those who live in Herceg Novi follow Serbian Orthodox Christianity and thus are Serbs. Montenegro appears to be a sideshow in Mr. Cetkovic's thinking. <br><br>What is clear is that Belgrade's propaganda is still finding fertile ground and has worked on people's fears, while the Montenegrin government has failed to allay them. <br><br>Montenegro appears to be a sideshow in Mr. Cetkovic's thinking. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Montenegro Town Rejects a Split With Belgrade``x961056282,2004,``x``x
``x<br> <br> <br>By our Eastern Europe correspondent James Kliphuis, 13 June 2000<br> <br> <br>Local elections in two towns in Montenegro have produced a mixed result. In the capital, Podgorica, the pro-Western government of Milo Djukanovic has succeeded in broadening its base; but in the coastal town of Herzeg Novi, the opposition (loyal to the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic) was victorious. <br><br>The two elections were necessary because the Liberal Alliance had walked out of the government-led local coalitions in Podgorica and Herzeg Novi. Both sides eagerly anticipated the outcome. For Montenegro's pro-Western president Milo Djukanovic and his followers in the "For a Better Life" coalition, the elections would provide an indication of the strength of their current popular support. But pro-Belgrade opposition leader Momir Bulatovic and his "Yugoslavia" bloc felt certain the results would show that support for Mr Djukanovic and his pro-Western stance had been largely eroded in the past year.<br><br>Mixed Message<br>As it turned out, both sides got a little of what they wanted, and some of what they had feared. With an absolute majority in the Montenegrin capital, President Djukanovic was able to claim that was what really mattered. With an absolute majority in the southern town of Herzeg Novi, opposition leader Bulatovic could say that his party - which was already strong in the north - now held a third of Montenegro's 21 municipalities.<br><br>"The citizens showed they were for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia", said Mr Bulatovic (who happens to be the Prime Minister of that Federation, which groups Montenegro with Serbia). President Djukanovic, however, stated that now "it was clear that Montenegro was marching on a stable, democratic, reform-oriented path", adding that his coalition's victory in Podgorica was "much better and greater" than its defeat in Herzeg Novi. <br><br>Brave Face<br>To some extent it sounds as if Mr Djukanovic is whistling in the dark, putting a brave face on a result that must have been pretty disappointing for him. The fact that support for the Milosevic loyalists has now spread to the south of Montenegro is significant. War veterans and pensioners make up a significant share of the electorate in Herzeg Novi. Their traditional loyalty to Belgrade has proved stronger than their support for Djukanovic's measures aimed at pacifying them, such as paying pensions in strong Deutschmarks instead of Yugoslav dinars. <br><br>The mixed outcome of this local vote can in no way be seen as an encouragement to Mr Djukanovic to call for a referendum on the vexed question whether Montenegro should finally cut loose from Belgrade. The outcome would be too uncertain. Djukanovic (and above all, his Western backers) have until now always shied away from that one irrecoverable step. They have always felt that a referendum would be tantamount to an invitation to the Federal authorities to send in the Yugoslav army to take over in Montenegro.<br><br>Army Presence<br>Over the past months there have been numerous occasions when Belgrade has signalled that it is not willing to let Montenegro leave the Yugoslav Federation just like that. For example, the federal army has been staging all sorts of manoeuvres in Montenegro. At the same time, it is doubtful that Bulatovic and his Belgrade loyalists will remain content with their Herzeg Novi win and let the Montenegrin President carry on as before. Even before the polls closed, they had been complaining about ballot-rigging; in Belgrade, the Yugoslav army chief of staff had been warning that the army will prevent civil war "at any price" The least that can mean is a continued, very visible presence of the federal Yugoslav army in Montenegro.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRN: Mixed Election Result in Montenegro``x961056298,47051,``x``x
``xNIS, Jun 15, 2000 -- (Reuters) The Yugoslav army on Wednesday displayed a range of crudely-made decoys that it said had tricked NATO pilots into firing away from genuine targets during the alliance's 1999 air strike campaign.<br><br>The head of Yugoslavia's Third Army division, Colonel-General Vladimir Lazarevic, sought the upper hand in the post-war public relations battle by reiterating accusations that the West had exaggerated the damage inflicted by its bombs.<br><br>"The first victim (of the war) was the truth," said Lazarevic, who headed the army's Pristina Corps during the conflict and who was later promoted by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Lazarevic, speaking at the bomb-damaged headquarters of the Third Army in the southern Serbian city of Nis, put its losses at 13 tanks, 10 armored personnel carriers as well as some artillery pieces - well below Western estimates.<br><br>"The truth is that the losses in military equipment were minimal," he said in an interview. "Never before in the history of warfare have such low losses been seen."<br><br>He did not go into detail about army strategy for avoiding greater damage, nor did he give military casualty figures.<br><br>But journalists were later shown decoys at an army base outside Nis which army personnel said were used in Kosovo.<br><br>Intended to trick hostile aircraft into going after the wrong targets, the decoys include dummies of soldiers filled with hay standing next to fake anti-aircraft guns made out of various metal parts, including old water pipes.<br><br>ARMY SAY DECOYS EFFECTIVE<br><br>One decoy was a multiple rocket launcher with rusty vegetable cans as barrels.<br><br>"It looks primitive, but it was very effective," said one army official. "The results were very good."<br><br>Another army officer, who declined to be identified, said the decoys had contributed greatly to reduced hardware losses. He said most of them were hit during the March-to-June air war.<br><br>Before reporters could approach a field where a dozen or so decoys were scattered, soldiers covered some of the larger ones so they could not be seen.<br><br>The army said these decoys had survived the bombing and been brought back by soldiers withdrawing from Kosovo last year to Nis, where the Pristina Corps, named after the provincial capital, is now based.<br><br>NATO bombed Yugoslavia to force Belgrade's military and police into ending a harsh crackdown on ethnic Albanians seeking self-rule in Kosovo, a southern province of Yugoslavia's main republic, Serbia.<br><br>Last month, the Pentagon and the U.S. Air Force denied a Western media report that the U.S. military and NATO had vastly inflated bomb damage wrought on Serbian armor.<br><br>An article in the U.S. magazine Newsweek said the air strikes were very accurate against fixed targets but ineffective against tanks, armored vehicles and mobile artillery.<br><br>U.S. Air Force Brigadier General John Corley, director of studies and analysis at U.S. Air Force headquarters in Europe, conceded that only about 26 destroyed and burned-out Serb tanks were found by his team after the bombing ended.<br><br>But he said that the total count was 93 destroyed after information from sources such as satellite pictures and gun-camera film was considered.<br><br>Kosovo, still legally part of Yugoslavia, is now under the de facto international rule, with 40,000 NATO-led peacekeeping troops struggling to keep peace and vengeful ethnic Albanians carrying out frequent attacks against remaining Serbs.<br><br>Echoing statements by the civilian Yugoslav leadership, Lazarevic said KFOR peacekeepers had failed to stop such attacks and suggested that they should be replaced by Serbian troops.<br><br>"There is no peace in Kosovo, there is no peace in the Balkans, unless the international security troops, the way they are, withdraw from Kosovo," he said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav Army Displays Decoys Said To Have Fooled NATO``x961140326,14858,``x``x
``xControversial Serb opposition leader Vuk Draskovic was slightly wounded early today when unknown assailants fired at him at his holiday home on the Montenegrin coast, his party and the independent Beta news agency reported. <br><br>The shooting occurred shortly after midnight near the coastal town of Budva, Beta said. <br><br>Quoting local police, Beta said Draskovic was transported to a hospital in nearby Kotor with bullet wounds in his head but the injuries were not life–threatening. <br><br>In Belgrade, Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement said the attackers "sprayed machine gun fire" on his house in a "new assassination attempt." <br><br>A senior party official said that one bullet struck Draskovic in the ear while another grazed his temple. <br><br>The official said the Draskovic home was "peppered with bullets." <br><br>A nurse on duty at the hospital in Kotor, 40 kilometers (22 miles) southwest of the Montenegrin capital Podgorica, said Draskovic was released after receiving treatment for "bullet injuries." <br><br>She would not give her name. <br><br>The incident was the latest in a series of attacks against prominent figures in Yugoslavia. On May May 31, Serbs, Goran Zugic, the national security adviser to Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, was gunned down in front of his home in Podgorica. <br><br>In January, Serbia's most infamous warlord Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, was nurdered in Belgrade. One montn later, Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic was shot dead in a restaurant in Yugoslav capital. <br><br>On Oct. 3, Draskovic survived a road accident in which three members of his party associates, includinh his brother–in–law, were killed. <br><br>Draskovic himself suffered only minor injuries but called the incident an assassination attempt. <br><br>At the time, Draskovic was in a car convoy when a truck coming the other way sweerved off its lane, crashing into two cars in Draskovic's convoy. <br><br>A police investigation later uncovered the charred remains of the truck but the driver has never been found. <br><br>Following the accident, Draskovic appeared less in public and kept a somewhat lower profile but made several blatant accusations against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic whom he blamed for "state terrorism." <br><br>Draskovic and his party are considered key Milosevic opponents, despite occasional cooperation with the Serb strongman, such as during NATO's bombing campaign last year when Draskovic briefly joined Milosevic's government. <br><br>Last summer and fall, Draskovic also refused refused to join daily street protests organized by a rival opposition group demanding Milosevic's ousting, arguing that protests could lead to a civil war in Serbia. <br><br>Instead, he is demanding Milosevic resign and all–out early elections be held only after free and fair election conditions can be implemented. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAP : Serbia's major opposition leader wounded in shooting incident ``x961140359,67296,``x``x
``xNeither pro-independence nor pro-Yugoslav forces have gained significant ground in this week's Montenegrin local elections<br><br>By Milka Tadic in Podgorica (BCR No. 148, 13-June-00)<br><br>Cars took to the streets of Podgorica early on Monday morning to celebrate President Milo Djukanovic's local election triumph in the capital. "We have won thousands more votes more than in previous elections. Our main opponents lost four and a half thousand votes. Our victory represents a real triumph in the capital for our policies," President Djukanovic told supporters of his victorious "For a Better Life" coalition.<br><br>But the champagne flowing in government headquarters, the dancing in the streets and the chants of "Milo, Milo" masked concern over the other result, in the coastal town of Herceg Novi. There, the "Yugoslavia" coalition led by Milosevic loyalist and former Montenegrin president Momir Bulatovic had triumphed.<br><br>Unofficial results for the June 11 poll suggest that Djukanovic's coalition won 28 of the total 55 seats in the Podgorica parliament, while "Yugoslavia" will now control Herceg Novi, where it won 19 out of 35 seats in the local assembly.<br><br>There were celebrations in Herceg Novi too, where they waved Yugoslav and Serbian flags, toasted Slobodan Milosevic and sang Chetnik songs. It all felt like a throw-back to the early nineties, when the Montenegrins fought with the Serbs against Croatia and Bosnia. "Serbia is our state and we will work for it in Herzeg Novi," future mayor, Djuro Cetkovic said in excitment.<br><br>The biggest loser in these elections is the Liberal Alliance, the pro-independence party which precipitated a crisis and forced early elections in the two towns by leaving the ruling alliance. The Liberals were banking on a bigger share of power in these elections, but they won only four seats in Podgorica and two in Herceg Novi. Moreover, they have lost their previous leverage, as the ruling coalition won enough seats to govern without them.<br><br>Podgorica, which comprises a quarter of the total electorate, is important for Djukanovic, so his improved performance there is good news. By contrast, Herceg Novi is home to only five per cent of the electorate, yet the psychological impact of a victory for pro-Milosevic forces in this coastal town far outweighs its numerical significance.<br><br>For Momir Bulatovic, the regaining of Herceg Novi marks the first turn around in a series of election defeats following presidential elections of 1997. Bulatovic probably got the votes of several thousand Serb refugees from Croatia and Bosnia who have settled in the town, but the pre-election strategy of the ruling coalition will have contributed to their defeat. <br><br>In pre-election campaigning in Herceg Novi, Svetozar Marovic, the chief campaigner for "A Better Life", tried to beat the "Yugoslavia" coalition at its own game, with patriotic pro-Yugoslav rhetoric, which paled in comparison to the real thing.<br><br>It seems neither pro-independence nor pro-Yugoslav forces have gained significant ground in this election. <br><br>Despite the defeat in Herceg Novi, anti-Milosevic forces are growing, but not fast enough for President Djukanovic to risk a referendum on independence. <br><br>Milka Tadic is the editor of the Podgorica-based Monitor magazine.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIWPR: Montenegrin Stalemate ``x961140396,35390,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, June 17 (AFP) - Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor for the UN war crimes tribunal, has no "permission" to visit any part of Yugoslav territory, state agency Tanjug quoted the Yugoslav foreign ministry as saying Friday.<br><br>Del Ponte "is NATO administration clerk and such a personality has neither permission of authorised Yugoslav institutions, nor a visa to visit any part of its sovereign territory," the ministry said in a statement.<br><br>"Those who accept and allow her to come to sovereign Yugoslav territory pursue with ingratiating themselves to NATO and the US administration and also break Yugoslav laws and the constitution," the statement said.<br><br>They also "desecrate victims of NATO aggression," as Belgrade refers to the 1999 Alliance bombing campaign on Yugoslavia, and "bore responsibility in front of their own people," the statement added.<br><br>Del Ponte, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), was scheduled to visit Montenegro, the reformist-led republic, which together with Serbia makes up Yugoslavia.<br><br>Earlier Friday, Montenegrin Justice Minister Dragan Soc said that the republic's government will cooperate with the ICTY and provide it with all necessary assistance.<br><br>ICTY deputy prosecutor Graham Blewitt said last week in The Hague that the visit was primarily at the request of the Montenegrin authorities, but added that it also gave the tribunal an opportunity to reach Serb witnesses and victims given Belgrade's refusal to cooperate.<br><br>Contrary to Belgrade, Montenegro, led by reformist President Milo Djukanovic, a fierce critic of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, has established contacts with the ICTY.<br><br>Milosevic and four other top Serbian officals were indicted by the ICTY last year for war crimes committed in Kosovo during Belgrade's repressive rule in the province.<br><br>Meanwhile in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica, the Socialist People's party (SNP) of Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, Milosevic's close ally, called for a "series of street protests" if Del Ponte was allowed to visit the republic.<br><br>"By giving up a pursuit of real criminals and proclaiming our state leadership as war criminals, Del Ponte has become persona non grata in Montenegro," Danijela Prenkic of the SNP told reporters.<br><br>"We advise her to remain in The Hague, if not, the SNP will call people for mass protest to block her arrival to Montenegro," Prenkic said.<br><br>The SNP is in the opposition to Djukanovic in Montenegro, while on the federal level, it is united with Milosevic's Socialists, his wife's neo-communist Yugoslav Left, and the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical party of Vojislav Seselj.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xDel Ponte has no "permission" to visit Montenegro: ministry``x961232458,50747,``x``x
``xSerbia: special report<br><br><br>Gillian Sandford and agencies in Belgrade and Budva, Montenegro <br>Saturday June 17, 2000 <br><br>Serbia's best-known opposition figure has accused President Slobodan Milosevic's secret police of trying to kill him, after his holiday home was sprayed by gunfire. <br>Vuk Draskovic, the head of the Serbian Renewal Movement, was grazed in the head by the shooting, which occurred at about midnight on Thursday at his home near Budva, a coastal town in Montenegro, where he had been staying for two days. <br><br>"This was definitely organised by Serbia's state security," Mr Draskovic said yesterday. <br><br>Mr Draskovic, with a bandage on his left ear and right temple, claimed Mr Milosevic had transformed Yugoslavia into a "lawless concentration camp" where gangland-style killings have become a means of governance. <br><br>"It is also definitely certain that another decision on my liquidation could not have been reached without the knowledge of those who run the country - and in this case it is Slobodan Milosevic and his wife," he added. According to Mr Draskovic's wife, Danica, he had told local police he was in Montenegro but declined their offer of protection. <br><br>After the first bullet grazed his temple, Mr Draskovic threw himself on the living room floor, his wife said. One of the bullets hit his earlobe. <br><br>The Serbian deputy information minister, Miodrag Popovic, denied that the government was behind the attack. <br><br>Montenegro's police chief, Vukasin Maras, said that his force now faced attempts by Belgrade to export "state terrorism" to the Yugoslav federation's junior republic. "This is a monstrous conspiracy," he added, saying he felt personally responsible for Mr Draskovic's injury. <br><br>Mr Draskovic's aides said the attack "came as a shock" and grim-faced party officials gathered yesterday at the party's Belgrade headquarters. <br><br>It was the latest in a series of attacks against prominent figures in Yugoslavia this year. Mr Draskovic has claimed there was an attempt on his life last October when a car he was in collided head-on with a truck which allegedly swerved out of its lane. He suffered minor injuries but three party associates were killed. <br><br>Mr Draskovic and his party are considered key Milosevic opponents, despite their occasional cooperation with him - notably during the Nato bombing campaign last year when he briefly joined the Milosevic government. <br><br>The most prominent unsolved murders in Yugoslavia this year:<br><br>Bosko Perosevic <br>Senior official in Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist party. Shot dead on May 13 at the Novi Sad fair <br><br>Zika Petrovic <br>Head of Yugoslav national airline JAT. Gunned down outside his home in central Belgrade on April 27. <br><br>Mirko Tomic <br>Also known as Bosanac (the Bosnian). Prominent underworld figure. Gunned down on February 13 from a speeding vehicle. <br><br>Pavle Bulatovic <br>Yugoslav defence minister, shot dead in restaurant on February 8. Officials put the blame on terrorists who had received their orders from abroad. Police have yet to find the killer. <br><br>Zeljko 'Arkan' Raznatovic <br>Feared Serbian warlord indicted by UN court for war crimes during the Croatian and Bosnian wars in 1991-95. Shot dead on January 15 in a Belgrade hotel. Police say they have arrested several suspects but do not have a motive for the killing.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Serb leader accused of murder plot ``x961232486,42275,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br><br>17 June 2000 <br><br>Vuk Draskovic, Serbia'sleading opposition politician, last night accused government agents acting on the orders of President Slobodan Milosevic of carrying out an attempt on his life. <br><br>Mr Draskovic was injured when shots were fired through a window of his holiday home in the Montenegrin town of Budva on Thursday night, grazing his head, but leaving him otherwise unharmed. <br><br>"This was definitely organised by Serbia's state security," he said. Amid the rubble of smashed glass, blood stains and a wall riddled with bullet holes, Mr Draskovic, with a bandage on his left ear and right temple, claimed President Milosevic had transformed the former Yugoslavia into a "lawless concentration camp" where gangland-style killings had become a means of governance. <br><br>Senior officials in Mr Draskovic's party, the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), voiced their anger at the attack yesterday. "This was an act of terrorism, Draskovic was saved by a miracle," said Ognjen Pribicevic, one of Mr Draskovic's closest allies. <br><br>An SPO spokesman, Ivan Kovacevic, said Mr Draskovic had been alone, watching television, when the living room was sprayed with bullets. No bodyguards had been present. <br><br>"There are no doubts that certain forces that want Draskovic to vanish as a leader that can bring changes into this country, stand behind this assassination attempt," Mr Kovacevic said. Another attempt was made on Mr Draskovic's life last October. Four aides died in a car crash near Belgrade, while he suffered only minor injuries. <br><br>The Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, sent a message to the SPO yesterday condemning "the assassination attempt". Mr Ivanov said this "act of terrorism" had endangered the process of democratisation in Serbia. Mr Draskovic headed a delegation of Serbian opposition parties which visited Moscow last month. <br><br>In Brussels, Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign and security policy chief, said he was shocked by the incident. Mr Solana said the "escalation in the cycle of violence illustrates the sad state of political affairs" in a country "where the use of brute force seems to have become an increasingly standard method of settling political differences". <br><br>Mr Draskovic's aides said the attack "came as a shock" and grim-faced party officials gathered yesterday at the party's Belgrade headquarters to discuss its implications. Milan Bozic, a close ally of Mr Draskovic, said: "The spiral of violence continues and threatens to suck in the entire country," <br><br>The incident was the latest in a series of attacks against prominent figures in Yugoslavia. On 31 May, Goran Zugic, the national security adviser to the Montenegrin President, Milo Djukanovic, was gunned down in front of his home in Podgorica. In January, Serbia's most infamous warlord Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, was murdered in Belgrade. <br><br>One month later, the Defence Minister, Pavle Bulatovic, was shot dead in a restaurant in Yugoslav capital. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Milosevic accused of assassination attempt ``x961232528,86614,``x``x
``xStephen Grey, Pristina <br><br>THE British Army's most senior commander in Kosovo has accused the European Union of failing to deliver aid promised to families left homeless by ethnic cleansing and war. <br>Brigadier Richard Shirreff, who heads Nato forces in central Kosovo, said time was being squandered in delay and red tape. "The EU seems incapable of getting anything done without a bureaucratic wrangle," he said. "We have lost three months since the last winter and another is approaching fast." <br><br>The remarks by Shirreff, who also commands Britain's 7th Armoured Brigade, were en-dorsed by high-ranking EU officials in Pristina, the Kosovan capital, and in Brussels. <br><br>Six months into the year only a fraction of the EU's £170m earmarked for reconstruction in Kosovo has been spent. By last week, contracts had been signed for £60m of work and only £6m had been paid out. Michaele Schreyer, EU budget commissioner and a member of the German Green party, called the delays shocking and unacceptable. <br><br>Although Kosovo is under United Nations control, the EU is in charge of reconstruction and is meeting up to 70% of the bill. Its £170m contribution includes £34m to rebuild 8,000 of the 120,000 homes damaged in the war. <br><br>The EU's record on aid contrasts unfavourably with Britain's Department for International Development, led by Clare Short. Since April, Britain has awarded contracts for 70% of its £20m budget. <br><br>Experts say many of the problems have been caused by delays in setting up the European Agency for Reconstruction, which oversees the EU's work in Kosovo. The agency began work in February, months behind schedule. <br><br>Its work has been hampered by a power struggle between the Greece-based governing body and a management committee in Brussels that controls its funds. <br><br>Last month the committee delayed approval of an agricultural aid programme for Kosovo because members said they had not been consulted earlier. The committee has not even agreed which language to use in meetings, forcing Chris Patten, the external relations commissioner, to intervene. <br><br>All members speak English, but sessions will be conducted in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German. Patten won a single compromise that papers would be in English only. <br><br>The committee has also angered field workers by intervening over minor details, creating substantial delay. Lousewies van der Laan, a Dutch liberal and vice-president of the European parliament's budget control committee, condemned such "childish" behaviour. <br><br>Patten said agency officials in Kosovo were working "flat out" to get everything done. "I'm confident we can get the houses rebuilt and the power restored before winter," he said. "It's going to be tight, but we are determined to do it." <br><br>For Nato commanders on the ground, such as Shirreff, the main problem is the slow pace of rural reconstruction, which has caused a flow of people into the cities. The population of Pristina has grown from 300,000 before the war to 500,000 and, with 100,000 more refugees expected to return to Kosovo this summer, there are fears that overcrowding will threaten security. <br><br>The Mramor area near the capital illustrates the difficulties created by the EU's slow delivery of aid. Brussels promised to rebuild 300 homes this year. Work has yet to begin and most families live in tents or are refugees elsewhere. <br><br>"The international community and the bureaucracy of the EU are finding it next to impossible to release the money," Shirreff said. "I have been going from office to office in Pristina, trying to identify what the blockage is." <br><br>Antoine Duplouy, the shelter co-ordinator for the international rescue committee, the EU's main contractor in the area, said the EU was going to fund the rebuilding of the Mramor homes. But first a committee would have to meet in Pristina to decide which families should be given priority. <br><br>"It is always the same with the EU, you have to wait for the money," Duplouy complained. "We could have started in April but for some reason money from Brussels arrives late in the year. I don't understand why."<br><br>Serbs hold on to the forgotten victims of war<br> <br>NEITHER Burim Zhubi nor his brother Mirgjim can be called prisoners of war. They have never held a gun or worn a uniform, writes Stephen Grey. <br>A year after the end of Nato's aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia, however, they remain in jail in Serbia, among more than 1,300 forgotten victims of the Kosovo conflict still held by the Serbs. <br><br>Their family says they were betrayed by Nato when it dropped a clause, obliging the Serbs to release prisoners, from the final draft of the pact that ended the 12 weeks of airstrikes. It was signed by Lieutenant-General Sir Michael Jackson, Nato's British commander in Kosovo. <br><br>Ferial Zhubi, 61, the men's mother, returned from visiting Burim in jail in Nis, 150 miles south of Belgrade, saying he and his fellow prisoners were bitter about the agreement. "They want to know why it contained nothing about our people in prison," she said. <br><br>Until May 7 last year - nearly two months into Nato's air war against President Slobodan Milosevic - Burim, 41, and Mergjim, 31, were known to the people in their home town of Djakovica only as managers of a chemist's shop. That day they were arrested, along with 150 other local men, accused of terrorism and taken into custody. <br><br>A draft peace agreement for Kosovo drawn up at the failed negotiations at Rambouillet, France, three months earlier had included provisions demanding "the release and transfer" of "all persons held in connection with the conflict". <br><br>A later peace plan devised by the G8 group of the world's most powerful nations, which was accepted by Milosevic on June 3, demanded that "full account" be taken of the Rambouillet accords. So, too, The Sunday Times has learnt, did early drafts of the final agreement. <br><br>The International Crisis Group, an American-based think tank, blames the climbdown on pressure from President Bill Clinton to end the war. <br><br>Jackson said he had dropped the clauses on releasing prisoners because he was powerless to negotiate over their fate. "I was well aware of this issue," he said. "But the fundamental decision was taken by the G8. This formed the basis of everything that followed. I could not go beyond what was agreed." <br><br>Many western officials have since accepted they were wrong to abandon the Albanian prisoners. One senior diplomat in Pristina last week said the absence of any agreement containing terms for prisoners and missing persons was the "number one outstanding issue" in Kosovo. "Nato was in an obscene hurry to end this war," he said. "So they abandoned these prisoners wholesale." <br><br>In Kosovo last month there were demonstrations after a judge in Nis sentenced 143 Kosovar Albanians to a total of 1,632 years in jail for alleged involvement in terrorism. Among those sentenced, all of whom were arrested at random in Djakovica, were Burim, who was given 12 years in jail, and Mergjim, given nine years. Their alleged crime was complicity in the murder of a Serbian policeman on May 11 - even though they had been arrested four days earlier. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times: British commander hits at EU for Kosovo aid delays ``x961403714,30617,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br> <br>PRAGUE, June 18 -- The Clinton administration is exploring with some of its NATO allies and Russia the possibility that President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia be allowed to leave office with guarantees for his safety and his savings, senior American and NATO officials say. <br><br>The discussions are delicate and informal, the officials stress, emphasizing that the administration is not preparing any offer to Mr. Milosevic -- who has been indicted by an international war crimes tribunal -- and will not make one. <br><br>On the other hand, "if we were presented with a hard and fast offer that would get Milosevic out of power, we'd have to think very hard before saying 'no,' " a senior administration official said. <br><br>Another senior official said that the United States would condemn any proposal that would allow Mr. Milosevic to go anywhere but to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. "That's the policy," the official said. "But 'Would we act to stop it or quietly acquiesce?' is another question," the official said, then added carefully: "There has been no formal discussion of this -- that I am aware of." <br><br>Mr. Milosevic raised the question of his future last summer, after the war over Kosovo ended, officials say. But Washington rebuffed any discussion of a deal. <br><br>Various proposals have been raised to Washington and Athens in recent weeks by emissaries saying they come from Mr. Milosevic, the officials said. But what is less clear is whether they are fully authorized, and whether Mr. Milosevic is serious about doing a deal, or simply trying to "see how the ground lies," an American official said. "What we would never do is make him an offer, because he'll just pocket it." <br><br>Any deal, even without clear American fingerprints, would also put Vice President Al Gore into a difficult position during the presidential campaign and could undermine the international tribunal that indicted Mr. Milosevic. <br><br>It is also not clear why Mr. Milosevic would choose to leave power now, the officials caution. While his position is slowly disintegrating, along with Yugoslavia's economy, his current seat is probably the safest place for him. "It would be hard for him to trust assurances from anyone, inside or outside the country," an official said. <br><br>Within his ruling party, Mr. Milosevic has said that it is important to wait out the Clinton administration, and that a President George W. Bush would be more "realistic" toward Serbia and carry less personal animosity from the Kosovo war. <br><br>Still, President Clinton raised the issue of Mr. Milosevic's future with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, at their recent summit meeting, Russian officials have told some NATO-country officials. According to the Russians, Mr. Putin told Mr. Clinton that Miami seemed as good a place for Mr. Milosevic as Moscow, the officials said. <br><br>The Clinton administration has made the ouster of Mr. Milosevic one of its main policy goals and regards him as the central obstacle to democratization and stability in southeastern Europe. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has told her top aides she wants Mr. Milosevic out of office before she goes, yet Mr. Milosevic has frustrated Washington, outflanking the opposition. <br><br>"There is keen interest in these proposals in Washington," said a NATO-country official. "They can't be seen to be shopping. But they are sending signals that should a clear proposal come, it would be seriously entertained. And that shows they're serious. If you write about it, it will be full denial. But it's the best solution for everyone, and they could spin it as victory, as his head on a platter. There is a strong argument that democracy should be put ahead of the person." <br><br>Greece is one of the countries actively exploring the possibility of a deal for Mr. Milosevic's ouster, which could mean exile abroad for him and his family or, less likely, pledges of safety inside Serbia from any successor government that promises not to extradite him. <br><br>Orthodox Greece provided humanitarian aid to Serbia and Kosovo even during the air war and has acted as a go-between for NATO and Belgrade in the past. <br><br>Last month, Mr. Milosevic saw the former Greek foreign minister, Karolos Papoulias, and some important Greek businessmen, including some with close ties to the United States. Mr. Milosevic is said to have asked to see former Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis, whom he trusts, but officials say that they are looking for more signals of seriousness from Belgrade before Mr. Mitsotakis would be authorized to go. <br><br>While Mr. Milosevic is beleaguered and unpopular, and the country is having severe economic problems, the Serbian opposition is weak and there are no signs of potential insurrection. The army and the police have not cracked. Russia and China, which opposed NATO's use of force in Kosovo and have interests in Serbia, have been willing to help Mr. Milosevic and his government with credits, loans and energy supplies. <br><br>On the other hand, the officials say, Mr. Milosevic is showing signs of nervousness. He is not seeing a broad range of people or traveling widely inside the country; there is evidence of a grain shortage that will drive up food prices; and there have been a series of assassinations of senior officials and criminal leaders, none of them solved, that indicate instability. <br><br>The opposition is becoming more of a widespread movement inside Serbia, with opinion polls showing a growing desire for change and an end to international isolation, even if the current leaders of the opposition are not popular themselves. <br><br>Furthermore, international sanctions against Yugoslavia are becoming better coordinated and seem to be biting those close to the government. Just last week, officials say, Cyprus, a favored spot for Serbian money and money laundering, finally agreed to shut down the office of Beogradska Banka on technical grounds. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic and his family are believed to have large amounts of money in foreign banks, although the size and location of the holdings are not known. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic seems tired and irritable, the officials say, and they note that his speeches have a kind of ideological fury more reminiscent of the views of his influential wife, Mirjana Markovic, a professor of sociology who founded the Yugoslav United Left Party. <br><br>Some in his own party are said to be looking beyond him, and the security of his family -- especially his son, Marko, who is involved in a wide range of business activities -- is a concern. <br><br>Marko Milosevic, although on a list of individuals banned from travel to European Union countries, was recently in Greece on a false diplomatic passport, one official said, and he is now believed to be in Japan, possibly on his way to China. <br><br>As for Mr. Milosevic's conviction that a Bush administration would be more realistic and less emotional toward him, a Bush foreign policy adviser cautioned that there was no agreed policy, and that the situation in Serbia could change a lot in six months. <br><br>"But Milosevic should take no comfort from the prospect of a Bush administration," the adviser said. "There will be no sense of letting bygones be bygones. The strategy may change in different ways, and it will be worked out with the Europeans. But the idea that a bunch of Kissingerian realpolitikers will focus energy elsewhere and let him mind his own business is not something he should bank on."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Informal Talks Reported on Exit Terms for Milosevic ``x961403743,60964,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br> <br>WASHINGTON -- To hear some in NATO talk, Montenegro is the unsinkable aircraft carrier in the West's unfinished war against Yugoslavia's president, Slobodan Milosevic. But last week, the carrier took a few shells from Montenegro's voters, a sizable minority of whom want to remain inside Yugoslavia. <br><br>Montenegro is the last republic of Tito's Yugoslavia that remains alongside Serbia in Mr. Milosevic's incredible shrinking state. <br><br>But Montenegro has barely more than 600,000 people -- a third of Belgrade's population -- and represents only 5 percent of Yugoslavia's people. <br><br>Still, Milo Djukanovic, its young president, broke away from Mr. Milosevic and barely defeated a Milosevic ally in 1997. He has also moved sharply toward the West on a platform of virtual and then eventual independence from an undemocratic Belgrade. He opposed Mr. Milosevic's policies toward Kosovo and then defied him during the war there a year ago, raising fears that Montenegro could be the next flashpoint in Yugoslavia. <br><br>But now, an ambiguous election result has reduced the pressure for Montenegrin independence just when few in NATO have much taste for another confrontation with Mr. Milosevic. <br><br>In local elections last week in the capital, Podgorica, and in the seaside town of Herceg Novi, Montenegrins split over competing notions of the republic's future. A coalition called "For Yugoslavia," which supported Mr. Milosevic, won a handy victory in Herceg Novi, while losing in Podgorica, where Mr. Djukanovic is strong. <br><br>It's always easy to make too much of local elections, but the message to American policy makers was clear: Mr. Milosevic has won a round in fair elections. <br><br>"Djukanovic clearly thought he'd get a better result, and he didn't," one senior American official said. "It's not a disaster, but it's a signal." <br><br>For Mr. Djukanovic and his coalition, it is a clear warning that any referendum on independence for Montenegro would not win by the kind of thumping majority that could prevent civil strife. In fact, it could produce civil war and partition. <br><br>Even more important, these deep splits could allow Mr. Milosevic and Belgrade to foment civil strife in Montenegro with a high degree of deniability, even without a direct use of the Yugoslav military units that are based there. While the NATO alliance has not promised to come to Montenegro's aid if Belgrade moves forcibly against it, NATO leaders have warned Mr. Milosevic against doing so. <br><br>Senior American officials insist that any effort to move against Mr. Djukanovic with force could have consequences in Belgrade, with new bombing attacks. But few in NATO want another bombing war after Kosovo. One senior NATO official said acerbically, "Kosovo was such a resounding success that no one in the alliance wants to repeat it ever again." <br><br>So Mr. Djukanovic's awkward limbo continues, with him caught among competing pressures -- from some supporters to move more briskly toward independence, from Washington and NATO not to precipitate a crisis, and from Belgrade aimed at undermining him. <br><br>Belgrade's pressure is not just political and psychological, Western and Montenegrin officials insist, but also physical, with the skillful assassination, 10 days before the vote, of one of Mr. Djukanovic's closest bodyguards. American officials say they have no evidence of Belgrade's involvement. Still, the assassination seemed like a message to the Serbian political opposition, too -- one that was underscored by what appeared to be an assassination attempt on the Serbian opposition figure Vuk Draskovic late Thursday night in Montenegro. <br><br>"The vote just puts Djukanovic further into the maze, trying to chart a middle course, but to where?" said John Fox, a former State Department official who specializes in the Balkans. "This limbo in which Montenegro is supposed to remain becomes more difficult and more costly for Djukanovic in political terms." <br><br>The most obvious loser in the election was the Liberal Alliance, which favors rapid independence and precipitated these elections by pulling out of a coalition with Mr. Djukanovic. But Mr. Djukanovic has also lost, because some significant part of the pro-Yugoslavia vote was an anti-Djukanovic protest against corruption and arrogance in this small state where, as in Belgrade, a few people live extremely well on their political and criminal connections. In small Herceg Novi, Mr. Djukanovic's brother, Aco, is a major figure, and he is widely disliked for his shady business practices. <br><br>But Mr. Djukanovic matters to the West. He has provided shelter to Serbian opposition figures who were afraid for their lives, both during the war and afterward, as well as to Serbian draft dodgers during the war. And he has provided a platform for broadcasting anti-Milosevic material into Serbia. In return, he has received Western adulation and millions of dollars in aid. <br><br>As a part of Yugoslavia, Montenegro can also have an impact on the fate of the country's president, Mr. Milosevic. That is why American officials -- and much of the Serbian opposition -- are pressing Mr. Djukanovic to take part in federal elections Mr. Milosevic must call by the end of this year. <br><br>Mr. Djukanovic has opposed the idea, rejecting the legitimacy of the currently constituted federal government or Parliament. But the Americans and the Serbian opposition are convinced that they can win the elections if Montenegro participates, weakening Mr. Milosevic before next year's crucial parliamentary elections in Serbia. A Montenegrin boycott, on the other hand, could give Mr. Milosevic an excuse not to have the elections at all. <br><br>But Mr. Fox thinks the strategy is wrongheaded. Montenegro's participation would legitimize Mr. Milosevic more than undermine him, he says, and in any event the West should call the elections unfree and unfair, given the restrictions on the media in Serbia. "The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is already illegitimate and dysfunctional," Mr. Fox said. "And here we are saying to Djukanovic that we won't talk to the war criminal that heads it but that you have to participate in his election."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : NATO's Friends Can't Win Every Vote``x961403773,13192,``x``x
``x<br><br>China is seen as haven if Milosevic gives up power<br><br>Kosovo: special report <br><br>Rory Carroll, Julian Borger in Washington and Helena Smith in Athens <br>Tuesday June 20, 2000 <br><br>It bombed his home, put a bounty on his head and branded him a monster who could never be forgiven, but the United States is quietly seeking a way out for Slobodan Milosevic that would leave his bank account intact. <br>Despite denials, US officials are considering ways to allow the Yugoslav president to leave office without a war crimes trial at the Hague. In what may turn out to be the Balkan endgame, the US is signalling the possibility of a secure retirement for the man blamed for setting Yugoslavia aflame.<br><br>Amid reports that Mr Milosevic is transferring his family fortune to China, officials leaked claims that his emissaries have approached Washington and Athens with proposals for his ceding power in exchange for an amnesty.<br><br>The war crimes tribunal in the Hague insisted yesterday that the Yugoslav leader would have nowhere to hide, but President Bill Clinton's yearning for a historic legacy is said to be opening doors to a deal.<br><br>The US is using Greece as an intermediary to discuss bolt holes, the New York Times reported yesterday. <br><br>"If we were presented with a hard and fast offer that would get Milosevic out of power, we'd have to think very hard before saying no," a senior US administration official said.<br><br>The revelation follows rumours in Belgrade that Mr Milosevic wants out, exhausted by defeat in Kosovo, indict ment by the Hague and economic meltdown.<br><br>His wife, Mira Markovic, haunted by the fate of Romania's executed first couple, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, fears that events are spinning out of control, according to leaks from their tight circle of friends. Mr Milosevic's political allies have been assassinated in a wave of unexplained shootings.<br><br>At the beginning of the year and with Washington's blessing, Greece dispatched envoys to Belgrade to discuss exit scenarios for him and his family. The former Greek prime minister, Constantine Mitsotakis, is willing to act as an interlocutor between the west and Mr Milosevic, his "close friend" and sailing partner.<br><br>Mr Mitsotakis, who belongs to the opposition New Democracy party, has a reputation as the only western politician the Yugoslav leader trusts. <br><br>Last week Mr Mitsotakis reportedly vowed to undertake the mission if the US guaranteed that it was serious and that he was not made an "international laughing stock".<br><br>Denying the New York Times report, the state department yesterday repeated the official position tha Washington would never contemplate offering Mr Milosevic an amnesty from war crimes.<br><br>Any international amnesty deal behind the back of the Hague tribunal would seriously undermine its authority in administering justice in the wake of the Croatian, Bosnian and Kosovo wars.<br><br>Last year the US slapped down opposition leaders in Serbia who sought to arrange an asylum deal for Mr Milosevic as a means of ensuring a peaceful transition of power.<br><br>"If there is any place where he seeks sanctuary, I would recommend the Hague," the US defence secretary, William Cohen, said at the time. Washington has offered a $5m reward for information leading to Mr Milosevic's arrest and delivery to the Hague tribunal.<br><br>One year on, however, the Serbian opposition remains as divided as ever and apparently no closer to ousting Mr Milosevic under its own steam. Disillusionment has made the people of Belgrade sceptical of suggestions that he may step down. The rumours tend to be believed only by senior opposition figures. "Wishful thinking. They've screwed it up so that's all they've left," said one Belgrade shop assistant.<br><br>But the Clinton administration is running out of time, and is deeply concerned about its final balance sheet. Greek officials at the foreign ministry said they believed Mr Milosevic was biding his time until the US presidential election - a view echoed in Belgrade - in the hope of a Republican victory.<br><br>A British diplomat said the Clinton administration's hopes were deluded. "I don't see why he would do it. It's more dangerous for him to quit than it is to stay put."<br><br>Once he cedes power Mr Milosevic will lose all his bargaining chips. Though he is beleaguered, the official opposition in Serbia is in disarray and unpopular. The police and army remain loyal. Street protests have fizzled out.<br><br>One Nato country official insisted, however, that an amnesty was on the cards, saying: "It's in the best solution for everyone, and they [Nato] could spin it as victory. There is a strong argument that democracy should be put ahead of the person."<br><br>Greece, Belarus and Iraq are believed to be among countries ready to provide a haven. Shortly after the Bosnian war the Serb monastery on the self-governing Republic of Mount Athos, in northern Greece, prepared accommodation for Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, though both remained in Serbia.<br><br>According to the Serb opposition leader, Zoran Djindjic, Mr Milosevic has also been offered asylum in China. Of all possible bolt-holes, that is the most likely. His son, Marko, is believed to have recently flown to Beijing to negotiate transfers of family funds with officials in the government, with which his mother's Marxist party, the Yugoslav United Left, enjoys excellent relations.<br><br>Chinese money has been pouring into Belgrade since the end of the Kosovo bombing. Advertisements in China encouraging nationals to emigrate have increased the number of Chinese people living in Serbia to nearly 100,000.<br><br>However last year's indictment as a war criminal would complicate any deal. James Landale, the Hague tribunal's spokesman, said yesterday: "The mandate of the tribunal is handed down by the security council. All states are obliged to cooperate. Anyone who is indicted is indicted for life. No one can nullify or dismiss an indictment, other than the security council."<br><br>Any package deal for Mr Milosevic will have to include his unceasingly loyal wife. "My husband is a perfect man," she wrote in her regular column in a women's magazine.<br><br>The war leaders: at home, in prison - or dead<br><br>• Radovan Karadzic The Bosnian Serb wartime leader who was charged with crimes against humanity and genocide is still living in seclusion in his home in Pale. The S-For peacekeeping troops patrolling the area have been reluctant to storm his house for fear of casualties.<br><br>• Ratko Mladic The Bosnian Serbs' top general, who is living in retirement in the Yugoslav capital, is also wanted for genocide. He commanded the constant shelling of Sarajevo and the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men from Srebrenica. His full address is: 119 Blagoja Parovica, Banovo Brdo, Belgrade. He likes to go to horse races and football matches, and continues to draw a monthly pension from the Yugoslav government. <br><br>• Zeljko Raznjatovic, known as Arkan. The leader of the paramilitary group the Tigers was charged last year in a sealed indictment, which was thought to include his role in massacres in Croatia in 1991, Bosnia in 1992 and possibly in Kosovo last year. He was gunned down in a Belgrade hotel soon after the indictment was issued. At the time of his murder, he had been exploring his options, sounding out at least one western country for asylum.<br><br>• Momcilo Krajisnik Karadzic's right-hand man, and the most senior war crimes suspect to have been captured by Nato troops and delivered to the Hague, in April this year. He is accused of genocide and crimes against humanity for his part in implementing a policy of ethnic cleansing across Bosnia from 1991 to 1995.<br><br>• Dusan Tadic Convicted on 11 war crimes counts by the Hague tribunal in 1997 for his part in running the horrific Omarska camp in the Bosnian Serb Republic where inmates, mostly Muslims, were tortured, raped and killed. He is currently appealing against his sentence.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUS seeks war crime amnesty for Serb leader ``x961499673,44304,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Mary Dejevsky in Washington <br><br><br>20 June 2000 <br><br>One year after the end of the Kosovo conflict, the United States, along with its Nato allies and Russia, is exploring ways to ease the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, from power with his consent, according to a newspaper report yesterday. <br><br>But the report, quoting senior US and Nato officials, said the talks were delicate and informal, and officials denied that any offer was either being prepared or was likely to be made. <br><br>The scenario set out in The New York Times report would require Mr Milosevic to leave power but would guarantee his safety and his savings. While the Serbian leader has so far resisted all efforts to oust him, domestic opposition is mounting, and several of his close allies have been assassinated. <br><br>Yesterday's report bears all the hallmarks of a test of public and political opinion, especially in the US, where the presidential election is less than five months away. Allowing Mr Milosevic to leave office with virtual impunity would anger large sections of the political establishment and the public, not just in the US, but in Europe. <br><br>Mr Milosevic is seen on both continents as the chief instigator of the violence against Kosovo's Albanians which triggered Nato's military intervention. He is also an indicted war criminal; allowing him to go free would imply that one law was applied to subordinates and quite another to leaders. <br><br>In response to the report, a State Department official was quoted as saying there was no change in US policy, which was that the right destination for Mr Milosevic was the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. A senior White House official echoed that view, saying the US would condemn any other proposal. But the official went on: "That's the policy. But would we act to stop it [a deal] or quietly acquiesce is another question." <br><br>In Russia, which has shown considerably more sympathy for the Serbian case, a deal that removed Mr Milosevic from power without subjecting him to prosecution could be a welcome solution. It would allow the new Russian government to keep its pro-Serb sentiments intact while severing ties with a leader who has frequently proved a liability. <br><br>What is uncertain is which side made the first move. It can be inferred from The New York Times account that at least some of the running was made by Mr Milosevic himself, or by his domestic allies. Emissaries purporting to come from Mr Milosevic have reportedly approached officials in the US and in Greece. Russia denied flat out that it was involved in talks about the leader's future. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNato may offer Milosevic an amnesty if he agrees to quit ``x961499707,6341,``x``x
``x<br><br>AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Any diplomatic deal to push Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from power must contain no promises of immunity for war crimes, officials at the U.N. tribunal said Monday. <br><br>They were interviewed after The New York Times reported Monday that the Clinton administration is exploring the possibility of a deal for Milosevic to leave office while guaranteeing his safety and his savings. <br><br>Though tribunal officials remain steadfast in objecting to any plan that would grant Milosevic immunity from prosecution, the tribunal would be unlikely to impede diplomatic moves to restore political stability to Yugoslavia, said spokesman Paul Risley, broadly indicating that the chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, would not block a deal for Milosevic to step down from power. <br><br>Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt told reporters in Skopje, Macedonia, that if another country took in Milosevic, the tribunal at The Hague "would not hesitate to send another warrant to that country to arrest him." <br><br>"Any country that agrees to take President Milosevic, who has been indicted by the tribunal, has an obligation to arrest and surrender him," he said. <br><br>There was no immediate comment from the Yugoslav officials on the Times report. However, sources close to the government said Milosevic is not contemplating such an option at the moment and that he has moved to strengthen his grip on power in Yugoslavia. <br><br>Although Milosevic faces international isolation, he has managed to consolidate his rule a year after the NATO bombing left his country in ruins and caused his popularity to plummet among ordinary Serbs. <br><br>In the past year, Milosevic has managed to outmaneuver his political opponents by a combination of increased repression against dissent and an aggressive campaign to reconstruct the country. <br><br>With federal and municipal votes due by the end of the year, Milosevic is more focused on the ways to ensure his ruling coalition's election victory. He could also be hoping that the international political climate would change to his benefit, enabling him to cut a better deal. <br><br>While war crimes suspects in Bosnia constantly are at risk of arrest by NATO troops stationed there, Milosevic -- who rules in Serbia -- does not feel threatened by the alliance's troops in Kosovo, Yugoslavia's southern province. <br><br>Del Ponte was in Skopje on Monday and will travel to Kosovo on Tuesday and Wednesday to pursue the investigation of alleged war crimes in the Yugoslav province. <br><br>The indictment against Milosevic focused on Serb policies in Kosovo, which is dominated by ethnic Albanians. Milosevic's crackdown on Kosovo prompted a 78-day NATO bombing campaign against Serbia last year. <br><br>Risley said the tribunal and the countries that support it "would never permit a guarantee of immunity for any person indicted by the tribunal. <br><br>"That said, the tribunal recognizes the important role of diplomacy in bringing stability to the region," he added in a telephone call from Skopje. <br><br>Other tribunal officials said rumors of U.S. interest in a deal with Milosevic have been floating for some time. A Greek newspaper reported a month ago that U.S. officials had quietly approached Athens to try to work out an arrangement for his departure from office. <br><br>Greece, which has maintained close ties with Belgrade, had acted as an intermediary with Yugoslavia during the NATO bombing campaign. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWar Crimes prosecutor would object to immunity for Milosevic``x961499728,40417,``x``x
``xState Department: Policy Toward Yugoslav Leader Unchanged <br> <br>Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has been indicted for atrocities Yugoslav security forces allegedly committed in Kosovo before NATO's air campaign drove them from the ethnic-Albanian dominated province last year. (AP Photo)<br><br>June 19 — The State Department today denied a newspaper report saying U.S. officials were looking for a way to let Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic bow out of office without having to face the consequences of his indictment as a war criminal. <br>The United States has not changed its policy toward Milosevic, State Department officials said. The New York Times, citing senior U.S. and NATO officials, reported today the United States has been talking to NATO allies and Russia about the possibility that Milosevic be permitted to leave office with guarantees for his safety and personal assets.<br>“The only place that Milosevic should consider going is the Hague,” a State Department official told ABCNEWS. “The United States continues to view him as a war criminal. <br>“Right now there has been no deal offered, either by Milosevic’s people or by anyone acting as an intermediary,” the official said. <br>The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague has indicted Milosevic for atrocities Yugoslav security forces allegedly committed in Kosovo before NATO’s air campaign drove them from the ethnic-Albanian dominated province last year. <br>No Offers, But Some Talk <br>The Times also reported the Clinton administration was not preparing any offer to Milosevic and would not make one.<br>But a senior administration official told ABCNEWS that U.S. allies “have raised this idea periodically but only informally. There have been no formal discussions of any kind … this is just one of those issues that is hanging out there.”<br>“The issue for most people is that if you have to choose at the end of the day between giving Milosevic a safe haven versus keeping him in power, then I think people [in the Administration] would think hard about holding their nose and taking the deal,” the official said.<br>The official also said circumstances would depend on whether Milosevic himself was interested. “The deal has to be something Milosevic agrees to and it seems hard to see him taking such a deal since he is better off in power, even though it is eroding, than by going in to exile.” <br><br>Proposals, Denials <br><br>The Times quoted officials saying various proposals have been made to the United States and Greece in recent weeks by emissaries saying they come from Milosevic. <br>It is less clear is whether they are fully authorized, and whether Milosevic is serious about cutting a deal, the newspaper said.<br>The Times reported that Milosevic and his family are believed to possess large amounts of money in foreign banks, although the size and location of the holdings are not known.<br>Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted a Russian diplomatic source as saying the Times report that Moscow was involved in the informal talks on an exit option for Milosevic “has no foundation whatsoever.”<br>Russia “is having no such talks, not with the Americans or anyone else,” Interfax quoted the source as saying. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNo Deal for Milosevic``x961499745,56756,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia, June 20 (Reuters) - Montenegrin police said on Tuesday they had arrested two suspects in last week's shooting of a Serbian opposition leader and had identified two others who were being sought. <br>Police said two more people were believed to be involved in the assassination attempt against Serbian Renewal Movement leader Vuk Draskovic on Thursday night, but they did not have their names. <br><br>A police statement said all four named suspects came from Serbia, which together with tiny Montenegro make up the Yugoslav federation. They had asked Serbian police for help in apprehending those still at large, the statement added. <br><br>Draskovic, 53, was wounded when gunmen opened fire through a window of his apartment in the Montenegrin sea resort of Budva. <br><br>Montenegrin police said late on Friday they had detained the gunmen and their accomplices and knew who had ordered the shooting, but did not give any details. <br><br>Draskovic has accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of responsibility for the shooting. <br><br>But a Yugoslav government minister said Milosevic's foes, ranging from U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to domestic opponents, were behind the shooting. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro police names Draskovic shooting suspects``x961571593,88301,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Four Serbs and two other people were charged Tuesday with terrorism and attempted murder in an attack on Vuk Draskovic, Serbia's top opposition leader, Montenegrin police said. <br>Two of the Serb men were in custody in Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation. Montenegrin authorities were demanding that their counterparts in Serbia arrest the two other Serbs and search for the remaining pair of unidentified suspects, police said in a report released Tuesday. <br><br>Draskovic, the head of the Serbian Renewal Movement, was shot Thursday at his summer home in the Montenegrin coastal town of Budva. <br><br>Four of the suspects were identified as cousins Milan and Ivan Lovric, 26 and 19; Vladimir Jovanovic, 32; and Dusan Spasojevic, 32, all from Belgrade. They and the two unidentified accomplices are accused of sneaking up to the verandah of Draskovic's summer home and firing eight .32 caliber bullets as he sat on a sofa watching television, the report said. Draskovic was grazed by two shots. <br><br>After opening fire, the six allegedly escaped to an apartment about 100 yards from Draskovic's home, the report said. Police discovered an unlicensed gun during a search of the apartment and immediate vicinity, which ballistics later proved was used in the shooting, the report said. <br><br>In the report, police accuse the suspects of carrying out a carefully premeditated attack. It was not immediately clear whether they allegedly devised the plan on their own or were working for someone else. Draskovic has accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's regime of being behind the shooting. <br><br>On Tuesday, suspects Milan and Ivan Lovric were brought to a courthouse in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica, for a 45-minute appearance amid heavy security. Reporters were not allowed in and no information about the hearing was released. Lawyers said the two were due back in court Wednesday. <br><br>Montenegro's police have been tightlipped about the case, claiming its political sensitivity requires secrecy. They announced Friday they had arrested some of the alleged attackers but failed to say more until Tuesday. <br><br>Since the incident, Draskovic has remained in Budva under heavy police protection. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSix charged in attack on Serb opposition leader, police say``x961571614,81694,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, June 21 (AFP) - <br>Yugoslavia is committed to develop strong ties with India in a bid to fight policies of colonialism and domination in the world, Tanjug news agency quoted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic as saying Wednesday.<br><br>Successful cooperation between the two countries, to which Yugoslavia is committed, is of vital importance to the people of both India and Yugoslavia, Milosevic said Wednesday to the new Indian ambassador in Yugoslavia, Arun Kamur, after receiving his credentials, the agency said.<br><br>Milosevic said the "consistant efforts of the two countries against the policies of colonialism and domination" represented "special contribution to peace and understanding among states and nations", the state-run agency said said.<br><br>Tamjug quoted Kamur as saying that India and Yugoslavia had a long tradition of excellent mutual relations, adding that there was a great potential for future economic cooperation between the two countries.<br><br>Kamur also said that his government was ready to cooperate with Yugoslavia, the agency said.<br><br>Western countries have refused to cooperate with Milosevic and his regime ever since he, along with four associates, was indicted by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia for warcrimes against ethnic Albanians in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia committed to firm ties with India: Milosevic``x961673852,45537,``x``x
``x <br>By George Jahn<br>Associated Press Writer<br>Wednesday, June 21, 2000; 8:38 AM <br><br><br>PRISTINA, Yugoslavia –– The chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal denied Wednesday that the tribunal is willing to cut a deal with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and drop its indictment against him. <br><br><br>The prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, also announced that Milosevic's archenemies in Kosovo – the former commanders of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, which fought Milosevic's forces until a year ago – are being investigated on suspicion of war crimes. And she said that Milosevic might face additional charges for his role in previous Balkan wars.<br><br><br>Milosevic is already indicted by the tribunal for his alleged role in atrocities during the Serb crackdown on Kosovo Albanians that ended a year ago. Del Ponte's denial that the tribunal might drop the indictment was a response to news reports that the United States is considering offering Milosevic safety guarantees in exchange for him stepping down.<br><br><br>"My investigators will continue their forensic work in Kosovo to gather additional evidence concerning the existing indictment of Slobodan Milosevic," Del Ponte told reporters. "We have no intention to withdraw this indictment.<br><br><br>It is unclear what kind of international pressure could be brought on the court, which answers to the United Nations, but Del Ponte's comments were an indication that the court itself was not aware of any kind of deal for Milosevic.<br><br><br>There is no indication in any case that Milosevic is contemplating a deal that would see him step down in exchange for safety guarantees. While facing international isolation, he has managed to consolidate his rule by outmaneuvering a split political opposition.<br><br><br>In her comments Wednesday, Del Ponte said the tribunal is "investigating the criminal responsibility of Milosevic for (wars in) Bosnia and Croatia."<br><br><br>Milosevic fomented Serb rebellions, first in Croatia and then in Bosnia, in response to decisions by the non-Serb majorities in those two republics to secede from Yugoslavia. Hundreds of thousands of people died in those two wars.<br><br><br>Her comments on the Kosovo Liberation Army, meanwhile, appeared calculated at least in part to dispel Serb criticism that the war crimes tribunal is biased against Serbs. Serbs have accounted for the majority of those indicted as a result of the Croatian, Bosnian and Kosovo wars, and no ethnic Albanian has been publicly indicted for the Kosovo conflict.<br><br><br>"We are investigating KLA activity during the conflict," Del Ponte said. "Our mandate is always to look at the highest responsibility in the chain of command, and that is also the case for the KLA."<br><br><br>Serbia has barred tribunal officials from entry since the end of the Kosovo bloodshed. Del Ponte urged Serb officials to allow them in so they can interview Serb victims and witnesses of atrocities in Kosovo who later fled the province.<br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post: Prosecutor: No Milosevic Deal``x961673878,96401,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia, June 21 (Reuters) - A court on Wednesday agreed to a prosecutor's demand to change the judge investigating suspects in the shooting of Yugoslav opposition leader Vuk Draskovic. <br>The higher court in Podgorica, capital of the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, originally appointed Svetlana Vujanovic, wife of Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic, to investigate the case. Prosecutor Vesna Medenica demanded the court disqualify Vujanovic. <br><br>"Another judge, Zoran Zivkovic, was appointed to investigate the case. The defence has no right to complaint," said Nikola Martinovic, the lawyer representing two of the suspects detained in the case. Four others are being hunted by police. <br><br>"The prosecutor's demand to disqualify Vujanovic was justified by a need to protect rights of the accused during the prosecution process," Martinovic told Reuters. <br><br>The change in judges, approved by the higher court's president Milan Radovic, would delay the first hearing for suspects Ivan Lovric, 25, and his brother Milan 19, until Thursday at 0900 (0700 GMT), he said. <br><br>Montenegrin police filed charges of terrorism on Tuesday against six people suspected of the attack last week on Vuk Draskovic, leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement. Draskovic was wounded when gunmen fired a hail of bullets through a window of his apartment in the Adriatic seaside resort of Budva. <br><br>Police named four of the suspects as the Lovric brothers, Vladimir Jovanovic, 32, and Dusan Spasojevic, 32, and said Jovanovic had organised the assassination bid. They said they were hunting two more unnamed suspects. <br><br>Police said the four named suspects all came from Serbia, tiny Montenegro's bigger partner in the Yugoslav federation. They said they had asked Serbian police for help in apprehending those still at large. <br><br>Draskovic, who once joined the government of Slobodan Milosevic only to be sacked a few months later, was last year in a car crash which he called an assassination attempt. He has accused the Yugoslav president of responsibility for last week's shooting. <br><br>A Yugoslav government minister said Milosevic's foes, ranging from U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to domestic opponents, were instead behind the attack. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro court changes judge in Draskovic case``x961673902,33663,``x``x
``xNew anti-terrorist legislation in Serbia would strike at the very heart of civil liberties and crush the last vestiges of democracy.<br><br>By Slobodan Vucetic in Belgrade (BCR No. 150, 20-June-00)<br><br>Incapable of finding a way out of the deep economic, social and political crisis and burdened with the problems of international isolation, the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has resorted to wide-ranging repression.<br><br>Through the suppression of the independent media and an aggressive "anti-terrorist" campaign, the regime aims to intimidate those citizens who do not share its views.<br><br>The principal "internal enemies, fascists and terrorists" and all those supposedly undermining the country are in reality unarmed students and school pupils, members of the Otpor (Resistance) movement.<br><br>Their only terrorist activity amounts to plastering posters with the name Otpor and the clenched fist symbol (a reference to the old communists) on walls.<br><br>Having failed to prove earlier claims that these students and some opposition parties are engaged in terrorist activities, the regime has come up with a fiendish idea - the immediate introduction in Serbia of a new law against terrorism. Under this proposed legislation, the term "terrorism" would enjoy a very flexible interpretation.<br><br>The details of the new law have yet to be revealed. But Serbia's Deputy Justice Minister, Zoran Balinovac, has suggested that merely the "intention" to commit a violent crime would be enough to support a terrorism charge. <br><br>The state controlled television and media have being laying the groundwork for this new legislation, reporting the urgent need for such measures in light of the experience of other countries with similar patterns of terrorist activity. <br><br>But it is quite clear these forms of terrorism do not exist in Serbia.<br><br>Of course, every state has a right and a duty to combat terrorism, but this fight must be conducted in line with constitutional guarantees of civil liberty and civic rights. The limits of executive power must be respected.<br><br>The regime's intention is to use this new 'Law against Terrorism' to limit the basic freedoms of its citizens. Under the constitution, these rights can only be limited during wartime or during a state of emergency.<br><br>Only when specific legal and constitutional conditions are met can the Federal Parliament or Federal Government declare war or a state of emergency. <br><br>No such legal or constitutional conditions exist in Serbia. There is no "large scale internal unrest which threatens the constitutional order of the country," to cite the Law of Defence, Article 4.<br><br>Should Milosevic's regime pass such a law then it would be in breach of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, FRY, especially of those clauses guaranteeing basic civil freedoms.<br><br>A group of pliant officials within the Serbian judiciary have already announced in the media the possible introduction of rigorous new restrictions of basic rights and freedoms. These officials have cited so-called "higher interests" and the "urgent need to protect society from terrorism" as the reasons behind the new rules.<br><br>The proposed increase in police powers of detention, restrictions on a suspect's rights to a proper defence and the introduction of quick trials would all be in contravention of the FRY constitution and the Federal Law on Legal Proceedings, legislation introduced during Tito's time. <br><br>Under the current Law on Legal Proceedings, police powers are already vast - a suspect can be detained for up to 72 hours without access to a defence lawyer - and unconstitutional.<br><br>Citizens deemed "politically unfit" are already being subjected to so-called "informative chats" at their local police stations - which also breach existing laws.<br><br>There are suggestions the new law would legalise the use of telephone tapping devices and bugs and that the police would be allowed to submit such recordings as evidence in court.<br><br>Such proposals are monstrous and represent a dangerous political and legal precedent. They threaten the freedom of Serbian citizens and the future and international reputation of the country.<br><br>Constitutional rights to privacy would be breached. There would be no guarantee that such recordings had been made after the introduction of the legislation or that the material had not been tampered with, edited or taken out of context.<br><br>It has already been announced that the police will be granted the right to break into private premises without a court order or two witnesses, whenever they deem there is "reasonable evidence" a terrorist act is being prepared.<br><br>At present the Serbian constitution and the federal constitution (Article 31) allow police to do so only "if it is necessary to arrest a person who has committed a criminal offence or to rescue people or property in a manner defined by Federal Law."<br><br>It should come as no surprise if all forms of public (and private) criticism of the regime and its officials are redefined as an act of terrorism and if all public gatherings of more than five people are banned - except those by members of the ruling parties, of course.<br><br>Judging by comments from Serbia's minister of justice and his colleagues in the Party of the Yugoslav Left, JUL, they are keen to see a statutory provision for special courts dedicated to combating terrorism. Magistrates who have already demonstrated their worthiness be passing down draconian penalties on the independent media could staff these administrative organs.<br><br>The latest rumours indicate a Federal anti-terrorist law may also be in the pipeline, thereby legalising the arrest of "terrorists" in Montenegro.<br><br>The frightening scope of this proposed Law against Terrorism is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that even Vojislav Seselj - a man renowned as an enemy of democracy and civil rights in Serbia - opposes its introduction.<br><br>Slobodan Vucetic was, until his dismissal six months ago, a judge in the Serbian Constitutional Court. A version of this legal analysis first appeared in the daily newspaper "Blic".``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIWPR : Anti-terrorism Law Poses "Monstrous Threat" ``x961754619,27050,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br> <br>PRISTINA, Kosovo, June 22 -- The head of the United Nations mission in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, plans to create an internationally run court to try war and ethnic crimes in the province, an official in Dr. Kouchner's agency said today. <br>"This will be the first court of its nature," said the official, Fernando Castanon, who heads the prosecution services in the United Nations administration and who will coordinate the court installation. "It is a response to such a need for justice." <br><br>The proposed tribunal, the Kosovo War and Ethnic Crimes Court, would be headed by international judges and prosecutors and supplemented by equal numbers of Albanian, Serbian and other ethnic judges. Experts expect the court to break ground in pursuing justice after the Kosovo conflict, blending the impartiality and scope of an international tribunal with the immediacy of locally executed justice. <br><br>Proposed by a commission of Albanian and international legal experts last year, the court plan has languished as an idea, neglected as the United Nations administration tried to establish a local judiciary. But Serbian judges have refused or been intimidated from serving on the local courts, leaving the system hopelessly one-sided. The proposal for the special court has emerged as the crucial element and, perhaps, last chance to bring justice and reconciliation to Kosovo. <br><br>The court would be a specialized agency, with precedence over local courts and concentrating on war crimes in the Kosovo conflict and on serious crimes since the war that have racial, ethnic or political grounds. Its mandate would cover war crimes committed by Serbs in the conflict, and the court would try Albanians in the abductions and killings of Serbs and other minorities during and after the war. <br><br>Dr. Kouchner is widely expected to sign a regulation to establish the court in 15 days. According to a United Nations official who is close to him, Dr. Kouchner has made his decision in recognition that attempts to give the local judiciary a chance have failed. <br><br>"Kouchner thinks we need a credible judiciary," the official said. "Taking stock of one year in office, that is our failure. The only way to kick start it now is with internationals." <br><br>As violence continues to simmer between the majority Albanian and dwindling Serbian communities, a judicial system is essential if international peacekeepers, police forces and administrators are to stabilize the province, said Kosovare Kelmendi, an Albanian lawyer who heads the Pristina office of the Humanitarian Center for Law. "It has to start as fast as possible," Ms. Kelmendi said. <br><br>A year after the conflict ended and the United Nations took over, Albanian victims of Serbian forces' war crimes have yet to see justice in the courts. The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague has indicted President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and four others, and it is preparing additional charges. But prosecutors concede that they cannot handle all the cases.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : U.N. Mission in Kosovo Proposes to Set Up a War Crimes Court ``x961754647,85915,``x``x
``xJulian Borger <br><br>British troops in Bosnia snatched the commander of one of the Serb's most notorious wartime prison camps yesterday, breaking down the door of his home and wrestling him to the ground before flying him to the Hague to face trial. <br>Dusko Sikirica was indicted by the war crimes tribunal in July 1995 for genocide and crimes against humanity for presiding over the massacre of Muslims and Croats at the Keraterm camp in Prijedor. <br><br>Serb news media reported that British troops, including members of the SAS, drove up to Mr Sikirica's house in Prijedor at 2.45am in four vehicles. They knocked down the door, forced him to the floor, tied him up and dragged him away. Within hours he was on a flight to the Netherlands. <br><br>Since 1997, 21 war crimes suspects have been taken to the Hague for trial, eight of them since October, when George Robertson, the former British defence secretary, became Nato secretary general. He promised to make the arrest of war criminals a priority. <br><br>Keraterm ranks alongside Omarska, Trnopolje and Srebrenica as one of the most gruesome massacre sites of the Bosnian war. According to the indictment against Mr Sikirica, more than 3,000 prisoners were held in the abandoned ceramics factory, where they were "killed, sexually assaulted, tortured, beaten and otherwise subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment". <br><br>"The overcrowded conditions were extreme, to the extent that on many occasions the detainees could not lie down," it added. "Detainees were fed starvation rations once a day, with little time to eat. <br><br>"Severe beatings were commonplace; all manner of weapons were used, including wooden batons, metal rods, baseball bats, lengths of thick industrial cable that had metal balls affixed to the end." <br><br>The corpses of detainees were piled next to a garbage area. <br><br>In one incident in July 1992, the guards herded 140 inmates into a factory warehouse and mowed them down with machine guns. When they discovered that a few prisoners had somehow survived the massacre and escaped, they selected 20 other prisoners and executed them on the spot, the indictment said. <br><br>Twelve camp guards and officials were charged with war crimes alongside Mr Sikirica. Three of them are already in custody. He was indicted for genocide because of his role as camp commander. <br><br>"This detention shows the international community has not forgotten one of the most gruesome episodes of the war," the defence secretary, Geoffrey Hoon, and foreign secretary, Robin Cook, said yesterday. <br><br>Mr Sikirica is one of the most senior Serb officers from the camps to be arrested as Nato troops start to focus on the higher ranks of the Bosnian Serb authorities. Momcilo Krajisnik, the breakaway republic's deputy leader, was arrested in April. <br><br>The wartime Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, remain at large. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : British drag off death camp Serb ``x962003537,65737,``x``x
``xBy Colum Lynch<br><br>UNITED NATIONS, June 23 –– The United States is campaigning to kick Serbia's U.N. envoy out of the United Nations, at least temporarily, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said today. <br><br>Richard C. Holbrooke said that Belgrade's envoy, Vladislav Jovanovic, continues to be accredited to the United Nations as the representative of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, even though that country ceased to exist in the early 1990s. He said Serbia must re-apply for membership in the United Nations as a newly independent state, or leave the organization.<br><br>"This is going to be an all-out effort to dislodge Yugoslavia from the United Nations. We may win. We may fail," Holbrooke said in an interview. "The flag flying [at U.N. headquarters] on First Avenue is the flag of a country that hasn't existed in a decade--Tito's Yugoslavia."<br><br>Holbrooke announced the U.S. campaign shortly after the Security Council, acting at the behest of the United States, voted to bar Jovanovic from participating in a council debate on the Balkans. The U.S. envoy said that he and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright would urge their counterparts in New York and in foreign capitals to support the U.S. position.<br><br>The United Nations decided in 1993 that the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ceased to exist and that each new country should apply for membership. The former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have since done so.<br><br>But the government of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic "refused to apply again, saying that they were the successor state and the other states were just breakaway renegades," Holbrooke said.<br><br>While Belgrade has been denied a seat in the U.N. General Assembly since 1993, the U.N.'s legal office decided to accredit the government's U.N. mission and allow it to participate in a number of U.N. committees. In the past, the Serbian representative has been permitted to sit in the Security Council as an observer.<br><br>Holbrooke said that since he became the U.S. ambassador nine months ago, he has quietly persuaded his colleagues to bar Jovanovic from addressing the council. But Russia's U.N. ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, decided today to put the issue to a vote. He was defeated 7 to 4, with China, Namibia and Ukraine supporting Moscow.<br><br>After the vote, Lavrov stormed out of the council chamber in protest, saying it was "nonsense" to discuss the Balkan troubles without the presence of Milosevic's representative.<br><br>"Gagging people's mouths is not the best way to discuss the acute international problems. . . . Even a defendant has a right to defend his or her position," Lavrov said.<br><br>"The Russians in effect triggered this fight by raising the issue," Holbrooke responded. "And now we're going to go at it."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post : U.S. Seeks Envoy's Ouster``x962003560,95204,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, June 26 (AFP) - Five men accused of plotting to assassinate Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic under French orders were scheduled for trial here Tuesday, seven months after spectacular accusations levelled by the authorities.<br><br>The five were originally accused of devising four different plans to kill Milosevic, including a sniper attack, a bomb placed in a gutter, a booby-trapped car and an armed raid on his residence.<br><br>The accused, all Serbs from Yugoslavia and Bosnia, were arrested last November, alleged to be members of an underground group called Spider.<br><br>The Belgrade prosecution charges that they took instructions from Paris.<br><br>"France was caught red-handed," Information Minister Goran Matic said at the time.<br><br>But his allegations that a French intelligence service connected with the group was involved in a plot to kill Milosevic were dismissed by French officials as "totally unsubstantiated."<br><br>Matic said Spider had been set up in 1996 and headed by Jugoslav Petrusic, a 37-year-old man with joint Yugoslav-French citizenship.<br><br>Petrusic had worked for France for 10 years under the codename "Dominique," the minister charged.<br><br>Petrusic is on trial with Milorad Pelemis, 35, Branko Vlaco, 46, Rade Petrovic, 25, and Slobodan Orasanin, 43.<br><br>Matic said the five were "ruthless mercenaries," who had fought in the Bosnian and Kosovo wars on the Serb side, but had also been undercover agents recruited by France.<br><br>The original charges that the five had devised four different plans for the assassination of Milosevic were later dropped.<br><br>Instead they were charged by a Belgrade court with "spying for a foreign country" -- France -- and with the murder of two Albanians in the Kosovo province during 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.<br><br>However, full details of the indictment have not been made public yet, and the start of the trial on Tuesday was to be in camera, "due to the revealing of details considered top secret," defence lawyers said.<br><br>Thirteen prosecution witnesses are to testify, defence lawyer Nenad Vukasovic said, stressing difficulties in the communication process with the defendants.<br><br>Since the start of the investigation, only a handful of details linked to the investigation have leaked out, and press reports have frequently repeated Matic's claims of Spider's involvement in a series of crimes in the past decade.<br><br>Matic alleged that in 1994 Petrusic had committed a "massacre in Algeria in which 15 Algerians were killed, on the instructions of France."<br><br>The minister also claimed Petrusic was part of a group that had participated in the July 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica, the bloodiest incident of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.<br><br>Matic said Pelemis, Vlaco and Petrovic had been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for crimes committed in Srebrenica, but that they had escaped prosecution by working for the French.<br><br>After the end of Bosnian war in 1996, Petrusic had been involved in recruiting foreign mercenaries for fighting in Zaire -- the present day Democratic Republic of Congo -- again under French instructions, Matic asserted.<br><br>During the Kosovo bombing campaign, the Spider group had gone to the province in a failed attempt to kill a leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), "Commander Remi," but the group had later killed several Albanians in the province, the minister also claimed.<br><br>After the end of NATO bombings in June 1999, Petrusic had allegedly returned to France, but later came to Kosovo with the French contingent of the NATO-led peacekeeping force (KFOR), under the name "Jean-Pierre Pironi", according to Matic.<br><br>"His task was to take part in setting up the mixed civilian police in the province, whose members he would recruit for the French secret services," Matic said.<br><br>Neither the authorities in Belgrade nor the media have said the alleged plot was uncovered, while evidence presented to journalists has consisted mostly of photographs and unclear statements by Petrusic and the others given during the investigation.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAFP : Five on trial accused of attempted killing of Milosevic on French orders``x962098043,57418,``x``x
``xFour British soldiers of the peacekeeping force in Kosovo have been accused of stealing money and valuables from ethnic Albanian civilians at a checkpoint, the Ministry of Defence confirmed yesterday. <br>The four members of the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers have been separated and given other duties. <br><br>The civilians say that the soldiers took mobile phones, cameras and up to £10,000-worth of German marks at a checkpoint in the provincial capital, Pristina. <br><br>"Because it was a four-man patrol and an allegation was made that money and effects were stolen, they are all under investigation," an MoD spokesman said.<br>"But we don't know yet whether it's one or more that actually are being accused." <br><br>The military police special investigation branch was investigating, and the soldiers "would be dealt with quite severely" if the allegations proved true, he added <br><br>Meanwhile international aid agencies which pulled out of Serb-held areas of the flashpoint town of Mitrovica last Friday said yesterday that they would not return until there were better guarantees for the safety of their staff. <br><br>"If we were to go back without some kind of explicit agreement [with Kosovo Serb leaders], then next time we will have somebody killed. It will not just be a matter of somebody being beaten," said Paula Ghedini of the UN refugee agency UNHCR, which coordinates the international aid effort. <br><br>Ms Ghedini had a letter from Oliver Ivanovic, the self-proclaimed leader of the Serbs in Mitrovica, saying the aid organisations' decision to suspend work was "hasty and politicised". The Serb National Council in north Mitrovica did not support violence and had condemned individuals responsible for recent attacks on aid staff and their vehicles. <br><br>Ms Ghedini said this fell short of what was needed. In less than a year, 90 aid agency vehicles had been damaged and 36 destroyed in Mitrovica in clearly coordinated attacks. <br><br>Dennis McNamara, UNHCR chief in Kosovo, was meeting the Serbs and UN security staff in Mitrovica and the situation would be reviewed daily. Meanwhile, the UN police were working to improve their response.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Kosovans accuse four British peacekeepers of theft ``x962098223,27529,``x``x
``x<br><br>June 27, 2000<br><br>BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) -- The European Commission on Tuesday approved 61 million euros ($57.38 million) in funding to provide humanitarian aid for refugees, displaced people and ordinary citizens in Yugoslavia. <br><br>The funding will enable the Commission's own aid office and humanitarian organizations to carry out projects such as providing better food supplies, shelter, sanitation, and community and health services. <br><br>The Commission, the EU's executive, said in a statement Serbia would receive 31.9 million euros, 18.1 million would go to Kosovo province and 5.3 million would go to Montenegro. About 5.7 million would be placed in a contingency reserve fund. <br><br>"The objective is to continue covering the most urgent needs throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, including Kosovo," it said. <br><br>The Commission said it had already provided about 378 million euros in aid for people affected by violence in Kosovo. <br><br>The EU has been trying to help ordinary people and the democratic opposition in Yugoslavia while at the same time attempting to isolate Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Milosevic is a U.N.-indicted war criminal and the EU regards him as a major obstacle to democracy after years of conflict in the region. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xEU approves humanitarian aid for Yugoslavia``x962187532,70314,``x``x
``x<br> <br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslav authorities released details Tuesday of a draft anti-terrorism law that critics say will plunge the country into "darkness and fear." <br>The draft, which parliament is expected to pass Friday, foresees jail terms of at least five years for "acts that threaten constitutional order." <br><br>The phrase is a catch-all term often applied to opposition groups, particularly the student-based Otpor or Resistance movement, that are campaigning to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to step down. <br><br>Lawyers said the draft violated existing law and was clearly targeted against opponents of Milosevic, both in Serbia and Montenegro, where the pro-Western government has edged away from Belgrade over the past two years. <br><br>It enables suspects to be held without charge for 30 days compared with the three days set down under existing laws and the theoretical 24-hour limit set in the Yugoslav constitution. <br><br>Information about proceedings may not be made public and witnesses can be held for 30 days if they refuse to testify. <br><br>"The true name of this act is not the anti-terrorism but the anti-opposition law," the opposition Christian Democratic party said in a statement. <br><br>Another opposition party said the law, which also envisages at least five years' jail for acts threatening the "territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" (FRY), was an attempt to provoke conflict in the smaller republic Montenegro. <br><br>Montenegro has taken control over some of its borders and its foreign and monetary policy in the past two years -- actions that could be seen as "terrorist" under the new law. <br><br>"Citizens of the FRY are facing darkness and fear," the Djordje Subotic from the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina told a news conference. <br><br> <br><br>LAW OPEN TO WIDE INTERPRETATION <br><br>The activities defined in the law include kidnapping, arson and nuclear blackmail as well as "generally dangerous activities...(that) create a feeling of insecurity and fear among citizens" -- a phrase open to wide interpretation. <br><br>Serbian Deputy Justice Minister Zoran Balinovic told the Vecernje Novosti newspaper last week that traffic blockades -- something that has been discussed by the opposition -- would be considered terrorism as they endangered citizens' security. <br><br>Sinisa Nikolic, a lawyer for the opposition Democratic Party, said by telephone the law could easily be abused. <br><br>"The proposal is legally inaccurate and leaves great space for misconduct at the expense of human rights," he said. <br><br>Igor Olujic, from the Humanitarian Law Center, a non-governmental organization that monitors political trials, said recent legal practice made him fear the worst. <br><br>A prosecutor in the southern Serbian town of Leskovac had on Monday called for an Otpor activist who tried to paint the movement's symbol, a clenched fist, on a police station wall, to be investigated for threatening constitutional order, he said. <br><br>Olujic said if Otpor was declared a terrorist organization under the new law -- something he said would be legally incorrect but possible in the current climate -- people could be jailed for at least three years for just wearing an Otpor badge. <br><br>"I hope it's only meant to scare people," he said. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia Drafts Tough Anti-Terrorism Law``x962187559,56658,``x``x
``x<br> <br>ZAGREB, June 27 (Reuters) - Croatia said on Tuesday it had given documents on the Yugoslav bombardment of Dubrovnik in 1991 to the international war crimes tribunal to speed up indictments of the army and paramilitaries. <br>Justice Minister Stjepan Ivanisevic told a news conference that Croatia's new reformist government had given several documents and video tapes related to the 1991 siege and bombing of the Adriatic city to the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY). <br><br>He said these were given to the ICTY's chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte during her recent visit. <br><br>"By doing this we wanted to speed up the process of investigating and indicting (the Yugoslav army and paramilitaries). We intend to provide more material so that indictments are raised and Madam del Ponte has publicly pledged to do so in near future," he said. <br><br>The area south of Dubrovnik was overrun by Yugoslav army and Montenegrin reservists in autumn 1991. The city itself, a key tourist destination on the Adriatic coast, was shelled from overlooking mountains held by Bosnian Serbs. <br><br>Montenegro's pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic apologised at the weekend to the Croatian people, particularly to those living in Dubrovnik, for the "pain and damage" they suffered at the hands of his compatriots. <br><br>Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Montenegro is still a member of the Yugoslav federation, together with Serbia, but has increasingly sought more independence from Belgrade. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCroatia seeks warcrimes charges for Dubrovnik``x962187602,9329,``x``x
``xBy The Associated Press<br>BERLIN (AP)-- Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Thursday renewed a so-far unsuccessful campaign to depose Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>``As far as U.S. policy is concerned, we want to see Milosevic out of power, out of Serbia and in The Hague,'' Albright said, referring to the international court that indicted him on charges of war crimes in the Kosovo conflict. <br><br>Speaking at a conference on democracy in the Balkans, Albright said, ``If Milosevic cared at all about the rule of law, he would turn himself over to The Hague and stand trial.'' <br><br>She credited Serbs in opposition to his rule, some of whom attended the conference, as supporters of democracy and said Serbia's desperate economic plight is the result not of U.S., U.N. and European sanctions, but ``the mismanagement and thievery of a regime that has enriched Milosevic's cronies, while leaving everyone else with scraps.'' <br><br>Albright urged the private groups at the conference to assist ``courageous political and municipal leaders, journalists, students and other activists trying to assemble the nuts and bolts of freedom'' in Serbia, the larger of the two republics remaining in truncated Yugoslavia. <br><br>She called Milosevic's government the biggest impediment to democratic progress in the region. Milosevic ``is now waging war against the democratic aspirations of his own people -- a people that deserve far, far better,'' she said. <br><br>In the speech and over breakfast with Serbian opponents of Milosevic, Albright condemned an anti-terrorism law approved by the Serbian parliament. <br><br>``Its transparent purpose is to provide a respectable cover for repressive policies,'' she said. <br><br>In the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia and the Serbian province of Kosovo, the Clinton administration helped upset Belgrade's rule. <br><br>Reviewing progress toward democracy, Albright said Bosnia's leaders have been slow to adopt economic policies needed to attract investment to create jobs and sustain growth, <br><br>And in Kosovo, she said, rivalry among factions is testing the democratic tradition of coexistence. Ethnic Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo will not learn to live together overnight, she said. <br><br>While the level of violence has decreased dramatically in the province since the start of the year, tensions among ethnic groups remain high, Albright said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbright Renews Anti-Milosevic Plan``x962272631,3015,``x``x
``xBy John Burgess<br>Saturday, July 1, 2000; Page E01 <br><br><br>Turning aside firm opposition from congressional leaders, the Clinton administration said yesterday that it will proceed with plans to let Russia postpone payment on $485 million in debt owed to the U.S. government. In retaliation, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said it will put all ambassadorial nominations on hold. <br><br>Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sent the news by letter Thursday night to the committee chairmen, who had argued that the rescheduling would help finance Russia's war in Chechnya and its aid to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. In addition, the full Senate has passed a measure critical of debt rescheduling.<br><br>"Refusal to reschedule would not stop Russia from taking actions that it deems to be in its interests," Albright said in a letter to House International Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.). She sent a similar letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).<br><br>Russia had been due to pay $155 million to the United States yesterday for old debts left from the World War II Lend Lease program; it will now be allowed to put off that payment and others due this year and next year.<br><br>Senate committee spokesman Mark Thiessen called it "unprecedented and unacceptable" for the administration to defy the chairman in this way. He added, "That's not done without consequences."<br><br>Albright has publicly courted Helms, flying to his home state to consult with him and holding hands with him in a photograph. However, serious tensions have continued in the relationship and now are flaring again.<br><br>Russia is still suffering the effects of a financial panic that broke out in 1998. "It's either alternate repayment schedules or default," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "It's not money that they have." Rescheduling will help assure the debt will be paid back later, he said, rather than the money being lost forever.<br><br>But Helms and Gilman contend that it merely frees up money for dark purposes. "In no way should the United States underwrite the Kremlin's war against the peoples of Chechnya or its support of the Milosevic regime," Helms said in a June 14 letter to Albright, citing a $150 million Russian loan to the Yugoslav government.<br><br>He said that before he would back the rescheduling, Russia would at the least have to declare a cease-fire in Chechnya, begin peace negotiations with its elected leader and end assistance to Milosevic.<br><br>Gilman also is "very upset" by Albright's move, House committee spokesman Lester Munson said, and is "going to seek a legislative remedy for this problem." He also said Gilman would hold up elements of the Russia aid program.<br><br>Critics contend that by rescheduling the debt payments, the United States will merely encourage economic irresponsibility in Russia and will miss a chance to bring the government there to heel.<br><br>Boucher said the United States is pressing by other means for peace in Chechnya and an end to aid to Milosevic. He said Russia had turned down a recent request from Serbia for $32 million for diesel fuel.<br><br>He faulted the Senate committee's decision to hold up ambassadorial nominations, of which at least 13 are pending. "We send up qualified applicants" for confirmation, Boucher said. "We need to have these people in posts and we don't think their fate should be linked to unrelated issues."<br><br>The U.S. debt postponement is part of a larger rescheduling agreed to last year by the Paris Club, a forum in which creditor governments sit down with governments that are having trouble paying what they owe. It was the fifth rescheduling for the Russian Federation, which inherited the Soviet Union's foreign debt.<br><br>A U.S. refusal to reschedule its share of Russia's debt would create tensions within the Paris Club, U.S. officials have said. Moreover, under U.S. law, if Russia falls behind on Lend Lease payments without U.S. permission, Russian goods entering the United States would be hit by higher duties. U.S. officials are eager to avoid that disruption to the Russian economy, as well as possible retaliation by Russia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWashington Post : U.S. Plan On Russia Debt Stirs Hill Anger``x962526982,28020,``x``x
``xBy SUSAN BLAUSTEIN<br><br>WASHINGTON--While exasperated senior Western government officials busily float trial balloons about arranging a possible safe exit for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his family, the indicted leader continues to ratchet up his assault on the Serbian people. In recent weeks, the Belgrade regime has shuttered nearly all independent media outlets, arrested more than 1,000 student activists and begun pushing anti-terrorism and anti-assembly bills through the rubber-stamp Yugoslav parliament that will give Milosevic even more draconian powers to stamp out dissent. <br>In Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic where the democratically elected president, Milo Djukanovic, enjoys Western support, Milosevic has imposed a punishing economic blockade, fortified his military command with trusted loyalists, created a 1,000-strong battalion composed of ruthless military police and vastly increased the number of army checkpoints. Two weeks ago, Serbian opposition leader Vuk Draskovic was wounded in his Montenegrin vacation home by automatic gunfire during what appeared to be the second organized attack on his life inside eight months; two weeks before that, Djukanovic's key security advisor was shot dead in front of his home. <br>The recent spate of gangland-style killings has targeted cronies and rivals of Milosevic. Polls suggest Milosevic would lose in any fair election, and a number of his fellow indicted war criminals in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia have been arrested or turned over to the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Aides whisper that Milosevic is unusually anxious and irritable, and that his wife and full-fledged partner in crime, Mirjana "Mira" Markovic, views the spiraling violence as prefiguring a Belgrade reprise of the blood-drenched 1989 finale for Romania's first couple, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. As if to stave off such a demise, Belgrade's conjugal regime has exploited its virtual media monopoly to fabricate a surreal kingdom. <br>Early last month, Markovic's Yugoslav United Left party nominated Milosevic for "the order of national hero." The nomination was heartily seconded by the general staff of the Yugoslav army, which praised their "supreme commander's heroic exploits" and wartime display of "military leadership that has rarely been found in modern world history." The party has also condemned the unconventional opposition youth movement known as Resistance, or Otpor, which has captured the imagination of the demoralized Serbian public, as "a satanic terrorist organization" whose widely graffitied symbol, a clenched fist, "is a satanic sign which lacked only blood under the nails." <br>Such hyperbole, with its invocation of the supernatural, coupled with the current crackdown, reveals a despot in extremis, squeezed by discontent, sanctions and the arrests of fellow indictees. Yet, despite these signs that the allies' postwar policy may be succeeding, more and more foreign leaders, frustrated by Milosevic's staying power, appear willing to contemplate alternatives. <br>Recent press reports suggest that not only would Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and former Greek Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis prefer a kinder, gentler approach toward Milosevic, but that even the Clinton administration, which spearheaded the NATO air campaign and has consistently backed sanctions against Serbia, would find such a "solution" hard to refuse. European nations seem to be suffering from a combination of Balkans fatigue and the pragmatic desire to position themselves for lucrative contracts in a post-Milosevic Serbia. As for Washington, the administration's desire to brandish a foreign policy success before the November presidential election may override its professed interest in bringing alleged war criminals to trial. <br>Administration figures deny that any such deal is being contemplated, but have not stated categorically that the U.S. will block efforts by other countries to provide Milosevic with a graceful exit. Indeed, Milosevic's political survival a year after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's ostensible victory in Kosovo has induced the international community to relax its postwar policy. Ambassadors representing the Vatican, the Russian Federation, Argentina, Mexico and Australia have visited Belgrade in recent weeks, as have China's parliamentary head and Greece's former foreign minister. The European Union lifted its flight ban on the state-run Yugoslav airline, but has dawdled on implementing its new, "smarter" sanctions, which would ban EU trade with any firm or individual unable to prove complete independence of the Milosevic regime. <br>If a safe-haven strategy for Milosevic is pursued, it will have devastating consequences in Serbia, throughout the former Yugoslavia and on other, non-Balkan states ruled by alleged war criminals. It would mark a clear victory for impunity, the death of U.N. credibility and of any hope for the future of international justice. <br>Despite the apparent lack of leverage over the Belgrade regime, there remain at least a half-dozen measures that the allies can take to let Milosevic and the Serbian people know that there will be no slackening of international resolve. <br><br>* NATO countries should make it clear that there will be no deal. The U.N. tribunal has refused to grant Milosevic immunity, but that is not enough. With his extensive network of loyalists, Milosevic would remain capable of destabilizing the region even from the "safe" remove of a Belarus or Iraq. Only The Hague, Western leaders must insist, can be his safe haven. <br>* Allied nations should inform Milosevic that NATO will respond with overwhelming force to any violent attempt to unseat Montenegro's reformist government. <br>* The U.S. and EU should compensate for Serbia's news blackout by swiftly reinstating the wartime "ring around Serbia," which enabled Radio Free Europe and Voice of America to broadcast across Serbia from neighboring countries. <br>* The EU should implement its new, more closely targeted sanctions and strengthen its monitoring and enforcement capabilities. Cutting off Milosevic's hard-currency stream will, if handled skillfully, pull the plug on the regime. <br>* Western democracies should support non-nationalist opposition parties and movements such as Resistance, which are open to forming coalitions and devising a common platform that could turn local elections later this year into a referendum on Milosevic, Serbia's economy and its pariah-nation status. <br>* The Clinton administration and other allied governments should continue to inveigh against the regime's capricious seizure of independent media outlets, brutal intimidation of opposition parties and non-government organizations, and maltreatment and arrest of dissidents. <br><br>The Serbian people appear to be nearing their tolerance threshold for Milosevic and his policies. Given the extent of the decay of Serbian society after a decade under Milosevic, a peaceful transition to stable, democratic governance in Serbia is unlikely to happen overnight. It is worth recalling that every democratic transition in Eastern Europe has taken years of patient persistence on the part of engaged Western democracies. Allied impatience should not become an excuse for not staying the course this time.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Los Angeles Times : Milosevic Should Not Escape Unpunished ``x962608848,9496,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>PRISTINA, Kosovo, July 2 -- As the humane "pillar" of the United Nations administration in Kosovo prepares to shut down, its job of emergency relief deemed to be over, its director has some advice for the next great international mission to rebuild a country: be prepared to invest as much money and effort in winning the peace as in fighting the war. <br><br>Dennis McNamara, the United Nations special envoy for humanitarian affairs, regional director for the United Nations high commissioner for refugees and a deputy to the United Nations chief administrator in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, leaves Kosovo proud of the way the international community saved lives here after the war, which ended a year ago. <br><br>Mr. McNamara helped to coordinate nearly 300 private and government organizations to provide emergency shelter, food, health care and transport to nearly one million Kosovo Albanian refugees who have returned. <br><br>Despite delays in aid and reconstruction, including severe shortages of electricity and running water, no one is known to have died here last winter from exposure or hunger. Up to half of the population -- 900,000 people a day -- was fed by international agencies last winter and spring, and a program to clear land mines and unexploded NATO ordnance is proceeding apace. <br><br>But Mr. McNamara, 54, a New Zealander who began his United Nations refugee work in 1975 with the exodus of the Vietnamese boat people, is caustic about the continuing and worsening violence against non-Albanian minorities in Kosovo, especially the remaining Serbs and Roma, or Gypsies. He says the United Nations, Western governments and NATO have been too slow and timid in their response. <br><br>"There was from the start an environment of tolerance for intolerance and revenge," he said. "There was no real effort or interest in trying to deter or stop it. There was an implicit endorsement of it by everybody -- by the silence of the Albanian political leadership and by the lack of active discouragement of it by the West." <br><br>Action was needed, he said, in the first days and weeks, when the old images of Albanians forced out of Kosovo on their tractors were replaced by Serbs fleeing Kosovo on their tractors, and as it became clear that the effort to push minorities out of Kosovo was continuing and organized. <br><br>"This is not why we fought the war," Mr. McNamara said. He noted that in recent weeks there had been a new spate of comments by Western leaders, including President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and the NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson, warning the Albanians that the West would not continue its support for Kosovo if violence against minorities continued at such a pace and in organized fashion. <br><br>But previous warnings and admonitions have not been followed by any action, Mr. McNamara noted. In general, he and others suggested, there is simply a tendency to put an optimistic gloss on events here and to avoid confrontation with former guerrillas who fought for independence for Kosovo or with increasingly active gangs of organized criminals. <br><br>"This violence against the minorities has been too prolonged and too widespread not to be systematic," Mr. McNamara said, giving voice to views that he has made known throughout his time here. "We can't easily say who's behind it, but we can say we have not seen any organized effort to stop it or any effort to back up the rhetoric of tolerance from Albanian leaders with any meaningful action." <br><br>In the year since NATO took over complete control of Kosovo and Serbian troops and policemen left the province, there have been some 500 killings, a disproportionate number of them committed against Serbs and other minorities. <br><br>But there has not been a single conviction. The judicial system is still not functioning, and local and international officials here say that witnesses are intimidated or killed and are afraid to come forward, pressure has been put on some judges to quit and many of those arrested for murder and other serious crimes have been released, either because of lack of prison space or the inability to bring them to trial. <br><br>Only recently has the United Nations decided to bring in international prosecutors and judges, but finding them and persuading them to come to Kosovo has not been easy. And foreign governments have been very slow to send the police officers they promised to patrol the streets. <br><br>Now, some 3,100 of a promised 4,800 have arrived, although Mr. Kouchner wanted 6,000. The big problem, Mr. McNamara said, is the generally poor quality of the police officers who have come, some of whom have had to be sent home because they could neither drive nor handle their weapons. And coordination between the police and the military has been haphazard and slow. <br><br>"The West should have started to build up institutions of a civil society from day one," Mr. McNamara said. "And there should have been a wide use of emergency powers by the military at the beginning to prevent the growth of this culture of impunity, where no one is punished. I'm a human rights lawyer, but I'd break the rules to establish order and security at the start, to get the word out that it's not for free." <br><br>Similarly, the NATO troops that form the backbone of the United Nations peacekeeping force here were too cautious about breaking down the artificial barrier created by the Serbs in the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica, Mr. McNamara said. <br><br>Northern Mitrovica is now inhabited almost entirely by Serbs, marking an informal partition of Kosovo that extends up to the province's border with the rest of Serbia, creating a zone where the Yugoslav government of President Slobodan Milosevic exercises significant control, infuriating Kosovo's Albanian majority. <br><br>"Having allowed Mitrovica to slip away in the first days and weeks, it's very hard to regain it now," Mr. McNamara said. "Why wasn't there strong action to take control of Mitrovica from the outset? We're living with the consequences of that now." <br><br>In the last two months, as attacks on Serbs have increased again in Kosovo, Serbs in northern Mitrovica have attacked United Nations aid workers, equipment and offices, causing Mr. McNamara to pull aid workers temporarily out of the town. After promises from the effective leader of the northern Mitrovica Serbs, Oliver Ivanovic, those workers returned. <br><br>Another significant problem has been the lack of a "unified command" of the peacekeeping troops, Mr. McNamara said. Their overall commander, currently a Spanish general, cannot order around the troops of constituent countries. Washington controls the American troops, Paris the French ones and so on. <br><br>And there are no common rules of engagement or behavior in the various countries' military sectors of Kosovo. <br><br>"The disparities in the sectors are real," Mr. McNamara said. And after American troops were stoned as they tried to aid French troops in Mitrovica last spring, the Pentagon ordered the American commander here not to send his troops out of the American sector of Kosovo. <br><br>While the Pentagon denies a blanket ban, officers in the Kosovo peacekeeping operation support Mr. McNamara's assertion. They say no commanders here want to risk their troops in the kind of significant confrontation required to break down the ethnic barriers of Mitrovica. <br><br>The United Nations has had difficulties of organization and financing, Mr. McNamara readily acknowledges. "But governments must bear the main responsibility," he said. "Governments decide what the United Nations will be, and what resources governments commit to the conflict they won't commit to the peace." <br><br>Governments want to dump problems like Kosovo onto the United Nations to avoid responsibility, he said. The United Nations should develop "a serious checklist" of requirements and commitments from governments before it agrees to another Kosovo, Mr. McNamara said, "and the U.N. should be able to say no." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : U.N. Official Warns of Losing the Peace in Kosovo ``x962608882,49743,``x``x
``xA Kosovar's perspective <br>Fatmir Zajmi <br><br>I have, as a Kosova Albanian, accepted the challenge of "defending" the legality of what I consider the most humanitarian and generous international act of the post-Second World War period: NATO's intervention in Kosova in 1999.<br><br>On the whole, I feel that the discussion surrounding this issue has been poisoned by hasty "revisionist scholarship," emanating from doctrinaire Serbophiles, nay-saying journalists, and former politicians and high officials with axes to grind. One need look no further than individuals in my new Canadian home, such as Mihailo Crnobrnja (former Yugoslav ambassador to the EC, now a scholar in Canada at McGill University); Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star; and James Bisset, Canada's former ambassador to the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. <br><br>For these men, discussion of NATO's intervention in Kosova principally takes one of two forms: denial of the truth to bolster their own national views, or denial of the truth in order to further their own personal ambitions. From my perspective, denying the legality of NATO intervention is advocating an evil, collaborating with the perpetrators who forced nearly two million human beings from their homes, killing as many as 10,000 and raping countless others. <br><br>Perhaps even more important, however, is that the answer to the question "What was the legal basis for NATO's intervention in Kosova" touches on issues far wider than the Serbo-Kosovan struggle. <br><br>At stake: the future of humanitarianism<br><br>What is at stake and at-issue are nothing less than the future of humanitarian intervention, its position in the hierarchy of international law and the relative impotence of the United Nations and its Security Council as global authorities for the preservation of peace and international law and order. This is a point on which many are in agreement, including the Kosova Albanian political leader Hashim Thaçi, who stated that questioning the legality of the NATO war against Serbia, over the issue of Kosova, is typical of the hypocrisy and inhumanity of revisionists, for "without NATO bombing, the world's shame would still have been going on in Kosova."<br><br>In the end, I feel that the debate is a political issues as much as it is a legal one for, unfortunately, as I illustrate in these pages, the legality of NATO intervention in Kosova is clear, although it represents a significant departure from international norms and laws as established during the Cold War and very early post-Cold War period. <br><br>NATO's actions in implementing Security Council Resolutions on Kosova not only hastened and implemented radical, necessary changes in international laws and norms of behaviour, but also validated a change in international consciousness brought about by the blood on the hands of the international community in the wake of its inaction at Srebrenica and in the Rwandan genocide. Indeed, NATO's actions validated the overthrow of the morally bankrupt policies which marked international policies in the decade that preceded it. <br><br>P5 politics<br><br>The major players in this political game are China and Russia, members of the "P5" or "Perm5," who, along with the United States, the United Kingdom and France, constitute the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Russia and China have remained staunchly opposed to NATO intervention in the Balkans not on legal grounds, but for political reasons having to do with concerns about their own problem associated with sovereignty and ethnic minorities. <br><br>Together with Serbia and Iraq, they are the international community's biggest backers of the "absolute inviolability" of state sovereignty for the simple reason that they are the worst violators of international human rights laws. In concerted, premeditated cooperation, these nations campaign for the "status quo," or pre-1990, definition of international law and order, and of "respect" for the emasculated organizations of the United Nations and, in particular, the Security Council.<br><br>Why? Russia has its Chechnya, a war of questionable legality whose brutal tactics have been roundly condemned by the international community. China has its own human rights problems, ranging from repression of dissidents to the oppression of its northern Muslim minority, while Iraq continues to persecute its Kurdish minority at the same time as working to become a nuclear power.<br><br>The primary threat to the political ambitions of the "NATO nay sayers" is the present trend toward considering international human rights law as entailing erga omnes obligations, that is: obligations that states must respect in all circumstances, without any contractual expectation, or the requirement of reciprocity. <br><br>The third exception<br><br>International humanitarian and human rights law can already be considered a strong body of law allowing intervention on humanitarian grounds. There is no doubt that humanitarian intervention has become a third exception to the UN prohibition against "The threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state." <br><br>Thus, governments which are abusing internationally recognized provisions on state sovereignty, and certain Security Council members that are clearly abusing their veto power by blocking legitimate Security Council motions they perceive as being contrary to their own interests, are the losers in this game. <br><br>On the other side are NATO and other Western nations who, through their humanitarian intervention, have effectively implemented the spirit of the 1998 Security Council resolutions on Kosova, sending a strong message to the international community that the Security Council alone does not enjoy an absolute monopoly on the international use of force in specific legal instances in which moral and legal actions are blocked for purely political reasons.<br><br>Parallels with the SFRY<br><br>Somehow, the United Nations' Charter and, in particular, the Security Council structure, reminds me of the 1974 Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the nature of the SFRY Presidency, particularly as they are based on similarly ambiguous and contradictory norms open to broad interpretation. <br><br>In the political sense, the Security Council is, as a political body, impotent and handicapped by politically-motivated vetoes by members of the P5, analogous to the former Yugoslav Presidency as it was constituted by eight representatives of equal units in the Federation. In practice, this allowed Serbia, in 1989, to strip the autonomy of two legally equal federal units, turning them into de facto colonies. <br><br>In practice, the presidents of Kosova and Vojvodina became merely nominal representatives of these two "equal" units at the Yugoslav presidency, while in fact their status in this political body was limited by their de facto status as puppets of the Serbian regime in Belgrade. Serbia also came to enjoy the vote of its satellite sister republic of Montenegro, whose leadership was removed by Miloševic and his cronies, to be replaced by Serbian loyalists.<br><br>Serbia was thus granted a veto power legally and practically different, yet functionally similar, to that enjoyed by members of the P5 – and exercised on the same political bases as Russia and China. <br><br>Further functional similarities between the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution and the UN Charter are evident in their respective impacts on the innocents of the world. Just as the structural flaws of the Yugoslav Constitution merged with political currents to generate four Serbian wars in the 1990s, inconsistencies in the United Nations Charter allowed a lack of political will and general obstructionism by key members to translate into the massacres at Srebrenica and genocide in Rwanda.<br><br>Law, order and international politics<br><br>Finally, it is necessary to lay out some thoughts on the basics of international law and order. According to the renowned international law scholar I L M Shaw, "probably the first reaction upon an introduction to international law (order) is to question its legal equality." Clearly, this is the case with respect to debate on NATO's intervention in Kosova. Here, we see that views of international law and enforcement mechanisms are highly malleable and, indeed, subject to interpretation through almost strictly political lenses. <br><br>Consider, for example, Shaw's further analysis:<br><br>It is recalled that in practically every international dispute, both sides proclaim there adherence to the principles of the system, and declare that they are acting in accordance with its provisions. It is alleged, for example, that the other side has committed unprovoked aggression, and the only suitable reaction is to follow the dictates of the rules governing self-defense, or perhaps that the principles of self-determination have been ignored and the values of international law must be upheld.<br>International law has no legislature. True, there is the General Assembly of the United Nations, comprising delegates from all member-states, but its resolutions are not legally binding on anybody save for certain of the organs of the UN for certain purposes. There is no system of courts.<br>The International Court of Justice does exist at the Hague, but it can only decide cases when both sides agree, and it can not ensure that its decisions are complied with. It is important, but is only peripheral to the international community. Above all, there is no executive or governing entity. The Security Council of the UN, which was intended to have such a role in a sense, has been effectively constrained by the veto power of the five permanent members.<br>Thus, if there is no identifiable institution either to establish rules or clarify them, or see that those who break them are punished, how can what is called international law be law? Without a legislature, judiciary and executive, one cannot talk about a legal order.<br><br>Similarly, on the relationship between international law and international politics and policy, Shaw notes that, "it is clear that there can never be a complete separation between law and policy. No matter what theory of law or political philosophy is professed, the inextricable bonds linking law and politics must be recognized."<br><br>However, when one looks at the international legal scene, one finds that politics are much closer to the heart of the system, therefore the interplay of law and politics in world affairs is much more complex and difficult to unravel. It should thus hardly be surprising when Shaw notes that:<br><br>The function of the UN system in the preservation and restoration of world peace has not been a tremendous success, and is very far from being comprehensive. It constitutes merely an additional factor in international dispute management, and is one particularly subject to political pressures. The UN has played a minimal part in some of the major conflicts and disputes [which have arisen] since its inception.<br>A poor track record<br><br>In fact, since the United Nations was formed, there have been more than 160 major wars in the world. It was only five years after the end of war in Bosnia that the UN finally admitted its responsibility in failing to prevent the massacre of as many as 7500 Bosnian Muslims at the "Safe Area" of Srebrenica, admitting that the international body had been responsible for errors, misjudgement, and "an inability to recognize the scope of evil confronting us." <br><br>Certain states, especially Serbia, discovered this "weakness" in the international body and the recidivist Serbian government, with its "premiere" at Srebrenica, discovered the impotence of the UN when it so easily destroyed a UN "safe haven" in front of the world's television cameras. By handcuffing UN peacekeepers, Serbia humiliated the international community, to the joy of certain members of the UN Security Council, certain that the "traditional" ineffectiveness of this political body guaranteed their impunity. <br><br>In addition to the record of UN failures in Southeastern Europe, we must add the horrifying mass slaughter in Rwanda, and the murder of thousands of innocent civilians in East Timor - it is only then that the importance of NATO intervention to prevent genocide in Kosova can be understood in its full context.<br><br>Pro and contra<br><br>What follows, then is a documentary analysis, examining issues raised by pundits and scholars on all ideological sides of the debate, in order to help the reader reformulate his or her own preconceptions.<br><br>In order to provide my modest contribution to the analysis of this complicated international legal-political issue, and to help bring a more objective judgement to the issue of NATO intervention than has been provided by the recent wave of revisionist punditry, it is necessary to examine the two dominant opinions of those opposed to NATO intervention. <br><br>The first, and perhaps most widely-articulated, argument holds that NATO intervention in Kosova was illegal, as it by-passed the UN Security Council in not obtaining that body's approval. In this, they claim that the Security Council is the only international body competent to authorize intervention on humanitarian -or other- grounds. <br><br>In the second instance, many have argued that NATO's intervention was illegal as it constituted an attack on a sovereign state on the basis of that state's domestic problems, thereby violating its territorial integrity. This, they claim, stems from Articles 2 and 4 of the UN Charter, prohibiting the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.<br><br>Open to interpretation<br><br>There are a wide variety of perspectives on what body may be competent to authorize an international intervention, particularly one involving the use of force. In a general sense, these are functions of the different political interests of the states in question, their power and position on the international stage, their understanding, respect and internalization of democratic values and human rights, individual nations' ideological perspectives and differences, and varying levels of respect and for the rule of international law and order. <br><br>To examine this problem, then, one should first begin with point one, particularly as it concerns the interests and political motivations of the parties to the conflict, including members of the Security Council, NATO nations and developing nations with complex domestic problems.<br><br>The most common "NATO nay-sayers" are not merely scholars with revisionist agendas, but rather totalitarian regimes such as Russia, China, Iraq, Libya and Serbia, as well as emerging states with complex domestic political situations involving irridenta and other entho/religious minority rights issues. <br><br>The role of national interests<br><br>Russia, for example, is still in a state of political and economic chaos, with large-scale dependence on financial support from western nations. As the still lingering war in Chechnya and spill-over into Dagestan have illustrated, the dissolution of the former Soviet Union may well not yet be completed, meaning Russia has domestic separatist issues with which to deal. These factors combine with Russia's efforts to redefine its global role to ensure that Russia has an almost "existential" interest in blocking many forms of Security Council resolutions through the exercise of its veto. <br><br>In the particular case of military action against rump Yugoslavia, Russia is motivated by concerns regarding its prestige as a world power; its need, given its dismal domestic human rights record, to prevent international action on human rights issues; and by its hundred-year-long (and largely unsuccessful) attempt to gain a strategic foothold in the Adriatic Sea through Serbia and Montenegro.<br><br>For its part, China not only has a dismal human rights record, ensuring it must remove humanitarian considerations from the field of possible motivators for international action, but also occupation/border issues and irridenta problems with Tibet, Thailand, and a population of roughly 60 million Muslims, predominantly on its northwestern borderlands, who present consistent challenges to Beijing's authority. <br><br>Next, Iraq is a totalitarian nation with one of the worst human rights records in the world, and seeks to enhance the primacy of state sovereignty not only to protect against this, but also as a result of its as-yet unsolved Kurdish minority problem. That Libya, long known in the international community as a pariah nation owing to its sponsorship in international terrorism, would have issues with an expansion of Western international law and order norms should hardly come as a surprise. <br><br>Furthermore, the Indian nation is faced with vast problems concerning domestic social unrest, minority issues, and seemingly perpetual clashes with Pakistan over the disputed Kashmiri territory - a factor complicated by its desire to keep international inspectors away from its newly-acquired nuclear capability.<br><br>Finally, then, there is Serbia, once a republic in the former Yugoslavia which in 1989 used force to suspend the autonomy of two formerly equal legal units of the Yugoslav state (Kosova and Vojvodina), and which has sparked four armed conflicts in the past decade. That Serbia is a kleptocratic state which is confirmed as harbouring at least 40 (and likely countless unconfirmed others) war crimes suspects would clearly militate against Serbian interest in allowing the universal enforcement of international humanitarian and human rights norms. <br><br>Strategically, then, this group has a complex but interlinked network of interests. First, they seek to minimize NATO's influence in the international arena by assailing its reputation and prestige with an eye toward creating internal cracks. Secondly, by occupying, or having in the past occupied, other nations and territories, they seek to represent those purely domestic issues, thereby invoking the UN Charter's provisions on the inviolability of state sovereignty in order to cover their actions. Finally, they work to prevent the rapid advancement and development of what I would call the "principle of humanitarian rights" in contrast with the Cold War era concept of the inviolability of state sovereignty.<br><br>The Kosovan perspective<br><br>From the perspective of Kosova Albanians both before, during, and after the action in question, NATO's intervention on behalf of those threatened with, and subject to, ethnic cleansing, was legal for a variety of reasons rooted in law and history.<br><br>Not only did it rectify an historical injustice committed by the Great Powers at the London Conference of 1913, in which Serbia was granted possession of the occupied territory of Kosova, but it recognized the declaration of sovereignty of the Kosovan people in 1943 and 1944, which was, in fact, backed by Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito. <br><br>At the Bujan Conference, Kosovan Partisan leaders came together to declare that they were supporting the Yugoslav Partisan struggle as it was the best means for the people of Kosova to enjoy some form of association with Albania proper.<br><br>At that time, both Tito and Edvard Kardelj acknowledged to Albanian President Enver Hoxha that "the best solution would be if Kosova were to be united with Albania, but because neither foreign nor domestic factors favour this, it must remain a compact province within the framework of Serbia" for the time-being.<br><br>Furthermore, the 1974 Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia constituted Kosova as one of eight federal units –including rights to judicial and legislative autonomy and representation at the federal level independent of Serbian authorities– making it a Republic in everything but name, a status illegally revoked by Serbia with the connivance of federal politicians fearful of Serbian disruption.<br><br>Domestic indicators<br><br>These, however, were not the only historical injustices NATO rectified. It also did away with the speculative and unfairly unilateral decision of the Badinter Commission of 1991, which paved the road to international recognition for only the six equal federal units (the Republics), and the West's negligence in leaving humanitarian treatment for Kosova out of the Dayton Peace Accords. Both actions had the effect of formalizing the illegal 1989 annexation of Kosova and Vojvodina, in many respects repeating the outcome of 1913's London Conference.<br><br> <br>Furthermore, NATO intervention was a long-delayed, if not tacit, recognition that the people of Kosova had, in fact, spoken overwhelmingly of their desire for freedom and autonomy within Serbia, first through the Parliament of Kosova's proclamation of independence in 1991 - which was ratified by an overwhelming majority of Kosovars - and the subsequent free and fair presidential election of Dr Ibrahim Rugova.<br><br>Legal indicators<br><br>NATO intervention was, furthermore, legalized on the basis of international instruments and declarations. In the first instance, there is the 1948 United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, which not only bound nations to international norms and standards, but also imposed a duty to take measures to enforce its principles. To this, one might also add the 1949 Geneva Convention on international humanitarian law.<br><br>Democratic principles, also legally enshrined, contributed to the legal basis for intervention, particularly in a post-Cold War period that has seen the increasing primacy of the "human rights principle" over the inviolability of state sovereignty – as legal scholars and politicians the world over have recognized. Here, then, one cannot doubt the legitimacy of NATO as an internationally recognized and accepted alliance of 19 democratic nations. All 19 are not only members of the OSCE: their domestic political systems are based on the rule of law.<br><br>To this basis, one must also add legal instruments including the absolute internationalisation of the Kosova question by UN Security Council Resolutions 1160, 1199 and 1203 - the very resolutions that NATO intervention enforced. The Security Council had only the humanitarian will to condemn Serbia's illegal actions in Kosova, but not the fortitude to ensure that words were translated into actions. But in their legal findings under 1160, 1199 and 1203, they provided the final legal basis for intervention.<br><br>American understanding<br><br>The United States, as the leading NATO power, fully understood many of these points. In a letter dated 23 March 2000 to Trent Lott, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, US Presidential National Security Advisor Sandy Berger "justified going to war on the grounds that Serbian strongman Slobodan Miloševic was a repeat offender under international law, and a direct threat to the security" of Southeastern Europe. <br><br>"It is important to note," he wrote, "that... Miloševic initiated an aggressive war against the independent nation of Croatia in 1991; against the independent nation of Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1992; and is currently engaged in widespread repression of Kosova, whose constitutional guarantees of autonomy he unilaterally abrogated in 1989. Arguments based on Serbian 'sovereignty,'" he concluded, "are undercut by history."<br><br>Thus, the intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization may only be seen as being illegal if the international community neglects the historical facts and legal and political declarations of the Kosova Albanian peoples through 1989 and, particularly, thereafter following the revocation of autonomy; and if it recognizes Serbia and Montenegro as the legal, international continuation of the former Yugoslavia.<br><br>Intervention may also be deemed illegal if one accepts that the repression of –and ethnic cleansing operations against– the people of Kosova is a legitimate domestic operation by the FRY as a sovereign nation-state; and, finally, accepts and perpetuates the irresponsible usage of the term "civil war" in the context of Kosova, instead of clearly labeling the conflict in question as an overt act of aggression by Serbia against the Kosovan people under Chapter VII, article 39 of the United Nations Charter.<br><br>As in the case of Bosnia, legal grounds for intervention were clear, and the international community appears to have internalized at least some of the lessons paid for in the blood of Bosnian people.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCentral Europe Review : Refighting Kosova ``x962696386,58931,``x``x
``xBy David J. Lynch<br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- His usually quarrelsome political opponents are uniting against him. There's even tantalizing talk of a U.S.-brokered deal that could send him into exile.<br><br>But a little more than one year after NATO's war with Yugoslavia, President Slobodan Milosevic's grip on power is as strong as ever.<br><br>He may have led his nation into three losing wars and earned indictment as a war criminal, but Milosevic also has demonstrated an uncanny instinct for political survival.<br><br>''After NATO airstrikes, Milosevic was weak and ready to fall, but the opposition wasn't ready,'' political commentator Bratislav Grubacic says. ''Milosevic doesn't have a single idea to step down. He is under no pressure internally.''<br><br>At one level, Yugoslavia is little changed from before the war. Electricity supplies have returned to normal. The cafes along Belgrade's main pedestrian boulevard are full, and McDonald's has even added a franchise to its local outlets.<br><br>That doesn't mean the Yugoslav leader lacks political problems. Analysts say a student-led resistance movement called Otpor seems especially to have spooked the regime. Likewise, polling by the Medijum agency over the past year showed that 51%-59% of Serbs want Milosevic to resign.<br><br>In a May survey, 62% of those queried said Serbia, which with Montenegro makes up the Yugoslav federation, is heading in the wrong direction.<br><br>It's not difficult to see why. Persistent gasoline shortages mean that cars wait routinely in three-block-long lines to fill up at the Jugopetrol filling station in the Novi Belgrade neighborhood. Young people at soccer games serenade one another with chants of ''Slobo, save Serbia and kill yourself.'' Goran Pitic, a prominent economist, reckons that after a decade of warfare and political turmoil, it will take Yugoslavia perhaps two decades to build its economic output back to what it was in 1989. <br><br>Reminders of the NATO-Yugoslavia war over the separatist province of Kosovo linger in the devastated government buildings downtown along Kneza Milosa, which locals have nicknamed the ''street of death.''<br><br>Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic scoffs at the polls as ''foolish.'' He adds, ''We'll see in the election.''<br><br>This fall, Yugoslavia is scheduled to hold elections for municipal and federal parliamentary offices. Opposition figures worry that with the United States preoccupied by a presidential campaign, Milosevic might crack down on dissent without fear of strong U.S. response.<br><br>Prospects for a fair election are further clouded by:<br><br>* A proposed ''anti-terrorism'' law that would allow the police to jail individuals for up to 30 days before charging them with a crime.<br><br>* Ongoing strategy disputes within the habitually querulous opposition.<br><br>* Indications that Montenegro's government, long at odds with Milosevic, might boycott the parliamentary contests.<br><br>Several opposition parties are running on a united electoral ticket, which enjoys a solid lead over Milosevic's ruling coalition in major polls.<br><br>However, the largest single opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement, which has about 10% support, has quit the ticket.<br><br>There is a widespread assumption that the real showdown won't come until next year's elections for Serbian republic offices.<br><br>Vuk Draskovic, the Serbian Renewal Movement's charismatic leader, says a fair political contest is impossible. The Yugoslav president has tightened controls on universities and the independent press. Milosevic wants to use rigged elections to legitimize his rule, according to Draskovic.<br><br>A major opposition worry is the proposed anti-terrorism law, which the regime says is needed to battle anti-Milosevic violence such as the recent shootings of prominent political figures. Opposition leaders say the measure's expansive police powers and broad definition of ''terrorism'' could herald the rise of a police state.<br><br>Milan Protic, a U.S.-educated academic leading a small anti-Milosevic party, says the opposition must contest the elections. ''We are limited to the democratic path,'' Protic says. ''We can't get into a power struggle; we do not have any power.''<br><br>The political skirmishing is accompanied by a striking fatalism on the opposition's part. With the prospect of being turned over by his successor to war crimes prosecutors at the Hague, Netherlands, almost no one thinks Milosevic can be dislodged peacefully:<br><br>* ''There is absolutely no theoretical possibility that Milosevic will lose power through elections,'' says Predrag Simic, an adviser for Draskovic.<br><br>* ''I can't imagine a normal way for him to go,'' says Dragan Soc, Montenegro's justice minister. ''He closed every door for a peaceful solution. . . . My impression is his decision is to rule even if the cost is his life.''<br><br>* ''I don't have any illusion that we can get rid of Milosevic without casualties,'' says Cedomir Jovanovic of the Democratic Party of Serbia.<br><br>Those who favor a regime change concede they essentially are waiting for a military coup or a deal that would send Milosevic and his powerful wife, Mira, into exile in return for immunity from war-crimes prosecution.<br><br>Matic denounces such talk as ''ridiculous propaganda . . . clearly stupid.'' Officially, Washington says it won't bargain with an indicted war criminal.<br><br>Milosevic and his opponents agree on one point: Both want to see the U.S. policy of isolating Yugoslavia scrapped. A travel ban keeps the regime's government and private supporters penned inside Serbia. Financial sanctions bar Yugoslavia from accessing international credit markets.<br><br>Some democracy activists say that by strangling the economy, sanctions have eviscerated the pro-democracy middle-class and given Milosevic an excuse for the many hardships of daily life.<br><br>Milosevic, meanwhile, is said to believe that any new U.S. administration might rethink its Balkans policy.<br><br>''The (next) American administration -- it doesn't matter which (political party) -- can't have a worse policy than this one,'' Matic says. ''They bombed us for three months, eight years of sanctions, made Nazis out of Serbs. What else can they do? Just throw the atomic bomb?''``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUSA TODAY : Milosevic's grip on power not likely to loosen Opposition has little hope that elections will be fair ``x962696412,42879,``x``x
``xGENEVA, Jul 5, 2000 -- (Reuters) Switzerland will more than double the rate of its deportations of Kosovo refugees after the end of the summer, the federal office for refugees said on Tuesday. It said Switzerland, which took in tens of thousands of Kosovans last year, plans to send 10,000 of them by the end of the year back to the province where Serbs and ethnic Albanians fought until a NATO-led bombing campaign forced Serb forces to withdraw in June 1999.<br><br>Some 18,500 Kosovans left Switzerland voluntarily last year under a Swiss government program that included cash handouts of up to 2,000 Swiss francs ($1,222) per adult and 1,000 Swiss francs per child, said the office's spokesman Dominique Boillat.<br><br>The deadline for the sponsored voluntary departures expired at the end of May and the number of forced returns would now increase, he said.<br><br>The increase in the pace of expulsions comes despite warnings from United Nations officials that the devastated Yugoslav province can't cope with large numbers of returnees.<br><br>The top UN official in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, urged Switzerland in May to go slow in sending the refugees back home.<br><br>Boillat said Switzerland was negotiating the rate of returns with the United Nations in Kosovo on a monthly basis.<br><br>The number of deportations is expected to rise to 750 each in June, July and August compared to 500 a month earlier in the year, he added.<br><br>"Our aim is 750 forced returns a month for the summer months. But after September, we will speed up the forced repatriations." He said the figure could rise to up to 2,000.<br><br>Despite the end of the official cash incentives, voluntary returns were expected to continue at a rate of up to 4,000 in the three months from June, Boillat said. Switzerland is home to an estimated 150,000 ethnic Albanians who provide cheap labor in jobs the Swiss do not want. In addition to that figure, Boillat said the country was host to some 60,000 asylum seekers from Kosovo.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSwiss to Speed Up Expulsions of Kosovo Refugees``x962785018,3417,``x``x
``xGENEVA, Jul 5, 2000 -- (Reuters) Switzerland will more than double the rate of its deportations of Kosovo refugees after the end of the summer, the federal office for refugees said on Tuesday. It said Switzerland, which took in tens of thousands of Kosovans last year, plans to send 10,000 of them by the end of the year back to the province where Serbs and ethnic Albanians fought until a NATO-led bombing campaign forced Serb forces to withdraw in June 1999.<br><br>Some 18,500 Kosovans left Switzerland voluntarily last year under a Swiss government program that included cash handouts of up to 2,000 Swiss francs ($1,222) per adult and 1,000 Swiss francs per child, said the office's spokesman Dominique Boillat.<br><br>The deadline for the sponsored voluntary departures expired at the end of May and the number of forced returns would now increase, he said.<br><br>The increase in the pace of expulsions comes despite warnings from United Nations officials that the devastated Yugoslav province can't cope with large numbers of returnees.<br><br>The top UN official in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, urged Switzerland in May to go slow in sending the refugees back home.<br><br>Boillat said Switzerland was negotiating the rate of returns with the United Nations in Kosovo on a monthly basis.<br><br>The number of deportations is expected to rise to 750 each in June, July and August compared to 500 a month earlier in the year, he added.<br><br>"Our aim is 750 forced returns a month for the summer months. But after September, we will speed up the forced repatriations." He said the figure could rise to up to 2,000.<br><br>Despite the end of the official cash incentives, voluntary returns were expected to continue at a rate of up to 4,000 in the three months from June, Boillat said. Switzerland is home to an estimated 150,000 ethnic Albanians who provide cheap labor in jobs the Swiss do not want. In addition to that figure, Boillat said the country was host to some 60,000 asylum seekers from Kosovo.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSwiss to Speed Up Expulsions of Kosovo Refugees``x962785029,34051,``x``x
``xCAMP BONDSTEEL, Jul 5, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) The new commander of US troops in Kosovo warned locals Monday that he would withhold aid and refuse to escort humanitarian convoys if villagers continued to attack his troops.<br><br>General Randal Tieszen chose his country's Independence Day holiday to discuss publicly for the first time Task Force Falcon's mission in the southeast of the disputed province, which has recently been Kosovo's most volatile military sector.<br><br>He justified his decision to stop escorting Serbs from Strpce to Serbia and to freeze the delivery of around 580,000 marks (around 240,000 dollars) in aid to the village following a riot in which the local UN and military headquarters were ransacked. But he denied he was punishing the village.<br><br>"The sanctions were imposed because we were attacked. You cannot attack us and put your hand our for support or aid. It's not logical," he said.<br><br>"The communities that demonstrate that they care about peace, that they care about economic development, will get our support."<br><br>"I am prepared to never see another convoy go into Strpce if they refuse to cooperate with us," he warned, "We cannot be intimidated."<br><br>The general called on Serbs living in Strpce to publicly vow to cooperate with international authorities, remove roadblocks around the village and dismantle piles of stones he said had been stockpiled to be thrown at peacekeepers.<br><br>Tieszen took command of the KFOR multinational peacekeeping force in the ethnically mixed southeastern sector of Kosovo -- where he is in charge of some 5,500 US personnel, and around 1,500 troops from Russia, Poland, Greece, Lithuania and the United Arab Emirates -- on June 20.<br><br>Since then the area has suffered a new outburst of inter-ethnic violence and attacks on peacekeepers. When, on June 20 a Serbian shepherd went missing near the village of Strpce, local Serbs rioted and ransacked the local premises of KFOR and Kosovo's UN administration, UNMIK, demanding greater protection. The shepherd was later found dead.<br><br>"I share the concerns of the Serbs. A shepherd should be able to go out and tend to his flocks. It's barbaric what happened to this man, disgusting," the general said.<br><br>But he insisted that he had neither the troops not the resources to protect every person from Kosovo and urged communities to do more to cooperate and promote peace, rejecting the idea that a handful of extremists were to blame for the recent tension.<br><br>"Communities can not attack us and they can not allow extremists to attack us," he said, calling on local people to act with "common sense, dignity and respect."<br><br>Tieszen, speaking at the United States' huge military base at Camp Bondsteel 32 kilometers (20 miles) south of the provincial capital Pristina, also rejected suggestions that the strong line taken in his sector was evidence of US bias against Serbs.<br><br>"I'm not from the Balkans. I don't care whether the people I'm dealing with are Albanians or Serbs. I just don't care," he said.<br><br>Asked if he had an Independence Day message for the people of Kosovo, Tieszen said that his own country had suffered from civil war, but urged people in Kosovo to find a non-violent solution to their differences.<br><br>Kosovo has been under UN administration since June last year, when the arrival of KFOR, the retreat of Yugoslav forces and the demilitarization of ethnic Albanian separatist guerrillas brought to an end a civil war in the province. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse) ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.S. General's Independence Day Warning to People of Kosovo``x962785047,22057,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Fredrik Dahl in Belgrade <br><br><br>6 July 2000 <br><br>The Yugoslav parliament plans to discuss constitutional changes today that could allow President Slobodan Milosevic, indicted by a UN court as a war criminal, to win a new term of office through a popular ballot. <br><br>The state news agency outlined changes yesterday that it said had been proposed by deputies of the ruling coalition led by Mr Milosevic, whose term is due to expire in 2001. Currently, the President is elected by parliament and cannot run twice. <br><br>Opposition deputies complained that they had not received the proposals and said the secretive and hasty procedure – with parliament's constitutional commission due to review the proposal an hour before the session – was illegal. <br><br>"Even though I am a member of the constitutional commission, I have not received the text of the draft changes to the constitution and I was told they could not be sent by fax," said Laszlo Jozsa of the Vojvodina Hungarians Alliance. "The constitution is not supposed to be changed in this way but it seems that in this country nobody cares about that." <br><br>A deputy of the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement said a "kind of constitutional coup" was being prepared. "This is what we call legalisation of tyranny," said Tomislav Jeremic. <br><br>A source close to the government said the move would allow Mr Milosevic to extend his term. "All this is about keeping him in power as long as possible," he said. <br><br>Bratislav Grubacic, the editor of the English-language newsletter VIP, said that by turning the post into a directly elected one, Mr Milosevic could get around the present one-term restriction on the position. <br><br>"It would be the fulfilment of Milosevic's old dream to be elected as federal president," Mr Grubacic said, noting that there was no obvious competing candidate. <br><br>The Western-leaning leaders of Montenegro – Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav Federation – were caught off- guard by the proposals, which would also undermine their authority.(Reuters) <br><br>* Miroslav Filipovic, a Serbian journalist jailed for espionage after The Independent published an article by him detailing Serbian atrocities against Kosovo Albanians, has won the European Internet Journalist of the Year award. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Constitution change could keep Milosevic in power ``x962870714,25393,``x``x
``x<br>BY CONAL URQUHART <br><br>A SENIOR Army officer is to be sent home from Kosovo after he was allegedly caught by military police in a brothel. <br>Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Buxton, 43, was reported to have been found by an anti-vice squad in one of Pristina's many brothels. It is believed that the father-of-two has been relieved of his duties and is due to be sent home. He could face a disciplinary hearing and court martial. <br><br>The Ministry of Defence said last night that it was aware of the incident. <br><br>Lieutenant-Colonel Buxton was posted to Kosovo as a liaison officer with the 2nd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times: Colonel 'caught in brothel'``x962870740,54055,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia, July 5 (Reuters) - Montenegro has accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of using the army units based in the republic to stir tensions and pave the way for a coup there, newspapers said on Wednesday. <br>The accusation follows an army statement that fiercely criticised Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, who has pulled the coastal republic away from Milosevic's government in Belgrade over the past two years. <br><br>"The (army) statement represents political support for Milosevic's servants in Montenegro and an appeal for further political destruction aimed at provoking a coup," the Vijesti daily quoted Montenegrin Deputy Premier Dragisa Burzan as saying. <br><br>Burzan was referring to the Socialist People's Party (SNP), a pro-Serb Montenegrin party loyal to Milosevic which is in opposition to Djukanovic's government. <br><br>"These are preparations for a 'hot autumn' in which Milosevic's rule will be 'constitutionally' defended from the citizens of Serbia and Montenegro," Burzan said. <br><br>The army said on Tuesday the activities of Djukanovic and his government were dangerous and violated the interests of the army and people of Yugoslavia and Montenegro, the smaller of the two republics left in the federation. <br><br>"Milo Djukanovic is spreading a thesis, very dangerous for the survival of Yugoslavia, that Serbia is the biggest European problem and the reason why the Balkans continue to be a potential flashpoint," the army said. <br><br>The Yugoslav Army says its public statements are aimed only at clarifying a distorted picture of events in Yugoslavia. <br><br>But Burzan accused it of violating its neutral status and said Montenegro would defend itself from any attempt to impose Milosevic's will in the republic. <br><br>"We will do everything we can to preserve civil peace, but the army's taking politics in its own hands indicates that conflicts have been planned in Montenegro," Burzan said. <br><br>Serbian opposition leader Zoran Djindjics said he did not think the army was planning anything. <br><br>"I think this is only a propaganda war...between Belgrade and Podgorica," he told a news conference. "I do not think Milosevic would need such media preparations." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro says Milosevic may be planning coup``x962870764,34301,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Montenegro accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic Wednesday of dealing a final blow to its troubled union with Serbia with a sudden proposal to change the constitution. <br>"This is the final act of the political destruction of Yugoslavia," said Miodrag Vukovic, adviser to Montenegro's pro-Western president, referring to proposals due to be discussed by the Yugoslav parliament Thursday. <br><br>The proposed constitutional changes would allow Milosevic to win a new term of office through a popular ballot. Currently he is elected by parliament and cannot run twice. <br><br>The change would also mean direct elections for the upper chamber of the Yugoslav parliament, thereby bypassing the Montenegrin parliament. <br><br>"With this move Thursday, Milosevic is showing who is destroying the state of Serbia and Montenegro," Vukovic told Reuters. <br><br>"We have yet to see what is his final ambition -- to rule with no limits in Yugoslavia or create a Yugoslavia without Montenegro," he said. <br><br>Montenegro is Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav Federation. <br><br>Milosevic's officials regularly accuse Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic -- who has won control of the economy, foreign policy and some borders from Belgrade over the past two years -- of trying to split Yugoslavia. <br><br>Montenegro retorts by saying it is Milosevic who is pushing it away. <br><br>Montenegro's parliament halted its session Wednesday when it heard the news of the proposals and will resume work on Tuesday once the constitutional changes are known. <br><br>Members of Montenegro's pro-Belgrade Socialist People's Party (SNP) were reported to be backing the changes. <br><br>"Many SNP deputies were not in parliament today, so they must have been taken to Belgrade secretly to vote for these changes," Dragan Djurovic, chairman of the deputy club of Djukanovic's party in the Montenegrin parliament, told Reuters. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro says Milosevic destroying Yugoslavia``x962870786,61,``x``x
``x<br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ President Slobodan Milosevic's allies asked parliament Wednesday to make changes to the Yugoslav constitution that legal experts say could enable Milosevic to seek re-election after his term expires next year. <br>The proposals also include changes in the election of the federal parliament _ a move that could downgrade the position of Montenegro, Serbia's smaller, pro-Western partner in the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>Such a move could push the republic toward declaring independence or risk coming increasingly dominated by Milosevic's central government. <br><br>According to the official Tanjug news agency, deputies from Milosevic's ruling coalition proposed that the president of Yugoslavia be elected directly by the voters rather than appointed by the assembly's two chambers. <br><br>That was the system used when Milosevic became Yugoslav president in 1997. Parliament, which is controlled by Milosevic, takes up the issue Thursday. Changes in the constitution require only parliamentary approval. <br><br>Milosevic's allies argued that direct election conferred "the greatest possible democratic legitimacy" to the institution of the president. <br><br>However, some legal experts said the proposal paves the way for the re-election of Milosevic, who under the present system is constitutionally barred from a second term. By changing the election rules, Milosevic's allies could argue that the current ban on him running again does not apply. <br><br>Milosevic has been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague for atrocities committed during the crackdown in Kosovo, which triggered the 78-day NATO bombing campaign. Staying in power would be Milosevic's best guarantee against prosecution. <br><br>The proposal also calls for direct election of deputies in the upper chamber of the Yugoslav parliament _ which includes 20 deputies from Serbia and 20 from Montenegro. Deputies are currently elected by the parliaments of both republics. <br><br>Many Montenegrin candidates, however, would stand little chance since their republic has only 600,000 people compared with 10 million in Serbia. <br><br>Montenegro's reformist leadership has already made several steps toward independence from Yugoslavia. <br><br>"This (proposal) is the last act of the tragic political destruction," warned a top Montenegrin official, Miodrag Vukovic. "What remains is for Montenegro to defend itself, its state, democratic structures and its right to future." <br><br>Serbian opposition leader Zoran Djindjic called the plan "a most serious blow for the federal state because it will destroy constitutional equality between Serbia and Montenegro." <br><br>Another opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic, said the move constituted "a form of legal state terrorism and an attack on the constitution." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic allies call for change of constitution to prolong his rule``x962870811,92879,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br><br><br>PRISTINA, Kosovo, July 1 -- Kosovo's capital today is a chaotic and noisy town, heaving with small traders, construction work, sidewalk cafes and traffic jams. But the hubbub scarcely speaks of solution of Kosovo's many problems: a year after the end of the war here, chaos and dislocation continue, manifested in the doubling or even tripling of the population of this ramshackle town, now home to more than half a million people. <br>Mostly people from the villages, they are refugees who have abandoned their burned-out homes and have sought work and shelter in the capital. <br><br>As more than 700,000 Kosovo Albanians flocked home from refugee camps in six weeks last summer, or came down from their hiding places in the hills, many seized Serbian houses here, forcing Serbs and Gypsy residents to flee. <br><br>The Kosovo war forced about two-thirds of the province's two million people from their homes. Hundreds of thousands remain displaced, living in tents and shacks in villages, in drab and despondent refugee centers in towns, or doubled up with relatives in cramped and unhealthy surroundings in the cities, as many as 30 to an apartment. <br><br>The refugee camps in neighboring Macedonia and Albania, which took in more than a million Kosovo refugees in the three months of NATO's war with Yugoslavia last year, are long empty, like abandoned parking lots with a few discarded clothes lying among the weeds. Only a few thousand mostly old or sick refugees remain in the two countries, left behind in the struggle for survival. <br><br>In Kosovo, people are still returning every day. In front of the Pristina airport stand two large white tents where local officials register the hundreds of refugees returning on daily flights from Western Europe or further afield. As many as 140,000 people will be returning to Kosovo this summer. <br><br>Their host countries have deemed the province peaceful and safe enough, but United Nations officials fear the influx will strain Kosovo's limited housing beyond the breaking point, adding to the ethnic and other tensions that continue to explode in almost daily violence. <br><br>Arsim Krasniqi, 22, was among the refugees returning from Germany recently. He was traveling alone, and no one met him. "I am happy to be coming back to a free Kosovo, but I am sad because I have no family here," he said. "My father and brother were killed. My other brother is missing. At home everything is burned." <br><br>His mother and sisters were to arrive on another refugee flight from Germany in several days, he said. "Where we'll live, I don't know." <br><br>On their first night back in Kosovo, thousands of returning refugees end up on mattresses on the floor of a transit center in Pristina. Adem Sylejmani, who runs the center for World Vision, said many were still traumatized and uncertain. "One of the first things they ask is, 'Are there any Serbs around here?' " he said. <br><br>Most move on quickly, usually to relatives, or take a tent and head home to their villages. "We are left with the very vulnerable people, the old, social cases, ones with family problems and mental cases," he said. <br><br>Despite the enormous building activity obvious in every corner of Kosovo, United Nations officials are growing concerned that Kosovo simply does not have enough housing. "Capacity is limited," said Gottfried Koefner assistant chief of the Kosovo mission of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee. "People are squeezing, and we are already seeing secondary displacement. People are ending up in tents." <br><br>Some of those returning are forcing other families out on the streets as they reclaim their houses. There are at least 6,000 people in collective centers in public buildings in Kosovo, most of them villagers whose houses have been burned, whose relatives are unable to help and who have nowhere else to go. <br><br>Bernard Kouchner, the head of the United Nations administration in Kosovo, has appealed for countries to slow the returns, particularly because aid officials do not plan to rebuild all the destroyed homes here. <br><br>More than 120,000 houses across the province were damaged or destroyed in the war, about 80,000 of them so badly that they have to be rebuilt from their foundations, European officials found. International assistance has helped repair 17,000 of the partly damaged homes. <br><br>Of the 80,000 destroyed houses, there are plans to rebuild 12,000 to 15,000 this year and a similar number next year, said Stephen Lewarne, the head of reconstruction in the United Nations administration here. He is seeking $126 million from international donors for housing for this year alone. <br><br>The overall budget for the reconstruction and recovery of Kosovo for 2000 is $1.3 billion, an amount that is just trickling in. The 3,500 houses that the European Union, the chief donor for reconstruction, pledged to build last year are only now being completed. Contracts for the 8,000 houses the union plans to build this year were only signed at the end of May, and the immense task of getting the construction materials into a province with poor roads, no seaport and only a small airport still lies ahead. <br><br>By 2002, Mr. Lewarne said, the aid is likely to run out, and Kosovo will be left to the dynamics of the private housing market. "We are not going to repair or rebuild everyone's home -- we do not have the internal budget," he said. "Even if we were able to, it would not be a good idea, it would not be good governance." <br><br>Many Kosovo families have the means to build houses, yet it is clear that thousands will never get their houses rebuilt. <br><br>Perhaps the very poorest Kosovars are those in refugee centers, or the few who never made it back from camps in Albania or Macedonia. Macedonia hopes the 900 Kosovo Albanians still in its care will get home this year. Hamdi and Elheme Bardiqi, an elderly couple, remain in a camp in Macedonia dependent on houdouts because their home in central Kosovo was burned and they gave what little money they had to a son so he could rebuild part of it. The son and his wife have eight children, so it is too crowded to join them. <br><br>In the Macedonian village of Radusa, where thousands camped in tents last year, there are just a few families now living in refugee housing. They are apathetic and depressed. <br><br>Izet Rama, 42, a farmer, who lives in one set of rooms with his wife and six children, said: "We do feel left behind. We don't feel good at all. There is nothing to compare to your own country." But he is cautious about going home, for his house is burned, and he clearly does not want to give up what he has. <br><br>On the edge of Pristina, in a suburb called Germia, is a typical refugee center, immediately recognizable by the lines of washing hanging in the garden. A former school, it is now home to 38 families, and smells strongly of unwashed, crowded humanity. <br><br>Isa Plakiqi, 62, and his two sons live there. Leaning against the door of his room, dressed in a characteristic Albanian white felt hat that is dirty and yellow with age, Mr. Plakiqi told how he lost his wife and daughter in an artillery attack by Serbian forces last year. At the end of the war, he returned from their refuge high in the mountains with his sons, one of whom is an invalid, and found that his house in Drenica, in central Kosovo, had been leveled with a bulldozer. "We didn't have a tent, just a sheet of plastic, and some people came and photographed us, and then they brought us here," he said. <br><br>"Ninety houses in the village were destroyed," Mr. Plakiqi said. "They promised to rebuild them. They said I would be the first in line, but I don't trust them anymore." He said he had no money to rebuild. <br><br>"If they gave me the building materials, I would build the house myself," he said. "I would be slow, because I am an invalid, but I just would like to have my own house again. I am old and just want to die there." <br><br>But not everyone wants to return to the villages. Shefkia and Omer Zogjani are torn between city and village. With their three children, they moved into a Serbian house in Pristina last summer after they found their house and village destroyed. Grabovac, or Grabofc as it is called in Albanian, is a small mining village tucked into the hillside and lies just 10 miles from Pristina. All but one of the 47 houses are burnt. <br><br>"They did not even leave the outhouses standing," Mr. Zogjani said. <br><br>When he occupied a Serbian house in the city last year, he thought that he had solved his problems. Now he is not sure that he will be able to keep it. He earns a small wage at the mine in Grabovac and said he could not afford to rebuild his village house. And while he is in the city, he is unlikely to get any aid. <br><br>In the village, his relatives face even more uncertainty. From outside his tent on the hillside, Dalip Zogjani, 51, a cousin of Omer, stared down at the village below him, his hands on his hips, his eyes crinkled against the harsh sun. A year after he returned from Macedonia, the houses remain charred ruins, their blackened roof timbers poking into the sky, weeds growing in the living rooms. <br><br>"The grass was up to your waist," he said. "No one had lived here for two years since the Serb police occupied it." Nearby, a cousin, Banush Zogjani, who spent the war hiding in the mountains, cleared a small garden in front of a house whose roof was destroyed. <br><br>Only 7 of the 47 families who lived here have returned, living in tents and clearing away the rubble of broken tiles and glass. They are busy digging their garden and growing vegetables for the winter. <br><br>Only two families received aid last year and have plastic sheeting stretched over new wooden beams for a makeshift roof. Their bathrooms and kitchens are open to the sky. There is no school and no shop, and life is tough in winter, when Dalip Zogjani lived here with his 12-year-old son, brushing snow from the tent each morning. <br><br>He came back to Kosovo last July, and lodged his wife and children with a friend in a neighboring town. But his elderly mother insisted on returning home to the tent in the garden. "She was 86, she was sick, but she did not want to live in the city," he said. "I carried her on my back to the refugee camps, and then I carried her back home. She died here in our tent last October." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New Yorkt Times : In the Hundreds of Thousands, Kosovo Homeless Feel Forsaken``x962959933,58275,``x``x
``xYugoslavia: The defiant president quickly rewrites the constitution to allow his reelection. Analysts fear that the move could lead to further breakup of the country.<br><br>By PAUL WATSON<br><br>SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina--With international war crimes charges hanging over his head, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic moved Thursday to extend his hold on power by rewriting his country's constitution in a matter of hours.<br>The changes, which won quick approval in the Milosevic-dominated federal parliament, will allow the Yugoslav leader to run for reelection. His term expires next year, and he previously was barred from seeking another.<br>The new constitution will also sharply reduce what little power Montenegro has in the Yugoslav federation by changing how delegates are selected for the upper house of the federal parliament. The republics of Montenegro and the much larger Serbia make up Yugoslavia.<br>Legal experts and Milosevic's political opponents warned that the president's latest power grab could destroy what is left of the Yugoslav federation after a decade of secessionist wars and isolation.<br>"What he is doing right now is fighting for survival at any cost," Zarko Korac, an opposition politician in the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, Belgrade, said in a telephone interview. "It's almost a death blow to the Yugoslav federation, because he is doing whatever he pleases in Yugoslavia."<br>Milosevic served two terms as Serbian president before the federal parliament elected him president of Yugoslavia in 1997 for a single term that expires in July 2001.<br>The measures passed Thursday call for the Yugoslav president to be elected to four-year terms by popular vote, rather than by the parliament. The president can serve a maximum of two terms--potentially allowing Milosevic to remain in power for two more terms. <br>In addition, the measures call for the direct election of deputies in the upper house of the federal parliament. Under the previous system, Montenegro's parliament was authorized to choose half of the 40 deputies in the upper house, to offset the larger Serbia's power in the federation. However, the Montenegrin deputies in the current federal parliament are dominated by loyalists of Milosevic, who in 1998 refused to allow the smaller republic to replace them.<br>The lower house of parliament passed the changes, 95-7, while the vote among upper house delegates in attendance was 27-0, according to the Associated Press.<br>Milosevic's government insisted that the amended constitution will give Yugoslavs greater democracy by allowing for direct elections of the president and deputies.<br>The new document provides "the greatest possible form of democracy," Milutin Stojkovic, a deputy from Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party, told the parliament as opposition members condemned the changes.<br>But while Milosevic is increasingly unpopular in his homeland, he controls the media and state institutions and faces a deeply divided opposition, giving him advantages in a direct election.<br>Vuk Draskovic, Milosevic's most popular opponent, called the constitutional changes "legal terrorism" and said the Yugoslav president's allies from Montenegro who voted in favor of the new constitution were "committing a severe criminal act."<br>Montenegro's parliament is expected to vote today to declare a moratorium in the republic on Milosevic's constitutional changes, "which will not be valid in Montenegro," said Miodrag Vukovic, a top aide to Milo Djukanovic, the republic's pro-Western president.<br>"In the next days, Montenegro will adopt laws that will wrap up its independence in all fields," added Vukovic, who before Thursday's vote had declared that "Milosevic is speeding up the process of throwing Montenegro out of the joint state."<br>Djukanovic repeatedly has threatened to declare Montenegro's independence, only to back down, largely because a complete break could spark a civil war. Such a conflict would pit Djukanovic's supporters and his police against Milosevic allies backed by heavily armed federal troops based in Montenegro.<br>Milosevic appears to be calculating that the split between pro- and anti-independence supporters in Montenegro is so deep that Djukanovic isn't strong enough to resist the new constitution, said Korac, the opposition politician.<br>Milosevic's gambit was as stunning for its speed as it was for its audacity. Without warning, his government announced Wednesday that it planned to rewrite the constitution. After a day of debate in parliament, the job was done.<br>Few Yugoslavs outside parliament knew the details of the constitutional reforms, which were kept secret until they were put to deputies Thursday for debate and a vote.<br>An act as crucial as changing a country's supreme law should take months and, in a federal state, should not have been done without the approval of Montenegro, said Slobodan Vucetic, a former judge on Serbia's Constitutional Court who was removed by Milosevic last year.<br>"If the announced change is carried out, there is no doubt that this would not be just the beginning of the end but that it would be the very end of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," Vucetic said in an interview published Thursday in Blic, the nation's largest-circulation independent daily newspaper.<br>Until 1991, six republics made up Yugoslavia. Four have broken away to form independent nations--reducing Milosevic's control to Serbia and Montenegro.<br>During the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 78-day air war against Yugoslavia last year, a U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague indicted Milosevic and four senior officials of his government on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Kosovo, a Serbian province where his military and police forces were repressing the ethnic Albanian majority.<br>Opposition leaders called the timing of the indictments a mistake because Milosevic would be left with no option but to hold on to power as long as he could to avoid being sent to trial in The Hague.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Los Angeles Times : Milosevic Moves to Reinforce Control ``x962959964,17101,``x``x
``x <br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Montenegro issued a thinly veiled threat to secede from the Yugoslav federation after the Yugoslav parliament changed its constitution to strengthen President Slobodan Milosevic's hold on power. <br>By changing the constitution, the parliament _ dominated by president's allies _ paved the way for Milosevic's re-election when his term expires next year. <br><br>The amendments passed Thursday call for the Yugoslav president to be elected by popular vote, allowing Milosevic to run for a second term, and for direct election of representatives to the upper house of the Yugoslav parliament. <br><br>After the votes, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic warned that Milosevic's regime had destroyed the federal constitutional system. <br><br>"Therefore, Montenegro will have to find mechanisms to protect itself from such constitutional and legal violence, through its parliament and with the support from its citizens," a statement from Djukanovic's office said. <br><br>The Parliament of Montenegro, Serbia's much smaller partner in the Yugoslav federation, was to meet Friday to discuss the constitutional changes designed to perpetuate the Balkan strongman's hold on power. <br><br>While Djukanovic did not call for outright independence, other senior Montenegrin officials speaking before him indicated that the amendments enacted in Belgrade could quicken the pace. <br><br>"Tomorrow Montenegro's parliament will declare a moratorium on today's decisions, which will not be valid in Montenegro," Miodrag Vukovic, a senior adviser to Djukanovic, said of the parliament's vote. <br><br>"Since this amounts to the constitution of a new country, Montenegro is now forced into making inevitable moves," he said. <br><br>Montenegro's reformist leadership has thus far refrained from declaring full independence, fearing a possible armed conflict with Milosevic's supporters. <br><br>Currently, the upper house includes 20 deputies from Serbia and 20 from Montenegro, all chosen by both republics' parliaments. If the deputies are directly elected, Montenegrin candidates would stand little chance of winning _ their republic has only 600,000 people, compared with Serbia's 10 million. <br><br>The other amendment approved Thursday calls for the Yugoslav president to be elected by popular vote, rather than by assembly members, as was the case when Milosevic was appointed in 1997. <br><br>The lower chamber passed the changes 95-7, while the vote in the upper chamber was 27-0. <br><br>Milosevic's allies argued that direct election would confer "the greatest possible democratic legitimacy" to the institution of the president. <br><br>"This is in the interest of the citizens of Serbia and Montenegro and our joint state," Milutin Stojkovic, a deputy from the president's ruling Socialist Party, said during the parliamentary debate. <br><br>But an opposition deputy, Vladeta Jankovic, told parliament that "instead of us all respecting the constitution, we are having the whole constitution adjusted to serve the interests of one man." <br><br>Although Milosevic's popularity is believed to have plummeted since last year's NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, he is still in full control of the media and state institutions, diminishing opposition chances for a fair election race. <br><br>Milosevic has been indicted by an international war crimes tribunal for atrocities committed during his crackdown in Serbia's Kosovo province, which triggered last year's 78-day NATO bombing campaign. Staying in power would be Milosevic's best guarantee against prosecution.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAP : Montenegro up in arms against constitutional changes curtailing its role``x962959987,23910,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br><br>7 July 2000 <br><br>Yugoslavia's rubber-stamp parliament prolonged President Slobodan Milosevic's grip on power yesterday and cut the influence of the pro-Western republic of Montenegro. <br><br>Miodrag Vukovic, an adviser to Montenegro's President, Milo Djukanovic, said: "Montenegro views this as a move to destroy the federal state, which will enable us to speed up the process of independence." <br><br>The Yugoslav opposition also denounced the changes as a "constitutional coup" by Mr Milosevic, whose supporters dominate the federal legislature. Both houses of parliament in Belgrade voted for the change that will enable thepresident to be chosen by direct elections, rather than by the federal assembly as at present. The decision will enable Mr Milosevic to stand for a second term as head of state when his current, non-renewable mandate expires next year. <br><br>A change in the system of election of deputies to the Yugoslav parliament's upper chamber was also passed. The upper chamber had, until now, given both republics in the federation equal weight, despite the disparity in their populations. <br><br>The move to elect deputies directly, annulling the balance stipulated by the 1992 constitution, will mean that deputies from Montenegro would stand little chance of success in a popular vote, given that Serbia has a population of 7.5 million while the junior partner only has 650,000. <br><br>Slobodan Vucetic, a former judge with the Constitutional Court, said: "This is the end of federal Yugoslavia. The smaller republic [Montenegro] will have no more influence whatsoever in the federation." <br><br>Mr Djukanovic has already announced plans for Montenegro's future independence from the federation, citing irreconcilable differences with the repressive policies of Milosevic-controlled Serbia. <br><br>The Montenegrin parliament is to hold an emergency session in the capital, Podgorica, today, amid indications that deputies would seek to accelerate the process towards independence from Belgrade. <br><br>Yesterday's special session of the Yugoslav federal parliament was hastily convened only on Wednesday, in an unprecedented move by the ruling coalition. Yugoslavia, like Serbia, is run by the coalition made up of Mr Milosevic'sSocialists, the Yugoslav Left run by his wife, Mira Markovic,and the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj. <br><br>Mr Milosevic has wanted to abolish the single four-year term since his election in July 1997. The changes approved by the parliament state that "the same person can be elected to the post twice, each mandate lasting four years". <br><br>The constitutional changes will radically strengthen the President's authority. The 1999 Nato air raids against Serbia did not threaten him, and his political opponents have failed to unite and topple him, despite years of international economic and political isolation. <br><br>Since his indictment by the UN tribunal for war crimes in Kosovo last year, various reports have suggested that Mr Milosevic was trying to find a way to leave office, without facing prosecution. <br><br>The reports were never confirmed, and the latest developments suggest that Mr Milosevic is not going anywhere and is strengthening his power base at home. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Yugoslav MPs bend rules so Milosevic can stand again ``x962960021,21517,``x``x
``xMilosevic could become constitutional dictator, say critics<br><br>Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is a step closer towards a second term in office after his country's parliament cleared the way for him to stand for re-election. <br>Both houses of parliament overwhelmingly approved changes to the constitution put forward by the ruling coalition, which will allow the Yugoslav leader to run for office again when his term expires next year. <br><br>His supporters have hailed the vote as a step towards greater democracy, but opponents say it could turn him into a constitutional dictator. <br><br>The move is also provoking anger and talk of independence in Montenegro, the last state to remain alongside Serbia in the Yugoslav alliance. <br><br>The Montenegrins object to the changes, claiming the move amounts to a constitutional coup which leaves their own power and rights in tatters. <br><br>Deputies applaud the constitutional changes<br> <br><br>The BBC's Central Europe correspondent Nick Thorpe says the changes increase the likelihood that Montenegro will try to sever its remaining links with Serbia. <br><br>The Montenegrin President, Milo Djukanovic, is a pro-western leader who has already tried to distance himself from Belgrade. <br><br>An emergency session of the republic's own parliament, due to take place on Friday, is expected to hear calls for independence, and may reject the new constitution. <br><br>"Since this amounts to the constitution of a new country, Montenegro is now forced into making inevitable moves," said Miodrag Vukovic, a leading adviser to the Montenegrin Government. <br><br>Another senior figure, speaker of parliament Predrag Popovic, also attacked the changes. <br><br>"Montenegro has to defend itself from such an attack," he said. <br><br>"Yugoslavia was erased today and such a move can cost all of us dearly."<br><br>Ballot box <br><br>Under the changes, agreed by the Yugoslav parliaments, the president may stand for re-election through the ballot box rather than an electoral college of deputies. <br><br>The Yugoslav president is currently elected by parliament and cannot run twice. <br><br>Mr Milosevic, indicted by a UN court as a war criminal, has been Yugoslav president since 1997 and Serbian president since 1989. <br><br>Montenegro currently controls half the seats in Yugoslavia's upper house. The proposed constitution would bypass the Montenegrin parliament. <br><br>Opposition deputies in Belgrade also condemned the changes. <br><br>"This is what we call the legalisation of tyranny," said Tomislav Jeremic of the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement. <br><br><br>The Serbian Renewal Movement, one of the three main opposition groupings led by Vuk Draskovic, boycotted the debate in the lower house. <br><br>The fragmented Serbian opposition is united only in wanting to see Mr Milosevic ousted. <br><br>A deputy from Mr Milosevic's ruling party told parliament the changes were "the greatest possible form of democracy". <br><br>"This is in the interest of the citizens of Serbia and Montenegro and our joint state," Milutin Stojkovic said.<br><br>The presidential elections are now expected to be held in the autumn, at the same time as the federal and local elections. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBBC : Power boost for Milosevic``x962960047,66420,``x``x
``x<br><br>Review to examine claims that former commanders now standing trial are getting a share of their lawyers' legal aid <br><br>By Stephen Castle in Brussels and Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br><br>7 July 2000 <br><br>The United Nations war crimes tribunal is investigating claims that some of its $14m (£8.75m) annual budget for legal aid is being shared by Serb defence lawyers with clients accused of some of the most serious crimes against humanity. <br><br>The registrar at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague, is reviewing procedures as suspicion grows that UN cash is being siphoned to fund a property-buying spree in Bosnia and Serbia. <br><br>Defendants are said to earn between 20 and 40 per cent of their counsel's fees and are usually paid in cash. One prominent Serb lawyer, Vladimir Bozovic, said "enormous amounts of money are given". <br><br>Among the most notorious suspects in The Hague are Stanislav Galic and Momir Talic, whose cases are at the pre-trial stage, and Radislav Krstic whose trial is ongoing, although there is no evidence that any are linked to the practice. <br><br>The UN is currently covering defence costs for 37 of the Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims accused of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, with each lawyer claiming $80 to $110 an hour, depending on their experience. This sum, intended to cover all expenses including office costs, is limited to 175 hours a month for each claimant but most defendants have a co-counsel in addition to their main attorney. <br><br>Last year's budget ran to $14.2m, with this year's set slightly lower at $13.9m, reflecting the importance the tribunal attaches to the principle that the accused should be properly defended. <br><br>Jim Landale, a spokesman for the tribunal, said it was aware of the rumours that money was shared with clients and that procedures were under review. "This is something that we take very seriously," he added. <br><br>But the registrar's options may be limited. Normally such issues are referred to the bar association of the country concerned but, given Belgrade's hostility to the tribunal in The Hague, this is unlikely to provide a solution. <br><br>Another possibility would be to use evidence of money being paid to clients to disqualify claimants from legal aid entitlements. However, even this might be open to challenge because there is a grey area over the use of legal aid money for some expenses outside the court room – for example funding relatives' visits. <br><br>Mr Bozovic, who is one of the lawyers representing the Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic – currently serving 20 years for war crimes committed in the 1992-1995 Bosnia conflict – said "it is true many defence lawyers share their high fees with their clients". According to Mr Bozovic: "Defendants get between 20 and 40 per cent of a lawyer's fee and the payment is usually in cash", although he declined to name the lawyers involved. <br><br>He believes that the "idea might have come from certain dishonourable lawyers who, by representing many clients at the same time, have been making enormous amounts of money". Insisting that "enormous amounts of money are given" to the clients from the UN-funded lawyers' fees, Mr Bozovic said some of his colleagues had earned more than 500,000 German marks (£166,000), an extremely high sum by Serbian standards. The money is often used for buying real estate in the Serb part of Bosnia or in Serbia proper. <br><br>"War crimes suspects choose lawyers depending on the amount of money they would receive ... Defendants often say they do not care whether they are cleared of charges. The only thing important to them is to get more money than they could have earned, being free, during their lifetime." <br><br>The president of the Bar Association of Serbia, Branislav Tapuskovic, said: "The rumours are not new. If they are true, that would mean breaching of the ethic code of the profession. That would also mean that the defendants are choosing law-yers to make money and not to have a good defence". <br><br>Meanwhile the Croatian lawyer Ante Nobilo, representing the jailed Croatian general Tihomir Blaskic, told the Dutch media that there were lawyers on the Croatian side involved in such practice. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: UN cash 'is going to Serbian war crimes suspects' ``x963047581,64971,``x``x
``x<br><br>BELGRADE, Jul 7, 2000 -- (RFE/RL) Parliamentary deputies from parties loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic approved on 6 July three amendments to the federal constitution aimed at strengthening his power.<br><br>The first amendment states that the president will be elected directly- -instead of by the parliament, as is now the case--for up to two terms of four years each.<br><br>The second amendment specifies that members of the upper house will be elected directly by popular vote, instead of being elected in equal numbers by the Serbian and Montenegrin parliaments, as current legislation states.<br><br>This will greatly reduce the influence of Montenegro, whose population is approximately only one-tenth of Serbia's.<br><br>The third amendment allows the parliament to appoint or sack individual ministers. At present, the cabinet must be approved or dismissed as a body.<br><br>This amendment will enable Milosevic to intimidate or remove any minister who has become politically inconvenient.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic Seeks Eight More Years in Office``x963047597,7009,``x``x
``x<br>By Misha Savic<br>Associated Press Writer<br>Friday, July 7, 2000; 1:07 AM <br><br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia –– Montenegro issued a thinly veiled threat to secede from the Yugoslav federation after the Yugoslav parliament changed its constitution to strengthen President Slobodan Milosevic's hold on power. <br><br>By changing the constitution, the parliament – dominated by president's allies – paved the way for Milosevic's re-election when his term expires next year.<br><br>The amendments passed Thursday call for the Yugoslav president to be elected by popular vote, allowing Milosevic to run for a second term, and for direct election of representatives to the upper house of the Yugoslav parliament.<br><br>After the votes, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic warned that Milosevic's regime had destroyed the federal constitutional system.<br><br>"Therefore, Montenegro will have to find mechanisms to protect itself from such constitutional and legal violence, through its parliament and with the support from its citizens," a statement from Djukanovic's office said.<br><br>The Parliament of Montenegro, Serbia's much smaller partner in the Yugoslav federation, was to meet Friday to discuss the constitutional changes designed to perpetuate the Balkan strongman's hold on power.<br><br>While Djukanovic did not call for outright independence, other senior Montenegrin officials speaking before him indicated that the amendments enacted in Belgrade could quicken the pace.<br><br>"Tomorrow Montenegro's parliament will declare a moratorium on today's decisions, which will not be valid in Montenegro," Miodrag Vukovic, a senior adviser to Djukanovic, said of the parliament's vote.<br><br>"Since this amounts to the constitution of a new country, Montenegro is now forced into making inevitable moves," he said.<br><br>Montenegro's reformist leadership has thus far refrained from declaring full independence, fearing a possible armed conflict with Milosevic's supporters.<br><br>Currently, the upper house includes 20 deputies from Serbia and 20 from Montenegro, all chosen by both republics' parliaments. If the deputies are directly elected, Montenegrin candidates would stand little chance of winning – their republic has only 600,000 people, compared with Serbia's 10 million.<br><br>The other amendment approved Thursday calls for the Yugoslav president to be elected by popular vote, rather than by assembly members, as was the case when Milosevic was appointed in 1997.<br><br>The lower chamber passed the changes 95-7, while the vote in the upper chamber was 27-0.<br><br>Milosevic's allies argued that direct election would confer "the greatest possible democratic legitimacy" to the institution of the president.<br><br>"This is in the interest of the citizens of Serbia and Montenegro and our joint state," Milutin Stojkovic, a deputy from the president's ruling Socialist Party, said during the parliamentary debate.<br><br>But an opposition deputy, Vladeta Jankovic, told parliament that "instead of us all respecting the constitution, we are having the whole constitution adjusted to serve the interests of one man."<br><br>Although Milosevic's popularity is believed to have plummeted since last year's NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, he is still in full control of the media and state institutions, diminishing opposition chances for a fair election race.<br><br>Milosevic has been indicted by an international war crimes tribunal for atrocities committed during his crackdown in Serbia's Kosovo province, which triggered last year's 78-day NATO bombing campaign. Staying in power would be Milosevic's best guarantee against prosecution.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post: Move OK'd To Prolong Milosevic Rule``x963047633,15386,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Lawmakers on Saturday backed the Montenegrin government"s decision to reject changes to the constitution _ amendments aimed at concentrating power into the hands of the Yugoslav president while reducing Montenegro"s status. <br>After a marathon session marked by insults between pro-independence and pro-Yugoslav camps, 35 of the parliament"s 53 representatives voted in favor of the resolution adopted Friday by the Montenegrin government. The other deputies in the 78-member legislature were not present or abstained. <br><br>The parliament session, which lasted more than seven hours, revealed the deep divisions between supporters of Montenegro"s pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic and those who stand behind President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>A proposed amendment to the government resolution calling for a referendum on the republic"s independence and proposed by the Social Democrats was rejected by the lawmakers. The Social Democrats are partners in Montenegro"s ruling coalition. <br><br>Representatives broke-off for an hour Friday, after Zarko Rakcevic, a Djukanovic ally, accused the pro-Milosevic Socialist People"s Party of being "ethnic cleansers who can only go to The Hague," referring to the U.N. tribunal. <br><br>Rakcevic refused to apologize for the remark, saying "the man you rally (Milosevic) is indicted and wanted by the tribunal." <br><br>The bickering in parliament reflects the overall political situation in Montenegro, Serbia"s junior partner in the Yugoslav federation. While backers of Djukanovic support independence, the pro-Milosevic camp see the Montenegrin president"s ideas as threatening Yugoslavia. <br><br>Despite threats to begin steps toward independence, following the decision in Belgrade Thursday to rewrite parts of the federal constitution, Montenegrin officials declared the changes "illegal, illegitimate ... and unacceptable," but stopped short of making moves toward breaking away. <br><br>Instead, the resolution appealed for "the citizens of Montenegro, Serbia"s democratic public and the international community to contribute to peace, and the members of the Yugoslav army not to be misused against the citizens and the institutions of Montenegro." <br><br>The constitutional amendments passed in Belgrade on Thursday envisage that both the Yugoslav president and the parliament"s upper house be chosen in a popular vote, paving the way for Milosevic"s re-election, while downgrading Montenegro"s position in the federation. <br><br>Montenegro has only 600,000 people, compared to Serbia"s 10 million. A direct election of the president and the legislators cuts its influence in the federation and concentrates power in Milosevic"s hands. <br><br>Although Milosevic"s popularity is believed to have plummeted since last year"s NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, he retains full control of the media and state institutions _ limiting the opposition"s chances for a fair election race. <br><br>Milosevic was indicted by an international war crimes tribunal for atrocities committed during his crackdown in Serbia"s Kosovo province, which triggered last year"s 78-day NATO bombing campaign. Staying in power would be Milosevic"s best guarantee against prosecution. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegrin parliament rejects Yugoslav constitutional amendments``x963047661,49749,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>RACANICA, Kosovo, July 6 -- The first agreement between the Serbs and the United Nations administration here may provide better protection for the Serbian minority, but it threatens to unravel key Albanian participation in international efforts to build a democratic, tolerant Kosovo. <br>Maneuvering by the province's majority Albanians and the Serbs is intensifying ahead of municipal elections scheduled for October. The international administration here hopes that this ballot will be the first step toward cutting Kosovo loose from its foreign lifelines, but so far almost no Serbs have registered to vote. <br><br>And Albanian leaders jostling for power seem to be increasingly willing to fight out their differences on the streets. <br><br>A year into the effort to rebuild Kosovo, many in the United Nations administration say they are wearying of the recalcitrance of Albanian leaders. They are also under new pressure to protect the Serbian minority better against persistent attacks, especially the more openly cooperative Serbs grouped around the religious leaders Bishop Kyr Artemije and the Rev. Sava Janjic -- known as Father Sava -- who are based at the early 14th-century Serbian Orthodox monastery here. <br><br>The Clinton administration has negotiated with Bishop Artemije to persuade him to join the executive council established by Bernard Kouchner, the chief United Nations administrator. The bishop's decision to do so was viewed as traitorous by the Yugoslav government of President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade and by a rival Kosovo Serb grouping led from the northern town of Mitrovica. <br><br>Some formal participation by Serbs is considered vital to the success of the Western effort to turn Kosovo into a democratic, self-governing entity where all ethnic groups can live peacefully -- even if separated into enclaves behind barbed wire and guarded by foreign peacekeepers. <br><br>And there is pressure from Washington to begin the return to Kosovo of at least some Serbs who fled Albanian revenge when NATO's bombing war against Yugoslavia ended a year ago, enabling hundreds of thousands of Albanians driven from home by the Serbs to return. <br><br>Washington is eager to promote the bishop and his Serbian National Council over the harder-line Mitrovica Serbs led by Oliver Ivanovic, who is more closely, if not definitively, allied with Belgrade. <br><br>Therefore, after Bishop Artemije protested increased attacks on Serbs last month by walking out of Mr. Kouchner's council, the Clinton administration helped the bishop's group of Serbs and the United Nations to negotiate an agreement on security for the Serbian minority that coaxed the bishop back in, at least for three more months. <br><br>It was the first direct accord between the United Nations and Kosovo Serbs. <br><br>"We have no other choice but to participate," said Father Sava, the bishop's aide and spokesman. "We cannot live on rhetoric and criticism, but we have to give our own constructive contribution." <br><br>The memorandum drew fierce protests from other Serbs, nearly every Kosovo Albanian party and the government of neighboring Albania. <br><br>Hashim Thaci, once the leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army and now head of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, himself withdrew from United Nations councils, at least "temporarily," on July 4, just before attending a party at the American diplomatic mission here. <br><br>Mr. Thaci says the agreement, which he first read about in newspapers, "opens the door" to the partition of Kosovo into separate ethnic enclaves. What bothers him most, his aides say, is not Gracanica and its Serbs, but partitioned Mitrovica, which is divided into a Serbian-dominated north and an Albanian-dominated south and where the Ibar River still marks the effective beginning of Serbia proper, though the actual border is further north. <br><br>Mitrovica remains a neuralgic point for Albanians. Mr. Thaci's aides say Mr. Kouchner and the NATO officers who lead the peacekeeping force here may mean well but are naïve and open to Serbian manipulation. <br><br>Indeed, United Nations and NATO officials admit privately that it is less and less likely that the West will act forcefully to end the partition of Mitrovica, and therefore of Kosovo itself, because of the risk to alliance troops and the fear that such action would drive thousands more Serbs from the province. <br><br>Under the agreement with Bishop Artemije, the United Nations promises to improve the safety and freedom of movement of Serbs by developing a special police task force for Serb enclaves; to get more Serbs, particularly those nominated by the bishop, into Kosovo's multiethnic police force; to promote the return of Serbs, find more Serbian and international judges to adjudicate crimes and disputes; and, crucially, to establish up to 20 "local community offices" in Serbian areas. <br><br>Albanians criticize the special offices and arrangements for Kosovo Serbs, saying they undermine the principle of a unified and multiethnic Kosovo. <br><br>But Father Sava points to Albanian attacks on Serbs that make enclaves necessary, and notes that if the United Nations and NATO peacekeepers do not deliver, the position of Gracanica's Serbs will be further undermined. <br><br>Mr. Kouchner emphasizes that every institution is ultimately under his control. He admits that he did not consult Mr. Thaci or other Albanian leaders, saying he has always dealt with security issues as his responsibility. <br><br>"Personally, I have always been on the side of those who suffer," Mr. Kouchner said. "Earlier they were the Albanians, but now it is the Serbs and members of other communities." <br><br>An aide to Mr. Kouchner suggested that Mr. Thaci was losing popularity and needed to stand up to the United Nations, although he conceded there were deeper issues at stake. He noted that Ibrahim Rugova, the more moderate Albanian leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo, had not left the council. <br><br>The aide predicted that the summer months, leading up to the first elections in postwar Kosovo, were likely to be marked by more violence, especially among the Albanian parties. <br><br>Already Mr. Thaci's followers and those of Ramush Haradinaj, a former Kosovo Liberation Army commander who heads another rival party, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, have been attacking each other, as well as Mr. Rugova's followers. <br><br>[In one such attack early Friday morning, Mr. Haradinaj and his brother were wounded in an exchange of fire with Rugova supporters in the village of Stroece, near Pec. Mr. Haradinaj, the third former K.L.A. leader attacked in recent weeks, was flown on Sunday to an American military hospital in Germany.] <br><br>The continuing violence -- both intra-Albanian and interethnic -- has depressed United Nations workers who are struggling to build a new Kosovo with limited resources. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: U.N.'s Plan for Kosovo Threatens to Unravel``x963219437,83834,``x``x
``x<br>Constitutional changes approved Friday entrench president, may bring civil war.<br><br>Alex Todorovic <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor<br><br>BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>Once again, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has put his political opponents off guard, producing a new but risky strategy for remaining in office: direct democracy.<br><br>Yugoslavia's federal parliament enacted changes to Yugoslavia's Constitution on Friday that will allow Mr. Milosevic to serve two more four-year terms. They also tilt the balance of power in pro-Western Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, and could push the republic toward civil war.<br><br>Justice Minister Dragan Soc warned that the constitutional changes would lead to the further breakup of Yugoslavia. "There is no Yugoslavia with a humiliated Montenegro," he told parliament during a heated debate last week.<br><br>In an eight-hour emergency session that ended early Saturday morning, Montenegrin lawmakers passed a resolution rejecting the constitutional changes. Montenegro will no longer recognize any legal or political acts adopted by Yugoslav federal authorities, they said.<br><br>"Montenegro as a federal unit and Montenegrin citizens as equal citizens of Yugoslavia no longer exist as a constitutional category," Ratko Vukotic, head of the Supreme Court, was quoted as saying by Montenegro's news agency Montena-Fax.<br><br><br>More democratic<br><br>Although Milosevic opponents decried the hastily enacted constitutional changes as political manipulation, the new system is, ironically, more democratic. The Yugoslav president and Montenegro's representatives in federal parliament will now be elected by direct vote instead of by parliament. "The tendency in federal systems everywhere is toward more direct democracy. In modern times, if you are not directly elected you don't have the support of the people. Direct elections are a good thing," says Aleksa Djilas, a historian and Milosevic observer. Mr. Djilas adds, however, that any serious constitutional changes should be preceded by a long debate. "They voted to change the Constitution as if it were a minor procedural issue," he says.<br><br>Many observers had expected Milosevic, who is under indictment by the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague, to become Yugoslavia's next prime minister, an office technically more powerful than the presidency. The Constitution prohibited Milosevic from serving another term as Yugoslav president. He had already served the maximum two terms as Serbian president.<br><br>Instead, Milosevic has decided to trust in the people. Although the strategy contains risks, a victory by popular ballot would give him democratic credibility.<br><br>Taken as a whole, Serbia's opposition is much more popular, but polls show Milosevic can beat any opposition candidate in a one-on-one contest. "Today, Milosevic would receive 25 to 30 percent of the vote, a figure that nobody from the opposition can rival," says Srbobran Brankovic, with Medium, an independent polling agency in Belgrade.<br><br>But it's not enough to win the presidency. Milosevic must also control the federal parliament, and the changes to the Constitution also simplify that task.<br><br>Previously, Montenegro's parliament chose its representatives to the upper house Chamber of Republics. Now, Montenegrin voters will elect their representatives, giving Milosevic supporters more power against President Milo Djukanovic's ruling coalition.<br><br>The point is somewhat moot, because Mr, Djukanovic has refused to send representatives to federal parliament since 1998.<br><br>Montenegro is gradually distancing itself from the Yugoslav federation. Today, the only remaining federal institution is the Yugoslav Army and Navy, with an estimated presence of 25,000. Montenegrin leaders accuse Milosevic of using Army units to stir up unrest and pave the way for a possible coup.<br><br><br>Showdown possible<br><br>Nebojsa Covic, an opposition leader in Belgrade, said he expected Milosevic to step up pressure on Montenegro. "In the next week or so, the Yugoslav parliament will adopt the famous antiterrorism law," he told reporters, referring to a proposed security law that critics say will threaten basic human rights. "Together with the amended Constitution, it creates great potential for Milosevic's negative imagination and a showdown with political opponents."<br><br>The West has given Montenegro millions in financial aid, at the same time warning the republic to move slowly on a referendum to separate from Yugoslavia. Montenegrins remain sharply divided on the issue. After the latest changes, it seems clear Djukanovic will not take part in federal and local elections expected in November and may pursue the referendum option.<br><br>Djilas notes, however, that Milosevic allies in Montenegro, who control a number of towns, may participate in the vote anyway. "That would mean Montenegro's representatives in federal parliament would consist entirely of Milosevic supporters, which would help Milosevic immensely in parliament. That is precisely what happened in Kosovo when Albanians boycotted elections.<br><br>"Montenegrin separatism may be Milosevic's political ally as Albanian separatism was in Kosovo, before NATO's bombing campaign," Djilas says.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor: Yugoslavia heads for showdown on Milosevic's tenure``x963219462,37591,``x``x
``x<br>By Raymond Whitaker <br><br><br>9 July 2000 <br><br>The creeping confrontation between Serbia and Montenegro, the only other republic remaining within Yugoslavia, inched another step forward yesterday when the Montenegrin parliament voted to boycott all decisions made by the federal government in Belgrade. <br><br>But the deputies shied from voting for an immediate referendum on independence from Yugoslavia, a step which could have brought a new Balkan war much closer. <br><br>They rejected a call for a vote by the pro-independence Social Democratic Party, which is allied to the Western-leaning president of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic. <br><br>The emergency parliamentary session in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica, followed changes to the Yugoslav constitution voted through in Belgrade. <br><br>These would not only strengthen the hold on power of the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, but would considerably reduce the influence of Montenegro within Yugoslavia. <br><br>Opening the session on Friday evening, the Montenegrin Prime Minister, Filip Vujanovic, said the Yugoslav amendments were a "brutal attempt" to annul the statehood of Montenegro. <br><br>Mr Milosevic would be able to stand for a second term, keeping him in power for up to eight more years, and instead of being chosen by parliament would be directly elected, a change which would also apply to the upper house of the federal parliament. These measures would minimise the influence of Montenegro, which has only 600,000 people against Serbia's 10 million. <br><br>In essence, Mr Milosevic is using the same tactics on Montenegro as the one that devastated Bosnia and much of Croatia in the 1990s, forcing the republic to choose between remaining in Yugoslavia on his terms or going to war. <br><br>In Bosnia's case, President Alija Izetbegovic's decision to hold a referendum on breaking away from Yugoslavia was the immediate trigger for the bloodiest European conflict since the Second World War. <br><br>Mr Djukanovic has edged Montenegro as far away from Belgrade as he dares, making overtures to the West, adopting the deutschmark as a parallel currency and ignoring the writ of the federal authorities. <br><br>But this weekend he has compromised on the question of independence. The Yugoslav national army remains on his soil, and he has not given way to the demands of his more radical ministers for an immediate independence vote. <br><br>The seven-hour parliamentary debate revealed the degree of tension within Montenegro, with frequent exchanges of insults and menacing language between Milosevic and Djukanovic supporters. <br><br>One of the latter, Zarko Rakcevic, accused the pro-Milosevic Socialist People's Party of being "ethnic cleansers who can only go to The Hague", referring to the UN tribunal trying war crimes in the former Yugoslav republics. The man they supported, he said, "is indicted and wanted by the tribunal". <br><br>Zoran Zizic, a Socialist People's Party member, said the constitutional changes were aimed at "saving Yugoslavia from those whose basic political platform is to destroy the federal state". ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Montenegro resists Milosevic's attempt to provoke a new war ``x963219481,18835,``x``x
``x<br><br>By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE<br> <br> <br>PRISTINA, Kosovo, July 10 -- An American soldier accidentally shot and killed a 5-year-old Kosovo Albanian boy today, a spokesman for the Kosovo peacekeeping force said. <br>"Today a Kosovar Albanian child was accidentally shot by" an American peacekeeper "at the village of Cerkez Sadovina" in eastern Kosovo, Maj. Scott Slaten said. <br><br>The boy was shot when a soldier who was part of a team mending a fence at a village school accidentally discharged a three-round burst from his weapon, said a statement released by peacekeeping officials in Pristina. <br><br>The boy was taken to a hospital, where he was declared dead. He had been hit in the chest with at least one round, the statement said. An investigation was under way, officials said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Accident Kills Kosovo Boy ``x963310672,80593,``x``x
``x<br><br>Frustrated US military tries sanctions to prod intractable Serb and ethnic Albanian villages.<br><br>Richard Mertens <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor<br><br>STRPCE, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>A group of about 20 cars, trucks, and buses made a tense journey across Kosovo recently. The vehicles were old, some had bundles tied to their roofs, and together they had the desperate, rag-tag look of a column of refugees.<br><br>In fact, they were Serbs returning to southern Kosovo after a visit to Serbia proper. But to reach home they had to pass through ethnic Albanian villages. Three people were injured when the convoy was pelted with rocks.<br><br>For the people of Strpce, an isolated Serb enclave in Kosovo's American-patrolled sector, the twice-a-week convoys are a lifeline. Without them, villagers cannot receive hospital treatment, visit relatives, take university exams, or stock their shops. Normally, the US Army protects them with armored vehicles. But after villagers ransacked a local United Nations building, the Americans suspended the escort for a week and vowed to divert money for improvement projects to more cooperative communities.<br><br>"You can't attack us and then put your hand out for support and aid," Brig. Gen. Randal Tieszen, the American commander in Kosovo, told reporters last Tuesday.<br><br>Strpce is not the only place where the Americans are getting tough. They also vowed to withhold medical assistance and other aid from ethnic Albanians around Kamenica, an ethnically mixed town in eastern Kosovo, in a dispute over a monument honoring the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the officially disbanded ethnic Albanian rebel force.<br><br>American peacekeepers are resorting to sterner measures than usual to loosen the grip of hard-liners on both sides of the ethnic divide. Their weapons were not guns, but the rewards of American aid.<br><br>"This is a mental game more than any other situation I've been in," said General Tieszen.<br><br>Lack of cooperation is a recurring problem in Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia that has been under UN and NATO control since the United States and its allies went to war last year over the mistreatment of its ethnic Albanian majority. Since then, ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs have confounded efforts to create multiethnic institutions such as schools, hospitals, and workplaces, and continue to intimidate and commit violence against each other. The strains have taken on new urgency as the UN tries to organize municipal elections set for October.<br><br>Most of the time, Western officials have relied on patient negotiation and stern but vague warnings. But events in the American sector recently frustrated peacekeepers to the point where they believed sanctions had become necessary.<br><br>In Strpce, the problem began with the disappearance of a Serb farmer, who was later found murdered. The night he disappeared, Serbs gathered in the town square. Western officials say the group threw rocks at the local UN police station then stormed the UN administration building, ripping out doors, breaking windows, and throwing out computers and other equipment.<br><br>The Serbs in Strpce have plenty to be angry about. Since NATO-led forces entered the province in June, 1999, 13 villagers have disappeared. In addition, their loyalties remain firmly with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Still, the American sanctions stung. "I think it's just ordinary blackmail," says Zoran Popovic, a demonstrator outside the Strpce cultural center. The local UN administrator, who is French, called the punishment "politically stupid" and resigned. But Tieszen insisted that "communities must be held responsible."<br><br>In Kamenica, the problem began earlier this year when local ethnic Albanians began building monuments to those who died fighting the Serbs. Western officials believed there were more pressing needs for the community funds. Some also worried that the monuments were part of an attempt to drive Serbs from the area. Lt. Gary Oscar, an American military analyst, describes the monuments as "ethnically divisive and politically motivated."<br><br>The issue came to a head two weeks ago, when Albanians erected a 12-foot granite-and-marble monument in the local market. The local UN administration gave permission, but in deference to local Serbs forbade any display of the KLA emblem, a black double-headed eagle against a red background.<br><br><br> <br>The day the monument was unveiled, local Albanians put a large KLA emblem on top of it anyway - even though the men it honored had not been KLA members. A large crowd threw rocks at Russian soldiers who tried to intervene. Since then, the Americans have tried but failed to get local leaders to remove the symbol. "It's been a real thorn," says Capt. Bill Thompson, an Army spokesman. "It's a provocation, how can it not be?" says Stojanka Djordjevic, selling walnuts, string beans, and summer apples at the edge of the market.<br><br>Some people have praised the American measures. The Rev. Sava Janjic, a spokesman for a group of moderate Serb leaders in Kosovo, says sanctions should be used more broadly in Kosovo. "This is the best way to create moderate leadership in Kosovo," he says. "Otherwise, the people will not feel the difference between moderate and extremist leaders. They will still get the same aid."<br><br>But although British and French peacekeepers face similar problems, spokesmen for both contingents said sanctions had not been deemed necessary. Even the Americans seemed eager not to appear too tough. "This is not punishment," Tieszen stressed last week.<br><br>In Strpce on Thursday, the local Serb leader publicly expressed gratitude to the international community and vowed to cooperate. American peacekeepers said the Serbs also removed piles of rocks and timbers that had been laid up for barricades. But as American soldiers passed out leaflets explaining that the convoys would resume "on a trial basis," they were greeted with little joy.<br><br>"They just think they have success, but that's not true," says Dule Ogarovic, a trader in the village center. "Because they have more power, they can force us to do things. But it's not democracy. It's success with force."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor: Nudge toward order in Kosovo``x963310707,64284,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Stephen Castle in Brussels <br><br><br>11 July 2000 <br><br>Europe's sanctions against Serbia are to be reviewed after EU foreign ministers voiced mounting concern yesterday that measures intended to isolate President Slobodan Milosevic's regime have failed. <br><br>After a debate revealed growing frustration over the sanctions, Hubert Vedrine, the Foreign Minister of France, which holds the EU presidency, said there was "genuine scepticism ... on the part of a growing number of states" over the effectiveness of the policy. He added: "They have not achieved their political objective. This is a debate that will have to be brought forward and lead to a conclusion." <br><br>The European regime includes an oil embargo, a visa ban on senior Serbian figures, and financial sanctions against Yugoslav companies except those which feature on a so-called "white list". The oil embargo is the most controversial because several countries feel it is hitting the wider population rather than the political élite. <br><br>Britain, the last country to agree to a suspension of the ban on commercial flights, last night stuck to the tough line. Keith Vaz, the minister for Europe, said: "If you start to withdraw sanctions that would send the wrong message." British officials are particularly reluctant to agree to any relaxation because of changes to the Yugoslav constitution that allow Mr Milosevic to serve a further term as President. <br><br>But there has been growing agreement in European capitals on the need to engage with Serb civil society, and to stress the economic rewards of working with the West, rather than isolating Yugoslavia. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: EU may lift 'failed' Milosevic sanctions ``x963310750,59081,``x``x
``x<br><br>FROM MARTIN FLETCHER IN BRUSSELS<br><br><br> <br>DIVISIONS surfaced within the European Union yesterday on the wisdom of continuing sanctions against Yugoslavia. <br>After debating the issue with his counterparts, Hubert Vedrine, the French Foreign Minister, acknowledged that doubts about the effectiveness of President Milosevic's regime meant that it would have to be reviewed. <br><br>"Scepticism came from a growing number of quarters about the effectiveness of the sanctions policy," he said. "Some feel they are not properly applied, others that they have been applied too much, some that they have been circumvented, some that they are bound to fail, some that they are logical and others that they are absurd. They have not achieved their political objective." <br><br>The sanctions were imposed during the war in Kosovo last year in an attempt to isolate Mr Milosevic and encourage democracy. They included a visa ban on the President and his associates, financial sanctions and an oil embargo. The EU has sought to bolster the opposition by suspending a flight ban, removing some companies from the blacklist and allowing oil deliveries. <br><br>Montenegro's Western-backed President said yesterday the Yugoslavia no longer exists and that his republic would not take part in federal elections this autumn. President Djukanovic said that by ignoring Yogoslav constitutional changes, his country had effectively left the Yogoslav legal system. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times: EU sanctions may help Milosevic``x963310808,44323,``x``x
``x<br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia, July 10 (Reuters) - Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said on Monday his republic would boycott federal elections after Belgrade"s move to extend the rule of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br>In hard-hitting remarks, the pro-Western leader of the coastal republic blasted the Belgrade government as a "dangerous dictatorial regime" and made clear Podgorica would not accept the constitutional changes or any elections under the new rules. <br><br>"Montenegro will not participate in such elections if they are organised under circumstances that have been announced with the newly-adopted amendments," he told a news conference. <br><br>Djukanovic said the amendments destroyed the Yugoslav federation in its current form. <br><br>But he stopped short of declaring independence from internationally shunned Yugoslavia, saying his republic, which has edged away from Belgrade, would not react "nervously and rashly" and give Milosevic a pretext for starting a new war. <br><br>Amendments to the Yugoslav constitution, passed by the Serbian-dominated federal parliament last week, allow Milosevic to win a new period in office at the ballot box when his present term expires in mid-2000. <br><br>Elections for the federal Yugoslav parliament are due by early November, and some analysts believe Milosevic may go for an early presidential vote at the same time. <br><br>NO RUSH FOR INDEPENDENCE <br><br>Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic said separately that Podgorica would not rush into an independence plebiscite because it might give Milosevic a reason to stir up trouble. <br><br>"We shall continue our policy of patience and soft steps to preserve peace and prevent Milosevic from creating another war for the sake of hanging on to his power," Vujanovic said. <br><br>Montenegro "shall not declare a referendum as long as conflict is possible and Milosevic could use it to create a crisis in Montenegro," he told reporters after meeting his Albanian and Macedonian counterparts in Durres, Albania. <br><br>Montenegro and much larger Serbia are the only republics still in Yugoslavia after Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia broke away during the early 1990s. <br><br>Under the amended Yugoslav constitution, not only the president but also the upper chamber of the federal parliament would be directly elected, thereby bypassing the Montenegrin parliament. Under previous rules, the president was elected by the federal parliament and could not run twice. <br><br>Djukanovic denounced it as the "most drastic and most dangerous move so far in the toppling of the constitutional and the legal system of the country" based on the 1992 Yugoslav constitution, adding: <br><br>"It is certain that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, constituted on these principles, no longer exists today." <br><br>The Montenegrin parliament on Saturday rejected the amendments to the constitution, branding them as illegal. <br><br>Opposition leaders in Belgrade said a more aggressive response from Montenegro could have triggered civil war. <br><br>Montenegro has gradually taken over fiscal and monetary affairs from Belgrade, but Djukanovic said the time was not yet ripe for a separate defence ministry. <br><br>This was despite charges by his officials last week that Milosevic was using army units in the republic to stir tension and pave the way for a coup. <br><br>Djukanovic expressed confidence that the West would not abandon Montenegro. "The international community will react in time and will not wait for war to break out before it reacts."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro threatens Yugo poll boycott``x963310872,84401,``x``x
``x<br> <br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Montenegro"s pro-Western president, angry at constitutional changes passed last week by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic"s government, said Monday that Yugoslavia no longer exists. <br>Yugoslavia, once a federation that included a half-dozen Balkan republics, has in recent years consisted only of Montenegro and its dominant partner, Serbia. But Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said that with the latest federal constitutional changes _ and Montenegro"s decision to ignore them _ the republic "has practically left the constitutional and legal system of Yugoslavia." <br><br>He said Montenegro will not take part in federal elections envisaged by Milosevic for next autumn. <br><br>"It is evident that Yugoslavia no longer exists," Djukanovic said. "Instead of the two equal states _ Montenegro and Serbia _ we have a one-state model." <br><br>He blamed Milosevic, saying the Serb leader destroyed the federation to preserve his own power and avoid war crime charges. <br><br>Milosevic was indicted by an international war crimes tribunal in the Hague for atrocities committed during his crackdown in Serbia"s Kosovo province, which triggered last year"s NATO bombing campaign. It is widely believed that staying in power would be his best guarantee against prosecution by the U.N. war crimes court. <br><br>"Milosevic"s dilemma was Yugoslavia or the Hague ... he chose destroying Yugoslavia," Djukanovic told a press conference. <br><br>The constitutional amendments passed Thursday by the Yugoslav assembly aim to concentrate power into the hands of the Yugoslav president while reducing Montenegro"s status. One paves the way for Milosevic"s re-election; the other says parliament"s upper house will be chosen by popular vote, making it harder for candidates from tiny Montenegro to win seats. <br><br>The Montenegrin government quickly rejected the amendments. Montenegro"s lawmakers backed that decision on Saturday. <br><br>Unlike most of the other former Yugoslav republics, Montenegro under Djukanovic has moved away from Belgrade without violence. It has won many of the trappings of a sovereign state, including a separate currency and police force and virtual control of the nation"s borders. <br><br>But there are fears that Milosevic _ who has started four Balkan wars _ might intervene militarily against Montenegro if it proclaims outright independence. His army remains the only federal institution still functioning in Montenegro. <br><br>Djukanovic said his government won"t provoke the Yugoslav army, but after holding an independence referendum, "will form a (Montenegrin) defense ministry and complete state sovereignty." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro's president says Yugoslavia no longer exists``x963311363,60741,``x``x
``x<br><br>By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer <br><br>PODUJEVO, Yugoslavia (AP) - On a moonlit night, British soldiers on a hilltop near this northeastern Kosovo town peer into screens, watching vehicles and people moving about dozens of miles away as clearly as if it were day.<br><br>Along with German and American forces, 22 Battery of the 32 Royal Artillery Regiment, based in Larkhar, England, operates one of several unmanned airborne surveillance systems available to NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo.<br><br>The British Phoenix system, like its U.S. and German counterparts, allows the NATO-led Kosovo Force to watch for violations of the June 1999 agreement, under which international troops replaced Yugoslav soldiers and police following the 78-day Allied bombing campaign of Yugoslavia.<br><br>British officers refused to say whether the Phoenix, an aluminum-colored aircraft with a 15-foot wingspan that looks like a giant model plane, is used along the control zone that separates Kosovo from the rest of Serbia.<br><br>Traveling at 70 mph at an altitude of about 2,300 feet, the Phoenix is mounted with cameras that send back real time video from as far as 1.2 miles from the plane itself, a capability that could be used to keep track of any Yugoslav forces near the boundary.<br><br>Since the pictures are real-time, the images can alert troops on the ground to suspicious activity, such as ethnic Albanian extremists trying to transport illegal weapons by night. The cameras can make out individuals on the ground but not their faces.<br><br>Crews operating from a truck at a remote hillside about three miles from the boundary with Serbia can track the Phoenix's location and provide precise grid coordinates of any suspicious activity.<br><br>Maj. Sebastian Heath, commander of 22 Battery, said the real-time nature of the system means ground troops can respond instantly. Heath said the Phoenix was used during last month's NATO raids on secret ethnic Albanian weapons stockpiles in central Kosovo, which NATO commanders described as the biggest illegal weapons cache uncovered since the end of fighting last year.<br><br>``We could see them moving about so that we could say 'in that building there are people you need to get your hands on,''' Heath said.<br><br>NATO obtained mixed results from unmanned surveillance aircraft during the Kosovo war. Yugoslavia reported, and the alliance confirmed, that a number were brought down by ground fire.<br><br>Sensors on the Lynx or Gazelle helicopters are believed to be more detailed than those on the Phoenix.<br><br>In Kosovo, however, where the threat of hostile fire is minimal, the aircraft expands NATO's ability to keep watch and serves as a deterrent to those seeking to violate the peace agreement.<br><br>During a visit to the unit during a night operation Tuesday, reporters could see vehicles traveling down a darkened road west of Pristina as well as people crossing a field on foot.<br><br>``I enjoy it,'' said Bombadier Andrew Friendship, a 12-year veteran whose job is to track the aircraft's course. ``We had an old drone system before which only produced pictures after two hours. This is instantaneous, live.'' <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAerial Surveillance in Kosovo ``x963398013,97310,``x``x
``x<br><br>From Times Wire Reports<br><br>Montenegro's pro-Western president, angry at constitutional changes passed last week by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to strengthen his power, says Yugoslavia no longer exists. Yugoslavia, once a federation that included six Balkan republics, has in recent years consisted only of Montenegro and Serbia. But Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said that with the latest federal constitutional changes, his republic "has practically left the constitutional and legal system of Yugoslavia." He said Montenegro will not take part in federal elections envisaged by Milosevic for this autumn. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLA Times: Montenegro Says Federation Defunct ``x963398045,13217,``x``x
``x<br><br>DUBROVNIK, Jul 12, 2000 -- (Reuters) Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said on Tuesday his republic was closer than ever to calling a referendum on independence and urged the West to help avoid a military conflict with Serbia.<br><br>"Unfortunately, Belgrade's irresponsible behavior brings us closer to that option (of calling a referendum) every day," Djukanovic told reporters after meeting his counterparts from Croatia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.<br><br>"Today we are closer to becoming an independent state than we were yesterday," he added.<br><br>Western leaders have cautioned Montenegro against calling an independence referendum, fearful that it could lead to a new conflict in the Balkans.<br><br>But the Western-leaning reformist Montenegrin president said the international community's "policies and honor" were at stake over Montenegro and called for Western help.<br><br>Czech President Vaclav Havel urged NATO to stage a show of force to prevent Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from using his troops to crack down on Montenegro.<br><br>"Apart from political options, there are alternatives, which consist of a demonstration of force," he said, adding that he was speaking as a leader of a NATO member country.<br><br>"The international community looked on events (in former Yugoslavia) with surprise and abhorrence and reacted too late. It should not be repeated a fifth time," he said in reference to bloody conflicts in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo which followed Yugoslavia's disintegration.<br><br>PATIENCE RUNNING OUT<br><br>The four presidents, who also included Croatia's Stipe Mesic and Slovenia's Milan Kucan, backed the Montenegrin parliament's recent decision to boycott federal elections.<br><br>Montenegro rejected fresh changes to the Yugoslav constitution under which the federal president - currently Milosevic - and the upper chamber of parliament would be directly elected, thereby bypassing Montenegrin parliament.<br><br>The changes would enable Milosevic, indicted for war crimes by a UN tribunal, to extend his rule for another mandate.<br><br>Djukanovic told reporters the constitutional changes effectively destroyed the Yugoslav federation and Montenegro might now have to fend for itself.<br><br>"We have been patient out of respect for the world's wish not to stir things up and because we wanted to democratize the country. But there are limits to our patience as well," he said.<br><br>"Montenegro is not going to sacrifice its future so that the dictator in Belgrade can rule forever."<br><br>Djukanovic, who has threatened a referendum for almost a year but held back from naming a date, said Montenegro would be "very careful" in choosing the right moment and would exercise maximum restraint.<br><br>"We shall do everything we can to avoid a new conflict, but it is not only up to Montenegro...If there is a conflict we shall be able to defend ourselves."<br><br>The four presidents signed a joint statement saying the latest events in Yugoslavia were seriously threatening democracy and putting Montenegro at a disadvantage within the federation.<br><br>The statement also defended Montenegro's right to self-determination.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro Nearer Independence Than Ever``x963398062,74141,``x``x
``xBRUSSELS, July 14 (Reuters) - Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic once told some U.S. visitors he wanted nothing to do with foreign investment -- let a little in and before you knew it, it was "all over the place, like rabbits," he said. A quaint slant on economics combined with an iron grip on power already offered small hope of a miracle conversion to open markets and democracy. Now a move by Milosevic to lock up the leadership for eight more years may have quashed it for good. Milosevic abroad would face arrest on charges of inciting war crimes in the conflicts over Yugoslavia"s breakup, a predicament that some believe gives him nothing to lose. Faced now with a "president-for-life" in the path of their toughest project, the architects of European Union strategy for the Western Balkans are redoubling their efforts. Their aim is to dispel a Serbian "laager" mentality that the rest of Europe barely comprehends, to show there is another way. Most of the EU"s 15 members believe sanctions against Yugoslavia are failing to deliver. They see much more mileage in trade with its neighbours, grass-roots contacts in Serbia itself, and the prospect of EU membership. KEY PLAYERS Stabilising the Balkans is the key goal of EU Foreign and Security Affairs chief Javier Solana and Commissioner for External Relations Chris Patten, and a priority for the French presidency of the EU over the next six months. Patten reckons some 17 billion euro (dollars) of European taxpayers" money has been spent since 1991 in a bid to bring the Western Balkans into the European mainstream. He wants results. The former Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia all show signs of progress. Slovenia is a candidate for early EU membership. Albania is in the hands of reformers. But Kosovo is a fragile protectorate, Western-leaning Montenegro is on a political razor"s edge and Serbia is defiant. "There can be no lasting solution...without Serbia -- 10 million people, crucial geographically, potentially the most productive economy," Patten told a London conference. "But for now, Serbia drifts on isolated and alone while the rest of Europe passes it by." China and, more ambiguously, Russia remain friends of Belgrade. But its links to immediate neighbours are sorely frayed. SQUEEZE OR RELAX? The EU has cut off travel visas to key backers of the Milosevic regime, black-listed firms and institutions that fund it, and "white-listed" those who show independence. It is trying to foster an embattled independent media and has alternately badgered and feted a chronically divided political opposition. The EU supplied heating fuel last winter to Serbian cities run by anti-Milosevic councils. Now it plans to help their schools, with blackboards, books and other basics. But all these efforts in support of democratic change have not been enough. Yugoslavia is again entering "a particularly dangerous period," Solana told EU foreign ministers on Monday. "Milosevic, having lost much of his popular support, is desperately clinging to power," he said. "He now appears to be aiming to consolidate his regime through elections this autumn or next year. As he cannot hope to win free and fair elections he will make sure they are neither." GET OUT THE REFROM VOTE With municipal elections due in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia in October and November, a legislative ballot in Bosnia in November and both local and federal elections due in Yugoslavia by year"s end, the potential power of the ballot box will be in the spotlight. A flawed election in ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo, where the remaining Serbs are too fearful of violence to take part, could wreck the EU"s best intentions. And as Solana acknowledged, a constitutional showdown between Belgrade and Montenegro "could easily trigger a new crisis." But results favouring reformers would bolster Serbia"s opposition and raise the profile of a ring of stable and increasingly prosperous democracies getting rapidly closer to the EU, around Milosevic"s isolated regime. The EU Stabilisation and Association Agreements on offer to Macedonia and Croatia, and later Albania and Bosnia, "are a reform agenda in themselves," in Patten"s words. On Monday the EU sets out to further deepen ties with Yugoslavia"s civil society, linking opposition mayors from Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro with the mayors of major European cities and key non-governmental organisations. On a grander scale, a regional summit initiated by France and due to be held in Croatia in November, with Yugoslavia left out, will also show "what a difference fresh, decent and sensible leaders can make very fast," as Patten put it. Meanwhile the European Commission proposes to open up the EU market to Balkan trade, in a one-sided liberalisation that would open markets to products from Bosnia, Croatia, Albania and Macedonia. The one-year-old Balkan Stability Pact has started infrastructure projects for the region, including major roads to improve links in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia. Pact coordinator Bodo Hombach meets his counterparts from the region in Brussels on Monday to urge them to do more, for themselves and each other, to promote cooperation and build institutions, such as a functioning customs service. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xANALYSIS-EU strategy seeks to bypass Milosevic``x963657778,39675,``x``x
``xSKOPJE, July 14 (Reuters) - Yugoslavia"s Balkan neighbours said on Friday constitutional changes allowing President Slobodan Milosevic to remain in power could destabilise the whole region. Foreign ministers of Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Macedonia and ministerial officials from Croatia and Bosnia issued a statement after meeting at the Macedonian resort of Okhrid. "We are deeply concerned over the recent revision of the Yugoslav constitution which has the clear objective of prolonging the mandate in office of the current president and entails serious consequences for the country and for stability and security in the region," they said. The ministers also expressed concern "over the continued pressure from the current Yugoslav regime" on Montenegro. "This is the voice of the region, the voice for solving the problems by working together and helping the region," Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou told reporters. The constitutional changes allow Milosevic to seek a new period in office at the ballot box when his present term expires in mid-2001. They also introduce a direct vote for the upper house of the federal parliament, bypassing the Montenegrin assembly. The Montenegrin parliament rejected the amendments which sharply increased tension between Milosevic and the independence-minded leadership of Montenegro, Serbia"s junior partner in the Yugoslav federation. Montenegrin officials and Serbian opposition leaders agreed earlier on Friday to develop joint tactics against Milosevic. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugo neighbours concerned over Milosevic moves``x963657799,9429,``x``x
``xSVETI STEFAN, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Montenegrin officials and Serbian opposition leaders agreed Friday to work toward creating a new union of the two republics following a crisis over constitutional changes. A mildly worded joint statement, read out by Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic after several hours of talks in the seaside resort of Sveti Stefan, made only oblique references to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Yugoslavia itself. The future of the Yugoslav federation, now made up of just two of the original six republics, was thrown into doubt last week by changes to the Yugoslav constitution which critics saw as designed to let Milosevic stay in power for eight more years. The Montenegrin parliament rejected the changes, saying they stripped the republic of its equal status in the federation and destroyed federal Yugoslavia in its current form. "Democratic forces in Montenegro and Serbia condemn in the strongest possible terms and resolutely reject the latest constitutional changes," said the statement, drawn up amid a sharp increase in tensions between the two republics. Friday, army commanders headed by Chief of Staff Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic met in the Montenegrin capital to "assess the level of combat readiness and give instructions for concrete tasks in the coming period," the state news agency Tanjug said, without elaborating. FEARS OF CLASHES IF REFERENDUM GOES AHEAD The West and many in Montenegro fear possible clashes between the republic"s police and supporters of Milosevic backed by Yugoslav army units if Montenegrin leaders go ahead with threats to call a referendum on independence. The Serbian opposition is eager for powerful Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic to back its struggle against Milosevic, hoping to regain ground and support lost in recent years as a result of its divisions. "Our main common goal is to topple Milosevic and his regime. And we are here to agree how to do this and how to reach basic principles of the joint state of Serbia and Montenegro," Serbian Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic earlier told reporters. But Djukanovic and his officials -- who face pressure from pro-independence forces in their coalition government -- are circumspect about how much they can get involved in what they see as Serbia"s internal affairs. The seven-point statement seemed to reflect that. It called for changes of the political system in Serbia, rapid economic development of Serbia and Montenegro, and changes to the union of the two republics, without mentioning Yugoslavia by name. It said democratic forces in the two republics would work together to establish "a stable, successful and European union of Montenegro and Serbia," making clear that such a union would involve a substantial level of self-rule for the republics. They would do this "regardless of attempts by destructive political groups to halt progress and to keep our country isolated from the world for ever in order to preserve their own privileges," the statement said. It was a clear reference to Milosevic and his allies, but much more oblique than usually used by the two groups. The Montenegrin leadership has been praised by the West for not taking any rash countermeasures after the constitutional changes cut it out of federal decision-making, and after strong criticism by the Yugoslav army, which has units in the republic. Democratic Party of Serbia leader Vojislav Kostunica said the two sides had also discussed whether they should boycott federal elections as a result of the changes but did not take any final decision, independent news agency Beta said. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic foes seek joint strategy in Montenegro``x963657820,41970,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - The head of the Yugoslav army and his aides visited units in Montenegro Friday as Serbian opposition parties met with the pro-Western coastal republic"s leadership to discuss a constitutional crisis. "Chief of Staff General Nebojsa Pavkovic visited the zone of responsibility of the Second Army, Navy and part of the Air force and Air Defense of the Yugoslav Army," the state news agency Tanjug quoted a statement from the General Staff as saying. A meeting of the Chiefs of Staff in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica was attended by commanders of strategic groupings whose units are stationed in the region, the statement said. "The level of combat readiness of these commands and units was assessed and concrete instructions given for planned activities in the coming period," it added. The statement gave no hint as to what those activities might be. It followed a report by the Montenegrin news agency quoting an army source as saying army units were on alert in the republic last week and might have carried out a military coup if its leadership had declared independence. Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, a Montenegrin protege of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, said Thursday reports of a possible attack by the army were untrue and accused the Montenegrin leadership of "sowing discord." Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic met Serbian opposition leaders Friday in the republic"s top Adriatic resort to discuss how to respond to constitutional changes introduced by Belgrade last week. The changes, seen by critics as an illegal bid by Milosevic to cling to power, cut the Montenegrin leadership out of federal decision-making, prompting it to declare the Yugoslav federation dead in its current form. On Friday Djukanovic and the Serb opposition pledged to build a new union of the two republics despite attempts by "destructive political groups to halt progress and to keep our country isolated from the world for ever in order to preserve their own privileges." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav army chief visits units in Montenegro``x963657836,34554,``x``x
``xTHURMONT, Md. (Reuters) - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called Montenegro"s pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic Thursday to tell him he could expect more cash this year to help him in his democratization effort, a U.S. spokesman said. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters she had called him from Camp David, where she was leading Middle East peace talks while President Clinton took about eight hours off to attend prior engagements. They discussed developments in the region, including changes in the constitution introduced by Belgrade and rejected by Montenegro. The rejection sparked a sharp increase in tension between President Slobodan Milosevic and the Montenegrin leadership. "She was also able to tell him that after we consult with Congress, we will be able to provide $16.5 million of additional assistance to Montenegro for democratization and economic reform during the course of this year," Boucher said. If approved, this would bring total U.S. aid to Serbia"s sister republic in the Yugoslav federation to $77.1 million in fiscal year 2000, a U.S. official said. Boucher said Albright and Djukanovic had also agreed to consult more in the future on upcoming federal elections. "The main thrust of the phone call was to express her support for democracy in Montenegro and appreciation for the moderate policies that Djukanovic has been following," Boucher said. More than a year after NATO"s 78-day bombing campaign against Milosevic"s forces, he remains in power and the United States and its allies hopes eventually to unseat him by supporting his opposition. Montenegro"s Montena-fax news agency reported Wednesday that Yugoslav army units stationed in Montenegro were on alert last week and might have carried out a military coup in the republic if its leadership had declared independence. Djukanovic has distanced himself from the Belgrade-based Yugoslav federal government and has accused the army of interfering in Montenegrin politics in support of pro-Milosevic forces. He wants to escape 10 years of international isolation resulting from Yugoslavia"s role in a string of Balkan wars. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbright calls Djukanovic from M.East talks``x963657853,28600,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br> <br> <br><br>PRISTINA, Kosovo -- Bernard Kouchner, the emotional chief of the United Nations administration in Kosovo, has made it through a tumultuous year. <br>Last November, as the province's water and power were almost nonexistent, the West was not providing the money or personnel it promised and the cold was as profound and bitter as the ethnic hatred, Mr. Kouchner was in a depression so deep that his staff thought he might quit. <br><br>He spoke darkly then of "how hard it is to change the human soul," of the quick fatigue of Western leaders who prosecuted the war with Serbia over Kosovo and had no interest in hearing about its problematic aftermath, of the impenetrability of the local Serbs and Albanians, with their tribal, feudal passions. <br><br>"I've never heard an Albanian joke," he said sadly, looking around his dreary office, the former seat of Serbian power here. "Do they have a sense of humor?" <br><br>Now, in a blistering summer, Mr. Kouchner's mood has improved. A French physician who founded Doctors Without Borders because he became fed up with international bureaucracy, he is now an international bureaucrat, sometimes uneasy in his skin. He still goes up and down with the vagaries of this broken province, with its ramshackle infrastructure, chaotic traffic and lack of real law or justice. And without question, he admits, some of those problems can be laid at his door. <br><br>"Of course I'm not the perfect model of a bureaucrat and an administrator," he said. "But we have succeeded in the main thing": stopping the oppression of Kosovo's Albanians by Belgrade, bringing them home and letting them restart their lives in freedom. <br><br>And yet, he said, "I have not succeeded in human terms" with a traumatized population. "They still hate one another deeply." <br><br>He paused, and added: "Here I discovered hatred deeper than anywhere in the world, more than in Cambodia or Vietnam or Bosnia. Usually someone, a doctor or a journalist, will say, 'I know someone on the other side.' But here, no. They had no real relationship with the other community." <br><br>The hatred, he suggested, can be daunting and has plunged him and his colleagues into despair. "Sometimes we got tired and exhausted, and we didn't want a reward, not like that, but just a little smile," he said wanly. "I'm looking for moments of real happiness, but you know just now I'm a bit dry." But he is proud that everyone has persisted nonetheless. <br><br>As for himself, he said, "my only real success is to set up this administration," persuading Albanian and some Serbian leaders to cooperate with foreign officials and begin to share some executive responsibility. <br><br>When the head of the local Serbian Orthodox Church, Bishop Kyr Artemije, and the leaders of perhaps half of Kosovo's Serbs decided to join as observers, "we were very happy then," he said. "We were jumping in the air. We believed then that we were reaching the point of no return." <br><br>But even those Serbs left the executive council set up by Mr. Kouchner, only to return after securing written promises for better security that have prompted the Albanian Hashim Thaci, former leader of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, to suspend his own participation. <br><br>Bishop Artemije's chief aide, the Rev. Sava Janjic, said carefully: "Kouchner has not been serious in his promises, and the efforts to demilitarize the Kosovo Liberation Army are very inefficient. But he is sincere, and this written document is important on its own." <br><br>A senior Albanian politician said Mr. Kouchner was "the wrong man for the job," which he said required more forcefulness and less empathy. "After a year, you still can't talk of the rule of law." Still, the politician said, "Kouchner's instincts are good -- he knew he had to co-opt the Albanians, that the U.N. couldn't run the place alone." <br><br>Less successful, most officials and analysts interviewed here said, is Mr. Kouchner's sometimes flighty, sometimes secretive management of the clumsy international bureaucracy itself in the year since Secretary General Kofi Annan sent him here to run the United Nations administration in Kosovo. <br><br>Alongside the bureaucrats are the 45,000 troops of the NATO-led Kosovo Force, known as KFOR, responsible to their home governments, not to Mr. Kouchner or even to the force's commander. And while Mr. Kouchner was able to persuade the former commander, Gen. Klaus Reinhardt of Germany, to do more to help the civilian side, they were both less successful with Washington, Paris, Bonn, Rome and London. <br><br>The affliction known here as "Bosnian disease" -- with well-armed troops unwilling to take risks that might cause them harm -- has settled into Kosovo, say Mr. Kouchner's aides and even some senior officers of the United Nations force. <br><br>Consequently, some serious problems -- like the division of the northern town of Mitrovica into Serbian and Albanian halves that also marks the informal partition of Kosovo -- appear likely not to be solved but simply "managed," no matter how much they embolden Belgrade or undermine the confidence of Kosovo Albanians in the good will of their saviors. It was on the bridge dividing Mitrovica -- not in Paris -- that Mr. Kouchner chose to spend his New Year's Eve, making a hopeful toast, so far in vain, to reconciliation. <br><br>Nor will the peacekeeping troops do much to stop organized crime or confront, in a serious fashion, organized Albanian efforts to drive the remaining Serbs out of Kosovo and prevent the return of those who fled, the officials say. <br><br>The discovery last month of some 70 tons of arms, hidden away by the former Kosovo Liberation Army and not handed over as promised to the peacekeepers, took no one here by surprise. <br><br>"It was a success," Mr. Kouchner said, "not a surprise." <br><br>In fact, senior United Nations and NATO officials say, the existence of the arms cache was known and the timing of the discovery was a message to the former rebels, who had recently used some of the weapons, to stop their organized attacks on Serbs and moderate Albanian politicians. <br><br>But few here expect the arrest of former rebel commanders who are widely suspected of involvement in corruption or political violence. The reaction may be volatile, officials say: troops could be attacked and the shaky political cooperation with the Albanians undermined. <br><br>Is the United Nations peacekeeping force too timid? Mr. Kouchner paused and shrugged. "Of course," he finally said. "But what can we do? Everything in the international community works by compromise." <br><br>Foreign policemen are also too timid and take too long with investigations that never seem to finish, Mr. Kouchner says. But at least now, more than 3,100 of the 4,800 international police officers he has been promised -- even if not the 6,000 he wanted -- are here, and a Kosovo police academy is turning out graduates. <br><br>One of Mr. Kouchner's biggest regrets is the slow arrival of the police, which bred a culture of impunity. More than 500 murders have taken place in the year since the United Nations force took complete control of the province, and no one has yet been convicted. <br><br>There are still only four international judges and prosecutors in a province where violence and intimidation mean neither Serbs nor Albanians can administer fair justice. <br><br>What Mr. Kouchner says depresses him most is the persistence of ethnic violence even against the innocent and the caregivers. One of his worst moments came last winter, he said, when a Serbian obstetrician who cared for women of all ethnic groups was murdered by Albanians in Gnjilane, in the sector of Kosovo patrolled by American units of the United Nations force. <br><br>"He was a doctor!" Mr. Kouchner exclaimed, still appalled. "It was the reverse of everything we did with Doctors Without Borders." <br><br>While Mr. Kouchner says he has put himself alongside "the new victims," the minority Serbs, he carries with him his visits to the mass graves of slain Albanians. <br><br>"I'm angry that world opinion has changed so quickly," he said. "They were aware before of the beatings and the killings of Albanians, but now they say, 'There is ethnic cleansing of the Serbs.' But it is not the same -- it's revenge." <br><br>He does savor the international military intervention on moral and humane grounds. "I don't know if we will succeed in Kosovo," he said. "But already we've won. We stopped the oppression of the Albanians of Kosovo." <br><br>Mr. Kouchner paused, lost in thought and memory. "It was my dream," he said softly. "My grandparents died in Auschwitz," he said, opening a normally closed door. "If only the international community was brave enough just to bomb the railways there," which took the Nazis' victims to the death camp. "But all the opportunities were missed." <br><br>That, he said, is why he became involved, early on, in Biafra, the region whose secession touched off the Nigerian civil war of 1967-70, in which perhaps one million people died. And it is what drives him in Kosovo. <br><br>Mr. Kouchner, now 60, holds to the healing power of time. He points to the reconciliation now of Germany and Israel, and of France and Germany. <br><br>"Working with Klaus Reinhardt is a good memory," he said. "He called me his twin brother." They both came of age in the Europe of 1968. "I'm a Frenchman and he's a German," and 50 years ago, he said, "no one could imagine this." <br><br>"It's much easier to make war than peace," Mr. Kouchner said. "To make peace takes generations, a deep movement and a change of the spirit." He smiled, looked away. "It's why I sometimes want to believe in God." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Aide Takes Stock of U.N. in Kosovo``x963833560,35952,``x``x
``x<br><br>SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has more control over the military of Bosnia's Serb republic than its Western-leaning government of Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, a U.S. official was quoted as saying Sunday.<br><br>``Milosevic in this moment definitely has bigger influence over the VRS (Bosnian Serb army) than Dodik,'' an unnamed senior official of the State Department was quoted as saying by the Sarajevo daily Dnevni Avaz.<br><br>He said he could not elaborate on the exact level of Milosevic's control over the VRS. ``But the ability to determine their wages, appoint and dismiss officers gives him for sure a strong influence over the army.''<br><br>``He can use the army to block whatever Dodik initiates,'' he said, adding that Milosevic also influenced Bosnian Serb intelligence services.<br><br>Dodik, who in 1998 ousted hard-liners loyal to Bosnian Serb wartime leader and indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic, is loved by the West for his fierce opposition to Milosevic and a commitment to economic reforms.<br><br>But the hard-liners, who were backed by Milosevic during the Balkan country's 1992-95 war, remained strong. The Serb Democratic Party (SDS), formed by Karadzic in 1900, was the biggest party in the Serb republic after April's local vote.<br><br>The 1995 Dayton peace treaty split Bosnia into two highly-autonomous entities: the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb republic.<br><br>They have their own parliaments, governments, police and military, which in the federation has a Muslim and a Croat part.<br><br>The State Department official said that Bosnia's separate militaries should become one in future: ``But as long as these relations exist between Belgrade and the VRS, the building of a single Bosnian army could not be expected.''<br><br>Yugoslavia, now consisting of the Milosevic-controlled Serbia and reform-minded Montenegro, is under a Western wall of sanctions imposed for its role in the bloody disintegration of the former socialist Yugoslav federation throughout the 1990s.<br><br>Milosevic himself has been indicted by the U.N. tribunal for the war crimes committed against ethnic Albanians in Serbia's southern province in Kosovo. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xReport: Yugo's Milosevic Controls Bosnian Serb Army ``x963833583,11352,``x``x
``x<br><br>By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer <br><br>UNITED NATIONS (AP) - From his one-bedroom apartment in midtown Manhattan, Zeljko Perovic has begun a campaign to give Montenegro a greater voice at the United Nations, setting up a one-man ``mission'' and getting himself invited to U.N. meetings.<br><br>One of two republics that make up what is left of the former Yugoslavia, Montenegro has no independent legal status at the United Nations. Montenegro and Serbia are represented together by Belgrade's U.N. mission.<br><br>But with tensions between the two republics increasing - and heightened last week with constitutional changes that seek to reduce Montenegro's status - Montenegro is seeking to increase its own diplomatic visibility and garner support for its pro-Western cause.<br><br>``We have to protect our interests,'' said Perovic, Montenegro's self-proclaimed ``head of mission and U.N. liaison officer,'' in an interview Friday.<br><br>Montenegro is finding support in its campaign from the four former republics that separated from Belgrade in the early 1990s: Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.<br><br>On Friday, Slovenia circulated a second letter in three weeks on behalf of Montenegro to the Security Council, enclosing the text of a resolution adopted by the Montenegrin parliament rejecting the constitutional amendments enacted by the Yugoslav federal assembly.<br><br>The amendments aim to concentrate power in the hands of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic while reducing Montenegro's status. One paves the way for Milosevic's re-election, the other says parliament's upper house will be chosen by popular vote, curtailing the influence of Montenegro's parliament, which is dominated by Milosevic's opponents.<br><br>Slovenia's deputy U.N. ambassador, Samuel Zbogar, said Friday that his government had decided to help Montenegro gain greater visibility at the United Nations because Belgrade wasn't representing its interests here.<br><br>That support includes circulating letters to U.N. ambassadors on behalf of Montenegro and inviting Perovic and other Montenegrin officials to the United Nations as ``guests'' of the Slovene mission.<br><br>Visitors to the non-public areas of the United Nations must be accredited to the organization or be escorted into the building as a ``guest'' of someone who is.<br><br>``They are the democratic light in Yugoslavia and you have to support that,'' Zbogar said in an interview.<br><br>Yugoslavia's representative at the United Nations, Vladislav Jovanovic, has bitterly complained about what he calls Slovenia's interference in Yugoslav internal affairs. He has also dismissed Montenegro's quest for official, or even unofficial, recognition at the organization.<br><br>``Parts of member states are not entitled to have any official or semi-official mission within the U.N. The appearance of one person claiming to represent Montenegro in the U.N. is totally private business and doesn't have anything to do with the U.N. membership,'' he said in an interview.<br><br>Indeed, as a part of Yugoslavia, Montenegro cannot be recognized as an independent U.N. member state. It probably couldn't even get ``observer'' status, which has been granted to entities such as the Palestine Liberation Organization.<br><br>In their dispute with Milosevic's regime, Montenegro officials have talked of breaking from Belgrade, but they have stopped short of making a direct move for independence.<br><br>Similarly, Montenegro's moves at the United Nations have not been presented as a step toward statehood. But Zbogar and Perovic said they were looking into ways to allow Montenegro to have some type of other accreditation at the United Nations - or at least be given the same type of access as Belgrade's U.N. representatives.<br><br>Belgrade's envoys don't have full rights at the United Nations. In 1992, they were stripped of some membership rights following the independence of four of its six republics. The United States, Britain and the four former Yugoslav republics have demanded that Belgrade apply for membership as a new country.<br><br>Belgrade has so far refused, arguing that the independence of its republics didn't affect the ``continuity'' of the country.<br><br>Last month, U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke raised Yugoslavia's disputed status as one reason for limiting its access to U.N. meetings. He successfully got the Security Council to block Jovanovic from participating in a council debate on the Balkans, primarily on grounds that Milosevic and other key leaders have been indicted for war crimes.<br><br>Montenegro's foreign minister, Branko Lukovac, attended the Security Council debate as a guest of Slovenia, Zbogar said. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro More Visible at UN ``x963833603,81215,``x``x
``x<br><br>Filed at 4:07 a.m. EDT<br><br><br>By The Associated Press<br>KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- French troops fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of Serbs who massed around a U.N. police station to demand the release of a Serb arrested for allegedly burning cars, a French spokesman said Tuesday. <br><br>Four Serbs and two U.N. policemen were injured in the clash, which began about 11 p.m. Monday in the Serb part of this ethnically divided city, French Lt. Col. Philippe Eriau said. One of the policeman was hospitalized. <br><br>It was the second confrontation in less than a week between Serbs and peacekeepers in this northwestern Kosovo city, divided by the Ibar River into Serb and ethnic Albanian communities. <br><br>On Friday, four grenades were fired from the ethnic Albanian side, touching off about three hours of Serb protests, which ended without injuries. <br><br>The latest violence erupted hours before the arrival of NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson and ambassadors of the NATO-member states for a firsthand look at the situation in Kosovo more than a year after the beginning of the NATO peacekeeping mission. <br><br>Robertson arrived early Tuesday and met the peacekeeping commander, Brig. Gen. Juan Ortuno of Spain. <br><br>The Kosovska Mitrovica clash occurred as the U.N. mission is trying to convince Serbs to register for municipal elections in October, the first internationally supervised balloting in Kosovo's history. <br><br>Most Serb leaders are resisting until the United Nations and NATO can guarantee their security and allow thousands of Serbs to return to Kosovo, which they fled after Yugoslav forces withdrew at the end of the 78-day bombing campaign in 1999. <br><br>The leader of the largest Serb community left in Kosovo has assured international officials that he will not stand in the way of Serbs who may want to register. However, Oliver Ivanovic said Monday that he did not believe many Serbs would sign up until the United Nations takes steps to allow more than 200,000 Serbs to return here. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFrench Troops Battle Angry Serbs``x963916989,94042,``x``x
``x<br><br>July 17, 2000<br>Web posted at: 10:28 AM EDT (1428 GMT)<br><br><br>PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- An explosion ripped through a medieval Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo, flattening the structure, U.N. police said Monday. <br><br>The church of the Holy Prophet Elijah was located in the village of Pomazetin, just outside the Serb village of Kosovo Polje. The church was leveled in the Sunday night explosion, said Oleg Rubezhov, a U.N. police officer who patrols the area. <br><br>"It was destroyed to the basement," he said. <br><br>About 66 pounds of explosives were used in the 11:30 p.m. blast, peacekeepers said. Two people were seen running from the site shortly after the explosion. <br><br>The church was not under guard by NATO-led peacekeepers, U.N. police said. They said it had already been severely damaged during the war between ethnic Albanian separatists and the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>However, the private Beta and FoNet news agencies in Belgrade said in their reports that the church was first damaged last August in a fire or by an explosion. <br><br>The opposition Serbian Renewal Movement blamed the latest explosion on the peacekeeping force, called KFOR, saying its troops did nothing to prevent it in this heavily ethnic Albanian province. <br><br>"Members of KFOR know well enough that Albanian extremists systematically destroy Orthodox Christian churches, but they obviously do nothing to prevent them, which is proven by this latest crime," the party said. <br><br>Minority Serbs have faced daily attacks over the past year and Serb Orthodox monuments have been targeted by ethnic Albanian militants. The Beta news agency said 86 religious objects have been destroyed. <br><br>Beta said Pomazetin was an ethnically mixed village before Kosovo's 1998-99 war. Since the deployment of NATO-led peacekeepers in the province last year, Serb villagers have fled, fearing for their safety. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbian Orthodox Church blown up in Kosovo``x963917026,85872,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br> <br><br>ARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 19 -- Svetlana Broz stands out in the lobby of Sarajevo's hotel, an elegant blond woman out of place amid the men in suits, members of the hard-line nationalist Croatian party who are here for a conference. <br>Few appear to recognize her, but they would instantly recognize her name, for everyone in the former Yugoslavia knows her grandfather, Josip Broz, who as Tito was the Communist leader of Yugoslavia for 35 years, from the end of World War II until his death in 1980. <br><br>Ms. Broz, a confident, educated woman of 45, a cardiologist and a divorced mother of two, grew up in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, and worked at the Military Medical Academy. But in 1993, when war was tearing Bosnia apart, she began a personal crusade against the nationalism that has destroyed the country her grandfather created. <br><br>She left her home in Belgrade, and with her teenage daughter drove into Bosnia to offer her services in hospitals and clinics in the Serb-controlled areas. "I went because I refused to accept the indifference in Belgrade to what was happening in Bosnia, and because I could not accept that the Bosnians were another people," she said in an interview. "The people in Bosnia-Herzegovina were my people, and I had to do something." <br><br>Some days she would treat up to 100 people in a day, and she found that many of her patients wanted to tell her stories, not so much of the horrors they had experienced but of the gestures of goodness from people who were often on opposing sides in the war. These were tales little broadcast at the time, mainly because the media of all sides were so nationalistic, but also because even small deeds that could be construed as helpful to one's ethnic foes put good Samaritans in danger. <br><br>"So for some moments I put away my cardiological instruments and took up my dictaphone, and I started collecting stories," she said. "I started in 1993 at the most aggressive time when people were killing each other, yet people were prepared to talk of goodness." <br><br>She published the stories in a book, "Dobri Ljudi u Vremenu Zla" (Good People in Times of Evil), printed in the town of Banja Luka in Bosnia's Serbian entity in 1999. Already on its second print run of 5,000, it tells stories of the war from Serbs, Croats and Muslims equally. It remains unavailable in Serbia and Croatia, although she plans readings in Croatian resorts this summer. <br><br>A Croatian doctor helps Muslim prisoners of his own army, and later has to flee when Muslims overrun his town. A Serbian taxi driver in Sarajevo risks his life to ferry people around and bring food to those living under the siege by Serbian forces. The mixed village where Serbian and Muslim neighbors protected each other, as they did in World War II, and survived unscathed. <br><br>"It shows a message, that even in the worst period, every individual could make a choice and that there were a lot of people who remained human in such a time," Ms. Broz said. "People paid with their lives but did not accept the brutal behavior of their own nation." <br><br>Now living in Sarajevo and working on another book, this one about mixed marriages that still occurred during the war, Ms. Broz said she wanted to create a park in the Bosnian capital, once famed for its multiethnic diversity. Inspired by the Yad Vashem park in Jerusalem, this one would be dedicated to unsung heroes of the war, those who risked their lives to help people from the opposing side. <br><br>For Ms. Broz, the issue is fundamental. She acknowledges with a smile that she has no place to call home and is hard put to say which country she is from. Her father, Zarko Broz, was the eldest surviving son of Tito's first marriage to the Russian Pelagia Belousova, whom he met in Siberia during World War I. Tito himself was half Croatian and half Slovenian. <br><br>Her father fought in Russia in World War II, lost his right arm defending Moscow, and then came to Belgrade the day after it was liberated from Nazi forces in 1944. He accompanied his father to meetings with Churchill. He then joined the Yugoslav Interior Ministry, where he worked for the rest of his life. <br><br>Ms. Broz was the only child of his third marriage to a Czech doctor whose family originally came from Bosnia. "My answer is I am a cosmopolitan, and I call myself European since Yugoslavia disappeared," she said. She added that she feels no affinity to today's Yugoslavia -- consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, and ruled by Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>"Emotionally and psychologically the whole of the former territory of Yugoslavia is my country, and no one can take that away from me, however many borders they put up in between," she said. She still has her home in Belgrade, and both her children are studying there, but she is now building a house on land that belongs to her mother's family, in Hadzici, a village 12 miles outside Sarajevo where she often spent holidays as a child. <br><br>Like many people of her generation, she looks back on the years before war destroyed the old Yugoslavia as halcyon days of harmony and prosperity, and she gives the credit to her grandfather, Tito. "I lived for 35 years in a country that was magical," she said. "So I believe in what I think was fundamental to his policies, that was living together." <br><br>She rejects the argument that the Communist slogans of brotherhood and unity were false or that suppressing ethnic differences prepared the ground for a nationalist explosion. She attributes the wars of the last decade rather to the calculated moves by politicians who used nationalism to break up the country. <br><br>She does, however, condemn the suppression of political freedom under Tito, who killed and imprisoned opponents and stamped out even slight expressions of what was deemed to be nationalism. As a democrat, Ms. Broz said, she cannot agree with the persecution of people for their ideas. Yet in the same breath, she wondered if it would not have been better if some dissidents, who became leading nationalist politicians, had remained in prison. "I am against political persecution, but when you look back, you can see that those people led to the evil that happened," she said. <br><br>She retains her harshest words for the intellectuals of Yugoslavia and members of her own medical profession who joined and even led the nationalist charge, like the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, a former psychiatrist. <br><br>She described a dangerous confrontation during the Bosnian war with one of Dr. Karadzic's close associates, the head doctor of a hospital who ordered her arrest. <br><br>"He said I should write about the evil, not the good," she said. "He said there was no good Croat except a dead Croat, and no good Muslim except a dead one. I told him he was inhuman and a fascist, and I was ashamed to be carrying the same diploma as him -- we graduated from the same medical school." <br><br>When a warrant went out for her arrest, she turned herself in, but the policeman told her to carry on working. "It showed a policeman wasn't as bad as a doctor," she said. <br><br>She rules out a life in politics for herself. "I am a humanist, and my profession is completely different from politics," she said. "And anyway, there has been enough of that in my family." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: A Tito Grandchild Battles Nationalism's Excesses``x964089800,33068,``x``x
``xBy Alexandra Poolos<br><br>The Yugoslav republic of Montenegro faced another blow with the recent constitutional changes that will allow Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to seek another term. NCA's Alexandra Poolos interviews Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic about how the republic's pro-Western leadership plans to respond. <br><br>Prague, 19 July 2000 (RFE/RL) -- Montenegro said today that its pro-Western president will not run against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic if an election is called later this year. <br><br>In a telephone interview with RFE/RL, Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic said that President Milo Djukanovic intends to keep his office. <br><br>"No, absolutely not. He is the president of Montenegro, entrusted by the citizens and he is fulfilling his public mandate, which he has said many times." <br><br>The denial comes in the wake of Yugoslav constitutional changes that will allow Milosevic to seek another presidential term. It is a rebuke to recent statements by Serbian opposition leaders that Djukanovic is the best candidate to run against Milosevic. Serbian opposition leaders have been scrambling since the amendments, as they confront the fact that with no viable candidate to run against Milosevic, he could easily win another term. <br><br>Djukanovic and his lawmakers denounced the constitutional changes, which diminish Montenegro's role in the Yugoslav parliament. They say the moves are destroying the Yugoslav federation and pushing Montenegro to independence. But although Montenegrin lawmakers voted not to take part in the changes, including the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections, they have balked at taking decisive action -- namely calling for a referendum on independence. <br><br>Some of Djukanovic's political advisers argue that it is vital to prepare the ground for a referendum before federal elections are officially announced. But support for such a poll is far from universal in Montenegro. Even Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists is split on whether to call a referendum, largely because Western governments are opposed to it and because it could provide a pretext for Yugoslav military intervention. <br><br>Serbian opposition leaders met with Montenegrin officials in the Montenegrin coastal resort of Sveti Stefan last week. Both sides agreed that stability in Montenegro depends on a democratic Serbia and the removal of Milosevic from power. But they have yet to come up with a common strategy. Instead, they seem paralyzed with patience. <br><br>Vujanovic told RFE/RL that the tiny republic must wait to see what happens in Serbia. <br><br>"We have no idea when we will call a referendum. We are expecting the situation in Serbia to develop democratically, and then we'll see what Montenegro's position looks like, whether we will make an agreement with Serbian opposition to save the federal state on the principles of state, national and civic equality with the others. And if not, then we will call a referendum." <br><br>But as Montenegro continues to wait, Milosevic is moving steadily forward with plans for elections. Belgrade has already set in motion logistical preparations for elections at Yugoslav Army bases in districts controlled by the pro-Milosevic Socialist People's Party of Montenegro. <br><br>As the federal crisis continuing to percolate in Yugoslavia, Montenegro may have to act soon or risk being acted upon.<br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro To Wait Before Calling Referendum``x964089824,52822,``x``x
``xSARAJEVO, July 19 (Reuters) - NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said on Wednesday he had no information that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had planned a military coup in Montenegro, but he repeated warnings to him not to intervene. Robertson was asked what might have been going on when the Montenegrin news agency reported that Yugoslav army units had been on alert and might have intervened during a recent parliament session there. "I have no information about a military coup in Montenegro and I"ve made it very clear on a number of occasions as Secretary-General of NATO that we watch with care and concern what is going on in Montenegro," he replied. Robertson was speaking to a news conference during a visit to Bosnia to review international efforts to promote stability after the 1992-5 war that accompanied the former Yugoslav republic"s split from the former Socialist federation. Montenegro is now the only republic left with Serbia in Yugoslavia and its leadership has threatened to call a referendum on independence if its calls for reform are ignored. "President Milosevic should be aware that the international community is also concerned about what is happening and the right of (Montenegrin) President (Milo) Djukanovic to be able to fulfil the mandate given to him by the Montenegrin people," he said. Djukanovic"s government has accused Yugoslav army commanders of violating the official neutrality of the military with statements slamming his links with the West and accusing him of separatism. Last week the Montenegrin news agency Montena-Fax quoted an army source as saying military units in the smaller, coastal republic would have taken over the parliament building if the legislature had decided to declare independence. The chamber was debating how to respond to constitutional amendments introduced by Milosevic"s government in Belgrade that Montenegrin officials said destroyed Yugoslavia in its current form. In the end it decided only to ignore the changes. A spokesman for the Yugoslav army on Tuesday rejected the report of a coup plan as "notorious lies," saying it would not do such a thing at any price. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNATO chief not aware of any Montenegro coup plan``x964089845,2951,``x``x
``x<br>Special report: Kosovo <br><br>Richard Norton-Taylor <br>Friday July 21, 2000 <br><br>The cruise missile attacks that badly damaged the Serbian television and socialist party headquarters in Belgrade during the Kosovo war were specifically intended to maximise their domestic and international propaganda value, according to senior US officials. <br>The attacks, among the most controversial of Nato's bombing campaign, killed 16 civilians and injured 16 others. <br><br>They are singled out by US officials in an article in the latest issue of Jane's Defence Weekly, which also reveals that the British submarine Splendid fired 20 Tomahawk cruise missiles during the war, 17 of which hit their targets. <br><br>It was the first time British forces had used American-made cruise missiles in a military operation. <br><br>US ships and submarines fired 218 cruise missiles at 66 targets, and 181 reached their "intended aim-points", naval officers told the magazine. <br><br>Planners assessed which parts of the television and party building were most likely to contain the controls for fire alarms and sprinkler systems and the missiles were programmed to hit these spots - they were directed into the sixth floor and on to the roof - to increase the chance that any fire they caused would spread." <br><br>The building burned for three days, according to a senior US naval officer, who highlighted the propaganda value of having a well-known and highly visible government building lighting up the Belgrade skyline. <br><br>Human Rights Watch in New York sharply criticised the attack in April last year. It rejected claims by General Wesley Clark, then Nato's supreme commander, and British ministers that the building was a "legitimate military target". Amnesty International also condemned the attack as unlawful and said it constituted a war crime. <br><br>Nato governments say the building was used to pass information to Serb military units in Kosovo and to promote Serb propaganda. <br><br>Another precise target was one floor of a building in Pristina housing the Yugoslav interior ministry police. <br><br>Meanwhile it emerged that the families of Serbs killed in the missile attack on the building are suing the television station's bosses and Nato for damages. <br><br>"We think they are both equally responsible and both sides are running away from their guilt," said Zanka Stojanovic, whose son Nebojsa was killed during the attack. <br><br>The families say the state television company "violated the law by not allowing employees to go into shelters during an air raid". <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Nato picked Belgrade targets for propaganda targets ``x964178651,60054,``x``x
``xPRISTINA, Jul 21, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) The U.S. army said Friday it has sent the judge handling the second trial of three Kosovo Serbs accused of killing an ethnic Albanian war hero new evidence which might lead to them being freed.<br><br>Investigators from the KFOR peacekeeping force on Tuesday handed the Gnjilane District Court "recently developed information" which could lead to a review of the Serbs' "detention status," a statement released by the US army's Headquarters Europe in Heidelberg said.<br><br>The trial of Miroljub Momcilovic and his sons Boban and Jugoslav began again Thursday with an international judge, in the southeast Kosovo town of Gnjilane, after a trial begun last year under an ethnic Albanian judge was abandoned.<br><br>The three Serbs are accused of killing Afrim Gagica, an ethnic Albanian and a well-known former member of the Kosovo Liberation Army, in a shoot-out outside their home in Gnjilane on July 10 last year.<br><br>They have been held in custody since the day of the shooting.<br><br>"Based on a June 19, 2000 media inquiry, the U.S. Criminal Investigation Command re-opened its investigation.<br><br>"Information from the second CID investigation provides the ... prosecutor with a more thorough and complete investigation concerning the death of Mr. Gagica," the statement said.<br><br>On June 17 last year army investigators handed Kosovo's UN administration a report "which stated that the Momcilovic family home was attacked and that they were defending themselves," the statement said.<br><br>A second ethnic Albanian was shot dead by U.S members of the KFOR peacekeeping force who intervened after the start of the gun battle, the statement said.<br><br>Following the start of the first trial on April 25 this year, the London-based human rights group Amnesty International criticized the conduct of the case against the Serbs.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMurder Trial Serbs May Be Freed after U.S. Provides New Evidence``x964248438,67617,``x``x
``xBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br>HE HAGUE, July 21 -- The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal today upheld a landmark ruling that established rape as a war crime, rejecting an appeal by a Bosnian Croat commander convicted of watching as a knife-wielding subordinate tortured and raped a female prisoner. <br><br>The five-judge appellate chamber rejected every ground upon which the defense contested the Dec. 10, 1998, judgment against the former commander, Anto Furundzija, 31. <br><br>"The appeals chamber has not been persuaded as to the existence of any legal errors which require it to intervene," the Guyanan presiding judge, Mohamed Shahabuddeen, said for the tribunal's court of last resort. <br><br>Prosecutors hailed the decision. <br><br>"It demonstrates that people who are in a position of authority have a responsibility to govern the behavior of people under their authority," said Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt. <br><br>Mr. Furundzija, head of the special military police unit called the Jokers, stood by as one of his soldiers threatened a woman being detained, then raped her during interrogation. <br><br>Mr. Furundzija received a 10-year sentence as a result of the attack, which happened a year into the 1992-95 Bosnian war during a campaign to expel Muslims from the Lasva River Valley. The soldier has been indicted but not captured. <br><br>Mr. Furundzija is one of 14 convicted war criminals sentenced to up to 45 years by the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia since it was established in 1993. <br><br>Two international legal precedents were set. The tribunal admitted the victim's testimony, even though she suffered from post-traumatic stress. It also expanded the definition of sexual assault to be more easily punishable as an act of torture. <br><br>A defense lawyer, Luka Misetic, had challenged the conviction on the grounds that the presiding judge, Florence Mumba of Zambia, had not disclosed her membership in a United Nations women's rights commission that advocated the inclusion of rape as a war crime. The panel ruled that Ms. Mumba had not shown bias in conducting the trial. <br><br>It also dismissed Mr. Misetic's claim that the sentence was excessive because the crime did not result in loss of life. The panel said the trial chamber had "exercised its discretion" within the precedents. <br><br>Quietly watching the verdict was the defense team for three Serbian paramilitary fighters accused of taking part in the nightly rapes of Muslim women at detention centers in the southeast Bosnian city of Foca in 1992. That trial, which began on March 20, is the first international proceeding to focus on systematic rape and sexual enslavement. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Top Balkan Tribunal Upholds Ruling on Rape as War Crime ``x964248460,35735,``x``x
``xBy Raymond Whitaker <br><br>21 July 2000 <br><br>Anywhere else in Europe, the road to Foca (pronounced "Fotcha") would be filled with holidaymakers' cars. It winds down through a series of rocky gorges, each more breathtaking than the last, carved out by a river so achingly clear that you long to plunge in. Yet vehicles are few and far between, and the river is empty apart from the odd fisherman. <br><br>No tourists are likely to come this way any time soon, for the road crosses back and forth between the two halves of Bosnia. Even before you leave the outskirts of Sarajevo, the capital of the Muslim-Croat Federation, you are in the Serb-controlled part. Here the boundary follows the front line as it was when the Dayton Accords stopped the Bosnian war less than five years ago, and in 10 minutes you can drive from the heart of the city to the heights from which Serb gunners poured mortar bombs and shells into the streets below. Their ammunition boxes still litter the slopes. <br><br>For the rest of the journey you are in Serb territory, except for a finger of land, agreed over several whiskies at Dayton, which gives the Federation access to the town of Gorazde. The limits of this enclave are no longer defined by trenches or tanks, but by giant billboards saying (in English) "Welcome to Republika Srpska". <br><br>When you reach Foca, there is a problem. It is on the opposite bank of the beautiful Drina, celebrated in Serbian folk-song, but the main bridge into the town was demolished by the Nato airstrikes in 1995, which finally persuaded the Serbs to get serious about peace talks. To cross over you have to continue another mile upstream to the next bridge – inconvenient, maybe, but not to local residents who would like as much warning as possible of your approach. Foca is also close to the Serbian, Montenegrin and Croatian borders, which is useful if, as rumour has it, one of the world's most wanted men is hiding in the vicinity: a man still known as "the doctor", who proclaimed the foundation of a Serb republic in Bosnia with himself as president, and ordered the bombardment of Sarajevo. <br><br>The bouffant hair and cynically amused features of Radovan Karadzic, psychiatrist, soi-disant poet and indicted war criminal, disappeared from sight two years ago. "Karadzic went completely underground in 1998," said his former defence minister, Milan Ninkovic, who has reason to fear indictment himself. "Nobody has seen or heard from him since; there have been no messages. We are all trying to work out whether he is in Republika Srpska, Serbia or maybe Russia." <br><br>The whereabouts of Ratko Mladic, the military commander indicted with Karadzic for the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslims at Srbrenica five years ago, are known. Journalists have pinpointed his house in west Belgrade, and he is occasionally seen at a racecourse nearby, as well as the odd football match. But of his partner in genocide, according to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, there is no sign. <br><br>The ex-president's wife, Ljiljana, is still head of the Red Cross in Republika Srpska, and makes public appearances before carefully-selected audiences. Last week in Pale, the ski resort near Sarajevo used by Karadzic as his headquarters during the war, she issued a statement to mark the tenth anniversary of his Serbian Democratic Party (SDS). The foreign press was not invited. "Although their marriage is still strong, they spend much of the time apart," said a source in Pale. "For the sake of his security, she often doesn't know where he is. But I think he still comes here sometimes – when you see certain faces in town, he is said to be around. The last time was two or three months ago." <br><br>In Karadzic's looming absence, stories have grown. Many people have heard that the self-promoting poet has turned to religious mysticism. Perhaps, in the tradition of Balkan holy men, he is allowing his beard to grow. One source in Foca claimed to have it on good authority that the fugitive was writing his memoirs, which seems plausible enough, but whether he could get them published is another matter. <br><br>Rumours that the doctor had decamped to the Foca area began two or three months ago, about the time that The Hague netted its biggest fish. In April, French troops seized Momcilo Krajisnik, not only a senior former associate of Karadzic, but the man who took over his role as a nationalist figurehead, at his home in Pale. They were using a powerful new weapon devised by the tribunal: the secret indictment, which means that you do not know you are on the wanted list until you are arrested. <br><br>Using this tool, the tide of arrests has accelerated sharply in the past few months. The SAS regularly takes part in snatches in the British zone of Bosnia, most recently in Prijedor last month, when Dusko Sikirica, commander of the notorious Keraterm prison camp during the war, was taken from his home in the middle of the night and flown to The Netherlands within hours. According to the Serbian media, the rewards on offer have even led to suspects being kidnapped in Serbia and brought to Bosnia. <br><br>No one will confirm it, but Serbian policemen are said to have helped lure one man out of his home. He was then bundled into a car, rowed across the Drina into Bosnia and handed over to the Americans. <br><br>The pressure is beginning to tell on people like Mr Ninkovic, the Republika Srpska defence minister from 1994 to 1996. Helicopters frequently hover over his home in the town of Doboj; when I asked to take his photograph, he hesitated, then said: "Why not – they have plenty anyway." <br><br>For Mr Ninkovic, too, the arrest of Momcilo Krajisnik is worrying, because it implies that the war crimes tribunal is now going after politicians in office at the time of the atrocities as well as the soldiers who carried them out – "objective responsibility", in the jargon, as opposed to "command responsibility". He had agreed to an interview to make it clear that there was no reason why he should be indicted. <br><br>"Although I was defence minister, my main task was to organise the mobilisation of civilians," he said. "I had no power to order anything operational." But did he see the orders? "What do you expect?" he replied, glaring. <br><br>"Mladic issued the orders to the troops," said Mr Ninkovic. "He was not obliged to inform me. I only received orders to supply rations. It wasn't like in your country, where ministers have power. <br><br>"Karadzic was the supreme commander and Mladic the commander of the Republika Srpska army, although he took most of his orders from Belgrade," Mr Ninkovic continued. "At the time of Dayton I piloted a law through the assembly to increase civilian control of the military, and Mladic didn't like that. He arrested me. I thought I was going to be executed. I was released because Patriarch Pavle, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, intervened." <br><br>Mr Ninkovic said that at the time of the Srebrenica massacre, when General Mladic was filmed on the scene, he was at the other end of Bosnia, where the Croatians were driving Serb forces back. But that might not absolve him from a trip to The Hague to explain himself. "The minister is very popular in Doboj," an associate said before his arrival. "He goes around openly, and doesn't have bodyguards." If he is arrested, however, there is unlikely to be the angry reaction Serbs might have mounted a year ago. Steady and persistent international pressure appears to have worn them down to sullen resignation. <br><br>"We are under occupation," Alexander Draskovic, a hardliner banned from office by the international authorities, told me in Srebrenica. But what was he doing about it? He was getting drunk in a café, and complaining that the international community was "doing nothing to help the town". If Mr Draskovic and Mr Ninkovic are any sign, the forces of reason may be getting the upper hand. <br><br>When the civilised world intervenes in a crisis, it douses the flames with alphabet soup. In Bosnia there is the OHR (Office of the High Representative of more than 50 countries, in effect the Western pro-consul); UNMIBH (the United Nations Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina); the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which enforces democracy by excluding people such as Mr Ninkovic) and hundreds of others, such as the IPTF (International Police Task Force, which supervises the local police). The military peacekeepers have gone from being called Unprofor to I-For (Implementation Force) to S-For (Stabilisation Force). <br><br>Some people, the Federation authorities among them, complain that even this mountain of acronyms does not weigh heavily enough on the Serbs. S-For mounted a big security operation last week to protect 3,000 Muslim widows when they returned to Srebrenica to mark the fifth anniversary of the massacre of their menfolk, but one man pointed out that the Serbs still had a military post next door. "S-For will be going back to their bases in the Federation," he said. "They don't patrol around here at night." <br><br>Still, the Serb civilians along the way confined themselves to jeering, and the commemoration ceremony went without incident. It was attended by the Bosnian president, Alia Izetbegovic, the first time he has been on Republika Srpska territory since the war. Gradually, with many inter-agency muddles and political mistakes along the way, the international community has learnt to squeeze Bosnia where it hurts. Secret indictments are keeping the "Pifwics" (Persons Indicted for War Crimes) off-balance, but money is also talking. <br><br>Desperate to get their share of development funds, the SDS has purged the hardliners. The Republika Srpska government has moved from Pale to the more enlightened atmosphere of Banja Luka in central Bosnia, where people from Serbia are amazed at the array of outspoken publications on the newsstands, as well as the range of goods in the shops. Muslims have been elected to the councils of places such as Doboj and even Srebrenica, and the OHR claims it is on the verge of success in forcing significant numbers of people to return to their old homes. <br><br>Even in Foca, where three Serbs in The Hague are accused of rape, torture and sex slavery, and the IPTF post was stormed last year after a war crimes suspect was shot dead while allegedly resisting arrest, Muslims are coming back. Since 1 June the head of the municipal council has been a Muslim, Lutvo Sukalo, who was in the Federation army during the war. He predicts that large numbers of Muslims will return this year, and not just to the outskirts, but to the centre of town. "A psychological block has been removed, especially when it comes to freedom of movement in Bosnia," he said. <br><br>Mr Sukalo works closely with his fellow engineer and technocrat, Dragolub Pipovic, a former Republika Srpska conscript who now runs the municipal administration. "The situation has changed," said Mr Pipovic. "People are forgetting the war. They are more interested in jobs and the economy." Foca is on a list of municipalities where the US refuses to invest because of its hardline reputation, but the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development plans to complete the bridge across the Drina by the end of the year. <br><br>If Radovan Karadzic is hiding in the hills behind the town, the new bridge will make it quicker and easier to get at him, but there are suggestions that the international community is more interested in promoting reconstruction and the reversal of ethnic cleansing than in looking for him, because such efforts are making him an irrelevance in any case. So is the doctor around? "I don't know," laughed Mr Sukalo, "but if I see him I'll let you know." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Looking for Radovan ``x964248496,47509,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Yugoslavia, July 21 (Reuters) - A Montenegrin official said on Friday the pro-Western republic would have no choice but to hold a referendum on independence if Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic won another term. Miodrag Vukovic, an aide of Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, said that if Milosevic "secures himself another four to eight years in power... Montenegro will not be able to sustain his pressure any more and will go for the referendum." "But a referendum is not our goal, it"s a consequence," he told Reuters in an interview. The federal Yugoslav parliament this month adopted constitutional changes which allow the Serbian strongman to win a new period in office at the ballot box when his present term expires in mid-2001. The president will be able to stay in office for a maximum of two four-year terms. Under previous rules, the Yugoslav president was elected by parliament and could not run twice. Elections for the federal parliament should be held by early November and some analysts believe Milosevic may go for an early presidential vote at the same time. Montenegro and the Serbian opposition have accused Milosevic of introducing the changes to prolong his grip on power. The Montenegrin parliament rejected the amendments, which also introduced changes by-passing it in the election of deputies for the upper house of the federal assembly. It said they denied its equality with dominant Serbia in their joint state. But the Montenegrin leadership stopped short of announcing a vote on independence, which the West fears could spark armed conflict between police loyal to Djukanovic and supporters of Milosevic backed by Yugoslav army units based in the republic. <br><br>REFERENDUM LAST RESORT<br> Vukovic did not rule out the possibility of clashes in the coastal republic, but said the authorities were using all democratic means to prevent conflicts. He said a referendum was a last resort, and that there was a chance to preserve a joint state if the Serb opposition beat Milosevic at the ballot box. "When it becomes absolutely certain that there is no long or short term prospect of creating a union with Serbia... Montenegro would opt for independence," he said. Vukovic said he would not be surprised if Milosevic also decided to call early presidential and parliamentary elections in Serbia, in addition to federal polls. The fragmented Serbian opposition has long demanded elections at all levels. "He will surprise the opposition: "you asked for general elections -- here they are,"" he said. Djukanovic has said Montenegro would not take part in elections held under the new rules. The Serbian Renewal Movement, the largest opposition party, has also threatened an election boycott. According to a European Union analysis obtained by Reuters in Brussels this week, Milosevic remains the most trusted leader in Serbia and will most likely succeed in winning re-election as president of Yugoslavia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro independence vote seen if Milosevic wins``x964248524,9326,``x``x
``x<br><br>By MISHA SAVIC, Associated Press Writer <br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Serbia's opposition fears recent warnings that the West will not recognize results of upcoming Yugoslav elections could dash their chances of challenging Slobodan Milosevic, representatives said Sunday.<br><br>Most of Serbia's few dozen opposition parties have contemplated running against the Yugoslav president and have been counting on support from Western nations in their attempts.<br><br>On Saturday, a foreign affairs adviser to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, said that some heads of state attending the G-8 conference in Japan remarked that recent amendments to the Yugoslav constitution were manipulative attempts to prolong Milosevic's rule. As a result, Western leaders will disregard the vote, said the adviser, Michael Steiner.<br><br>The changes included two additional mandates for Milosevic and a downgrading of the position of Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation.<br><br>Montenegro's pro-Western leadership - which is at odds with Milosevic's central government in Belgrade - has already said it will ignore the general elections that are due by the end of the year.<br><br>Serbia's largest opposition party, Serbian Renewal Movement, led by Vuk Draskovic, has also vowed to boycott the elections.<br><br>Yet several of the other opposition parties, which have recently set their differences aside, were still considering whether or not to challenge the Milosevic's ruling Socialists at the polls.<br><br>Steiner's warning is a ``new development'' calling for a ``reconsideration of a decision about the elections,'' said Dragoljub Micunovic, who heads of the opposition Democratic Center party.<br><br>``This further complicates the situation for Serbia's united opposition,'' said Vladan Batic of Christian Democrats, adding that the opposition is now wondering whether the world will ignore the elections on principle even if the opposition wins.<br><br>Yugoslavia's parliament, dominated by Milosevic loyalists, is to convene Monday to adopt a few electoral laws in tune with the amendments. There are indications the assembly might also set a date for the elections - possibly as early as September.<br><br>Fifteen of Serbia's main opposition groups are to meet Tuesday to further streamline a joint strategy against Milosevic and decide whether to boycott or take part in the elections. They have pledged to stay together either way.<br><br>An opposition boycott would guarantee an easy victory for Milosevic's Socialists and their allies, the ultranationalist Radicals and a neo-communist party led by Milosevic's wife. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb Opposition Worries Over West ``x964434351,3271,``x``x
``x<br><br>Jonathan Steele <br>Tuesday July 25, 2000 <br><br>Police backed by Nato troops moved into a tense village in central Bosnia yesterday to carry out the first eviction of the militant Islamic volunteers known as mojahedin, who fought on the Muslim side in the Bosnian war but refused to leave when peace came in 1995. <br>The fundamentalists and their local supporters erected roadblocks last week to ward off the police after the first eviction orders were issued. In skirmishes 19 people were arrested. <br><br>Yesterday's operation in the village of Bocnija went smoothly, though bearded fighters filmed police officers descending on two houses. <br><br>The police found that the first two families due to be evicted had left of their own accord. "We anticipated obstruction and resistance. You never know with these guys," said Mehmed Bradaric, the mayor of Maglaj, himself a Muslim. <br><br>"I am extremely pleased that the process has begun without conflict. That is what we wanted. We didn't wish to begin in an uncivilised manner." <br><br>The 89 mojahedin families include about 65 men from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Sudan, and other countries. The rest are Bosnian militants. They were welcomed during the war of 1992-95, when the United Nations had an embargo on weapons entering Bosnia and the government side was desperate for any kind of military assistance. <br><br>Under the Dayton peace agreement of 1995 all foreign forces were supposed to go home. But many Mojahedin settled in central Bosnia, often in houses once owned by Serbs. They have become active in the logging business. <br><br>The push to evict them is part of a new policy by Wolfgang Petritsch, the internationally appointed high representative for Bosnia, to enforce property laws throughout the country. This has helped to produce a surge in refugees, who have become confident enough to go home to their towns and villages despite the fact that a different ethnic majority now has power. <br><br>Hundreds of people who wanted to go back in the first years of peace found their homes burned down just before they arrived, or else they were greeted by angry mobs throwing stones. <br><br>In the last few months the tide has mysteriously begun to turn. About 12,580 people - four times as many as in the same period of 1999 - went back in the first four months of this year. Officials are baffled, but it seems to be partly that refugees of all ethnic groups are simply impatient five years after the end of the war. <br><br>It also helps that the average returnee is elderly, and therefore seen as little threat. Most have gone to remote and unoccupied homes damaged in the war. But people are also demanding the right to go back to flats where others are illegally squatting. <br><br>The eviction orders - now totalling several thousand and issued by local authorities at the high representative's instigation - are starting what officials describe as a virtuous circle, reversing ethnic cleansing. Mr Petritsch has been sacking officials who refuse to enforce the property laws. <br><br>In Bocinja the mojahedin were occupying houses that used to be Serb owned. The Serbs want to return. The first evictions in the village were deliberately aimed at local mojahedin who had homes to go to elsewhere. The hardest cases are those who are foreign and have no pre-war homes, though many have married locally. <br><br>The evictions have even been proceeding with some success in Republika Srpska, the Serb-run entity. In May, 163 took place there compared to 205 in the Muslim-Croat Federation, which is run from Sarajevo.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Bosnian minorities risk going home ``x964515928,75225,``x``x
``x<br><br>Miroslav Filipovic is facing 15 years in a Yugoslav prison. His crime – reporting war crimes. <br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic <br><br>25 July 2000 <br><br>Today is the day Miroslav Filopovic has been waiting for – but with little sense of hope or pleasure. For the past two months the Serb journalist has been in custody, charged with espionage. Today he will face a military court in the southern Serbian town of Nis, and if found guilty tomorrow, when the trial ends, he faces between three and 15 years in prison. Filipovic, 49, is the first Serb journalist to be tried for espionage in decades, and the case has become a cause of concern for human rights groups. <br><br>The basis of the charges is a series of articles considered by the authorities to have "undermined the defence of the country". These include one that was published in The Independent, detailing atrocities allegedly committed by Serbian forces in Kosovo. <br><br>Mr Filipovic, 49, worked from the central Serbian town of Kraljevo, 100 miles south of Belgrade, as a correspondent for the capital's independent daily Danas, the French news agency Agence France-Presse and the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). <br><br>The Nis military court indicted him on 14 June, accusing him of espionage and spreading false news. Because of the nature of the charges, his attorney, Zoran Ateljevic, says the trial will probably be held behind closed doors. He maintains Mr Filipovic never compromised his professionalism in any of his articles. <br><br>Mr Filipovic wrote for the IWPR about alleged atrocities by Yugoslav Army soldiers in Kosovo at the time of the NATO air strikes last year. <br><br>Mr Filipovic's story, which was also published in The Independent, caused particular offence with its talk of "sickening atrocities". Worst of all from the perspective of the regime, the evidence came from an internal army report showing that many officers were shocked at what they had seen. Sources say the report was aimed at gauging morale at a time when President Slobodan Milosevic seemed to be weighing up the possibility of launching another war, this time against the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro. <br><br>His articles also dealt with the tense situation in the Muslim-populated Serbian region of Sandzak and on the case of army generals who sided with Montenegro's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic. <br><br>His pieces in Danas dealt with the growing discontent of provincial Serbia with the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and the hardships of Serb refugees from Kosovo, forgotten by the authorities. <br><br>Mr Filipovic was first arrested in his Kraljevo apartment on 8 May, on the orders of the local civil court. The police searched the apartment and took away a computer hard disk, an address book and his passport. In a matter of days, the case was transferred to the Nis military court which chose at first not to press charges and released him. "I'm not a spy. All the stories I've written were printed under my name and spies do not do such things," Mr Filipovic said on leaving custody. <br><br>He also revealed the investigators had pressed him to reveal his sources. "My sources walk through the town. My articles are based on hundreds of conversations I had with people in Kraljevo or elsewhere." <br><br>On 22 May, the military court opened a new investigation and Mr Filipovic has been in custody ever since. The possibility that he may flee the country and or influence witnesses was quoted by the court as the reason for his prolonged custody. <br><br>The trial opens at the time of growing repression against non-government media in Serbia. The opposition-run Belgrade Studio B radio and TV station and the independent B2-92 radio station were taken over by the government in May. <br><br>Many view the Filipovic case as a dangerous precedent for Serb journalists who work with the international media. Only days ago, the Yugoslav authorities refused to register a Radio Free Europe office in Belgrade, accusing it of efforts to overthrow the government. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Journalist reveals his sources: the people of Serbia ``x964515956,12206,``x``x
``xSARAJEVO, July 25 (Reuters) - A year ago this week, world leaders gathered in Sarajevo among buildings damaged by shells and gunfire and pledged to banish war from Europe forever. They outlined a Stability Pact for the Balkans, an echo of the Marshall Plan that helped the continent recover from World War Two, and agreed that long term peace in this particular corner required democracy in what remains of Yugoslavia, shattered by 10 years of disintegration and the Kosovo war last year. One year on, it is clear the political will and funding that drove the Marshall Plan are missing from the Stability Pact. It is also clear that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic"s idea of democracy is far from that of the West and does not appear to include him stepping down any time soon. This makes an underlying goal of the pact, at least as far as Sarajevo"s most exalted guest U.S. President Bill Clinton was concerned, as elusive as ever. FUTURE CLOUDED BY DOUBT Officially, the pact was aimed at encouraging economic reform, democratisation and cooperation across the volatile Balkans by coordinating international efforts and backing them with funding to those countries which got the message. Things started to go wrong early on. When the delegates left Bosnia, which suffered the worst damage in the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, they also left a 1.5 million German mark ($716,300) bill for their stay in Sarajevo. Bosnian officials say it remained unpaid for months. The European Commission this week dismissed their allegations, saying it was paid "many months ago." James Lyon, director of the International Crisis Group think tank in Sarajevo, noted that it took eight months to arrange the first donor conference and said even then the pledging was essentially a repetition of existing promises. "The Stability Pact has got off to a very slow start and there are doubts as to whether it can achieve what it set out to do," said Lyon. Even the coordinator of the pact, Germany"s Bodo Hombach, has admitted its shortcomings. "The general disappointment is the slowness of the bureaucratic process that creates a lot of impatience," he told Reuters last week, sending a warning to the European Union and Group of Seven leading industrialised nations plus Russia. "I see in southeastern Europe an upward spiral of hope for a new era and the EU and the G8 must now watch out that this does not become a downward spiral of disappointment," he said. MILOSEVIC STILL IN PLACE Coupled with that disappointment is the knowledge that, with internationally isolated and volatile Yugoslavia in the middle of the Balkans, prosperity and peace are distant prospects. "Milosevic is the biggest cause of instability in the region, he"s blocking development and trade," said a senior Western diplomat, expressing a view that crystallised with Milosevic"s indictment by a U.N. war crimes tribunal last year. Even with 20,000 NATO-led troops keeping the peace in Bosnia and more than that in Kosovo, a new outbreak of violence cannot be ruled out. Montenegro, the last republic left in Yugoslavia with Serbia, is the main cause of concern. "We get the feeling that Milosevic is trying to pick a fight with Montenegro," said the diplomat, who has wide experience of the Balkans. He said Milosevic and Montenegro"s pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic were shadow-boxing over what remained of Yugoslavia -- a situation that could get out of hand any time. If Milosevic moved against Montenegro the West would respond, he said, but stopped short of saying how. Mladjan Dinkic, a dissident Serbian economist and one of those recently allowed to sit in on Stability Pact meetings that exclude official Yugoslavia, believes time is running out and that if the Stability Pact is to work at all, it must work fast. "Time is measured in a different way in the developed world, in countries where people plan next year"s summer holiday before they"ve started this one. In southeastern Europe things change from day to day," he said by telephone. He and other Serbian opposition leaders have asked the Stability Pact"s 40-plus members to outline international help for a post-Milosevic era in September, thereby giving them something to offer voters due at the polls by early November. "They say there will be a working group but it hasn"t got anywhere -- maybe because of summer holidays. The pace is very slow," he said. With scepticism in the West over whether the bickering opposition could win elections even with funding pledges, so far the only regional summit on the horizon has been planned to take place after they are due. France, as current president of the European Union, has proposed a summit for Croatia at the end of November. A Bosnian official who has dealt with Stability Pact issues in the war-torn former Yugoslav republic, divided into Moslem-Croat and Serb entities, said this was part of the West"s plan for one country to take the lead in the pact. "Western countries see the pact as a way to encourage the countries to get together to lobby for their interests and they think there should be someone leading the group," he said. The West sees Croatia as a model because its people turned their backs on nationalism in this year"s elections. But its new Western-looking leaders are still wary of being put in the "Balkan" context. Lyon said that while the November meeting seemed to broadly mirror the Stability Pact, it was not clear if it would be part of the same organisation, which was in danger of losing its way. "We don"t know what its role is, we don"t know what it is supposed to be doing," he said. ($1-2.094 German Mark) ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTime blurs West's vision of a stable Balkans``x964515986,98427,``x``x
``x<br>By Misha Savic<br><br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia –– Lawmakers on Monday gave President Slobodan Milosevic the legal opening to extend his autocratic rule while weakening the power of Montegnegro, Serbia's bitter junior partner in the Yugoslav federation. <br><br><br>The federal parliament approved legislation Milosevic's own Cabinet wrote, giving him the option to run for two more four-year terms after his current one expires in July 2001.<br><br><br>It also allows the president to be elected by a simple majority of the popular vote, regardless of election turnout. That's an important change in a country where the opposition has threatened an election boycott.<br><br><br>The opposition was quick to criticize the new laws.<br><br><br>"The outcome of this will be the uncontrolled power of an individual," said Vladeta Jankovic, an opposition deputy who accused the ruling party of treating Milosevic as a "deity, like in primitive religions."<br><br><br>Other changes involve the way legislators for the upper house of the Yugoslav parliament, the Chamber of Republics, are elected. Currently, separate assemblies in Montenegro and Serbia, the much larger Yugoslav republic, each select 20 of the chamber's 40 deputies. Under the new system, the deputies will be elected by popular vote.<br><br><br>That takes away the ability of the small Montenegrin republic's pro-Western government to control its representatives and will make it easier for Milosevic to push Montenegrin politicians that are loyal to him.<br><br><br>"In a shady, clandestine way, Milosevic has prepared an election infrastructure to solidify his power and extend his dictatorship," said Miodrag Vukovic, a top Montenegrin official, who reiterated the republic's threat to boycott the elections.<br><br><br>Yugoslav officials defended the legislation, which followed up on constitutional changes adopted by parliament earlier this month.<br><br><br>"The new laws ensure more freedom and full legality of our election system," said Yugoslav Justice Minister Petar Jojic, a Milosevic supporter.<br><br><br>Western leaders had warned Milosevic not to crack down on Montenegro's breakaway leadership or attempt to force the tiny republic back under his control.<br><br><br>Parliament also reshuffled electoral districts in Serbia, mostly because Serbia's southern province of Kosovo has been under NATO and United Nations control since last summer.<br><br><br>NATO intervened in Kosovo to end ethnic warfare between Kosovo's pro-independence ethnic Albanians and Serbs.<br><br><br>Parliament's decision means that voters from Kosovo can cast their ballots in two districts inside Serbia proper. Because Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority is certain to continue its boycott of elections organized by Belgrade, the likely voters in Yugoslav elections would be the more than 100,000 Serbs who fled Kosovo.<br><br><br>As a consequence, some two dozen seats for deputies from Kosovo could easily be filled by Milosevic loyalists, effectively helping the strongman retain control in the 138-seat lower chamber and 40-seat upper chamber of Parliament.<br><br><br>Serbia's main opposition groups are to meet Tuesday to try define a joint strategy against Milosevic and decide whether to boycott elections.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post: New Laws Prolong Milosevic's Power``x964516012,95668,``x``x
``x<br>PARIS, July 24 (Reuters) - Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, fresh from winning G8 backing in his battle with Belgrade, is to visit Paris on Tuesday, diplomatic sources said on Monday. The visit, yet to be announced officially, comes at a time of tense relations between Serbia and Montenegro, the two members of the Yugoslav federation, over constitutional changes pushed through by Belgrade. A statement on the Balkans at the Group of Eight summit in Japan voiced concern about the changes, which open the way for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to serve another eight years as president, and expressed support for Montenegro"s Western-leaning government. Djukanovic has said his republic, with only 650,000 inhabitants, would boycott federal elections held under the new rules because they denied it equality with 10-million-strong Serbia. European leaders at the summit said the international community should not recognise any Yugoslav election results based on the new laws Milosevic has pushed through. Montenegro has said it might hold a referendum on independence if Milosevic wins another term, a move the West fears could ignite another Balkan conflict.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro leader to visit France Tuesday``x964516038,75920,``x``x
``xJonathan Steele <br><br>A Serb journalist who reported on atrocities in Kosovo went on trial for espionage in a military court in the Serbian city of Nis yesterday. <br>Miroslav Filipovic's reports on atrocities committed in the province last year included accounts by Yugoslav officers who said they were shocked at some of the brutality they had seen their side perpetrating. <br><br>Mr Filipovic, who has already been detained for several weeks, is the first Serb journalist to face such serious charges. His case has aroused extensive international protest and he was recently named the European Internet Journalist of the Year. <br><br>Mr Filipovic worked for the web-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting in London, the French news agency Agence France-Presse and a Belgrade paper, Danas. <br><br>His hard-hitting pieces have included reports on the defection of generals from the Yugoslav army and the sending of elite army and police units in plain clothes to Kosovo in recent months to incite clashes between Serb and Albanian civilians, with the aim of discrediting international peacekeeping efforts. <br><br>The presiding judge, a colonel, ordered the court into closed session soon after the trial opened yesterday, because the deputy military prosecutor, Captain Aleksandar Kalicanin, said Mr Filipovic's testimony would contain sensitive military information. <br><br>The charges state that he committed espionage by "collecting secret military data from the beginning of May 1999 until May 2000, with the intention of passing it on to foreign organisations such as IWPR and AFP." <br><br>They also say he spread false information - with the intention of provoking civil unrest - by reporting that "the Yugoslav army committed atrocities in Kosovo and Metohija [a mountainous district in the province], and shelled and destroyed villages". <br><br>Mr Filipovic's most dramatic story was about an internal army survey into wartime atrocities. He later interviewed officers who had spoken to the investigators. "War-weary Serb officers have spoken for the first time of sickening atrocities committed by the Yugoslav army in Kosovo during the Nato bombing campaign" in mid-1999, he wrote. <br><br>"One field commander admitted that he watched in horror as a soldier decapitated a three-year-old boy in front of his family. Another soldier described how tanks in his unit indiscriminately shelled Albanian villages before paramilitary police moved in and massacred the survivors. <br><br>"The shocking confessions were made by officers who took part in a survey commissioned by the army intelligence unit in January and February this year." <br><br>The military men who spoke to Mr Filipovic claimed to be shocked by the enormity of the crimes committed in Kosovo at the climax of the conflict provoked by the secession attempts of the province's ethnic Albanian majority. Particularly disturbing were the combined testimonies of field officers which suggested that Yugoslav army units were responsible for the death of at least 800 Albanian children under the age of five. <br><br>Several officers interviewed by Mr Filipovic said that the army's internal survey had been aimed at gauging their morale at a time when new tension was developing - this time between Serbia and Montenegro. The veterans said they were appalled by the prospect of mounting a military campaign against their ethnic Montenegrin cousins. <br><br>Those interviewed said they were traumatised by what they had seen in Kosovo . <br><br>One officer, Drazen, said, "I watched with my own eyes as a reservist lined up around 30 Albanian women and children against a wall. I thought he just wanted to frighten them, but then he crouched down behind an anti-aircraft machine gun and pulled the trigger." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Serb army tries author of atrocity reports as spy ``x964601461,31033,``x``x
``xChristopher Walker<br><br>NEW YORK <br><br>A clash of cultures threatens to hold back democratic development in the Balkans. But it's not what you might think.<br><br>Though ethnic and nationalist tensions remain a grave problem in many parts of former Yugoslavia, it is the ruinous mix of isolation, dependency, and criminality causing the region's undoing. While no one imagined setting things right in this part of Europe would be quick or easy, the long-term implications of cultures of corruption and criminality entrenching themselves should be of serious concern to North Americans and Europeans who have invested so much to bring stability to the Balkans.<br><br>Serbia, a country of 9 million perched in the geographic center of the Balkans, has been subject to blanket sanctions for almost a decade. Western policymakers have chosen international ostracism and isolation for Belgrade, but have come to realize that this policy has sharp limits.<br><br>Montenegro, the smaller constituent republic of rump Yugoslavia along with Serbia, is extremely vulnerable. Embroiled in political brinkmanship with Belgrade, the republic is dependent on Western aid to remain afloat.<br><br>The United States is providing $77 million in assistance to Montenegro (population 600,000) this year alone. Bosnia and Kosovo, both of which suffered horribly during the wars of the last decade, are now effectively foreign-administered semi-protectorates, largely dependent on external assistance.<br><br>And while Serbia's isolation and the dependency of Bosnia, Kosovo, and Montenegro are grave problems, the region's culture of corruption and criminality knows no borders.<br><br>These cultures are by no means exclusive of each other. Indeed, isolation and dependency feed the criminality and corruption that plague the region. Sanctions on Serbia enable black markets and transborder criminal enterprises to flourish.<br><br>Millions of dollars in aid provided by the UN and other foreign administrators enable vast corruption in Bosnia and Kosovo.<br><br>Earlier this month, the US General Accounting Office issued a report indicating that crime and corruption in Bosnia are so pervasive that aid should be withheld until local authorities demonstrate they are serious about changing things.<br><br>Organized crime has been a persistent problem throughout the southern Balkans, not to mention the powerful rackets and gangs that operate virtually unmolested in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Macedonia.<br><br>With all of its imperfections, the reconstruction process is under way in Bosnia and Kosovo, and there are signs of progress.<br><br>In Serbia, any such reconstruction effort is on hold until President Slobodan Milosevic is no longer on the scene. Last month at an international conference on the progress of the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright restated their belief that Balkan-wide prosperity and democratization can only happen when Serbia rids itself of Mr. Milosevic.<br><br>But while Milosevic finds himself boxed in - indicted as a war criminal and cut off from much of the world - he nonetheless remains in power.<br><br>Paradoxically, the West finds itself in a box of its own, already having used considerable military force against Belgrade and unable to withdraw sanctions in more than a token fashion so long as Milosevic is in charge. The loss of face the West would suffer in a significant scaling back of sanctions is unthinkable.<br><br>But in the meantime, the benefits that would otherwise accrue to the West from a genuine economic revival throughout Southeastern Europe won't happen as long as sanctions remain in place, a time frame that should exactly mirror the period Milosevic manages to stay in power.<br><br>Croatia is one of former Yugoslavia's bright spots. Under the leadership of reform-minded President Stipe Mesic, who replaced the authoritarian and corrupt Franjo Tudjman, Zagreb now supports The Hague-based war crimes tribunal as well as efforts of the international community aimed at keeping peace in Southeastern Europe. But Croatia still faces considerable challenges in overhauling its economy and reorienting its politics.<br><br>In areas where the West is heavily engaged, namely Kosovo and Bosnia, there is insufficient political will to tackle the important task of local law enforcement and court administration.<br><br>Bernard Kouchner, the head of the UN mission in Kosovo, has criticized key UN member states for the laggardly pace of supplying sorely needed foreign policemen, prosecutors, and judges.<br><br>Lofty pronouncements on democracy in Yugoslavia need to be substituted by action on the more pressing need for effective law enforcement and judicial administration at the local level.<br><br>The fact is that an anchoring of democratic values in the Balkans will not happen if the international community decides to skip the unglamorous, but essential work needed to stem corruption and crime. To do so would allow far too much of the territory of the former Yugoslavia to carry a shameful legacy of impunity into the future.<br><br><br>Christopher Walker, who spent 1995 to 1998 in the Balkan region, is an analyst specializing in European affairs.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : Democratic values in Balkans?``x964601488,18713,``x``x
``xDOBROSIN, Yugoslavia, July 27 (AFP) - <br>Fighting in southern Serbia between Yugoslavian security forces and ethnic Albanian separatists has intensified in the past week, US troops stationed nearby told AFP Thursday.<br><br>The commander of the KFOR peacekeeping force's Outpost Sapper, Captain Tom Hairgrove, said that his troops had heard automatic gunfire and explosions from over the administrative border in Serbia proper near the village of Dobrosin on two nights this week.<br><br>As he spoke, his troops were reinforcing the fortifications surrounding the checkpoint they man on the narrow country road beween Gnjilane in Kosovo and Dobrosin with extra razor wire and barricades packed with soil and rocks.<br><br>Dobrosin is in a pocket of Serbia controlled by the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UPCMB), an ethnic Albanian guerilla force fighting to separate the Presevo valley area and its 70,000-strong Albanian majority from Yugoslavia.<br><br>Guerrillas in the village confirmed to AFP Thursday that there had been recent fighting in the area but refused to discuss details.<br><br>"We have heard bursts of automatic gunfire and explosions, probably mortars. There's definitely something going on," Hairgrove said.<br><br>KFOR sources said that the increased activity around Dobrosin in the five-kilometre (three-mile) -wide Ground Safety Zone, a demilitarised strip of land between UN-administered Kosovo and Serbia proper, was a matter of concern.<br><br>The zone was set up under the Military Technical Agreement signed between NATO and Yugoslavia in June last year to regulate the withdrawal of Belgrade's forces from the disputed province.<br><br>Under the agreement, the Yugoslavian army is barred from entering the zone, although Belgrade's well-armed interior ministry paramilitary police force does patrol there and sometimes clashes with the rebels.<br><br>The UPCMB guerrillas move around openly in Dobrosin, where they are clearly in charge. They are well armed with good quality Yugoslavian manufactured Kalashnikov assault rifles and a variety of pistols, grenades and sub-machine guns.<br><br>US soldiers stationed 200 metres (yards) from the village estimate their strength in Dobrosin at any one time to be around 60.<br><br>KFOR patrols keep a close eye on the frontier to try and prevent arms being smuggled to the rebel group, which is thought to have close links with ethnic Albanian militants in Kosovo.<br><br>One of the rebels met by AFP was wearing the uniform of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), the civilian successor of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The man, who was unarmed, wore the shoulder flash of the group's Second Region, that operating in the north of Kosovo near Kosovska Mitrovica.<br><br>The KPC, which is commanded by former KLA leaders, was set up as a civilian disaster relief force and receives funding from international donors including the United States and the European Union.<br><br>Other rebels wore a variety of camouflage or black fatigues emblazoned with the red, black and gold UPCMB badge, itself very similar to those worn by the KLA and KPC.<br><br>From the hill above Dobrosin, a small farming community huddled around a tiny mosque, six-man UPCMB patrols can be seen strung out along dirt tracks into the hills around the village.<br><br>KFOR has repeatedly warned the UPCMB that they will not allow their troops to be drawn into fighting in the Ground Safety Zone or further inside Serbia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIncreased fighting between rebels and Yugoslavian forces: KFOR``x964769458,69716,``x``x
``xMontenegrin society is rapidly polarising between supporters of independence and those backing continued union with Serbia.<br><br>By Dragana Nikolic in Kotor (BCR No. 159, 25-July-2000)<br><br>Outside the lively, 12th Century walled city of Kotor, the picturesque fishing village of Ljuta nestles beneath the black mountains which gave Montenegro its name. But all is not as tranquil as it looks. <br><br>At the village kiosk, sixty-year-old Andja chides her neighbours for forgetting their roots and disregarding their Orthodox faith. Many in Ljuta support President Milo Djukanovic's cautious moves towards independence, but Andja is one of a small minority who believe that the road to independence could lead this tiny republic of 600,000 to disaster. <br><br>The ties which bind the two republics are too intricate ever to be unravelled, she argues, plus she doubts whether Montenegro could ever survive on its own. Anxious that her world could soon fragment, she supports the Socialist Peoples Party, SNP, of Yugoslav Prime Minister, Momir Bulatovic, which offers unswerving support to Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, and vents her anger against villagers who think otherwise.<br><br>Further down the coast in Budva, 27-year-old film-maker Maria has quite a different vision of Montenegro. Tired of waiting, she wants the Montenegrin government to take concrete steps to clarify the republic's status - preferably in a peaceful way. <br><br>"I need to know who I am, to be free from this confusion." So far as Maria is concerned she is already living in a de facto separate state anyway. The Yugoslav dinar has almost vanished from Montenegro, where even government workers are paid in German marks and when she travels to Serbia, she is subjected to searches of documents and belongings of a kind normally reserved for international border crossings. "Why are we pretending? Why wait?" she asks. "We have already separated." Now Marija wants a divorce.<br><br>Montenegrin society is rapidly polarising between these two positions, with Momir Bulatovic's supporters enlisting in the reserve units of the Yugoslav Army, while young men who favour independence are hastily joining Montenegrin reserve police units, which fall under the direct command of Milo Djukanovic. <br><br>As with all conflicts in Yugoslavia, deep-rooted historical grievances lie just below the surface. In 1918, the Serbian Karadjordjevic dynasty ousted the Montenegrin King, Nikola I Petrovic, who emigrated to Italy. Pro-Serb forces known as "Whites" defeated the "Greens" who supported independence and Montenegro was duly annexed to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, under the auspices of the Karadjordjevic dynasty.<br><br>The pro and anti-independence forces in modern Montenegro still go by the names of their forebears. "Whites", who support the SNP, are mainly from the older generation, often former Communists who want to preserve the old Yugoslav ideal at all costs. Many Montenegrin youth, however, are "Greens" who hope that independence will bring long-awaited economic change and prosperity to their country. There is also a rough north-south divide in the country, with the south broadly supporting Djukanovic, while the north tends towards Bulatovic.<br><br>The latest constitutional changes in Belgrade have done nothing to ease the escalation of tensions. Pro-independence Montenegrins are incensed by what they see as another of Milosevic's attempts to consolidate his power base and marginalise Montenegro. "I think that Montenegro should go its own way. The only way I could support the union between Montenegro and Serbia would be to call it Monte Serbia," jokes twenty-four-year old Sandra, a student from Podgorica.<br><br>Many Montenegrins perceive the constitutional reforms as the latest proof that Montenegro can never be an equal partner in Yugoslavia. "The ratio between Serbs and Montenegrins is 17:1," says Miko Zivkovic, leader of the Liberal Party. "Equality of parliamentary members at a Federal level is key. Otherwise, how can 600,000 Montenegrins ever be equal to 10 million Serbs?"<br><br>But Zivkovic does not see a more serious threat in the changes; he thinks that Milosevic is simply sending a signal to Djukanovic not to run in federal elections expected later this year. "He is trying to cordon Serbia off as a way of consolidating his power base. He doesn't want Montenegro around as a destabilising factor. In fact, he wants us to leave," he says.<br><br>As the summer season in Montenegro reaches its peak, planes, buses and trains full of Serbs are arriving at seaside resorts, despite a state media campaign warning them that "you need a sack full of foreign currency" to holiday in Montenegro, and urging them to visit Serbian spa-towns instead.<br><br>While they welcome a tourist "invasion" from Serbia, Montenegrins are more worried than ever before about Serbian influence on their language, culture and identity. "We live in a zone of small differences, which makes the search for our own identity that much more difficult," comments a former Yugoslav diplomat now resident in Podgorica, whose conscience compelled him to resign from a foreign ministry firmly in thrall to Milosevic's world view.<br><br>Local analysts agree that Milosevic wouldn't need to send in the Yugoslav Army to block independence. With opposing forces in place on the ground, he could provoke bloodshed by remote control from Belgrade. <br><br>However, just like their counterparts in Croatia and Bosnia before them, ordinary Montenegrins seem blissfully unaware that they may be on the brink of a conflict. As August beckons, most are thinking of a long hot summer by the sea and want to postpone all thought of Yugoslav politics till the autumn.<br><br>Dragana Nikolic is an IWPR contributor .``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe IWPR : Montenegrin Divisions Grow``x964769493,66533,``x``x
``xBy Andrew F. Tully<br><br>On Thursday, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic set presidential and parliamentary elections for 24 September. The same day, in Washington, four of his opponents were testifying about the political climate in the federation of Serbia and Montenegro. RFE/RL correspondent Andrew F. Tully reports. <br><br>Washington, 28 July 2000 (RFE/RL) -- Four political opponents of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic say that country's ruling coalition no longer has the support of the majority of the Yugoslav people.<br><br>But they add that opposition parties in Yugoslavia are so fractured that they probably will not be able to oust Milosevic in the 24 September elections.<br><br>The three Serbs and one Montenegrin gave their assessment during testimony in Washington before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe -- also known as the Helsinki Commission.<br><br>Their testimony came Thursday -- the same day that Milosevic, in Belgrade, announced that the Yugoslav Republic -- made up of Serbia and Montenegro -- will hold presidential and parliamentary election on 24 September.<br><br>Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia meets today to plan its strategy. It is expected to nominate the president for an unprecedented second term. Until now, the Yugoslav Constitution forbade a president to serve more than one term. But earlier this month, the parliament changed the constitution, allowing Milosevic to run for two more four-year terms as president.<br><br>The four Yugoslav dissidents testifying before the Helsinki Commission said they would not be surprised if the federation faced eight more years of Milosevic's control. One was Stojan Cerovic, a journalist with the United States Institute for Peace, an independent think-tank in Washington funded by the U.S. Congress. Cerovic alluded to the sudden change in the Yugoslav Constitution as just one step that Milosevic is taking to ensure the longevity of his political control.<br><br>"Milosevic's problem is real and he would like to survive, he would like to win the elections, and he's basically doing his best now to create an atmosphere in which he will be able to win."<br><br>Another witness was Bogdan Invanisevic, a Yugoslav researcher for Human Rights Watch, who also noted the change in the constitution that favors Milosevic. He and others said Milosevic does not enjoy the support of the majority of eligible voters in either Serbia or Montenegro.<br><br>"For the first time, the threat for the authorities to be removed from power as a result of elections is a real one."<br><br>Cerovic agreed, but he said a united opposition is essential to defeat the Socialists in September.<br><br>"According to the polls, support for...Milosevic and his...ruling coalition is going down, and the opposition parties, if united, they can count on a clear majority at the moment."<br><br>But Cerovic added that so far, the opposition parties show no sign of working together. The other witnesses agreed.<br><br>Also testifying was Branislav Canak, president of the independent Serbian trade union Nezavisnost. He said a united opposition is essential to show the people of the Yugoslav Federation that votes against Milosevic would not be wasted.<br><br>"We need one very basic precondition: It's united opposition. If they still remain divided on the eve of the elections, we will never motivate the people because they don't see the reason -- realistic reason -- why they should go out and vote."<br><br>The witness with perhaps the gloomiest outlook was David Dasic, the head of Montenegro's trade mission to the United States. The political leadership in Podgorica has expressed fears that the constitutional change allowing Milosevic to seek a second and a third term will further marginalize Montenegro.<br><br>Even before the constitutional change, the republic was seen as the lesser half of the Yugoslav Federation. Now, Dasic said, Montenegro can never hope to see its proper position restored.<br><br>"The consequences of the recent changes are destructive for Montenegro. Montenegro is no more an equal constituent of the federal state. Practically, the president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia will never be from Montenegro."<br><br>The witnesses also told the Helsinki Commission about what they described as rampant human rights violations committed by Milosevic's government. They ranged from harassment and beatings of pro-democracy demonstrators to making it difficult for independent newspapers to get newsprint. Ivanisevic said the U.S. could help improve Yugoslavia's human rights record by asking Russia to use its influence on Milosevic.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia: Fractured Opposition Is No Match For Milosevic``x964857896,29342,``x``x
``xYugoslavia: The move comes 3 weeks after a constitutional bar to his running was removed. Increasing repression has weakened the opposition. <br><br>By PAUL WATSON, Times Staff Writer<br><br>VIENNA--After months of increasing repression that has weakened the already fractured opposition in Yugoslavia, President Slobodan Milosevic's government announced Thursday that Serbia and the Yugoslav federation will hold elections Sept. 24. <br>The decision to conduct presidential, parliamentary and local elections came exactly three weeks after Milosevic rewrote a constitution that had prohibited him from running for reelection after his term expires next year. Under the new constitution, he can potentially hold on to power for two more terms of four years each. <br>Milosevic pulled off what opposition politicians called "a constitutional coup" in a matter of hours July 6--with the unintended help of his foes. The Serbian Renewal Movement, led by Vuk Draskovic, was boycotting parliament, thus guaranteeing that there were not enough votes to defeat Milosevic's constitutional amendments. <br>Draskovic, a mercurial politician who consistently ranks as one of Serbia's most popular leaders, may ensure Milosevic's reelection as well. <br>Draskovic has refused to create a united front with other opposition parties, which argue that only a coalition supporting a single candidate can defeat Milosevic, who has been indicted on war crimes charges by the international tribunal at The Hague. <br>Although public opinion polling is often unreliable in Yugoslavia, surveys consistently suggest that Milosevic will win if the opposition does not unite behind a single candidate. <br>Milosevic, with just 13.7% support, was ranked as Yugoslavia's most popular politician in a survey conducted in Serbia and Montenegro by Mark-Plan, an independent polling firm in Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital. The results were published July 19. <br>Draskovic came second, with 6.3%. Milo Djukanovic, president of Montenegro, the pro-Western partner of Serbia in the Yugoslav federation, placed third in the poll, with support from 4.9% of those surveyed. <br>In yet another sign of deep cynicism and disappointment with Milosevic and his opponents alike, 39.5% said they trust no politician. <br>Milosevic's Socialist Party is the most popular one in Serbia, with the backing of 17.6% of those polled. If the opposition ended its bickering to present a united front, it could--with 32.2% backing--defeat Milosevic, the survey suggested. <br>Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement could expect to get only 11.5% of the votes, according to the poll. <br>The man most often named the best candidate to take on Milosevic as head of a united opposition is Vojislav Kostunica, a soft-spoken Serbian nationalist and former law professor and dissident. <br>A "sworn anti-communist," Kostunica comes across as a stiff and boring "intellectual," no match for the charisma of Draskovic and his main rival, Democratic Party head Zoran Djindjic. But unlike them, Kostunica isn't seen as a corrupt ally of the West. <br>"He has never forgotten Western leaders' bombing of Serbia," columnist Ljubodrag Stojadinovic wrote in the independent daily Glas Javnosti. "He has never met the people who personified [NATO] aggression. However, that doesn't mean that he is not ready to talk to the democratic West." <br>Kostunica would stand a "great" chance against Milosevic, Djindjic said last week. <br>Draskovic has remained in Montenegro since assassins almost killed him at his seaside home there June 15. <br>Draskovic's party may reconsider its boycott of the elections if certain conditions are met, including that the vote be free and fair, spokesman Ivan Kovacevic said Thursday. <br>Draskovic and his party are likely to contest municipal elections in the hope of holding on to control of local government and the lucrative payoffs, especially in Belgrade. <br>Allowing the opposition to hold power in several towns and cities has proved one of Milosevic's most successful strategies: Opposition politicians compete with each other for control of local government because they can enrich themselves through endemic corruption. <br>Djukanovic, the Montenegrin president, has repeatedly said his republic will boycott any federal poll he considers illegal. Djukanovic has also suggested many times that he may call a referendum on independence, only to step back in the face of threats from Belgrade. <br>"The situation in Montenegro is very worrying," George Robertson, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said in Paris on Thursday after meeting with French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. <br>"I again repeat my warning to President Milosevic not to make mistakes that he has made in the past and not to continue to undermine the elected government of Montenegro," Robertson added. <br>Parliamentary and local elections weren't due until November, but Milosevic apparently had an eye on Kosovo when setting an earlier date for the balloting. <br>Although Kosovo is still technically a province of Serbia, a United Nations administration runs the territory as a virtual protectorate and has scheduled local elections for October. <br>As many as 100,000 Serbs still live in Kosovo, but only a few registered for the October vote even though the U.N. pushed hard to break the boycott by extending its registration for a few days earlier this month. <br>The U.N. estimates that 210,000 Serbs and members of other minorities fled Kosovo to Serbia proper when ethnic Albanian extremists began killing non-Albanians and burning homes after NATO-led peacekeepers took control of the province in June 1999. <br><br>Belgrade is expected to invite Kosovo Serbs to cross the administrative border to vote in September.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Los Angeles Time : Milosevic Calls Elections for Sept. 24 ``x964857920,97859,``x``x
``x<br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>PRAGUE, July 30 -- American officials are putting strong pressure on the president of Montenegro and the leader of Serbia's largest opposition party to take part in Yugoslav elections called in September, according to Yugoslav politicians and Western officials. <br>The American officials argue that a united opposition in Serbia, together with voters in Montenegro, Serbia's increasingly independent partner in the Yugoslav federation, would have a good chance of defeating President Slobodan Milosevic in the presidential and parliamentary elections he has called for Sept. 24. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic and his allies have launched a new wave of repression and altered the Constitution to create direct elections for his position -- which he otherwise would have to relinquish next July. <br><br>The only time the opposition has triumphed in past elections was when it united for municipal elections in 1996, winning in Belgrade and dozens of other cities. Mr. Milosevic initially refused to recognize the victories, prompting three months of mass demonstrations. <br><br>If these elections are manipulated or stolen, as expected, the Americans argue, the opposition will have another rallying cry for anti-Milosevic demonstrations. But a boycott provides no chance to beat Mr. Milosevic, they say, and a divided opposition has almost no chance to win. <br><br>In late 1997, Milo Djukanovic broke with Mr. Milosevic and won the presidency in Montenegro. He has allied himself with the West, but is refusing to participate in the September elections, arguing that the constitutional changes were made without consultation with Montenegro and aim to reduce its influence. <br><br>Mr. Djukanovic's officials say that to participate in these elections would only ratify Mr. Milosevic's constitutional coup and legitimize the likely outcome -- a Milosevic victory, fair or otherwise. <br><br>The changes to the Constitution have also removed previous requirements for a minimum turnout of half the eligible voters -- apparently to blunt any opposition boycott or the effect of widespread apathy among a generally depressed electorate. <br><br>Vuk Draskovic, the leader of the largest single opposition party in Serbia, the Serbian Renewal Movement, says that he will not participate in federal elections if Mr. Djukanovic will not. Mr. Draskovic also argues that these elections cannot be free and fair -- with attacks on opposition politicians, the judiciary, student protesters and intense government pressure on the independent news media. <br><br>The rest of Serbia's political opposition, largely grouped into the Alliance for Change, says it will take part, and is urging Mr. Draskovic to follow suit. <br><br>Mr. Draskovic is almost sure to participate in the local elections, where his party has many seats and privileges to defend. A boycott of the elections would cause a revolt in his own party, Draskovic aides admit. <br><br>A likely opposition presidential candidate is Vojislav Kostunica, a moderate nationalist who is considered free of corruption or of cooptation by the West -- distinguishing him from Mr. Draskovic or his great rival, Zoran Djindjic of the Democratic Party. <br><br>In May, the government took over the Belgrade television station Mr. Draskovic controlled, Studio B, and prevented the independent radio station, B2-92, and two others from broadcasting in Belgrade. <br><br>The government has been regularly suing the independent news media under a tough information law passed in October 1998 and has also restricted newsprint to major independent publications, particularly Blic, a popular tabloid whose circulation has been reduced by nearly half. <br><br>And last week, in a trial that produced outrage domestically and internationally, a Serbian journalist, Miroslav Filipovic, was convicted by a military court in Nis on charges of espionage and sentenced to seven years in prison. <br><br>Mr. Filipovic, who works for the independent Belgrade publication Danas, Agence France-Presse and a London-based Internet site called the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, wrote a number of articles that annoyed the government, including one that cited an internal Yugoslav Army report on unhappiness and remorse over the brutal tactics used against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo -- tactics that caused Mr. Milosevic and four top aides to be indicted on charges of war crimes. <br><br>Unusually for a suspected spy, Mr. Filipovic signed his name to his articles, and no evidence was presented to indicate that he had secret contacts with any foreigner or intelligence agency. <br><br>The government has also accused other independent journalists in Serbia of being spies and working on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency or the same NATO countries that bombed Serbia last year, but in no case has provided evidence. <br><br>While these forms of pressure are hardly new in Serbia, they are increasing and indicate pre-election nervousness in the Milosevic camp. <br><br>"Milosevic is very shaky and obviously very concerned about these elections," said Ognjen Pribicevic, a Draskovic aide. "His worry is not just because of the opposition, but because the situation in Serbia is disintegrating in every sense, economically and politically."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : U.S. Urging Milosevic Opponents to Unite for September Vote``x965029232,9713,``x``x
``x'No Credible Alternative' in September Election<br><br>ROME - Roughly half the work force in Yugoslavia is unemployed and high inflation is eating away at citizens' already barren lifestyle. Economic sanctions continue to pinch recovery from war. Hundreds of political activists are in jail, sometimes enduring beatings, and assassinations are common.<br>Yet the man who presides over all of this, President Slobodan Milosevic, regarded by the United States and its allies as the greatest single threat to peace in Eastern Europe, is almost certain to secure an additional four-year term in elections he has called for Sept. 24, senior U.S. and European officials predict.<br><br>Through intimidation, political manipulation and lofty nationalist rhetoric, he is settling in as the Saddam Hussein of Europe, a man who lost a war but holds onto power indefinitely.<br><br>Mr. Milosevic has effectively run Yugoslavia since 1989. Today, ''there is no credible alternative'' to him, lamented a U.S. government analyst, who asked not to be named. No opposition figure with the moral stature and political skill of Lech Walesa of Poland has surfaced. Most opposition leaders here have ''congenitally bad judgment'' that leads them to make self-serving decisions, the analyst said.<br><br>A Milosevic election victory, said Bratislav Grubacic, editor of the Belgrade newsletter VIP Daily News Report, would ''crush the hopes of the West that peaceful change can happen'' in Yugoslavia.<br><br>With a new term in hand, some U.S. officials fear, Mr. Milosevic may feel emboldened to incite new resistance to the Western-led peacekeeping operation in Bosnia and Kosovo. They also say they worry he will grind down the pro-Western leaders of Montenegro, a republic that is ostensibly part of Yugoslavia, or provoke an incident there that could justify a military takeover.<br><br>He would be moving at a time when there is little appetite in Western capitals for another military confrontation with Mr. Milosevic.<br><br>Fearful of assassination, the 58-year-old president rarely appears in public, and only then to deliver brief speeches to supporters about the evils of fascism. Indicted for war crimes in Bosnia and Kosovo, he is still shunned by virtually all foreign leaders, although he has hosted senior emissaries this year from a handful of other isolated states, such as Iraq and Burma, as well as the speaker of the Chinese Parliament.<br><br>Our president ''is the symbol of the struggle for the defense of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence,'' said Ivica Dacic, a ruling party official, said on state-run television. Thanks to Mr. Milosevic, he added, Yugoslavia managed ''to preserve our right to decide about our fate ourselves.''<br><br>That kind of talk plays well with segments of the Yugoslav population, to whom Mr. Milosevic is a hero who stands up to Western intimidation. But recent polls in Yugoslavia have indicated that more than two-thirds of the electorate favors Mr. Milosevic's ouster.<br><br>The problem is that his opposition is deeply divided, and polls also indicate that each of his potential political opponents is even less popular than he is. Widespread apathy and cynicism is also likely to undermine the voting turnout.<br><br>Vuk Draskovic, who heads the Serbian Renewal Movement, the largest opposition party, told radio B2-92 of Belgrade after surviving an assassination attempt in mid-June that he had no interest in the elections. ''Let them have everything, let them choke on it, let them choke on their own power,'' said the rattled politician. The spokesman for his party says the movement will neither participate in the elections nor support any candidate.<br><br>The anti-Milosevic coalition that governs Montenegro has also repeatedly said its supporters will not vote.<br><br>''This is a dark forest, and we are up the creek again,'' said Nenad Canak, an opposition political leader in Serbia's Vojvodina region, in an interview with the independent Beta news agency in Yugoslavia. ''If we participate in the elections, we must accept that Milosevic will cheat, and if we don't, we hand everything to him on a plate.''<br><br>On Friday, Mr. Milosevic formally announced his candidacy. He would not be running at all were it not for constitutional changes that he pushed through the Yugoslav Parliament. Those changes removed a bar on him seeking a new term. They also set up a system of direct election of the president, which Mr. Milosevic's supporters claim can only increase democracy.<br><br>Under the new rules, which were ratified by the Parliament, Mr. Milosevic can win by gaining a simple majority of votes cast, no matter how low the turnout. U.S. officials also said they expect Mr. Milosevic, whose appointees will have complete control of the procedures for both presidential and municipal elections to be held the same day, to stuff the ballot boxes if needed.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWashington Post : Milosevic Seems a Winner``x965029270,3692,``x``x
``xBy Phil Rees in Podgorica <br><br><br>30 July 2000 <br><br>An officer from Montenegro's Special Police, the Spezijalni, has described the role of the SAS in training the force. Tensions between Montenegro and Serbia – the last republics remaining in the Yugoslav federation – are likely to be stretched even nearer to breaking point by the revelations. <br><br>The 15,000-strong force will be the front line of defence if the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, attempts to oust the separatist Montenegrin president, Milo Djukanovic, and replace him with a leader loyal to the union with Serbia. <br><br>The presence in Montenegro of the Seventh Battalion of the Yugoslav army, which has been busy recruiting there, raises the prospect of a bitter fratricidal war on Montenegrin soil between the pro- and anti-Milosevic camps. <br><br>Sparked by Mr Djukanovic's increasing threats to break away, the Seventh Battalion keeps an ever-watchful eye on its Montenegrin counterparts. But British involvement in the republic, in the shape of the SAS, may have escaped the gaze of the black-bereted recruits to the Yugoslav force. <br><br>The revelation comes amid an increasing sense of doom in Montenegro, following the announcement by Mr Milosevic that he will seek re-election as Yugoslav president in polls in late September. An internal EU analysis recently predicted that Mr Milosevic would most probably win at least another four years in office. <br><br>In the grounds of the Hotel Zlatica, now converted into a barracks on the outskirts of Montenegro's capital, Podgorica, Velibor, 23, an experienced officer in the Spezijalni, spoke of his time with the British unit: "It was great. We learnt a lot. Some of the techniques they use are different to ours." <br><br>The threat from fellow countrymen in the Seventh Battalion is treated very seriously: "If somebody wants to harm our country, you have to shoot him. It doesn't matter if it's your friend or your father or your brother. My best friend – or he used to be, he joined the army and I joined the police – told me 'brother, it's better for me to shoot you because then you can't shoot me'." <br><br>Velibor stands well over 6ft tall, as do most of the officers in the élite unit of the Special Police – seemingly in contrast to their SAS tutors. "They told us 'You have very big guys here... we are all small guys and we like to run, and you all like to lift weights.' We were very strange to them." <br><br>The Special Police has a fierce reputation in Montenegro – its gung-ho approach seemingly unsettling the SAS. "They thought we were crazy. When two of us banged into a house and started shooting into walls, bullets were flying around and they said 'Oh, it's a real gun, real bullets? You're crazy guys, you don't have protection'. But we have a heart, we don't have protection but we have a heart. A big heart." <br><br>The role of the SAS in Montenegro is highly sensitive, with the Special Police seen as a challenge from inside Yugoslavia to Mr Milosevic. His supporters have regularly claimed that "foreign forces" are arming and training the Spezijalni. Montenegro's government officially denies any involvement by foreign nations in the training or arming of the police. <br><br>The SAS training includes hostage rescue. A key scenario played out by the anti-terrorist unit of the Spezijalni is how to react to an attempted coup by forces loyal to Mr Milosevic. <br><br>The Seventh Battalion, all Montenegrin, whose largest contingent is based near the northern town of Bijelo Polje, has been recruiting in numbers for the past six months. <br><br>Ivan, a softly spoken man in his late thirties, fought for the Yugoslav army during the wars that ripped Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s. He was under the orders of Mr Milosevic then and would continue to follow his orders now. <br><br>"If Djukanovic calls for a referendum or moves in any other violent way towards independence, the Seventh Battalion will follow the orders of the president. If there is a situation where weapons will decide the outcome, we are ready. We are training for that." <br><br>Mr Djukanovic describes the Seventh Battalion as a "paramilitary force". "Mr Milosevic has always formed groups with the aim of provoking internal conflicts," he says.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : We have the heart for battle, says Montenegrin trained by SAS ``x965029297,46865,``x``x
``xForeign judges are one way the UN is establishing civil order, more than a year after taking control.<br><br>Richard Mertens <br><br>KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br><br>Lack of impartiality<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br> <br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br><br>Rebuilding from scratch<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>But finding qualified judges is difficult, officials say. Nor have Albanian judges exactly welcomed them.<br><br>"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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : Justice a foreign term in Kosovo``x965121140,61406,``x``x
``xIan Black in Brussels <br>Tuesday August 1, 2000 <br><br>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. <br>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. <br><br>A government source said the men could be tourists. <br><br>"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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>Speaking in English with a Dutch accent, Mr Van Iersel said he knew Mr Milosevic and Gen Mladic were among those indicted. <br><br>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." <br><br>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". <br><br>"We have all got normal jobs in our life and at weekends we like to change into uniforms," he said. <br><br>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. <br><br>The Yugoslav government regularly accuses western spies of plotting assassination attempts. <br><br>Western officials have made it clear that they would like to see Mr Milosevic ousted, but they have denied any attempt to assassinate him.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Dutchmen accused of Milosevic plot ``x965121186,99800,``x``x
``x<br><br><br>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.<br>by AVNER GIDRON and CLAUDIO CORDONE<br><br><br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br> <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br> <br><br>What rules of engagement? <br><br>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. <br><br>"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). <br><br>"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). <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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). <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br> <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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). <br><br>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. <br><br>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). <br><br>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. <br><br><br>* Respectively Research and Mandate Policy Adviser and Director of the Research and Mandate Program at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International in London. <br><br>(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; <a href="http://www.amnesty.org">http://www.amnesty.org</a> <br><br>(2) Military Readiness Subcommittee of House Armed Services Committee, Hearing on the Readiness Impact of Operations in Kosovo, Washington, 25 October 1999. <br><br>(3) Remarks by Lieutenant General Michael C. Short at the Air Force Association's Air Warfare Symposium, Orlando, Florida, 25 February 2000. <br><br>(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". <br><br>(5) "Moral Combat - Nato at War", op.cit. <br><br>(6) Press Conference, Jamie Shea and Major General Walter Jertz, Brussels, 3 May 1999 <br><br>(7) <a href="http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/kaar02072000.pdf">http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/kaar02072000.pdf</a> <br><br> <br><br>(8) Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the Nato Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in <a href="http://un.org/icty/">http://un.org/icty/</a> <br><br>(9) Human Rights Watch, Civilian Deaths in the NATO Air Campaign, New York, February 2000, <a href="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/nato">http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/nato</a> <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLe Monde diplomatique : Nato on trial``x965212520,7632,``x``x
``x<br>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. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav opposition groups defy U.S. pressure, plan election boycott``x965212539,9185,``x``x
``x‘This Is Fiction’ <br> <br> <br><br>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)<br><br><br> <br> <br><br>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.<br> 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.<br> “I would call it pretty good fiction,” said Paul Risley, spokesman for the tribunal. “This story is fiction and nothing more.” <br> 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.<br> “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.<br> Friends and colleagues of one of those detained, Godfried de Rie, reacted to the news with shock.<br> “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.”<br> A next-door neighbor of de Rie’s described him as a perfectly normal person who once worked as a postman. <br>‘Weekend Warriors’<br>Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic said the men were posing as amateur “weekend warriors” but were in fact assassins sent by the West.<br> 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.<br> 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.<br> The Dutch spokesman said the Foreign Ministry was investigating reports that the group was arrested as long as two weeks ago.<br> “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.<br> He added that de Rie had done his military service in the army in 1989. “But he was an administrator, hardly a paratrooper.”<br> The Dutch Foreign Ministry named the others as Bas van Schaik, Sander Zeitsen and van Iersel. All are aged between 28 and 32.<br> “We are pretty sure that they are neither military nor involved in military things,” the spokesman said.<br> 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.<br> 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. <br><br>‘These Are No Pros’<br>Military specialists appeared in the Dutch media this morning to say it was extremely unlikely that the four are professional militiamen. <br> 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. <br> Most of them came from extreme right-wing organizations, they said. <br> They also pointed out that the $5 million bounty is for information — not for kidnapping, much less delivering a human head.<br> One NATO source was reported as dismissing the whole incident as “bizarre.”<br> 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.<br> 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. <br><br>A Milosevic Stunt?<br>In Belgrade, the opposition dismissed the arrests as a propaganda stunt. <br> “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.<br> 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.<br> The Milosevic regime says Montenegro is behind repeated assassinations. Montenegro, in return, regularly accuses Milosevic of sending his hit-men there.<br> 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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. Tribunal, Dutch Govt. Deny Links to Milosevic’s Alleged Assassins ``x965212558,34835,``x``x
``xROME (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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro President Says Poll Boycott Not Decided``x965212585,64971,``x``x
``xOpposition parties see possibilities - though slim - that Sept. 24 vote could bring Milosevic ouster.<br><br>Alex Todorovic <br><br>BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>Kostunica, meanwhile, warned that "the Balkans' problems must be solved in there and not in European capitals."<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : Serb vote holds hope for change``x965289802,76723,``x``x
``x<br><br>Richard Mertens <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor<br><br>PRISTINA, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br> <br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>"This is against the freedom of speech and writing," protested Dita's editor-in-chief, Belul Beqaj. "It's anti-democratic."<br><br>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."<br><br><br>A growing practice<br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>"There can't be anarchy," Maliqi says. "But there must be consultation."<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br><br>Press under pressure<br><br>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.<br><br>"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.' "<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian science monitor: Kosovo press names names, vigilantes act``x965378983,92143,``x``x
``x<br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>4 August 2000 <br><br>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. <br><br>The four – two British and two Canadian – were said by Belgrade to be armed, and planning to train Montenegrin police units for "terrorist acts". <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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". <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Serbs hold two British policemen on terrorist allegations ``x965379012,98930,``x``x
``xBy Jolyon Naegele<br><br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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."<br><br>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. <br><br>Albright said she and Djukanovic also discussed ways to increase economic assistance to Montenegro.<br><br>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.<br><br>He says whatever decision the parties reach, his government will not damage what he called Serbia's "fragile" opposition:<br><br>"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." <br><br>Montenegro's ruling parties are divided over whether the Serb opposition should participate in the elections or not.<br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>Draskovic meanwhile has renewed his call for the Serbian Renewal Movement to boycott the elections if Montenegro does not participate.<br><br>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."<br><br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRFE: Yugoslavia: Albright Asks Montenegro To Take Part In Vote``x965379206,29497,``x``x
``xBy Julijana Mojsilovic - 4 Aug 2000 05:26GMT<br> <br><br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>Analysts say two opposition candidates would split the vote among Milosevic's foes and diminish the chances of ousting him. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>In return he would work with us in the local polls. <br><br>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. <br><br>The SPO was not available for comment. Party sources said it would meet on Sunday to decide on all election issues. <br><br>OPPOSITION SEEKS UNITY <br><br>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. <br><br>The announcement dealt a blow to the opposition, which failed on Wednesday to persuade Monetenegro to change its mind. <br><br>If the opposition runs united, it will surely win, Perisic said. If we are divided we will help the government stay in power. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>He said the opposition would wait one week for a decision from Draskovic. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe FT: Serb opposition divided in bid to oust Milosevic``x965379234,65380,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, 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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xChanges dateline from Belgrade``x965379260,62004,``x``x
``x<br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xOSCE bans travel to Montenegro after Westerners detained``x965464776,37585,``x``x
``x<br>By JANE PERLEZ<br> <br><br>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. <br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br><br>"I remind you of Marcos," Mr. Clinton's adviser said. "That was the beginning of the end." <br><br>In 1986, Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines claimed victory in rigged elections and was eventually toppled through street protests. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: U.S. Fears Montenegro May Be Target for Milosevic``x965464802,74953,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade and Anne Penketh <br><br><br>5 August 2000 <br><br>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. <br><br>Diplomats in Belgrade said last night that the visit may proceed today or tomorrow. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>They are accused of training units of the pro-Western Montenegrin army. <br><br>"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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>The Canadian chargé d'affaires in Belgrade yesterday travelled to Andrijevica, where the four were detained. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Britain and Canada press for policemen held by Serbs on terrorism charges to be released ``x965464824,76906,``x``x
``xBy PAUL WATSON, Times Staff Writer<br><br>KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia--Memli Krasniqi prefers to sing what he has to say in his native Albanian--except when he <br>has a rap against Kosovo's foreign-run government. <br>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: <br>"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." <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>"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. <br>"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." <br><br><br>Divided City Highlights Ethnic Tensions <br><br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>But frustration is mounting. <br>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. <br><br>A Desire to Drive Out Serbian 'Militants' <br><br>"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. <br>"If they really want Kosovo whole, and not divided, that would take maybe 12 hours." <br>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. <br>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. <br>After more than a year of ethnic Albanian attacks on minorities, the U.N. administration is more openly sympathetic to the Serbs' fears. <br>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. <br>"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. <br>"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." <br>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. <br>For years, the members of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority have embraced the flag of neighboring Albania as their own. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>"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." <br><br>Escape of Prisoners Raises Questions <br><br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>"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."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe LA Times: Kosovo Rapper Vents Albanian Anger at U.N. ``x965638088,35436,``x``x
``xBY JAMES PRINGLE, BALKANS CORRESPONDENT<br> <br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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". <br><br>He praised Mr Mihailovic as "a man who would bring us peace, rule of law and co-operation with the world". <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>However, observers say that Mr Draskovic was acting true to his mercurial form and only lately had pledged to boycott the election altogether. <br><br>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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times : Yugoslav opposition split over presidency ``x965638124,56725,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>Until yesterday, Mr Draskovic had said that his party planned to boycott thepresidential and local elections on 24 September. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent :Opposition split as party picks mayor to take on Milosevic ``x965638148,11904,``x``x
``xJulijana Mojsilovic in Belgrade <br><br>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. <br>"We unanimously decided to name Vojislav Kostunica as our joint candidate," Dusan Mihajlovic, leader of the New Democracy party, said. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>The Democratic party leader, Zoran Djindjic, said Mr Draskovic would not discuss a joint candidate. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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." <br><br>Mr Djindjic said Mr Kostunica's advantage was that he could travel to Montenegro and Kosovo, whereas Mr Milosevic could not. <br><br>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 . <br><br>"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." <br><br>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. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Opposition says Draskovic a spoiler ``x965728676,3262,``x``x
``xBy Rupert Cornwell <br><br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>The arrest of the two Britons and two Canadians, a classic piece of mischief-making by Yugoslavia's leader, fits in with both goals. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Bit parts for officers in Milosevic's latest power-play ``x965728698,41768,``x``x
``xBY ALEX TODOROVIC IN PODGORICA AND RICHARD BEESTON, DIPLOMATIC EDITOR<br><br>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. <br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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." <br><br>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. <br><br>"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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br> <br>Misha Glenny <br><br>Hostages are Milosevic pawns in election game <br><br><br><br> <br>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. <br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times : Serb jail threat to arrested British police ``x965728720,64592,``x``x
``xVuk 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.<br><br>By Zeljko Cvijanovic in Belgrade<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>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."<br><br>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. <br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>The nickname "Seselj in a tuxedo" may appear alarming to the West, but in Serbia most opposition supporters accept Kostunica as a "moderate nationalist." <br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>"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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>"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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>"The return will be painful, in some ways humiliating, but there is no other way," Kostunica said.<br><br>Zeljko Cvijanovic is a regular IWPR contributor.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe IWPR : Kostunica's "Middle Way" ``x965810487,170,``x``x
``xBY RICHARD BEESTON, ALEX TODOROVIC IN PODGORICA AND JAMES PRINGLE IN PRISTINA<br><br>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. <br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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". <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times : British policemen to face Serb tribunal ``x965810516,40844,``x``x
``xRichard Norton-Taylor <br>Thursday August 10, 2000 <br><br>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. <br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Britons still in jail after Belgrade hearing ``x965892083,35851,``x``x
``xWASHINGTON, 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.<br><br>"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.<br><br>"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.<br><br>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.<br><br>"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.<br><br>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.<br><br>"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.<br><br>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.<br><br>"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."<br><br>Lockhart said he expected discussion of Milosevic to be part of the conversation.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>"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.<br><br>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.<br><br>"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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAFP : Albright hails Croatian democratization, urges Serbia to follow suit``x965892105,16113,``x``x
``x<br><br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br> <br> <br>OSOVO POLJE, Kosovo -- The Rev. Radivoje Panic has had more than his share of parishes. <br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>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." <br><br>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." <br><br>There were a lot of armed Serbian police officers, he said, standing guard and guiding those who were leaving. <br><br>And what did he do? <br><br>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." <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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." <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: His Serbian Flock Scattered, the Priest Reflects``x965985152,79579,``x``x
``x<br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWesterners plead innocent at Belgrade hearing``x965985178,41952,``x``x
``x<br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia faces food shortages, price rises -FAO``x965985201,17867,``x``x
``x<br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCroatia says Milosevic seeking crisis in Montenegro``x965985227,17638,``x``x
``xPRISTINA, Kosovo - The United Nations has set a date of Oct. 28 for what it is billing as Kosovo's first free and fair elections.<br>The head of the UN mission in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, said he hoped the municipal vote would be ''fair, democratic and well-controlled.''<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>''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.<br><br>Speaking of the United Nations, he added, ''They have not been able to return any Serbs to their homes.''<br><br>Besides requiring the return of Serbs to their homes in Kosovo, Serbian leaders in the province have demanded enhanced security. <br><br>Serbs, along with other minorities, still suffer revenge attacks from ethnic Albanians and generally live in heavily guarded enclaves.<br><br>Mr. Kouchner said he thought the Serb boycott was a mistake but was confident ''a real body of governance'' would emerge from the elections.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUN to Hold Kosovo Elections For Local Leaders on Oct. 28``x966238052,60851,``x``x
``xLJUBLJANA, 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. <br>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. <br><br>"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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br><br>President Kucan said Mr. Milosevic was "looking for an excuse to intervene." He said there was a fundamental element that had to be understood: <br><br>"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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br><br>"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." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Five Minutes to Midnight``x966238103,84346,``x``x
``xMarie Colvin, Pristina <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>Here, they were turfed out of Going's Nissan Patrol, arrested and confined to a Yugoslav army barracks. <br><br>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. <br><br>As far as the terrorist charges are concerned, all those familiar with the case admit that it is complicated by Going's record. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"Everything is being handled correctly," said Bob Gordon, Britain's representative in Belgrade, yesterday. "It's quite clear they've done nothing wrong." <br><br>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. <br><br><br>Additional reporting: James Pettifer, Sveti Stefan, and Edin Hamzic.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times : Britons trapped in warlords' web ``x966238124,2481,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Kim Sengupta <br><br><br>15 August 2000 <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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". <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Ministers 'tried to cover up report on Kosovo bombs' ``x966322760,29147,``x``x
``x<br>By REUTERS<br> <br> <br>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. <br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"This story of pollution is completely senseless," he said. "It is a classic case of robbery." <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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. <br><br>Control of Trepca's mineral wealth has long been disputed between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>But Mr. Kouchner's chief economic adviser, Bernard Salome, said it could take three years before significant output appeared. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKosovo Serbs React Angrily to NATO Shutting Smelter``x966322779,11056,``x``x
``x<br> <br>From Associated Press<br>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. <br> 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. <br> 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. <br> 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. <br> 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. <br> "I am very sorry for them, and I think it was a mistake," he said. <br> A key Kosovo Serb leader, Oliver Ivanovic, expressed disinterest in the announcement. <br> "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." <br> Meanwhile, the Tanjug news agency, a mouthpiece for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government, criticized the decision. <br> "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<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. Sets October Date for Kosovo Elections ``x966322801,87874,``x``x
``x<br><br>Montenegro may be the Yugoslav president's next target. The Clinton administration sees pressures mounting. <br><br>By George Gedda <br>ASSOCIATED PRESS <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>The United States is warning Milosevic to let the republic live in peace. <br><br>As early as January, Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering was asked in the Albanian capital Tirana about possible Milosevic moves in Montenegro.<br><br>"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." <br><br>Senior administration officials speak now of obvious actions by Milosevic to increase pressure on Montenegro, apparently intending to provoke a crisis in the republic. <br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>Army troops in Montenegro, which are controlled by Milosevic's government, have established checkpoints on main roads into the republic from Bosnia and Croatia. <br><br>"All of that is new in the last few weeks," said one U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>Montenegro has 600,000 people, Serbia six million. <br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>"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." <br><br>The charged atmosphere has U.S. officials worried that a victory by pro-Milosevic forces could give Milosevic an excuse to intervene.<br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"We know that Milosevic will cheat," she said. <br><br>On Thursday, the State Department said Milosevic was aware of the West's capability to respond should he threaten Montenegro. <br><br>"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." <br><br>That warning was echoed last week by Stipe Mesic, the president of Yugoslavia's pro-Western neighbor, Croatia. <br><br>"The international community should now send a message to Milosevic to force him to desist from causing any crisis in Montenegro," Mesic said. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic could be plotting more aggression ``x966322826,10970,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Kim Sengupta <br><br><br>15 August 2000 <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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". <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Ministers 'tried to cover up report on Kosovo bombs' ``x966329690,50939,``x``x
``xMITROVICA, 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. <br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"This story of pollution is completely senseless," he said. "It is a classic case of robbery." <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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. <br><br>Control of Trepca's mineral wealth has long been disputed between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>But Mr. Kouchner's chief economic adviser, Bernard Salome, said it could take three years before significant output appeared. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xREUTERS: Kosovo Serbs React Angrily to NATO Shutting Smelter``x966329710,1605,``x``x
``x<br><br> 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. <br> 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. <br> 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. <br> 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. <br> 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. <br> "I am very sorry for them, and I think it was a mistake," he said. <br> A key Kosovo Serb leader, Oliver Ivanovic, expressed disinterest in the announcement. <br> "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." <br> Meanwhile, the Tanjug news agency, a mouthpiece for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government, criticized the decision. <br> "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<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAP: U.N. Sets October Date for Kosovo Elections ``x966329737,92909,``x``x
``x<br><br>Montenegro may be the Yugoslav president's next target. The Clinton administration sees pressures mounting. <br><br>By George Gedda <br>ASSOCIATED PRESS <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>The United States is warning Milosevic to let the republic live in peace. <br><br>As early as January, Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering was asked in the Albanian capital Tirana about possible Milosevic moves in Montenegro.<br><br>"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." <br><br>Senior administration officials speak now of obvious actions by Milosevic to increase pressure on Montenegro, apparently intending to provoke a crisis in the republic. <br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>Army troops in Montenegro, which are controlled by Milosevic's government, have established checkpoints on main roads into the republic from Bosnia and Croatia. <br><br>"All of that is new in the last few weeks," said one U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>Montenegro has 600,000 people, Serbia six million. <br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>"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." <br><br>The charged atmosphere has U.S. officials worried that a victory by pro-Milosevic forces could give Milosevic an excuse to intervene.<br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"We know that Milosevic will cheat," she said. <br><br>On Thursday, the State Department said Milosevic was aware of the West's capability to respond should he threaten Montenegro. <br><br>"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." <br><br>That warning was echoed last week by Stipe Mesic, the president of Yugoslavia's pro-Western neighbor, Croatia. <br><br>"The international community should now send a message to Milosevic to force him to desist from causing any crisis in Montenegro," Mesic said. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAP: Milosevic could be plotting more aggression ``x966329752,50716,``x``x
``x<br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xOpposition candidate criticizes Montenegrin election boycott``x966420260,98119,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, 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. ^ <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBelgrade court ends probe into Britons, Canadians``x966420294,77239,``x``x
``x<br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb opposition to launch election campaign Sept 1``x966420318,96001,``x``x
``xJonathan Steele <br><br>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. <br>Not all of the dead can be proved to be victims of murder or execution. <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Figures put on Serb killings too high ``x966589440,41607,``x``x
``xBY MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR<br> <br>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. <br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>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". <br><br>"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. <br><br>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. <br><br><br>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. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times : Kosovo killings estimate halved``x966677152,4479,``x``x
``xBy Katarina Kratovac <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>Gordon did not elaborate what that "something" would entail. <br><br>"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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>"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. <br><br>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. <br><br>If found guilty of terrorism, the four could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Diplomats exasperated at lengthy imprisonment of two Britons, two Canadians ``x966677176,37994,``x``x
``x<br>By Roberto Suro<br><br>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. <br><br><br>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.<br><br><br>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.<br><br><br>"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.<br><br><br>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.<br><br><br>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.<br><br><br>"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?"<br><br><br>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.<br><br><br>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.<br><br><br>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.<br><br><br>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."<br><br>TALKING THE TALK: More on the Pentagon's relentless effort to stretch the English language:<br><br>"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."<br><br><br>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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWashington Post : Up in Arms: The Defense Department``x966842721,68099,``x``x
``xTHE 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. <br>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. <br><br>They were handcuffed at a Yugoslav checkpoint and bundled into an army truck in remote countryside. <br><br>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. <br><br>"I really felt it was over, we're not going to get out alive," said Yore. <br><br>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. <br><br><br>British police tell of Serb beatings <br>Alex Todorovic and Tom Walker <br><br>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. <br>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. <br><br>Last week, details of the men's experience emerged for the first time. <br><br>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". <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>In an account given to military sources in Belgrade, Prangnell, 41, said he was punched on the chin, while Yore, 31, was stamped on. <br><br>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. <br><br>"I really felt it was over, we're not going to get out alive," said Yore. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>The men are now feeling more relaxed in the Serbian capital. <br><br>"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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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. <br><br>They get on well with their guards, with whom they are slowly improving their Serbo-Croat. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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." <br><br>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. <br><br>Diplomats fear that Going, in particular, may face a tougher time because he has worked on sensitive American construction projects. <br><br>"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. <br><br>"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." <br><br><br>Murders linked to Milosevic loot <br>Tom Walker, Diplomatic Correspondent <br> <br>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. <br>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". <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>Intelligence officials who have interviewed former JAT pilots have learnt that Petrovic personally oversaw the loading of suitcases stashed with cash onto flights. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>However, none of Bulatovic's powerful contacts could prevent him from being slain in a hail of bullets in a Belgrade restaurant in February. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>American officials are monitoring the case of one Yugoslav citizen who claims to have had his Beogradska bank account hijacked by money launderers. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>"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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times : Jailed British policemen reveal they were beaten ``x966842750,27465,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, 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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>A separate survey by the Medium polling agency also put Kostunica in the lead but with Milosevic closer behind.<br><br>It put support for Kostunica at 30 percent against 25 percent for Milosevic, the Beta news agency quoted Medium director Srbobran Brankovic as saying.<br><br>Yugoslav presidential and federal elections, along with Serbian local elections, are scheduled for September 24.<br><br>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.<br><br>Since then opposition parties have nominated two more candidates for the presidential election.<br><br>The ISS survey also showed that Milosevic's support had slipped by five percent from the 28 percent he polled in the first survey.<br><br>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.<br><br>RIVAL OPPOSITION CANDIDATES<br><br>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.<br><br>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".<br><br>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.<br><br>Other opposition parties have said this will further split the opposition votes and reduce their chances in the race for federal parliament seats.<br><br>If the SPO does contest the federal elections, other opposition parties would garner 34 percent and the SPO six percent, the survey said.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic Lags Behind Opposition Candidate``x966945854,99513,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, 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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugo dinar resumes decline, seen down to 30 marks``x966945873,99297,``x``x
``xDeep in the forests of Mount Cnri Vrh a villa used by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic sits above a mysterious underground complex<br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>"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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>"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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>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.<br><br>Although Ekstra is on sale inside Serbia, there has to date been no official response to the article.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>The United States government strongly denied the claims and the Tribunal dismissed the any possibility Milosevic could ever be granted immunity.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>Marko Ruzic is a pseudonym for a journalist in Belgrade. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIWPR : Milosevic's Forbidden City ``x967016275,77074,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br> <br>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. <br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>They represent a minuscule part of Europe's latest headache caused by Belgrade. <br><br>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. <br><br>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.' " <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>A large number of these people are now coming to Europe, taking advantage of the new Yugoslav route. <br><br>"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." <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : China's Migrants Find Europe's Open Back Door: The Balkans``x967016332,25414,``x``x
``xBy David Sands<br><br><br>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.<br>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.<br>"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.<br>"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.<br>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.<br>The vote will be the first national election since last year's disastrous conflict with NATO over Kosovo.<br>"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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>Clinton administration efforts to aid Mr. Milosevic's rivals have played to mixed reviews inside Serbia.<br>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.<br>But Mr. Kostunica complained that the opening of the Budapest office was an "American kiss of death to the democratic forces of Serbia."<br>"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.<br>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.<br>The ICG analysis found that Serbian nationalism and resentment of Western pressure play into the hands of Mr. Milosevic's still-potent propaganda machine.<br>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.<br>"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.<br>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.<br>Angry that Mr. Milosevic's constitutional rewrite dilutes their power in parliament, Montenegro's leaders say they will boycott the vote.<br>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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTHE WASHINGTON TIMES : Milosevic's grip on power still firm as elections near ``x967100106,82247,``x``x
``x<br>By Paul Watson <br><br>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. <br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>''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.<br><br>''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.''<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>''He responds to questions, but he generally keeps quiet,'' Father Nojic said. ''He refuses most things and keeps saying he has a headache.''<br><br>The mother said she had sent him out with 10 Yugoslav dinars, about 20 cents, to buy candy. <br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>''I think most witnesses are being trained by experts,'' the Serbian lawyer said. ''The public prosecutor is often blatantly lying. '' <br><br>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. <br><br>When the judiciary was set up, it wasn't clear that Albanians would only act reasonably in terms of Albanian cases.<br><br>''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.''<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>A Finnish judge, Ante Ruotslainen, ruled that there was not enough evidence against Mr. Zeqiri to commit him to trial and ordered his release.<br><br>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. <br><br>It was the sixth time Mr. Zeqiri had been jailed in a year for weapons offenses and threats against Serbs, Ms. Manuel said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLos Angeles Times Service : Both Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo Denounce UN Over Court-System Snags ``x967100132,51751,``x``x
``xFrom Gillian Sandford, in Belgrade <br><br>YUGOSLAVIA: Tension is ratcheting tighter across Yugoslavia as Mr Slobodan Milosevic faces the threat of losing the presidency in key elections next month.<br><br>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.<br><br>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".<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Irish Times : Opposition candidate could do well ``x967100148,9298,``x``x
``xWASHINGTON (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. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbanian govt leader warns of danger in Montenegro``x967289972,79915,``x``x
``xBy PAUL WATSON, Times Staff Writer<br><br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>"I call this affair with the office in Budapest the kiss of death," Kostunica, 56, said last week in an interview here. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>"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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>"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." <br>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." <br>Kostunica believes that the Clinton administration strengthened Milosevic by demonizing him and by prolonging economic sanctions that have demoralized ordinary Serbs. <br>"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." <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>"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." <br>In his effort to unseat Milosevic, Kostunica has won support from a man often dismissed by Washington as a puppet of the Yugoslav president. <br>"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. <br>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. <br>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. <br>Kostunica has been waiting for a decade "to see the end of Slobodan Milosevic." Now he thinks the curtain will soon fall. <br>"For me, it is a matter of some months, or a year," he said. "Not more than that." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLA Times: U.S. Aid to Milosevic's Foes Is Criticized as 'Kiss of Death' ``x967539419,77321,``x``x
``xBy PAM NOLES<br>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. <br> 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. <br> "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." <br> 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. <br> Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) said Radlovic's death was "a tremendous loss for Southern California and the nation." <br> "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." <br> 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. <br> 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. <br> 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. <br> 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. <br> "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." <br> Mike Radlovic said his father maintained his "love for family" while helping others. <br> "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." <br> Radlovic is survived by his wife, Milena; two sons, Mike and Marko; a daughter, Sandra; and a grandchild. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLA Times: Business leader, WWII British officer Radlovic dies at 86 ``x967717198,24474,``x``x
``x<br>Special report: Kosovo <br><br>Gillian Sandford in Belgrade <br>Thursday August 31, 2000 <br><br>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. <br>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. <br><br>She also pledged that 200 flats would be built in Kosovo for returning Serb refugees. <br><br>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. <br><br>Mr Kouchner plans to hold separate local elections within the province a month after Yugoslavia votes in the local, parliamentary and presidential poll. <br><br>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. <br><br>However, the return of some Serb forces to the region, as envisaged in the Kumanovo agreement, has not yet happened <br><br>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. <br><br>Ms Gajevic's visit signals Belgrade's intent to make Kosovo an election issue and exploit the ambiguity over its status for propaganda. <br><br>Tomorrow the Yugoslav army will hold exercises of a new Kosovo unit currently based in southern Serbia. <br><br>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. <br><br>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?" <br><br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Milosevic challenges UN by planning Kosovo poll ``x967717228,41717,``x``x
``x<br><br>As the Sept. 24 election nears, one of Slobodan Milosevic's best-known critics has vanished.<br><br>Alex Todorovic <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor<br><br>BELGRADE <br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>"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.<br><br>Serbia's largest opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement, demanded Stambolic's immediate release and referred to the kidnapping as a "terrorist act."<br><br>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.<br> <br><br>Draskovic is not alone. Dissident journalist Alexandar Tijanic also stays away from Belgrade since being publicly rebuked by the president's wife.<br><br>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.<br><br>Stambolic is the first pubic figure to have simply vanished.<br><br>"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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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!" <br><br>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.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor: Unsettling prelude to Yugoslav vote``x967717257,18176,``x``x
``x<br>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. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugo prosecutor stalls on Western detainees``x967717312,84325,``x``x
``xAndrew Osborn in Brussels <br>Friday September 1, 2000 <br><br>France will exploit its current position as EU president this weekend to push for sanctions against Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia to be watered down or even dropped, a move which Britain opposes strongly. <br>The timing of the initiative is particularly sensitive since Yugoslav parliamentary and presidential elections are due to be held on September 24 and supporters of the sanctions believe that any change in policy now risks boosting Mr Milosevic's popularity. <br><br>Britain's foreign secretary, Robin Cook, is likely to find himself virtually isolated, however, when he meets his European counterparts this weekend for a meeting in the French resort of Evian. <br><br>Only the Netherlands and Denmark are said to back Britain's hard line and other countries have made no secret of the fact that they believe the sanctions are flawed and ineffective. <br><br>Although the Evian meeting is informal and is not expected to yield any concrete decisions, the Foreign Office will be aware that such meetings are often used to pave the way for formal decisions shortly afterwards. <br><br>Consensus on the sanctions - which include an oil embargo, a ban on doing business with most Yugoslav firms, and travel restrictions on government officials - crumbled in July at a similar EU meeting. <br><br>Hubert Védrine, the French foreign minister, said in a recent letter to European foreign ministers: "It's obvious that our action (towards Serbia) has not yielded the desired results and that several of us are of the opinion that some of the measures we have imposed like the sanctions remain ineffective and even counter-productive. <br><br>"It will be indispensable to evaluate our policy on the eve of these very important elections." <br><br>The stated aim of the sanctions was to undermine Mr Milosevic but many countries are convinced that they have served only to impoverish ordinary Serbs and have allowed the Yugoslav strongman to portray himself and his country as the victim of international bullying. <br><br>Britain begs to differ, however, and believes that the current "carrot and stick" approach which is designed to hurt the Milosevic regime while simultaneously promoting democracy should be continued. <br><br>Foreign Office officials played down the prospect of confrontation on the issue and said they had no problem discussing different scenarios for action after the elections. They acknowledged, however, that they were still "firmly" opposed to any move to lift the sanctions. <br><br>"You've got to play this incredibly carefully because Mr Milosevic has made a career of pretending that Yugoslavia is being bullied," one official said. <br><br>Serbia is not the only subject on the agenda this weekend. France is expected to float for the first time a controversial idea to hold yet another landmark EU summit to reform the 15-nation bloc. A major summit is already planned for Nice in December with the aim of preparing for enlargement, and the French are keen to start thinking about further reforms afterwards. <br><br>There are fears in Britain that the idea of yet another summit would be to make progress on the contentious idea of a two-speed Europe. There is also speculation that such a summit might be used to draw up a European constitution, the stuff of nightmares for Britain's eurosceptics. <br><br>The EU's highly criticised £7bn a year programme of external aid is also up for review. Slammed by the commissioner in charge of it, Chris Patten, and dubbed the worst aid system in the world by Clare Short, it is in need of an overhaul. Ministers are pushing for a greater say in deciding its priorities and are likely to get their way. <br><br>The final topic on the agenda will be the Middle East. With a Palestinian threat to declare an independent state on September 13 if the peace process does not produce an agreement, the EU must consider how it would respond to such a dramatic development. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Britain faces fight to keep Serb sanctions ``x967791888,31679,``x``x
``xBY DANIEL MCGRORY IN SARAJEVO <br><br>OPPONENTS of President Milosevic are trying to enlist the most famous name in their fractured country's history to join the campaign for this month's elections. <br><br>They have approached the youngest grandchild of Josip Broz Tito, founder of Yugoslavia, after opinion polls showed nostalgia and support among all ages for the days when they lived under the same flag. <br><br>The candidate that they are trying to lure - Svetlana Broz - is an image-maker's ideal: a tall, blonde, elegantly dressed woman who is herself a recent victim of Mr Milosevic's vindictiveness. Her lineage makes her an obvious figure for the increasingly desperate opposition movements, as does her proven televisual ability to deliver perfectly crafted insults about the Milosevic regime. <br><br>There is no doubt that among all ages there is a growing affection for the days of her grandfather's communist rule, even among those barely old enough to remember his funeral in 1980. It does not matter to those seeking to exploit this nostalgic longing for all things Tito that it does not bear close historical scrutiny. <br><br>Dr Broz, 45, enthusiastically fosters the image that life under Tito's communism provided all her countrymen with creature comforts and safety. "I'm not being selfish because my family were in power, nor am I being foolishly nostalgic about the good old days, but it was better for all of us when we were Yugoslavs. We all had a car, a place to live and everyone I knew had a summer house and enough to eat." <br><br>There will be many of her generation who did not enjoy such privileges, although she says: "I have lost count of the people, of all ages and ethnic groups, who say that living under communism was a lot better than the present madness. The Broz name represents a country where we could live together and living standards were good." <br><br>She recognises that the real attraction for those who yearn for Tito's days is that it was better than their present leadership. "We are living under our version of Hitler, who has brought us a decade of war, so anything is better than this." <br><br>Thus far Dr Broz has resisted invitations from some in groups such as Vuk Drascovic's SPO party who are keen for her to appear on their platforms. She explains that while her affection for her grandfather is undiminished, it does not yet extend to wanting to follow him into politics. <br><br>She describes how her political skills were sharpened during fierce arguments with her grandfather, who, she says, contrary to his acerbic public image, tolerated her teenage rebellion, which included refusing to join the Communist Party. <br><br>"I was approached when I was 14 and at school to join the party. At the time I wanted to, but my father said I wasn't disciplined enough to toe the party line. I wasn't a member, but Tito never chastised us for it. <br><br>"At home he didn't want to talk politics all the time, though I did argue with him when he put various nationalist leaders in prison. I think now maybe he was right because when they got out of prison these were the bigots who started our wars. I could see after grandfather died there were many trying to break up Yugoslavia, but I did not foresee the bloodshed and nor did he." <br><br>Evidence of the popular support for Tito, who died 20 years ago aged 88, are the bouquets of fresh flowers that appear daily around his bronze statute in the centre of Sarajevo, she says. It, too, bears the scars of the recent siege, with bullet holes through the army greatcoat he is wearing and the implant of where a mortar shell landed close to the statue's plinth. She noted that statues of him have been stripped from Belgrade. Loyalists cannot even visit Tito's grave because it is in the garden of one of Mr Milosevic's official residences. <br><br>"Perhaps when he is arrested and standing in the dock at The Hague answering to his war crimes, my family and others will be allowed to visit my grandfather's grave," Dr Broz said. <br><br>"People say my grandfather was a dictator, but we were a people at peace. Milosevic is the dictator and we are at war with each other. He kills people to stay in power." <br><br>The impression that the West had of Tito in those Cold War days, as a scowling dictator who punished anyone who defied his Communist Party's rule, makes her laugh out loud. Photographs always showed him as a gnarled, bad-tempered figure, grimacing at the camera. <br><br>"Of course he wasn't like that. I don't remember him raising his voice," she says, showing the few black-and- white family photographs she still has of her embracing the old dictator. <br><br>Many other pictures that Dr Broz had went missing after a break-in at her home. The only other things taken were computer discs and recordings of conversations she had made with families in Bosnia who had risked their lives to help others from a different ethnic community. <br><br>She blames Mr Milosevic's secret police for the break-in. She shrugs and says: "I reported the theft, but the police refused to investigate. I just started all over again on what I called Good People in Evil Times. She published it in Banja Luka, capital of the self-proclaimed Serb Republic, which is a haven of literary freedom compared with Belgrade. For the moment, she has stopped working as a doctor to write more books, believing that this will do more to bring down the Milosevic regime, but, swearing that there are no offshore trust funds in Tito's name, she is going back to work as a doctor in November. What spare time she has will be spent writing a follow-up to her bestseller. <br><br>"This is about mixed marriages. There were about a third in Sarajevo before the war and what I have discovered, which is really gratifying, is that through the war about a third were mixed and that is still the story today. I have six bloodlines in me after all the mixed marriages in my family." Tito was half-Croat and married a Russian who he met in Siberia during the First World War. Her father, Zarko, fought with the Red Army and lost an arm in the battle for Moscow. Svetlana is the product of his third marriage to a Czech doctor who lived in Bosnia during the Austro-Hungarian empire. <br><br>Noticeably she refuses to call herself a Serb and will not refer to anyone she knows by their ethnic origins. She jokes that the Broz family has so many different blood lines it is impossible to categorise. <br><br>She realises that her outspoken condemnations, which are frequently aired on television and in magazines, make her a target for Mr Milosevic's vengeance, which is why this mother of two grown-up children has fled her family home in Belgrade and moved to the "enemy capital", Sarajevo. While she is talking, she glances nervously over her shoulder, a habit to see if anyone is eavesdropping. <br><br>"Friends ask: 'Aren't you afraid he might have someone to shoot you?' I tell them: 'Death is horrible, but it would be worse to be in one of his jails.' " <br><br>To avoid that risk, she usually travels overnight across the border and seldom stays longer than 24 hours, just long enough to visit her son, Ivan, 21, who is at university in Belgrade. Her daughter, Sonia, 18, has just finished school there and has taken her mother's advice to study medicine in Slovenia. <br><br>"I hope they don't leave our country altogether, but it is their choice. I refuse to call myself, or anyone else, Serb, Croat, Muslim or any such thing. I still think of us as Yugoslavs, but it's easier to believe we can be European. That thought keeps me sane." <br><br>There are aspects of present life in Sarajevo that she finds distasteful, in particular the presence of so many gangsters around the city centre who, by common consent, appear to run the place. <br><br>They are not hard to spot in their Porsche and Mercedes convertibles, their shoulder holsters visible under their hand-stitched linen jackets. From their tables in the more fashionable restaurants, they operate prostitution and smuggling rackets in drugs and tobacco, boastful they can bribe their way out of any prosecution. <br><br>She says: "I'm not sure they would behave like this if my grandfather were still around, but men like Milosevic rely upon them to get him money and to protect him." <br><br>It is up to historians, she says, to judge Tito's legacy. Ask what she would like hers to be, she describes how she wants to establish a "peace park" in Sarajevo. Ideally it would be modelled on Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, so that visitors could salute the righteous people who helped to save the city and those trapped in its siege, but could also learn about those responsible for the worst carnage in Europe since her grandfather fought Hitler. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times : Tito's heir a challenge to Milosevic ``x967791920,63243,``x``x
``xSpecial report: Serbia <br><br>Gillian Sandford in Zajecar <br>Monday September 4, 2000 <br><br>The leading opposition candidate for the presidency of Yugoslavia, Vojislav Kostunica, played on the nationalist pride of the thousands of people who gathered to hear him launch his election campaign in the Socialist heartland of eastern Serbia. <br>A buzz of approval ran through the main square in Zajecar, close to the Bulgarian border, as they heard him say: "Everyone in Serbia still has some heroic blood. And we will show how worthy we are of our ancestors on September 24." <br><br>He is looking for the votes of people who have traditionally supported Slobodan Milosevic and he made his challenge far away from Belgrade, the capital. <br><br>Mr Kostunica is the candidate of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DOS), a coalition of 19 opposition groups. According to the latest opinion polls he is leading President Milosevic by 51% to 31%. <br><br>Just over 70,000 people live in the Zajecar region. According to a DOS official, Cedomir Jovanovic, around a third of them are without work, although the official figure is lower. <br><br>The town has a core of opposition supporters, but in the villages the Socialists keep an iron grip on the loyalty of the old and uneducated peasant farmers. <br><br>Mr Kostunica berated communism and the Milosevic regime for stamping out democracy in Yugoslavia <br><br>"Reality has been fabricated." he said. "So don't be surprised if you hear in this big factory of lies that there were 10 of you here." <br><br>He promised to restore normal life and return Yugoslavia back to the world community. <br><br>Afterwards he led an enthusiastic group to the town's Orthodox church, said a prayer, and then had a private conversation with Archbishop Justin: a symbolic gesture which implied that the weight of the church was behind him and will help sway voters to his cause. <br><br>Outside the church a pensioner, Danilo Petkovic, 65, said: "I will vote for him. I would give him two, if I could. But we are not like the communists. We are the honest ones. I think 80% of Zajecar will vote for him." <br><br>But the real Socialist supporters are in isolated villages, where the daily news comes from state television and many people do not read newspapers. <br><br>The three hundred villagers of Gornji Bela Reka live 18 miles from Zajeca, close to the Bulgarian border. <br><br>Milivoje Veljkovic, 58, a peasant farmer there, said "Milosevic is with the people. He has shown it. Ever since he came into power he has fought for Serbia and Yugoslavia. <br><br>"Milosevic has looked after people. Everyone has a pension. I think everyone in the village thinks the same as me." <br><br>Asked about the hard times and the Nato bombing, he said: "I blame the ones from outside who are creating rules for us. All the countries that bombed us didn't have any reason, because we didn't attack anybody." <br><br>On the way to a nearby village an elderly woman in mourning black sat on a stone and watching her two goats. Bosanka Stojanovic, 70, said: "What do we expect from elections? Who has been up to now will stay. It hasn't been bad, so it won't be bad in the future." <br><br>With her pension of less than £10 a month she survives with her two goats, three sheep and a small plot of land. "Yes, I will vote for Milosevic," she said, smiling with her few remaining teeth. <br><br>•The EU will revise its policy towards Serbia radically if voters opt for democracy in the elections, the French foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, said yesterday. <br><br>He was speaking for the French presidency of the EU at a foreign ministers meeting in Evian, and said all 15 members supported the statement. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Rival opens fight in Milosevic territory ``x968051656,78121,``x``x
``xTom Walker, Diplomatic Correspondent <br> <br>INTERNATIONAL war crimes investigators are for the first time focusing on atrocities against Serbian civilians that were committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). <br> Sources close to prosecutors in the Hague confirmed last week that its forensic experts were checking five sites where war crimes were allegedly carried out by members of the KLA. Their findings could lead to a request to Nato's Kfor troops to arrest several senior figures in the new Kosovo Albanian elite, including possibly Hashim Thaci, the KLA's former political leader, or Ramush Haridinaj, one of his main political rivals. <br><br>United Nations sources have already revealed that Agim Ceku, the guerrillas' former commander, may be the subject of a secret "sealed" indictment for his activities while fighting for the Croatian army against the Serbs. Like Thaci and Haridinaj, Ceku, who now heads the Kosovo Protection Corps, the local defence force, has denied wrong-doing. <br><br>The investigation could radically alter the international perception of the conflict, in which Albanians were seen as the largely innocent victims of Serbian aggression. After a year of growing concern about hundreds of revenge killings of Serbs by Albanians in the province, there are signs that the public relations pendulum may begin to swing the Serbs' way. <br><br>The investigations by the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia are among its most secretive, with officials fearing retaliation by the Albanians. "The operations of the KLA clearly involved many activities we should scrutinise," said one Hague official. <br><br>"There's a real problem in unravelling their cell structure, but we may well end up pointing the finger at senior figures. The difficulty then will be persuading any Nato nation to arrest them." <br><br>All five sites were discovered by the Serbian police as they regained territory lost to the KLA in the summer of 1998. As Albanian villages were being destroyed in the Serbian police offensives that grabbed the international media spotlight, the plight of the rural Serbian peasantry was often ignored and dozens of villagers and farmers were abducted, tortured and left in mass graves. <br><br>Three of the areas under investigation are thought to be the villages of Klecka and Glodjane and the town of Orahovac. <br><br>The killings in Klecka have been linked to Thaci, who now heads the Democratic party of Kosovo. The Belgrade media made great play of the discovery in August 1998 of what it claimed were 22 Serbian bodies in a lime kiln in Klecka. <br><br>Glodjane, further west in the Decane area bordering Albania, was fiercely contested by the Serbs and Albanians. In September 1998 the Serbian media centre in Pristina claimed that the bodies of 34 people had been found in a canal there. They were a mixture of Serbian farmers, some gypsies and Albanians suspected of being collaborators. The local commander at the time was Haradinaj, now head of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo. <br><br>In Orahovac, an ancient Balkan maze of cobbled streets and mixed ethnicities, at least 50 Serbs were abducted by the KLA in July 1998, never to be seen again. In the autumn hundreds of angry Serbs marched six miles through the hills to Dragobilj, the local KLA headquarters and one of the few places where Islamic mujaheddin fighters were seen. The protest failed to persuade the KLA to give any details of the missing Serbs. <br><br>Most inquiries made so far have been met with silence and few witnesses are thought likely to be brave enough to reveal the brutality of the KLA. <br><br>One former Albanian commander, who now lives in the West, told The Sunday Times that he saw two Serbian policemen tied to the backs of Jeeps and dragged to their deaths during the fighting around Glodjane. He said he had no intention of talking to the war crimes prosecutors and wished to forget Kosovo altogether. <br><br>The Serbs, too, are unlikely to co-operate with the Hague because Belgrade refuses to recognise the tribunal. Milosevic and Milan Milutinovic, the Serbian president, are both indicted by the tribunal, and Milosevic is believed to have offered a bolthole to Radovan Karadzic, the most wanted suspect of the Bosnian conflict. <br><br>"We're not permitted to make any interviews in Serbia proper and that is a considerable hindrance," said Paul Risley, spokesman for Carla Del Ponte, the tribunal's senior prosecutor. <br><br>It is also not clear whether investigations into the KLA's activities can be extended into the period after Nato entered Kosovo in June 1999. Authorities in Belgrade claim there have been 1,041 murders in the province since then - with 910 of the victims being Serbs or Montenegrins. In the most recent attacks on Serbs, an eight-year-old child was killed by a hit-and-run driver near the town of Lipljan last month, and a hand grenade was lobbed into a basketball court injuring 10 children north of Pristina. A farmer aged 80 was machine-gunned to death in the nearby village of Crkvna Vodica while he was tending his cattle. <br><br>The claims of genocide being made by the Albanians at Belgrade two years ago are now being thrown back at them, but the war crimes tribunal remains dispassionate. "We're not seeing genocide at the moment, but severe human rights violations. There is no evidence that any group wants to annihilate the Serbs rather than just force them out," said an official. <br><br><br>Milosevic builds bunker bolthole <br><br><br>AS Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, faces the prospect of defeat at the polls for the first time in his political career, it has emerged that he has begun building an underground bunker complex for himself beneath a villa in eastern Serbia once used by Marshal Tito, writes Tom Walker. <br><br>The extensive renovations of the former Yugoslav dictator's residence on a mountain known as Crni Vrh near the town of Bor come amid speculation in Belgrade about Milosevic's likely next move. <br><br>The formation of a new army unit designated to re-turn to Kosovo suggests Milosevic is willing to make more mayhem, but the strange goings-on at Crni Vrh indicate that he is contemplating life as a private citizen wanted for war crimes. <br><br>There is speculation that the bunker may provide him with refuge from international investigators trying to bring him to trial or even his own fellow countrymen if the popular mood turns against him. <br><br>News of the extensions under the villa - known to locals as "the forbidden city" - leaked out after Marko, Milosevic's freewheeling son, returned from a visit there, and told staff at his private Madonna discotheque in the clan's home town of Pozarevac that his father feared the worst. Only the villa's roof is visible from the nearest road, but powerful lights illuminate the site at night. Villagers say Milosevic normally travels there by helicopter, and he is said to have spent much of the Nato air campaign in a command bunker there. <br><br>The elections, set for September 24, will probably determine whether Milosevic has to retreat to Crni Vrh for his own safety. Already his security forces appear to be doing everything possible to turn the election his way, with the formation of an elite army unit in southern Kosovo an obvious ploy to swing voters. <br><br>About 1,000 infantry, backed by 200 tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopters, have begun exercises known as Return 2000, a clear reference to the army's desire to take up a clause in the Nato military agreement for Kosovo that allows limited numbers of Yugoslav soldiers back into the province. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times : KLA faces trials for war crimes on Serbs Inquiry turns on Albanians ``x968051686,82399,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Sept. 2 -- Vojislav Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer, was fired from the Belgrade University law faculty in 1974 for defending a senior professor jailed for criticizing the government. In 1989, when Serbia's new leader, Slobodan Milosevic, tried to co-opt intellectuals and offered to rehire those fired then, only Mr. Kostunica refused. <br>Now Mr. Kostunica, a moderate nationalist, anti-Communist and democrat, is trying to take Mr. Milosevic's job as Yugoslavia's president in elections later this month. He is the most serious opposition candidate ever to challenge Mr. Milosevic, and polls suggest that Mr. Kostunica, now 56, ought to be able to win. <br><br>It is an election being closely watched by Washington and NATO, which bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days last year over Kosovo and have labored since to push Mr. Milosevic out of office. <br><br>For Mr. Milosevic, who has been indicted for war crimes, this election has turned into a battle for his political survival. He called it nine months early to shore up his international legitimacy, but now he may be forced to steal votes in order to prevail. <br><br>"In some sense, it's a matter of life and death for him," Mr. Kostunica said in a long interview here. "It's why I hesitated in the beginning. I thought Milosevic must have considered everything very carefully, but I overestimated the rationale in his decision. Now I think he miscalculated, and I'm sure he did not expect my candidacy." <br><br>Mr. Kostunica, who describes himself as a generally pessimistic man, now senses "a feeling of victory in the air." He said: "This is the moment -- people can't keep living, or surviving, like this. Individuals come up to me and say, 'Save us,' and they are sincere. And they say, 'I'm hungry.' People know that if Milosevic stays in power they will go on living like this. It's an important feeling. But it frightens me, too." <br><br>Why? "It's frightening because the stakes are so high for him," Mr. Kostunica said slowly. "Milosevic will do everything he can to win in the first round," even if it risks popular anger over fraud, sets off a new round of opposition demonstrations and undermines the renewed democratic legitimacy he seeks. <br><br>Mr. Kostunica is one of four major candidates. If no one wins more than 50 percent of the votes on Sept. 24, there would be a second-round runoff between the two top finishers on Oct. 8. In a free and fair, head-to-head race with Mr. Milosevic, all the polls show, Mr. Kostunica (pronounced, kosh-TOON-itza) is almost sure to win. <br><br>But Mr. Kostunica is not convinced that Mr. Milosevic will allow himself to be beaten or has any intention of handing over power peacefully. He expects widespread vote stealing and even raises the possibility that Mr. Milosevic will postpone these elections by creating some military "emergency," Mr. Kostunica believes. <br><br>This skepticism about the election results -- no matter the vote -- is widespread, and is among the opposition's greatest problems. While some 35 percent of voters in the polls back Mr. Kostunica compared to some 25 percent for Mr. Milosevic, about 16 percent back other candidates and 24 percent say they will not vote or are undecided. But more than 45 percent say they expect Mr. Milosevic will remain in power after the elections in any case. <br><br>"People are fatalistic about the way they see these elections," Mr. Kostunica concedes. "Our biggest challenge is to convince people that their vote, which does not require too much investment from them, can change Serbia." Mr. Milosevic, on the other hand, with state television and a disciplined party behind him, will try to keep turnout low, while seeking to win with high and uncheckable vote totals from Kosovo itself, refugees from Kosovo in southern Serbia, the army and the police, Mr. Kostunica said. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic's campaign is concentrating on his defense of the Serbs against the united might and perceived injustice of the West, his administrative competence, his work to rebuild the country after the bombing and his promises of stability and development. His slogan is "Under the flag of freedom, for Yugoslavia." <br><br>Even a Milosevic defeat would not suddenly change Yugoslavia, Mr. Kostunica cautions. With Montenegro's government boycotting the election, Mr. Milosevic's coalition should retain control over the federal Parliament, as they continue to run Serbia, the larger of Yugoslavia's remaining two republics since the country all but disintegrated in the 1990's. And with the opposition still divided on the local level, despite American pressure to unite, the ruling parties could win back some cities they lost in 1996. <br><br>"This the moment when the first step will be made," Mr. Kostunica said. "What's problematic is that the first step is the presidential elections, where Milosevic is running, and so where it's the easiest, it's also the hardest." <br><br>For the Yugoslavs, Mr. Kostunica's virtues are many: a reputation for modesty, honesty and principle; a belief in democracy and the rule of law; a career untainted by any previous cooperation with the Milosevic regime; a clear patriotism and sense of nationhood; and a nuanced but sharply critical stance toward the United States and the Western countries that bombed Yugoslavia last year. <br><br>His main campaign poster plays on his incorruptibility, saying: "Who can look you straight in the eyes? Kostunica." It is a quiet commentary on the accusations often made against other opposition leaders like Vuk Draskovic of the Serbian Renewal Movement and Zoran Djindjic of the Democratic Party, who are seen as having been tarnished by their past associations either with Mr. Milosevic or the West. <br><br>Mr. Kostunica's patriotism, his criticism of the war-crimes tribunal at The Hague as a political instrument, his support for Serbs in Kosovo and his skepticism toward the West made him a good choice for a democratic opposition accused over and over again by Mr. Milosevic of being traitors in the pay of Washington and the NATO countries that bombed Yugoslavia. <br><br>It was easy for the regime and state television to attack Mr. Djindjic and Mr. Draskovic, who was filmed kissing the hand of Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, for being Western lackeys. But it can only accuse Mr. Kostunica of being allied with them -- of shaking the hand of the man who kissed the hand of Dr. Albright. <br><br>As the federal information minister, Goran Matic, said: "The West picked Kostunica because he could look like a genuine Serbian candidate. But he is the candidate of Madeleine Albright, and Milosevic is the candidate of the people of Yugoslavia, and they will vote for the man who defended them." <br><br>There have been a few personal attacks. The Radical Party leader, Vojislav Seselj, has insinuated that Mr. Kostunica is somehow unmanly because, although married, he has no children and is very fond of his two cats. "I think it's just silly," Mr. Kostunica said. "A friend told me that when he heard the story about the cats he realized they couldn't find anything else." <br><br>State-controlled news media have also made contradictory charges that Mr. Kostunica, who was once pictured with an assault rifle in Kosovo, is too nationalist, but also that he intends to break up Serbia, since he is supported by Muslim parties in Sandzak and opposition parties in Vojvodina that seek greater autonomy. <br><br>In the interests of unity, Mr. Djindjic and the other opposition leaders threw their support to Mr. Kostunica; only Mr. Draskovic refused to join the united opposition, naming his own presidential candidate, the Belgrade mayor, Vojislav Mihailovic, whose presence in the race will make it nearly impossible for Mr. Kostunica to win in the first round. <br><br>In a rally Friday night kicking off his campaign, Mr. Kostunica vowed to defend Yugoslavia and bring it back into Europe; promised generosity and no revenge toward the regime and its servants; and pledged his "word of honor" to "try to change this state of ours for the better in accordance with God's and human laws, and to never let power change me." <br><br>A rather shy and reserved man, he seemed almost overwhelmed by the response to his words. <br><br>Mr. Kostunica, despite his criticism of Western arrogance and hypocrisy now, is a believer in democracy and the rule of law. He translated "The Federalist Papers" into Serbo-Croatian in 1981, and was a member of a committee to defend freedom of speech in the early 1980's, when the post-Tito regime cracked down on advocates of nationalism ranging from Franjo Tudjman in Croatia and Mr. Seselj in Serbia to Alija Izetbegovic in Bosnia and Adem Demaci in Kosovo. <br><br>He helped found the Democratic Party in 1989, when, as he said, "I lived in that democratic air. But my picture of the West was rather idealistic. I haven't changed my values or pro-Western attitudes despite my criticism of the United States during the war; I see it as defending the West from itself, insisting on original democratic and liberal values." <br><br>At the same time, he thinks there must be a counterbalance to American power, that the tribunal in The Hague is an instrument of American political goals rather than a model of legal justice, and that Washington too often insists on supporting politicians, like Biljana Plavsic and Milorad Dodik in Bosnia, who do not have realistic support in the larger population. <br><br>He thinks that Washington has helped Mr. Milosevic remain in power first by supporting him and then by attacking him and punishing all Serbs with bombs and sanctions, making the country hostages in "a private war." <br><br>Tactically, of course, it is also important for Mr. Kostunica to keep his distance from Western oral and financial support for the opposition here and for his own candidacy. He has set up his own campaign structure, separate from the alliance operation Mr. Djindjic runs, to protect himself from too much Western taint. And Mr. Kostunica has criticized the Americans for setting up a Belgrade embassy in exile in Budapest to assist Serbia's democrats, saying that such a goal is a "kiss of death for all truly democratic and patriotic forces in Serbia." <br><br>Still, he says, he wants Yugoslavia to rejoin Europe and the West, "and I'm prepared to take steps to ensure it." Handing over Mr. Milosevic to The Hague, however, would not be a priority, he said. <br><br>"Everyone in this country is in need of some stability and peace," said Mr. Kostunica. "That's my message to the state apparatus, the army and the police, who need it, too. They also don't see a clear future if nothing changes here, and many of them are also tired of all this." <br><br>Mr. Kostunica finds it hopeful that "someone who has never been part of the Communist nomenklatura appears to have a chance" to take the country into a different future. "I sometimes have a vague, irrational feeling that if it happens, it would be a form of justice," he said quietly. <br><br>"It would be a validation of the beliefs that our families had for the last 50 years, and it would be some sort of God's justice." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Milosevic Foe Leading Field in Yugoslavia``x968051720,34161,``x``x
``x<br><br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>ELGRADE, Serbia, Sept. 4 — A split in the opposition to President Slobodan Milosevic is putting at risk its main achievement so far: its control over Serbia's major cities, including radio and television stations.<br><br>American officials are pressing opposition politicians to settle their differences to present a united slate of candidates for the local elections on Sept. 24, but so far without success. Otherwise, they fear, Mr. Milosevic can regain lost ground and win back some cities.<br><br>This could happen even though the opposition is probably more united and popular now than it has been since its victory in the last local elections, in 1996.<br><br>In the race for president of Yugoslavia, Mr. Milosevic is trailing the main opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, in opinion polls. The polls indicate that a large majority of Serbs want change in the elections, which are for the federal presidency, the federal Parliament and municipal governments.<br><br>But a game of mutual blackmail over the presidential race is blocking opposition unity on the local level, much to the confusion of ordinary voters and to the distress of local government officials, who do not share the rivalries of their national party bosses. <br><br>Some senior opposition politicians, who expect Mr. Milosevic to try to retain the presidency through vote fraud or other means, say one of his main goals is to take back some cities before vital Serbian elections, which are due next year. Serbia, long Mr. Milosevic's power base, dominates Montenegro, the other republic remaining in Yugoslavia. <br><br>Opposition control over major cities like Kragujevac, Kraljevo and Uzice is at stake, with even Belgrade, the capital, at risk, say both opposition officials and members of the governing coalition.<br><br>"I think Milosevic called these elections more to win back some cities than for any other reason," said Goran Svilanovic, leader of the Civil Alliance, part of the united opposition backing Mr. Kostunica. "This is the real fight."<br><br>Mr. Svilanovic said the opposition must be realistic. <br><br>"I know how many people want to wake up one day and find Milosevic gone, but it's a step-by-step fight," he said. "We need to take pieces of his power and enlarge the number of cities we control. And if we lose some of these cities, these parties may not exist in a year, when we're facing Serbian elections." <br><br>A united opposition could win cities currently controlled by the government he said.<br><br>Milan Milosevic, a political analyst with the magazine Vreme (and no relation to the president), said that President Milosevic's coalition will win the federal elections because of a boycott by Montenegro, and that his coalition badly wants victories in the local races.<br><br>"President Milosevic solves one problem at a time, the one in front of him," the commentator said. "These elections will start the real game, which will go on for the next year. He's a fighter, and he'll continue to fight."<br><br>President Milosevic has ruled by dividing the opposition. After his losses in 1996, he won Serbian elections handily in 1997 when one part of the opposition, led by Zoran Djindjic of the Democratic Party, boycotted the election. Another part, led by Mr. Djindjic's archrival, Vuk Draskovic of the Serbian Renewal Movement, did not boycott the vote. <br><br>Regardless of the national rivalry, the two groups continue to cooperate in many city governments.<br><br>The mercurial Mr. Draskovic, who lives in Montenegro, is keeping aloof from the rest of the opposition, which has banded together to support Mr. Kostunica. By doing so, Mr. Draskovic seems to be harming his own party, which had been the largest and best organized opposition group.<br><br>Mr. Draskovic insisted on running his own candidate for the presidency — Vojislav Mihailovic, the mayor of Belgrade — and on running his own candidates for the federal Parliament. While he is facing great pressure from his party to unite with the rest of the opposition on the local level, it is Mr. Kostunica, backed by Mr. Djindjic, who is playing hardball.<br><br>Mr. Draskovic now wants joint slates on the local level. But Mr. Kostunica and Mr. Djindjic insist that Mr. Draskovic and his party first withdraw Mr. Mihailovic, who has no chance of winning. <br><br>Some experts and American officials say Mr. Kostunica, and especially Mr. Djindjic, also see this as a chance to finish off the difficult Mr. Draskovic as a serious opposition leader.<br><br>"The old personal rivalries and suspicions between Djindjic and Draskovic are a factor," one official said. "Djindjic smells Draskovic's blood in the water."<br><br>In interviews, both Mr. Kostunica and Mr. Djindjic deny any such motivation, saying it is Mr. Draskovic who is hurting the opposition by remaining aloof and running Mr. Mihailovic as a spoiler.<br><br>"Mr. Milosevic is happy that Mihailovic is running, and this makes me careful," Mr. Djindjic said. "On the presidential level, we need a black-and-white race to win a million more votes than Milosevic. We can't afford to be confused on the local level and be attacked by our coalition partners."<br><br>The difficulty stems from changes in the local elections made last year by Mr. Milosevic's government — to a winner-take-all system, eliminating a second-round runoff between the two top finishers. So a divided opposition could be beaten by a determined member of the ruling coalition. <br><br>Under such a system, Mr. Milosevic would have done well in the 1996 local elections, rather than losing them in the second round. Even so, it took months of daily demonstrations and marches for him to acknowledge his defeat in those local elections.<br><br>But now, after the NATO bombing last year and the increased repression of dissent, it is not clear that Serbs have the energy or optimism to demonstrate again or to confront the regime openly, even if the voting seem to be manipulated.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica and Mr. Djindjic say there is no chance now for a united opposition slate on the local level, but American officials continue to push, as do Mr. Draskovic's aides, pressed by local officials. One of their main arguments is that even if Mr. Mihailovic stays in the presidential race, he will not win enough votes to make much of a difference in the results, since many members of Mr. Draskovic's party will vote for Mr. Kostunica anyway.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Elections Near, Rivalries Split Opposition to Milosevic``x968318709,65947,``x``x
``x<br>By Don Hill<br><br><br>Ivan Stambolic -- past president of Serbia and the latest former associate of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to disappear -- vowed that he had retired from politics, and his family says he had no enemies. Still. many in Serbia believe that government authorities engineered his mysterious vanishing. RFE/RL correspondent Don Hill tells the story. <br><br>Prague, 31 August 2000 (RFE/RL) -- To a casual observer, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic might seem to be having a run of terrible luck. Over the last decade, a number of Milosevic's former friends and political associates have met with accidents, been gunned down by unknown assailants or simply disappeared. <br><br>The latest of these, former Serb president Ivan Stambolic, went out for his regular morning run last Friday -- and has not been heard from since. <br><br>On Saturday (Aug 26), three Serbian opposition parties said they were convinced that Milosevic's organization was behind Stambolic's vanishing month before scheduled presidential elections. The New Democracy party said this in a statement: "When darkness starts to swallow up people, [all] of us have reason for concern." <br><br>Ivan Stambolic is more than merely a Serbian intellectual and political has-been. In the words of Ljubica Markovic, the director of Serbia's independent news agency BETA, Stambolic was Milosevic's "political father." <br><br>In 1987, Josip Broz Tito -- who by the force of his personality had held Yugoslavia's Bosnians, Serbs, Croats and other ethnic groups together as one country for 35 years -- was seven years dead. The Serbian province of Kosovo was restive amid growing confrontations between Kosovar Albanians and its then Serb majority. The Serbian president tapped his protege, a little known bureaucrat named Slobodan Milosevic, to go to Kosovo to calm the situation. That president was Ivan Stambolic. <br><br>Milosevic did not bring calm to Kosovo. Instead, he made a fiery nationalistic speech promising the Serbs they never again would be defeated. He said: "Unless you fight for Serbia, your ancestors will be betrayed, your descendants will be shamed. These are your lands, your fields, your gardens, your memories." <br><br>With that single speech, Milosevic reawakened the slumbering ogre of Serbian nationalism. BETA Director Markovic said in a telephone interview from Belgrade that under Tito any appeal to such narrow nationalism had been prohibited. <br><br>"It was a forbidden topic at that time. No nationalism was ever permitted in Yugoslavia. And Serb nationalism was the first one to arise, to be raised, to be put on the agenda by Mr. Milosevic, and that caused a sort of scandal." <br><br>Milosevic became an instant Serb nationalist hero. That was the beginning of his political career. When he returned home in triumph, President Stambolic publicly denounced him for embarking on the dangerous course of appealing to Serb nationalism. That was the beginning of the end of Stambolic' political career. <br><br>A year later, a Milosevic faction forced Stambolic from office. Milosevic threw his old boss and sponsor a bone. He appointed Stambolic director of the Yugoslav Bank for International Cooperation. <br><br>Markovic remembers that Stambolic took on his new job with grace and skill, making the bank a force for economic good in the country until Milosevic abruptly replaced him with a crony. Still, the BETA director says she remains of mixed mind about Stambolic. In her words: <br><br>"I can't say I'm an admirer, but I respect very much what he did after he was kicked out of political life [but] only after that. Because before that, he was a member of the communist establishment, very strong, very decisive. He was leading cleansing campaigns against the Serbian media. He was not very liberally oriented at that time." <br><br>When, six years ago, Markovic and a handful of colleagues sought to establish BETA, now Serbia's most influential independent news organization, banker Stambolic -- the former antagonist of a free press -- helped arrange a vital bank loan. <br><br>Markovic says she wasn't close to Stambolic, but was told by colleagues who were that he was remorseful over his role in Milosevic's rise. Stambolic's name had appeared in recent public opinion polls as a possible candidate to run against Milosevic in next month's presidential elections. He told friends that at 65 he considered his political life over. It was a time for younger, newer faces, he said. <br><br>Even so, Stambolic continued to be outspoken and public in his criticism of Milosevic. He also frequently gave advice to Milosevic's foes in Montenegro, even traveling to the smaller Yugoslav republic on several recent occasions. <br><br>BETA broke the story last Friday (Aug 25) about the former president's disappearance. For six days, the Milosevic government and its state-controlled news outlets remained ominously silent about the incident. Markovic agrees with those who believe that Stambolic is the latest victim of Milosevic's forces. <br><br>"My personal opinion at the first moment I heard it (the disappearance report) was that the regime is behind it, that they're cooking something up, and that they want to press him and that he will be released in two or three days. Now those hopes are fading away." <br><br>Vojislav Kustunica is the presidential candidate of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia and has emerged in the polls as likely to defeat Milosevic in a fair election. He told a press conference Monday (Aug 28), "This is part of a wider, extremely worrying process which speaks about the situation we live in." <br><br>The Milosevic regime has closed the coming election to most international observers. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia: Missing Serb Leader Was 'Man Who Invented Milosevic'``x968318739,6188,``x``x
``x<br>Westerners Plead Innocent at Terror Hearing in Yugoslavia <br><br><br>B E L G R A D E, Yugoslavia, Aug. 9 — Two Canadians and two Britons pleaded innocent today at the opening of a hearing at Belgrade’s military court into whether to raise formal, terrorism-related charges against them, their lawyer said.<br> 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, 45, and his nephew Liam Hall, arrested together last week.<br> Prangnell, 41, and Yore, 31, were detained by the Yugoslav army while returning from a brief holiday in Montenegro, Yugoslavia’s smaller, Western-leaning republic, on Aug. 2. Both had been helping the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe in the vital work of training Kosovo’s new police force.<br> 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.<br> “This is only a preliminary investigation, an examination of the suspects, nothing else,” Djursic 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.”<br> Today’s hearing lasted nine hours and Djurisic said the legal proceedings would continue with testimony from witnesses Friday. He said it could be some time before the military prosecutor announces a decision on whether to lodge charges.<br> “We can count on 15 days or three weeks before we will know what the final decision is, whether the charges will be raised,” he said. <br>Speaking Issues<br>Djurisic said he had a chance to see the detainees, and they appeared to be in good shape, but he not had a chance to speak with them at length. “They have denied all the charges,” he said.<br> Canadian and British diplomats also visited the court today in the hope of attending the hearing and meeting the detainees. But after five hours inside, they emerged saying they had been denied access.<br> “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.<br> “We were told consular access will be granted tomorrow morning,” he said.<br> Prangnell was allowed his first phone contact with British officials in Belgrade on Tuesday, when he requested legal representation. The monitored phone call was described as “calm.” But Prangnell also described his treatment, and that of the other three, by their Yugoslav military captors as “firm.”<br> The four men appeared well if subdued when they were paraded on Belgrade television last week, but “firm” was probably the nearest Prangnell could say under the noses of his captors to indicate that they have been pushed around.<br> Britain’s Foreign Office has said Yugoslavia is in breach of the Geneva Convention by not allowing consular access to the men.<br> Craig Bale of 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.<br> The lawyers were proposed by the embassies after Prangnell telephoned Gordon on Tuesday and requested independent legal counsel. Previously they had been assigned a lawyer by the military authorities who had arrested them in Montenegro.<br> Djurisic and Jankovic defended two Australian aid workers for the CARE organization who were arrested during NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia last year and charged with espionage before being released by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br><br>Westerners Accused of Terrorism<br><br>The four Westerners are being accused of planning terrorist activities in Montenegro. If charged, tried and found guilty, they could face 15 years in jail.<br> Other cases in the past have resulted in show trials and convictions, followed by a prompt release after a visit to Belgrade by a leading figure such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson.<br> Yugoslav authorities have said the investigation into the case could take six months, but diplomatic observers expect a swift show trial with which Milosevic would try to score points before the first round of elections on Sept. 24. There is little chance, they say, of the men being freed until the elections are over.<br> The evidence against the men is based on equipment the Yugoslav army claims it found in the car belonging to the two Canadians. This included 20 yards of detonating cable and 38 yards of slow burning fuse plus 79 detonator caps and “pliers for creating explosive devices,” the army said.<br> Going runs a construction and mining company in the capital of Kosovo, Pristina. His main base is in Albania. Part of his job is quarrying, for which such equipment might be used. There is no explanation of why he chose to take it to Montenegro, having been warned such an expedition could be risky.<br> Montenegro, with its anti-Milosevic leadership, does not require visas for holiday travel. The Yugoslav army, which also patrols the borders, does demand them. The men are also charged with illegal entry into Yugoslavia. <br><br><br><br> The Dutch Version <br>Aug. 9 — The Netherlands is also expressing “extreme irritation” with Belgrade’s continued refusal to allow them any access to another group of foreign captives — four Dutchmen, ostensibly on a “survival holiday,” who were picked up at the Montenegrin-Serbian border four weeks ago.<br> But they have ruled out moves such as asking for Russian mediation, as Britain’s Foreign Office has done. The four were tourists, they say, not employees of an international organization.<br> The background of the four, linked to the ultra-right scene, is also posing problems for the Dutch. The leader of the group, Bas van Schaik, 31, is a bouncer in an Amsterdam bar and makes a living as a knife grinder. He also keeps dangerous dogs, one of which the group took with them. The group wore military-style uniforms and were very keen on survival and paramilitary weekends.<br> Van Schaik confessed on Serb television that the aim of the group was to kidnap President Milosevic, who has a $5 million bounty on his head as one of the most wanted indicted war criminals at the War Crimes court in The Hague. They would “bring his head home in a box” or smuggle him out in a ski box.<br> Friends of van Schaik who have watched the TV pictures claim he was either drugged or beaten into submission in order to make any such statement. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTheir Day in Court ``x968318777,29064,``x``x
``x<br><br>By ALEN MLATISUMA, Associated Press Writer <br><br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) - The prime minister of Montenegro, Yugoslavia's smaller republic, said Wednesday that President Slobodan Milosevic would never concede defeat in elections even if the ballot count goes against him.<br><br>``I believe Mr. Milosevic would never acknowledge a defeat in the elections and would do everything to stay in power,'' Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic said.<br><br>Milosevic's behavior has always been ``undemocratic,'' Vujanovic said, adding he saw no reason for the autocratic ruler to change should he lose the Sept. 24 Yugoslav presidential elections.<br><br>The elections will be decided in Serbia, the much larger Yugoslav republic and Milosevic's power base, and Vujanovic said that it would be ``up to the Serbian people and progressive forces within Serbia to struggle and achieve democracy - something I am convinced is entirely possible.''<br><br>Tensions have been growing in Montenegro in recent weeks ahead of the Yugoslav presidential and parliamentary elections. Vujanovic's pro-Western government has called on Montenegrins to boycott the vote, citing constitutional changes imposed by Milosevic that weaken the republic's clout in the two-state federation.<br><br>Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, considered a chief Milosevic foe, has claimed that if his tiny republic of 600,000 participated in the vote, it would give legitimacy to the Belgrade regime and prolong its survival.<br><br>Montenegro is also hesitant to proclaim outright independence, fearing clashes within the republic, also bitterly split between those who back the reformist leadership and those loyal to Milosevic.<br><br>Milosevic's regime has attacked Vujanovic's government for its ties to the West, describing it as a traitor set on destroying Yugoslavia. Anti-Western sentiments in Yugoslavia remain strong following the NATO bombing campaign last year.<br><br>Despite the boycott, Montenegro has said it would not prevent those loyal to Milosevic from voting on Montenegrin territory.<br><br>Vujanovic also said Montenegrin officials and Milosevic's supporters are involved in discussions on how to organize the balloting in Montenegro in order to avoid further rise of tensions.<br><br>Should Montenegrin officials be denied the opportunity to observe the balloting, Vujanovic said they would be convinced of a carefully planned and premeditated election fraud.<br><br>Vujanovic also rejected recent claims by Milosevic's chief Montenegrin associate, Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, that 180,000 Montenegrins signed a petition supporting Milosevic's presidential candidacy. The claim is ``just a simple marketing move'' he said.<br><br>Also Wednesday, NATO peacekeepers stopped a high-ranking Serbian official and presidential candidate for about one hour in Kosovo before allowing him to leave the province.<br><br>Local villagers near Zvecan, in northern Kosovo, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Tomislav Nikolic and some 30 persons from his entourage were stopped after NATO troops discovered arms in the convoy. Nikolic, an ultranationalist, is running against Milosevic.<br><br>Reports that the NATO peacekeepers confiscated arms belonging to a Radical Party security guard traveling with Nikolic could not be immediately confirmed. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLeader: Milosevic Won't Accept Loss ``x968318796,56054,``x``x
``xSerb challenger driven out of town by organised thugs for trying to make election speech in Kosovo<br>Special report: Serbia<br><br>Nick Wood in Mitrovice, northern Kosovo <br><br><br>Supporters of Slobodan Milosevic broke up a campaign rally in Kosovo yesterday by the Yugoslav leader's main challenger in the presidential race, striking Vojislav Kostunica in the face with a stone and setting upon a convoy of cars protecting him. <br>French troops of the K-For peacekeeping force in Kosovo stood by without intervening. <br><br>Pelted by rotten tomatoes, Mr Kostunica, the candidate put up by an alliance comprising most of Yugoslavia's opposition parties, was bundled off the platform by his bodyguards after trying to address Serb inhabitants of the divided city of Mitrovice in northern Kosovo. <br><br>Then Mr Milosevic's supporters, some of them bussed in for the purpose, set about attacking Mr Kostunica's convoy. The soft-spoken university professor was hit with a stone below his eye. <br><br>Wiping the blood from a small cut under his eye, the challenger said Mr Milosevic must feel threatened if he was resorting to violence. "I am ashamed because I am a Serb, but I am also very satisfied because this means that Milosevic is weaker than ever," he said. <br><br>The rally in Mitrovice was intended to be a moment of glory for Mr Kostunica, who was touring Kosovo's Serb enclaves on his first visit to the province as a presidential candidate. The largely male crowd appeared uninterested, however, in being told this was the man who could beat Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>"He [Milosevic] put you up to this - God will forgive you but God will not forgive him," Mr Kostunica shouted at his attackers. <br><br>After trying to talk for 10 minutes he and his entourage were forced to withdraw. In front of them the row of cars in which they had arrived came under attack from crowds smashing windows and slashing tyres. <br><br>Mr Kostunica blamed plainclothes police planted in the crowd for the violence, and criticised Nato peacekeepers for failing to intervene even though they were standing at the edge of the crowd. French soldiers with riot shields and tear gas canisters, were eventually ordered to disperse the gathering. <br><br>The acknowledged leader of Mitrovice's Serb community, Oliver Ivanovic, watched the crowd's behavior uneasily, and blamed Mr Milosevic's forces. "Our dismay is that much greater that we did not prevent Mr Kostunica from being exposed to such an extremely unpleasant situation," he said. "We all know that he was the only Serb politician who really took to heart the plight of our people here." <br><br>At a press conference afterwards Mr Kostunica taunted Mr Milosovic by inviting him to visit Kosovo. K-For has vowed to arrest the Yugoslav leader as an indicted war criminal if he sets foot in Kosovo. <br><br>Mr Kostunica accused Mr Milosevic of neglecting hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled the province since Serb forces were driven out by Nato in June 1999. <br><br>But the main opposition candidate cast doubt on the fairness of both the local elections being overseen by the UN in Kosovo and the presidential elections: "I was very sceptical about local elections in October so I am sceptical about these elections in September because the situation is not normal in the rest of Kosovo because of Albanian terrorism and here because of Milosevic's terrorism as you have seen here." <br><br>Earlier yesterday, Mr Kostunica's convoy was held up at the Serbian border with Kosovo as K-For officials refused to let his party through. Overnight, Serbian Socialist party supporters put up Milosevic posters with the slogan, "Under the flag of freedom". Mr Kostunica's publicity matter was torn down. <br><br>Mr Kostunica bitterly attacked international sanctions against Yugoslavia, which helped to produce the resentment behind "some of the stones that we saw today". <br><br>"We are his [Mr Milosevic's] hostages and the hostages of the International Community." <br><br>The UN says election balloting can take place in Kosovo, but not inside UN buildings. The opposition says this will help Mr Milosevic's party, which is organising the voting expected to take place in private households. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Mob stones Milosevic rival ``x968999145,91261,``x``x
``xBy ERIC SCHMITT<br> <br>WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — House and Senate negotiators are fighting over a deadline for withdrawing American troops from Kosovo, renewing a clash with President Clinton and putting Gov. George W. Bush on the spot again, since he lobbied Senate Republicans to drop a similar provision earlier this year. <br><br>At issue is a proposal to cut off money for nearly 6,000 United States ground forces in Kosovo by April 1, forcing their withdrawal unless Congress authorizes an extension. <br><br>In May, the Senate rejected a similar measure, 53 to 47, with at least two or three Republicans saying they were swayed by Governor Bush, who called it a "legislative overreach" that would tie his hands if he became president. But House Republicans quietly attached a comparable provision to the Pentagon's $310 billion budget bill for fiscal year 2001. <br><br>House and Senate leaders are now meeting in a conference committee to reconcile the two versions of the military budget bills — one with the provision, the other without. The contentious language was one of the last sticking points negotiators faced in finishing the bill before Congress adjourns for the year.<br><br>By tonight, there were signs that Congressional Republicans were relenting. "I think we'll work something out," said Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee and who sponsored the original Senate measure. The House version was sponsored by Representative John R. Kasich, Republican of Ohio. <br><br>The dispute comes at an awkward time for Mr. Bush, the Republican presidential nominee, who has accused the Clinton administration of allowing the military's combat readiness to erode, in part by dispatching American forces on far- flung peacekeeping missions to places like Kosovo. <br><br>A spokesman for Mr. Bush, Ray Sullivan, said today that the governor objected to the Republican-written language for the same reasons that he balked at the Senate provision in May. "He views it as a legislative overreach on the powers of the president," said Mr. Sullivan, who added that Congressional Republicans were aware of Mr. Bush's views. <br><br>Critics say the provision would undermine the unity and morale of NATO's peacekeeping operation, which involves forces from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and other nations in and out of Europe. <br><br>In a letter sent late today to Senator Warner, Mr. Clinton warned that imposing an arbitrary deadline for withdrawal would also send a dangerous signal of uncertain American resolve to President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia before that country's elections scheduled for Sept. 24. <br><br>Under the provision, Mr. Clinton's successor would be required to certify to Congress that Washington's European allies were meeting their commitments in Kosovo for reconstruction aid, police officers, food and medicines. Without that certification, the measure required that money be spent in Kosovo only for a withdrawal of American troops. <br><br>The measure would require the allies to be responsible for at least 50 percent of reconstruction aid, 85 percent of humanitarian assistance and 90 percent of police officers in Kosovo. The allies are now providing 87 percent of the reconstruction aid, 73 percent of the humanitarian assistance and 87 percent of the police, the White House said. Some of the contributions are from non-European countries. <br><br>In a letter last month to Mr. Warner, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen criticized the provision, saying it was "unacceptable because it is counterproductive to peace in Kosovo and could seriously jeopardize relations between the United States and its NATO allies."<br><br>"If enacted this provision would take decision-making on the deployment of U.S. forces out of the hands of Congress and the president and put it into the hands of European governments — a dangerous precedent," said Mr. Cohen, who is the only Republican in the cabinet. <br><br>"This provision would create uncertainty about U.S. intentions and resoluteness, and could encourage an extremist element to take actions that could put American forces at increased risk, in the hope of triggering their withdrawal," he concluded. <br><br>But many Congressional Republicans say the provision is essential to relieve the burden on American ground troops in Kosovo and pressure European countries to pay a larger share of the reconstruction and policing costs for Kosovo. <br><br>"We feel pretty strongly about it," said Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the House majority leader. "The question is, how long will we have people over there, and when will we have a clear definition of what they're doing?" <br><br>Representative Floyd D. Spence of South Carolina, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, agreed: "We're tied down too much in different places right now. People are scattered all over the world, our readiness is down and our equipment is wearing out. We have to have our allies do more." <br><br>But Democrats echoed Mr. Cohen's dire warnings. "These arbitrary limits are not going to be helpful," said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. <br><br>Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the panel's senior Democrat and a top negotiator in the conference committee, said: "It undermines the coalition and creates terrible morale for our troops to let them know they're coming out." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Bush on Spot as G.O.P. Pushes to Pull Out G.I.'s From Kosovo``x968999176,10333,``x``x
``xBy ERIC SCHMITT<br> <br>WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — House and Senate negotiators are fighting over a deadline for withdrawing American troops from Kosovo, renewing a clash with President Clinton and putting Gov. George W. Bush on the spot again, since he lobbied Senate Republicans to drop a similar provision earlier this year. <br><br>At issue is a proposal to cut off money for nearly 6,000 United States ground forces in Kosovo by April 1, forcing their withdrawal unless Congress authorizes an extension. <br><br>In May, the Senate rejected a similar measure, 53 to 47, with at least two or three Republicans saying they were swayed by Governor Bush, who called it a "legislative overreach" that would tie his hands if he became president. But House Republicans quietly attached a comparable provision to the Pentagon's $310 billion budget bill for fiscal year 2001. <br><br>House and Senate leaders are now meeting in a conference committee to reconcile the two versions of the military budget bills — one with the provision, the other without. The contentious language was one of the last sticking points negotiators faced in finishing the bill before Congress adjourns for the year.<br><br>By tonight, there were signs that Congressional Republicans were relenting. "I think we'll work something out," said Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee and who sponsored the original Senate measure. The House version was sponsored by Representative John R. Kasich, Republican of Ohio. <br><br>The dispute comes at an awkward time for Mr. Bush, the Republican presidential nominee, who has accused the Clinton administration of allowing the military's combat readiness to erode, in part by dispatching American forces on far- flung peacekeeping missions to places like Kosovo. <br><br>A spokesman for Mr. Bush, Ray Sullivan, said today that the governor objected to the Republican-written language for the same reasons that he balked at the Senate provision in May. "He views it as a legislative overreach on the powers of the president," said Mr. Sullivan, who added that Congressional Republicans were aware of Mr. Bush's views. <br><br>Critics say the provision would undermine the unity and morale of NATO's peacekeeping operation, which involves forces from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and other nations in and out of Europe. <br><br>In a letter sent late today to Senator Warner, Mr. Clinton warned that imposing an arbitrary deadline for withdrawal would also send a dangerous signal of uncertain American resolve to President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia before that country's elections scheduled for Sept. 24. <br><br>Under the provision, Mr. Clinton's successor would be required to certify to Congress that Washington's European allies were meeting their commitments in Kosovo for reconstruction aid, police officers, food and medicines. Without that certification, the measure required that money be spent in Kosovo only for a withdrawal of American troops. <br><br>The measure would require the allies to be responsible for at least 50 percent of reconstruction aid, 85 percent of humanitarian assistance and 90 percent of police officers in Kosovo. The allies are now providing 87 percent of the reconstruction aid, 73 percent of the humanitarian assistance and 87 percent of the police, the White House said. Some of the contributions are from non-European countries. <br><br>In a letter last month to Mr. Warner, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen criticized the provision, saying it was "unacceptable because it is counterproductive to peace in Kosovo and could seriously jeopardize relations between the United States and its NATO allies."<br><br>"If enacted this provision would take decision-making on the deployment of U.S. forces out of the hands of Congress and the president and put it into the hands of European governments — a dangerous precedent," said Mr. Cohen, who is the only Republican in the cabinet. <br><br>"This provision would create uncertainty about U.S. intentions and resoluteness, and could encourage an extremist element to take actions that could put American forces at increased risk, in the hope of triggering their withdrawal," he concluded. <br><br>But many Congressional Republicans say the provision is essential to relieve the burden on American ground troops in Kosovo and pressure European countries to pay a larger share of the reconstruction and policing costs for Kosovo. <br><br>"We feel pretty strongly about it," said Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the House majority leader. "The question is, how long will we have people over there, and when will we have a clear definition of what they're doing?" <br><br>Representative Floyd D. Spence of South Carolina, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, agreed: "We're tied down too much in different places right now. People are scattered all over the world, our readiness is down and our equipment is wearing out. We have to have our allies do more." <br><br>But Democrats echoed Mr. Cohen's dire warnings. "These arbitrary limits are not going to be helpful," said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. <br><br>Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the panel's senior Democrat and a top negotiator in the conference committee, said: "It undermines the coalition and creates terrible morale for our troops to let them know they're coming out."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times : Bush on Spot as G.O.P. Pushes to Pull Out G.I.'s From Kosovo``x968999204,75023,``x``x
``xBy ANNA HUSARSKA<br><br>Next Sunday, presidential, parliamentary and local elections will be held in Yugoslavia--or more precisely in Serbia, since Montenegro, its smaller partner republic, declared its nonparticipation. <br>The Serbian opposition is, alas, internally divided, rather nationalist and not very popular outside the urban centers. Apparently the opposition, in choosing to go ahead with the game called by the Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, calculated that being a part of a farce is better than being an outsider to a farce. <br>But nobody should be fooled: The conditions are not there for these elections to be free and fair. Past experience shows that Milosevic cheats; nothing will stop him from cheating this time. It is therefore more than likely that a few days after the Sept. 24 elections, people in Serbia and outside will declare the elections stolen. Therefore, would it not seem judicious to observe the whole electoral process? <br>No. Given that it is unlikely that the international community could muster enough qualified people who would be allowed in to observe, it is strongly advisable for foreign institutions, organizations and groups not to observe, at least not officially or even overtly, lest it gives the elections an air of a bona fide democracy. <br>The regional elections observer, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, has canceled its exploratory mission because it did not obtain the required visas. And Milosevic has said that monitors from NATO countries will not be admitted. Of course, Serbia is not entirely without friends; one can picture a motley multi-continental group of rubber-stampers as observers from Belarus, China, Libya, Iraq, Myanmar and Venezuela. <br>But even if some legitimate international organization were to be admitted, it should not accept the role of fig leaf. Here is why: <br><br>* No government, and especially not one with such an appalling electoral cheating record as Yugoslavia, should be allowed to pick and choose who can monitor its elections. <br>* It is late in the game; the OSCE usually sends a long-term observation mission to the country six to eight weeks before an election. <br>* Given the centralized power in Serbia--Milosevic and his wife, Mirjana Markovic, constitute a one-bedroom dictatorship--there is little chance that irregularities of tabulation, most of them probably happening at the high level, would be caught by outsiders. <br>* Spot observation by diplomats would be unlikely to observe anything else than the Potemkin-village appearance of voting stations--if indeed the diplomats were even allowed into the stations. <br>* Covert monitoring from bona fide organizations would lack credibility and could be risky: The recent arrests by the Yugoslav army of British, Canadian and Dutch nationals in Montenegro shows that Milosevic does not shy away from detaining foreigners. <br>So would the elections be better left unmonitored? Not necessarily. The Serb opposition and their Montenegrin friends can and will come up with monitoring teams. They live with the system, they speak the language, they have monitored before. They have seen cheating before and so they are better qualified to see it when it happens again. <br>There is another argument for letting Serbs--at least officially--observe their own elections: Not only the ruling clique but also much of the political opposition has been hostile to foreigners, suspicious of international involvement and rather openly anti-American. Any Western involvement, especially by the U.S., would be denounced by Milosevic as meddling. <br>So it is safer and more productive to discreetly channel aid to Serbia through the independent media, democratic-minded mayors and nongovernmental organizations and wait for them to report not if but how Milosevic stole the elections. After all, the point of participating in such a sham is to energize the opposition, and this only the Serbs themselves can do. <br><br>Anna Husarska Is the Senior Political Analyst at the International Crisis Group, a Think Tank That Has Been Working in the Balkans Since the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. Web Site: <a href="Http://www.crisisweb.org">Http://www.crisisweb.org</a>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe LA Times : Concerning Serb Elections, Let's Look the Other Way ``x969275818,82530,``x``x
``xA foe who can win—if Milosevic allows a fair vote <br> <br>By Zoran Cirjakovic and Russell Watson<br> <br>September 25 issue — People who know him well say Vojislav Kostunica is shy and lazy, with little charisma and few communication skills. He is a political loner; critics used to call his organization a “van party,” claiming that all of its members could fit into a single vehicle. In a country steeped in machismo, Kostunica’s opponents gleefully point out that he has two pet cats but never fathered any children. <br><br>EVEN SO, HE COULD WELL BE Yugoslavia’s next president. Looking at the opinion polls, it’s hard to see how Kostunica can lose the presidential election, scheduled for a first round on Sept. 24. But many Yugoslavs find it even harder to believe that his main opponent, President Slobodan Milosevic, will allow him to win.<br>Kostunica is supported by a coalition of 18 opposition parties, which picked him because more popular opponents of Milosevic had been discredited by corruption or ties to the hated West. Kostunica has a reputation for incorruptibility, and now that a majority of voters seems to want Milosevic out, the challenger has the president worried enough to lash out. As Kostunica campaigned last week, pro-Milosevic thugs pelted him with eggs, tomatoes and rocks, driving him from the platform. “Milosevic is weaker than ever,” Kostunica insisted later.<br>An independent poll published last week gave the challenger 43 percent of the votes in the first round, in which five candidates are running. Milosevic got only 21 percent. The same poll gave Kostunica a 49-26 lead over Milosevic in a two-way runoff, which would be held on Oct. 8, if necessary. The catch is that many Yugoslavs believe Milosevic will steal the election—and get away with it. <br><br>“I am not saying that Kostunica would be an ideal president, but the only thing that matters now is that he is perfectly immune to all possible accusations by the regime—no corruption, no scandals, not a traitor, not a servant of the West.” <br>— STOJAN CEROVIC liberal commentator<br><br>Opposition leaders think Milosevic will fraudulently claim the votes of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, as he has done before. He also stands to gain votes in Montenegro, Serbia’s junior partner in the Yugoslav federation. <br> <br>There the pro-independence president, Milo Djukanovic, has called for a boycott of the election, leaving the field to Milosevic.<br>If Milosevic does steal the election, the West won’t be able to do much about it. There’s little the NATO allies can offer him as an inducement to go quietly, and it isn’t clear that a back channel even exists for negotiations on his future. At home, however, a vote-stealing Milosevic would probably face massive street demonstrations, which could persuade some of his more powerful cronies to desert him. Milosevic would still control the federal Parliament, and one of his henchmen holds the presidency of Serbia, the major component of the federation. But the Serbian presidency could easily be lost in an election two years from now. <br> <br>If Milosevic loses and accepts defeat, the picture turns brighter. With Kostunica as federal president, the country’s European neighbors would scramble to lift economic sanctions on Yugoslavia and do business there. “The money would begin to flow,” says a senior official of the European Union. Not that Kostunica, 56, would be a friend to the West. Although he is an outspoken advocate of Western-style democracy, he hotly denounces NATO for its bombing of Yugoslavia. An ardent nationalist, he insists that if he is elected, he will not extradite Milosevic to face the war-crimes charges pending against him.<br><br>Kostunica is acceptable to many Serbs because of what he hasn’t done in public life. Unlike better-known opposition leaders, such as Vuk Draskovic and Zoran Djindjic, he never tried to make political deals with Milosevic. And he has not enriched himself, as many opposition leaders did after winning municipal elections in 1996. A law professor, Kostunica still drives a battered Yugo and spends his holidays in a modest cottage. “I am not saying that Kostunica would be an ideal president,” writes liberal commentator Stojan Cerovic, “but the only thing that matters now is that he is perfectly immune to all possible accusations by the regime—no corruption, no scandals, not a traitor, not a servant of the West.”<br><br>If Kostunica can win by a large enough majority, his supporters say, even Milosevic may not be able to steal the election. “We should pinch our noses and vote for Kostunica,” says Nenad Canak, a liberal who disagrees with the candidate on almost every issue. Under Milosevic, Serbia has become “the black hole of the Balkans,” as one EU official puts it. If Milosevic clings to power, the hole will only get deeper.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xNewsweek : The Man Who Isn’t Slobo ``x969275857,74990,``x``x
``xMisha Glenny <br><br>EIGHTEEN months after Nato dropped the first bombs of the Kosovo campaign on Belgrade, the people of the Serbian capital are bracing themselves for more trouble. There is a real prospect that seven days from now the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, may be voted from office after 14 destructive years in power. There is also a real prospect that he will not go peacefully. <br>For a long time many in the Balkans have feared that Milosevic's ultimate political threat remains that if he goes down, he will fall in a blaze of chaos, igniting civil war in Serbia or war in neighbouring Montenegro. <br><br>The election campaign has already been marked by unprecedented violence, betraying an unusual nervousness on the regime's part. <br><br>Throughout Serbia police have targeted Resistance, a youth movement that supports Vojislav Kostunica, the main opposition candidate. Last weekend five teenagers were tied by their feet, hung from a ceiling and beaten in the southern town of Vladicin Han. <br><br>A senior official in Milosevic's Socialist party justified the attacks on Resistance by calling it "a fascist organisation", even though most of its members are schoolchildren and students. <br><br>Two weeks ago unknown assailants kidnapped Ivan Stambolic, a former president of Serbia, when it was rumoured he would lead the opposition slate for the parliamentary elections. <br><br>For two decades Stambolic was Milosevic's mentor, assisting his rise through the communist hierarchy. Then, in 1987, Milosevic turned on his old friend unexpectedly at a party meeting, seizing power and provoking the memorable headline at the time: "Et tu, Slobo?" <br><br>Now, it seems, the drama is approaching its denouement. "There's a rumbling you can feel throughout the city," one Belgrade resident said on Friday. "Society has had enough and it is ready to tell this to Milosevic through the ballot box." <br><br>Most opinion polls confirm that Kostunica is leading Milosevic by about 20 points, although one independent survey suggests the vote will be much closer. Kostunica is more cautious about the result than most of his supporters. <br><br>"Anything can happen after next week's elections," said Braca Grubacic, one of the most respected commentators in Belgrade. "We are now entering the twilight zone of Serbian politics." <br><br>There are four possible scenarios. First, the opposition is worried that Milosevic will rig the vote. The chaotic status of Kosovo and the presence of tens of thousands of Serbian refugees in two neighbouring districts, Prokuplje and Vranje, offers him an opportunity for a substantial "adjustment" of the vote. <br><br>Milosevic has rigged ballots before but he has never faced defeat on this scale. Result: the opposition would almost certainly take to the streets in large numbers for a showdown with security forces. <br><br>Second, Milosevic discards the presidency and assumes instead the prime ministership of Serbia. In theory, the Serbian prime minister wields much greater power. Result: an institutional standoff that would eventually be decided by the police and army. <br><br>Third, Milosevic may trigger a civil war in Montenegro as a diversionary tactic. This has been a threat for several months. Montenegro is divided between pro and anti-Milosevic factions who are armed and prepared to fight. <br><br>Last week Tony Blair and Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, issued veiled threats to Milosevic that if he attacked Montenegro, Nato would not stand idly by. However, it is difficult to see how the West could intervene in a country where war would pit village against village and clan against clan. The United States would be especially reserved in its response as its own presidential election approaches. <br><br>But it is the fourth scenario that most diplomats and intelligence agencies are concentrating on. "A likely outcome is that both the opposition and Milosevic will promptly proclaim victory, regardless of the facts. This would take us into very uncertain territory," said a senior western diplomat. <br><br>For uncertain territory, read violence and even a short, sharp civil war. Over the past decade, Milosevic has built the police force into a praetorian guard, well armed, well paid and loyal to the president. But although the army leadership backs Milosevic, western intelligence sources maintain he is unable to rely on a large part of the junior officer corps. <br><br>"It would be a short civil war," according to an American source, "and one which Milosevic would probably lose." <br><br>Defeat for Milosevic would be not only a blow to his pride, but a threat to his personal security. As an indicted war criminal he cannot leave the country without being arrested on the orders of the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague. He would almost certainly face a long term of imprisonment. <br><br>But his chances of enjoying a peaceful retirement in Serbia are equally slim. Unprotected by power, he would be vulnerable to what analysts call "the Ceausescu scenario" - a reference to the summary execution of the Romanian dictator. <br><br>Nobody counted on this course of events when Milosevic called snap elections in mid-summer. The decision came after his supporters steamrollered through a constitutional reform enabling the Yugoslav president to stand for an unprecedented third term. <br><br>Most Serbs assumed the result would be a foregone conclusion. For more than a decade, the Serbian leader has used every trick in the book to maintain his grip on power - violent nationalism, anti-capitalism, war, police repression, capitalism, snuggling up to the West, going to war with Nato. It has worked every time. <br><br>Serbia's fractious opposition never looked capable of denting Milosevic's powerful apparatus. This consists chiefly of a subservient but well-armed police force and a criminal mafia that has grown fat on war booty and sanctions-busting. <br><br>Now, it seems ordinary Serbs have reached breaking point. Isolated, reviled by the outside world and desperately poor, they have rallied behind a presidential candidate who is free from the otherwise ubiquitous stench of corruption. Kostunica also has a charisma not based on hysterical nationalism. <br><br>In the past 10 days, signs that Milosevic is losing his grip have proliferated. Vojislav Seselj, the ultra-nationalist leader of the Radicals, has jumped ship. If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote next Sunday, there will be a second round and Seselj has announced his party will not support Milosevic in the runoff. <br><br>Then came the unexpected resignation of Zoran Lilic, one of Milosevic's closest advisers in the Socialist party and his predecessor as president. <br><br>The party's old guard resent their leader's ambitious wife, Mira Markovic, who runs her own left-wing party, JUL. At key stages in his career, Markovic has urged her husband to take a hard line. <br><br>The Greek government, Milosevic's one friend in the West, made it clear last week that it has had enough of him. <br><br>George Papandreou, the Greek foreign minister, met Milosevic in Belgrade. According to a senior Greek government official, Milosevic got "a big shock". <br><br>Milosevic's departure would not solve the problems of the Balkans, but it would reduce dramatically the security headaches for the rest of Europe. With crucial elections in Bosnia and Kosovo due within five weeks of the Serbian vote, western diplomats are keeping their fingers crossed that the fallout from the poll will not be too destabilising. But few are sanguine. <br><br>"I fear we are in for big trouble after next week, and nobody really knows which way it is going to go," one diplomat said. It is going to be a rough ride this autumn in the Balkans. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times : Milosevic raises spectre of civil war ``x969275938,80742,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br> <br>KOLASIN, Montenegro — Here in the stirring, ragged mountains of northern Montenegro, the Yugoslav Army patrols from the Breza barracks on one side of town, while the Montenegrin special police, dressed in army fatigues and carrying automatic weapons, roam from their barracks in a resort hotel, the Bjelasica, that once catered to skiers.<br><br>They follow each other on the narrow roads with Balkan braggadocio, but neither side appears eager to fight. "We keep an eye on each other," said one policeman. "But everyone's tired of blood." Fatigue may be an insufficient tourniquet, however.<br><br>Tiny Montenegro is the last remaining republic with Serbia in what is left of Yugoslavia, but under President Milo Djukanovic it is moving gingerly toward independence. Mr. Djukanovic has decided to boycott the elections called for Sept. 24 by the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, who changed the Constitution to win another term.<br><br>Here in Kolasin, a stronghold of pro-Yugoslav feeling, Montenegrins will go to vote anyway, casting their ballots for unity. Mr. Djukanovic, who broke away from Mr. Milosevic in 1997 and split Montenegro's governing party, is regarded as a traitor to centuries of Montenegrin-Serbian brotherhood. Mr. Milosevic's brother, Borislav, now the Yugoslav ambassador in Moscow, was born here, and their father is buried nearby; President Milosevic is not just a native son, but a fixture in the cosmos.<br><br>"Until Milosevic dies he will be president of Yugoslavia," Dragomir Bulatovic said with fervor. "It wouldn't be Yugoslavia unless Milosevic were president. We'd be like San Marino and controlled by the United States."<br><br>His friend, Milan Bulatovic, concurred. "What Milosevic accomplished last year in Serbia, rebuilding the country, couldn't be done anywhere else in the world," he said. "Here, Djukanovic just wants to sell the country to foreigners."<br><br>Major complaints here center on Mr. Djukanovic's management of the economy: dumping the Yugoslav dinar for the German mark, closing former state-owned enterprises, like a wood factory and a department store, swapping the management of another firm and laying off most of its workers, albeit — for the moment — at 70 percent of their pay.<br><br>Along the chilly streets of low wooden houses and crumbling, angular public buildings constructed in the modernist-socialist style, skeptical citizens emerged from coffee houses to interrogate a foreigner, riled by the presence of an American whose government bombed Yugoslavia last year.<br><br>"You killed our children!" one man shouted, but Drasko Popovic told him to calm down, then apologized. This is a pro-Milosevic town, he said, run by the pro-Milosevic Socialist People's Party of Momir Bulatovic, and most people in this part of Montenegro, closest to Serbia, will vote in the elections.<br><br>Most of the 5,000 people in town, and some 9,000 more in surrounding villages, want to stay united with Serbia, Mr. Popovic said. "We don't like those people who are trying to push us apart to make money for themselves."<br><br>About 35 percent to 40 percent of Montenegro's 650,000 people support the union with Serbia, too large a minority for Mr. Djukanovic to ignore or idly antagonize. There are fears in the capital, Podgorica, that Mr. Milosevic will manipulate pro- Serbian feelings in this region and use the army — and a special paramilitary grouping called the Seventh Battalion, some of whose members are also billeted here — to foment what could look like a civil war. <br><br>Mr. Popovic was chatting with his friend, Branko Kukovic, who has just published a book of patriotic poems about Serbs in Montenegro and Herzegovina called "The Guardians of Freedom." The book's preface is some 15 pages of intricate historical data about the undying bond between Serbia and Montenegro.<br><br>Some of Mr. Djukanovic's special police sped up in their new white Land Rovers and then slammed on the brakes. "The police are Milo's army, and he's doing what the Croats and the others did before they broke away," said Mr. Kukovic. "But here it just helps Milosevic with the Serbs who support his cause. It makes people angry."<br><br>Mr. Kukovic seemed especially agitated that the Montenegrin authorities were even splitting the Serbian Orthodox Church, setting up a Montenegrin Orthodox Church, and he said that would be the subject of his next book.<br><br>But he is not a pessimist. "We'll find enough clever people not to have a civil war," he said. <br><br>Still, attitudes are not uniform. In a dark little coffee shop, Djuro Bojic, 18, sported a sweatshirt that read: "Montenegro Independent."<br><br>Kolasin is a center of pro-Milosevic feeling, he said, "but some people are changing their minds — they begin to think that Milosevic may be finished." This election "is very, very touchy," he said, and there is little affection for Mr. Milosevic's main challenger, the Serbian opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica.<br><br>"This town is very, very tense," Mr. Bojic said. "People get drunk, and there are a lot of fights over political issues. It's so stupid, but it's very, very deep. I know examples of fathers sending sons away, because the son was for Milo and he was for Momir," referring to Mr. Djukanovic and Mr. Bulatovic, as usual in Montenegro, by their first names.<br><br>Yugoslav soldiers act like bullies, he said. "They're pushing hard," he added. The Seventh Battalion, he said, is hot-tempered and recently broke up a friendly soccer match in nearby Bijelo Polje by taking out guns and shooting in the air.<br><br>Mr. Bojic is no great fan of Mr. Djukanovic, favoring instead a smaller pro-independence party. But in the elections, he will be rooting for Mr. Milosevic. "I never supported him more," Mr. Bojic said, grinning widely. "Because if Milosevic wins, we'll definitely have independence here."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Old Ties to Serbia Still Bind Many in Montenegro``x969276020,77709,``x``x
``x<br><br>By DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press Writer <br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Struggling in the polls just days before elections, Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) has turned to his Marxist wife for help - and her withering diatribes against the opposition and the West are setting the tone for Sunday's vote.<br><br>For the first time, Mirjana Markovic is openly campaigning with her husband and running for a federal parliament seat.<br><br>One of the world's most autocratic leaders, Milosevic faces a popular challenger, Vojislav Kostunica, in the presidential race. Polls show Kostunica in a clear lead.<br><br>In fiery campaign speeches, Markovic divides the country into patriots and traitors. The elections, she tells voters, are a do-or-die battle in the defense of the state against ``evil'' Western ``neocolonialism.''<br><br>``NATO (news - web sites) has again attacked Yugoslavia through traitor opposition,'' Markovic, 58, told a recent campaign rally. Political opponents, she added, were ``mental retards'' and ``dumb.''<br><br>Her tough tone leaves no doubt that the Milosevic regime is prepared to go all the way to fight any opposition victory in the elections.<br><br>Markovic, dubbed by her many enemies as ``the Lady Macbeth of the Balkans'' and ``the Red Witch,'' had a key role in Milosevic's climb to power.<br><br>When Milosevic's popularity plummeted in 1993 because of his shift from communism to nationalism, Markovic formed her own left-wing JUL party to keep true Marxist followers in the ruling party fold.<br><br>The co-founders of Markovic's party say that at their opening meeting, she asked: ``Which is the strongest organization in the world?''<br><br>``The Mafia,'' someone in the crowd replied.<br><br>Critics say JUL - which combines extreme-left rhetoric with the practices of early capitalism - was formed along Mafia lines, with no popular backing, but strict rules that made its leaders rich and powerful.<br><br>The party only once - in 1998 in Serbia's sister republic of Montenegro - ran alone in the elections, receiving less than 1 percent of the vote.<br><br>Markovic and Milosevic met in high school in their hometown of Pozarevac, in central Serbia. She came from a distinguished communist family and boasted that one day her Slobo would be as prominent a leader as Josip Broz Tito, the communist president of Yugoslavia at the time.<br><br>In 1987, Markovic, a sociology professor at Belgrade University, was instrumental in helping Milosevic - then a raising communist party apparatchik - oust their longtime friend and patron Ivan Stambolic as the head of Serbia's Communist Party.<br><br>Last month, Stambolic was abducted in Belgrade and has not seen since. The opposition has accused Milosevic's secret police of being behind the kidnapping, alleging Stambolic knew too much about the Milosevic family.<br><br>Even more hard-line than Milosevic, Markovic persuaded her husband not to recognize opposition victories in local elections in 1996, triggering months of demonstrations before he changed his mind.<br><br>When independent media editor Slavko Curuvija challenged Milosevic's decision to go to war with NATO over Kosovo last year, she publicly charged he was helping the alliance target bombs at Belgrade. Soon after, Curuvija was assassinated. His killers were never named.<br><br>Biographer Slavoljub Djukic, author of a book on the ruling couple, depicts Milosevic as a beleaguered, emotionless leader detached from everyday reality, who trusts no one but his wife.<br><br>Markovic, he writes, is a reclusive woman who maintains her husband and country are the targets of domestic and international plots.<br><br>Their goal, those who know the couple say, is to stay in power - and escape the fate of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, who were toppled in an anti-communist uprising in 1989 and executed.<br><br>``Without Mira,'' as Mirjana is known in Serbia, ``Sloba would not be where he is now,'' Djukic said.<br><br>Markovic, a short, plump woman who always wears dark dresses and no makeup, is detested by opposition supporters.<br><br>Even some of Milosevic's associates dislike her, maintaining her tirades against the opposition and the West, delivered in her high-pitched voice, are irritants to both Milosevic's allies and foes.<br><br>``There is no better propaganda for the opposition then when state media carries Mira's speeches,'' said the head of the opposition election campaign, Cedomir Jovanovic.<br><br>``Her speeches are so irritating that even Milosevic's supporters switch channels when they see her.'' <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic's Wife Joins in Campaign ``x969437665,48266,``x``x
``x<br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br> <br> <br>ELGRADE, Serbia, Sept. 19 — In his race for re-election, President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia is running against NATO and the United States, not against his democratic opposition.<br><br>He is not entirely mistaken to do so. The United States and its European allies have made it clear that they want Mr. Milosevic ousted, and they have spent tens of millions of dollars trying to get it done.<br><br>Portraying himself as the defender of Yugoslavia's sovereignty against a hostile, hegemonic West led by Washington, Mr. Milosevic and his government argue that opposition leaders are merely the paid, traitorous tools of enemies who are continuing their war against him by other means. In March 1999, NATO began a 78-day bombing campaign to drive Serbian forces out of Kosovo.<br><br>The Yugoslav elections are on Sunday, but there has hardly been a day since the bombing began that state television news has not railed against "NATO aggressors."<br><br>With the campaign at its height, the government has spread its attacks to include all opposition political parties, independent newspapers, magazines and electronic media, the student organization known as Otpor — or Resistance — and any nongovernmental organization working to promote democracy, human rights or even economic reforms.<br><br>While Mr. Milosevic is trailing the main opposition leader, Vojislav Kostunica, in opinion polls, the anti- Western campaign is having an impact. The money from the West is going to most of the institutions that the government attacks for receiving it — sometimes in direct aid, sometimes in indirect aid like computers and broadcasting equipment, and sometimes in suitcases of cash carried across the border between Yugoslavia and Hungary or Serbia and Montenegro. Most of those organizations and news media could not exist without foreign aid in this society, which is poor and repressive and whose market is distorted by foreign economic sanctions.<br><br>Even with foreign aid, government restrictions on newsprint supplies and high and repeated fines after suspiciously quick court cases make it hard for the independent news media to reach their natural market.<br><br>As for the opinion polls that show Mr. Kostunica in the lead, the information minister, Goran Matic, charges that the polls are orchestrated and manipulated by the Americans and the Central Intelligence Agency, who help pay for them. According to Mr. Matic, Mr. Milosevic is actually far ahead of Mr. Kostunica, and the polls simply serve as a vehicle for the opposition to claim that the government stole the election once Mr. Milosevic wins.<br><br>Mr. Matic asserts that the Atlantic alliance has come up with various scenarios, such as infiltrating soldiers wearing Yugoslav Army and police uniforms, to make it possible for the opposition to start civil unrest in the streets after the election while claiming that the police and the army are actually on their side.<br><br>Mr. Matic has attacked various nongovernmental organizations, including the Center for Free Elections and Democracy, which is trying to monitor the fairness of the election, as paid instruments of American and alliance policy. Many such organizations have been raided by the police, who confiscate computer files and also appear to be gathering evidence about foreign payments.<br><br>"President Milosevic will win this election," said Ljubisa Ristic, the president of the Yugolav United Left party, founded by Mr. Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic. "This is not Hollywood." Washington and the West, she said, "are like little kids, wanting something to happen so much they're fooling themselves."<br><br>Mr. Ristic said the alliance's war produced a new solidarity among Yugoslavs and "killed many illusions people had about the West and about their own opposition leaders, who went to the countries that were bombing us to seek their support." <br><br>The issues, Mr. Ristic said, are clear now. "It's a decisive time," he said. "This is not an election so much as a referendum, a decision on being an independent country or a colony. People see what's happened in Kosovo, what happens when NATO troops enter the country, and they are not going to allow the alliance's hand- picked candidates to win."<br><br>Even before the Kosovo war, the United States was spending up to $10 million a year to back opposition parties, independent news media and other institutions opposed to Mr. Milosevic. The war itself cost billions of dollars. This fiscal year, through September, the administration is spending $25 million to support Serbian "democratization," with an unknown amount of money spent covertly to help the failed rallies of last year, which did not bring down Mr. Milosevic, or to influence the current election. For next year, the administration is requesting $41.5 million in open aid to Serbian democratization, though Congress is likely to cut that request.<br><br>Independent journalists and broadcasters here have been told by American aid officials "not to worry about how much they're spending now," that plenty more is in the pipeline, said one knowledgable aid worker. Others in the opposition complain that the Americans are clumsy, sending e-mails from "state.gov" — the State Department's address — summoning people to impolitic meetings with American officials in Budapest, Montenegro or Dubrovnik, Croatia.<br><br>But there is little effort to disguise the fact that Western money pays for much of the polling, advertising, printing and other costs of the opposition political campaign — one way, to be sure, to give opposition leaders a better chance to get their message across in a quasi-authoritarian system where television in particular is in the firm hands of the government.<br><br>While that spending allows the opposition to be heard more broadly, deepening the opposition to Mr. Milosevic, it also allows the government here to argue that it has real enemies, and that the Serbian opposition is in league with them.<br><br>Just today, in the state-run newspaper Politika, a long article used public information from the United States — including Congressional testimony and Web site material — to show that the United States is financing the opposition.<br><br>" `Independent,' `nongovernmental' and `democratic' are the standard phrases the C.I.A. uses to describe organizations established all over the world to destroy the governments and the societies that the U.S. government wants to colonize and control," the paper wrote.<br><br>The Congressional testimony, from July 29, 1999, cited American officials then involved with Yugoslav policy, like Robert Gelbard and James Pardew, telling Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware about their projects. They describe the creation of a "ring around Serbia" of radio stations broadcasting into Serbia from Bosnia and Montenegro, the spending of $16.5 million in the previous two years to support "democratization in Serbia," and another $20 million to support Montenegro's president, Milo Djukanovic, who broke away from Mr. Milosevic in 1998.<br><br>The testimony listed some of the recipients of American aid here, including various newspapers, magazines, news agencies and broadcasters opposed to Mr. Milosevic, as well as various nongovernmental organizations engaged in legal defense and human rights and projects to bring promising Yugoslav journalists to the United States for professional training.<br><br>All such projects are portrayed by Politika and state television as a way to undermine the legal government, and the recipients are labeled traitors to their country.<br><br>Opposition leaders like Mr. Kostunica regard such tactics by the government as crass propaganda, but even he is skeptical of American intentions in paying for nongovernmental organizations, some of whom, he believes, are even unconsciously working for American imperial goals and not necessarily Serbian values.<br><br>Other democratic leaders, like Zoran Djindjic and Zarko Korac, regard such attacks as an indication of Mr. Milosevic's desperation and anxiety on the eve of the first election he is likely to lose in his entire political career. Given the stakes for Mr. Milosevic, they believe that he will do all he can, including the wholesale stealing of votes, to ensure a victory in the first round of voting.<br><br>"The stakes are fundamental for Milosevic," Mr. Korac said. "These elections are crucial, not necessarily for the immediate handover of power, but because for the first time Mr. Milosevic will be delegitimized in the eyes of his own people. He was an elected dictator, with popular and legal legitimacy. But from now on he's a true dictator, and he will only be able to rule by force — that's a big step for Serbia."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Milosevic, Trailing in Polls, Rails Against NATO``x969437692,67659,``x``x
``x<br><br>FROM RICHARD BEESTON IN BELGRADE<br><br>THERE were growing fears yesterday that Montenegro, the junior partner in what is left of Yugoslavia, could be sucked into the political turmoil sweeping Serbia as a result of the bitterly contested presidential elections taking place at the weekend. <br>Although Montenegro is officially boycotting the election, because its leaders regard the polls as illegal, President Milosevic enjoys strong support in the north of the country and is planning his first visit there since coming to power more than a decade ago. <br><br>Local officials are making preparations for his arrival as early as today in the town of Berane, which some fear could spark violence between units of the Yugoslav Army loyal to Belgrade and local paramilitary police under the command of the Montenegrin leadership. <br><br>"Milosevic will not come to Montenegro with cannon and tanks but on the wings of popular will," Momir Bulatovic, the Yugoslav Prime Minister and Mr Milosevic's closest ally in the neighbouring state, said. "He is coming to Montenegro for us to elect the man who will truly represent us in the country and the world." <br><br>Those sentiments were not shared by others in Montenegro and yesterday senior figures in the leadership admitted that they feared being dragged into a conflict with Mr Milosevic similar to the wars triggered in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. <br><br>Montenegrins are particularly concerned about the Seventh Battalion of the Yugoslav Army, a paramilitary unit that has recently been strengthened and has conducted provocative excercises near the capital, Podgorica. <br><br>"We would be expecting the international community to use all possible means to protect Montenegro, including economic assistance and military assistance, like no-fly zones," Franko Lukovac, Montenegro's Foreign Minister, said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic visit sets Montenegro on edge``x969437711,1242,``x``x
``x<br><br><br>By Balkans reporter Paul Wood in Montenegro <br><br><br>"Marko" - we cannot use his real name - says he used to be a criminal; now he is a policeman. <br><br>An enforcer for a vicious Belgrade protection racket, he explains how he almost killed someone while collecting money for his bosses and was told to expect a five-year sentence. <br> <br>But he is not in jail: instead the Belgrade authorities offered him an alternative, sending him to join the Yugoslav Army's Seventh Battalion Military Police in Montenegro. <br><br>The battalion is the unit most feared by the Montenegrin government, who say it is a paramilitary force which will be used by President Milosevic if he decides to take power in the republic. <br><br>It has certainly been taking on reservists from among Milosevic loyalists in the Montenegrin population. <br><br>And according to Marko, the battalion is also being filled with personnel from Serbia, many like him with paramilitary experience in Bosnia and Kosovo, some from the Belgrade underworld. It is a method of recruitment which led to some of the worst atrocities of those two conflicts. <br><br>"I was blackmailed into joining. It was my only way to avoid jail. If I don't do this job well I could get three to five years," he said. <br><br>I asked if his orders and training were for offensive action or to stop trouble. <br><br>"Just offensive action. We are training how to take vital objectives in as short a time as possible," Marko said. <br><br>Dangerous time <br><br>The Yugoslav elections are to be held on 24 September and are expected to see President Slobodan Milosevic confirmed in power. <br><br>Montenegro, Serbia's smaller partner in the Yugoslav Federation, is boycotting the poll, saying it will not be conducted fairly. <br> <br>Under its reformist pro-western leader, Milo Djukanovic, Montenegro has been steadily breaking away from Belgrade. <br><br>His government fears that the time after the poll will be the most dangerous for the republic. The government believes President Milosevic will feel he has the strength to act after the election - and that he calculates the Americans, preoccupied with their own presidential race, will not intervene. <br><br>Montenegrin Foreign Minister Branko Lukova says the West must be prepared to carry out a Kosovo-style intervention. <br><br>"If we are the victims of violence, we would be expecting the international community to use all possible means to assist Montenegro, including economic assistance, military assistance, no fly zones, whatever," Mr Lukova said. <br><br>Independence <br><br>Private polls carried out for the Montenegrin government, and shown to the BBC, suggest that around two thirds of people in the Republic want independence. <br><br>That figure is disputed by the one party not boycotting the Presidential election in Montenegro, the Socialist People's Party (SNP), which is loyal to Belgrade. <br><br><br>Emilo Labudovic, an SNP member, said that the Montenegrin coalition government was not taking part in the election, or organising a referendum on independence, for the same reason: they were afraid they would lose in both cases. <br><br>The SNP is fighting to keep Montenegro within Yugoslavia. <br><br>"Yugoslavia is its people, it is more than Milosevic or Djukanovic. The national, economic, historical and cultural interests of Montenegro all lie in Yugoslavia. The idea of Yugoslavia will not be extinguished here," Mr Labudovic said. <br><br><br><br>Government monopolies <br><br><br>He is backed by the West, but Milka Tadic, editor of the influential Montenegrin weekly Monitor, warned the West to be careful. <br><br>"We cannot compare Mr Djukanvoic to a western style leader. The Montenegrin government is unfortunately corrupted, it would like to keep a monopoly in the media, in the economy, in many fields. They do not want real reforms here," Ms Tadic said. <br><br>Supporters of the Djukanovic government - those who want independence - may just be in the majority. But to all intents and purposes, the country is split over the issue. <br><br><br><br>Civil war memories <br><br>In the 1920s Montenegrins fought a bloody civil war over the same issue, union with Serbia. <br><br>It was a war which pitted brother against brother, father against son - could such a conflict happen in Montenegro today? <br><br>We went to the tiny village of Godinje, a picturesque collection of about 30 houses on the hills above Lake Skadar. <br><br><br><br>Djukanovic has been steadily breaking away from Belgrade<br> <br>The village voted 18 to 14 for the government party, the DPS, against the SNP. The headman of the village, and DPS representative, Pero Lekovic, came to blows at a public meeting with the local SNP leader, who is also his cousin. <br><br>I asked Mr Lekovic why he couldn't sit down and talk to the SNP representative, who was after all a member of his own family. <br><br>He replied: "No, as long as I live, no. He is a completely dead person to me." <br><br>I put the same question to the SNP man, his cousin, Zoran Lekovic. He was adamant: "No never. A man has to choose his company carefully. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing for us to talk about." <br><br><br>Two fire brigades <br><br>These divisions run right through Montenegrin life. Although ominous, sometimes the effects are unintentionally comic. <br><br>The town of Kolashin even has two separate fire brigades, organised on party lines. <br><br>"This town should be in the Guinness book of records, such a small place with two fire brigades: politics did that," the head of the SNP fire brigade Zeljko Darmanovic told me. <br><br>The other fire brigade is run by a government loyalist, Radomir Begovic, who says he's suffered a dirty tricks campaign for being a member of the DPS. <br><br>"In the winter, the other fire brigade sent council workers to pile up snow in front of the garage doors so we couldn't get the engine out. We had to call the police." <br><br>Mr Darmanovic was having none of that: "It's all political. That man just left the station, locking the doors and taking all our equipment, including our fire engine. We had to borrow one from Serbia." <br><br>I put it to Mr Begovic that the people of Kolashin could only lose in this situation, especially if there was a big fire which might require the use of both fire engines. <br><br>He was unapologetic: "It would be better if we could work together. We on this side are ready for that but it does not depend on us, they're the ones not ready for any co-operation." <br><br><br><br>Military preparations <br><br>Montenegro has been training elite special police units to stop a Yugoslav attack if it comes. <br><br>"We can be dragged into conflict very easily, I am very much sure Milosevic is planning one," Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister, Dragisa Burzan, told me. <br><br>We have been sending messages and Mr Milosevic understands it quite clearly - that he cannot repeat here what he did in Bosnia and Croatia<br> <br>Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister Dragisa Burzan <br>The Montenegrins cannot match the Yugoslav Army's heavy weapons or air support. But there are thousands of troops or heavily armed police on both sides. <br><br>This would be a high intensity conflict, closer to full scale war than anything yet unleashed by President Milosevic in the break-up of the old Yugoslavia. <br><br>Mr Burzan said: "The orders to the police will be very clear: to defend the institutions, to defend the country, to defend the democracy we have built - so the police will have no orders to surrender. <br><br>"We have been sending messages and he [Mr Milosevic] understands it quite clearly - that he cannot repeat here what he did in Bosnia and Croatia." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro: Serbia's nervous neighbour``x969437735,90764,``x``x
``xFROM RICHARD BEESTON IN BELGRADE<br> <br>TENS of thousands of President Milosevic's opponents flooded into the streets of central Belgrade last night, staging the largest rally of this Yugoslav election campaign and boosting the hopes of his challenger, Vojislav Kostunica. <br>For several hours the Danube river became a political dividing line as campaigning for Sunday's election reached a climax. About 10,000 of Mr Milosevic's supporters packed a sports hall on the north side of the city, while Mr Kostunica addressed a crowd several times that size in the city's main Pioneer Square. <br><br>With both sides predicting comfortable victories on Sunday, the demonstrations of support could be the last time that the rival supporters gather so peacefully. The Serb public has been polarised by the campaign, which offers the country a stark choice: continuing under Mr Milosevic's defiantly nationalist rule, or breaking with a decade of conflict and elect Mr Kostunica, who has vowed to make peace with Serbia's enemies. <br><br>Mr Kostunica promised the crowds that if he was elected "Serbia would start a new life" and described a country prepared to put a decade of conflict behind it and ready to return to the community of nations, just over a year after Nato's Kosovo campaign. <br><br>"This state is like a sinking ship," he told the crowd, made up of supporters from the Democratic Opposition of Serbia alliance. "We want to build a nation where the state serves the people, not where the people serve the state." <br><br>Many of his supporters, gathering on a humid evening were drawn from the traditional ranks of the opposition, the urban middle class and the country's student movement, which led street protests against Mr Milosevic in 1996. <br><br>However, there were indications that his message appeared to have attracted support beyond Belgrade's intelligentsia to the working class, traditionally the bedrock of Mr Milosevic's support. <br><br>Mr Milosevic said that the elections would be a referendum on whether Yugoslavia remained independent or became subject to Western colonial rule. He said that opposition politicians were stooges of the West and he compared them to "locators" - the missile guidance equipment used by Nato during its 1999 bombing campaign - who "have our children and youth as the main strategic targets after failed war of the Alliance against our country." <br><br>Earlier in Belgrade, Dragan, a former soldier who now does odd jobs to survive, said that if Mr Milosevic stayed in power, "I will go abroad; if he is kicked out I will stay." Although not persuaded that Mr Kostunica's mild-mannered style was the answer to the country's problems, Dragan insisted that anything would be better than the status quo. "If Kostunica is no good we can get rid of him at the next election - that is the whole point of democracy." <br><br>Yet as most people will tell you here, getting rid of the incumbent is not just a case of voting him out or brandishing the posters that declare confidently: "He's finished". Mr Milosevic's rally was a demonstration of raw power. <br><br>Mr Milosevic does not expect to win by kissing babies and shaking hands but by pulling the levers of power, which remain in his hands. Socialist Party of Serbia activists are expected to get supporters out to vote; big commercial enterprises, which owe their prosperity to the Government, are under orders to provide money and people to the campaign effort, which is broadcast round the clock on state television. <br><br>There is residual support for Mr Milosevic in traditional rural areas and nationalist strongholds, where the view of the world is still seen exclusively through the prism of the state-run media and where Serb nationhood remains the dominant political emotion.Many of those who support him most ardently are refugees who lost their homes in the Balkan wars of the past decade, instigated in large part by Mr Milosevic. <br><br>What is so bizarre about the election campaign is that it has all the trappings of a Western democratic contest, with opinion polls, political advertisements and debates in the press. Yet the accepted wisdom is that Mr Milosevic will not respect the ballot in the likely event that he loses.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times : Vote may not settle Serbia's divisions ``x969534186,72634,``x``x
``xUS navy sends reinforcements to Adriatic ahead of poll<br><br>Jonathan Steele <br><br>The Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, flew to an army base in Montenegro yesterday to denounce his opponents as "rabbits, rats and even hyenas" and warn the west not to interfere in elections on Sunday, which the opinion polls indicate that he cannot win. <br>Scores of Mr Milosevic's critics have been detained and with tension rising the chief opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, has warned that the president could use fraud to stay in power. Western governments fear he will use the army to crush protests if he is declared the winner. A US aircraft carrier is being sent to the Adriatic. <br><br>It was Mr Milosevic's first visit to Montenegro - which with Serbia makes up Yugoslavia - since he became federal president three years ago. His helicopter brought him to the rally near the town of Berane, within 15 miles of Kosovo, where Nato-led troops could have arrested him on war crimes charges brought by the Hague tribunal last year. <br><br>The republic of Montenegro is deeply divided and its pro-western government, led by Milo Djukanovic, is boycotting the Yugoslav election. A former Serbian information minister, Aleksandar Tijanic, warned that Mr Milosevic was preparing to arrest the Montenegrin president. <br><br>Mr Djukanovic said last night that Montenegro would defend itself if Mr Milosevic provoked a military clash. Speaking to Russian television, he said: "If Milosevic decides to provoke a military conflict with Montenegro, we would have no choice but to defend our freedom." <br><br>A US navy spokeswoman confirmed yesterday that the aircraft carrier George Washington would arrive in the Adriatic from the Persian Gulf on about September 30. "This is much the normal tour of duty," the spokeswoman said. "There hasn't been a carrier in the Adriatic for about three or four months and the George Washington is on its way back to the Atlantic." <br><br>Mr Milosevic yesterday told a crowd of 10,000 supporters bussed in from nearby towns: "Our country is the focus of much attention from the world's strongest nations, as if mankind has no other worries but how ... Serbs and Montenegrins will govern their joint state." Many in the crowd shouted "Slobo, Slobo" and "We are all Yugoslavia". <br><br>He has clamped down on the independent media and ordered police to confiscate computers and other material from Serbian election monitoring groups. Under the law, independent observers have no right to enter polling stations or attend the count. <br><br>Despite the pressures, the opposition has done remarkably well by uniting behind Mr Kostunica, a Belgrade lawyer, Only the maverick Serbian Renewal Movement is running a separate candidate. An opinion poll by the Belgrade-based Strategic Marketing agency gave Mr Kostunica 32.5% of the vote to Mr Milosevic's 26.6%. The Centre for Policy Studies gave Mr Kostunica 41% to Mr Milosevic's 20%. <br><br>Mr Milosevic has support in rural areas and has manipulated the campaign through control of state television. State controls on the price of staple goods have also cushioned the realities of a weak economy. But years of war and corruption at the top have disillusioned many urban voters. <br><br>Warning of vote rigging, Mr Kostunica told a rally at the weekend: "They are bullies, liars and thieves and have stolen years of our lives and dignity. Now they are preparing to steal the elections". <br><br>Mr Milosevic could cheat by falsifying votes from Kosovo. The UN has allowed the poll to go ahead there but will not be running or supervising it. In the last Serbian presidential elections as many as 200,000 Albanians supposedly voted for Mr Milosevic's right-hand man. Because of the boycott in Montenegro, Mr Milosevic can also steal votes which are cast in army camps and town halls run by the pro-Belgrade party. <br><br>The EU has offered to lift sanctions if the election "leads to democratic change". The wording was chosen with care as the Yugoslav constitution is so ambiguous it could allow Mr Milosevic to serve out his term until next July, even if the opposition wins. But most observers believe he is more likely simply to declare victory and hope to ride out - or shoot out - any protests. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Tensions rise as Milosevic faces defeat ``x969534217,74678,``x``x
``xBy Paul Wood <br><br><br>21 September 2000 <br><br>"Zeljko" says he used to be a criminal; now he is a policeman. An enforcer for a vicious Belgrade protection racket, he almost killed one of his victims and was told to expect a five-year sentence. <br><br>But he is not in jail. Instead, the Belgrade authorities offered him an alternative, sending him to join the Yugoslav Army's 7th Battalion Military Police in Montenegro. <br><br>The 7th Battalion is the unit most feared by the Montenegrin government, which maintains it is a paramilitary force that will be used by Yugoslavia's President, Slobodan Milosevic, if he decides to seize power in the republic. It has been steadily taking on reservists from among Milosevic loyalists in the Montenegrin population. And, according to Zeljko, it is also being filled with personnel from Serbia, many with his sort of paramilitary experience in Bosnia and Kosovo, some from the Belgrade underworld. <br><br>Taking recruits from criminal gangs in Serbia was a method of recruiting that led to some of the worst atrocities of the earlier conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. That it is taking place in Montenegro is an ominous sign of what Belgrade intends. <br><br>"I was blackmailed into joining. It was my only way to avoid jail. If I don't do this job well, I could get three to five years," Zeljko said. Asked what his orders were, he replied: "Just offensive action. We are training how to take vital objectives in as short a time as possible." <br><br>The Yugoslav elections on Sunday are expected to confirm President Milosevic in power. Montenegro, Serbia's much smaller partner in the Yugoslav federation, is boycotting the poll, saying it will not be conducted fairly. <br><br>Under its reformist pro-western leader, Milo Djukanovic, Montenegro has been steadily breaking away from Belgrade. His government fears that the time after the poll will be the most dangerous for the republic. It believes Mr Milosevic will then feel he has the strength to act – and that hecalculates the United States, preoccupied with its own presidential race, will not intervene. <br><br>The Montenegrin Foreign Minister, Branko Lukova, said the West had to be prepared to make a Kosovo-style intervention. "If we are the victims of violence, we would be expecting the international community to use all possible means to assist Montenegro, including economic assistance, military assistance, no-fly zones, whatever," he said. <br><br>The European Union's call to the people of Serbia to vote against President Milosevic will probably not worry the Yugoslav leader – in fact the declaration could not have been better designed to fit with Belgrade's propaganda. Mr Milosevic's government has all along sought to portray him as the defender of Yugoslav interests against foreign conspirators seeking to undermine the country with the help of"enemies within" – the opposition, the student resistance, disloyal journalists or miscellaneous spies. <br><br>That is why the Montenegrin authorities are so sensitive to charges that Western governments have been helping them to train special police units, which would be used in a conflict with Belgrade. Such stories, whether true or not, play right into the hands of Mr Milosevic, who likes to portray the Montenegrin government as a tool of the Nato "aggressor" states. <br><br>The Montenegrins cannot match the Yugoslav army's heavy weapons or air support. But there are thousands of troops or heavily armed police on both sides. A conflict would be high intensity, probably closer to full-scale war than anything unleashed by President Milosevic in the break-up of the old Yugoslavia. <br><br>"The orders to the police will be very clear," the Deputy Prime Minister, Dragisa Burzan, said. "To defend the institutions, to defend the country, to defend the democracy we have built – so the police will have no orders to surrender. [Mr Milosevic] understands it quite clearly – that he cannot repeat here what he did in Bosnia and Croatia."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Montenegro fears attack by Serb enemy within ``x969534255,57674,``x``x
``xBERANE, Yugoslavia - The Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, sought Wednesday to raise the stakes in campaigning for Sunday's crucial elections, warning Montenegro that it was a question of life or death for the federation. <br>But the republic's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, hit back, accusing the Yugoslav strongman of trying to scare voters ahead of the polls because he knew he had little chance of winning, and said Montenegro would defend itself if attacked. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic, isolated internationally as an indicted war criminal and making his first trip in four years to Serbia's tiny sister republic, told 20,000 supporters that federal Yugoslavia faced the biggest test in its history. <br><br>''The survival of the state depends on the Serbian and Montenegrin people,'' Mr. Milosevic said.<br><br>''The outside world has nothing better to do than try to provoke conflict between Serbs and Montenegrins.'' <br><br>The visit came as a new opinion poll in Belgrade showed Mr. Milosevic, seeking to hold onto power as the best guarantee of freedom from arrest for alleged war crimes, was trailing the main opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, by 6 percentage points. <br><br>The survey by the respected Belgrade-based Strategic Marketing agency showed that 32.5 percent would vote for Mr. Kostunica and 26.6 percent for Mr. Milosevic in the federal presidential and parliamentary elections Sunday. <br><br>Mr. Djukanovic told Russian ORT public television: ''If Milosevic decides to provoke a military conflict with Montenegro, then we would have no choice but to defend the state and our freedom.'' <br><br>Opponents and analysts fear that Mr. Milosevic will either rig the results to show he won or provoke a crisis, possibly in Montenegro, so he can declare a state of emergency. ''It is more and more clear to Milosevic that his chances of winning at these elections in a legal way are minimal - they practically do not exist,'' Mr. Djukanovic said. <br><br>''Therefore, he is trying to scare the Yugoslav public with speculation about introducing a state of emergency.'' <br><br>Mr. Djukanovic insisted that Montenegro backed the solving of political disputes by peaceful means but expected the worst. <br><br>''Is it possible that things will go as far as a conflict and Milosevic will use some kind of pretext to declare a state of emergency?'' he asked. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic returned later on Wednesday to Belgrade, where he and Mr. Kostunica held rallies in different parts of the capital. <br><br>About 100,000 people gathered in the city center and more were still arriving ahead of Mr. Kostunica's rally, as the police kept a low profile. <br><br>In contrast, Mr. Milosevic addressed 15,000 people in a sports stadium, many of them bused in, amid tight security. <br><br>In the troubled Serbian province of Kosovo, which is under international administration, the first batch of 2,000 extra troops started arriving to reinforce security ahead of the elections amid renewed threats of violence. <br><br>Kosovo's own United Nations-organized local elections are still five weeks away, on Oct. 28.<br><br>But some of the estimated 100,000 Serb minority remaining in the province will participate in Sunday's polls. <br><br>Tuesday's discovery of what NATO says was a Serbian terrorist cell in a major Serbian enclave, and reports of an armed clash between Albanian guerrillas and Serbian forces on Kosovo's doorstep, underlined the potential for trouble. <br><br>Senior officials of Mr. Milosevic's Socialist Party said earlier this month that he would also visit Kosovo to campaign for the elections. NATO-led peacekeepers responded by saying he would be arrested if he tried to come. <br><br>In Belgrade, Serbia's main opposition bloc called on the army and the police not to allow themselves to be used against their own people during and after the polls Sunday. <br><br>The Democratic Opposition of Serbia said the army was aware that the majority of Yugoslavs wanted change, and that elections provided a means to bring that about peacefully. <br><br>In Montenegro, Mr. Milosevic directed a thinly veiled barb at Mr. Djukanovic, accusing the West of bribing politicians, prompting the crowd to chant: ''Milo thief, Milo thief.'' <br><br>''I see your interest in a free and independent country together with Serbia, together with all those who live in Yugoslavia today,'' he told the crowd of Serbs and pro-Serbs.<br><br>They responded with chants of ''Slobo, Slobo - Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia!''``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe IHT : Milosevic, in Montenegro, Calls His Foes Tools of West ``x969534313,23568,``x``x
``x<br>By STEVEN ERLANGER with CARLOTTA GALL<br> <br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Sept. 20 — With Yugoslavia's presidential election only days away, the two main rivals held competing rallies here tonight, speaking as if to two separate nations, with President Slobodan Milosevic taking up the fight for his future in an extraordinarily personal fashion.<br><br>For the first time in memory, Mr. Milosevic made two appearances in a single day, delivering slashing attacks on opposition leaders at rallies in Montenegro and later tonight in Belgrade, calling them "rabbits, rats and even hyenas" who had "the loyalty of dogs" to the NATO masters "who bribe and pay them."<br><br>Tonight in Belgrade his main opponent, Vojislav Kostunica, appeared before an enormous excited crowd estimated at 100,000, urging them to vote for his own vision of "a normal European democratic country" where "the government is not afraid of the people, and the people are not afraid of their government."<br><br>The election is Sunday, and the campaign has suddenly seemed to take on weight and moment, with Mr. Milosevic trying to beat back the challenge of those he considers traitors, while the opposition gathered courage from numbers and from the obvious nervousness of the regime.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica, hoarse and tired from his campaign of retail politics all over Serbia, urged courage on the crowd, saying, "There is a great chance and hope that after these elections, we will begin a new life in different Serbia." <br><br>Rather than a country "that is hostage to one man," he said, "I know you want to live in a good, democratic European state, one that is free inside and free abroad, too, that is independent, with a normal economy, industry, banking system, social and health care and media."<br><br>The crowd shouted slogans like "He's finished!" about Mr. Milosevic, and "Save Serbia from this madhouse, Kostunica!" (pronounced KOSH-too-nee-tsa).<br><br>The mood was happy, helped by the performance of two famous Yugoslav musicians, Bajaga and Bora Djordjevic, who endorsed Mr. Kostunica. Nebojsa Ristic, a television journalist jailed for 339 days by the government for supporting free speech, also spoke to endorse Mr. Kostunica.<br><br>Speaking on an outdoor stage in front of the Parliament, Mr. Kostunica was flanked by the leaders of 18 opposition parties who chose him as their joint candidate. While some have said they are uncomfortable with his deeply felt nationalism, they decided that Mr. Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer, was their best answer to Mr. Milosevic's appeal to Serbian patriotism.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica, both in his speech and an earlier appearance on state television, spoke in strong terms tonight about "NATO's criminal bombing of Yugoslavia" last year and the damage the war did "to the international legal order." <br><br>He repeated his assertion that the tribunal in The Hague that indicted Mr. Milosevic for war crimes at the end of the Kosovo war "is an American tribunal — not a court, but a political instrument." <br><br>And he said again that he disagreed with the indictment of Mr. Milosevic, "which puts Serbia in a difficult position" and gives Mr. Milosevic "no way out except to make the whole country his hostage."<br><br>Mr. Milosevic's appearance in Montenegro was his first visit to Serbia's sister republic in four years, and he went to a carefully protected military airfield in Berane, just across the border from Serbia, an indication of how little he can call this republic his own.<br><br>The president of the Montenegro republic, Milo Djukanovic, split with Mr. Milosevic in 1998 and has turned to the West while edging toward independence from Serbia. Mr. Djukanovic has urged a boycott of the Yugoslav elections, but up to a third of Montenegro's 440,000 voters are likely to cast ballots in any case.<br><br>In slashing style before some 10,000 people, Mr. Milosevic mocked Mr. Djukanovic and Serbia's opposition leaders as those "bribed and blackmailed by the mighty," calling them rats "who want to turn this great nation into a permed poodle."<br><br>He said that Mr. Djukanovic would surrender Montenegro's true freedom and independence, and that its traditional musical instruments and costumes would be reduced to museum exhibits "for American stars and British spinsters to see after they swim free on the beaches of Sveti Stefan," a famous Montenegrin resort.<br><br>While bellicose, he was also conciliatory, urging Montenegrins to carefully consider their future. "I think your interests are to live with Serbia, but it is up to you whether or not you wish to live with Serbia or if you choose another way," he said. "Whatever happens, I wish you good luck."<br><br>In a conservative blue suit and white shirt, Mr. Milosevic appeared confident. "How long Yugoslavia will survive will depend on the Montenegrin and Serbian people," he said. "If they want to live together, no one will be able to separate them."<br><br>The crowd, many bused in from other parts of northern Montenegro and some from Serbia, cheered and clapped for Mr. Milosevic, who stayed barely 35 minutes, shouting, "We love you, Slobo!" and "We are all Yugoslavia!" <br><br>He then returned to Belgrade, apparently by helicopter, for a second rally tonight, opening a sports hall orginally begun for a 1994 world basketball championship that international sanctions made impossible to hold here.<br><br>Speaking before a conservatively dressed crowd estimated at 15,000 people, who gave him standing ovations and rhythmic applause, Mr. Milosevic continued to attack his opposition as tools of the same Western countries that bombed Yugoslavia. He said the opposition was inspired by the West "to spread terrorism and crime" and "to destroy families through religious sects, spy groups and drug lords."<br><br>"Those alleged political parties, united or on their own — it makes no difference — are tasked with spreading lies and defeatism, provoking crime and terrorism, inciting chauvinism," he said. He accused the opposition of "abusing children and youth through sects and other intelligence organizations, terrorist groups and the narco-mafia."<br><br>His appearance in Montenegro was the main feature on state television, whose news broadcast was also shown simultaneously on every channel in Belgrade, something unprecedented even during the war, when state television was bombed by the Atlantic alliance. (One young girl of seven was infuriated when "Baywatch" was pre-empted by Mr. Milosevic in Montenegro, asking her mother whether something was wrong with the television.)<br><br>Opposition politicians interpreted Mr. Milosevic's appeareances as a sign of nervousness about the results of the election; he continues to trail Mr. Kostunica in the polls. <br><br>If no one wins more than 50 percent of the vote on Sunday, a runoff between the two top finishers will be held two weeks later. But opposition leaders say Mr. Milosevic will find a way — even through electoral fraud — to declare victory in the first round.<br><br>The opposition also appealed today to the army and the police not to let themselves be used to save Mr. Milosevic if he loses the elections. "Your sacred duty is to defend the country and peace in it, and this means to respect the will of the people," the opposition said.<br><br>As if in response, the chief of staff of the Yugoslav military, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, said tonight that the army would accept Mr. Kostunica as head of state if he wins the elections. General Pavkovic, who has come out in open support of Mr. Milosevic, repeated his view that the military will support the elected head of state.<br><br>"There is no debate over the fact that the military will accept the victory of Vojislav Kostunica if he is elected president," the general said on Montenegrin state television. <br><br>It was less clear what would happen if both Mr. Milosevic and Mr. Kostunica declare victory, or if the opposition goes into the streets to protest a rigged victory by Mr. Milosevic.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : As Election Nears, Yugoslavia's Main Rivals Lash Out``x969534350,60286,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br> <br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Sept. 21 — The leader of the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Seselj, made a bitter attack today on "the undemocratic propaganda methods" of the political coalition of President Slobodan Milosevic and his wife, Mirjana Markovic — a coalition Mr. Seselj has supported in both the federal and Serbian parliaments.<br><br>"The elections have been prepared in a completely irregular fashion," Mr. Seselj said at a news conference, saying that if Sunday's voting results are faked, "it will further destabilize the country." He said that if the elections were fair, it was "absolutely impossible" for any candidate to win the presidency in the first round, as many opposition leaders believe Mr. Milosevic intends to do, fairly or otherwise.<br><br>Without any apparent irony, Mr. Seselj accused Mr. Milosevic and his wife of "turning state media into their propaganda outlets," of "instrumentalizing the army and the police for political ends," and of "using all the financial resources of the state for their campaign," including the spending of reserves from the state bank. "There's nothing anyone can do about it," he said. "They are above the law."<br><br>Mr. Seselj and his Radical Party are ultranationalists and ambitious for power, and it has been clear for some time that Mr. Milosevic wants to use these elections to cut back Mr. Seselj's influence. In previous elections, Mr. Milosevic has given Mr. Seselj and his party considerable air time, in order to create a coalition partner on the patriotic right. This time, Mr. Seselj complained today, his party is being shut out of its fair share of time on state television.<br><br>The Radicals and the Serbian Renewal Movement — hitherto the largest opposition party, led by Mr. Seselj's sometime friend, sometime enemy Vuk Draskovic — look to be the main losers from this election. In the byzantine world of Serbian politics, they are already talking about cooperating in the Serbian Parliament, where the two parties control a majority of the seats and could combine to call early elections.<br><br>Despite his sharp criticism of Mr. Milosevic today, however, Mr. Seselj did not rule out any form of coalition after the election, so long as it is fair, he said.<br><br>But it was possible to hear his attacks as a warning to Mr. Milosevic that the Radicals can be dangerous in the vital Serbian Parliament if their desires are ignored.<br><br>At another news conference today, Nikola Sainovic, deputy prime minister and a spokesman for Mr. Milosevic's party, said the election campaign "has been very correct," adding that "all parties got time" on state television. He said the election would be free and fair, but he warned that NATO countries, helping the opposition to organize, "will participate in the stealing of the election."<br><br>He said he expected the Milosevic coalition to win "an absolute majority," both in parliamentary elections and in the first round of presidential elections.<br><br>In an instance of the way the state-owned press can manipulate the news, the tabloid Vecerni Novosti today printed a computer-distorted photograph of the crowd at Mr. Milosevic's rally on Wednesday at Berane, in Montenegro. The photograph has clearly been extended by at least a third of its length by adding another photograph of the same crowd taken at a different moment. Comparing the trees in the background and the faces at the front of the photograph, the repetition is obvious, with the same faces appearing twice in the crowd, though with slightly different expressions.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Coalition Partner of Milosevic Attacks Him Over Elections``x969616847,5490,``x``x
``xBy R. Jeffrey Smith<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Friday, September 22, 2000; Page A01 <br><br>PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Sept. 21 – Two months ago, Western governments uniformly predicted that elections called for Sunday in Yugoslavia by President Slobodan Milosevic would have little impact on the nation's future. Milosevic would certainly be the official victor, they said, either through massive vote theft or suppression of dissent. <br><br><br>But three days before the vote, an unexpectedly strong showing by Milosevic's chief opponent in the past month has some U.S. and European officials hoping for another outcome: a vote that sets in motion his downfall.<br><br><br>As a result, Western governments are now tripping over one another to advertise to Yugoslavia's voters the potential benefits of political change. Statements from Washington and European capitals predict trade and foreign aid. This is your chance to become part of the new Europe, they say, hoping to win over nationalist Serbs who are the base of Milosevic's support.<br><br><br>Norway last week came out with a specific dollar figure: $15 million if the opposition takes power.<br><br><br>And under pressure from the Clinton administration and the European Union, the U.N. mission now running the Serbian province of Kosovo, which was occupied by NATO troops last year but is legally still part of Yugoslavia, has reversed its plan to treat the election as an illegitimate ploy unworthy of its attention.<br><br><br>Instead, U.N. officials will go to dozens of polling stations in Kosovo to "bear witness" to how many voters actually show up at the polls, officials say.<br><br><br>The idea is to be prepared to question any exaggerated claims by the Yugoslav government about the number of votes Milosevic collects from supporters in Kosovo, and thus help stoke post-election sentiment against him.<br><br><br>Western analysts say Milosevic has manipulated past elections and could do so again through such tactics as withholding voter lists from outside observers and keeping those observers out of polling stations. In recent weeks, they note, police have arrested and otherwise harassed opposition supporters and journalists.<br><br><br>No Western consensus exists, however, about how quickly the long-standing international sanctions against Yugoslavia should be lifted to reward Milosevic's principal challenger, lawyer Vojislav Kostunica, if he unseats Milosevic.<br><br><br>During a visit here today, the European Union's commissioner of external relations, Chris Patten, noted that the United States and Europe have long disagreed over how effective the sanctions against Yugoslavia have been. "I am sure we will proceed in step," he said about their potential withdrawal. But EU ministers and the Clinton administration this week released separate statements forecasting slightly different policies on the issue.<br><br><br>The disagreement has not come to a boil yet because most experts still do not rate Milosevic's ouster as a high probability. At age 59, Milosevic has already survived three military routs – in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo – in which tens of thousand of Serbs died. He has also proven extraordinarily adept at convincing Serbs that foreigners are principally responsible for the nation's desperate economic troubles.<br><br><br>Milosevic called the Sept. 24 election in a burst of confidence that the outcome would be favorable, Western analysts say. His aides, who control the vote-counting process, have repeatedly said he is certain to win a majority on the first ballot. Public opinion polls concluding that Kostunica is more popular are Western-funded inventions, they claim. The United States has been helping bankroll opposition activities.<br><br><br>But U.S. and European officials say that if a large portion of the Yugoslav population becomes convinced that he stole the elections, people could turn out in the streets in large numbers, as they did for several weeks after the 1996 election. This time, protests could spawn major defections from within his circle, leaving him without a base of power, they say.<br><br><br>The issue of how the West should respond to an opposition victory is complicated by recent changes made by Milosevic and his supporters to the Yugoslav constitution. Even if he conceded defeat, the new provisions would allow him to remain in office until the end of his four-year term next summer.<br><br><br>Many experts also have predicted that the ruling Socialist Party could continue to dominate parliament. That would create a divided government even if Kostunica gained the presidency.<br><br><br>But even if Kostunica achieved full power, his rise would not automatically turn on the aid spigots full blast. He has taken many positions at odds with those of Western countries. For instance, he promised during the campaign not to allow Serbian policy to be influenced by the West. He said he would seek the withdrawal of NATO troops from Kosovo. And he promised not to cooperate with the International War Crimes Tribunal, which last year indicted Milosevic and four of his top aides for alleged crimes in Kosovo and wants to put them on trial.<br><br><br>After the election of a new president and prime minister in nearby Croatia last winter, U.S. and European officials said the government could gain access to international loans and substantial foreign investment only if it cooperated fully with the tribunal. But several diplomats have said the West's position on Yugoslavia's cooperation is less clear-cut.<br><br><br>On Tuesday, for example, the European Union declared on behalf of its 15 members and 14 other European countries that "a choice leading to democratic change will entail a radical change in the European Union's policy with regard to Serbia [the dominant republic of Yugoslavia]: We will lift the sanctions . . . we will support the necessary economic and political reforms by providing Serbia with economic aid for its reconstruction and we will support the reintegration of [Yugoslavia] . . . into the international community."<br><br><br>The sanctions on Yugoslavia include a widely flouted ban on the sale of fuel, a ban on foreign investments and a ban on international loans.<br><br><br>The Clinton administration, in contrast, has made a less sweeping statement that "when a democratic transition takes place, we will take steps to remove sanctions."<br><br><br>James C. O'Brien, special assistant to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright for Balkans policy, told a conference in Washington this week that a Kostunica victory would not cause the United States to back away from its basic positions on Yugoslavia.<br><br><br>The United States will insist on a Yugoslavia that respects the rule of law, the Dayton agreement that ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war and the United Nations, O'Brien said. If Yugoslavia is to join Europe, it must give up its ambition to annex the Serbian part of Bosnia and must accept the U.N. administration of Kosovo, he said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post : West's Interest Surges In Yugoslavia's Election``x969616880,7736,``x``x
``xYugoslavs vote Sunday. An opposition leader is ahead, but officials say the president will win. <br>By Alex Todorovic <br> <br>BELGRADE <br><br>No matter who is declared the winner of the elections in Yugoslavia this weekend, President Slobodan Milosevic's main challenger, Vojislav Kostunica, has permanently altered the political landscape. <br><br>Although independent opinion polls show Mr. Kostunica seven to 10 points ahead, opposition politicians and foreign officials expect election fraud will guarantee a Milosevic victory. <br><br>But Yugoslavia analysts note that the campaign has profoundly affected Mr. Milosevic's ability to manipulate the opposition and has put the president on the defensive. Milosevic, who rarely appears in public, addressed two rallies in the past week. <br><br>"After this election, nothing will be the same," says Alexandar Tijanic, a prominent journalist and former minister of information. "President Milosevic will no longer be able to speak in the name of the Serbian people and Kostunica is a new kind of opposition leader." <br><br>Analysts say the Kostunica campaign has undermined Milosevic's formula for political success. Over the past decade, he has exploited fierce rivalries among Serbia's charismatic political leaders – especially Vuk Draskovic and Zoran Djindjic – to divide the opposition. "The previous leaders are now in the background, while Kostunica's campaign is bigger than any political party and represents a movement that can't be manipulated," says Mr. Tijanic. <br><br>In the past, Milosevic has been very successful at whipping up patriotic zeal. Now, he has divided the country into patriots and traitors, lovers of freedom and NATO slaves. A trial of the leaders of NATO countries that conducted airstrikes against Yugoslavia last year over Kosovo is scheduled to wrap up today. Each NATO leader had an appointed lawyer and an empty chair before the presiding judge, with the first seat reserved for President Clinton. The trial, which is being shown on state television, featured personal testimony and graphic video footage, including the bombing of Radio Television Serbia, which human rights group Amnesty International labeled a war crime. <br><br>"In Libya, there is an official holiday called 'Day of Hatred,' which is directed against the West.... The trial this week has been our very own 'Week of Hatred' and its timing is designed to pound in the message we've been hearing all year, that the Serbian opposition is supported by NATO countries that were bombing us," says Nenad Stefanovic, a strategist with the opposition Democratic Party. <br><br>The "NATO lackey" label doesn't stick to Kostunica, however. While the West has poured millions of dollars into supporting Serbia's opposition, Kostunica isn't on its list of favored candidates. A moderate nationalist, he is a harsh critic of the UN's peacekeeping mission in Kosovo and of the NATO bombing campaign. <br><br>"It's remarkable that Kostunica has been able to come out of nowhere and establish so much trust in such a short period of time," says Svetlana Djordjezic, political editor of Nin, an independent Belgrade weekly. <br><br>Kostunica's popularity also has exacerbated tensions within the three-party ruling coalition made up of Milosevic's Socialist Party, the Yugoslav United Left (JUL) under his wife, Mira Markovic, and Vojislav Seselj's Radical Party. <br><br>Ms. Markovic is running for a seat in the federal parliament in what analysts see as a bid to emerge from wielding a strong background influence to a visible role in running the country alongside Milosevic. <br><br>Mr. Seselj's party dramatically resigned from the governing board of Radio Television Serbia, claiming the state-controlled national network focused exclusively on the first couple's parties. The pair have made an unprecedented number of campaign appearances. At a certain risk, Milosevic made a historic visit on Wednesday to Montenegro, Serbia's smaller partner in the Yugoslav federation, where he spoke to tens of thousands of supporters. <br><br>Montenegro's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, once threatened to arrest Milosevic for war crimes if he came to the republic. The visit emphasized that Montenegro is still a part of Yugoslavia despite Mr. Djukanovic's efforts to distance himself from Belgrade. <br><br>Milosevic called the opposition "rats and hyenas" in his Montenegro speech, and in Belgrade accused the opposition of "abusing children and the youth through sects and other intelligence organizations, terrorist groups, and the narco-mafia." Markovic has cast the elections as an ideological fight between the fascism of a "new world order" and poor nations battling for their freedom. <br><br>The contrast between the sides was further underlined on Wednesday evening, when Kostunica also held a rally in Belgrade. As he waded through a cheerful crowd of 100,000 downtown, supporters chanted, "Save Serbia from this madhouse, Kostunica" and "He's finished," a popular reference to the president. Milosevic, by contrast, spoke to about 15,000 supporters, many of whom were bused in from the suburbs, in a sports arena that was surrounded by police. <br><br>The subject of conversation across Belgrade is what will happen once the polls close on Sunday. The first results are not expected until Monday, but the opposition has urged supporters to take to the streets to celebrate victory. There is speculation that if he loses the vote, Milosevic may trigger unrest as an excuse to impose martial law. <br><br>The head of the Yugoslav Army warned that the military would not tolerate disturbances that threatened the stability of the country, suggesting that foreign troops may try to infiltrate over the weekend. In broadcast comments yesterday, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic said, "We have to be ready to prevent any surprises." He added, "If someone intervenes, there won't be peace."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor : Milosevic defensive as vote nears ``x969616926,56487,``x``x
``xBy Katarina Kratovac <br><br><br>22 September 2000 <br><br>With Slobodan Milosevic trailing in the polls, one of his key lieutenants says the Yugoslav president will remain in office until June even if he loses this weekend's election. <br><br>"The current president can stay in power until the middle of next year because the constitution allows him to do so," Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic told the private Elmag TV in Montenegro late Thursday. <br><br>Some legal experts question that interpretation, since the constitution also requires a new president to be sworn in within 15 days of Sunday's election. Milosevic, who assumed the presidency in 1997, called early balloting after amending the constitution to provide for direct election of the chief of state, who had formerly been chosen by parliament. <br><br>Bulatovic's comment was broadcast shortly before the pre–election ban on campaigning that began at midnight Thursday. That also effectively prevents the opposition from responding to the claim. <br><br>On Thursday's final night of campaigning, more than 20,000 people took to the streets in Novi Sad, Serbia's second largest city, to show their support for opposition presidential candidate Vojislav Kostunica. <br><br>Despite heavy rain, Kostunica's supporters were enthusiastic, chanting, "Down with Milosevic," and brandishing posters reading "He's finished." <br><br>Meanwhile, in Prague, Wesley Clark, NATO's former commander in Europe, said that he did not think there would be a peaceful transition of power if Milosevic loses Sunday's ballot. <br><br>Speaking after a conference on Balkan reconstruction, Clark issued a stark warning to Milosevic, who many expect will rig the vote to stay in power. <br><br>"Were I in Milosevic's position ... I would not exclude international intervention," Clark said. <br><br>NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson told Germany's n–tv station that the alliance "feared the worst" and had little hope that Yugoslav elections would be free and fair. <br><br>In Montenegro, Yugoslavia's junior republic, the pro–Western president Milo Djukanovic, predicted Milosevic will proclaim victory despite losing at the polls to Kostunica. <br><br>"I don't expect Milosevic will ever concede losing the ballot," Djukanovic told The Associated Press. <br><br>Although Kostunica will be the real winner, "Milosevic will declare victory" after polls close at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) Sunday, and if needed, use force to stay in power, Djukanovic said. <br><br>Although Djukanovic's independence–minded government is boycotting the elections, Montenegrins who back Milosevic will be allowed to vote there, chiefly in private homes turned into makeshift polling stations. <br><br>Any failure to oust Milosevic will mean likely violence, in Serbia between police and opposition supporters claiming the regime cheated, and in Montenegro between pro–Djukanovic police and federal army units supporting Milosevic. Montenegrin government officials have said they would formally secede if Milosevic remains president. <br><br>On Thursday, Milosevic's allies turned up their anti–Western propaganda, claiming alleged Western plots to bring the opposition to power in the elections. <br><br>Yugoslavia's army chief, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, who recently described the elections as "D–Day" for the army, claimed the West's plans could include infiltration of his troops during Sunday's elections – only a latest in conspiracy theories spun here by government officials. <br><br>Pavkovic warned that Yugoslav soldiers were prepared if foreign troops tried to move into the country. <br><br>Milosevic consistently links those who oppose him to foreign enemies – shorthand for NATO, the United States and other Western democracies – and portrays himself as the defender of a sovereign Yugoslavia against a hostile outside world led by Washington. <br><br>For Milosevic's camp, opposition leaders are opportunistic Western stooges and Yugoslavia's traitors. <br><br>The government on Thursday protested against a European Union pledge to lift sanctions if upcoming elections lead to Milosevic's ousting, labeling the EU message a "gross interference" into the country's internal affairs. <br><br>The opposition tried to end its campaign on a note of confidence. <br><br>"We have no armed forces if Milosevic goes on the warpath again," Zoran Djindjic of the Democrats told the crowd in Novi Sad. "Our job is to win these elections through our campaign and then defend our ballots on the streets." <br><br>Nenad Canak, an opposition leader from Novi Sad, wished Yugoslavs "wake up on Monday without the nightmare called Milosevic." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : 'Milosovic can stay as president if he loses poll', says his PM ``x969616980,26070,``x``x
``xSpecial report: Serbia <br><br>Jonathan Steele <br>Friday September 22, 2000 <br><br>Yugoslavia's army chief ratcheted up the tension yesterday ahead of Sunday's election by claiming that Nato countries planned to send in special forces to help rivals of President Slobodan Milosevic seize power. <br>General Nebojsa Pavkovic's assertion sounded like a pretext for Mr Milosevic to clamp down on protesters or declare a state of emergency if he loses on Sunday - as all opinion polls predict he will. Voters will be choosing a federal parliament, local mayors and the Yugoslav presidency. <br><br>The army knew of a plan, Gen Pavkovic said, under which there would be disturbances on Sunday "provoked by special units of foreign armed forces who would be infiltrated into Yugoslav territory on that day". <br><br>They would come from the Serb part of Bosnia, from Montenegro and from Kosovo. They would dress in Yugoslav army and police uniforms, he said, and would stage provocations "under the guise of extending aid to the 'victors' - the opposition". <br><br>"Threats are being addressed to our country at the moment and as a serious army it is our duty to make all the preparations to prevent any surprises," he added. <br><br>Although the general also said the army would accept a genuine opposition victory, he is a Milosevic loyalist. Mr Milosevic has called the vote a choice between "patriotism and treachery" and the hint of military action worries western policymakers. <br><br>European Union foreign ministers offered voters a massive inducement this week to oust the president by announcing that foreign sanctions would be lifted if there was "democratic change". <br><br>The chief opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, is a moderate nationalist who has walked a careful line in recent days by strongly criticising the United States while showing more sympathy for European positions. But he still calls for the unconditional lifting of sanctions and has denounced Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia last year. <br><br>While western governments can offer an end to sanctions, they cannot agree on what to do if Mr Milosevic "steals" Sunday's election by declaring victory on the basis of fraud and ballot-rigging. <br><br>Diplomats are uncertain how the president will play the election and are unwilling to speculate on his options or their reactions. The only certainties are that Mr Milosevic called the polls early thinking he would win easily because of the opposition's disunity, and that he is as surprised as any one by his opponents' strength. <br><br>The International Crisis Group, a think-tank that aims to strengthen the capacity of the international community to anticipate conflict, and which has good contacts in Washington and London, this week outlined four scenarios for Sunday's poll. <br><br>Fearing defeat, the Yugoslav president may call it off after "provoking some sort of internal crisis through a staged terrorist attack or simulated military coup, or major disruption in Montenegro". This is unlikely, says the ICG, because it would damage his image of being confident and in control. <br><br>Scenario two, is "the big steal" in which he cheats. A third option is that he plays by the rules on Sunday and accepts defeat knowing that under the constitution he need not hand over power until his mandate ends next August. In the meantime he transfers all power to the Serbian presidency and organises an election victory in Serbia next spring, leaving Mr Kostunica to inherit an empty shell as Yugoslav president. <br><br>The last option is again that Mr Milosevic accepts a Kostunica victory but over the next few months allows Montenegro to secede, thereby destroying Yugoslavia and leaving Mr Kostunica with no role. <br><br>Like most observers, the ICG believes the "big steal" is the likeliest. All will depend on the opposition's reaction, it says. <br><br>The opposition might accept cheating in the presidential vote while using its new strength in parliament and town halls to consolidate power for the long haul. Alternatively, it may mount street protests and confront the government, but Mr Kostunica has repeatedly said he does not want bloodshed. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : How Milosevic can ensure he's an each-way winner ``x969617020,99297,``x``x
``xBy JANE PERLEZ<br>WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 — After more than seven years opposing President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia on the battlefield and in the negotiating room, the Clinton administration is making one last stand against him — among the voters. <br><br>In a high-profile strategy that began a year ago, the administration has helped finance an opposition movement that is backing Vojislav Kostunica in his campaign to unseat Mr. Milosevic from the Yugoslav presidency in voting on Sunday. <br><br>Even if, as almost everyone expects, Mr. Milosevic simply declares himself the victor, Washington is hoping that angry voters will take to the streets in a way that eventually drives him from office, much as Ferdinand E. Marcos was ousted in the Philippines in 1986.<br><br>The strategy largely reflects the thinking of Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, who has made democracy a centerpiece of her tenure and has cast Mr. Milosevic as her most bitter enemy. <br><br>But the plan, which has ranged from bringing fractious opposition leaders here to meet Dr. Albright in her seventh-floor suite at the State Department to pumping million of dollars into voter education groups and the independent media, has its risks. <br><br>For one thing, Mr. Kostunica is a Serbian nationalist who does not necessarily support the NATO presence in Kosovo. Without an official American presence in Serbia, it is difficult to gauge how much of the $25 million spent on the opposition over the last year has been fruitfully used. In fact, the blatant American campaign against Mr. Milosevic has given him a powerful theme for his campaign.<br><br>The administration officials who devised the strategy said they believed that Mr. Milosevic, regardless of the vote tallies, would manipulate the results and declare victory. In the best case, the officials said, they hoped that opposition protests would eventually lead Mr. Milosevic's all- important army and security forces to turn against him.<br><br>"The people of Yugoslavia are standing up," said James C. O'Brien, special adviser to President Clinton and Dr. Albright on democracy in the Balkans. "They believe it's time for change. There is the potential for seismic change in Yugoslavia." <br><br>The administration, Mr. O'Brien suggested, hopes that the elections will provide a "crucial moment, like the Berlin Wall falling." But he said Washington would settle for a "tide turning." <br><br>The national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, noted recently that "people power" spelled the end in Manila in 1986 and that the same movement could occur now in Belgrade.<br><br>Other officials acknowledged, however, that it was unclear how motivated the opposition would be to protest, whether it could rouse a weary population to rally in great numbers and whether the security forces would turn against Mr. Milosevic.<br><br>To encourage opposition activities in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia, the United States has spent $25 million in the last year, according to Donald L. Pressley, the assistant administrator at the United States Agency for International Development. Nearly half of the money, $11 million, was spent on helping unions, media organizations and civic associations, Mr. Pressley said.<br><br>Two groups here, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, were allocated $4 million to help groups in Serbia campaign door to door and to develop other get-out-the-vote techniques, Mr. Pressley said. Much of the remaining money went to Serbian cities like Nis and Novi Sad, which are run by independent mayors. <br><br>Because American officials are barred from Serbia, a satellite embassy, under the direction of Ambassador William Montgomery, was established in Budapest in the summer to be the fulcrum for the effort to build democracy in Serbia. From Budapest, conferences have been organized in southern Hungary to bring Serbians together with turnout experts from Central Europe. <br><br>The Agency for International Development has given contracts to establish nongovernmental organizations like Freedom House and the German Marshall Fund, which give grants to Central European groups that have access to Serbia, Mr. Pressley said. <br><br>Thus, O.K. 98, a group that helped unseat Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar in Slovakia in 1998, is working alongside Serbian groups in door-to- door canvassing, he said.<br><br>In Serbia, there have been complaints that some of the foreign activity enriches individuals with cash, cell phones and faxes. Mr. Pressley said that $1.5 million of the $25 million effort was earmarked for audits and that A.I.D.'s Budapest operation for Serbia included an auditor.<br><br>Administration officials, following their usual policy, refused to confirm or deny the existence of covert operations in Yugoslavia.<br><br>One main reason for optimism in the administration is that officials apparently believe that their carefully devised effort to build democracy has helped magnify interest in the opposition candidate, Mr. Kostunica.<br><br>Rarely in more than seven years of dealing with Mr. Milosevic has the Clinton administration sounded so upbeat. Nor have officials been so willing to advertise their policy. One official said this week that he had to warn about too much euphoria inside the State Department. <br><br>The administration has had little to do with Mr. Kostunica, a law professor who has maintained a fierce independence from American policy and who has said that if he came to power he would not send Mr. Milosevic to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. The tribunal indicted Mr. Milosevic last year for what it said were crimes committed by his security forces in Kosovo. <br><br>Dr. Albright has watched enthusiastically as more than a dozen parties in Serbia's famously fractured opposition decided to back Mr. Kostunica. Administration officials are also upbeat because, they say, they believe that Mr. Milosevic miscalculated by suddenly calling the elections in July, making this his first direct electoral test since 1992.<br><br>The unanswered question in the strategy is what happens after the vote. In his 13 years in power, Mr. Milosevic has repeatedly shown his ability to maneuver, manipulating allies and rivals to maintain his grip.<br><br>Some administration officials said they believed that if Mr. Milosevic did not lose by a wide margin and, therefore, did not resort to extensive fraud, there would be a less compelling case for protest.<br><br>Other officials argue that ordinary people, buffeted by a bad economy and accepting of official propaganda that the opposition is backed by foreign interests, lack the passion for an enduring show of protest. <br><br>Other questions concern whether the police and soldiers are prepared to use large-scale force against fellow Serbs. If they are, that raises a question about how much the administration should encourage protest.<br><br>"Is this going to be like 1956?" asked one senior administration official, recalling the Western hints to the Hungarians that help would be on the way if the Soviet Union quashed the uprising. <br><br>In the last several days, Bratislav Grubacic, a Serbian journalist who is widely read in the Western diplomatic community, has warned that Mr. Milosevic will attempt to stay in power at any cost. "The bigger danger for the Serbs," Mr. Grubacic wrote, "is that the authorities could apply repressive measures such as those in Beijing's Tiananmen Square." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : U.S. Anti-Milosevic Plan Faces Major Test at Polls``x969704234,10153,``x``x
``xSpecial report: Serbia<br>Nicholas Wood in Pristina and Jonathan Steele <br>Saturday September 23, 2000 <br><br>United Nations officials in Kosovo were hastily putting together a team of election "witnesses" yesterday to count the voters who turn out for Sunday's crucial Yugoslav presidential and parliamentary elections. <br>The UN has denounced the elections as neither free nor fair, and said previously that it would do no more than provide security for Serbs in Kosovo who wanted to vote - it is assumed that Albanian Kosovans will boycott the poll. <br><br>It has changed its mind under heavy pressure from the US, Britain and other Nato countries which want to reduce President Slobodan Milosevic's chance of rigging the ballot. <br><br>As it became clear that, in the absence of supervision, Mr Milosevic could use the Kosovan votes to bump up his total, the UN decided to appoint monitors. <br><br>In Serbia itself no monitors, local or from Nato countries, have been accredited. Only the political parties will be able to have someone in the polling stations, but with restricted rights to examine the count and the lists of total votes. <br><br>Anxious not to give credibility to the poll, the UN team in Kosovo will stay out of the election buildings and count voters, not votes, to have some check on turnout padding. <br><br>Officials say they are operating on opinion poll predictions that Mr Milosevic needs 500,000 extra votes to secure the 50% required for a first-round win. <br><br>The head of the UN administration, Bernard Kouchner, is expected to announce the number seen entering and leaving polling stations late on Sunday evening. <br><br>The UN acted as Western officials stepped up their warning of fraud on Sunday. <br><br>In Zagreb the European Union external relations commissioner, Chris Patten, said Mr Milosevic might use "Stalinist" methods to keep power after the election. <br><br>"While many of us believe that the overwhelming majority in Serbia want the long night represented by Milosevic's regime to come to an end, I am not sure that is a view entirely held by Mr Milosevic," he told reporters after talks with Croatian officials. <br><br>"If Milosevic hangs on, I think many people predict growing economic and humanitarian problems in Serbia. That is one reason why we want to see ... substantial and rapid change as soon as possible," he added. <br><br>The Nato secretary-general, Lord Robertson, said he hoped Yugoslav opposition parties would win by too large a margin for Mr Milosevic to falsify the result. <br><br>"I hope the people of Serbia use the opportunity they have to accept the welcome Europe extends to them if they turn their backs on the politics of ethnic hatred. I hope they'll make it impossible for him to pretend he has won when he has lost." <br><br>He warned Mr Milosevic against undermining Milo Djukanovic, the pro-western president of Montenegro. <br><br>"Djukanovic has the right to fulfill the mandate given him by the people of Montenegro. Milosevic shouldn't miscalculate the determination of the international community in this matter," he said. <br><br>Senior Serb figures also called for free elections. Patriarch Pavle, head of the Serbian Orthodox church and a frequent critic of Mr Milosevic, said ballot-rigging could lead to bloodshed. <br><br>"The voice of the people is the voice of God," he said. "If someone tries to change the people's will there is a danger of unforeseeable consequences for our people and country." <br><br>Milorad Dodik, the west-backed prime minister of the Bosnian Serb republic, urged Mr Milosevic to quit, saying no other leader had caused the Serb people so much misery. <br><br>"What is left? What will we remember you for?" he wrote in an open letter. <br><br>"Wars? Hyperinflation? The loss of Kosovo? Turning Serbs into a refugee tribe on tractors? Graves, ruins? These, Slobodan, are the monuments of your rule." <br><br>With campaigning now officially over, several of Mr Milosevic's critics reacted angrily yesterday to a statement by his close ally, the federal prime minister Momir Bulatovic, that the president might stay in power until next summer even if he lost the vote. <br><br>"Under the constitutional law, the mandate of the president cannot be shortened. It will last until its expiry, which will be until mid-2001," he told a Montenegrin television station. <br><br>Mr Milosevic called the elec tions early in the hope of catching the opposition off guard, but it united unexpectedly quickly round Vojislav Kostunica, who leads in every poll. Zoran Djindjic of the Democratic party said the Bulatovic statement proved the president was running scared. <br><br>The Montenegrin prime minister, Filip Vujanovic, also attacked the suggestion that Mr Milosevic could legally stay on if he lost. It was "completely ridiculous". <br><br>His government is boycotting the elections as unconstitutional. Pro-Belgrade parties in the republic will organise their own voting. <br><br>But Mr Vujanovic added a rare note of optimism. He said he doubted that Mr Milosevic would lash out at Montenegro. <br><br>"I don't see high risks of conflicts in Montenegro after the elections," he said. There was no evidence of a Yugoslav army build-up in Montenegro. <br><br>Western analysts suggest various ways Mr Milosevic may have in mind to cling on to power. One is pressure on Montenegro as a way of trying to justify a state of emergency and a clampdown on all opposition parties and media.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : UN appoints watchers as fear of Milosevic poll-rigging grows ``x969704285,68578,``x``x
``x <br>Ethnic Albanian suporters chant during a rally of Aliance for the Future of Kosova (AAK) in the capital Pristina on Friday. (Visar Kryeziu - AP) <br><br>By R. Jeffrey Smith<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Saturday, September 23, 2000; Page A16 <br><br>STRPCE, Yugoslavia, Sept. 22 –– When voters in this scenic mountain village arrive at an elementary school to cast a ballot for president of Yugoslavia on Sunday, their names will first have to be matched against a master voting list compiled by officials in the ruling Socialist Party. <br><br><br>Chances are that the person who hands them a ballot will be an official of the ruling party. And after the voters have circled their selection on a printed page and deposited it in a box sealed by twine and wax, the results will be tallied by an election commission consisting mostly of ruling party members.<br><br><br>"You know who will win here," said Lubomir Regic, a retired construction worker, raising his eyebrows. "Of course, it will be Milosevic."<br><br><br>With the vote drawing near, President Slobodan Milosevic is the second choice, according to non-government opinion polls, as the opposition mounts a vigorous campaign. Still, many people here assume that he will announce victory after the vote, regardless of the actual numbers. The reason is the kind of control that the government will exercise in this village.<br><br><br>Strpce is in Kosovo province, which was occupied by NATO troops last year but is still legally part of Yugoslavia. Yugoslav officials running the polling here and reports from other parts of Yugoslavia indicate that its local practices will be standard all over the country.<br><br><br>The government has invited lawmakers from 52 friendly countries, including Angola, Belarus and Iraq, to monitor the elections. But it is not allowing trained, independent domestic volunteers or Western observers. Domestic and foreign journalists will have no guaranteed access to polling stations. And in two regions of the country, the republic of Montenegro and Kosovo, where many people are boycotting the vote, many voting stations will be located in the homes of Milosevic supporters.<br><br><br>The nation's estimated 108,000 military personnel are slated to vote with their units, whose leaders have publicly endorsed Milosevic. Other voting will take place in factories and offices, without monitors.<br><br><br>The election observation unit of the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe--the continent's principal voting watchdog--concluded in a recent report that "the scope for abuse is . . . considerable" in Yugoslavia. A separate study by New York-based Human Rights Watch went further, alleging that "Yugoslav election law facilitates fraud."<br><br><br>Here in Strpce, an enclave of about 11,000 Serbs, Yugoslavia's dominant ethnic group, located near a closed ski resort in a south-central region of Kosovo, people have had only the government-controlled newspaper to read of late. Unemployment is widespread, and virtually all those who work depend on the Milosevic government for their meager paychecks or pensions.<br><br><br>Election preparations are being overseen by Svetislav Durlevic, the 32-year-old secretary of the municipal assembly, a member of the ruling Socialist Party who said he, too, expects Milosevic will win--at least in a runoff election, if not on the first ballot.<br><br><br>Durlevic said he likes his job, which entitles him to an automobile, a cell phone, a modest fund for business lunches and a monthly salary of roughly $130. That makes him relatively well-to-do in a country whose economy has been battered by war and economic sanctions. Only Milosevic will ensure that Serbia "will remain free and independent, not one in a series of American servants," he said.<br><br><br>Durlevic stores the approved list of voters in Strpce, drawn from municipal and police records, inside a locked safe in his office at the municipal building. His counterparts throughout the country have amassed similar lists, and--according to Human Rights Watch--no one outside the government knows whether they contain duplicates or include voters who have moved or are deceased.<br><br><br>Those who vote at one of the 33 polling stations in the area will not be called on to sign a register, Durlevic said. Such signatures are a common feature in Western elections and are meant to inhibit repeat voting. Instead, people will simply circle one of the five numbers adjacent to the names of the presidential candidates.<br><br><br>Durlevic said he recently drove to the city of Vranje, to the northeast, to retrieve 9,681 ballots for voters in his municipality. This number seems large, considering a U.N. estimate last January that put the municipality's population--including children--at 11,012. But it is not clear whether the geographic areas match exactly.<br><br><br>Durlevic said that of the ballots he retrieved, 2,141 have been allocated to voters residing in three ethnic Albanian villages. He conceded that few of the Albanians will vote, since they have boycotted Yugoslav institutions for more than a decade. But he said that the government must respect their right to vote.<br><br><br>Opposition politicians have a different interpretation. They have alleged that the ruling party deliberately sent as many as 850,000 extra ballots to Kosovo and central Serbia, and that many will be returned with Milosevic's name circled by party functionaries.<br><br><br>The allegation is being taken seriously by the U.N. mission in Kosovo, which plans to deploy as many as 200 monitoring teams to check the size of the vote within the province.<br><br><br>Durlevic and an aide promised the election would be conducted fairly. With two days to go, Durlevic was happy to show a visitor some of the ballots--colored white for president and blue for the federal assembly, and bearing no printed numbers.<br><br><br>He said that many members of each station's election commission, who will count the votes after the polls close at 7 p.m. in Strpce, are Socialist Party members. At least one member of each opposition party is entitled to monitor the count, he said, provided they apply to the government for permission in advance and receive approval.<br><br><br>Durlevic could not recall the names of any opposition party officials, however, and said he was unsure if any will be present.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post : Ruling Party In Control of Yugoslav Vote``x969704311,62066,``x``x
``xRICHARD BEESTON IN SMEDEREVO <br><br><br>Posters for Vojislav Kostunica, rival candidate for the presidency, dominate Nis <br>Photograph: KOSTADIN KAMENOV/AP ©<br> <br>IF ONLY the rest of Serbia were as loyal as this drab industrial town on the Danube, then President Milosevic could comfortably put his feet up and cruise to a landslide re-election victory tomorrow. <br><br>Smederevo, 30 miles southeast of Belgrade, is a one-factory town, with a tradition of voting for the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), whose inhabitants, through conviction and sometimes fear, believe that they need Mr Milosevic as much as he needs them in the closing days of his flagging campaign. <br><br>With only one day to go before the polls open, the Serb leader is depending on the ordinary workers, in towns and villages where his support is still strong, to come out and save him in the greatest political test he has faced since coming to power more than a decade ago. <br><br>Mladen, a painter-decorator wearing a communist-era black leather cap, looked surprised when asked who he would be voting for, as though there was little choice in the matter. <br><br>"Slobodan Milosevic, of course. A vote for anyone else means voting for our enemies, it means our destruction," he said, politely noting that only last year Nato aircraft knocked out the town's bridge and oil depot. <br><br>"The world, apart from the Russians, hates us because we are Orthodox. If Milosevic is no longer there to defend us, we will lose Montenegro, then [the Hungarian region of] Vojvodino and then [the Muslim region of] Sandzak," he said emphatically. <br><br>His opinion was not the ranting of some paranoid ultra-nationalist but the conviction shared by many ordinary Serbs, who have been fed on a steady diet of anti-Western propaganda and sincerely believe that the nation state faces an existential challenge. <br><br>While the nationalist theme certainly has popular backing - with all four main presidential candidates espousing the Serb cause - there are also far more practical means of ensuring that this town, and many others across the country, votes the way the Milosevic regime wants. <br><br>The main employer here is the Sartid metalworks factory, a state-owned enterprise, run by Dusan Matkovic, one the main figures in the SPS hierarchy. Workers claimed that they had been instructed to vote for Mr Milosevic and were warned that without him the factory would most likely collapse - and with it the town's future. <br><br>The story can be heard repeatedly across Serbia. Although the country's economy has been in sharp decline caused by a decade of wars, refugees and economic sanctions, workers who do still have jobs in state enterprises cling to their jobs even more tightly. <br><br>"Why go and muck everything up?" asked Snejen, a retired worker. "The present is not perfect but it gives enough for people to survive. The alternative could be much worse." <br><br>Although Mr Milosevic has projected his rule in a nationalist guise, he remains at heart a product of the Yugoslav Communist Party he served in the 1980s before rising to become President of Serbia in 1989. <br><br>While communist ideology has largely been discredited and state controls dismantled across the former Soviet bloc, the hybrid form still lives on in Serbia, where the economy, the media and the security forces remain under tight central control. <br><br>Television news usually consists of coverage of party meetings, the opening of bridges and the inspection of factories, with the only foreign news usually concentrating on bad news from the West, like terrorist attacks, natural disasters and political scandals. <br><br>The big test now for Mr Milosevic is whether his obsolete system of government, already swept aside throughout the Balkans, can survive what is in effect a national referendum. <br><br>It has remained intact through a decade of turmoil and the state apparatus will use all its considerable power to make sure that it is still in place on Monday morning. <br><br>It is clear that the system will remain intact in Smederevo and other Milosevic strongholds, but this time that may not be enough to save him. <br><br><br> <br><br>Poll will decide nation's fate<br><br><br><br> <br>President Milosevic faces his toughest political challenge tomorrow when millions of his countrymen go to the polls in an election he cannot afford to lose but seems unable to win legitimately (Richard Beeston writes). <br><br>Final opinion polls suggest that he is as many as 20 points behind Vojislav Kostunica, the leader of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia. The two other contenders are Tomislav Nikolic, of the ultra-nationalist Serb Radical Party, and Vojilsav Mihajlovic, of the Serbian Renewal Movement. <br><br>The vote is essentially a referendum on where Serbia should go in the new century. Mr Milosevic represents continued hostility to the West, to the free market and the global economy, while promising to maintain a socialist state and strengthen ties with China and Russia. Mr Kostunica has pledged to lead Serbia out of its international isolation, to make peace with its neighbours and bring the country into the heart of Europe. <br><br>The elections are being held simultaneously for the presidency of Yugoslavia, both chambers of the federal parliament, the parliament of the autonomous province of Vojvodina and for Serbia's municipalities. <br><br> <br>Polling station witnesses watch for cheating<br><br>FROM JAMES PRINGLE IN KOSOVO<br><br><br> <br>THE United Nations will deploy teams throughout Kosovo tomorrow to see whether President Milosevic of Yugoslavia tries to cheat in presidential and federal elections by stealing the votes of up to a million Albanians. <br>Most Albanians are expected to boycott the polls. The 46,000-strong Nato-led Kosovo force, Kfor, is strengthening security as the situation grows more tense. But it will not provide security at the polling stations. <br><br>The UN teams, who will be looking for fraud and ballot-rigging, include diplomats from Britain, the United States, Germany and other states. They have volunteered to act as witnesses by standing outside polling stations, counting people who enter. <br><br>Nadia Younes, a spokesman for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (Unmik), said that while the UN did not recognise the Yugoslav elections as legitimate, and while the volunteers were neither election monitors nor observers, they would be on hand "to witness what is going on". <br><br>She said: "We will bear witness to any inflated claims. We will be in a position to address the magnitude of what is happening." <br><br>Bernard Kouchner, the head of Unmik and Kosovo's de facto Governor, has called the holding of elections in Kosovo a "farce" and a "provocation". The Council of Europe said this week that the election "will not be, in all probability, free and fair". <br><br>The Yugoslav authorities have not told Unmik how many polling stations there will be but Belgrade has said there could be as many as 300 in a province with little security for the Serb minority, which numbers about 100,000. <br><br>It is anticipated that Mr Milosevic's operators will stuff ballot boxes with unused Albanian votes in his name. <br> <br><br><br>Troops kill Montenegrin for insulting President<br><br>FROM JOHN PHILLIPS IN PODGORICA<br><br><br> <br>PRO-SERB special forces shot and killed a Montenegrin policeman for insulting President Milosevic yesterday, worsening tension between Belgrade and the tiny Balkan republic as Montenegrins are braced for tomorrow's Yugoslav presidential elections. <br>The incident happened in the early hours outside the Stori Bunar (Old Well) pub in Zlatica, a pro-Serb suburb on the northern outskirts of Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital, diplomatic sources and bar staff said. <br><br>Two plain-clothed Montenegrin policemen returning from duty in the north of the republic went to the bar and met seven uniformed members of the 7th Battalion, an elite Yugoslav Army unit deployed in Montenegro by Belgrade in response to the republic's campaign for independence. <br><br>An argument developed after the Montenegrins declined to sing Serbian traditional songs and made uncomplimentary remarks about the Yugoslav President, as the soldiers, evidently inspired by Montenegro's fiery grape brandy, poured scorn on Milo Djukanovic, the Montenegrin President, and refused to sing Montenegrin songs. <br><br>A police source said: "They went outside to try to resolve their differences with a fair fist-fight. But since they were outnumbered, one of the policemen went to his car to get his gun as a precaution. One of the soldiers saw that he was armed and fired six shots at the policeman, killing him instantly." <br><br>The incident happened as Montenegrins anxiously await the results of tomorrow's elections amid persistent rumours in Podgorica that President Milosevic might connive to topple Mr Djukanovic as a diversion from a Serbian opposition victory. <br><br>The Montenegrin leader has urged his compatriots to boycott the election on the ground that the republic was not consulted about recent constitutional changes implemented by Mr Milosevic. <br><br>The United States this week began military manoeuvres with Croatia off the Adriatic coast in what Washington has indicated is a warning to Belgrade not to threaten Montenegro's autonomy. Thousands of Yugoslav Army troops have been withdrawn from barracks around Podgorica and other cities in Montenegro over the past two weeks as an apparent precaution against being targeted by Nato war planes, should the situation deteriorate, the independent Montenegro newspaper Monitor reported. <br><br>After the shooting, the gunman fled to northern Montenegro, but was arrested near the Serbian border, diplomatic sources said. <br><br>Balkans experts said the incident would increase Montenegrin resentment at the unwelcome presence of the troops in the republic. <br><br>The affair was the worst such episode since Yugoslav soldiers shut down Podgorica's airport last December. The Army condemned the violent behaviour and vowed to try to stop it happening again. <br><br> <br>Tiny country teeters on the brink of bloody civil war<br><br>BY MISHA GLENNY<br><br><br> <br>WITH its breathtaking mountains and spectacular, unspoilt Adriatic resorts, Montenegro is one of the most beautiful parts of Europe. But for the past six months it has also been a land teetering on the brink of civil war, which tomorrow's elections may finally ignite. <br>There is a sinister atmosphere in Serbia's tiny sister republic, one familiar to those who knew Croatia and Bosnia before the outbreak of war in the early 1990s. <br><br>Guns are being cleaned; old friendships have been broken off; villages and clans have proclaimed their loyalty either to Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav President, or to Milo Djukanovic, his Montenegrin counterpart. <br><br>The Yugoslav Army, Mr Milosevic's key ally in Montenegro, has boosted its ranks by forming the 7th Battalion. Made up exclusively of pro-Milosevic Serbians, the 7th Battalion has been flexing its menacing muscles in a series of manoeuvres recently. <br><br>President Djukanovic has responded by creating special police units to halt the threat from Belgrade. "The Montenegrins cannot match the Yugoslav Army's heavy weapons but there are thousands of troops or heavily armed police on both sides," Dragisa Burzan, the Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister, said last week. "[If war broke out] this would be a high intensity conflict, closer to full-scale civil war than anything yet unleashed by Milosevic." <br><br>President Djukanovic is unlikely to pull the trigger to start the war. Despite flirting with the idea of holding a referendum on independence, he knows that such a move would lead to war immediately and that he would shoulder some of the blame, so he continues to be committed to the joint state with Serbia. He has insisted on autonomy though, including the right to maintain close relations with the West. <br><br>Provocation is much more likely to come from Mr Milosevic. Montenegro is by far the most powerful weapon at his disposal if he begins to feel his position in Serbia is no longer secure after the elections. In the past he has not hesitated to ignite bloody chaos in neighbouring territories with the aim of strengthening his grip inside Serbia. To judge by the uncompromising tone of his speech in the Montenegrin town of Berane on Wednesday, he may be prepared to do it again. "Think carefully about how and where you want to live," he warned, adding that it was in their best interests to live "in a free and independent country together with Serbia". <br><br>The risk of war in Montenegro is a tremendous headache for the US and Europe. Nato leaders, including George Robertson, the Secretary General, and Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, have engaged in some robust finger-wagging at Mr Milosevic over Montenegro recently. Nato refused, however, to deploy ground troops during the Kosovo war and no Western leader has indicated that there has been a shift in military doctrine since then. If Montenegro erupted, it would not be another Kosovo, with Yugoslav Army troops massacring a defenceless population. It would be a hell-hole similar to the civil war in Montenegro during the Second World War, described with terrifying vividness by Milovan Djilas, the partisan leader. Trying to identify who was slaughtering whom would be extremely difficult; air power would certainly not keep the two sides apart. <br><br>Such a conflict would also bring disturbing ramifications for the rest of the region, especially for neighbouring Kosovo. Montenegro boasts a substantial Albanian minority which has in recent years supported Mr Djukanovic. <br><br>If Serbia were to swallow part of Montenegro (the north-east of the republic is notably more pro-Belgrade than the southern areas around Podgorica, the capital), the tiny rump would be left with a much larger Albanian minority, raising fears of another Kosovo down the line. <br><br>If Mr Milosevic decides to leave Montenegro well alone, it will still take many years to defuse the tremendous tension that has built up there over the past six months.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times : Milosevic harnesses one-horse towns ``x969704348,91365,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Monday, Sept. 25 — Enthusiastic leaders of the opposition to President Slobodan Milosevic said early today that their candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, was leading by wide margins in watershed elections for president held on Sunday, but government spokesmen insisted that their sampling indicated that Mr. Milosevic was ahead.<br><br>Mr. Milosevic, who has ruled this country for the last 13 years, called the election nine months early — after changing the Constitution in a day — in an effort to prolong and legitimize his hold on power. While no official figures had been released six hours after the polls closed, opposition leaders said he had badly miscalculated in his first attempt at direct election since 1992.<br><br>Certainly, government officials who had predicted an early evening declaration of victory for Mr. Milosevic in the first round, with the incumbent taking more than 50 percent of the vote, were mistaken. Some officials in Mr. Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party said privately that the mood was grim, and that there was some confusion about how to respond to the vote.<br><br>There were indications early this morning that the Socialists might choose to allow a second-round runoff between Mr. Milosevic and Mr. Kostunica rather than simply declare victory by means of a voting fraud that could require Mr. Milosevic to claim a million phantom votes. A runoff on Oct. 8 would in effect challenge the opposition to respond in the streets if it felt cheated of a victory then.<br><br>The United States and other Western powers have invested much effort and money in trying to unite Serbia's opposition, promote independent media and oust Mr. Milosevic, against whom NATO fought a three-month bombing war last year for control of Kosovo.<br><br>An opposition spokesman, Cedomir Jovanovic, said the results he had received made it clear that a second-round runoff between Mr. Milosevic and his main opponent, a 56- year-old lawyer backed by 18 opposition parties, would be required if Mr. Kostunica did not win outright. Figures released by the opposition said turnout was nearly 78 percent in Serbia and about 25 percent in the tiny sister republic of Montenegro, whose pro-Western president had urged a boycott the vote.<br><br>At 3:30 this morning (9:30 p.m. Sunday, Eastern time), Nikola Sainovic, the Yugoslav deputy prime minister and a spokesman for the Socialist Party, said that, with 900,000 votes counted, Mr. Milosevic was leading with 44 percent of the vote to 41 percent for Mr. Kostunica.<br><br>Polling experts noted that a lower turnout would require Mr. Milosevic to win or manufacture fewer votes in order to claim a first-round victory. The Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj, which is an increasingly disaffected partner of Mr. Milosevic in the government and is considered a watchful counter of votes in this election, offered a larger sample of 600,000 votes. That sample showed Mr. Kostunica with 49 percent to Mr. Milosevic's 41 percent. But again, it was impossible to judge how representative the sample was.<br><br>Some Socialist Party officials were said to be arguing for a second round, hoping to keep the turnout down, but opposition leaders, pollsters and analysts believe that a second round would produce a definitive victory for Mr. Kostunica.<br><br>People also voted for both houses of the Yugoslav Parliament and for local governments, but the counting of those votes is slower. The opposition claimed big victories in Belgrade, which it already controls, and said it had lost no towns.<br><br>Vladimir Stambuk, vice president of the Serbian Parliament and a senior member of the party of Mr. Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic, said, "The turnout is very large, and it's clearly a kind of referendum."<br><br>Officials of the Serbian Renewal Movement, an opposition party which did not back Mr. Kostunica, said he was winning by wide margins over Mr. Milosevic in central Serbia and in large cities, while Mr. Milosevic was running ahead, though less dramatically, in more rural eastern and southern Serbia.<br><br>The State Department said Sunday night that it believed that more than 70 percent of the population had voted in the election. "We congratulate the people of Yugoslavia on their commitment to democracy," said Richard A. Boucher, a department spokesman. He said that there were numerous reliable accounts of irregularities during the voting.<br><br>In Belgrade and other Serbian cities there were rival rallies and concerts. The opposition had planned to rally in the capital's Square of the Republic, but the government set up a loud concert instead. Some surprised opposition supporters yelled "red thieves" at the stage.<br><br>The opposition moved down the street to a smaller square, and some 5,000 people gathered to hear scattered results, chant slogans and cheer for Mr. Kostunica. They chanted: "Kostunica, save Serbia from this madhouse" and "Slobo, save Serbia and kill yourself."<br><br>The police separated the crowds but there was no violence.<br><br>In Belgrade, Milan Spasic, a 52- year-old lawyer, said: "We want change, but with this guy we'll never have it. We'll have only blood."<br><br>Mr. Milosevic, who was indicted last year by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, is widely blamed for igniting the wars that marked the breakup of the old Yugoslavia in the 1990's.<br><br>Milos Cervenic, 26, a metalworker, spoke hopefully of an opposition victory. "I'm expecting to live like a man at last, to not be ashamed of being a Serb anymore," he said.<br><br>In Montenegro, President Milo Djukanovic, who urged a boycott, dismissed the elections as a show. "Milosevic intends to continue his dictatorship in Belgrade," he said.<br><br>Under the original Constitution, Mr. Milosevic could serve only a single term as president, which would end next July. His ally, Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, has said Mr. Milosevic will serve out his term no matter what the results of the elections may be.<br><br>In Montenegro itself, the elections caused little stir, with a large majority not voting. Special police units loyal to Mr. Djukanovic were on guard at state buildings in full combat gear but Yugoslav Army units, whose commanders have openly supported Mr. Milosevic, mostly kept in their barracks.<br><br>In Serbia and Montenegro there were complaints of electoral abuses, including inflated voter tallies, missing curtains and the banning of opposition monitors from a few polling places. The police and soldiers voted in barracks, away from the scrutiny of party representatives.<br><br>In Kosovo, which is run by the United Nations, Western troops and officials attempted to keep a count of those who voted, to try to defeat any effort by Belgrade to inflate the numbers. Western officials said that fewer than 40,000 people appeared to vote. State news media said Mr. Milosevic had done very well in Kosovo.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Both Sides Claim to Hold the Lead in Yugoslav Vote``x969877132,59176,``x``x
``xSpecial report: Serbia<br><br>Maggie O'Kane in Belgrade <br><br><br>President Slobodan Milosevic was fighting for his political life last night with the same audacity that has kept him in power for 13 years. <br>After a turnout in yesterday's elections that may be as high as 60% in Serbia and 75% in the rest of the country, he responded to the threat by staging a victory concert on the main square of the capital. <br><br>It began an hour before the polls closed, wrongfooting the plans of his main challenger the Belgrade lawyer Vojislav Kostunica to hold a rally in the same square. The danger of violent clashes grew as both sides in Yugoslavia's hotly contested election accused each other of fraud. <br><br>As supporters gathered in Belgrade city centre, state television announced an overwhelming lead for Mr Milosevic in voting in the Serb-populated villages of northern Kosovo. The claim was dismissed by the opposition as "pure manipulation". <br><br>Hundreds of thousands voted in Serbia, its sister republic of Montenegro, and UN-administered Kosovo after Mr Milosevic called an early election. <br><br>Confident of catching the opposition off-guard, he was surprised by its unity and Mr Kostunica's strength in the latest opinion polls, which suggested that Mr Milosevic's 13 years of power would end if the balloting and count were free and fair. <br><br>Mr Milosevic put on a show of looking relaxed and confident as he voted with his wife, Mirjana Markovic, in an exclusive Belgrade suburb, and expressed optimism about the vote in a comment carried by state news agency Tanjug. <br><br>"I expect the political scene in Serbia to be clarified, creating the conditions for lasting stability and even faster economic development," he said, referring to efforts to rebuild the country after last year's Nato air strikes. <br><br>Mr Kostunica, the candidate of the 18-party alliance known as Democratic Opposition of Serbia, also voted in Belgrade. "It should be shown that the authorities in a democracy are changeable," he said, accusing the government of trying to confuse voters and justify any future moves to preserve power at all cost. <br><br>During the afternoon, as the opposition workers were arriving to prepare for their concert, they discovered that President Milosevic's party workers were already building a huge concert stage to the left of the square. <br><br>State television, which is controlled by Mr Milosevic had set up in front of the national museum in preparation for a live broadcast when the president's victory would be announced. Serbia was informed of Mr Milosevic's victory before the votes had been counted. "The political landscape has now been cleaned," the president said. <br><br>A Serbian traditional band was dressed in blue uniforms and began its concert with second world war songs while confused young people who had come to what they thought was an opposition rally milled around in confusion. <br><br>"Staging the concert on Republicca Square is designed to provoke us and give him the chance to crack down. They need a reason to use the police and the army," Steva Markovic, a 41-year-old opposition activist and computer analyst said. <br><br>Most of the people who arrived at the floodlit square were young and anti-Milosevic: "He is going to choke us again," a 21-year-old philosophy student said. Others stood in depressed silence. "The queues outside my polling station were the longest I have ever seen in my life," Davor Petrovic said. "I'm sure it will be a big turnout but we hadn't even finished voting when he did this. No one knows what to do." <br><br>As the voting got under way the federal prime minister, Momir Bulatovic, who is a regime loyalist said that under the constitution Mr Milosevic was obliged to remain in power until 2001, regardless of the election result - a suggestion aimed at discouraging his opponents from voting. <br><br>An uneasy fear has been seeping across the country for days. Even opposition supporters confident of victory at the ballot box are terrified that Mr Milosevic will not step down without bloodshed. Psychologist Zorica Razicsaid: "I think tonight nothing will happen, but on Monday I think people will be killed on the streets of Belgrade," she said. <br><br>On the eve of the poll, the election authorities announced a change in voting procedure that many believe breaches the fundamental right of privacy for voters. The Federal Election Commission ruled that every ballot slip would be checked by the local election board ostensibly to ensure that only one slip was put into the ballot box. <br><br>In southern Serbia, where voting fraud was most feared, 370 polling stations had no representative of the opposition on the board, an opposition spokesman said. <br><br>The Belgrade-based Centre for Free Elections and Democracy listed dozens of irregularities and said the poll was a "complete mess". Marko Blagojevic, its spokesman, said that in Leskovac, the voting lists were not opened up for inspection and voting was taking place without people needing identification. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Milosevic claims poll win ``x969877521,71068,``x``x
``xTHE SERB LEADER'S MAIN OPPONENT IS AHEAD IN PRE-ELECTION POLLS, BUT SERBS ARE RESIGNED TO ANOTHER TERM FOR THE VILIFIED INCUMBENT. <br><br>By Tom Hundley <br>Tribune Correspondent <br>September 24, 2000 <br>STRPCE, Yugoslavia -- The numbers look bad for incumbent President Slobodan Milosevic. Every reliable poll has him trailing challenger Vojislav Kostunica by a wide margin.<br><br>But numbers don't always add up in the Balkans, and Milosevic's supporters are confident their man will somehow pull off a win in Sunday's presidential election.<br><br>"Kostunica won't get much support here," promised Svetislav Durlevic, secretary of the municipal assembly in Strpce, a Serb enclave and once-popular ski resort in southern Kosovo.<br><br>Durlevic, who is responsible for running the election in Strpce, is a member of Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia. So are virtually all the polling board members who will oversee voting at the 33 polling stations in Strpce. So are the election commissioners who will tally the votes.<br><br>The unmarked, unnumbered ballots for Sunday's election were in three large plastic bags heaped behind his desk.<br><br>Newly rewritten Yugoslav election laws invite fraud, and Milosevic's low standing in opinion polls practically guarantees it.<br><br>Durlevic isn't the only one predicting victory for Milosevic. Western diplomats, observers from various international organizations in the region and dispirited Serbs who say they will take part in the election all seem to believe the outcome is a foregone conclusion.<br><br>"I expect Slobodan Milosevic to win the election and that he will do it through gross fraud," said a senior Western diplomat in Kosovo. "Milosevic believes he has control of the process. Otherwise, he would have stopped it."<br><br>The only element of suspense seems to be whether Milosevic will win in the first round or whether he will allow a potentially explosive situation to go to a second round of voting in two weeks.<br><br>Under the law, if none of the five candidates in Sunday's ballot passes the 50 percent threshold, the top two finishers go to a runoff. Opinion polls indicate that in a head-to-head race, Kostunica's margin over Milosevic would be even greater, leading most analysts to conclude Milosevic will try to lock up a first-round win.<br><br>According to a report by Human Rights Watch, the New York-based human-rights organization, "Pro-government parties dominate election commissions and polling boards, which conduct the elections. In the Federal Electoral Commission and district electoral commissions, the pro-government members outnumber the opposition by 6-1. All polling boards, which run the voting at polling stations, are dominated by members of Milosevic's coalition.<br><br>"There is no exhaustive list of voters' names and ID numbers, making it virtually impossible to identify persons registered to vote in more than one polling station or election district. Voters do not countersign the voting register; instead a polling board member simply circles the number next to the name of the voter casting his or her ballot, which facilitates ballot stuffing," the report continued.<br><br>"Voting results are expressed only in digits [numerals], not in words; in well-documented cases during the 1996 and 1997 elections, digits were simply added to the numbers indicating the vote for the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia after the polling board had counted the votes," the report said.<br><br>To have as free a hand as possible in conducting the elections, the Yugoslav government has barred international monitors, except for a select few from countries such as Libya and Iraq.<br><br>In Kosovo, one of the few places where the international community has a chance to observe the election, the opportunity has nearly been squandered.<br><br>The United Nations Mission in Kosovo, which administers the province, at first rejected the idea of allowing Milosevic to conduct elections in the province. That seemed undemocratic, so it changed its mind. But to avoid lending legitimacy to rigged elections, the UN and other international agencies won't monitor or even observe the vote. Instead, according to a senior Western diplomat in Kosovo, they will merely "witness" the vote.<br><br>In particular they will try to witness the expected non-voting by Kosovo Albanians--potentially a bountiful source of fraudulent votes for Milosevic.<br><br>"We expect that many Kosovo Albanians will be surprised to wake up on Monday morning to discover that they voted for Milosevic," said a senior administration official in Washington.<br><br>The Clinton administration appears to have resigned itself to a Milosevic "victory" no matter what the actual votes add up to. Its best hope is that if, as expected, the election is stolen, the opposition will quickly mobilize to expose the fraud and that Milosevic will be delegitimized in the eyes of most Serbs even as he clings to power.<br><br>"It's part of the long-term process of undermining Milosevic and building up the democratic forces in Serbia," the official said.<br><br>But in this election, the Serb leader still holds most of the important cards. In the year since the NATO air campaign he has all but suffocated the independent media in Serbia despite U.S. efforts to revive it.<br><br>At the same time, he uses state television to heap abuse on opposition candidates, labeling them traitors or NATO lackeys. The main government newspaper refers to the opposition as "well-fed dogs," while Milosevic, at a recent campaign rally, ridiculed his opponents as "rabid rats and hyenas."<br><br>Kostunica, a low-key lawyer and former professor, seems to have struck a chord with ordinary Serbs. He has not been tainted by the infighting and backbiting of Serbia's fractious opposition parties and he has been careful to avoid any association with the U.S.<br><br>During the Kosovo war, he staunchly defended Yugoslavia's right to crack down on Albanian separatists and bitterly criticized the NATO bombing campaign as unjustified interference.<br><br>He is an ardent and articulate defender of the Serb nation. His personality can be prickly, and his attacks on American "arrogance" are harsh. But his outlook is European, and his democratic credentials appear to be genuine.<br><br>A measure of the regime's nervousness was the decision, reported Saturday in Belgrade, to post Yugoslav soldiers at polling stations in Montenegro, Serbia's small sister republic in what remains of Yugoslavia. Montenegro has a pro-West government that is boycotting these elections, though Milosevic supporters are expected to vote.<br><br>The regime also has accused the opposition of planning to set up a shadow government or parallel government in Montenegro, an allegation that could serve as a pretext for a heavy-handed crackdown if Serbs take to the streets to protest a Milosevic victory.<br><br>Even true believers such as Durlevic, Milosevic's man in Strpce, sense the danger.<br><br>"I think a first-round victory for Milosevic will be difficult," he said. "You [Americans] are financing the opposition, you're giving them a lot of support."<br><br>But he warned that this alleged attempt by the U.S. to influence the Serb election could backfire. "Because you never can tell with the Serbs."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Chicago Tribune : MILOSEVIC HAS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO WIN ``x969877561,76351,``x``x
``xTension mounts in a town which is so divided there are two fire brigades; ballot in Kosovo descends into chaos <br><br>By Steve Crawshaw in Kolasin, Montenegro <br><br>25 September 2000 <br><br>"Anybody who is normal is worried in these crazy times." For one police officer in the town of Kolasin in northern Montenegro, yesterday's Yugoslav elections were less about the vote itself than the tension created. "What's been happening around us all this time is worrying. We're on a state of alert." <br><br>He did not wish to be quoted by name, but otherwise was frank. Is the endgame near for the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic? "I think so – and I'm rejoicing." <br><br>The elections in Montenegro, Serbia's small sister republic in what remains of Yugoslavia, had more than a touch of the surreal. The pro-Western government of Montenegro regards the elections as illegitimate. It stopped just short of banning them, however – allowing a twilight, not-quite election to take place. <br><br>In Kolasin, as in much of northern Montenegro, the pro-Milosevic opposition is strong. Tension in the run-up to the elections was high. The army promised on the eve of the poll to "secure polling stations" to "prevent incidents" – to Montenegro's considerable alarm. <br><br>In Kolasin yesterday, the two sides stopped short of direct conflict. In the shade of the pine trees outside the Bjelasica Hotel, a group of police special forces – Montenegro's élite force, loyal to the President, Milo Djukanovic – waited to be called out in case things turned nasty. "For the moment, it's peaceful. That's what we're working for," said one. Both sides look to different armed forces to protect them. Thus, the pro-Milosevic deputy mayor, Mile Sukovic, said he had a telephone number for the army, should it be needed. Mr Sukovic knew who would win. "Milosevic – who else?" <br><br>The divisions in Kolasin run through every aspect of life. For the past year, the town has even had two fire brigades. One supports the pro-Milosevic party that rules the town council; the other supports the Montenegrin government. Only in the direst emergency do they work together. <br><br>In Montenegro, unlike in Serbia – where every vote, fraud permitting, should count – those who chose to vote were stating their political preference by taking part. You could search long and hard for a Milosevic critic at the improvised polling stations that supporters of the Yugoslav President had opened across the republic. More typical was Jovan Marovic, 65, who declared: "Milosevic is a hero of the world. He makes peace and looks after all of us." Dessa Vlachovic, 20 years younger, agreed. "Everyone in the West is against him – here [in Yugoslavia], everyone is for him." Suggestions that Milosevic was lagging in the polls were dismissed: "That's all lies." <br><br>Many polling stations were organised in private houses, usually belonging to supporters of the pro-Milosevic Socialist National Party, and in other unusual premises, from restaurants to bomb shelters. Even the press accreditation for the elections was issued by the SNP, sister party of Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party in Belgrade. <br><br>Montenegrin voters who boycotted the polls were venomous at the mention of Mr Milosevic – or affected disdain. "I am for a sovereign and independent Montenegro," said one woman. "Things like this don't affect me." Each month that Mr Milosevic stays in power, the likelihood increases that Montenegro will seek to break away – even though the cost may be civil war. <br><br>Both sides are gearing up to accuse the other of fraud. The opposition had already claimed that Mr Milosevic was ready to "steal" the election results. Then, on the eve of the vote, Belgrade counter-accused. It announced that the Serb opposition was preparing to proclaim victory – and was hoping to establish an alternative Serb government in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica. This was denied by the Montenegrin authorities and the Serb opposition alike – though it is no secret that the sympathetic political climate in Montenegro has allowed Serb opposition politicians to operate freely here in a way that they are unable to do at home in Belgrade. <br><br>The police officer in Kolasin pointed out that Mr Milosevic, an indicted war criminal, has little to lose. "It's difficult to know if he will give up peacefully. If he hands over his power, he hands over his life and family." <br><br>Any democratic Serb government would be obliged to hand him to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. <br><br>In the days and weeks ahead, it will become clear whether the Serb opposition is strong enough to oust Mr Milosevic. If not, the danger of renewed bloodshed in Kolasin and elsewhere in Montenegro is real.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Montenegro on alert as 'twilight' poll is held ``x969877635,95857,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Steve Crawshaw in Montenegro <br><br><br>26 September 2000 <br><br>Every time that he has faced challenges in the past, the Serb leader has somehow survived – bruised, but still displaying his sphinx-like half-smile – to fight another day. <br><br>Yesterday, with the walls of his blood-stained regime crumbling around him, Slobodan Milosevic was in no mood to concede defeat as the results came pouring in during the pre-dawn hours. But the news was devastating for the man who has personally directed the bloodiest conflicts in Europe since the Second World War. He had even lost control of his hometown, Pozarevac, where he and his wife, Mira Markovic, launched their uniquely Balkan political partnership so many years ago. <br><br>His instinct, as ever, was to stonewall, and as morning broke over an expectant Belgrade he sent Nikola Sainovic, who like his leader has a war crimes indictment hanging over his head, to announce to the media that their president of the past 13 years had triumphed yet again over "the enemies of the Serbian people". <br><br>Sainovic brazened it out in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He doubted there would even be a need for a run-off vote – required if no candidate gets more than 50 per cent – because he said, to the incredulity of those gathered around him, "our candidate is leading". <br><br>In true Alice in Wonderland fashion he maintained that Mr Milosevic was leading by 44 per cent while Vojislav Kostunica had 41 per cent – contradicting the figures being posted on the ruling party's web site, which showed Kostunica leading with 44 per cent to 41 per cent for Mr Milosevic with 20 per cent of the vote counted. And as the bad news continued to pour in all day, the stonewalling continued. <br><br>Theoretically, one can see the latest dramas in Yugoslavia as just another example of a scenario that we have seen many times before. Mr Milosevic seems fatally weakened; he pulls an astonishing rabbit out of the hat; then, within a few months, everybody has forgotten that his position was ever under threat. <br><br>It still seems a fair bet that Mr Milosevic will produce one more rabbit – bedraggled and surprising in equal measure – before the bloody game ends. Equally, however, the cards are now stacked against him as they never have been before. Today, for the first time in a decade, many traditional Milosevic loyalists are beginning to wonder how and when they should jump ship. <br><br>One of the great Western misunderstandings of recent years has been the belief that Mr Milosevic owed power only to election fraud. Certainly, he has stolen votes; certainly, he has denied opposition election victories; but the other bitter truth about Serbia is that millions of Serbs have remained ready to vote for him for many reasons ranging from doggedness to apathy to fear of upheaval – compounded by an often justified contempt for the venal and divided opposition. Mr Milosevic's control of the media meant that alternative truths were scarcely heard. Even when Serbs had access to the truth – via the small but brave independent press, or via satellite television – many refused to believe what they heard, about Serb crimes in Bosnia or Kosovo, for example. Instead, they continued to see themselves as victims of an international conspiracy. Optimists may hope that the result of Sunday's election – undoubtedly an opposition victory, whatever the government may say – will be the beginning of the end of this poisonous self-delusion. <br><br>One can focus, as the United States did yesterday, on the irregularities of the polling process itself. But those irregularities, though real, did not prevent the final election result. There is little reason to doubt the opposition's election figures, which confirm what the opinion polls had suggested: a clear victory for Mr Milosevic's challenger, Mr Kostunica. In that sense, despite everything, the elections turned out "fair". It is the official admission of the result – not the flaws in the process – which matters most. <br><br>Mr Kostunica does not look set to be the world's favourite democrat. He is not a Vaclav Havel who will preach tolerance and help everybody to live happily ever after. His own track record as a nationalist is clear. He does, however, offer the possibility that Serbia can break its own brutalist mould of the past 10 years, so that some hope of sanity can return. <br><br>The fact that the regime still refuses to recognise Mr Kostunica's victory makes it more likely that we will see repression and bloodshed before the change finally comes. But the non-recognition of an obvious truth – after 13 years, Serbs have had enough of the man who they once believed to be their saviour – does not change the likely end result. For Mr Milosevic, the clock is ticking. <br><br>Although Serbs themselves have often been reluctant to admit it, the reason why Mr Milosevic is still in power is because too few people cared enough to get him out. In Leipzig, Prague, and Bucharest in 1989, crowds dislodged immovable regimes, each of which was ready to use force to stay in power. The threat or use of force merely redoubled the crowds anger and defiance. At a certain point, the instrument of repression gave way under its own weight; rats started to defect from the sinking ship, as fast as their corrupt little legs could carry them. Mr Milosevic and his closest comrades must fear that that moment is now arriving for them, too. <br><br>None of which means that the Milosevic era is already over, as everybody in Serbia knows from past experience. In winter 1996-97, Mr Milosevic faced huge street protests which pushed him to the political brink. On New Year's Eve, standing amidst crowds packed so tightly into the city centre that none of us could move, I was convinced that his time was over; Serb friends were equally confident. When the regime admitted opposition victories in local elections which Mr Milosevic had previously denied, that seemed the first crack in the edifice, before a final collapse of the regime. In reality, Mr Milosevic then sat on his hands, allowed the protesters to get bored – and waited for the opposition to knife each other in the back and front, which they quickly did. Within months, Mr Milosevic's position was again strong. <br><br>To some extent, the future of Serbia will be decided in the days and weeks to come in smoky offices, and in endless mobile phone calls, as deals are done, broken, and re-made. Above all, however, the future will be decided on Serbia's streets – by the crowds, or, if Mr Milosevic is very fortunate, by the lack of them. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Beaten but unbowed, Slobodan Milosevic once again plays the despot of the Balkans ``x969961044,80879,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Rupert Cornwell in London and Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br><br>26 September 2000 <br><br>The Yugoslav opposition last night claimed a resounding victory for their candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, in the presidential election on Sunday, but defiant supporters of Slobodan Milosevic declared their man was heading for a clear win. <br><br>The major Western nations piled on the pressure to drive President Milosevic from power, saying he had been routed in the elections, and that anything but a clear opposition victory would be a fraudulent sham. Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, said the Yugoslav leader was a "beaten, broken-backed president" whose best service to his people would be to leave power at once. As a mixture of exhilaration, confusion and fear gripped Belgrade in the aftermath of the vote, claims of the result conflicted wildly. Mr Milosevic himself remained silent, but Gorica Gajevic, secretary general of his ruling Socialist Party, said that with 37 per cent of the vote counted, Mr Milosevic led Mr Kostunica by 45 per cent to 40 per cent. <br><br>However, the Democratic Party of Serbia said that with almost two thirds of the vote counted, Mr Kostunica held a commanding 55 per cent to 35 per cent edge advantage -- an overall majority which, if confirmed, would remove the need for a run-off vote on 8 October. <br><br>One theory last night was that Mr Milosevic would seek a second vote, which could offer a two-week breathing space in which to gather his battered forces. But his precise intentions were a mystery amid signs he was struggling to come to terms with a stunning poll defeat and the greatest threat to his 13 years in power. <br><br>No official results are expected until today at the earliest but, ominously, opposition monitors on the government's electoral commission said the body appeared not to be processing results yesterday – increasing suspicions that the outcome would be manipulated by the Milosevic camp. <br><br>With uncertainty swirling over the cornered president's intentions, the verbal offensive by Britain, France, the United States and other Nato members was clearly co-ordinated. It was designed to discredit in advance any victory that might be claimed by the Milosevic camp as nothing more than blatant vote-rigging, and to embolden demonstrators as they took to the streets again to demand recognition of a Kostunicavictory. <br><br>Initial post-election rallies in the capital and other cities went off peacefully on Sunday. But last night's were expected to be tenser affairs, with the possibility of violence that would provide a pretext for a security clampdown. Fears also persisted that despite warnings from the West, Mr Milosevic might seek to provoke a showdown in Montenegro, Serbia's sole and independent-minded sister republic in the rump of Yugoslavia, which boycotted the vote. <br><br>In Washington, a National Security Council spokesman insisted that opinion polls, a high turn-out and evidence of vote-tampering ruled out any "credible claim of victory" by Mr Milosevic. The only dissenting voice came from Russia, which refused yesterday to prejudge the outcome, saying the voting appeared to have been fair. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWest calls on 'broken backed' Milosevic to quit ``x969961067,85936,``x``x
``x<br><br>BY ALICE LAGNADO IN MOSCOW AND MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR<br><br><br><br> <br>RUSSIA, the main ally of the beleaguered regime in Belgrade, hinted yesterday that Slobodan Milosevic's time was up. <br>The acknowledgment came after a meeting in Moscow between President Putin and Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor. "We agreed . . . that it looks as though Serbia and Yugoslavia have decided in favour of democratic change," Herr Schröder said. <br><br>Mr Putin's apparent agreement that Mr Milosevic may have been defeated in Sunday's presidential elections is seen in European capitals as a significant development. Moscow traditionally has sided with the Yugoslav leader and was vigorously opposed to the Nato bombing campaign to repel the Yugoslav Army from Kosovo last year. <br><br>By using Herr Schröder as a mouthpiece, President Putin appeared to have resorted to a traditional diplomatic tactic to voice what he did not want bluntly to admit himself. <br><br>Igor Ivanov, Russia's Foreign Minister, while refraining from commenting on who had won, said however that there had been no serious irregularities in the voting process. <br><br>Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, denied that claim. He said that President Milosevic had tried to "intimidate, bully and silence the opposition" in Yugoslavia but clearly had been defeated. <br><br>Pre-empting the final result, not due until today at the earliest, Mr Cook described Mr Milosevic as a "beaten, broken-backed" President. Speaking at the Labour Party conference in Brighton, he said: "We know he is preparing to rig the result, but the scale of this defeat is too great even for him to fix it." <br><br>Mr Cook advised Mr Milosevic to "get out of the way and let Serbia get out of the prison you have turned it into". <br><br>Crown Prince Alexander, pretender to the Yugoslav throne, extended his congratulations to Vojislav Kostunica, the opposition candidate, and urged Mr Milosevic to hand over power immediately in an orderly manner. In a statememt in London, he called on the people of Serbia and Montenegro to put aside their differences and said that there must be no revenge. "All sides must remain calm," he said. <br><br>Lamberto Dini, the Italian Foreign Minister, said that if Mr Milosevic tried to claim victory, it would have "disastrous consequences". <br><br>In a statement, the European Union said: "According to all available information, it is clear that any attempt by Milosevic to declare himself the victor would be fraudulent." <br><br>The statement, agreed by all 15 EU members, said that the large election turnout demonstrated that the people of Serbia wanted change. <br><br>"They wanted to speak up, regardless of intimidation, manoeuvring, pressure and all sorts of manipulation by the Belgrade regime leading up to this ballot," the EU said. <br><br>The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said that it had received reports of widespread fraud and intimidation during the voting and concluded that Dr Kostunica, the main opposition leader, had taken a clear lead. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times: Moscow calls time on 'beaten' Milosevic ``x969961091,60207,``x``x
``x<br><br>FROM JANINE DI GIOVANNI IN PODGORICA<br><br><br> <br>MONTENEGRO'S Government, led by President Djukanovic, accused Belgrade yesterday of claiming thousands of false votes in Sunday's Yugoslav elections. <br>"The SNP stole the vote, around 30,000. Actually it's probably more, but I like to be objective," said Ranko Krivokapic, vice-president of the ruling Social Democratic Party, which boycotted the elections. <br><br>There are about 440,000 registered voters in Montenegro. Only a quarter are thought to have voted, itself a bigger protest against Mr Milosevic than originally expected. Fraudulent votes took many forms. The most common was to use the names of the dead, but other Milosevic supporters simply voted as many times as they liked under the gaze of the Yugoslav Second Army, loyal to Mr Milosevic. <br><br>Montenegrins, edging closer to independence, are becoming more defiant against the Milosevic regime. Their economy is moving steadily ahead and they see Belgrade as an albatross around their necks. <br><br>"The time for Montenegrin independence is close, a matter of months," Mr Krivokapic said. "And it will be done, we hope, with normal procedures - normal referendum, normal controls." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro : Republic claims votes 'stolen'``x969961119,91991,``x``x
``xOver Milosevic<br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br> <br> <br>ELGRADE, Serbia, Sept. 25 — The opposition candidate in the Yugoslav presidential election claimed victory today over Slobodan Milosevic in elections on Sunday. But with official vote counting suspended, there were concerns about whether Mr. Milosevic is willing to acknowledge defeat. <br><br>Supporters of Vojislav Kostunica, the opposition candidate, said that according to their tally of more than 65 percent of the vote, he was ahead of Mr. Milosevic by 55 to 34 percent, or well on his way to a clear first- round victory. <br><br>"According to our count, a first- round victory is certain," Mr. Kostunica declared. "Dawn is coming to Serbia."<br><br>Even if the opposition's assertion of a first-round victory is not accepted, Milosevic allies fear that the elections could mark the beginning of the end of his 13-year rule. Tonight more than 20,000 people gathered in central Belgrade for a concert and rally to celebrate the victory hopes of Mr. Kostunica (pronounced kosh-TOON- eet-zah). <br><br>But Mr. Milosevic's government today said, in effect, not so fast. After a long night and day of debate within the ruling coalition headed by Mr. Milosevic and his wife, Mirjana Markovic, together with the heads of the police and the army, the decision seemed to be to buy time. No official results were released, and indications were that they could come as late as Thursday, the legal deadline.<br><br>By the ruling coalition's count, based on some 37 percent of the vote, Mr. Milosevic leads the race, 45 percent to 40 percent. A Socialist Party official, Gorica Gajevic, said those results show "the probability that our candidate Slobodan Milosevic will win in the first round." <br><br>But an effort to tough out a declaration of a first-round win would be difficult for the party, given the apparent size of Mr. Milosevic's defeat — but he and Ms. Markovic may decide to try.<br><br>"The defeat is too obvious to be denied," said one former official of the party. "They didn't expect such poor results. Even a small defeat is a problem for Milosevic. Now it's hard for him to find a way out without creating a crisis inside the system."<br><br>The United States and its Western allies, who have made ousting Mr. Milosevic a priority and who made war against Yugoslavia last year over Kosovo, urged Mr. Milosevic to accept defeat. While they originally cast doubt on the freedom and fairness of the elections, Western officials are now hailing them as a marvelous demonstration of the popular will.<br><br>Richard Boucher, a State Department spokesman, said today that if Mr. Milosevic accepts defeat and democratic change takes place, Washington would take steps to lift sanctions against Serbia.<br><br>Last week Mr. Milosevic's federal prime minister, Momir Bulatovic, said Mr. Milosevic's mandate as president runs through its original term of July 2001, regardless of the outcome of the elections. The Constitution is unclear on the point, but other laws indicate that his mandate should end within 10 days of losing the election. <br><br>Mr. Kostunica, a 56-year-old constitutional lawyer, is a moderate nationalist, deeply critical of the NATO bombing war over Yugoslavia. He has criticized its legal justification, and called the bombing of civilian targets possible war crimes. He also says he will not hand over Mr. Milosevic to the international criminal tribunal in The Hague.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica describes himself as a Western-oriented liberal democrat and once translated The Federalist Papers into Serbian. <br><br>Ljubisa Ristic, president of Mrs. Markovic's party, the Yugoslav United Left, suggested that if there was a runoff, the government would accept "the will of the people."<br><br>A second round, judging by the first, would mean a crushing defeat for Mr. Milosevic, and some in his party were said to have argued against the tactic, urging recognition of the defeat. Milosevic officials say they won control of the federal Parliament largely because the government of the sister republic, Montenegro, decided to boycott the election.<br><br>A number of officials, especially in Ms. Markovic's party, reportedly argued that any concession could mean the rapid disintegration of Mr. Milosevic's control over Serbia, and they urged delay, a second round or even the rerunning of the elections.<br><br>But opposition leaders said today that if their final tally still indicates that they won a first-round victory, they will demand it, even if the Federal Election Commission disagrees and calls for a second round. <br><br>Opposition leaders said the commission, which must verify the vote totals reached at local polling stations, had stopped its work early Monday morning and had not resumed counting, a delay the opposition regarded as suspicious and another effort by the government to buy time.<br><br>Each party has representatives at the polls who are informed of those counts, but the electoral commission in Belgrade has not announced vote totals. The commission contains two representatives from each political coalition, but a majority of its 28 members are appointed by the government. Its task is formally technical, to total local polling results and rule on any disparities. <br><br>The opposition intends to call a rally in Belgrade and other towns across Serbia for Wednesday night to demonstrate for recognition of its victory, an opposition leader said.<br><br>"If the Socialists declare victory or say we go to a second round, and it goes against the voting data we gather, we must defend our vote," said Zarko Korac. "Why should we accept his offer for a second round, if it's illegal? Our problems are in a way beginning. We have to get him to concede his defeat."<br><br>While the opposition and Mr. Kostunica appear to have little taste for street revolution, many experts believe that the size of Mr. Milosevic's apparent defeat will quickly become known, despite his control over the state media, and that even the police will be reluctant to beat or shoot demonstrators now. While the police broke up rallies against him after his defeat in Kosovo, Mr. Milosevic was still widely accepted as the legitimate and legal president of Yugoslavia. Now matters are not quite so clear.<br><br>"The numbers speak for us," Mr. Kostunica said today. "We will fight in democratic ways. The truth is our strongest weapon. We don't want to provoke internal tensions and foreign intervention."<br><br>The opposition also did extremely well in municipalities, sweeping Belgrade and other large cities despite a split with the Serbian Renewal Movement of Vuk Draskovic, which suffered enormous defeats along with the Radical Party of the ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj. Mr. Draskovic admitted today that he had been wrong to run a campaign separate from Mr. Kostunica. Both Mr. Draskovic and Mr. Seselj offered to resign — offers their parties are unlikely to accept.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica's insistence on unity at both federal and local levels proved to have been wise in the landslide of anti-government voting.<br><br>While the pro-Western president of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, succeeded in protecting his base by boycotting the federal election, the boycott handed Mr. Milosevic control of both houses of the federal Parliament, which he could not have won otherwise.<br><br>Even if he takes office, Mr. Kostunica — already contemplating choices for the Yugoslav prime minister — does not have a large amount of formal powers. Mr. Milosevic really runs the country from his position at the apex of the Socialist Party and its web of politicians and businessmen. But if Mr. Milosevic is beaten, his own party will have to look beyond him and Mr. Kostunica will be a major voice and symbol of democratic change.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Yugoslavia's Opposition Leader Claims Victory ``x969961149,72682,``x``x
``x<br><br>Boycott Tensions ease in sister state<br><br>Special report: Serbia<br><br><br>Jonathan Steele and Nick Wood in Pristina <br>Tuesday September 26, 2000 <br><br>Relief spread through the pro-western government of Montenegro yesterday, its leaders apparently convinced that Slobodan Milosevic would have less chance of provoking violence after faring badly in Yugoslavia's elections. <br>Montenegro's deputy prime minister, Dragisa Burzan, said he believed that the main opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, had won an outright victory in the presidential poll, and predicted that Mr Milosevic would soon be forced from power. <br><br>"I'd expect quite a quick removal of Milosevic. It cannot be more than at most a month of manoeuvring," he said in Podgorica. <br><br>Mr Burzan said the president was growing desperate as his support ebbed and claimed that the atmosphere in Mr Milosevic's inner circle was "like a funeral". <br><br>He was confident, he said, that the Yugoslav army and police would not support Mr Milosevic after seeing that he had such narrow backing. <br><br>He felt that low levels of support for Mr Milosevic also helped to cut the chances of armed intervention in Montenegro which has very mixed feelings about its federation with Serbia; together they make up Yugoslavia. "Tension is less _ I think he will be focused only on Serbia at the moment. I think he cannot now undertake anything in Montenegro." <br><br>As rumours grew of disarray among the Serbian ruling elite in Belgrade, there were reports that the Yugoslav prime minister, Momir Bulatovic, a Montenegrin and a Milosevic loyalist, had resigned. <br><br>But the main pro-Belgrade party in Montenegro dismissed the reports. "I wouldn't pay much attention to this. It's not true," Zoran Zizic, the deputy leader of the Socialist Peoples' party, said in Podgorica. He went on to accuse the Montena-Fax news agency of spreading wrong information. <br><br>Earlier, quoting a senior source in the Socialist Peoples' party, the agency had said that Mr Bulatovic had resigned after failing to meet a demand from President Milosevic to provide him with "an extra 100,000 votes". <br><br>"Having realised the election result was disastrous, Milosevic issued an ultimatum to Bulatovic to allocate another 100,000 votes through the military leadership and [army chief of staff] General Nebojsa Pavkovic," the agency said. <br><br>It quoted the party source as saying that "forged election material was to be transported to Podgorica by a military plane under General Pavkovic's orders, to be passed on to the election commission for 'verification'". <br><br>Mr Zizic called the report "media lies". He said that turnout in Montenegro, which has barely 5% of the Yugoslav electorate, was slightly below the 130,000 originally estimated, but reiterated that his party had won 90% of votes counted so far. <br><br>The Montenegrin government boycotted the vote and denounced it as an unconstitutional farce. It left pro-Belgrade parties to organise their own elections in makeshift polling stations. <br><br>Meanwhile, as the first results emerged in the province of Kosovo in Serbia, a mixture of apathy and resignation set in among Serbs there. <br><br>In spite of numerous allegations of electoral fraud, both Mr Milosevic's ruling Serbian Socialist party (SPS) and the opposition alliance of parties trying to oust him agreed he got the majority of votes. <br><br>In the divided town of Mitrovice, Mr Milosevic had claimed his party had won with 3,500 votes, compared with 800 for Mr Kostunica. In other towns the SPS claimed three-quarters of the vote. <br><br>The leader of the Serbian Democratic party in Mitrovice, Dragisa Djokovic, put the large margin down to the fact that many opposition supporters were not on the voting lists. But he admitted that many of the 100,000 Serbs in Kosovo had voted for Mr Milosevic in the hope that Yugoslav troops would one day return to the province. Kosovo's Albanian community boycotted Sunday's vote. <br><br>Mr Djokovic said: "There are a lot of reasons, one of them is people's disappointment in the international community." <br><br>For the most part, Kosovo's interest in the election results has been muted. TVs and radios in Mitrovice's cafes and shops could be heard announcing the results, but few people seemed pay attention. <br><br>Most roadside stallholders were reluctant to say who they had voted for. But one woman selling clothing said with a smile: "I have always voted for him. I don't know why, it's just a sort of tradition." <br><br>Nearby a man selling wires and batteries implied he had voted for Mr Kostunica. "People are afraid to vote for change, they think change is something terrible." <br><br>Back at the opposition's headquarters Mr Djokovic said the key to the next few days would lie in Serbia. <br><br>"Belgrade decides what happens here. Our primary concern here is to have peace and avoid any incident." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Montenegrins breathe easier as strongman fades ``x969961180,13830,``x``x
``x<br><br>President's aides vow he will fight on as opposition declares victory : Milosevic may force election runoff<br>Special report: Serbia <br><br>Maggie O'Kane in Belgrade <br>Tuesday September 26, 2000 <br><br>Slobodan Milosevic, struggling to retain his grip on the Yugoslav presidency, sought yesterday to force a second round runoff in the face of a deafening chorus of domestic and international calls for him to relinquish power. <br>All unofficial polls - except for those carried out by Mr Milosevic's Socialist party and some of its allies - put him more than 20% behind his main challenger, Vojislav Kostunica, who has managed to unite a fractured opposition. Mr Milosevic, cornered, is now fighting for time. <br><br>Mr Kostunica, 56, a law professor, claimed victory in Sunday's ballot and demanded that the state election commission release the official count: "This is a peoples' victory," he declared. "We will defend our victory by peaceful means and we will protest for as long as it takes." <br><br>As the commission delayed the announcement of the results, both sides issued widely conflicting unofficial results. The Democratic Opposition of Serbia claimed that with the votes counted at 60% of polling stations, Mr Kostunica was leading on 55.31%, against to Mr Milosevic's 34.19%. <br><br>But Gorica Gajevic, the general secretary of Mr Milosevic's Socialist party, said that with 37 % of the ballots counted, the president was ahead, on 45 % to Mr Kostunica's 40%."This result gives us optimism that we can win in the first round," he added. <br><br>There was no word from Mr Milosevic himself, and fears persisted that the authorities would resort to violence to retain their grip on power. <br><br>Western countries piled the pressure on the Yugoslav leader to accept defeat. Germany, Britain, Italy, France and the European Union all declared that Mr Milosevic had lost in Sunday's vote. The US said it doubted Mr Milosevic could make any "credible claim of victory". <br><br>Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, said: "Today Milosevic is a beaten, broken-backed president. My message to him today is, be honest with your people. Get out of the way and let Serbia get out of the prison you have turned it into." <br><br>The fightback began yesterday afternoon at a press conference for domestic consumption, in which Mr Gajevic insisted that Mr Milosevic had taken the first round of the election but that the margin was small, so he would fight a second round in a fortnight to give him absolute victory. <br><br>But even former Milosevic allies such as the ultranationalist Radical party agree that he has lost. Analysts said Mr Milosevic's camp was divided between those advising him to declare an outright victory and those saying he should play for time. Even a runoff would represent a loss of face. <br><br>Milos Aligridoc, a member of the opposition said yesterday: "[A runoff] would mean absolute humiliation for him and he is not a man who likes to be humiliated ." <br><br>Belgrade was calm yesterday but pressure is beginning to mount against the business people involved with the rul ing party, who have long controlled the wealthy shopping streets and the black market in cigarettes, petrol and whisky. <br><br>The opposition was out on the streets of Belgrade again last night, celebrating victory. Everywhere people are discussing Mr Milosevic's fate. <br><br>"I go for the Ceaucescu option myself,"said one housewife. "Although, I think he will be killed by someone inside his own circle who wants to become a hero of the Serbian people." <br><br>The state election commission was locked out of its office in the federal parliament building yesterday, as it has been since Sunday night, effectively suspending the official count. Mirko Popovic, a member of the commission, said that technically they could be called in time to announce the official result on Thursday. <br><br>Result according to pro- and anti-Milosevic camps <br><br>•Main opposition bloc <br><br>Milosevic 34% <br><br>Kostunica 55% <br><br>•Serbian Radical party <br><br>Milosevic 37.9% <br><br>Kostunica 53.5% <br><br>•Socialist party <br><br>Milosevic 45% <br><br>Kostunica 40% <br><br>•Yugoslav Left party <br><br>Milosevic 56.3% <br><br>Kostunica 31.4% <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic may force runoff ``x969961202,77968,``x``x
``x<br><br>Serb forces Strong-arm tactics unlikely<br><br>Special report: Serbia<br><br><br>Maggie O'Kane in Belgrade <br>Tuesday September 26, 2000 <br><br>Slobodan Milosevic's hold on power may be crumbling. The loyalty of the police force can no longer be guaranteed and the army is unlikely to support the use of force against peaceful protesters, Belgrade observers said yesterday. <br>"Beating up people for a president who is finished is not good for any policeman's job prospects," said Ljubodrag Stojadikovic, a former army spokesman who resigned last year. "If Milosevic tries to use the army it will be the last act of a drowning man." <br><br>His remarks came as Milan Panic, a former Yugoslav prime minister who lost to Mr Milosevic in the last Serbian presidential elections in 1992, called on the army and police not to take part in repression. "I want to remind the army and police that their duty is not to shoot or use force against their own people," he said. <br><br>He also urged western governments immediately to recognise the opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, as Yugoslavia's new president. <br><br>The 120,000 strong Serbian police force is huge by regional standards. In the winter of 1996 and 1997 it was involved in quelling three months of protests when Mr Milosevic rigged local elections. <br><br>The opposition fears there is now a real risk that Mr Milosevic's special forces, a section of the police loyal to him and used in Bosnia, Croatia and the Kosovo war, could come to see their only future as going down fighting with him. <br><br>There are estimated to be around 30,000 police in the special forces - many of them highly trained - who could be used to crush the demonstrators declaring victory for Mr Kostunica. Throughout his hold on power Mr Milosevic has successfully deployed the police and internal security as his personal protection force. They have also been used to organise unrest in Bosnia and Croatia. <br><br>It was his former head of secret police, Jovica Stanisic, who gave Belgrade prisoners the option of serving their sentence in the capital or as paramilitaries in Bosnia and Croatia (where they could loot) and who arranged for the first stocks of weapons for these wars to come from Serbian police stores. <br><br>"The only factory that is getting new workers in Serbia is the police," said Jovan Dulovic, who has specialised for 20 years in police affairs for the small independent magazine Vreme. "The special force can be in Belgrade in a few hours." <br><br>Despite threats by the top ranks of the army that they will back Mr Milosevic, the army in Serbia is obsessed with legality and the role of constitution. There is a great deal of anger that Mr Milosevic allowed them to be humiliated in the Kosovan and Bosnian wars and that their once proud reputation was dragged into the dirt in these conflicts. <br><br>Johan Stanovic, a 21-year-old taxi driver, who was injured in the Kosovo war, said: "There is no way that guys like me and the guys I was in the army with will go on to the streets for him. The army is supposed to fight wars, not beat their own people." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic can't count on army ``x969961223,89067,``x``x
``xSecond round of voting will buy time for beleaguered regime after ruling that opposition failed to secure sufficient majority <br><br>By Rupert Cornwell and Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>27 September 2000 <br><br>Election authorities in Yugoslavia conceded last night that the opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica had beaten Slobodan Milosevic in this week's presidential poll, but they said he had fallen short of the majority needed for outright victory and a second round of voting would be needed. <br><br>In a sign that the Belgrade regime is seeking to avoid a potentially bloody confrontation with opposition supporters, the move was designed to acknowledge Mr Kostunica'spopularity while allowing President Milosevic the breathing space he needs to consider his strategy. <br><br>State television claimed that Mr Kostunica had won 48.22 per cent of the votes and Mr Milosevic 40.23 per cent, according to what it said were preliminary results based on 10,153 polling stations out of about 10,500. The "run-off" poll must be held within 15 days of the first vote. <br><br>The opposition had earlier claimed that Mr Kostunica won an outright victory in the first round with 54.66 per cent against 35.01 per cent for Mr Milosevic, after 98.5 per cent of the votes had been counted. <br><br>Minutes before the official election announcement on state television, opposition officials rejected the idea of a second round. The Democratic Party head, Zoran Djindjic, told a news conference: "We cannot change the electoral will of the citizens because that would be a crime for which the penalty may be three years in jail." <br><br>Zarko Korac, of the Social Democratic Union, said: "If 2.9 million people have given their judgement, no one has the right to negotiate that. Balkan observers said the recourse to a second round of voting was a typical Milosevic manoeuvre, buying time in which to try to reinforce his grip on power. "He's a master of using time." said one Western diplomat. "It would give him at least another 10 to 12 days to figure out what to do and that could include all sorts of things like trying to drive wedges among the opposition, trying to bribe some of them off, whatever else." He added that Mr Milosevic might also try to provoke some crisis that would indefinitely postpone the second round of voting. <br><br>In the bluntest Western warning yet to Mr Milosevic, Britain told the Yugoslav President yesterday not to use force to hang on to power, stressing that the allies who had driven him from Kosovo still had a strong military presence in the region. <br><br>Addressing the Labour conference in Brighton, Tony Blair told Mr Milosevic bluntly, "You lost. Go." Earlier, Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, declared that "naked power" was the only way a beaten and discredited president could stay on. But, he noted, Nato had substantial forces on hand in the Balkans: "He should not be attempting any further military venture." As if to underline the point, George Robertson, Nato's secretary general, cut short a trip to the Caucasus to chair a meeting today of the North Atlantic Council, the alliance's political arm, which authorised last year's bombing. Mr Robertson said Nato was "worried there might be a spillover of violence fromSerbia". <br><br>Mr Cook was evidently referring to the widely expressed fear that the Yugoslav leader might seek a diversion from political defeat at home by unleashing his army against Serbia's reluctant and pro-Western sister republic Montenegro, or by stirring up fresh trouble in Kosovo. <br><br>But in Belgrade, where memories of the bombing by Nato are still fresh, opposition leaders warned that such language was counterproductive, merely enabling a desperate Mr Milosevic to brandish anew the spectre of a foreign military attack on Serbia. <br><br>One activist said: "If they want Milosevic to leave they should keep quiet. They should stay out of this. Elections are our business." Momcilo Perisic, leader of the small Movement for Democratic Serbia, went further, accusing "unhinged world leaders" of doing "many things which have only caused suffering for our people". <br><br>Mr Cook's stick was in sharp contrast to the carrot offered by Hubert Vedrine, speaking on behalf of the EU, of which France holds the presidency. Whatever Belgrade might claim, Mr Kostunica had won an "indisputable" victory. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent : Milosevic admits historic defeat but refuses to go ``x970048146,21136,``x``x
``xFirst couple increasingly isolated as president heads off defeat with call for runoff<br>Special report: Serbia <br><br>Maggie O'Kane in Belgrade <br>Wednesday September 27, 2000 <br><br>If the procession of visitors to the former residence of the king of Yugoslavia - now the home of President Slobodan Milosevic and his powerful wife, Mira Markovic - means anything, it paints a bleak picture of what is in store for the people of Serbia. <br>The couple have been at Beli Dvor, or White Court, since casting their votes in the elections on Sunday morning. <br><br>According to reliable sources, the guests since then have included Zoran Janackovic, a former secret police chief and now ambassador to Macedonia, followed by the current head of the Serbian police, Vlajko Stojiljkovic, and the head of state security, Rado Markovic. Yesterday afternoon they had a visit from General Nebojsa Pavkovic, who runs the army. <br><br>President Milosevic has enjoyed 13 years at the top after coming to power in September 1987. <br><br>But now his people have rejected him in favour of a 56-year-old lawyer, Vojislav Kostunica, who has united Serbia against Mr Milosevic and his wife. And the signs of what is to come are ominous. <br><br>"Initially they were in complete shock when the results came through and he especially was stunned by them. They never expected the opposition to get their act together so quickly," said the former information ministry head, Aleksandar Tijanic. <br><br>"He doesn't watch TV and his party people told him he was assured of victory. At first they could not believe it," he added. <br><br>"They were convinced that they were going to win. For the first 24 hours there was a real battle between Milosevic and his wife to choose between the soft option of letting go of power and the hard one that could eventually mean police on the streets." <br><br>Their strategy was decided after a three-hour meeting in the White Court on Tuesday morning with the leaders of both their parties, said Nebojsa Covic, the former leader of the Belgrade Socialist party and the ex-mayor of Belgrade. Ms Markovic leads the Yugoslav United Left party. <br><br>"The meeting began at 9am at their residence and ended at 12. After that they announced his victory at a press conference and said there would be another round." <br><br>"They are preparing to go for another round," said Mr Covic. "Some of his people told him that he should recognise the elections but the problem is his ego and his wife. They are both very sick people now." <br><br>"She sees herself a some sort of Rosa Luxemburg, or Karl Marx, with a mission to save Serbian communism at whatever price," Slavoljub Djukic, the author of four books on Slobodan Milosevic and Mira Markovic said. <br><br>"In a way he is the softer one. The one thing that Milosevic treasures above all else - even power - is his family and if they were under threat as they are now, I think he would consider other options. There are countries that could take them - China - but it will be she that decides." <br><br>Mr Covic, who also agreed that it would be Ms Markovic, not Mr Milosevic, who decides Serbia's fate, said he believed that they were buying time to discredit the elections before crushing the protests. <br><br>"It is true that the paramilitaries and parapolice are available to them. It is a sort of criminal police force that in cludes: the Legion, which has around 500 men; Frenki's Boys, about 1,400 of them [a vicious paramilitary force that fought in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo] and finally about 1,600 men in the 7th brigade who are loyal to him and based in Montenegro." <br><br>The presidential couple have been an extraordinary and devastating political unit for over 40 years since meeting at school. <br><br>"She chose him and she made him president," said Mr Covic, who for four years was part of the inner circle. "I was in the house regularly, for dinner, for talks. While I was mayor of Belgrade three years ago I was there every day." <br><br>Mr Covic believes that now, as then, Ms Markovic is insistent that her husband does not accept the election results. <br><br>"She is mad. It is as simple as that and she is very powerful," he said. <br><br>In a reference to demonstrations in Belgrade at the rigging of local elections, Mr Covic added: "During the protests in 1997 I tried to persuade him that he couldn't just null the elections and he would eventually have to give in. <br><br>"Then he would appear to soften and go home and then he would be back the next morning as hardline as ever. She cleaned his mind then and she is doing it again now," he said. <br><br>"Over the last two years even his speeches reflect her language. He has started using her words. Words for the opposition like 'lesbians', 'hyenas', 'rats'. That is Mira talking and now she is in charge." <br><br>Speaking before the election commission's announcement of the runoff, he added: "My prediction is that they will have a second round and then find some way to discredit the elections. <br><br>"Then they will bring the parapolice on to the streets and it will be a very dangerous time for everyone." <br><br>As if on cue, the phone in the former mayor's office rang. His workers told him that the gov ernment was declaring that the results from 26 out of 70 polling stations in one area of Belgrade would be declared invalid. <br><br>The reasons given included the stations staying open late, the fact that they had more ballots than they were supposed to have, and the distance of party posters from the entrance to the polling station, which was said to be less than the required 50 metres. <br><br>"It's starting," he said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian : Milosevic buys time as wife decides next move ``x970048164,5245,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Sept. 26 — The government-controlled Federal Election Commission announced tonight that President Slobodan Milosevic was trailing his challenger, Vojislav Kostunica, but rejected Mr. Kostunica's claim to an outright victory.<br><br>The commission said the opposition candidate had fallen short of the 50 percent required for a first-round win and called for a runoff to take place on Oct. 8. Opposition leaders immediately called the commission's figures fraudulent and said they would not take part in a runoff. They said that Mr. Kostunica had won almost 55 percent of the votes, and that he said he had rejected a government feeler, through intermediaries, for a second round.<br><br>"This is an offer that must be rejected," Mr. Kostunica said in a statement. "The victory is obvious, and we will defend it by all nonviolent means. The people have given their political no to Milosevic and his policies. Our first duty is to carry out that verdict."<br><br>The state television broke into the main evening news program with the announcement that Mr. Milosevic, with 40.23 percent, had come in second to Mr. Kostunica, with 48.22 percent, with a turnout of about 64.65 percent. Opposition members of the commission said they had not been involved in the tallying.<br><br>The opposition said that by its own figures, gathered from election monitors in each constituency who had signed the returns before they had been shipped to Belgrade for final approval by the election commission, Mr. Kostunica was beating Mr. Milosevic by 54.66 percent to 35.01 percent. The opposition said that the turnout had been 74 percent, and that its monitors had counted more than 98 percent of the votes.<br><br>Accordingly, Mr. Kostunica declared that a second round was unnecessary. "There is no single reason, not moral or political, by which we would accept such trampling on the electoral will of the people," he said. But Mr. Kostunica promised to avoid "careless moves that could raise tensions in society, that could lead to unforeseeable consequences."<br><br>In Washington, President Clinton praised the voters and offered to remove economic sanctions if democratic change prevails against any efforts by Mr. Milosevic to "cling to power." <br><br>The opposition has scheduled rallies in Belgrade and other cities for Wednesday night to defend what it called Mr. Kostunica's victory — rallies that could prove confrontational, depending on how the police respond. <br><br>The risk for Mr. Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer who is a moderate nationalist, an anti-Communist and a democrat, is that if the popular will proves insufficiently forceful, the boycott of a second round could let Mr. Milosevic claim an unopposed victory and remain president.<br><br>In 1996 thousands of Belgrade citizens marched for three months to defend the opposition's victory in local elections, which Mr. Milosevic had challenged in the courts, before he relented.<br><br>Tonight Belgrade's squares were largely empty, although some people were out on their terraces banging pots and pans, and an independent radio station, Radio Indeks, said its telephone lines were clogged by angry listeners. About 9 p.m., its signal was jammed. On the street, Ljiljana Zivkovic, 50, an accountant, said simply: "They can't steal the votes anymore. We'll make them leave."<br><br>In the opposition strongholds of Cacak and Novi Sad, large rallies were reported, with 15,000 and 5,000 people respectively, to protest the commission's announcement.<br><br>In an important message, the leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Pavle, who met with Mr. Kostunica today, urged Mr. Milosevic "to accept the electoral will of the people and contribute to the welfare of the nation and the state." <br><br>The patriarch "called on everyone, including the army and police, to defend the interests of people and the state rather than individuals," a church statement said.<br><br>The official announcement on state television that Mr. Milosevic was trailing was already an extraordinary admission that the government's campaign had gone badly wrong. It followed what government officials have described as a furious debate about how to handle Mr. Milosevic's first electoral defeat ever. <br><br>Proposals that Mr. Milosevic declare outright victory in the first round appear to have been rejected as too confrontational and risky.<br><br>A second round, especially with Mr. Milosevic trailing, at least keeps his options open and can be taken by some Serbs as democratic and non- confrontational. It will be harder for Mr. Kostunica to complain that his victory has been stolen, given what would appear to be near certainty that he would win a second round.<br><br>Most important, the tactic buys time for the government to consider its next step, and perhaps to bargain for a secure exit, especially with Western countries that have been sending word to Mr. Milosevic that his position is untenable and he must consider how to save himself from a system that could crumble rapidly.<br><br>But the effort to throw the election into a second round was interpreted by the opposition as a clumsy effort by Mr. Milosevic to escape his fate. <br><br>"A second round gives Milosevic 10 more days to find a pretext to call off the election, falsify it or postpone it," said one opposition leader. "It's a trap for us."<br><br>Before the election on Sunday, even Mr. Kostunica said he thought a second round would be necessary and hoped that Mr. Milosevic would not cancel the election altogether. But the breadth of the anti-government swing on Sunday took the opposition by surprise.<br><br>"This is a big fraud," said Zoran Djindjic, leader of the coalition that backs Mr. Kostunica, speaking of the call for a second round. "In last two days, we knew that they were preparing something to get Milosevic into the second round. But we have proof of our figures, and we will defend the people's vote to the end."<br><br>At the same time, Mr. Djindjic urged patience. He said the opposition would demand to see the commission's figures, and compare them with the opposition's. <br><br>"We have 98 percent of the facts in our hands," he said. "We know they are trying to manipulate the results from Kosovo." He alleged that the commission had taken 400,000 votes from Mr. Kostunica and had given 200,000 to Mr. Milosevic.<br><br>The commission has 28 members, 2 from the governing coalition and 2 from the opposition coalition, but with a majority appointed by the government. Mr. Milosevic was in the shadows today, but the commission is considered to be acting on his behalf. <br><br>Opposition representatives say they have been locked out of any counting. Tonight, one of Mr. Kostunica's representatives on the commission, Djordje Mamula, said at least 4 percent of Mr. Kostunica's votes had been stolen from him. "I don't know how their gummy mathematics work," he said.<br><br>Belgraders love to reminisce about the happy days of the winter of 1996, when thousands of protesters marched every day for three months after Mr. Milosevic challenged the opposition's victories in local elections. He finally backed down.<br><br>This year, the government has already conceded a huge defeat in local elections — the opposition will govern nearly 100 towns and cities in Serbia — but now Mr. Milosevic's own future is at stake.<br><br>While Belgrade was quiet tonight, with no rally scheduled, people were angry. Snjezana, 32, a shop attendant, said: "I'm not afraid. They can say whatever they want. But they are defeated — history. If we have to defend our victory on the street, we'll do that. We've had enough."<br><br>A lawyer of 35, Branomir Misic, said: "We were out on the street so many times. And this time we will be there again. There is no way out for them."<br><br>Zarko Korac, an opposition political leader, said tonight that victory could not be taken from the nearly three million people who had voted for Mr. Kostunica. "Milosevic is fighting for his political survival," he said. "But democracy is about accepting the will of the people. This was a political verdict, a referendum on Milosevic, and he lost it."<br><br>In the presidential election, Mr. Milosevic and Mr. Kostunica had three other competitors — Tomislav Nikolic of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, who got 5.1 percent of the vote according to the election commission; Vojislav Mihailovic of the Serbian Renewal Movement, who got 2.59 percent; and Miodrag Vidojkovic of the Affirmative Party, who got 0.8 percent.<br><br>People also voted for both houses of the federal Parliament. Despite the opposition's strong showing in Serbia, Mr. Milosevic will control both houses and can form a federal government with no other partners. <br><br>He will do so because his allied party won the seats reserved for Serbia's sister republic, Montenegro, after the Montenegrin president, Milo Djukanovic, urged his citizens to boycott the elections, saying they were unconstitutional. <br><br>In Montenegro itself, fears of a Milosevic move on Mr. Djukanovic were receding. Special police troops remained on alert and were guarding state buildings dressed in full combat gear and helmets, but Deputy Prime Minister Dragisa Burzan said in an interview that he believed that government fears that Mr. Milosevic might order the Yugoslav Army to take over government institutions or impose a state of emergency in the republic were receding.<br><br>`'If he survives he will be very dangerous," Mr. Burzan said of Mr. Milosevic. "But now he cannot influence the generals as he could even yesterday."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times : Milosevic Seeking a Runoff Election After His Setback``x970048195,49538,``x``x
``xMilosevic hands victorious rival poisoned chalice <br>FROM RICHARD BEESTON IN BELGRADE <br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Sept. 26 — The government-controlled Federal Election Commission announced tonight that President Slobodan Milosevic was trailing his challenger, Vojislav Kostunica, but rejected Mr. Kostunica's claim to an outright victory.<br><br>The commission said the opposition candidate had fallen short of the 50 percent required for a first-round win and called for a runoff to take place on Oct. 8. Opposition leaders immediately called the commission's figures fraudulent and said they would not take part in a runoff. They said that Mr. Kostunica had won almost 55 percent of the votes, and that he said he had rejected a government feeler, through intermediaries, for a second round.<br><br>"This is an offer that must be rejected," Mr. Kostunica said in a statement. "The victory is obvious, and we will defend it by all nonviolent means. The people have given their political no to Milosevic and his policies. Our first duty is to carry out that verdict."<br><br>The state television broke into the main evening news program with the announcement that Mr. Milosevic, with 40.23 percent, had come in second to Mr. Kostunica, with 48.22 percent, with a turnout of about 64.65 percent. Opposition members of the commission said they had not been involved in the tallying.<br><br>The opposition said that by its own figures, gathered from election monitors in each constituency who had signed the returns before they had been shipped to Belgrade for final approval by the election commission, Mr. Kostunica was beating Mr. Milosevic by 54.66 percent to 35.01 percent. The opposition said that the turnout had been 74 percent, and that its monitors had counted more than 98 percent of the votes.<br><br>Accordingly, Mr. Kostunica declared that a second round was unnecessary. "There is no single reason, not moral or political, by which we would accept such trampling on the electoral will of the people," he said. But Mr. Kostunica promised to avoid "careless moves that could raise tensions in society, that could lead to unforeseeable consequences."<br><br>In Washington, President Clinton praised the voters and offered to remove economic sanctions if democratic change prevails against any efforts by Mr. Milosevic to "cling to power." <br><br>The opposition has scheduled rallies in Belgrade and other cities for Wednesday night to defend what it called Mr. Kostunica's victory — rallies that could prove confrontational, depending on how the police respond. <br><br>The risk for Mr. Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer who is a moderate nationalist, an anti-Communist and a democrat, is that if the popular will proves insufficiently forceful, the boycott of a second round could let Mr. Milosevic claim an unopposed victory and remain president.<br><br>In 1996 thousands of Belgrade citizens marched for three months to defend the opposition's victory in local elections, which Mr. Milosevic had challenged in the courts, before he relented.<br><br>Tonight Belgrade's squares were largely empty, although some people were out on their terraces banging pots and pans, and an independent radio station, Radio Indeks, said its telephone lines were clogged by angry listeners. About 9 p.m., its signal was jammed. On the street, Ljiljana Zivkovic, 50, an accountant, said simply: "They can't steal the votes anymore. We'll make them leave."<br><br>In the opposition strongholds of Cacak and Novi Sad, large rallies were reported, with 15,000 and 5,000 people respectively, to protest the commission's announcement.<br><br>In an important message, the leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Pavle, who met with Mr. Kostunica today, urged Mr. Milosevic "to accept the electoral will of the people and contribute to the welfare of the nation and the state." <br><br>The patriarch "called on everyone, including the army and police, to defend the interests of people and the state rather than individuals," a church statement said.<br><br>The official announcement on state television that Mr. Milosevic was trailing was already an extraordinary admission that the government's campaign had gone badly wrong. It followed what government officials have described as a furious debate about how to handle Mr. Milosevic's first electoral defeat ever. <br><br>Proposals that Mr. Milosevic declare outright victory in the first round appear to have been rejected as too confrontational and risky.<br><br>A second round, especially with Mr. Milosevic trailing, at least keeps his options open and can be taken by some Serbs as democratic and non- confrontational. It will be harder for Mr. Kostunica to complain that his victory has been stolen, given what would appear to be near certainty that he would win a second round.<br><br>Most important, the tactic buys time for the government to consider its next step, and perhaps to bargain for a secure exit, especially with Western countries that have been sending word to Mr. Milosevic that his position is untenable and he must consider how to save himself from a system that could crumble rapidly.<br><br>But the effort to throw the election into a second round was interpreted by the opposition as a clumsy effort by Mr. Milosevic to escape his fate. <br><br>"A second round gives Milosevic 10 more days to find a pretext to call off the election, falsify it or postpone it," said one opposition leader. "It's a trap for us."<br><br>Before the election on Sunday, even Mr. Kostunica said he thought a second round would be necessary and hoped that Mr. Milosevic would not cancel the election altogether. But the breadth of the anti-government swing on Sunday took the opposition by surprise.<br><br>"This is a big fraud," said Zoran Djindjic, leader of the coalition that backs Mr. Kostunica, speaking of the call for a second round. "In last two days, we knew that they were preparing something to get Milosevic into the second round. But we have proof of our figures, and we will defend the people's vote to the end."<br><br>At the same time, Mr. Djindjic urged patience. He said the opposition would demand to see the commission's figures, and compare them with the opposition's. <br><br>"We have 98 percent of the facts in our hands," he said. "We know they are trying to manipulate the results from Kosovo." He alleged that the commission had taken 400,000 votes from Mr. Kostunica and had given 200,000 to Mr. Milosevic.<br><br>The commission has 28 members, 2 from the governing coalition and 2 from the opposition coalition, but with a majority appointed by the government. Mr. Milosevic was in the shadows today, but the commission is considered to be acting on his behalf. <br><br>Opposition representatives say they have been locked out of any counting. Tonight, one of Mr. Kostunica's representatives on the commission, Djordje Mamula, said at least 4 percent of Mr. Kostunica's votes had been stolen from him. "I don't know how their gummy mathematics work," he said.<br><br>Belgraders love to reminisce about the happy days of the winter of 1996, when thousands of protesters marched every day for three months after Mr. Milosevic challenged the opposition's victories in local elections. He finally backed down.<br><br>This year, the government has already conceded a huge defeat in local elections — the opposition will govern nearly 100 towns and cities in Serbia — but now Mr. Milosevic's own future is at stake.<br><br>While Belgrade was quiet tonight, with no rally scheduled, people were angry. Snjezana, 32, a shop attendant, said: "I'm not afraid. They can say whatever they want. But they are defeated — history. If we have to defend our victory on the street, we'll do that. We've had enough."<br><br>A lawyer of 35, Branomir Misic, said: "We were out on the street so many times. And this time we will be there again. There is no way out for them."<br><br>Zarko Korac, an opposition political leader, said tonight that victory could not be taken from the nearly three million people who had voted for Mr. Kostunica. "Milosevic is fighting for his political survival," he said. "But democracy is about accepting the will of the people. This was a political verdict, a referendum on Milosevic, and he lost it."<br><br>In the presidential election, Mr. Milosevic and Mr. Kostunica had three other competitors — Tomislav Nikolic of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, who got 5.1 percent of the vote according to the election commission; Vojislav Mihailovic of the Serbian Renewal Movement, who got 2.59 percent; and Miodrag Vidojkovic of the Affirmative Party, who got 0.8 percent.<br><br>People also voted for both houses of the federal Parliament. Despite the opposition's strong showing in Serbia, Mr. Milosevic will control both houses and can form a federal government with no other partners. <br><br>He will do so because his allied party won the seats reserved for Serbia's sister republic, Montenegro, after the Montenegrin president, Milo Djukanovic, urged his citizens to boycott the elections, saying they were unconstitutional. <br><br>In Montenegro itself, fears of a Milosevic move on Mr. Djukanovic were receding. Special police troops remained on alert and were guarding state buildings dressed in full combat gear and helmets, but Deputy Prime Minister Dragisa Burzan said in an interview that he believed that government fears that Mr. Milosevic might order the Yugoslav Army to take over government institutions or impose a state of emergency in the republic were receding.<br><br>`'If he survives he will be very dangerous," Mr. Burzan said of Mr. Milosevic. "But now he cannot influence the generals as he could even yesterday."<br><br>Fallen idol <br><br>Disaffected hometown spurns its most famous son<br><br>FROM RICHARD BEESTON IN POZAREVAC<br> <br>OF ALL the many defeats suffered by President Milosevic in Sunday's elections across Serbia, none is more humiliating than the result in his home town, where most voters have turned their backs on Pozarevac's most famous son. For ten years this sleepy market town southeast of Belgrade has been regarded as a fiefdom of the Milosevic family, where the Serb leader grew up and met his wife Mira Markovic at the local school. Their children were raised here and to this day the family keeps close links to Pozarevac through their son Marko, the most powerful local businessman. <br>However, the strong personal ties counted for nothing on Sunday when 23,230 voters backed Vojislav Kostunica, the opposition candidate, with Mr Milosevic trailing at 21,075, according to unofficial results. <br><br>Yesterday the whispered talk of the town was that the defeat here was probably more damaging to the regime than anywhere else in the country. Although most people were too fearful of reprisal to discuss the matter, they seemed giddy with excitement at the blow they had struck against the system and the ruling family under whose shadow they have been living. <br><br>"Despite the pressure on candidates not to stand, the people of Pozarevac finally said 'no' to the President," Anka Gogic-Mitic, an opposition activist, said. "We have had enough." <br><br>Mr Milosevic's defeat appeared to have been triggered by resentment at his family's influence across Serbia. "They think they own the place," a disgruntled, unemployed worker said. "They use their power to set up businesses, but they suck out the profits. They don't care that we have unemployment, bad salaries and unpaid farmers. Now they really know what people think. We want change." <br><br>Even his closest supporters must wonder, if Mr Milosevic is unable to control events in his own home town, what hope he has of continuing to rule the whole country. <br> <br><br>The army <br><br>Loyalty of troops is put in doubt <br><br>BY MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR AND JAMES LANDALE<br> <br>PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC may no longer be able to count on the total loyalty of the army. Any orders to mount a military attack either in Montenegro, Kosovo or elsewhere in Yugoslavia could split the forces, Nato sources said yesterday. Military intelligence, however, reported no signs of obvious preparations for any military action in Serbia or Montenegro. <br>Although most of the Yugoslav Army (VJ) troops based in the Republic of Montenegro were "out of their barracks", the sources said they could be on normal training exercises. <br><br>In one alliance assessment, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, the Nato Secretary-General, said he remained concerned that any post-election tension in Yugoslavia could spill into neighbouring regions. But he said there was no concentration of Nato forces on the border with Yugoslavia. <br><br>Nato officials said the alliance was anxious to avoid saying or doing anything that would give the Yugoslav leader an excuse to order his troops on to the streets to keep him in power. <br><br>Speaking at the Labour Party annual conference in Brighton, Tony Blair told the Yugoslav President: "You lost. Go. Your country and the world have suffered enough." Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, told Mr Milosevic not to use "naked power" to cling on to office and gave warning that Western powers had plenty of military might near Serbia. <br><br>However, Goran Svilanovic, of the Civic Alliance of Serbia, said: "No one can benefit from statements like these." Momcilo Perisic, leader of the Movement for Democractic Serbia, said: "I am begging some unhinged world leaders to spare us any counter-productive help because they have made many promises and done many things that have caused our people to suffer."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times : Victor's dilemma ``x970048279,22549,``x``x
``x<br>By CARLOTTA GALL<br> <br>ODGORICA, Montenegro, Sept. 29 — Even while the outcome of the Yugoslav presidential elections remains uncertain, Montenegro's leaders are sizing up the leading candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, and maneuvering for negotiations over the future of their republic. <br><br>Slobodan Milosevic's departure would not immediately dissolve the differences between Montenegro and Serbia, the two last remaining republics of Yugoslavia. Such a move could herald a realignment in this tiny coastal republic, which largely boycotted the elections, and sharpen the debate over independence.<br><br>President Milo Djukanovic laid out his position today in an interview with the leading daily here, Vijesti, welcoming the success of the Serbian opposition in the election on Sunday and the defeat of Mr. Milosevic's policies. "I hope there will be change in Serbia, and a healing of relations between Montenegro and Serbia and stability in the region," Mr. Djukanovic said. <br><br>Until Mr. Milosevic leaves, Mr. Djukanovic said, the most important thing is to avoid any conflict.<br><br>At a news conference on Thursday, Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic called for Mr. Kostunica to fulfill promises he made in the campaign to redefine the status and relationship of the two republics. In particular, Mr. Vujanovic said, Mr. Kostunica should dissolve the federal Parliament, which is filled just by the pro-Milosevic parties from Montenegro. "Kostunica has pledged to dissolve the federal Parliament and rectify the damage done to the Constitution," he said, referring to changes that Mr. Milosevic pushed through in July.<br><br>In a meeting with the government in Montenegro before the elections, Mr. Kostunica and other leaders of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia agreed to dismiss the Parliament in 18 months. "We hope it will be even shorter," Mr. Vujanovic said.<br><br>The Montenegro government has not had representatives in the Parliament for two years. The government has also been shut out of federal bodies like the National Bank of Yugoslavia and the Supreme Military Council, which oversees the armed forces in war.<br><br>Government ministers said Montenegro had advanced so much in recent years that even a return to the 1992 Yugoslav Constitution was no longer acceptable. They want a new relationship with Serbia based on the platform that they proposed last year to Mr. Milosevic, which he ignored. It is a plan for a very loose confederation, and refers to a union of separate sovereign states, each controlling the troops on its soil but conducting foreign and economic policy together.<br><br>While the platform is a document for negotiation, it is, in the words of a Western diplomat, fairly extravagant and may not go down well in Serbia or Mr. Kostunica, a moderate Serbian nationalist and a lawyer. Mr. Kostunica showed his annoyance at the Montenegrin government, supposedly his democratic allies, for boycotting the elections and thus denying him the extra help of votes from Montenegrins. <br><br>At a rally on Wednesday in Belgrade, he said he had won "despite some democrats in Serbia and Montenegro who turned their back on us." He lumped the Montenegrins together with Vuk Draskovic, an opposition figure who heads the Serbian Renewal Movement and who had refused to back Mr. Kostunica.<br><br>Mr. Djukanovic defended his boycott as a reaction to Mr. Milosevic's constitutional changes, which diminished Montenegro's standing in the federation. "It was clear we had to boycott," he said. "We were defending Montenegro's most important values." <br><br>He added that even while boycotting, the Montenegrins gave crucial assistance to the opposition on Sunday, supplying observers to monitor the vote and preventing large-scale fraud in Montenegro.<br><br>Government aides said the Democratic Opposition of Serbia and the Montenegrin leadership had been in close contact over the election results.<br><br>Nevertheless, Mr. Kostunica has also reportedly made overtures to the main Montenegrin opposition leader, Predrag Bulatovic, vice president of the Socialist People's Party, which supported Mr. Milosevic in the election. Mr. Bulatovic's party now commands all but one of the Montenegrin seats in the federal Parliament and is the largest party in the lower Chamber of Citizens.<br><br>Mr. Bulatovic, who commands considerable respect and popularity in Montenegro, said that he had not had any contacts with Mr. Kostunica but that he had also distanced himself from Mr. Milosevic since the election. <br><br>"We are a party with our own program," he said in an interview. "We are not tied to anyone. Milosevic is not written into our manifesto. We are fighting for equality of Serbia and Montenegro within a Yugoslav Federation, and everyone who respects this can be with us."<br><br>One sign of Mr. Bulatovic's influence is in press reports that Mr. Kostunica may offer him the post of federal prime minister. He may find in him an easier negotiator on Montenegro's future than Mr. Djukanovic. As if hinting at his greater flexibility, Mr. Bulatovic said this week that he saw no reason to change the Constitution as it stands.<br><br>The Montenegrin government retains the one strong piece of leverage, a call for an independence referendum. But divisions exist even on that issue. <br><br>"You will see a huge shuffle here," a minister said. "Take away Mr. Milosevic, and then we will quarrel about many things."<br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Montenegrins Gauging Effects of Yugoslav Vote``x970315787,86492,``x``x
``xOpposition gear up for general strike to unseat Yugoslav leader<br><br>Special report: Serbia <br><br>Maggie O' Kane in Belgrade <br>Saturday September 30, 2000 <br><br>Students walked out of classrooms, nurses and doctors came on to the streets and taxi drivers blocked the roads all over Serbia yesterday in preparation for a general strike. The marathon campaign of civil disobedience is due to start on Monday. <br>Opposition leaders have launched a two-pronged attack on the struggling president, Slobodan Milosevic. They are calling for a national protest campaign against him for refusing to accept defeat as president and are challenging his version of the election results in court. <br><br>Mr Milosevic is refusing to cede power saying that his opponent did not win an outright victory. The opposition has accused him of election fraud. "The whole story is over but nobody dares to say that to Mr Milosevic," said Zoran Sekulich, editor of the independent news agency Fonet in Belgrade. "It's now or never." <br><br>The opposition parties have called for an five days of protests but say more will follow in their attempt to unseat Mr Milosevic from power peacefully. "We will continue with the rallies over the weekend and start a general strike on Monday to grind Serbia to a halt," said one of the opposition leaders, Zoran Djinjic. <br><br>They want Mr Milosevic to cancel a run-off for the presidency ordered by the state-run election commission. <br><br>Yesterday the opposition revealed details of what they say was election fraud in Kosovo, where Mr Milosevic claimed he had won 140,000 votes. K-For, the international force administering the province, says only 45,000 people voted and polling stations where these votes were said to have come from never opened. <br><br>Although the general strike is not due to begin until Monday, crowds chanting "He's finished" and "Slobodan save Serbia and kill yourself" gathered in most of the major cities. <br><br>The largest crowd was expected last night in Belgrade, where more than 200,000 turned out for an opposition concert and rally earlier in the week. The mood in the city is one of growing confidence and irreverence. Insulting postcards of the president as a gorilla with the face of his wife Mira superimposed on the naked body of a woman are circulating, as well as badges reading "It's over" and "You're finished". <br><br>In Cacak, another strong opposition town, teachers and pupils from primary and secondary schools were on the streets. The mayor of Cacak, Velja Ilic, told them: "You are the youth and brains of this country. You were the first to enter the strike in Serbia, you should be an example to others." <br><br>Blocked from access to the state-controlled television in Belgrade, the opposition campaign is being run by word of mouth and through the former student radio station Index. <br><br>Yesterday, journalists at one former state-run television station in Novi Sad also went on strike and said they would produce their own independent news. Last night the top story on state television was the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's volleyball win at the Sydney Olympics, but they also showed for the first time seven minutes of the opposition rally. They also reported accusations of election fraud by Mr Milosevic's party workers. For 13 years the state-controlled Radio Television Serbia has been one of Mr Milosevic's most important tools. <br><br>The opposition have asked for direct meetings with army and police and there were unconfirmed reports yesterday that the army had agreed. <br><br>They also want Russian help to prove that Vojislav Kostunica, the main opposition candidate, has won the election. According to the independent Belgrade newspaper Danas, copies of the election results had been sent to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, by diplomatic bag. The opposition insists that Mr Kostunica defeated Mr Milosevic by 51% to 36%. <br><br>There have been few signs of police activity. At rallies and protests during the week, they spent their time chatting with demonstrators. Last night in Belgrade, as thousands flooded on to the streets of the capital, the only police around in the area were directing the traffic and offering helpful assessments of crowd numbers to journalists. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: 'The story is over but no one dares say that to Milosevic' ``x970315816,28194,``x``x
``xBalkans: As opposition prepares for big strike, many fear that president has too much time to regroup.<br>BUDVA, Yugoslavia--The protest movement aimed at driving Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from power sputtered forward Friday with rallies and a few scattered strikes.<br> The opposition hopes to build up a full head of steam by Monday, when it has called on supporters to go on strike for five days and bring Serbia, the larger of Yugoslavia's two republics, to a standstill. But many already are asking whether the slow start has given Milosevic and his allies too much time to regroup.<br> About 20,000 protesters rallied Friday night in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital. Opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica, who has declared himself president-elect after a disputed election Sunday, did not appear onstage.<br> At least 150,000 joyous Kostunica supporters packed central Belgrade on Wednesday to celebrate his self-declared victory, in one of the largest demonstrations ever against Milosevic's 13-year rule.<br> Yugoslavia's Federal Electoral Commission, which is dominated by Milosevic supporters, declared this week that none of the four candidates won an outright majority in the presidential election. It ordered a runoff Oct. 8 between Kostunica as the top vote-getter and the second-place Milosevic.<br> Milosevic has announced that he will be a candidate. Kostunica's aides continue to insist that their candidate won Sunday, based on ballot-count reports filed to the commission by the nation's nearly 11,000 polling stations, and say he will not participate in the second round. They charge that the Yugoslav leader would steal a runoff vote by fraud, though their boycott strategy could allow Milosevic to declare victory by default.<br> Their charges of fraud in Sunday's count were backed Friday by the United Nations' administrator in Kosovo. Bernard Kouchner, who oversees the Serbian province in the wake of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's air war against Yugoslavia last year, said the electoral commission's count from Kosovo was "a lie" and "a manipulation."<br> Speaking at the United Nations, Kouchner dismissed as "fiction" the Milosevic regime's claims that 140,000 people, including 8,173 ethnic Albanians, voted in the province. U.N. observers who monitored all voting stations in Kosovo had reported earlier this week that fewer than 45,000 people cast ballots.<br> Kostunica has formally written to several governments asking them to participate in an internationally supervised recount of Sunday's results, and so far Norway and Greece have agreed to send monitors, Vladeta Jankovic, Kostunica's deputy, told the cheering crowd Friday night.<br> "A recount is the only way to absolutely confirm our success," he said. "We have nothing to hide."<br> If Yugoslav officials deny visas to the monitors, "that means they have something to hide," Jankovic added.<br> The state-run Radio-Television Serbia counterattacked earlier Friday with a lengthy report that pointed out what it said were discrepancies in the opposition's count.<br> While Kostunica's own party headquarters declared that he had received 51.34% of the ballots, the 18-party coalition backing him put the figure at 54.66%. Those figures showed that the opposition can't be trusted, the state TV report claimed.<br> Coming from what has long been Milosevic's biggest propaganda tool, the criticism was far from convincing. But it could plant doubts in enough people's minds to undercut the opposition further as both camps settle in for what most expect to be a long confrontation.<br> The opposition's five-day campaign of strikes and civil disobedience got an early start Friday in a few opposition-controlled towns and cities such as Nis, Yugoslavia's third-largest city, and Cacak.<br> About 3,000 high school students gathered in Nis' central square to shout anti-Milosevic slogans. In Cacak, teachers and pupils at two high schools and most primary schools went on strike, Reuters news service reported.<br> "You are the youth and the brains of this country," Cacak Mayor Velimir Ilic, a staunch opponent of Milosevic, told the protesters. "You were the first to enter the strike in Serbia. You should be an example to the others."<br> Along with its street demonstrations, the opposition is also trying to send Milosevic a message with a new tactic: protest postcards. Activists handed out thousands of them on the streets of Belgrade on Friday, with instructions that read: "If you agree with this message, affix a postage stamp, sign this and throw the postcard into the nearest mailbox."<br> One of the cards shows a photo montage of Milosevic and his neo-Communist wife, Mirjana Markovic. Milosevic's head is on an ape's body, while his wife's sits atop the naked form of a much younger woman. She is sitting on Milosevic's hairy shoulder. The name "King Kong" is printed beneath Milosevic.<br> The mailing address is printed on the back of the postcard. It is Milosevic's former home in Belgrade at 15 Uzicka St., which NATO warplanes bombed during 78 days of airstrikes last year.<br> "Dear Mr. Milosevic," the postcard's message reads. "After 10 years of misery which you brought to the former Yugoslavia, Serbia and the Serbian people, it is time for you to step down before it becomes too late, both for you and for us."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe La Times: Anti-Milosevic Protests, Strikes Sputter Forward ``x970315841,39324,``x``x
``x<br><br>General strike call prompts Milosevic bid to stem defections after courts and state media declare support for Kostunica <br><br>By Steve Crawshaw in Belgrade <br><br>30 September 2000 <br><br>Serbia began grinding to a standstill yesterday in advance of five days of general strikes called by the opposition to start on Monday. <br><br>The authorities clamped down still further on international reporting of what many could prove to be the death throes of the Milosevic regime. Jacky Rowland, the BBC correspondent in Belgrade, was told she had 48 hours to leave the country after being accused of biased reporting on the election. Following enormous reluctance by Belgrade to grant visas for this historic election, and following a number of expulsions in recent weeks, the number of foreign journalists remaining in Belgrade is now tiny. <br><br>Thousands of Serbs gathered again in the centre of Belgrade and in cities across the country in defiance of President Slobodan Milosevic's attempts to steal the election victory from the opposition leader, Vojislav Kostunica. Some theatres and cinemas closed, as did universities and schools. <br><br>The opposition has called for a nation-wide campaign of civil disobedience but Mr Kostunica is anxious to avoid any moves that could provoke a Milosevic crackdown. Earlier yesterday, Zoran Djindjic, the head of the opposition election campaign, met with 40 diplomats accredited in Belgrade to brief them on what the opposition has said was a major election fraud by Mr Milosevic and to see how the EU could help. <br><br>An opposition source said diplomats were interested in the possibility of a run-off. "They did not suggest there should be a second round but were just inquiring about it," the source said. <br><br>Earlier Mr Kostunica made a specific appeal to Greece to use its influence over Mr Milosevic to agree to a recount of the votes from last Sunday's vote. "I appeal to all well-intentioned people to help ease tension which could destabilise not only the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia but the whole Balkan region, to get involved" in the recount, Mr Kostunica said in a statement. <br><br>Splits in the Milosevic regime continued apace. Even parts of the state TV network began to suffer from internal mutiny. Journalists at TV Novi Sad, part of the main RTS Serbian TV network, threatened to go on strike if the station refused access to the opposition coalition; the journalists demanded that the opposition election figures – which show a clear-cut, 52 per cent victory for Mr Kostunica – should be broadcast. <br><br>The independent Beta news agency said that uniformed and plainclothes police were in the building. <br><br>The defection of state TV journalists to the opposition – enabling previously unseen and unheard pictures to be broadcast – proved to be a key turning point in some of the east European revolutions that ended communism in 1989. <br><br>Even the traditional instruments of the Milosevic regime began to indicate their loyalty could no longer be relied upon. A court was reported to have closed in solidarity with the opposition demands. The courts have traditionally been ready to do Mr Milosevic's bidding. <br><br>The opposition began to refer to its candidate as President Kostunica of Yugoslavia. In a simultaneously conciliatory and defiant tone, Mr Kostunica said it was "more than necessary" to have a recount, in view of the "more than obvious" differences between the figures carefully collated from official return sheets by the opposition and the figures claimed, without substantiation, by the government. <br><br>Because the reach of independent media is patchy at best, part of the purpose of yesterday's rallies was to ensure that people across the country were aware of the opposition's demands and the plans for next week's strike. Already yesterday some factories closed. The atmosphere at the rallies was relaxed, almost celebratory. Despite the dismal history of the opposition, there is considerable confidence now that this time will prove to be different. <br><br>Part of the confidence comes not just from the clear-cut electoral victory – the first time that the opposition has truly defeated Mr Milosevic at the polls – but also from the sense that the regime is beginning to crumble. Representatives of the the Democratic Opposition of Serbia coalition met army and police chiefs for talks in the provinces. <br><br>Mr Kostunica and his colleagues are eager to achieve a handover of power without bloodshed, a possibility that until a few days ago still seemed unthinkable. <br><br>The opposition also sought meetings with the bosses of Serbian state television, to demand air-time to explain the position of the opposition, including the nature of next week's strikes. The strikes are limited to five days, a neat Monday-to-Friday self-contained set of pressures, in the hope that the response will be so overwhelming that the regime will start to crack and offer new compromises – and perhaps, even – though most Serbs still find it impossible to imagine that that day is near – that Mr Milosevic and his family will be bundled on to a plane to Moscow or elsewhere. <br><br>Zoran Djindjic, the opposition;s campaign manager andone of the main opposition leaders in the huge demonstrations of winter 1996-97, was cheered by the crowds in Belgrade when he quoted a popular new opposition slogan directed at Mr Milosevic: "Leave, before we come to you." Another popular, more brutal slogan says: "Slobo, save Serbia – kill yourself." Mr Milosevic's parents committed suicide. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Belgrade braced for five days of defiance ``x970315866,13885,``x``x
``x<br><br>FROM MISHA GLENNY IN BELGRADE<br><br><br> <br>KEY figures in President Milosevic's party turned against him last night, as thousands of Serbs took to the streets of Belgrade in support of Vojislav Kostunica, his opponent in the presidential elections last Sunday. <br>Sources close to the leadership of Mr Milosevic's Socialist Party said that several members of the party's Executive Committee had told him at a meeting that he should accept the outright victory of Mr Kostunica in the first round of the elections. "It was an extremely heated meeting, with several close colleagues telling Milosevic that the game was up," the source said. <br><br>A senior western diplomat told The Times that "at the leadership meeting, the atmosphere was rebellious and some of those present said that Milosevic should concede Kostunica's victory". <br><br>There are signs, however, that the opposition is unsure how to orchestrate its campaign of civil disobedience, which began yesterday with strikes and protests throughout the country. <br><br>Just 25,000 demonstrators, mainly schoolchildren and students, attended an afternoon rally at Republic Square in Belgrade. In spite of the low turnout, the protest quickly assumed a carnival atmosphere, with many youngsters swaying to rock music blasting from one opposition party's headquarters. <br><br>"Our parents were unable to finish this job, so now it is up to us," Svetlana, 17, a schoolgirl from Belgrade, said. <br><br>Last night Vojislav Kostunica, the opposition leader, called for an internationally monitored recount of last Sunday's vote in what he said was a "goodwill gesture" to end the impasse with Mr Milosevic. The offer was in response to a Greek initiative, which sees Mr Kostunica taking part in a second round. <br><br>In Montenegro, the reformist President Djukanovic broke his silence to praise the "victory" of Mr Kostunica, to whom he pledged his support in an attempt to heal the rifts caused by his call for a boycott of last Sunday's elections. <br><br>"The opposition will benefit from our support, as it always did, even during the elections we boycotted," he said. <br><br>Waving a huge blue-and-white banner of the Democratic Party, Nikola Djuric, 25, a baker, said he had not yet taken time off work, but he was ready to strike for "however long it takes, if it gets rid of that man", as he referred to President Milosevic. <br><br>The organisers said that the restricted numbers were due to the demonstration being held in the middle of the day, but they also pointed out that the main independent radio station in Belgrade, Radio Index, was jammed to prevent news of the protest spreading. <br><br>Sympathy demonstrations were held in other cities, including in the leading town in southern Serbia, Nis, and Novi Sad, the capital of the northern province, Vojvodina. The opposition demands that President Milosevic recognise the outright victory that it insists Mr Kostunica won in the first round of Yugoslavia's presidential elections. But the Government-controlled election commission says that Mr Kostunica failed to win 50 per cent of the vote and must face a second ballot a week tomorrow. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times: Milosevic allies admit defeat``x970315890,97911,``x``x
``x<br>CETINJE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Steeped in a history of resistance to attackers from the Turks to the Nazis, people in the former capital of Montenegro are starting to dream of independence from Yugoslavia. "Cetinje is at the heart of Montenegrin history.... The desire for a free and independent state is stronger here than anywhere else in Montenegro," said Savo Paraca, the mayor of the southern mountain town of 18,000 people. Only 4 percent of Cetinje"s electorate voted in Yugoslav presidential and parliamentary elections last Sunday, the lowest rate in Montenegro, in a slap at Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and other forces favoring continued ties to Belgrade. Overall turnout in Montenegro, the sole republic still in Yugoslavia along with its bigger sister Serbia, was 28.5 percent. The pro-Western government in Montenegro had urged a boycott, saying the vote was unconstitutional. Many citizens in the picturesque but dilapidated town, where 13 foreign nations once had embassies, hope a power struggle between Milosevic and his Serb challenger Vojislav Kostunica for the presidency will end up helping Montenegrin independence. "This is where a free Montenegro was born," said Radmila Kovacevic, a 49-year-old painter. "I feel a debt to my ancestors to fight for independence." "I think that Montenegro is heading for independence now, no matter whether Kostunica or Milosevic wins," she added. MILOSEVIC BOOSTS INDEPENDENCE PRESSURE Others say pressures for Montenegro to secede will increase if Milosevic, indicted last year by a U.N. court for alleged war crimes, clings to power. A Kostunica win could raise chances of reforms in Serbia and dampen Montenegrins" separatist ardor. "For 13 years we"ve lived under the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic. We want independence, especially if he stays on," said Vesko Stojkovic, 34. From the late 15th century, Cetinje became the heart of a principality that managed to survive on the fringes of the Ottoman and Austrian empires. It became the Montenegrin capital on independence in 1878 and was the seat of King Nicola I when Montenegro became a kingdom in 1910. Eight years later, it came under Yugoslav rule. The Montenegrin government of President Milo Djukanovic has said the country will stay in Yugoslavia if Serbia becomes democratic. If it does not, Montenegro may secede. Cetinje is not typical of Montenegro, where enough people still favor Yugoslavia to prompt fears of instability if the republic were to break away, even though the number of those seeking independence has grown in recent years. Even here some people still want links with Belgrade. "I voted. A lot more people wanted to but they were scared of coming out," said Vidosava Martinovic, a 47-year-old factory worker. "We should stay with Yugoslavia." Many recall heroic tales of resistance. In one 19th century battle, the town"s defenders kept back the Turks by taking metal letters from a printing press and melting them into bullets. In the Second World War, Cetinje was overrun by the Nazis and the Italians but 49 local fighters won awards for heroism, the most for any city in Montenegro. Paraca said Cetinje was punished for its monarchist past when the capital was moved east to Titograd, now called Podgorica, after the war. He said it hoped to get back some government ministries and embassies. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xHopes for independence in ex-Montenegro capital``x970315927,64547,``x``x
``x<br><br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br> <br> <br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 1 — As Serbia's opposition vowed to shut the country down on Monday, several hundred policemen, apparently sent to try to keep electricity production going, tonight surrounded and entered an important coal mine that went on strike on Friday.<br><br>The strike is part of the opposition's campaign to force President Slobodan Milosevic to concede defeat in the Sept. 24 elections to the challenger, Vojislav Kostunica. The coal mine supplies an electrical power station at Obrenovac, which produces up to half of Serbia's electricity in a system patched together after NATO bombing campaign last year. At least 4,500 coal workers are on strike, and the general manager of part of the mine, Slobodan Jankovic, resigned earlier today, throwing his support to the workers.<br><br>Citizens of Lazarevac, about 40 miles southwest of Belgrade, and relatives of the workers began to march toward the nearby mine, but the police did not let them through. An opposition politician, Nebojsa Covic, was negotiating with the police, who also blocked the road from Belgrade, checking identities of those traveling toward the mine.<br><br>On state television news, the country's electricity company also appealed to the workers not to deprive hospitals and schools of electricity and said it would restrict supplies.<br><br>The opposition is trying to organize what would be the first general strike in Yugoslavia since World War II.<br><br>Opposition leaders said they hoped that their strategy of legal challenges mixed with popular pressure would be enough to persuade Mr. Milosevic and his allies to concede his loss of the presidency.<br><br>"Monday is a crucial day, when schools won't work, students and teachers come onto the streets, the shops and cafes won't work and a great majority of Belgrade will block traffic," vowed Zoran Djindjic, a leader of the democratic opposition coalition. "Tomorrow will be a day when Belgrade comes to a halt."<br><br>The opposition hopes to block major roads all over Serbia, to cut off refineries and electrical stations, to shut down schools and especially public offices and ministries, all to try to show to Mr. Milosevic that he can no longer command the country.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica says that he won the presidential elections outright with more than 50 percent of the vote, and that Mr. Milosevic and his Federal Election Commission organized electoral fraud to justify a second-round runoff next Sunday.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica has vowed to boycott the second round as unnecessary. He has challenged the election commission's results in the Constitutional Court after a lower appeal was rejected and has urged Greece and Russia to mediate the electoral dispute and recount the votes.<br><br>President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, after talks with French, German and American officials, offered to send Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov to Belgrade, but Mr. Milosevic rejected the offer, according to American officials briefed on a conversation between Mr. Putin and President Clinton. Russia has been an important Milosevic ally, helpful with energy, credits and other support.<br><br>But today German officials said Mr. Putin had agreed with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany in a telephone call on Saturday that Mr. Kostunica had won the election. There was no confirmation from Moscow of this view, which would mark a major defeat for Mr. Milosevic in his effort to persuade his own people that he was not defeated outright by Mr. Kostunica. Two senior Russian diplomats arrived in Belgrade late Saturday for talks with government and opposition leaders.<br><br>Some opposition leaders believe that the pressure beginning on Monday must work quickly on the government, forcing a confrontation between the people and the police and fracturing the ruling circle before a second round next Sunday. If the strategy fails, however, there is the possibility of asking voters to come out again on Sunday to prevent a Milosevic victory by default.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica cannot easily reverse himself, but his name will appear on the ballot in any case. It is possible, the opposition leaders say, that the Serbian Orthodox Church, which has already recognized Mr. Kostunica as the first-round victor, could ask people to vote. <br><br>A Serbian expert, Aleksa Djilas, says he believes that Mr. Kostunica's rejection of a second round is a mistake. "If people vote again, Milosevic would surely lose, and such a huge fraud to win would be obvious and unlikely, and if it were that big, the wrath of the people would be enormous," Mr. Djilas said. "A boycott induces passivity. Why not say, `Let's drive it home — we are not afraid.' "<br><br>Mr. Milosevic tends to give in to the inevitable to save himself when other options are foreclosed, as he did to end the war in Kosovo, said Mr. Djilas, who is now at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.<br><br>While there is enormous anxiety in the governing coalition, with officials coming to their offices only to talk or calling in sick, there have been few signs of an open break with Mr. Milosevic. On Friday, he responded harshly at a Socialist Party meeting to suggestions that he concede to Mr. Kostunica, officials say, and his sudden visit on Saturday to a graduation ceremony at a military academy, with his two top generals, was perceived as a warning that he would not go without a fight.<br><br>At the same time, even official figures show Mr. Milosevic trailing Mr. Kostunica by more than 10 percentage points, and his aura as an elected president has been badly tainted. Even officials who are careful now say it is unlikely that he can remain president long.<br><br>They speak of a scenario where Mr. Milosevic concedes to Mr. Kostunica but remains in office until January or even June, then appoints himself federal prime minister, since his coalition controls the federal Parliament. Others believe that once Mr. Milosevic concedes, it is winner take all, and that even his allies will move to Mr. Kostunica.<br><br>State media are beginning to crack. More than 60 reporters at Vecernje Novosti, a popular tabloid the state took over in March, have signed a petition demanding a return to balanced news coverage within 24 hours. In an open letter, they demanded that the paper "stop linking itself to the interests of a narrow political party or person, but only to the truth and the will of the people as expressed in the elections."<br><br>There is a similar petition at the Belgrade radio, part of the state system. Eight local radio stations said they would also stop broadcasting state news.<br><br>There have been abundant rumors that Mr. Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic; their son, Marko; and daughter, Marija, left the country to go to Russia. But they are here, officials said. Ms. Markovic appeared on state television news tonight to denounce the West for trying "to produce hatred that will push people into civil war."<br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe NY Times: Serb Police Move Into Key Mine as General Strike Looms``x970490536,29031,``x``x
``x<br><br>The opposition called a general strike, starting today, to pressure Milosevic to step down. <br><br>By Alex Todorovic <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>BELGRADE <br><br>Residents in small towns across Serbia are eagerly preparing for a general strike due to begin today, ready to disrupt everyday life to convince Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic that his tenure has come to an end. But it's unclear whether Belgrade's Freedom Square will ring with the same revolutionary zeal. <br><br>By calling for a blockade of major roadways as part of a campaign of civil disobedience to protest next weekend's presidential runoff vote, Serbia's opposition has chosen a go-for-broke strategy that, if successful, has the potential of unseating President Milosevic in a matter of days. But a low turnout would enable Milosevic to stabilize his shaky government and remain in power, though with little democratic legitimacy. <br><br>"This is high stakes for the opposition. It's come down to the moment of truth. The protests have to be big enough to show that the Serbian people understand the stakes and are supporting their democratically elected leaders," says James Hooper, directory of Balkan policy at the Washington-based International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that works in crisis prevention. "It has to be big enough so that Milosevic understands his only option is to negotiate his way out of power." <br><br>"The government is lost and in a great panic. The idea is not to give it a breath of fresh air," adds Dusan Batakovic, a history professor in Belgrade. "The opposition must not let Milosevic prepare a counterattack." <br><br>The opposition insists that its candidate, constitutional law professor Vojislav Kostunica, won a majority in the first round of voting Sept. 24, and a runoff is therefore unnecessary. The federal election commission, dismissing complaints of widespread fraud, found that Mr. Kostunica won more votes, but said no candidate passed the crucial 50-percent mark. <br> <br><br>"The truth is that we won. If we were to negotiate, we would admit that the will of one man is stronger than the people," Kostunica said last week. His refusal to compromise on a matter of principle, in addition to his staunch nationalist views, have impressed many Serb voters. <br><br>Over the weekend, Milosevic delivered his own message to the Yugoslav public. In a televised speech to a graduating class of military officers he declared, "We are sure that our country, which managed to defend itself in a war, can successfully resist psychological, media, and political pressures." <br><br>The Army rank and file are said to have supported Kostunica in large numbers in last month's vote, while many police officers are thought to be loyal to Milosevic. The security services have been key to his 13-year grip on power. <br><br>Moscow, a traditional ally of fellow Slavic and Orthodox Christian Serbia, warned Milosevic not to use violence against strikers this week. A pair of Russian envoys arrived in Belgrade Sunday, but Milosevic reportedly rejected Russia's offer to send its foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, to mediate the crisis. <br><br>The opposition's wisdom in jumping into a general strike and rejecting a runoff is being called into question by some analysts, and there are unconfirmed reports that Western diplomats have tried to pressure Serbia's opposition into rethinking its position. <br><br>"The opposition went straight to a strike, which holds a great risk," says Slobodan Antonic, a Belgrade professor of political science. "We don't have strong unions or syndicates, like in Western Europe, and will have to rely on a spontaneous eruption, which is always a rare event. Frankly, I'm a pessimist." <br><br>The call for a general strike is being spearheaded by Kostunica ally Zoran Djindjic. Kostunica, who is not known for his power as an orator, has never been comfortable with large street demonstrations, and the general strike is being billed as the mother of all protests. <br><br>If the strike and civil-disobedience campaign are not successful by Wednesday, at the latest, the Milosevic government will get a boost of confidence and try to ride out the storm, according to Mr. Antonic. "He will then win the runoff because the opposition didn't participate, and remain in power indefinitely as an authoritarian leader with no pretense of democratic support." <br><br>But that opinion is, for the moment at least, in the minority. Most local observers and some foreign analysts think the Kostunica camp was right to keep up the pressure against Milosevic. <br><br>"There are plenty of risks in going to the streets, but a greater risk in going to a runoff because Milosevic would use the time against his opponents and prepare something," says Mr. Hooper. <br><br>Though recent protests have wavered in size, opposition leaders are optimistic based on Friday's opening act. Following a pattern seen all year, Belgrade was fairly quiet, but protests and civil disobedience showed much more energy elsewhere in Serbia. <br><br>Citizens blocked bridges and roads, high school students walked out of class in many towns, and 7,500 miners announced they are joining the strike, as did a large textile factory. Two hundred employees at a large television station in Novi Sad vowed to strike unless the state-controlled television station broadcasts coverage of the democratic opposition. <br><br>But citizens are also tired of a decade of protests, especially in cities. "Most people I talk to say they don't have the energy to protest for three months as they did in 1996," says Antonic. Those demonstrations forced the government to concede opposition wins in several municipal elections, including the capital's. Since then, bitter rivalries had kept opposition leaders divided until last month's vote. <br><br>The opposition concedes that, whatever happens, it must be quick. "The battle will be short and nonviolent," says opposition spokesman Ceda Jovanovic. <br><br>The Milosevic camp, meanwhile, appears to be holding together under pressure. Only Milosevic's allies in Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in what remains of Yugoslavia, have distanced themselves in recent days. <br><br>The opposition believes that a Kostunica victory would be even more decisive in a runoff, but opposition leaders suspect it may be part of a new Milosevic plan to remain in power, and would at the very least legitimize vote fraud in the first round. The opposition says the election commission's final results are full of impossible scenarios, such as polling stations located in burned-out houses, and thousands of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo casting ballots for Milosevic. The Yugoslav leader was indicted by the war crimes tribunal at The Hague for his mistreatment of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, and most boycotted the vote. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe CS Monitor: Serb opposition's risky gambit ``x970490561,85515,``x``x
``x<br> <br>A HIGHLY secretive SAS mission in Montenegro has spent the past six months training the Yugoslav republic's elite special police against terrorist threats from Serbia, writes Tom Walker. <br>The 1,500-strong commando units of the new Montenegrin force, who wear distinctive black uniforms, are now a common sight near government buildings and on Montenegro's borders. The commandos are backed up by another 5,000 special police. <br><br>Neither the Montenegrins nor the British government have admitted the presence of SAS trainers on Yugslav territory, for fear of provoking a confrontation with the Yugoslav army of President Slobodan Milosevic. Diplomats say they believe the trainers, said to have been a squad of be-tween four and eight, have now left after concern for their safety. <br><br>The SAS trainers were experienced Balkan hands. Several had assisted Nato's operation in Kosovo last year. "I saw some familiar faces while I was wandering across a park here. They saw me and dived behind a tree," said one diplomat. <br><br>The British involvement with the Montenegrin police is plain to see. More than 150 Land Rovers have been im-ported in the past year. The Foreign Office said two ex-port licences had been granted permitting civilian use. <br><br>Intelligence sources familiar with the police programme run by the SAS said the trainers were based near Bar, Yugoslavia's main port. The police have been given new mountaineering, diving and parachuting skills, and some officers are also be-lieved to have been given training in Britain. <br><br>"They've turned the police into a sort of light infantry militia-type outfit that can tackle any hijack or hostage crisis, the sort of thing that Serbia might provoke here," said one diplomat. He said most of the police armaments and uniforms came from America. The special police have sub-machineguns, mortars and bazookas, but cannot counter the heavy armoury of the Yugoslav army. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times: SAS trains Montenegrin police``x970490580,33257,``x``x
``x<br>By Irena Guzelova in Belgrade, Andrew Jack in Moscow and Agencies<br> <br>The Yugoslav opposition on Monday launched what it hopes will be a nationwide campaign of strikes, road blockages and rallies aimed at forcing President Slobodan Milosevic to step down in favour of Vojislav Kostunica. <br><br>Lorry and taxi drivers blocked roads in Belgrade and other towns on Monday, and workers were reported to have walked out of coal mines, an oil refinery and railway stations. <br><br>Western governments meanwhile stepped up diplomatic pressure at the weekend to persuade Russia to bring its influence to bear on Mr Milosevic to stand down after last month's disputed general election. <br><br>US President Bill Clinton, Gerhard Schöder, the German chancellor, and Giuliano Amato, Italy's prime minister, all had telephone conversations with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. <br><br>German officials said Mr Putin had agreed during a telephone conversation with Mr Schöder that the opposition candidate's victory over Mr Milosevic in the presidential election on Sunday reflected the will of the Serbian people for democratic change. <br><br>The German statement said Mr Schröder and Mr Putin had discussed how the international community could help ensure that a change of government could be "realised in a peaceful way". <br><br>Russia has so far stood back from support by western nations for the claim by the Yugoslav opposition that it won an outright majority in the first round of voting and did not need to take part in a run-off on October 8, as the government-controlled election commission has claimed. <br><br>Two senior Russian diplomats arrived in Belgrade on Saturday night, while the Kremlin confirmed that Mr Putin had offered to send Igor Ivanov, his foreign minister, to Yugoslavia to act as an intermediary. German and US officials said the offer had been rejected. <br><br>In other developments, Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State, arrived in Paris on Sunday where she was due to hold talks with senior British, European Union and French officials. <br><br>The opposition's protest campaign will seek to blockade main roads outside every large town. The opposition has called on workers in government offices and factories to join the strikes and also hopes that schools, universities, cinemas and theatres will be shut down. <br><br>Cinemas in Belgrade were closed on Sunday and workers on the capital's city transport system said they would join the strike. <br><br>Around 4,000 miners at Serbia's biggest coal mine, Kolubara near Belgrade, halted production on Friday night. Kolubara is the only supplier to the Nikola Tesla thermal power plant in nearby Obrenovac, producer of half of Serbia's electricity requirements. Coal supplies at Obrenovac are known to be low. <br><br>At a military ceremony on Saturday, Mr Milosevic showed no sign of compromise and warned his audience that "domestic enemies" were preparing to invite foreign armies into the country. <br><br>Mr Milosevic's son, Marko, visited government opponents at the weekend warning them that his father was still in power and had no intention of leaving, an opposition activist said. <br><br>Serbia's pro-government media were also defiant. The Politika daily carried a commentary from Serbian state television accusing opposition leaders of trying to provoke chaos. It went on to accuse the opposition of feeding the public with false election results. <br><br>It is not clear how widely the opposition's call for civil disobedience will be heeded. Employees at Belgrade's large state institutions are less likely to take part. <br><br>The weekend passed peacefully and only a few thousand protesters turned up at an opposition rally in Belgrade on Saturday night, far fewer than the 200,000 or so who came out on Wednesday. <br><br>The economic damage of a strike would be limited as years of sanctions and disastrous economic polices mean industry is running at only a fraction of its capacity. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe FT: Yugoslav opposition steps up protests``x970490600,42687,``x``x
``x<br><br>Russia leads international efforts to broker a peaceful handover of power in Yugoslavia<br><br><br>Ian Traynor in Moscow, Maggie O'Kane in Belgrade and Jonathan Steele <br>Monday October 2, 2000 <br><br>The Kremlin has launched a high-risk - but potentially rewarding - diplomatic initiative to broker a peaceful handover of power from President Slobodan Milosevic to the opposition in Belgrade. <br>In a weekend of intensive diplomacy following last week's disputed Yugoslav elections, President Vladimir Putin spoke to President Clinton, the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and the Italian prime minister, Giuliano Amato, about the increasingly isolated Milosevic regime. <br><br>For the first time Russia has conceded that the opposition leader, Vojislav Kostunica, won the poll in the first round. Two senior Russian diplomats arrived in Belgrade yesterday for talks. <br><br>Earlier Mr Putin offered to send the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, to Belgrade to defuse the standoff. An influential Russian foreign policy official said that Moscow should mediate in Belgrade, checking all versions of election returns to assess whether a second round runoff scheduled for next Sunday was warranted. <br><br>"If it [a runoff] is not needed, it would make sense to discuss the conditions that would ensure the transfer of power," said Vladimir Lukin, a deputy parliament speaker and a former Russian ambassador in Washington. "Russia has a chance to play a very big role in this process." <br><br>That seemed to reflect the views of Mr Putin, who appears to be relishing the opportunities afforded to enhance Russian prestige by succeeding in some crisis management which would leave the west in its debt. <br><br>The Russian foreign ministry confirmed that Vladimir Chizhov, the Russian envoy to the Balkans, and Alexander Tolkach, a foreign ministry official, were in Belgrade for talks with the Milosevic and Kostunica camps. <br><br>Russian media reports suggest that the Kremlin is engaged in a high-risk strategy to edge Mr Milosevic out peacefully, but it appears that Moscow is advising Mr Kostunica not to boycott any runoff. <br><br>Rumours have been rife for days that Mr Milosevic could flee to Russia, and that Mr Kostunica may go to Moscow for talks on the crisis with Mr Putin, who is due to leave for a four-day visit to India today. <br><br>The key issue would be to organise when Mr Milosevic leaves power. The Yugoslav prime minister, Momir Bulatovic, has said the constitution allows the president to stay until next summer. <br><br>This is unacceptable to the opposition, but there may be room for compromise on finding a date which allows Mr Milosevic to stay on for a shorter period or by guaranteeing his security if he resigns immediately. <br><br>In Belgrade, Mr Milosevic, continues to ignore internal and international pressures to step down. According to one inside source he expects next Sunday's runoff to go ahead. <br><br>Mr Kostunica, a law professor, insists he has already won and such a runoff would be an insult to the voters. <br><br>He is trying to unseat Mr Milosevic by legal challenges, international pressure and by persuading Mr Milosevic's allies to desert him. His aim is to corrode Mr Milosevic's powerbase without violence. <br><br>"There must be no blood because Serbia is already bleeding," an opposition speaker told a rally in Belgrade on Saturday. "We know you are tired. We know you are fed up and tired of speeches but please tell everyone the general strike begins on Monday at 5am" <br><br>Essential services such as hospitals are not expected to be affected by the strike but most of the country is expected to come to a standstill. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Putin tries to ease Milosevic out ``x970490623,17455,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Steve Crawshaw in Belgrade <br><br>2 October 2000 <br><br>"He's finished – absolutely finished." "I'm afraid – somehow, he always survives." These contradictory statements from one Serb student yesterday are echoed again and again in the revolutionary city of Belgrade. <br><br>Slobodan Milosevic is under greater pressure than ever before – of that, there can be no doubt. All the evidence points to the fact that we are seeing Milosevic's Last Days. And yet, he has survived too many times before. Many are still wary of what trick the old fox might yet pull, in order to maintain his grip on power. <br><br>On the face of it, it seems clear that President Milosevic has suffered a crushing electoral defeat at the hands of the opposition party led by Vojislav Kostunica. The whole world, including his traditional ally, Russia, is pressing him to go. And, on the streets throughout the capital city Belgrade and all over Serbia, millions look set to demonstrate against him and go on strike in the days to come. <br><br>And still, some cannot believe that it is really all over. What happens if he simply sits it all out, as he has done before? For the Serb opposition, which has traditionally shown an uncanny ability to start squabbling just at the moment when victory seems to be within reach, the question now is whether it will successfully keep up the pressure to make the once all-powerful regime crumble. <br><br>The most encouraging signs for the opposition are that President Milosevic's own people seem to be deserting him on a daily basis. Even so, many assume that victory can still only come with bloodshed. In a sense, that bloodshed might be expected merely to accelerate the fall of the House of Milosevic: dead demonstrators would probably soon mean a dead Milosevic. <br><br>The true nightmare scenario, from the opposition's point of view, might be that President Milosevic holds firm until the end of the week with his insistence that the opposition has failed to gain a first-round victory. <br><br>If the run-off election scheduled by the government for this coming Sunday goes ahead, some in the opposition might lose their nerve at the last moment and decide to vote in the run-off, while others stick with a boycott. In those circumstances, President Milosevic could gain a quasi-democratic victory – in other words, where no theft of votes would be needed – which would leave the opposition more divided than ever before. <br><br>The mood changes in Belgrade from day to day, and from hour to hour. Yesterday's optimist is today's pessimist, and vice versa. For the moment, the scenario of Milosevic's stubborn survival still seems less likely than the put-him-on-a-plane version which everybody in the opposition is hoping for. <br><br>Serbia has learnt not to expect any happy endings. In the past few days, however, even dyed-in-the-wool pessimists have learned what it means to hope. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: The second ballot could leave the opposition more divided than ever ``x970490640,35140,``x``x
``x<br>Tom Walker, Podgorica <br><br>Serbia Scenting power: jubilant opposition supporters light victory torches in Belgrade <br>NATO and western intelligence networks are closely monitoring all flights out of Belgrade in the belief that President Slobodan Milosevic may flee to China, where he is thought to have up to $200m (£140m) in secret bank accounts. <br><br>The surveillance operation began even before Milosevic lost last week's presidential election. Diplomats watching the decline of the Serbian regime said that in the past six weeks Borka Vucic, Milosevic's personal banker, had made at least two trips to Beijing. Their sources said her business was connected with the president's family and not the Yugoslav state. <br><br>American officials say Nato will thwart any attempt by Milosevic to escape from Serbia in a private jet. His likely flight path would take him over Hungary or Romania to Russia, which would probably turn a blind eye if he moved on to Beijing. <br><br>However, Hungary is a Nato member and Romania hopes to join the alliance. Both countries have interceptor aircraft on standby, ready to force down any private flights from Serbia. <br><br>Military sources in Bosnia said Nato surveillance had been briefed to look out for a private Falcon jet or the Yugoslav government's official DC10. <br><br>The whereabouts of Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic, who was reported to have suffered a nervous breakdown, and children, Marko and Maria, were unknown yesterday. Intelligence officials said they were more concerned with the movements of the president himself, who has been indicted by the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague for crimes against humanity in Kosovo. <br><br>The officials said Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, was determined to bring Milosevic to justice before the end of the Clinton administration in January. <br><br>The Milosevic regime is believed to have robbed the state of up to $5 billion, most of it leached out of the country in the early 1990s after all personal bank accounts were frozen in Serbia, ostensibly to help fund the war effort and to counter hyper-inflation. <br><br>Much of the money was taken to Cyprus, Lebanon and China, and classic money-laundering techniques have made it almost untraceable. Although Milosevic has never indulged himself on the scale of the former Ceausescu dynasty in neighbouring Romania, his security bills are huge and his Chinese savings are believed to be substantial. <br><br>"We believe he could have anything up to $200m there," said one intelligence source. "It will help him to hide away." <br><br>Vucic has helped Milosevic with his finances since they worked together at Beogradska Bank 20 years ago. She is now the minister in charge of co- operation with international financial institutions. <br><br>Intelligence sources say western capitals are watching the movements of members of the Yugoslav regime who may be thought by Milosevic to know too much. They include military figures such as General Dragoljub Ojdanic, the army chief of staff during the Kosovo campaign, and Frenki Simatovic, the head of anti-terrorist forces. <br><br>Milosevic is also wary of fellow politicians such as Milan Milutinovic, the Serbian president, and Vlajko Stojilkovic, the interior minister. <br><br>"The future is very difficult for all of them," said one western source. "They'd love to get out, but Slobo has to have them somewhere where he can control them." <br><br>The source said some members of the regime had already made secret trips to Budapest, the Hungarian capital, offering information on the intricacies of the Belgrade machine in exchange for visas to safe havens. <br><br>Stojilkovic is said to have been harshly treated last week. Police sources say that he was told by Markovic to bring his most ruthless units onto the streets of Belgrade, but that many had refused. <br><br>As the extent of police and army sympathy for the opposition became known, Milosevic was said to have hurled an ashtray at Gorica Gajevic, his party secretary. <br><br>In Milosevic's home town of Pozarevac, local people said they had heard the family was selling property. A cafe owned by Marko Milosevic has closed down and his Bambiland theme park has shut early for the winter. <br><br>For his part, however, the president has looked confident on state television. Yesterday afternoon he attended a military academy's passing out parade and declared that he would not bow to pressure. <br><br>"We will counter pressures and threats with the truth, unity, knowledge, work and creativity, just as we did successfully under the Nato aggression and in the subsequent reconstruction of our country," Milosevic said. "We are sure that our country, which managed to defend itself in a war, can also successfully resist these other psychological, media and political pressures." <br><br>Milosevic also claimed Yugoslavia was now pursuing a policy of peace. Its period of wars "is now behind us", he said. <br><br>A source close to Vojislav Kostunica, the opposition leader, said concern was growing that Milosevic's tactic of divide-and-rule may work. Opposition groups behind Kostunica have discussed the feasibility of forcing the president from power through a general strike. Last night, they called for a "total blockade of all state institutions and general civil disobedience" to start from Monday. <br><br>If Kostunica seeks help from outside Serbia to speed Milosevic's demise, he could hand the president a propaganda coup. Unconfirmed reports over the weekend claimed foreign diplomats had met Kostunica to discuss the possibility of bringing mediators into Serbia to negotiate Milosevic's departure. <br><br>Last night, President Vladimir Putin of Russia said he was willing to send Igor Ivanov, his foreign minister, to Belgrade "to be more active in the process". <br><br>However, Putin insisted: "The position of Russia is clear - the Yugoslav people must decide their ultimate fate and future without the interference of outside elements." <br><br>Greece also offered mediation and said it was willing to send observers to monitor a new count of election votes. Milosevic's federal election commission claimed Kostunica had beaten him by 49% to 39%, falling short of the 50% required for a first-round victory. Kostunica has refused to fight a second round next Sunday, insisting he secured well over 50%. <br><br>However, the election commission rejected complaints of voting irregularities, insisting yesterday that no recount was needed. <br><br>As the standoff intensified, the Yugoslav army seemed to be shifting its allegiance away from Milosevic. According to a high-ranking officer, at least one member of the army general staff has resigned. <br><br>In a further blow, the commanding officers turned down Milosevic's request for a meeting to discuss the outcome of the election, saying in a fax from headquarters that the army "has no functional link with the parties taking part". <br><br>A western diplomat in Podgorica, capital of Serbia's sister state of Montenegro, described Milosevic as "like a wounded buffalo who has taken a couple of rounds - he can still stagger around and cause a lot of damage"<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times: Nato guards escape routes as Milosevic makes plans to flee ``x970490669,62963,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Jovana Gec <br><br><br>2 October 2000 <br><br>When they did it in Britain, it was to demand cheap petrol: in Belgrade this morning when the truck drivers blocked the roads it was to fight for the future of their country. <br><br>The showdown for power in Yugoslavia has reached a pivotal moment – the opening of a protest blitz by opposition forces that could test their resolve to drive President Slobodan Milosevic from office. <br><br>Milosevic's foes have vowed to bring the country to a standstill with general strikes and road blockades. But the buildup to the campaign has been slow and cautious, raising questions about whether they possess the momentum and stamina to carry out their threats. <br><br>Less than a week remains before Sunday's scheduled run–off elections. Milosevic says challenger Vojislav Kostunica failed to achieve an outright victory in Sept. 24 elections and a second round is needed. The opposition, backed by the West, insist Milosevic rigged the voting. <br><br>"It's up to the people ... whether they are going to stand for this or not," said retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who led NATO's 78–day air war against Yugoslavia last year. <br><br>Road blockades snarled traffic outside the capital, Belgrade, just after dawn, independent radio station B2–92 reported. The protests clogged roads near the suburbs of Zemun and Sremcica. <br><br>Another road blockade effectively sealed off the opposition–run town of Cacak in central Yugoslavia early Monday. By 5 a.m.. (0300 GMT), some 70 truck drivers completely jammed the road outside the industrial town of 80,000 people. <br><br>Milosevic has so far held the military and police in check. There were fears, however, he could be running out of options as some vital industries, such as coal mines, join the opposition ranks. <br><br>The independent Beta news agency reported that 500 Interior Ministry policemen entered the Kolubara mine, the nation's largest, late Sunday. The action could be at attempt to thwart sabotage at the mine, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Belgrade, where thousands of workers have walked out. <br><br>A close Milosevic supporter, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, accused opposition groups of seeking "chaos, clashes and unrest." The republics of Serbia and Western–oriented Montenegro comprise what remains of Yugoslavia. <br><br>Opposition leader Milan Protic urged people to abandon their jobs and schools and take to the streets, building toward a "total blockade" of roads by Wednesday. <br><br>"(This) will last until Milosevic realizes that he is no longer president," said Protic, the opposition's candidate for mayor of Belgrade. <br><br>Already, thousands of workers have left key industries in a nation battered by international sanctions. Two important coal mines, an oil refinery and railway lines were idled, opening the possibility of power and fuel shortages. <br><br>A letter from Serbia's electric company urged coal miners to return to work immediately or power restrictions would be imposed that could "endanger people's health and lives (and) cause an ecological catastrophe." <br><br>Authorities also have warned students against joining Monday's strike. <br><br>Sunday offered a taste of the disturbances that may spread across the country. A convoy of 60 trucks blocked a key highway in central Yugoslavia and smaller, traffic–snarling demonstrations were held at main intersections in the capital Belgrade. <br><br>"Our victory is a pure as a diamond," said Velimir Ilic, the mayor of Cacak. About 10,000 opposition supporters gathered at the main town square for a seventh consecutive night. <br><br>A local police patrol briefly attempted to take the license plate of one of the truckers in Cacak around dawn Monday. They found themselves outnumbered and surrounded, however, and quickly handed it back. <br><br>The truckers were soon joined by about 100 taxi drivers. Protest leaders pledged their numbers would grow as the day went on. <br><br>"We are here to defend our votes and we won't go away until Kostunica is installed as president," said the group's leader Milun Kuzmanovic. <br><br>Only essential public services were operating in the city, and a rally was planned at noon. <br><br>"They are sending a strong message to Milosevic: 'Your time in office is over,"' said U.S. National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley in Washington. <br><br>The president of neighboring Romania, Emil Constantinescu, urged Milosevic to concede defeat and congratulated Kostunica for his "historic victory." <br><br>Even Russian President Vladimir Putin – one of Milosevic's last major allies – appeared to move toward the Western view that the Yugoslav leader was finished. <br><br>In Berlin, the German government said Putin and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder spoke by telephone and agreed that "Kostunica's election victory emphatically expresses the will of the Serbian people for a democratic change in Yugoslavia." <br><br>Milosevic turned down an offer by Putin to send his foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, to Belgrade to meet with both sides. But two senior Russian diplomats – Vladimir Chizhov and Alexander Tolkach – arrived in Serbia late Saturday. State Tanjug news agency reported Chizhov visited Kosovo on Sunday and planned official meetings in Belgrade the following day. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent:Truck blockade opens Yugoslav showdown ``x970490684,8868,``x``x
``xGeneral Strike Cripples Yugoslavia; Milosevic Goes on Offensive <br><br> <br>A priest blesses the anti-government protest in Cacak, Yugoslavia, 90 miles southwest of Belgrade. Citizens of Cacak blocked roads in the area in a protest over alleged fraud in federal elections. (Darko Vojinovic/AP Photo)<br> <br> <br><br>Oct. 2 — As thousands of people walked out of factories, mines and schools to demand Slobodan Milosevic leave office, the Yugoslav president today claimed the country would fall under foreign occupation if the opposition took power.<br> Milosevic spoke after the opposition launched what it hoped would be a nationwide campaign to force the president to accept electoral defeat by Vojislav Kostunica. <br> In a rare address to the nation, his first since the Sept. 24 election, Milosevic accused his opponents of using bribery and blackmail to organize the strikes, adding that if his rivals succeeded, “Yugoslavia would inevitably break up.” <br>Nation Grinds to a Halt <br>Milosevic’s address came as the Democratic Opposition of Serbia expressed satisfaction with today’s demonstrations, saying the responses in the provinces had been even better than it had expected. The opposition has vowed to keep up the general strike until Milosevic accepts what it called a crushing defeat at the polls. <br> “If the commission fails to present the real results today, the blockade will continue on Tuesday for five hours and from Wednesday, it will be round the clock if the electoral will of the people is not recognized,” said Cedimir Jovankovic, a DOS spokesman.<br> The protests represented the most extensive strikes ever waged against Milosevic, with no corner of the country left untouched. Participation appeared strongest in the industrial heartland south of Belgrade, where the government’s failure to extinguish independent media enabled the opposition to coordinate actions.<br> Protests were less effective in Belgrade, where steady rain and lack of an independent media may have discouraged people from taking to the streets.<br> “I don’t like to use the word revolution, but what is happening now is a revolution — a peaceful, nonviolent, wise, civilized, quiet and smart democratic revolution,” said opposition leader Kostunica. “People are ready to start building a new country.” <br><br>Still Clinging to Power<br>The opposition believes Kostunica received more than 50 percent of the vote. The government does not — and has scheduled an Oct. 8 runoff election. <br> Most Western powers appear to accept the opposition claim. But Russia, a traditional Serb ally, has said a second round of elections was legitimate.<br> Several reports from Belgrade said close Milosevic allies — including his chief of police — had either resigned or been replaced.<br> Diplomatic sources in Belgrade estimate only 10 percent of the armed forces — mainly high-ranking officers — and less than 30 percent of the police are loyal to Milosevic. <br><br>Miners Strike<br>Over the weekend, workers in vital coal and copper mines locked themselves in to prevent the police from taking over the facilities, both essential to the economy.<br> Stoppages at coal mines serving Serbia’s two biggest thermal power plants have struck at the heart of Yugoslavia’s struggling economy.<br> Around 4,000 miners have been on strike at Kolubara, the country’s largest coal mine, since Friday, a protest action which threatens to plunge large parts of the country into darkness.<br> Kolubara, with a daily output of 70,000 tons, is the only supplier to the thermal power station in nearby Obrenovac, which produces half of Serbia’s power needs. Three of its six generators have already been shut down due to a lack of coal.<br> In Kostolac, the second biggest thermal plant in Serbia, the management spent most of Sunday night discussing when to completely close down the plant.<br> “A meeting in the Kostolac thermoelectric power plant ended during the night and it has been decided that production should be kept at a required minimum of 20 percent,” said Dusan Jovanovic, a member of the opposition Democratic Party.<br> Leaving no doubt over whom they supported in the country’s fierce political battle, workers at Kolubara greeted Kostunica with shouts of “Long live the president!” after Kostunica addressed workers at the mine today.<br> “Thank you for what you initiated and for what we will finish off together,” Kostunica told the crowd of some 1,000 people. <br><br>Cracks in the Machine<br>Milosevic’s once-extensive propaganda machine appears to be showing more signs of cracking, despite the fact that the strongman has in recent months shut down almost all the TV and radio stations he does not own or control. <br> Eight local radio stations around the country said they had stopped broadcasting official programming. The editorial staffs of several major television stations are demanding the right to broadcast news of the protest — so far banned from the nation’s televisions. <br> The major state-run provincial TV station at Novi Sad is balking against the broadcast of more Milosevic propaganda. <br> The pro-Milosevic daily newspaper Vecernje Novosti’s 50 editorial staffers reportedly have issued an ultimatum to management, demanding the right to “publish the truth about what is going on in our country.”<br> Milosevic has turned down an offer of mediation from his most powerful ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Two high-ranking Russian envoys are already in the country and are expected to have talks in Belgrade today.<br> Despite today’s statement from Moscow, both German government and U.S. State Department sources have said Putin has acknowledged the opposition victory and is interested in getting Milosevic to step down peacefully. This could include negotiations for an exile deal. But it will likely not include an amnesty deal for Milosevic, who has been indicted for war crimes, including genocide, by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News: People vs. Power``x970569555,91551,``x``x
``xBy Irena Guzelova in Belgrade, Andrew Jack in Moscow and Stefan Wagstyl in London<br> <br><br> <br>Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic on Monday night broke his post-electoral silence with a rare televised address to the nation, attacking his opponents and making clear he had no intention of handing over power. <br><br>Mr Milosevic accused the West of trying to take over the Balkans by establishing 'puppet governments' and of planning to destroy Serbia. "We have been exposed to all pressures to which people can be exposed in the modern world," a tired-looking president said on the main TV news. <br><br>Mr Milosevic spoke as western leaders maintained the pressure on him to admit defeat and as Russia offered to host talks in Moscow between him and Vojislav Kostunica, the victor in last week's presidential polls. <br><br>The president was also responding to strikes and rallies called by the opposition in an effort to drive him from power and abandon plans for a run-off in the presidential polls. <br><br>On Monday the Serbian opposition staged a country-wide campaign of strikes, road blockages and rallies. Protests brought a string of towns to a halt, but failed to make much impact in Belgrade, where sporadic road blockades lasted just a few hours. <br><br>The most serious protests were at two coal mines serving Serbia's largest power plants. About 4,500 miners put down their tools at the Kostolac mine in eastern Serbia on Sunday and around 4,000 miners began a strike at Serbia's largest coal mine, Kolubara, south of Belgrade, on Friday, threatening to plunge parts of the country into darkness. The state power company said power cuts would begin soon. <br><br>Western officials meeting in Paris, including US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, again demanded Mr Milosevic resign. French president Jacques Chirac said: "In its vote . . . the Serbian people clearly rejected Slobodan Milosevic with courage and determination." <br><br>A similar message came from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which has a special role in election monitoring. Greece offered to help organise an internationally supervised election recount, a move designed to help Mr Milosevic accept defeat. <br><br>In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin, who has refused to bow to western pressure to recognise Mr Kostunica's victory, offered to host talks for "both candidates who have gone through to the second round" of voting. This wording suggested Russia accepts Mr Milosevic's argument that a second round is required. <br><br>The Serb opposition claims Mr Kostunica won an outright victory but the government's electoral commission said he scored less than the necessary minimum of 50 per cent. The opposition has said it would boycott a second round but would accept a recount of the first round votes. <br><br>Earlier Mr Kostunica strongly criticised both the US and Russia. He accused Washington of indirectly bolstering Mr Milosevic by insisting that he remained an indicted war criminal, thereby increasing nationalist support for the president. Mr Kostunica described Russian policy as "indecisive and reluctant". He said: "It could be described as taking one step forward and one step back." <br><br>If Mr Milosevic continues to refuse demands to recount the votes the opposition threatens to call a round-the-clock strike from Wednesday.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe FT: Milosevic breaks silence with defiant message``x970569597,39629,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Steve Crawshaw and Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade and Patrick Cockburn in Moscow <br><br><br>3 October 2000 <br><br>The Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, lashed out at his opponents yesterday as the first day of a campaign of civil disobedience, aimed at forcing him to relinquish power, brought Serbia to astandstill. <br><br>In a rare televised address the embattled President vehemently ruled out conceding defeat, vowing to fight a second-round election run-off on 8 October and fulminating that the West would use an opposition victory to engineer an "occupation" of Serbia. <br><br>Mr Milosevic may have been emboldened by an earlier statement from the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who offered to host talks between Mr Milosevic and his challenger for the Yugoslav presidency, Vojislav Kostunica. Mr Putin stopped well short of bowing to Western pressure to back Mr Kostunica, and appeared careful not to distance himself from Mr Milosevic. <br><br>Referring to both men as candidates in the second round – implicit recognition of the official first round results – Mr Putin said: "As President of Russia, I am prepared to receive in the next few days in Moscow both candidates who have gone through to the second round... to discuss means of finding a way out of the current situation." <br><br>In a vintage performance, broadcast simultaneously on six television channels in Belgrade, Mr Milosevic sought to present himself as the great defender of Serbia's interests, selfless in his attempt to keep the ship of state sailing while the opposition did its best to destroy the country. <br><br>"I believe I have a duty to caution the citizens of our country to the consequences of activities financed and supported by the governments of the Nato countries," he said before accusing his election challengers of blackmail, intimidation and violence. <br><br>But even as he spoke, an unprecedented wave of protests presented the President with the most serious challenge yet to his 13-year reign. Blockades, rallies, boycotts, school and university closures and strikes were reported across the country as the opposition stepped up its demands that the government should recognise the defeat of Mr Milosevic at the polls. <br><br>All over the country, parents kept their children from school and thousands of students took to the streets of Belgrade chanting "Save Serbia and kill yourself, Slobodan". Meanwhile rubbish containers blocked key boulevards from the early morning. Private cars jammed the streets, allowing only supply vehicles or ambulances to pass. Many people stayed at home from work as the public transport system ground to a halt. Hospitals were dealing only with emergency cases. <br><br>Many journalists at the formerly independent and now pro-government Studio B Television went on strike in protest at the station's editorial policy. The independent Beta news agency reported that thousands of demonstrators gathered outside the Novi Sad studios of Serbian state television, including journalists from the studio itself. <br><br>Meanwhile, Switzerland said yesterday it had frozen about 100 bank accounts belonging to allies of Slobodan Milosevic, although none were in the name of the Yugoslav President himself. The Swiss Finance Minister, Kaspar Villiger, told parliament that foreign heads of state frequently used fake names for stashing money away in accounts in the country.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Opposition protests bring Yugoslavia to a halt ``x970569627,17657,``x``x
``xfear now gripping his brutal regime <br><br>By Steve Crawshaw in Pozarevac <br><br><br>3 October 2000 <br><br>Radojko Lukovic, a bearded, out-of-work PE instructor in the central Serbian town of Pozarevac, talks in a mumble. And yet, what he says is dynamite. <br><br>"Marko came into the opposition offices, and asked to see me," said the broken-nosed Mr Lukovic with a gap-toothed grin, as he sipped his Turkish coffee in a Pozarevac cafe. "He told me: 'I'm sorry about what happened.' He wanted me to tell the opposition not to be rude to his family." <br><br>Marko Milosevic – the loathed son of the President and uncrowned king of Pozarevac – was upset in May when Mr Lukovic stepped in to defend a student who had been beaten up by Marko's thugs. Those same thugs broke Mr Lukovic's nose, kicked his teeth out, and left him unconscious. <br><br>The police reaction was to charge Mr Lukovic with involvement in attempted murder. So far, so normal in Mr Milosevic's Serbia. But an apology from Marko is quite unheard-of; it seems that even the inner clan is now positioning itself for a defeat to come. <br><br>In that respect, Mr Lukovic's encounter can be seen as history in the making. As I listened to him describing his visit from Marko, I finally became convinced of something which until now I had not quite dared to believe. This is, indeed, a revolution. It may yet fail and the chances of bloodshed remain high. But the chances of victory – perhaps even a peaceful victory – are greater than ever before. <br><br>In Pozarevac, Mr Milosevic's hometown and one of his strongholds, you can smell the fear that has begun to grip the regime. As in dozens of towns and cities across Serbia, thousands gathered in Pozarevac's city centre yesterday, demanding an end to Mr Milosevic's rule and chanting "Gotov je! He's finished!" Factories and schools were closed; the main roads out of the town and on to the nearby motorway were blocked by tractors and cars. <br><br>The blockades bringing the country to a standstill covered more than just the main roads. When a blockader accompanied The Independent along muddy farm tracks to help us return from Pozarevac to Belgrade, we found ourselves stuck in yet another blockade in the middle of nowhere. <br><br>These protests and strikes– which Serbia has, after all, seen before – are important as a reflection of the restlessness that has gripped the country. But the multiplying signs that the regime itself has begun to fissure are even more significant. <br><br>The local television station in Pozarevac, traditionally slavishly pro-regime, startled viewers when it displayed a message along the bottom of the screen on Sunday night informing viewers of plans for this week's general strike. After an hour, three policemen entered the television studio and ordered that the message should be removed. But the embarrassment remains. <br><br>In Pozarevac, even the pessimists seem to be optimists these days. Dragana Dejavic works for the local paper which, like the television station, has always been pro-Milosevic. Her first reaction to a question about Mr Milosevic sounds cautious. "It's not the end. It's only the beginning." So how long does she think it will be before the end? Weeks, months, a year? "Oh, no. Maybe two or three days. Up to a week." <br><br>Dragan Milinovic, the student victim rescued by Mr Lukovic in May, started the Pozarevac branch of Otpor (Resistance), a student opposition movement. He, too, believes that the end is near. "It's not a question of how long I give him. It's a question of how long The Hague [war crimes tribunal] will give him." <br><br>More cautious observers are still worried that everything can fall apart, as it has done so often before. One Belgrader said: "It has to be within a week. If it doesn't happen within a week, I'm afraid it won't happen at all." The opposition still has the chance to shoot itself in the foot again. If it falls apart amid arguments about tactics, Mr Milosevic could yet hang on for dear life. <br><br>But it is remarkable to see a once resentful and apathetic town like Pozarevac so alive with the possibilities of change. The rally yesterday was full of laughter as speakers mocked Mr Milosevic; confidence in Pozarevac, and all across Serbia, is now stronger than fear. The provinces will almost certainly play a more important part than the capital, Belgrade, in forcing change. <br><br>The confidence is infectious. Djordje Rankovic, a judge for 22 years, was sacked earlier this year after police video cameras caught him at an opposition rally. The only colleague who dared to stand up for him publicly was also removed from her post. <br><br>Not everything has changed, even now. You can still meet those who glance around nervously before telling you: "All we want is a better life. We hope for change. But who knows?" But Serbia is much closer to change than at any time in the past decade. <br><br>Mr Rankovic insists that change can no longer be reversed. "It's just a matter of days. In a few days, we'll have the new Serbia. But already it's not the old Serbia." <br><br>To a much greater extent than ever before, the opposition has succeeded in communicating with the police at local level. Police cars were present for the blockades around Pozarevac and at many of the hundreds of blockades across the country; at Pozarevac, a single busload of policemen in full riot gear appeared on the scene. But they eventually drove off without getting off the bus. <br><br>The face-to-face meetings in Pozarevac have sometimes been almost friendly. It seems that neither side is eager to become involved in the bloodshed that Mr Milosevic may yet seek to unleash. Srbislav Stojanovic, a lawyer active in the Pozarevac opposition, described a recent encounter, which revealed that tensions are running high on both sides. "Our representative went to the police and said: 'Let's do this peacefully. My pocket is full of tranquilliser pills.' And the policeman patted his pocket and answered: 'My pocket is full of tranquillisers, too.' <br><br>"The authorities are completely lost," Mr Stojanovic said. "They didn't expect any of this. Frankly, we didn't expect it either." Like so many others in Pozarevac, he believes that the clock is now ticking fast. "Soon, everything will be resolved. We could see the headline 'Milosevic is gone' within a week." <br><br>But Mr Milosevic came out fighting yesterday, insisting in his televised speech – live on half a dozen television channels in Belgrade – that anybody who supported the opposition was against Serbia. The voting figures in Pozarevac give a sense of how beleaguered he now is, however. In past years, up to 80 per cent voted for Mr Milosevic. In last month's elections, two thirds voted for Vojislav Kostunica, the candidate of the opposition. <br><br>Already, Mr Milosevic's hold on Pozarevac – and all Serbia – is weakening. Marko's Madonna discotheque on the edge of Pozarevac – a huge and astonishingly ugly place which bizarrely carries the slogan "Stop the Violence" on its outside wall – is now closed, not least because of a boycott that following the attack on Mr Lukovic. His little Pasaz Cafe, where his thugs beat Mr Lukovic and Mr Milinovic up, is closed, too. <br><br>The closed-circuit cameras are still in operation outside the Milosevic estate on the edge of Pozarevac. But it seems unlikely that this will ever be a retirement villa for a former President. A typical response about where he might spend his retirement came from one resident of Pozarevac, who argued: "Either a jail here in Yugoslavia, or a jail in The Hague." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: In Slobodan Milosevic's hometown, you can smell the ``x970569670,60424,``x``x
``x<br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br> <br> <br>ELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 2 — As a general strike hit much of Serbia, President Slobodan Milosevic went on national television today to implore his citizens to reject the designs of what he called a traitorous opposition and to re-elect him. <br><br>His challenger, Vojislav Kostunica, who says he won the presidency outright in elections on Sept. 24, made a triumphant visit to several thousand striking mine workers, promising them that Mr. Milosevic will not steal their victory from them. Mr. Kostunica vowed again that he would not participate in a second-round runoff that Mr. Milosevic has called for Oct. 8. <br><br>"Thank you for what you've started, just hold on and we will finish this struggle together," Mr. Kostunica told the workers and their families at the Kolubara mine, 30 miles south of Belgrade. They shouted his name and called him "president." <br><br>It was a day of high drama, with Mr. Milosevic's sudden television appearance the best indication that the opposition's efforts to organize a general strike were having an impact. The opposition is trying to force Mr. Milosevic to relinquish his office to Mr. Kostunica, but Mr. Milosevic showed little sign of going willingly.<br><br>While Belgrade was relatively unaffected, other towns throughout Serbia were brought to a halt, including Nis, Novi Sad, Cacak, Pancevo and Uzice. Roads and railways were blocked, schools and businesses were shut and two major coal mines vital to Serbia's electricity continued to be idled by striking workers. Thousands of students rallied all over the country, leaving their classes.<br><br>The opposition says its strike efforts will peak on Thursday, with efforts to bring hundreds of thousands of people to a large rally in Belgrade.<br><br>In his first television address since the election Sept. 24, Mr. Milosevic said a victory by Mr. Kostunica and the opposition would mean the subjugation of Yugoslavia, its further disintegration and its occupation by foreign forces. He said the world "is not attacking Serbia because of Milosevic but Milosevic because of Serbia," a line he used before, in the 1992 Serbian presidential campaign.<br><br>Saying that "my conscience is clear," Mr. Milosevic insisted that he was speaking from disinterested motives, and he seemed less to threaten than to plead with citizens not to choose the side of the same NATO countries that bombed Yugoslavia. <br><br>"I believe I have a duty to caution the citizens of our country to the consequences of activities financed and supported by the governments of the NATO countries," he said. "People can believe me or not. My wish is that they do not see the validity of my warnings too late, that they do not do so once it is too late to right the mistakes citizens made by themselves in their naïveté, shallowness or ignorance.<br><br>"By yielding their country to others, to a foreign will, they are also yielding their own lives and the lives of their children and many other people to a foreign will," Mr. Milosevic said.<br><br>"The leadership of the democratic opposition, with the money that they have received from abroad, is buying, blackmailing and scaring citizens and organizing strikes and violence in order to stop production, work and any activity — to stop life in Serbia," he said, and he vowed to protect the nation.<br><br>But his attack on his opponents as traitors and NATO dupes was an echo of his failed campaign before the first round, where even by the count of his own Federal Election Commission, he lost to Mr. Kostunica by more than 10 percentage points.<br><br>Many Serbs said they found Mr. Milosevic's tone much more personal than in any of his past speeches.<br><br>"The speech showed a weak Milosevic in some panic," said Zarko Korac, an opposition leader who is also a psychologist. "His highness came out from behind others and got down into the mud, throwing insults with the very vocabulary that voters rejected during the elections."<br><br>But unless the opposition can force Mr. Milosevic from office before then, he will hold the runoff on Sunday with Mr. Kostunica's name on the ballot — and possibly win by default, declaring himself duly elected.<br><br>But Mr. Kostunica says to take part in the runoff would be to recognize theft. And because the opposition sees Mr. Milosevic as having stolen the first round, it also sees no reason to trust that he will not try to do the same in a second round. <br><br>"They've stolen everything — our lives, history and now the elections," Mr. Kostunica told the miners at Kolubara, an hour from Belgrade, who have stopped producing the coal on which half of Serbia's electricity depends. "But we will not allow them to do this. This time we have caught him with his hand in our pockets. There will be no second round. The elections are over."<br><br>Mr. Kostunica seems to mean it, and he shows no signs of changing his mind despite some calls for him to alter his stance and participate in a second round regardless, to put an electoral coup to Mr. Milosevic. <br><br>In an earlier news conference, Mr. Kostunica criticized both Russia and the United States for acting like "great powers." President Vladimir Putin of Russia today invited both Mr. Milosevic and Mr. Kostunica to Moscow for talks on resolving their electoral dispute, but implicitly seemed to recognize the validity of the Oct. 8 runoff. It was a clear rejection of a statement by the German government on Sunday claiming that Mr. Putin recognized Mr. Kostunica as the outright winner of the election. <br><br>"As president of Russia, I am prepared to receive in the next few days in Moscow both candidates who have gone through to the second round, Yugoslav President S. Milosevic and the leader of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia V. Kostunica, to discuss means of finding a way out of the current situation," Mr. Putin's statement said. Undermining his offer, he then left on a four-day visit to India.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica attacked Russia today "for defending the indefensible" and carrying out "an indecisive policy — one step forward and then one step back."<br><br>The United States, he said, by its constant harping on the handover of Mr. Milosevic to face war-crimes charges in The Hague, was turning the election into a matter of life-and- death for Mr. Milosevic. "The Hague has no connection with the results of this election," Mr. Kostunica said. <br><br>"America, in each and every State Department statement, misses no chance to remind everyone of Slobodan Milosevic's Hague indictment, as if that indictment is more important at this moment than the future of the whole country, its people and stability in the region," Mr. Kostunica said. "It's as if, with such statements, America wants to strengthen Milosevic in his belief that these elections are a question of life and death for him."<br><br>The Milosevic government has urged miners at Kolubara and at Kostolac, in eastern Serbia, to return to work, saying that power outages would result from their actions. As many as 10,000 coal miners are on strike, saying that they will remain idle until Mr. Milosevic recognizes Mr. Kostunica's victory.<br><br>The state electric company warned that the strikes jeopardize "big infrastructure systems, such as the water-supply system, sewage system, city transport, bakeries, health and other institutions."<br><br>State news media also showed serious signs of unrest. Journalists at the daily newspaper Vecernje Novosti threatened to strike unless the editorial policy became balanced, and its computer technicians have already struck. Journalists at the Belgrade television station Studio B, taken over by the Serbian government in May, also threatened to strike for balanced coverage.<br><br>While it is unlikely to bring down the government, the Serbian Society of Composers and the Alliance of Composers' Organizations of Yugoslavia also called on their members to put down their pens.<br><br>In his news conference, Mr. Kostunica rejected a suggestion floated by the ruling coalition and even Mr. Milosevic's brother, the Yugoslav ambassador in Moscow, that Mr. Milosevic could leave office and appoint himself federal prime minister. But Mr. Kostunica said the post belonged constitutionally to a Montenegrin from the largest party in Parliament, and he suggested that he would nominate Predrag Bulatovic, deputy leader of the pro-Belgrade Socialist People's Party. Mr. Bulatovic, unlike the leader, Momir Bulatovic, has distanced himself from Mr. Milosevic. <br><br>Mr. Kostunica, a careful constitutional lawyer, seems to be taking his new responsibilities with seriousness and some sense of mission.<br><br>"I don't like the word revolution," Mr. Kostunica said today. "But what is happening in Serbia today is a revolution — a peaceful, nonviolent, clever, civilized, democratic revolution. People are ready to start building a new country."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe NY Times: Milosevic Attacks Opponents on TV``x970569706,53789,``x``x
``xFROM MISHA GLENNY IN BELGRADE<br><br>THE Serb Government vowed to "prevent and punish" harshly any "subversive" behaviour yesterday as police began to arrest ringleaders of the widening campaign of civil disobedience that paralysed the country for a second day. <br>Fears are increasing that the military will step in to break the miners' strikes that brought blackouts across much of Nis, Yugoslavia's third largest city. In a dramatic stand-off in the early hours yesterday, the 7,500 miners on strike at the Kolubara complex, the country's largest coalmine, fiercely rebuffed offers of hefty pay rises by the Chief of Staff of the Yugoslav Army, as he screamed insults and threatened them with court martial. <br><br>Last night the Belgrade public prosecutor called for the arrest of 11 miners on the strike committee at Kolubara and two opposition leaders - Nebojsa Covic and Boris Tadic - on suspicion of sabotage. The pair visited the mine on Sunday when police were sealing it off. Mr Tadic is deputy leader of the Democratic Party and Mr Covic leads the Democratic Alternative, a smaller party. <br><br>The Opposition, aiming to force President Milosevic to concede outright defeat in the September 24 elections, is braced for a massive clash of wills with the Government today as it plans a huge operation, dubbed Serbia Comes to Belgrade, bringing hundreds of thousands of Serbs from outside the capital to swell Belgrade's protests. <br><br>In London Robin Cook said that Mr Milosevic was doomed. "I do not know when Milosevic will leave, but it is the beginning of the end," the Foreign Secretary said. "He never had much credibility; he now has no more legitimacy." <br><br>The Serb Government gave a warning that anyone preventing "the free flow of traffic, the functioning of vital industries and normal work in factories and hospitals", would face the force of the law. <br><br>It also pledged not to tolerate the activity of media organisations or political movements financed from abroad and said: "Special measures will be used against those involved in subversive activities." It claimed that the campaign organisers were driving Serbia towards bloodshed. <br><br>Despite the threats, most of Serbia remained paralysed as lorries, tractors, buses and cars blocked roads. Strikes crippled most of the main towns and cities. <br><br>In Uzice, train drivers joined the strike, bringing the main rail connection between Serbia and Montenegro to a halt. In Novi Sad in the northern province of Vojvodina, demonstrators were preparing to take control of the main government television centre, one activist said. <br><br>In Belgrade many shops and factories were still open, but support for the protests appeared to be growing. More than 20,000 people took to the streets in three rallies. <br><br>Even before the government warning, police had begun to arrest trade unionists and student protesters. At 4am yesterday in New Belgrade several policemen took away Dragoljub Stosic, leader of the strike committee at a main depot of Belgrade's Public Transport Company, when he refused to remove buses blocking the depot entrance. <br><br>At least ten others were arrested in Belgrade for disturbing the peace and then sentenced to between 10 and 20 days in prison. In the Kolubara stand-off, the Chief of Staff of the Yugoslav Army, General Nebojsa Pavkovic, arrived at the site accompanied by two armoured cars. He demanded to see the strikers, but according to one worker, it took the general 45 minutes to grasp that they saw this as a political cause. "Pavkovic's mood turned from nice to nasty," the striker said. "He threatened to place us all before a court martial for disrupting vital supplies to the Yugoslav military." The strikers insisted that they would go back to work only when Vojislav Kostunica, the Opposition leader, was recogised as President of Yugoslavia. General Pavkovic stormed out screaming at the strikers that "he would throw everything he's got at us". The Government has warned miners that it will bus Serb miners in from Kosovo to reopen the plant. <br><br>Observers say that Mr Milosevic hopes the strikes will lose momentum by next week, giving him victory, but there is no sign of that so far.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTHE TIMES: Belgrade vows to punish strikers ``x970652601,961,``x``x
``xBy Fiona Fleck in Berne<br><br>SWITZERLAND has frozen £57 million from about 100 secret bank accounts linked to Slobodan Milosevic.<br>It was the first time that the Swiss authorities have taken such measures against a current head of state. The disclosure by Kaspar Villiger, the Swiss finance minister, came in response to a parliamentary question by MP Jean Ziegler.<br><br>Yesterday Mr Ziegler said banking regulators believed that the accounts were used to purchase arms and supplement the pay of Belgrade's MUP military police force, which is loyal to Milosevic. He said: "This is scandalous as Switzerland is supposed to cracking down on this kind of business." <br><br>The fate of the funds depend on whether Milosevic stays in power. Mr Ziegler said: "If a new government comes to power, they will demand the funds back." Ottmar Wyss, the head of export sanctions at the Swiss Economics Ministry, said some of the 100 accounts belonged to Yugoslav companies, while others were held by some of 300 Milosevic cronies who appeared on an EU blacklist last year. None was in the president's own name.<br><br>Western officials believe Milosevic and his entourage have plundered as much as £3.4 billion from Yugoslavia. In recent years, Switzerland has frozen the assets of the former dictators Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti, Mobuto Sesi Seko of Zaire and Sani Abacha of Nigeria.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTELEGRAPH:Swiss freeze £57m in 'Milosevic bank accounts'``x970652685,15118,``x``x
``xBy Irena Guzelova in Belgrade and Stefan Wagstyl in London<br>Published: October 3 2000 18:58GMT <br> <br>Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic's security forces on Tuesday made sporadic attempts to crack down on protestors campaigning to force him from office as widespread unrest hit Serbia for the second day running. <br><br>In a television statement, the government threatened to punish "subversive" activity and warned of "special measures" against protest organisers and against those media that were "inciting bloodshed". But the police response varied across the country, with officers arresting protestors in some places and appearing to tolerate demonstrations elsewhere. <br><br>Meanwhile, the international community maintained the pressure on Mr Milosevic to order a recount of the vote in last week's presidential election. Jiri Dienstbier, a top United Nations official and the first senior international official to visit Yugoslavia since last week's election, said in Belgrade: "The results must have been manipulated." <br><br>Vojislav Kostunica, the opposition leader, claims he won but the government's election commission said he scored less than the required 50 per cent for an outright victory and must enter a runoff against Mr Milosevic in a poll to be held this Sunday. <br><br>On Tuesday, the opposition claimed to have secured spectacular new evidence of election fraud. It said a computer disc containing detailed poll data had been thrown out of window of the Yugoslav Statistics Office in Belgrade on Monday into the hands of demonstrators. The G17 independent think-tank said the disk provided proof of how the results had been manipulated. <br><br>The first signs of the protests hitting the economy also emerged on Tuesday with the state-owned power utility imposing cuts. Its move follows a coal miners' strike which started on Friday at the country's largest mine, Kolubara. The Kolubara miners early on Tuesday refused to resume work in defiance of orders from Nebojsa Pavkovic, the army chief, who visited the mine in south Serbia. <br><br>Elsewhere, the main railway line between Serbia and Yugoslavia's smaller pro-western republic Montenegro was blocked for a second day and road blocks were set up in and around a string of towns in central and southern Serbia, the opposition heartlands. <br><br>In Belgrade, a crowd of about 50,000 students and others marched through the city. Riot police prepared for action when the protestors approached the elite suburb where Mr Milosevic has his official residence. But the mood lightened when the police agreed to lead the students back to the city centre. However, the Otpor student movement reported that one of its activists was missing and an independent radio station said that the leader of the Belgrade public transport workers' trade union had been arrested after Monday's strikes. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFINANCIAL TIMES:Milosevic's forces make attempt to crack down``x970652737,50557,``x``x
``xGovernment begins crackdown on wave of demonstrations as students blockade streets of Belgrade<br><br>Special report: Serbia <br><br>Gillian Sandford in Belgrade <br>Wednesday October 4, 2000 <br><br>In the first direct challenge to the wave of demonstrations against President Slobodan Milosevic, 11 striking miners and two Serbian opposition leaders were ordered to be detained on suspicion of sabotage yesterday. <br>The miners are members of the strike committee at Serbia's largest coal mine, Kolubara, where 4,500 workers have been on strike since Friday. <br><br>The two opposition leaders, Nebojsa Covic and Boris Tadic, visited the mine on Sunday night, when police sealed off the area. Mr Covic is the leader of the Democratic Alternative, a relatively small party within the opposition. Mr Tadic is deputy head of the larger Democratic Party. <br><br>The Belgrade public prosecutor demanded an investigation, saying there was a suspicion that they had "been accomplices in criminal sabotage". <br><br>Meanwhile, in the Yugoslav capital, tens of thousands of students walked out of exams and joined hands to form chains across major highways. <br><br>Anti-riot squad police stood by in blue camouflage fatigues as the students moved down the road toward Beli Dvor, the white palace of President Milosevic, shouting "Save Serbia and kill yourself, Slobodan" to the accompaniment of blaring car horns. <br><br>Two coachloads of the intervention squads were guarding Mr Milosevic's home, but the students sought disruption, not confrontation and when the road was blocked, they diverted to a square and another road. <br><br>Another group of tens of thousands of students marched from Plato square to Autokomanda square, just below the leafy suburb of Dedinje, home of Belgrade's rich. <br><br>The embattled government issued a statement threatening to crack down on the opposition, calling them subversive elements waging warfare through strikes and blockades. <br><br>In a statement, read on state television, it was announced that judges could jail those involved in civil disobedience for two to three months. <br><br>Dissenters in the judiciary were told to resign. But opposition leaders and supporters remained defiant and insisted that Mr Milosevic accept his landslide election defeat. They claim their results show that presidential challenger Vojislav Kostunica won the election outright and that the regime committed massive voting fraud. <br><br>A campaign of strikes and civil disobedience combined with legal appeals is being used to pressure the state election committee, which claims Mr Kostunica was not the outright winner of the presidential poll and is calling for a second round. <br><br>The opposition has ruled out participation in Sunday's planned run-off. <br><br>"No one has the right to so bluntly annul the people's will," said Mr Kostunica. <br><br>The opposition claims that a computer diskette thrown through a window of the Yugoslav statistics office building has provided them with evidence of the real results of the election on September 24. <br><br>Mladjan Dinkic, leader of the G17 independent think tank told a news conference: "We've got the proof now, but the electoral commission is the one to present the real results to the public." <br><br>Across the country, particularly in towns that fell to the opposition in last month's elections, strikes and blockades are crippling all activity. <br><br>On Monday night miners at the Kolubara complex ignored an appeal to return to work by the Yugoslavia army chief, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic - the first time Mr Milosevic has called on the military to help end the protests. <br><br>"We are under pressure from the police, psychological not physical pressure," said Predrag Stepanovic, a member of the strike committee. <br><br>After the general failed to resolve the coal mine impasse, the government struck back at opposition-run cities and towns across country by introducing four-hour power cuts allegedly triggered by the strike. Electricity was lost in parts of capital Belgrade for four hours as well as cities such as Nis and Novi Sad. <br><br>The campaign of civil disobedience is the most serious challenge yet to Milosevic's 13-year rule. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGUARDIAN:Pit strike leaders accused of sabotage ``x970652795,62514,``x``x
``xTuesday, the Yugoslav leader sent out Army and police officers to crack down on nationwide strikes and protests. <br><br>By Scott Peterson and Alex Todorovic <br><br><br>BELGRADE AND PODGORICA, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>In Belgrade and city after city across the industrial heartland – including President Slobodan Milosevic's hometown of Pozarevac – the trolley-bus bells and the rumble of traffic have been replaced by drumbeats of protest. <br><br>Thousands of coal miners have dropped their picks, prompting the government to impose power cuts across the country. Factory workers and farmers have added their voices to the chorus for change. And even state-controlled media workers have walked off the job. "This time is it.... We can't go on like this," says student Milan Nikolic, as students nearly shut down the capital yesterday. <br><br>Anti-Milosevic demonstrations are nothing new. And it's not yet clear whether the strikes will force Milosevic to step down. Yesterday, he appeared to resort to tactics he's successfully employed in the past, like sending out the Army's chief of staff and police officers to quash the demonstrators. But the difference this time – and the deep threat to Milosevic's power base, analysts say – is that many who once provided unquestioned loyalty are taking up the call for democratic change. <br><br>Popular protests during 13 years of tough Milosevic rule – marked by four wars and nearly a decade of international sanctions – have in the past ended in clouds of tear gas and severe truncheon beatings by loyal police units. In the latest crisis, Army and police forces have for the most part let the demonstrators alone. <br><br>But foreign and local analysts alike say the victory of opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica in Sept. 24 presidential elections has energized opponents of the regime like never before. <br><br>"For the first time, people have a sense that they are all together, and on the same side against the regime," says Stojan Cerovic, a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, and a former Belgrade columnist. "It's new, and might really grow into something impressive. There is something very strong, something mythical when coal miners strike. It reminds people of the 19th century, and of Poland's democracy born in the shipyards." <br><br>Mr. Kostunica's name will appear on the ballot of a second round of voting due Sunday. But the opposition leader says vote tallies from the first round show he won an outright victory. He refuses to take part in a runoff against Milosevic, who claims the vote was close enough to warrant one. <br><br>Instead, he called for a civil disobedience campaign to force Milosevic from office. "I don't like to use the word revolution, but what is happening now is a revolution – a peaceful, nonviolent, wise, civilized, quiet, and smart democratic revolution," Kostunica said on Monday. <br><br>Despite a slow, rain-swept start on Monday, the strike has seen the anti-Milosevic opposition – united behind one leader for the first time in years – grow in unprecedented ways. "This protest is activating people who have previously watched from the sidelines," says Slobodan Cvejic, a Belgrade sociologist. <br><br>Some 4,500 miners stopped work at the Kostolac mine in eastern Serbia Sunday, and another 4,000 have struck at Serbia's largest coal mine, Kolubara, south of Belgrade. Farmers and bus drivers blocked roadways with tractors and buses. Crowds scuffled – at times good naturedly – with police officers trying to remove their license plates. In some cases, protesters responded by attempting to remove police-car plates. <br><br><br>But Milosevic seems to be testing the opposition's strength, and a crackdown is still possible. In a rare television appearance Monday, he warned in a 20-minute speech that success of the Western-backed opposition would bring war and a loss of national identity. <br><br>"Yugoslavia would inevitably break up," Milosevic said. "Our policy guarantees peace, while theirs' [guarantees] clashes and hostility." Yugoslavia risked being "occupied by foreign forces," he said. <br><br>Despite estimates that many among the armed forces voted against Milosevic, the thinking among military commanders was unclear. One Belgrade daily reported that the head of a special police unit was transferred from the capital because he would not deal harshly with demonstrators. <br><br>But yesterday, Yugoslav Army Chief of Staff Nebojsa Pavkovic turned up at the Kolubara coal mine and ordered the striking miners back to work. Some police officers seemed more active yesterday as well. They prevented about 500 people gathered on a highway near the northern town of Novi Sad from reimposing a roadblock. And in the southern industrial town of Kragujevac, they stopped protesters setting out on a protest drive to Belgrade. <br><br>"Strikes are not enough [to unseat Milosevic], says Radha Kumar, a Balkans specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "So much depends on the Army and security police. If they begin to see that Milosevic's days are numbered, then they will step out of the picture and ... he will have to go." <br><br>But among the most surprising developments for the opposition are spontaneous strikes by the state-controlled media. Erupting almost by the hour, journalists are demanding objective reporting on the events shaking the country. <br><br>The opposition physically took over government-controlled TV in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia's second largest city. In one of several similar cases, the entire 150-member newsroom at Belgrade's Studio B television station walked out Monday. <br><br>"We can't sit in that building and pretend we don't see the crowds on the street below," says journalist Jadranka Jankovic. "We were tired of being ashamed in front of our friends and family," the computer staff of Vecernje Novosti, Yugoslavia's largest daily, said in a statement. <br><br>But in another sign that the strike has spread far beyond traditional antigovernment segments of society, the 100,000-member Council of Trade Unions – an organization that has always been loyal to the regime – says it will join the strike tomorrow unless Milosevic acknowledges defeat. <br><br>"This crisis presents Milosevic with a simple question: Do I want to be a dictator? Because that's his only option if he wants to remain in power," says Slobodan Antonic, a Belgrade political science professor. "For Milosevic to remain in power would require far more repression than he is used to dealing with." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCSMONITOR:Milosevic digs in as strikes build ``x970652838,26974,``x``x
``xThe West hopes Moscow can negotiate a peaceful transition of power for a close ally. <br><br>By Fred Weir (fweir@online.ru) <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>MOSCOW <br><br>As pressure increases at home and abroad for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to leave office, Russia is seeking to play a key role as intermediary. <br><br>A nudge from Moscow has helped to persuade Mr. Milosevic to back down at least once before, and might present the best chance for a peaceful exit from the present crisis, Russian experts say. <br><br>President Vladimir Putin, in the middle of a four-day state visit to India, has offered to meet with Milosevic and Vojislav Kostunica – the opposition candidate who outpolled him in Sept. 24 elections – "to discuss means of resolving the current situation." <br><br>Milosevic has yet to make a formal reply. Mr. Kostunica reportedly is willing to travel to Moscow as early as tomorrow, if formally invited. <br><br>But opposition protests are mounting against a runoff vote set for Sunday. "Yugoslavia is on the brink of explosion, and the key issue now is to ensure stability," says Yevgeny Kozhokhin, director of the official Institute of Strategic Studies, a think tank that advises the Kremlin on foreign policy. "Unfortunately the West is whipping up tension there with its tough demands that Milosevic step down and face trial as a war criminal.... Russia, which has never regarded Milosevic as a war criminal, is the only country in Europe that can step in and play the role of honest broker." <br><br>US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Monday that Moscow's role should be to persuade Milosevic to accept defeat and leave office. "We have all been in very close touch with our Russian counterparts," Dr. Albright said. "I think it is evident from their perspective that Kostunica won the first round. They have said that." <br><br>But experts close to the Kremlin say the matter is not quite so clear. "The official results may have been faked, but the opposition claims might be phony as well," says Alexander Karasyov, a Yugoslavia specialist with the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Slavic and Balkan Studies. "If we can bring the two sides to a negotiating table, they may agree to hold a second round under tight international scrutiny. Why should anyone fear this, especially if it avoids violence?" <br><br><br>Russia, a traditional ally of fellow Orthodox, Slavic Serbia, is the only European state to retain close links with Milosevic. His brother, Borislav, is the Yugoslav ambassador to Moscow. Russia strongly opposed last year's NATO bombing campaign over the mistreatment of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, and Russian diplomacy may have been instrumental in persuading Milosevic to accept a humiliating peace that handed the southern Serbian province over to Western administration. Serbia and Montenegro make up what remains of Yugoslavia. <br><br>"It was only when Russia became actively involved in seeking a diplomatic exit that the war came to an end," asserts Mr. Karasyov. "This shows that the Serbian people trust Russia and will accept solutions mediated by us, while Western demands will only stiffen their resentment." <br><br>Since last year's Yugoslav war, Russia has defied NATO by sending millions of dollars in aid to Belgrade and remains the embargoed country's sole supplier of oil and gas. Earlier this year, Moscow hosted a visit by Yugoslav Defense Minister Dragoljub Ojdanic, who, like Milosevic, has been indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague. "Western pressure only strengthens Milosevic's hand," says Sergei Romanenko, a Balkan expert with the Institute for International Economic and Political Studies in Moscow. But, he warns, "Russian intervention, unless it is very carefully thought out, runs a similar risk of giving Milosevic more political space to maneuver. Basically, the internationalization of the situation has been disastrous." <br><br>Russia may be the only country that can offer Milosevic a credible avenue of escape from his enemies at home and abroad. But a sanctuary offer would require at least the tacit agreement of the West, since Russia – a member of the United Nations Security Council – could not be seen acting alone to aid an indicted war criminal. "Under the right circumstances, Russia is ready to take part in solving this problem," says Mr. Kozhokhin. "The main priority ... is the urgent need to prevent the situation in Yugoslavia from flying out of control." <br><br>"The era of Milosevic is coming to an end in Yugoslavia, and Russia is the one country that can help bring that about peacefully," says Alexander Konovalov, an analyst with the independent Center of Strategic Assessments in Moscow. "We can also assist Milosevic and his family to retire from the scene, though it would probably be best if they didn't come to Russia," he says. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWill Russia offer a graceful exit for Milosevic? ``x970652890,46776,``x``x
``xBy R. Jeffrey Smith<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Wednesday, October 4, 2000; Page A25 <br><br>PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Oct. 3 –– President Slobodan Milosevic has seen it all before: angry street protesters convulsing the country's capital, an emboldened opposition making him the butt of public ridicule, and some vital institutions--the media, state-run companies--starting to slip from his grasp. <br><br><br>This was the scene he encountered in Belgrade today, much as he did in March 1991 and December 1996.<br><br><br>Milosevic's playbook in past confrontations was first to get tough, putting riot police and troops on the streets. He hinted at that option today, as his government threatened "special measures" against "subversives" and police broke up a few street barricades, blocked a Belgrade protest march and arrested a few people.<br><br><br>But ultimately, he got people out of the streets in the past by buying them off with partial concessions. This time, though, as the latest challenge to his authority gains momentum, Yugoslavs note that he has no concessions to offer, no political maneuvering room. This time, the demonstrators want nothing less than his departure.<br><br><br>The question now in Belgrade is whether history will repeat itself, leaving Milosevic in place as the only Communist leader in Europe to hold power continuously since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Or is this moment fundamentally different, with the opposition united in the inflexible goal of forcing his resignation?<br><br><br>Dragoslav Avramovic, a former Yugoslav treasury official celebrated for ending the country's hyperinflation, once called Milosevic "an aggressive coward," a man who rushes forward in a bullying way but stops fearfully at the edge of a potential abyss.<br><br><br>But even if he abandons that caution and attempts armed suppression of his own citizens, many observers say things have gone too far for him to succeed.<br><br><br>A month ago, they note, police were arresting students just for wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "Resistance!" Then came the Sept. 24 presidential election, in which opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica out-polled Milosevic, winning just under 50 percent of the vote by official count--and an outright majority by the opposition's count. Today, countless protesters are turning out on the streets, refusing to support the government's demand for a runoff ballot.<br><br><br>News reports from Belgrade and interviews by telephone from here in the NATO-occupied province of Kosovo indicated today that Yugoslavia was more and more paralyzed by a strike organized by the political opposition.<br><br><br>Belgrade bus drivers blocked roadways for a second day; more than 5,000 shouting people attempted to march on Milosevic's residence; electricity was cut in places because striking miners are denying coal to generating plants; and workers at a state-run cigarette factory paraded joyously in front of a mock coffin adorned with Milosevic's picture. Scores of emboldened shopkeepers have plastered their shuttered doors with signs saying "Closed Due to Theft." Police deployed on the streets were meant to signal Milosevic's resolve. They used force to clear some highway blockades; they hunted for 20 people that state media accused of "criminal" acts; and they arrested protesting high school students in Belgrade, a municipal lawmaker in the Belgrade suburb of Zemun and the president of the Belgrade Public Transportation Union, news reports said.<br><br><br>But whether Milosevic can stage a real crackdown is in question. The long-term loyalty of the police is uncertain. Non-government media are reporting low-level defections from the security apparatus, with at least one riot police commander being reassigned because he opposed any crackdown. This evening, a group of policemen in Belgrade beat an apparent Milosevic supporter who deliberately drove his car into a group of protesters, according to the non-government news agency B2-92.<br><br><br>No one knows whether the army would support a crackdown. The chief of staff, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, said last week that the army would not interfere in the election impasse. But news reports today said that Pavkovic personally called on striking coal miners and told them that unless they return to work, they risked being drafted and forced back to to their jobs as members of the military.<br><br><br>In the 1991 and 1996 crises, Milosevic's heavy-handed repression served in part to enrage the protesters and galvanize additional public support. In the end, the protests dissipated only when, in the first episode, Milosevic agreed to end the ruling party's control of a television station, and in the second, when he agreed to accept his party's defeat in elections that handed control of a dozen key municipal governments to the opposition.<br><br><br>This time, he could be desperate enough to try to get by with force alone. He is staring at the possibility of losing control over the instruments of power that have sustained his power since 1989--first as president of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, and then of Yugoslavia itself.<br><br><br>Also at risk would be the untouchable status enjoyed by his politically vocal wife and his children, of whom he is enormously protective. And he would be less able to evade an international warrant for his arrest for alleged war crimes in Kosovo.<br><br><br>Whatever he decides on the use of force, Milosevic seems certain to press ahead with the runoff election on Sunday. If Kostunica follows through with a vow to boycott the vote as a government fraud, Milosevic would emerge as the legal victor and claim a new four-year term in office.<br><br><br>Milo Djukanovic, president of Montenegro--Serbia's smaller, pro-Western partner in the Yugoslav federation--declared on Russian television today that this could mean the country would have two rival presidents--Milosevic and Kostunica--creating enormous instability.<br><br><br>But even with a new claim of electoral support, Milosevic's position would hardly be assured, according to polls that indicate his popularity is sinking. In a national poll taken three weeks ago, Kostunica was preferred over Milosevic by at least 5 percentage points in every population category except three--citizens older than 60; those who had not completed primary school; and those who earn less than $12 a month.<br><br><br>Slavoljub Djukic, 72, author of four books on Milosevic, said that Milosevic's usual pattern is that "he gives up to one who is stronger. The moment he finds himself weak, he stops. That's in his nature. At least it was until the moment he was indicted for war crimes. From that moment, he is not the same man. He is now in position to defend not only his power, but also his life. So now he acts differently."<br><br><br>Djukic says there is one thing he is sure about: Milosevic will never take the street protesters' chanted advice to "kill yourself and save Serbia." One of the salient facts of Milosevic's past is that both his parents committed suicide. But for him, such an option is out of the question, Djukic said. "He is a man who wants lasting life and lasting rule. The tragedy of his parents made no impact on him. He is ruthless on that matter. He never even mentions it."<br><br><br>Djukic made no attempt to predict the outcome of the crisis. "The problem with Milosevic is that he makes moves that no one expects."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWASHINGTONPOST:"An Aggresive Coward" Surveys His Options``x970652938,57326,``x``x
``xFROM MISHA GLENNY IN BELGRADE<br><br><br> <br>THE Yugoslav presidential election result was annulled by the country's supreme court last night as Belgrade confronted the prospect of all-out revolution over President Milosevic's refusal to cede power. <br>The constitutional court ruled that there had been irregularities in the "voting process, counting and confirmation" of the September 24 election. But it was not immediately clear whether this would bring an end to Mr Milosevic's rule or was simply a delaying tactic on his part. <br><br>The court was ruling on an appeal by Mr Milosevic's opponent, Vojislav Kostunica, who had asked it to declare that he had won the poll outright and should take office. <br><br>But members of the court are known to be Milosevic supporters and if the vote, or parts of it, were ordered to be repeated, it might buy Mr Milosevic more time in power. <br><br>Mr Kostunica, whose supporters had earlier given the President until 3pm today (2pm BST) to quit, said: "At first glance it might look like a concession by Slobodan Milosevic, but I am afraid that it's a question of a big trap and so there's no need to be euphoric. <br><br>"In any case, I think that Milosevic is weaker than ever today, which is evident from the fact that he must use various tricks to gain time." <br><br>Mr Kostunica also published an open letter warning the President that if he did not step down, the country faced armed conflict. "Believe me, it will be better for you to recognise this, for Serbia, Yugoslavia, Europe and each citizen of this country, including you and me," he wrote. "There is no point in me telling you how dramatic the situation is. We are faced with the danger of open clashes in Serbia." <br><br>The letter was published as Mr Milosevic's power base appeared to crumble as tens of thousands of protesters demonstrated in Belgrade and 30,000 people descended on the mines of Kolubara to disperse an 800-strong force of riot police sent in to break the strike launched last week. In astonishing scenes, protesters waved flags, jeered at the police and proclaimed the victory of the Serbian revolution. <br><br>"Serbia has arisen," they chanted before breaking into the hymn of the nationwide protest, "Slobodan, Slobodan - Save Serbia, Kill Yourself". <br><br>The Serbs have found their Solidarnosc, the political analyst Ivan Vejvoda said in a reference to the strikes that brought Poland to its knees in 1980, "and Kolubara is their Gdansk shipyard". <br><br>With mines across the country the focus of the protests, civilians bore down on the pits in their thousands, forcing the police to retreat at speed. Up to 300 lorries and other vehicles carrying thousands of people took to the roads to assist the striking miners as they formed a human blockade to prevent the 800 police armed with batons and shields from breaking into Tamnava West mine. <br><br>"At the rate this is going, we will soon have half of Serbia here," Predrag Videnovic, the Opposition spokesman in the local town Lazarevac, said. By early evening, the entire mine complex was under the control of laughing and singing crowds in jubilant mood, with the police nowhere to be seen. <br><br>Mr Kostunica, who diverted his car to lend his support to the protest, was stuck in the chaos as a vast convoy of vehicles streamed out of Belgrade, led by activists from the student movement, Resistance. <br><br>Another unit of some 500 special police tried to block the progress of two senior Opposition leaders at the front of a Resistance convoy bringing food and support from Belgrade. They, too, dispersed. <br><br>The country is now in the grip of a full-blown revolution and today the capital is braced for as many as two million people to pour in for a mass rally. <br><br>Yesterday the city witnessed the largest anti-government demonstration yet as some 30,000 students blocked one of the main bridges across the Sava river. Police observed them but did not intervene, and by last night the students had thrown up blockades across the city. <br><br>Belgrade's postal workers demanded that Mr Kostunica be declared President by the end of the day or they would join the general strike, while the huge copper mining complexes at Bor and Majdanpek in the east also downed tools. <br><br>Cracks also appeared in the bastion of Mr Milosevic's power, the state-run media, when two editors resigned and three were sacked from the main daily, Politika. Desimir Cantrak became the first journalist to resign from Milosevic's most powerful tool, Radio TV Serbia, saying he could no longer associate himself with its editorial policy. <br><br>The city of Aleksinac, a stronghold of Mr Milosevic's SPS party that was heavily bombed during Nato's Kosovo campaign, delivered a devastating blow to him when its civil servants joined the protests paralysing the streets. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTHE TIMES: Revolution in Belgrade``x970735882,12,``x``x
``xBY OUR FOREIGN STAFF <br><br><br> <br>THE campaign to topple President Milosevic won new defectors yesterday from media and trade unions previously considered loyal to him. One pro-government daily changed editorial line and reported the protests for the first time. <br>In a sudden switch in editorial policy, Dnevnik, the main loyalist daily in the province of Vojvodina, gave the anti-Milosevic campaign front page treatment. It thus became the first newspaper founded or financed by the regime to change its policy since the presidential election. Dnevnik's managers, editors and workers signed a petition demanding "the true results" of the disputed September 24 poll. <br><br>As the opposition intensifies the protests in an attempt to obtain recognition of what it says was an outright victory by Vojislav Kostunica in the election, a paper factory, Matroz, made a surprise announcement that it would not be able to provide stocks to newspapers controlled by the state. <br><br>Until now, Matroz, a state-controlled concern, limited its production to state-run papers, and only offered the remaining paper to privately-owned and independent papers for a prices twice as high as for state newspapers. <br><br>Mr Milosevic lost more support when a big trade union considered close to the government threatened to call a strike. The Association of Unions of Serbia, which boasts 1.8 million members, said it would call members out on strike later if the authorities failed to provide "the truth" on the election results. <br><br>"We demand that by Wednesday at 8:00 pm the latest, the truth expressed by the citizens at the September 24 vote be presented and fully respected," said a statement signed by Tomislav Banovic, the union's leader. <br><br>If "complete and authentic results" of the vote were not announced by the deadline, the assocciation"will call all its members on a general strike," the statement said. <br><br>With the momentum steadily turning against Belgrade, the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan slapped down a reported proposal by a UN human rights official that war crimes charges against Mr Milosevic should be dropped if he left office. Mr Annan said in a statement that he was "surprised to learn" of remarks attributed to Jiri Dienstbier, special rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Commission on the situation in Bosnia, Croatia and Yugoslavia, suggesting that the indictment against Mr Milosevic should be dropped if he stepped down. <br><br>Mr Annan said that, under the statute of the Hague-based UN War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the question of indictments "falls within the exclusive competence of the prosecutor and the trial chambers acting as independent organs of the tribunal." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xPress and unions desert Milosevic``x970735916,63387,``x``x
``x<br>By Steve Crawshaw, and Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br><br>5 October 2000 <br><br>Yugoslavia's constitutional court tried to throw a lifeline to the beleaguered President, Slobodan Milosevic, last night by annulling part of the contested election. <br><br>The decision was immediately denounced by the Serbian opposition whose supporters won a decisive victory yesterday by forcing police to abandon a crackdown on striking miners. A mammoth demonstration in Belgrade has been called for today, to demand that Mr Milosevic recognise his defeat in the 24 September presidential election and stand down. <br><br>The court ruling was put out in an ambiguous one-sentence report by the official news agency, Tanjug. A legal expert, Dragor Haiber, said the opposition took the ruling to mean that a rerun of the first round of the presidential election should be held, with all candidates competing. The results of parliamentary and local elections would remain valid. "If this is it, it can only mean that the thief is looking for another chance to steal again," Mr Haiber said, referring to Mr Milosevic. <br><br>The court decision came in response to an opposition challenge of the election results, which according to Mr Milosevic put the challenger Vojislav Kostunica ahead but without an outright victory. The opposition was seeking a recount of the first round. <br><br>As the opposition to Mr Milosevic gathered force, Serbs rose up yesterday in defence of striking miners. In an embarrassing turnabout, police in riot gear sent to quell a strike in Kolubara were forced to abandon their posts after thousands of people swarmed to the site. <br><br>After pouring in to Serbia's largest mine, where thousands have been on strike since last week – the police appeared to lose their nerve. The zigzag signals were typical of the uncertainties that have increasingly begun to mark the tactics of the Yugoslav regime. <br><br>When truckloads of police arrived at the Kolubara mine, it seemed that confrontation was inevitable. Increasingly, however, Serbs are reacting to the intimidatory tactics by showing less fear, not more fear. <br><br>A police colonel simply asked strikers to "leave the premises peacefully within a reasonable period". But no deadline was set, nor did the strikers show any intention of obeying the instruction. "The authorities" are an increasingly elusive concept, in Serbia today. It is clear that Mr Milosevic is desperate to stop the opposition rot. But nobody knows how many in the police or the army are ready to help him, let alone to use violence, to achieve that aim. Local police seem increasingly ready to support the protesters. <br><br>Mr Kostunica addressed more than 10,000 people at the mine last night. According to journalists at the scene, the police cordons that had been positioned in the afternoon faded away as Mr Kostunica stepped forward. <br><br>As daily demonstrations continue to roll on, the opposition gave Mr Milosevic until 2pm (GMT) today to recognise his defeat by Mr Kostunica. <br><br>In a further blow to the President, the Socialist People's Party (SNP) in Montenegro, his political allies in Serbia's sister republic, said yesterday that they were debating whether to take part in Sunday's run-off vote called by Mr Milosevic. The opposition is boycotting the poll on the grounds that he will falsify the results. <br><br>Today will see what looks set to be the biggest rally Belgrade has ever seen. So far, the rallies have been scattered in cities across the country. For today's, everybody has been invited to converge on Belgrade. If police try to block their path, that may itself lead to clashes with dramatic consequences. But brute force no longer seems likely to put an end to the changes that are already under way. Mr Kostunica predicted in an interview with The Independent yesterday that Mr Milosevic's days in office were numbered, and that the situation was changing by the hour. <br><br>"The change will happen very quickly. The moment we get rid of Milosevic, the poison will be taken out of the body politic," he said. "The police and the army are aware that they can't follow Milosevic to the end." <br><br>Goran Matic, the Yugoslav Information Minister, was yesterday still eager to counter-attack, accusing the opposition of "electoral fraud". But there is no doubt the authorities are rattled. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xINDEPENDENT: Yugoslavia ballot must be rerun, court rules ``x970735954,71340,``x``x
``xFrom Associated Press<br><br><br> KOLUBARA MINE, Yugoslavia -- In a startling boost for Slobodan Milosevic's foes, police sent to take control of a striking coal mine abandoned their posts today after running up against huge and fearless crowds.<br> The turnout gave opposition forces hope that the Yugoslav president's regime was mortally wounded.<br> "The battle for Serbia was won here," cried one jubilant opposition leader, Dragan Kovacevic.<br> The stunning and swift turn of events was unprecedented in a former communist nation with no history of major worker uprisings. It caught even top opposition figures off guard. They rushed to join more than 10,000 protesters at the Kolubara mine complex and predicted Milosevic's quick demise.<br> Opposition leaders issued an "ultimatum" for Milosevic to resign by 3 p.m. Thursday-- the time set for a large rally in the capital, Belgrade, to demand he accept election defeat.<br> "This flame will engulf the whole of Belgrade," said Vladan Batic, an opposition leader.<br> In an open letter today to Milosevic, challenger Vojislav Kostunica said "it will be better for you to recognize" electoral defeat or risk "the danger of open clashes" nationwide.<br> Milosevic, however, gave no immediate impression that he had run out of options.<br> The head of the Yugoslav army, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, pledged support for Milosevic in runoff elections planned for Sunday. The opposition is boycotting the runoff, claiming Kostunica was the outright winner of Sept. 24 elections and Milosevic rigged the results to force a second round.<br> "Serbia has risen so that one man would leave," Kostunica told cheering workers and their supporters at the Kolubara mine near Lazarevac, about 25 miles south of Belgrade.<br> Only hours earlier, police in riot gear had poured in and occupied the strip mine complex in an attempt to break up the largest of the nationwide strikes against Milosevic. But the police couldn't contain a swelling crowd that heeded the workers' cry for help.<br> With sunset approaching, the police gave up. Most withdrew from their barricades and were mingling with strikers inside the compound.<br> Supporters of the strikers streamed in on foot and in convoys of vehicles. One bus pushed aside a police car blocking its way.<br> A few police remained guarding some areas of the mine, but made no attempt to control the joyous crowd.<br> From the beginning of the civil disobedience campaign launched this week to force Milosevic to concede defeat in the election, the mine was a pivotal point. It employs 7,000 workers and supplies major power plants.<br> On Tuesday, the Milosevic government had threatened "special measures" against leaders of strikes and road blockades, and Belgrade's prosecutor issued arrest orders for 13 opposition leaders involved in organizing the walkout at the Kolubara mine. None of the arrests has been carried out.<br> The mine walkout was the forerunner of other strikes: the state telecommunications company workers announced they would stay off the job and city bus drivers and garbage collectors in Belgrade refused to work.<br> "This is (Milosevic's) end," said a Kolubara mine worker, Dragan Stamenkovic. "Now the workers have risen."<br> The opposition also pressed its claims of election fraud in Yugoslavia's Constitutional Court.<br> The tribunal met in emergency session to hear claims by the 18-party opposition coalition that Milosevic's cronies manipulated election results by using a sophisticated software program.<br> Opposition leaders said they had obtained a copy of the program and would use it to illustrate how the vote was rigged to favor Milosevic. But the court is full of Milosevic loyalists and has rendered a number of controversial verdicts.<br> Information Minister Goran Matic claimed the opposition "committed electoral fraud" and was now trying to provoke violence by "discrediting and denying the validity of the result."<br> Milosevic concedes that Kostunica outpolled him in the five-candidate race but says Kostunica fell short of an absolute majority.<br> The government is pushing ahead with plans for the runoff, where voters will mark paper ballots bearing the names of Milosevic and Kostunica. The opposition insists it is pointless to participate because Milosevic will simply cheat again.<br> In July, the Milosevic-controlled parliament changed the constitution, removing any requirement for a minimum voter turnout.<br> Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, meanwhile, repeated the position that regardless of the election outcome, Milosevic can remain in office until his current term expires in June.<br> There were also signs that Milosevic's control over the media, until now the principal propaganda pillar of his regime, was fraying.<br> The main state-run daily in the northern province of Vojvodina declared today that its editorial policy would switch from following the government line to reporting on events objectively. Its Wednesday edition for the first time carried numerous reports on opposition activities.<br> With momentum building for the opposition, some leaders of Thursday's planned rally have predicted it could be the final blow for Milosevic.<br> "I'm telling the army and police that we won't stop," said Zoran Zivkovic, the mayor of Nis, the nation's third-largest city. "Don't try to stop us. If you try, shoot but we'll do the same. We are going to Belgrade to finish off what we had started in the elections."<br> Kostunica told Russia's government ORT television that a Russian offer of mediation was "interesting" but that he could not afford to leave Yugoslavia.<br> "We are in a situation where it is difficult, I would say irresponsible, to leave the country," he said.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLATIMES: Milosevic Foes Celebrate Victory at Coal Mine``x970735988,79418,``x``x
``xToday's protests are billed as an all-out bid to force Slobodan Milosevic from office. <br><br>By Scott Peterson <br>Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>and Alex Todorovic <br><br><br>BELGRADE and PODGORICA, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>On the frontline in the spiraling political standoff in Yugoslavia sits a young man named Bane. He is one of several thousand students blocking the main north-south highway on the edge of Belgrade. <br><br>"Of course I'm a bit scared," says the veterinary student, warily eyeing some 100 helmeted riot police nearby. "This has to be the end of the regime, or else I have no hope," says Bane, unwilling to give his last name. <br><br>The students' determination evoke images of a similar pro-democracy standoff in China's Tiananmen Square a decade ago. But Belgrade is not Beijing. The students here are not alone. The resolve of anti-Milosevic protesters is deepening, and their numbers are growing across Serbia. <br><br>Opposition leaders – in what they're billing as a final push to drive President Slobodan Milosevic from power after nearly a week of general strikes – have called on all of Yugoslavia for a make-or-break march on Belgrade tonight. <br><br><br>The standoff between democracy and dictatorship could lead to violence, analysts say, in the wake of the contested Sept. 24 election, which opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica claims he won. <br><br>"Strictly speaking, you can't remove Milosevic without some trouble," says Srdan Darmanovic, head of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Serbia's sister republic of Montenegro. "I don't like violence, but the Serbian people feel they must test the armed forces and police – not to fight them, but to test them. Otherwise, Milosevic will not step down." <br><br>A nationwide strike that began Monday has brought parts of Serbia to a standstill. But Milosevic – who admits that Mr. Kostunica won more votes than he did in the earlier election, just not enough to avoid a runoff – has shown no signs of moving aside. Yesterday, his government began carrying through on Tuesday's promises of arresting strike leaders and using "special measures" against "organizers of criminal activities." <br><br>Police in full riot gear and flak jackets yesterday arrested several miners at Kolubara coal mine – the largest of hundreds of work stoppages nationwide. And about 30 miles southeast of Belgrade, in Pozarevac, Milosevic's hometown, police arrested several truckers who were blocking a main road. But elsewhere in the country, roadblocks remained in place for a third day. <br><br>Tonight's march, timed to coincide with a strike by the Council of Trade Unions, (the nation's largest labor organization and in the past a firmly pro-Milosevic group) is a bid to send a definitive message that a second-round runoff vote, scheduled by Milosevic for Sunday, is unacceptable. <br><br>Regime opponents have been here several times in the past decade, only to be beaten back by riot police with plastic shields, body armor, blue helmets, and truncheons. <br><br>"This time, this will be resolved only in a direct clash between the Serbian people and the regime," Mr. Darmonovic says. "Milosevic always puts his opponents in a situation of 'double regret.' if you move one way, you regret it. If you move the other, you regret that, too." <br><br><br> <br>But evidence is mounting that the strike action is beginning to bite. Work stopped at coal mines has meant power outages across Serbia, and in the capital Belgrade, mountains of trash have been growing as garbage collectors refuse to work. <br><br>Many private shops have closed their doors. Signs on a number of them read: "Closed due to robbery" – a reference to alleged vote rigging by the regime. <br><br><br><br>Opposition defiant <br><br>"The government is branding us saboteurs and enemies, so why don't they put us on trial?" Kostunica asked some 40,000 supporters at a rally in Kragulevac. "Let them dare. Milosevic is the biggest creator of chaos in Serbia." That defiance came as the government warned that it would not tolerate "violent behavior" that might "threaten citizens' lives." Tough measures, it added, would also "apply to media that are financed from abroad and are breeding lies, untruths, and inciting bloodshed." <br><br>Police in Novi Sad, Serbia's second-largest city, have succeeded in blocking demonstrators from marching onto one of the three bridges that have been rebuilt since their destruction by US-led NATO airstrikes last year. Opposition leader Nenad Canak made a special dig at the regime by cutting a ribbon there – mocking a ceremony that Milosevic himself is meant to carry out. <br><br>"We are all afraid of Milosevic's next move, because he still controls the police, and a certain number of generals are loyal to him," says Miodrag Vukovic, an adviser to Montenegro's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic. "Now he is acting like a wounded lion, and he can opt for conflict." <br><br>One element of the equation that may affect a political solution – even as Washington pushes Russia, a traditional ally of Milosevic, to convince the Serb leader to move aside – is Milosevic's indictment by the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. <br><br>Pushed through during the NATO campaign to push federal forces from Kosovo last year, the indictment appears now to be a two-edged sword. <br><br><br><br>War-crimes charges <br><br>A UN human rights official in the former Yugoslavia has asked that Milosevic be guaranteed freedom from prosecution if he steps down peacefully. But a spokesman for UN Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte responded that far from dropping the indictment, she is working to expand charges against the Yugoslav leader. And the Clinton administration has made clear that it would expect Russia to hand over Milosevic if he visits Moscow. <br><br>A foreign policy adviser traveling with President Vladimir Putin on a trip to India told reporters yesterday, "Russia continues consultations with all parties who are not indifferent to the fate of Yugoslavia." Mr. Putin has invited both Milosevic and Kostunica to the Kremlin for talks. He is due back in Moscow today. <br><br>Kostunica has vowed that if he takes office, he will not hand over Milosevic. "That indictment brings us a lot of headache," because it means that "for him these elections are a question of life or death." <br><br>There is another reason Serbs in general don't trust the tribunal, says one Balkans analyst, who asked not to be named. "It would be better for Serbia's future development if Milosevic were tried in Serbia rather than The Hague," the analyst says. "If he is tried in The Hague, many Serbs feel that it is Serbia itself that would be tried. On the basis of a healthy society, it would be better if they did it themselves." <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCSMONITOR: Push for break point in Belgrade ``x970736024,98552,``x``x
``xState News Agency Hails Opposition Leader as ‘President-Elect’ <br><br>B E L G R A D E, Yugoslavia, Oct. 6 — It looks like the end of the road for Slobodan Milosevic. The Belgrade police stood aside for demonstrators.<br><br> One day after massive rioting sent the Yugoslav president into hiding, his military appears to be ready to look the other way.<br> According to Tanjung, until yesterday a Milosevic mouthpiece news organization, the leaders of the armed forces have decided to take no action against the people unless their facilities or personnel are threatened. <br> Yesterday, people from across the nation gathered in Belgrade, celebrating in the streets, after opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica declared himself president. <br>Taking Back Belgrade<br>Called first by the opposition to protest the results of a controversial election, it turned into a riot when the news broke that Milosevic would have until the middle of next year to call for new elections. <br> At first, police used batons and teargas in an attempt to subdue the crowd. But the mass of humanity flowing into Belgrade was too much, and soon the parliamentary building was in the hands of the people. <br> Perhaps the biggest moment of the day was when state-run media suddenly abandoned their loyalty to Milosevic, now believed to be hiding in a bunker near the Romanian-Bulgarian border, and referred to Kostunica as “president-elect.”<br> Describing the day as a great moment in Serb history, Kostunica said that he hoped the U.N.-imposed sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia would be lifted. He declared that France had promised to lift the sanctions at a European Council meeting on Monday.<br> Once the sanctions are lifted, he said, “Everything will start to be normal — the economic recovery of the country will be like a medicine to our soul.” <br><br>Slobo’s Last Stand?<br>Milosevic, who had refused to quit as president after 13 years in power and elections Sept. 24 that named Kostunica the popular leader, was believed to be surrounded by loyal troops in his in eastern Serbia bunker.<br> Russia said this morning that it would not consider asylum for Milosevic, under indictment for war crimes. <br> “We are a long way from looking at the question in that way,” Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov told the Interfax news agency. <br> Russia has been one of Yugoslavia’s—and Milosevic’s—firmest allies and President Vladimir Putin earlier ordered Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to fly to Belgrade.<br> But the biggest key to the unrest has been the military. And with no troop movements reported across the nation, it appears to have spoken without saying a word. <br><br>Milosevic’s Whereabouts in Doubt<br>Milosevic was not seen all day today, but rumors that he had fled were fueled by reports that three large Anatov transport airplanes had flown out of Belgrade from a military airport near the city.<br> The leader of one Serb opposition party, Zoran Djindjic, said Milosevic had retreated with his “closest associates” to the eastern Serbian town of Bor, close to the Romanian and Bulgarian borders, and warned he might be preparing to try to regain power.<br> “I suppose that he may be preparing a coup,” Djindjic said on Serbian state television, “That would be very bad if he now pushed people further into conflicts.” By nearly 5 a.m. local time, there were no reports of a Milosevic-led attack.<br> Milosevic’s suburban Belgrade home appeared to have been vacated, U.S. intelligence sources monitoring the still developing situation said late today. <br><br>We Want the Airwaves<br>Yugoslav police did not put up a fight when protesters attempted to take over the state-run Belgrade TV building on Thursday. Reports from journalists on the scene claimed some soldiers and policemen were spotted smiling and shaking hands with demonstrators.<br> Serbian television went blank for several hours then broadcast a written message: “This is the new Radio Television Serbia broadcasting.” <br><br>‘Good Evening, Liberated Serbia’ <br>Addressing a huge rally in downtown Belgrade after demonstrators stormed the parliament building, Kostunica said Milosevic had been defeated.<br> ”Good evening, liberated Serbia,” Kostunica told the jubilant crowd.<br> “Serbia is running a victory lap at this moment and along that track there is no Slobodan Milosevic,” Kostunica declared.<br> The crowd chanted: “He’s finished!” and “Arrest Sloba!”<br> An air of jubilation reigned in the streets of Belgrade with extraordinary scenes of rioting and ransacking in the city.<br> The level of defiance was unprecedented in Yugoslavia’s 55-year history since World War II. <br> Very few police were seen at the height of the protests. <br><br>ABCNEWS.com’s Dada Jovanovic in Belgrade, Rebecca Cooper in Washington, Sue Masterman in Vienna, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. <br> Western Leaders Support Protesters <br>Western nations have urged Slobodan Milosevic to quit to avoid bloodshed.<br> In Washington, President Clinton offered his support for the demonstrators, but said the U.S. military would not intervene.<br> “I think the people are trying to get their country back, and we support democracy and the will of the Serbian people,” Clinton said. “The United States stands with people everywhere who are fighting for their freedom.”<br> In London, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Milosevic to step down. “Go. Go now. Go before any more lives are lost, before there is any more destruction,” he said.<br> German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder urged Yugoslav security forces not to fire on their own people and said violence in Belgrade would trigger “resistance” from the international community.<br> In Russia, a traditional ally of Yugoslavia, Foreign Ministry officials met to discuss the situation in Belgrade.<br> President Vladimir Putin, who was returning to Moscow from a four-day visit to India, renewed a mediation offer, which has so far drawn no response from either side.<br> White House officials said Washington would maintain contacts with Russia, which it regards as an important intermediary in the effort to persuade Milosevic to step down. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIs Milosevic Finished? ``x970826792,22390,``x``x
``xCountdown to revolution <br><br> <br>SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC'S state was burning to the ground last night as a million people seized Belgrade in a ferocious outburst of revolutionary power. <br>The federal parliament went up in flames in the early afternoon before a vast crowd stormed Radio Television Serbia, a hated symbol of Mr Milosevic's regime, and turned it into a blaze that spewed thick black smoke across the city centre. <br><br>By mid-evening, Serbs from across the country were celebrating in a joyous hysteria as Vojislav Kostunica, the Opposition leader who claimed victory in last month's presidential election, told them: "Good evening, liberated Serbia". A Serbian revolution had begun. <br><br>"We are living the last twitches of Milosevic's regime," Mr Kostunica told the crowd. "Democracy has happened in Serbia. Communism is falling. It is just a matter of hours." <br><br>He later got down to business, calling an emergency session of both houses of parliament and broadcasting on state television a promise to open the media to all political parties. <br><br>Late yesterday evening, there were reports that Mr Milosevic had fled by helicopter and plane to Moscow; that three Antonov's had taken off from a military air base near Belgrade; that he was in a bunker; that the SAS was sending a snatch squad to arrest him. Whichever, if any, was true, there was no doubt on the ground that his 13-year rule was over. A laughing Opposition leader, Dragoljub Micunovic, told me: "He's finished. There's no way back for him now." <br><br>Parliament was torched at the very start of the mass demonstration. Police launched dozens of teargas canisters into the crowd, but demonstrators on the steps of the parliament responded by charging into the building, led by Cedomir Jovanovic, a leading member of the Opposition. <br><br>"We just went for it," he told me with a broad, victorious smile on his face. "We took the parliament." Young men armed with rods and sticks began sacking the building, smashing windows, trampling on typewriters and telephones and burning pictures of Slobodan Milosevic, whose own headquarters were even then being ransacked by protesters. <br><br>In scenes unprecedented even in the troubled Balkans, groups of youths armed with improvised weapons were roaming the city, smashing anything associated with the Government. Members of the Resistance movement seized the old offices of the independent Radio B92, and broadcast victory messages. <br><br>Students and workers went on to occupy all the main media centres. At seven o'clock, they seized TV Serbia's second studio in the district of Kostunik and began broadcasting "Freedom Television". <br><br>Battling through a poisonous fog of teargas that hung over the city for most of the afternoon, the crowd re-formed again and again to take complete control of the city. Police vehicles were overturned, smashed and set on fire and by six o'clock the entire police force had retreated to its stations. Terrified officers handed their shields and batons to the demonstrators and promised never again to move against the people. <br><br>In Majke Revrosime Street in old Belgrade, I watched as police fled for their lives as the mob forced its way into the building and began ripping apart everything in sight. Even 70 members of the Unit of Special Operations stripped off their uniform, helmets and weapons and left them for the crowd to gather up. <br><br>All day, the city was ringing with the deafening roar of a million people singing this revolution's hymn: "Slobodan, Slobodan, Save Serbia, Kill Yourself." <br><br>This was no longer just the students and intellectuals who took to the streets of Belgrade in 1991 and the winter of 1996-97. Yesterday's revolutionary anarchy was bolstered by hundreds of thousands of peasants and workers who streamed into the city. <br><br>By nightfall, Belgrade had been transformed into the big-gest party Serbia has seen as people sang and danced in the streets to folk music blasting out of loudspeakers. "This is the end of ten years of darkness and the start of a new Serbia," a woman of 80 told me in tears. "The nightmare's over. He's finished! He's finished," Dragan Nikolic, a delirious 25-year-old student shouted. <br><br>The day's events began early as a vast movement of people left their homes in convoys of up to a thousand vehicles. Veljo Ilic, the opposition leader from the militant stronghold, Cacak, led his people in a convoy headed by bulldozers which smashed through a police blockade, scattering them in all directions. <br><br>When 25 buses and 300 lorries and cars from Kragujevac, led by the local Democratic Party chief, Vlatko Rajkovic, encountered 50 members of the special forces on the entrance to the Belgrade motorway, they attacked them, beat them, then stripped them of their flak jackets, helmets and weapons. <br><br>By midday, several thousand tough-looking workers had gathered in front of the federal parliament where they were greeted by police firing teargas and live ammunition in the air. <br><br>The tension was almost unbearable. It was almost possible to touch the anger of hundreds of thousands of Serbs as they streamed towards Tasmajdan Park in front of parliament. Inside the headquarters of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, leaders were planning lists of demands that amounted to nothing less than the seizure of power. <br><br>Between three and four o'clock, as a million people waited excitedly for the proclamation of Dr Kostunica's victory, the police moved in. I saw children and old women in exceptional distress as they tried desperately to escape the teargas fired into the crowd. <br><br>But that was the signal for revolution. The parliament was stormed and a huge group of muscle-bound young men charged towards Radio Television Serbia. A ferocious battle broke out in which live ammunition was used and at least one girl was killed. <br><br>But after an hour, the police were in full retreat and the furious crowd began destroying everything in sight before setting the building alight. <br><br>Within minutes, the building had become a huge blaze surrounded by ecstatic youths. The people of Serbia look to have brought to an end one of the most despised men in recent European history. <br><br><br>Countdown to revolution <br><br>April 14: Opposition demands early elections<br>July 27: Milosevic sets presidential elections for September 24<br>Sept 24: Milosevic fails to get required 50 per cent of vote<br>Sept 25: West accuses President of manipulating the result<br>Sept 27: Kostunica warns "there will be no bargaining"<br>Sept 28: Federal Electoral Commission gives Kostunica 48.96 per cent to Milosevic's 38.62 per cent<br>Sept 29: Kostunica claims he won 52 per cent of the vote<br>Sept 30: Electoral commission demands rerun of poll<br>Oct 4: Opposition sets October 6 deadline for Milosevic to concede defeat; Kolubara mine seized<br><br><br>Oct 5: Demonstrators seize parliament and television station <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times: Good evening, liberated Serbia ``x970826904,36355,``x``x
``xBY IAN COBAIN <br><br> JUST three months ago, Voji-slav Kostunica was at the helm of a political organisation derided as "the van party" because you could cram all of its members into the back of a small truck. <br>He walked unrecognised through the streets of Belgrade, where he had lived for years in the same small flat and regularly dined in the same restaurants. Moreover - and this perhaps is the true mark of a Balkan political nonentity - he had never bothered to hire a bodyguard. <br><br>So when Mr Kostunica was slipping triumphantly last night into the position vacated by Slobodan Milosevic, greeting his countrymen and women with the words "Good evening, liberated Serbia" many of them could have been forgiven for rubbing their eyes and wondering who on earth he was. <br><br>Mr Kostunica is a 56-year-old constitutional law professor, married and without children, who is said by those who know him to have three pre-eminent characteristics: a formidable intelligence; great consistency; and also an unquenchable sense of Serb nationalism. <br><br>He was born in the capital, the son of an officer in the pre-war Yugoslav Army, and studied law at Belgrade University. His anti-communist credentials were established early on when, in 1974, he was sacked from the university's law school after denouncing the jailing of a colleague who had dared to criticise Tito's regime. <br><br>By the mid-1980s he was a well-known figure within the Serb nationalist intelligentsia but when Mr Milosevic, who was eager to build his own nationalist appeal, held out the offer of a job, Mr Kostunica refused. <br><br>In 1992 he joined the flamboyant opposition figure, Zoran Djindjic, to form the Democratic Party, the first organised challenge to Mr Milosevic, but just a year later he was walking out, complaining that the party was not nationalist enough. He then set up the "van party", the Democratic Party of Serbia, and formed an alliance with Vuk Draskovic's conservative Serbian Renewal Movement, although they split up a few months later after a period of intense personal rivalry. <br><br>For the next few years he distinguished himself largely by attacking every plan that was aimed at ending the series of wars across the Balkans, including the Dayton Accords, with the result that even Mr Milosevic's aides denounced him as leading a "war party". <br><br>When the leading members of the Serbian Opposition formed an alliance in 1996, Mr Kostunica was notable for his absence and since then he has been careful to avoid any of the public squabbles that have done so much to erode the country's confidence in other political parties. <br><br>However, his reputation for uncompromising nationalism brought him back into the spotlight during the war in Kosovo. Many people noted that he had never struck any deals with President Milosevic, or been tainted by holding any prominent office, and that he had not appeared to attempt to enrich himself. <br><br>When Mr Milosevic announced his plans last July for nationwide presidential elections, most of the opposition parties agreed to nominate Mr Kostunica as their candidate. During the election he continued to attack Nato and Western "interference" in Serbia's affairs, while saying that he hoped that his country would one day be admitted into the European Union. <br><br>While some of his views may not be welcomed in London and Washington, Mr Kostunica is at least considered to be a democrat, unlike Mr Milosevic. He says he won a clear victory in the ballot on September 24, and insisted there could be no second round of voting. What is not so clear, however, is what plans Mr Kostunica might have for Mr Milosevic. In the past he has said that he would never surrender his political enemy to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. <br><br>But last night, with chants of "Arrest Sloba" ringing around the city, he declared: "Serbia hit the road of democracy, and where there is democracy there is no place for Slobodan Milosevic." <br><br><br>Belgrade: The Serbian Opposition said last night that it was in contact with the Yugoslav Army but declined to give details. "We have contacts with the army," Cedomir Jovanovic, who heads the election headquarters of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia bloc, said. <br>He said Momcilo Perisic, a former army chief of staff who now heads his own opposition party, was talking to the army but did not say where. Reuters ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xPolitical triumph of the man in the van ``x970826949,15057,``x``x
``xBY RICHARD BEESTON, DIPLOMATIC EDITOR<br><br> DESPITE the dangers, Slobodan Milosevic and his family have a number of choices if they decide to escape Serbia and live out their days abroad. <br>The most obvious and attractive bolthole would be Russia, which for centuries has had close cultural and religious ties to Serbia. Mr Milosevic's brother is the Yugoslav Ambassador to Moscow and the two men have a wide circle of contacts and friends among the Serb expatriate community and among members of the Russian ruling class, including former communists, businessmen and military figures. <br><br>It is possible to imagine Mr Milosevic and his wife spending the rest of their days in relative comfort in or near Moscow with their privacy and security guaranteed by the authorities. The one serious obstacle is the Kremlin leadership. Although sympathetic to Mr Milosevic, it is more eager to strengthen its relations with the West, in particular America and the EU. Harbouring an indicted war criminal could develop into an unpleasant diplomatic row with damaging consequences. <br><br>In that case, Mr Milosevic would have to look further afield, to countries less bound by international law, such as China and Cuba, or rogue states such as North Korea, Iraq and Libya. Beijing has certainly built up its commercial relations and political ties with Belgrade since Nato's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in the Yugoslav capital during last year's air campaign. However, for a man like Mr Milosevic, who has spent most of his life living in the close-knit Serb community, the prospect of living out his days in an entirely alien environment would be too awful for him to bear. <br><br>The same is true of the other rogue states scattered in remote corners of the world. He also knows better than anyone the dangers of putting his safety in the hands of dictators who might one day be tempted to give him up to the international community as part of some deal. <br><br>Britain and America have insisted repeatedly that Mr Milosevic is an indicted war criminal at The Hague and that he should not be allowed to escape justice and go into exile to retire peacefully. They have made it clear that they will use their considerable diplomatic muscle to track him down wherever he goes and force any host country to hand him over to the UN. <br><br>His safest bet might be to try to come to an agreement with his opponent, Vojislav Kostunica. Mr Kostunica has repeated often during the past weeks that he has no intention of handing Mr Milosevic over to the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague. As a trained lawyer, he challenges the legality of the court and as an elected President he insists that his primary duty is to protect Serbia's citizens, including his enemy, Mr Milosevic. <br><br>It is conceivable that the two men could come to some arrangement similar to that which occurred in the former Soviet bloc countries after the collapse of Communism a decade ago. Mr Milosevic might have to answer charges of vote-rigging, corruption or the harassment of dissidents. <br><br>But, like some of the senior communist leaders in East Germany, he might have to serve only a short term in prison before being allowed to retire to a private life, possibly in northern Montenegro, his birthplace, where he still commands strong support. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xChoices are limited in ex-dictators' club``x970826992,918,``x``x
``xBy Irena Guzelova in Belgrade and Stefan Wagstyl in London<br><br> Slobodan Milosevic's 13-year rule over Yugoslavia appeared to be over as army commanders met on Friday morning to consider their response to Thursday's mass protests that saw opposition forces storm the federal parliament, take over state television and the official news agency and begin negotiations with security forces. <br><br>Celebrations continued in the streets of Belgrade overnight. Cheering demonstrators sat on their car roofs waving flags. There was no sign of security forces in the centre of Belgrade. Although police stood by during the protests, scores of people were injured and there was a news agency report that a girl had died during the protests and several other people had been injured. <br><br>State-run television, until Thursday the mouthpiece of the Milosevic regime, referred to Vojislav Kostunica, the opposition leader who defeated Mr Milosevic in presidential elections last week, as "the Yugoslav president". Tanjug, the state news agency, declared Mr Kostunica "the elected president of Yugoslavia". <br><br>Mr Kostunica asked people to remain on the streets in case the security forces attempted to regain control over night. However, it appeared there was virtually no prospect that Mr Milosevic could make a comeback after the reverses of the day. <br><br>In his first televised address as elected president Mr Kostunica said he would call new federal elections as soon as possible and added that he would renew dialogue with the pro-western republic of Montenegro, which forms part of federal Yugoslavia. He said he had been promised that international sanctions would soon be lifted. <br><br>Earlier, asserting his presidential prerogative, Mr Kostunica called the parliament into a session that was due to start early on Friday. "Serbia hit the road of democracy and where there is democracy there is no place for Slobodan Milosevic," he said. <br><br>Western governments welcomed the developments. US president Bill Clinton said: "The people of Serbia have spoken with their ballots, they have spoken on the street." P.J. Crowley, the US National Security Council spokesman, said: "We hope that Milosevic will recognise reality and step aside peacefully. We also recognise that he is certainly capable of engineering a last stand." <br><br>There was intense speculation over the whereabouts of Mr Milosevic and other leaders of the regime. Late on Thursday night opposition sources said Mr Milosevic was in a bunker protected by troops near the eastern Serbian town of Bor. <br><br>Earlier, Mr Milosevic responded to the protests with a condemnation issued by his Socialist party, which pledged to "fight against violence and destruction". <br><br>The day began with news from the pro-Milosevic constitutional court that last week's presidential polls might be annulled, cancelling Mr Kostunica's victory and leaving Mr Milosevic in office. <br><br>This fired demonstrators who converged on Belgrade in thousands of buses and cars, bringing excavators to remove roadblocks. Police made few attempts to interfere. <br><br>Once inside the parliament, a symbol of Milosevic rule, demonstrators smashed windows and threw documents and pictures from the building. <br><br>Using a bulldozer, they stormed the television station, mouthpiece of Mr Milosevic, forcing it off air. <br><br>Later, it was reported that opposition supporters stormed a building housing the executive of the Socialist party. Police guarding the building fired tear gas, but could not prevent demonstrators from breaking in.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe FT: Milosevic's rule looks over as army meets``x970827049,93956,``x``x
``xBy Irena Guzelova in Belgrade<br><br> Vojislav Kostunica on Thursday night gave his first televised address to the Serbian nation as elected president of Yugoslavia and said that he would hold new federal elections within a year and a half. <br><br>Only a few hours earlier demonstrators had stormed the national television station which his rival, Slobodan Milosevic, used as his main mouthpiece. Mr Kostunica said that he was confident that he would soon take up his position as president and appealed to the crowds to avoid violence. <br><br>"For the past years our lives have been far too exciting. People would like some peace and normality, that is something I saw in their faces during my campaign," he said. <br><br>Mr Kostunica said he had been promised that international sanctions on the Balkan country would be lifted by next week. He said France, the current European Union president, had promised that sanctions against Yugoslavia, which include an investment ban and an oil embargo, would be a thing of the past as of Monday. "Sanctions will be lifted because Serbia has shown its real democratic face," Mr Kostunica said. <br><br>He promised not to take revenge on the Milosevic regime and its servants and reiterated his criticism of the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, which last year indicted Mr Milosevic and four other top Yugoslav officials for alleged war crimes in Kosovo. He made clear he would not co-operate with the tribunal in handing over Mr Milosevic, saying the Yugoslav constitution did not allow extraditions and denouncing it as an "American court". <br><br>Mr Kostunica said that once a new parliament was elected in 18 months' time at the latest he would ask the new government to redraw the constitution. <br><br>He promised to work to bring together Yugoslavia's polarised society and said he wanted to re-open talks with Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic in the Yugoslav federation, which has taken a series of unilateral steps towards independence to distance itself from the Milosevic regime. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica pledges elections within 18 months``x970827096,32528,``x``x
``xBy Stephen Fidler in Washington<br><br> The demise of Slobodan Milosevic will be regarded by the administration of President Bill Clinton as a final vindication of his decision last year to wage war against the Serbian strongman over the fate of Kosovo. <br><br>But US officials said the satisfaction of seeing Mr Milosevic unseated would be tempered somewhat by the knowledge that the development would throw up a whole raft of new issues. <br><br>The evident victor in the Yugoslav elections, Vojislav Kostunica, is viewed in Washington as a strongly nationalist politician, who may even be somewhat hostile to the US. <br><br>The most immediate question would be under what conditions he would be able to take power. Balkan experts said last night that, if the protests continued, there would be a growing risk of chaos and bloodshed, which could inhibit a peaceful transfer of power. <br><br>Even if the takeover took place in the best of circumstances - and starting long before last year's war against the Nato allies - Serbia's economy, the most important in the Balkans, has been severely weakened by years of sanctions. <br><br>Mr Kostunica's assumption of office may also encourage a reaction from militant ethnic Albanian nationalists in Kosovo, who are seeking full independence from Serbia, a formal admission of which the US and its allies have so far resisted. <br><br>The US has opposed the creation of further micro-states in the Balkans, believing Kosovo should be governed as an autonomous region within a democratic Serbia. A strongly nationalist government in Belgrade would make that outcome difficult to achieve. <br><br>"Nobody should be under any illusion that Milosevic out and Kostunica in will make everything into a field of dreams. It won't," said a senior administration official yesterday. But he added: "This would allow us - the US and Europe - to finally integrate Serbia into its rightful place in Europe. It would make that project much more realisable." <br><br>The main vehicle for bringing about Balkan integration into Europe and the world economy - the so-called Stability Pact, which brings together the European Union, the US and other countries together with international organisations - has been severely handicapped by the absence of the main power in the Balkans, Serbia. <br><br>"A new government in Belgrade, even quite a nationalist government, would change the whole complexion of the region," said a senior Defence Department official yesterday. <br><br>One question has been whether the US public insistence that Mr Milosevic be tried as an indicted war criminal in The Hague has provided a further incentive for him to cling on to power. US officials were still insisting yesterday that the position remained unchanged. <br><br>"The sonofabitch belongs in The Hague, convicted and in jail," said one. But the same official conceded that there could be circumstances in which Washington would accede to a different outcome. "We don't want to signal flexibility on this point for a variety of reasons. . . It's a dilemma I wouldn't mind us having, but we don't have that dilemma at the moment." <br><br>US officials said Russia's role in encouraging a transfer of power had been ambiguous. They said Moscow's actions - if not always its public statements - suggested Russia would prefer Mr Milosevic to survive in power, not least because his demise would be viewed as a success for western policy. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUS has fears for what happens next in Balkans``x970827146,78609,``x``x
``xBy JIM MANN, Times Staff Writer<br> <br> WASHINGTON--Vojislav Kostunica has long been a determined opponent of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. But that doesn't mean he is an unquestioning supporter and admirer of the United States.<br> Kostunica, who outpolled Milosevic in the Sept. 24 presidential election and on Thursday appeared to be finally forcing him from power, has some personal and political qualities that undoubtedly endear him to official Washington.<br>Vojislav Kostunica <br> Democratic Party of Serbia challenger Vojislav Kostunica apparently unseated Yugoslav President <br> Slobodan Milosevic in Sept. 24 elections, and protesters are demanding that Milosevic step down. A look at Kostunica: <br> Employment: President of Democratic Party of Serbia since its founding in 1992.<br> Personal:Born 1944 in Belgrade; married, no children.<br> Education: Bachelor of law degree, master's and PhD from University of Belgrade.<br> Academics: Elected assistant lecturer at Belgrade Faculty of Law in 1970 but quit during political purges four years later. Served as editor in chief of several prominent law and philosophy periodicals.<br> Politics: Helped establish the opposition Democratic Party in 1989. The same year, he declined an offer to resume his tenure as a professor at University of Belgrade, continuing his work with the Belgrade-based Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory. Served in the Serbian parliament from 1990 to 1997.<br><br>Source: News reports <br> He is a constitutional lawyer who once translated the Federalist Papers for his country. He talks regularly about the rule of law, freedom of the press and an independent judiciary--ideas that have never featured prominently in Milosevic's political lexicon.<br> Kostunica, 56, was also a determined anti-Communist, who was dismissed from a university teaching job in 1974 for criticizing the regime of Yugoslavia's longtime Communist leader, Josip Broz Tito.<br> And yet, Kostunica also has built a record as a moderate Serbian nationalist who has been willing to contest American policies he views as heavy-handed or domineering.<br> He has made it clear that he opposes war crimes trials for Milosevic and other Serbian leaders, and has called the Hague tribunal "an instrument of American policy, and not of international law." In the early 1990s, he supported the right of Bosnian Serbs to secede from Bosnia-Herzegovina.<br> Washington officials, from President Clinton on down, have been careful to emphasize that they do not expect to see eye to eye with Kostunica on all issues.<br> "I have said before, the opposition candidate, who, according to all unbiased reports, clearly won the election, obviously has strong differences with us," Clinton said Thursday. "This is not a question of whether he agrees with us. All we want for the Serbian people is what we want for people everywhere--the right to freely choose their own leaders."<br> From the Clinton administration's point of view, whatever disagreements the United States has with Kostunica are almost beside the point--first, because Kostunica seems to believe in bringing democratic change to Yugoslavia, and second, because virtually anyone would be preferable to Milosevic.<br> Even though they needed Milosevic to seal a deal to end the war in Bosnia, the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies have been at odds with him for most of the past decade, culminating in NATO's air war over Yugoslavia last year.<br> Kostunica grew up as a Serb within Tito's Yugoslavia. During the early 1970s, he was working as a law professor at the University of Belgrade when he was asked to give his support to the Communist regime's dismissal of a political dissident at the school. Kostunica refused and was eventually fired himself.<br> He went on to co-found the Democratic Party, and later became president of a splinter group, the Democratic Party of Serbia. For years he was obscured by other, flashier opposition leaders, who were consistently outmaneuvered by Milosevic.<br> During his presidential campaign, Kostunica repeatedly attacked Milosevic for bringing Yugoslavia to a point where it is politically isolated, war-weary and weakened by economic sanctions.<br> "We want a normal life in a normal state," Kostunica said.<br> The prospect of a return to normalcy was something for which Milosevic could hold out little promise.<br> Yugoslavs' realization of that fact helped form the basis of the public statements by the Clinton administration and its allies.<br> The West has made it plain that if Kostunica's election victory was honored and he became the next president, the sanctions against Yugoslavia could be lifted.<br> Yet, during his campaign, Kostunica also hinted at nationalist views that may turn out to be more important in the future than they seemed last month.<br> He called for adoption of the Serbian national anthem used in the 19th century.<br> He refused to say what should happen to Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb leaders who have been charged with war crimes at the court in The Hague.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe LA Times: Milosevic Foe Is No Great Fan of the U.S. ``x970827205,69667,``x``x
``xBy Andy Darley <br><br> Opposition leaders in Yugoslavia have set up a "crisis committee" to govern the country after the toppling of Slobodan Milosevic, according to reports today. <br><br>The committee's main task will be to secure public order and peace, an opposition source said. <br><br>The news comes as opposition leader Zoran Djindjic warned that Slobodan Milosevic had taken refuge in a bunker in Bor, near the borders with Romania and Bulgaria, with some of his closest allies. <br><br>Mr Djindjic warned that the ousted president may be planning a counter–coup, although neutral observers in Belgrade say the momentum built up by the popular revolt is now unstoppable. <br><br>It is reported that Yugoslav army high command is meeting this morning to decide its reaction to the events of the last 24 hours. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Milosevic down, but not necessarily out ``x970827263,1135,``x``x
``xWhat Now For Serb Leader? <br><br>By Marcus Tanner <br><br><br>The War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague is preparing to expand its indictment of Slobodan Milosevic from crimes against humanity to the much graver charge of genocide. The move came as crowds in the streets of Belgrade sought to achieve what Nato bombs and international sanctions had failed to do – drive the Yugoslavian President from power. <br><br>Mr Milosevic has defied public anger before. In the spring of 1997, despite months of nightly street protests in Belgrade and other cities, he held on to power long enough to set off another war over Kosovo. <br><br>He has consistently managed to divide the opposition, rigging elections and intimidating, discrediting or coopting potential challengers for so long that he did not seem to believe that this time they would remain united. <br><br>The prospect that he might at last be ousted has caused fierce controversy in the West. In the interest of getting him out, some have been prepared to contemplate allowing Mr Milosevic to go into exile, probably in Russia, and to ease his peaceful road to retirement by offering immunity from prosecution. That has outraged the officials who have spent years seeking to bring him to justice. <br><br>"Right now, he is only charged with crimes against humanity in relation to Kosovo," said Paul Risley, the spokesman for Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor in The Hague. "Potentially, his charges could now be as serious as genocide." <br><br>The indictment could be changed by extending the range of charges against Mr Milosevic from Kosovo to include Bosnia and Croatia, Mr Risley said. He might then be charged with overall responsibility for the bloodshed in Croatia in 1991 and in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995. <br><br>Mr Milosevic's responsibility would then include the Serb massacre in Vukovar, in eastern Croatia, the shelling of Dubrovnik, the ethnic cleansing of north-west Bosnia's Muslim population and the killings in Srebrenica and other towns in eastern Bosnia. <br><br>Until now, the crime of genocide has been levelled only at the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his military strongman, Ratko Mladic. But Mr Risley suggested thetribunal might be about to point the finger at Mr Milosevic as the supreme figure to whom all the others were responsible. <br><br>Jiri Dienstbier, the UN human rights envoy, suggested on Tuesday that the West and Russia might let Mr Milosevic off entirely. "The most important thing for Mr Milosevic is to have guarantees that if he leaves power he will not be prosecuted and he will not spend the rest of his life in prison," Mr Dienstbier said. <br><br>Tribunal officials are appalled at the signal such an offer would send to other national leaders accused of atrocities. But Mr Risley said an immunity offer would also throw into a tail-spin the Hague court's existing verdicts. "To allow such an individual as him to go free would make a mockery of any of the tribunal's efforts to prosecute people below him." <br><br>Lawyers for the 35 men already sentenced by the tribunal are thought to be preparing petitions for their clients' early release should the Serbian strongman go free. <br><br>They include Tihomir Blaskic, the Bosnian Croat general sentenced to 45 years in 1999 for the massacre of more than 100 Muslims in Bosnia in 1993. <br><br>The flurry of action comes amid fears that the Yugoslav leader will flee his rebellious capital and seek sanctuary inside Russia or Belarus, two of Serbia's staunchest allies over the past decade. <br><br>Mr Risley says the prosecutor will formally ask Russia to arrest Mr Milosevic if he leaves Belgrade for Moscow. <br><br>If the prosecutor releases the extra charges, it will be impossible for any state to offer Mr Milosevic sanctuary without becoming a virtual outlaw in the eyes of the UN. Strengthening Mr Milosevic's indictment might also affect the charges against his four cabinet associates, Milan Milutinoviv, Nikola Sainovic, Dragoljub Ojdanic and Vlajko Stojiljkovic. <br><br>Ms del Ponte is expected to act on the extra charges after she receives final dossiers on Serb atrocities in Kosovo in the course of her visit to Pristina today. <br><br>Mr Dienstbier's statement came as Ms del Ponte was in Bosnia for a meeting with the "Mothers of Srebrenica" group, representing relatives of 8,000 Muslim men massacred by Serbs in the eastern town in July 1995. <br><br>The survivors of the Srebrenica bloodbath pressed Ms del Ponte on Wednesday for an indictment of Mr Milosevic for his role in the single worst massacre in the Balkan wars of the Nineties.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xHe may run, but Milosevic cannot hide from justice ``x970827304,53985,``x``x
``xBy Misha Savic <br><br> A young woman danced on a police van, then jumped down to give a policeman a kiss and a whirl to the strains of "I Will Survive." Across the capital in the wee small hours of Friday the young danced, the old wept and the police laid down their arms to join the opposition jubilee. <br><br>After a tumultuous day which saw huge crowds storm the bastions of Slobodan Milosevic's regime, the streets of this capital of 2 million inhabitants turned into a gigantic party, awash in the red–blue–white bands of the Yugoslav flag and fists waving the traditional three–finger Serbian unity sign. <br><br>"We came to Belgrade to finish with him and that's what we did," said Janko Bacic, 41, brandishing a bottle of brandy in one hand and a trophy leg pulled off a chair in the parliament building in the other. <br><br>Bacic was one of tens of thousands of farmers and working class rural Serbs who'd converged on the capital early Thursday for massive demonstrations called by the opposition. By nightfall they believed they had won. Milosevic was gone and they were in no hurry to return home. <br><br>"Yes, I fought with this," Bacic said, waving the chair leg. "We're lucky the police didn't open fire." <br><br>Much of the police force had surprisingly quickly abandoned their posts in front of parliament and other state buildings. By early Friday, they were mingling with crowds, hugging the very people they had for years threatened with tear gas and truncheons. <br><br>There was no word of Milosevic's whereabouts in more than 24 hours, although opposition leaders believed he was in hiding in eastern Yugoslavia. Opposition leaders urged the masses to keep up their street vigil until dawn, amid fears that tanks and armored vehicles – symbols of Milosevic's 13 years of iron rule – might try to intervene. <br><br>"Belgrade must stay up all night, Serbia must stay up all night so that we can defend our victory," opposition leader, Velimir Ilic, told the tens of thousands gathered in front of the Yugoslav parliament. <br><br>The crowd didn't need much persuading. <br><br>In front of the domed building, three youths gleefully stubbed out their cigarettes on an official, framed portrait of Milosevic, one of the many thrown out, along with a flurry of documents, from parliament windows throughout the day. <br><br>Many residents of Belgrade, who'd been startled to see first the parliament, then the headquarters of state–run TV spewing flames Thursday as protesters forced police to flee, joined the celebration in the streets and muse over what their future. <br><br>"I'm not sure if I prefer to see him stand trial for all his misdeeds or not hear about him ever again," said bank clerk Jovan Malekovic, 59. <br><br>Yet the dizzying swiftness of Thursday's uprising took its toll. Several dozen people were reported injured and two others were killed in the melee. A number of policemen, as well as the head of Milosevic's infamous propaganda tool, the state–run television, suffered severe beatings at the hands of rioters unleashing decades of pent–up anger. <br><br>With nightfall, windows of businesses believed to be owned by Milosevic's cronies were reduced to heaps of shattered glass as looters took to the streets. <br><br>Opposition leaders kept calling for restraint, pleading the supporters not to mar the triumph. <br><br>For many, like 81–year–old Katarina Jakovljevic, the apparent demise of Milosevic's authority was a dream come true. <br><br>"I was young when Communists came to power," tearful, tired–looking Jakovljevic said, recalling 1945. "I think they are really through now. I waited 55 years for this day." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSleepless In Belgrade ``x970827349,14184,``x``x
``xOusted president congratulates rival and tells Yugoslav TV he wants to spend time with his family<br>Special report: Serbia <br><br>Jonathan Steele in Belgrade <br>Saturday October 7, 2000 <br><br>The most hated man in Europe, Slobodan Milosevic, finally threw in the towel last night and congratulated Vojislav Kostunica on his victory in the September 24 Yugoslav presidential election. But the ousted dictator showed he still has deluded hopes of a political career. <br>Speaking on television after a meeting earlier yesterday with the Russian foreign minster at one of his Belgrade residences, Mr Milosevic said he would spend time with his family before returning later to public life. <br><br>"I congratulate Mr Kostunica on his electoral victory and I wish much success to all citizens of Yugoslavia," he said in a television address. "I intend to rest a bit and spend some more time with my family, and especially with my grandson, and after that to help my party gain force and contribute to future prosperity." <br><br>The speech triggered a huge celebration on the streets of the Yugoslav capital. Firecrackers exploded and horns blared throughout the city. <br><br>Deprived of power by election defeat and the loss of support from the army and police, and of sanctuary in most of the world by his indictment as a war criminal, Mr Milosevic earlier yesterday had put on a brave smile and welcomed Moscow's foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, to tea at his villa in the suburb of Dedinje. <br><br>Seated on chintzy white sofas behind drawn curtains, Mr Milosevic told his Russian guest that he firmly intended to stay in political life as head of the Socialist party of Serbia. <br><br>He condemned Thursday's storming by demonstrators of the parliament and the state-run television station, actions that led the police to join the revolt in the streets and hastened his regime's collapse. <br><br>According to Mr Ivanov, who held a press conference after his talks with Mr Milosevic, the ousted president criticised "the violence and riots as jeopardising the functioning of the state". <br><br>While the rest of Yugoslavia has moved into a new era, Mr Milosevic seems unable to see how far he has fallen. He even risks repudiation by his colleagues. The Socialist party is reported to be in turmoil, with resignations mounting as erstwhile collaborators rush to distance themselves from him. <br><br>Late last night, Mr Kostunica, said he had spoken to Mr Milosevic and army commanders to try to quell fears that troops and police might intervene in the popular revolution. Mr Kostunica said on television: "There are guarantees that the shift of power will this time go smoothly." <br><br>No one in the Serbian capital seemed interested last night in hunting Mr Milosevic down or trying to ransack his many homes. People had clearly taken to heart an appeal for calm by Mr Kostunica. <br><br>Speaking from the balcony of Belgrade's town hall at Thursday night's victory party, the new leader had urged a jubilant audience "to drive the man away, but not with the violence which he used on us for so many years". <br><br>The only target of serious looting was a central Belgrade perfume shop called Scandal, owned by Mr Milosevic's mafioso son, Marko. It was ransacked on Thursday and yesterday crowds queued patiently to file past and peer through the broken windows. <br><br>Meanwhile, people in the state sphere were changing sides as easily as changing clothes. The constitutional court - which brought things to a head by trying to nullify the September 24 election results and suggesting a rerun - yesterday announced that Mr Kostunica had indeed won. <br><br>The anger ignited by the court's original decision, which led thousands of Serbs to loot the parliament and set fire to the TV centre, had by yesterday turned into a festival atmosphere. Massive crowds came out to celebrate the triumph of Mr Kostunica, as well as to see the site where what is being called a revolution reached its climax. Drums were beaten and flags waved. <br><br>Some revolutions are about social equality, others seek to end political dictatorship. The Serbian Autumn was fuelled by a thirst for normality. <br><br>Under the portico of the parliament, Slobodan Zhuric, 33, a shopkeeper, was acting as a volunteer guard preventing sightseers from going inside. <br><br>"We had reason to be angry with Milosevic for Kosovo, but the west had no reason to bomb us," he said. "Milosevic lost all credibility when he surrendered." But what he wanted above all, he said, was "to have a president we can exchange, if we find we don't like him". <br><br>Near Mr Milosevic's villa is Beli Dvor, the so-called White Palace, the presidential guards could not disguise their grins yesterday when we asked if they had celebrated on revolution night. "No comment," said one as he gave it all away with a toothy smile. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGuardian: Milosevic admits defeat``x970912545,29314,``x``x
``xBy Aleksandar Vasovic <br>Associated Press<br><br>BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA <br>(AP)—The Yugoslav high court on Friday declared opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica the winner in presidential elections, boosting his drive for power after a popular uprising swept away the pillars of Slobodan Milosevic's 13-year rule. <br><br>Milosevic, whose whereabouts have been a mystery since Thursday's street protests, met Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and denounced the unrest. <br><br>After days of hesitation by Moscow, Ivanov expressed support for Kostunica's victory, stripping Milosevic of his main international ally. But Ivanov suggested that Milosevic, who has been indicted on war crimes, will try to keep a role in Yugoslav politics. <br><br>"He said he intends to play a prominent role in the political life of the country,"Ivanov said. <br><br>Ivanov would not confirm the location of their meeting, but Milosevic said it took place in Belgrade. <br><br>"It was agreed that violence and destructive riots jeopardize the functioning of the state,"Milosevic said in a statement, broadcast by a TV station operated by his allies. <br><br>Such behavior "weakens the state, which is only in the interest of the country's enemies,"he said. <br><br>Milosevic's statement was seen in Belgrade as an indication of the Yugoslav leader's stubborn defiance in the wake of an electoral defeat and massive uprising Thursday in which his allies in the security forces, media and the parliament seemed to melt away. <br><br>The United States, which had cheered the prospect of a Balkans without Milosevic, rejected any future role for him in Yugoslav politics. "This is something we cannot support,"said Sandy Berger, the U.S. national security adviser. <br><br>"He is still an indicted war criminal and has to be accountable, we believe, for his actions," Berger said in an interview. <br><br>Milosevic also appeared to lose his last legal basis for keeping power. <br><br>The opposition had asked the Yugoslav Constitutional Court last week to declare Kostunica the outright winner in the Sept. 24 election. The government had acknowledged that he outpolled Milosevic in the five-candidate race but said he fell short of a majority, requiring a runoff. <br><br>Nebojsa Bakarec, a legal adviser to Kostunica, said Friday he received an official ruling from the court in the opposition's favor. Efforts to contact the court were unsuccessful because the report was received after the close of business hours. <br><br>Two days earlier, the same court had reportedly invalidated parts of the elections, a move the opposition had denounced as an attempt to buy time for Milosevic. <br><br>The apparent reversal by the court, which Milosevic had packed with loyalists, may indicate that Milosevic has given up any hopes of holding onto power and instead has decided to try to carve out a role for himself in national politics. <br><br>By accepting defeat, Milosevic could prevent a split between his party and its wing in Montenegro, which has already acknowledged Kostunica as the president-elect. If the Montenegrin wing backs Kostunica, he could have enough seats to keep Milosevic allies out of the government. But if the Montenegrins stick by Milosevic, the Yugoslav leader could maintain a strong voice in government. Montenegro and the larger, dominant Serbia make up the federation of Yugoslavia. <br><br>Ivanov, carrying a message from Russian President Vladimir Putin, met earlier with Kostunica, saying he "congratulated Mr. Kostunica on his victory in the presidential elections." <br><br>"I am convinced that we are gradually getting back to normal and I believe the crisis is behind us,"said a visibly pleased Kostunica. <br><br>The move by Russia—the last major European nation to back Kostunica—won praise from an exultant U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. <br><br>"This is great news,"Albright said, giving a thumbs up. "We are very glad that Russia has now joined the rest of Europe and us in congratulating the victory of President Kostunica." <br><br>The United States and the European Union promised economic sanctions on Serbia — the dominant republic in Yugoslavia—would be lifted once Kostunica was in place as president, and promised new aid to the country. <br><br>Meanwhile, Kostunica and his supporters continued to consolidate their control after huge crowds danced and sang in celebrations all night long, fed by the excitement of having seized Yugoslavia's parliament and other key symbols of Milosevic's regime. <br><br>About 200,000 people gathered in front of parliament Friday, hoping to watch Kostunica be inaugurated. One of their posters read: "Slobodan, are you counting your last minutes."But Kostunica's personal secretary, Svetlana Stojanovic, said the ceremony was postponed until he can reconvene parliament, possibly this weekend. <br><br>Worries eased about Milosevic's launching a military counterattack. Most police commanders have joined the groundswell behind Kostunica. The private news agency Beta quoted an army press service officer, Col. Dragan Velickovic, as saying the armed forces would not "interfere in the democratic process." <br><br>Tanjug and other state-owned media—formerly a key support of Milosevic's regime—were broadcasting or publishing apologies Friday for their past support for Milosevic. Serb television occasionally flashed its logo during broadcasts with the slogan: "This is the new free Serbian television."State-owned or past pro-Milosevic dailies issued special editions Friday, reflecting the change in their editorial policies. <br><br>Several hundred people from the opposition stronghold of Cacak marched down an avenue behind a brass band on Friday. A lone traffic policemen watched from his hiding place inside the entrance to an office building. <br><br>"God forbid that they see my uniform,"said the terrified officer, who declined to identify himself. <br><br>While Russia was keen to establish ties with any new government in Yugoslavia, it also faced the question of its old ally's future. <br><br>Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency cited Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov as saying there had been no discussion about granting asylum to Milosevic. Vladimir Yermoshin, the prime minister of Belarus—a former Soviet republic that has also been suggested as a refuge for Milosevic—said there has been no request for asylum. <br><br>Governments of the two Balkan neighbors—Bulgaria and Romania—ordered their armed forces to remain alert against any attempt by Milosevic or his allies to slip out of Yugoslavia. <br><br>"He's trapped and a wounded animal,"said former Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic, who ran against Milosevic in 1992. "He has to be given a chance to go somewhere." <br><br>Milosevic's regime began teetering Wednesday when police caved in to defiant coal miners striking in central Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic. After that, the movement gained stunning momentum. <br><br>A crowd Thursday—including tough miners, factory workers and farmers—stormed the parliament. They set fires, tossed portraits of Milosevic out of broken windows and chased the feared riot police away. <br><br>Soon the state television building was on fire, too. Its front door was crushed by a front-loader. Then came word that at least two police stations had also succumbed to the crowds. <br><br>Many police tossed away their clubs and shields, absorbed by joyous flag-waving crowds. Others were beaten senseless by angry, often intoxicated, young toughs. The director of Serbian state television and one of Milosevic's closest allies, Dragoljub Milanovic, was beaten with sticks. <br><br>Tanjug said two people were killed and 65 injured in the rioting. All but 12 of the injured were treated and released from hospitals, Tanjug said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCsmonitor: Court declares Kostunica winner``x970912624,3164,``x``x
``xBy Noel Malcolm<br>'I can't tell you what a relief it is - to think it's all over at last," one senior Foreign Office official said to me. "When I think of all the trouble this Balkan business has given us, the phone calls, the conferences, the endless crisis management - now we just want to get back to normal life."<br><br>I sympathised, of course, knowing that even Foreign Office officials are human. But that conversation took place in November 1995, after the Dayton peace agreement on Bosnia. The Kosovo crisis had merely been left on one side; the first outbreaks of violence, by frustrated and radicalised Albanians, began only a few months later.<br><br>As the diplomats breathe their sighs of relief today, contemplating the fall of Milosevic, are they making the same mistake? In one important sense, the answer has to be "no". The role played by Milosevic in the tragic recent history of the former Yugoslavia was different from that of any other factor: he really was the primary cause of the wars, the massacres of Bosnians and Albanians, and indeed the sufferings of his own people.<br><br>That does not mean that, without Milosevic, the old Titoist Yugoslavia would still be there today, delighting the tourists with its gipsy music, "socialist self-management" and other items of folklore. There were plenty of reasons why Slovenes, Croats and others might have wanted to go their separate ways. The point is simply that, without Milosevic, the unravelling of Yugoslavia could have taken place peacefully - no Vukovar, no Srebrenica, no Racak. With Milosevic gone, there is no reason to expect horrors of that kind to be seen on ex-Yugoslav soil again.<br><br>On the other hand, the consequences of a decade of Milosevic's rule cannot be wiped from the slate as quickly as the man himself. His policies created problems that had not existed before, such as the quasi-partition of Bosnia. And they also helped to radicalise nationalist feelings in the minds of many former Yugoslavs - above all, among the intellectuals of Serbia, some of whom are now coming to power. There will, alas, be no shortage of Balkan problems to deal with; those Foreign Office officials cannot put away their aspirin bottles just yet.<br><br>The biggest unresolved issue is Kosovo, where Western governments have just missed a golden opportunity. If they had announced, while Milosevic was in power, that Kosovo would definitely become independent, the Serbian people could have accepted such a political fait accompli as the final loss inflicted on them by Milosevic's policies; they could then have drawn a line under it, and got on with building normal politics in a post-Milosevic and post-Kosovo Serbia. Instead, the unresolved problem of Kosovo will poison Serbian politics for years to come.<br><br>This will be the case under almost any government in Belgrade; but the problem may be particularly acute under Vojislav Kostunica, the new president, who has campaigned on Kosovo for much of his adult life - from 1974, when he criticised Tito for giving too much autonomy to the Kosovo Albanians, to last year, when he posed for photographers in northern Kosovo with an assault rifle in his hands. One of the things Mr Kostunica may start pressing for is the return (agreed to in theory by the West at the end of the bombing) of a small number of Serbian troops to Kosovo. There could be no surer way of jeopardising the fragile progress made so far in that territory.<br><br>Another issue that still simmers is the status of Montenegro, the junior partner in the Yugoslav federation. Mr Kostunica was elected on the basis of a new federal constitution, pushed through by Milosevic in the summer; the Montenegrin government, which was not properly consulted, refuses to recognise this constitution.<br><br>Meanwhile, Kostunica is forming a federal government which depends on the support of the old pro-Milosevic party in Montenegro - an embittered opposition to the Montenegrin government. Somehow he has to negotiate a new federal constitution, which means riding both these horses at once. Recent talk of outright secession by the Montenegrin authorities may have been largely gamesmanship; but the game is a serious one, and it is still in progress.<br><br>Then there is Bosnia. The fact that, five years after Dayton, the Western media have lost all interest in the place does not mean that Bosnia's problems have been solved. Bosnia is still a non-functioning state and a potential trouble-spot, pinning down thousands of Western troops. The effects of ethnic cleansing have not been reversed; rather, they have been strengthened, both by the failure to return refugees to their homes, and by the Dayton constitution, which gives the "Republika Srpska" half of Bosnia, an official ethnic identity and strong local powers.<br><br>Just in the past year the picture did start to improve, as the return of non-Serb refugees to Republika Srpska accelerated. Part of the reason for this was the feeling among Serb politicians there that they had no choice but to co-operate with the rest of Bosnia, as they could not expect any support, either economic or diplomatic, from Belgrade.<br><br>That factor has now changed. No one in Bosnia can forget that Mr Kostunica was an enthusiastic supporter of Radovan Karadzic during the Bosnian war; he also denounced the Dayton accord, not because it gave too much power to Republika Srpska, but because it gave it, in his view, too little.<br><br>This does not mean that Mr Kostunica is going to start up some new project of Serb nationalist adventurism in Bosnia, let alone in Croatia or further afield. He has more than enough problems at home to be getting on with. And if he does succeed in building a new, democratic society there, one consequence will be that Serbs may learn to think in a new way, critically examining their own recent past and questioning some of the claims of Serbian nationalism - including ones made by Mr Kostunica himself. That, in the long term, is the most important reason why we should all wish him success.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xDAILY TELEGRAPH: Welcome Kostunica - but with serious reservations``x970912710,22015,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 6 — Bowing to a vast popular revolt against him, a pale Slobodan Milosevic resigned tonight as Yugoslavia's president, ending 13 years of rule that have brought his country four wars, international isolation, a NATO bombing campaign and his own indictment on war crimes charges.<br><br>Vojislav Kostunica, a 56-year-old constitutional lawyer of quiet habits and a firm belief in a future for Yugoslavia as a normal country within Europe, is expected to be inaugurated as president on Saturday.<br><br>An already exuberant and chaotic Belgrade, celebrating its extraordinary day of revolution on Thursday, exploded with noise as the news of Mr. Milosevic's resignation, made in a short speech on television, quickly spread. Cars blasted their horns; people banged on pots and pans from balconies, blew whistles and danced in the street.<br><br>Mr. Milosevic appeared on television about 11:20 p.m. — shortly after Mr. Kostunica announced, on a television phone-in program, that he had met Mr. Milosevic and the army chief of staff, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, this evening, and that both had congratulated him on his election victory on Sept. 24.<br><br>The resignation deal was helped along by Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov of Russia, who met with Mr. Kostunica and Mr. Milosevic today. Mr. Ivanov was carrying assurances that if Mr. Milosevic gave up power now, the world would not press for his extradition to face war crimes charges in The Hague, senior Western officials said tonight.<br><br>"I've just received official information that Vojislav Kostunica won the elections," Mr. Milosevic said in his television address. "This decision was made by the body that was authorized to do so under the Constitution, and I consider that it has to be respected."<br><br>Mr. Milosevic spoke with a straight face after an extraordinary set of manipulations on his part — of the Federal Election Commission and the highest court in the land — to deny Mr. Kostunica outright victory.<br><br>Speaking of how important it is for political parties to strengthen themselves in opposition, Mr. Milosevic said he intended to continue as leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia after taking a break "to spend more time with my family, especially my grandson, Marko."<br><br>Despite his brave words, it is unlikely that the Socialist Party, with its own future to consider, will keep Mr. Milosevic as its leader for long. The remarks seemed part of a deal to save him a little bit of face.<br><br>There is deep resentment in this semi-reformed Communist Party — Serbia's largest and best organized, in power since World War II — of Mr. Milosevic's indulgence of his wife, Mirjana Markovic, who began her own party, the Yugoslav United Left. Ruling in coalition, the Socialists saw more and more of their positions, powers and benefits going to the United Left. <br><br>The reaction in Belgrade was immediate and loud.<br><br>Tanja Radovic, a 23-year-old student blowing her whistle furiously on Knez Mihailova Street, said: "He's gone. It's finally true. We had too much of him, it's enough. This is the end of him and all these thieves."<br><br>Dragana Kovac, 31, said: "I'm happy, and not just because of him, but because of her. He should have spent more time with his family starting 10 years ago."<br><br>Ilija Bobic said: "I wish all my family were alive to see this. My father used to say that the Communists would finish quickly. He was wrong, but it came true, finally."<br><br>Mr. Bobic stopped, then said: "We all know it won't be better quickly here. But now you can talk. You're not afraid of the phone, of being an enemy inside, of having to join the party to have a job."<br><br>The United States and Europe have promised a quick lifting of international sanctions against Yugoslavia, as well as aid, once Mr. Milosevic goes. The sanctions include a toothless oil embargo and a flight ban, currently suspended. But financial sanctions and a visa ban aimed at the Milosevic government are likely to remain in place for now.<br><br>The United States and Britain have urged that Mr. Milosevic be handed over to the war crimes tribunal, and continued to do so publicly today. But Mr. Kostunica, who considers the tribunal a political instrument of Washington and not a neutral legal body, has made it clear that he will not arrest Mr. Milosevic or extradite him.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica's vow was also intended to give Mr. Milosevic the security to leave office, so that an electoral concession did not have to mean, as Mr. Kostunica said, "a matter of life or death."<br><br>Foreign Minister Ivanov came here today to deliver a similar message, Western officials said tonight.<br><br>If Mr. Milosevic conceded and renounced power, even after the pillars of his rule collapsed this week, he and his family would be allowed to remain in Serbia, they said. But no Western country would say so publicly, given the United Nations tribunal's indictment.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica has pointed out that if democratic and international stability is at stake, the requirement to pursue those indicted is secondary under international law.<br><br>The collapse of Mr. Milosevic's position came soon after Mr. Ivanov met him this morning in Belgrade. This afternoon, the Constitutional Court suddenly issued its ruling approving Mr. Kostunica's appeal of the election results. <br><br>The official press agency Tanjug said on Wednesday night that the court had decided to annul the main part of the Sept. 24 presidential vote, implying a repeat of the election. But then the court said that in fact Mr. Kostunica had won the first round outright, with more than 50 percent of the vote, precisely as he has insisted. It was another example of Mr. Milosevic's manipulation, but this time to others' ends.<br><br>Then the speaker of the Serbian Parliament, Dragan Tomic, one of Mr. Milosevic's closest allies, announced that he would convene that body on Monday to recognize Mr. Kostunica's election as federal president. He addressed a letter to Mr. Kostunica this way: "To the president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."<br><br>The election of Mr. Kostunica — carried to power first by the votes of a majority of Serbs, and then by an uprising by even more of them — will present difficulties and opportunities for Montenegro and Kosovo, both parts of Yugoslavia.<br><br>The Western-leaning president of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, will find himself offered a new deal within Yugoslavia that will be aimed at blunting the effort toward independence. That may quickly undermine Mr. Djukanovic's governing coalition in Montenegro, which contains parties firmly backing independence.<br><br>Mr. Djukanovic boycotted the federal elections, allowing Milosevic allies to win all of Montenegro's seats in the federal Parliament. Those allies are now likely to make a deal with Mr. Kostunica, abandoning Mr. Milosevic, and leaving Mr. Djukanovic in effect powerless in a Belgrade that could quickly become the center for democratic life in the Balkans.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica will also offer Kosovo a high degree of autonomy. While outside powers recognizes Yugoslav sovereignty over Kosovo, Mr. Milosevic was a perfect foil for Kosovo Albanian desires for independence, which have only grown stronger since NATO intervened on the Albanians' behalf in the 1999 bombing war.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica says he will live within United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, governing Kosovo, but will insist on the return of Serbs who fled during the war.<br><br>In his television appearance, Mr. Milosevic thanked those who voted for him and even those who voted against him, "because they lifted from my soul a heavy burden I have borne for 10 years," he said. He also said a time in opposition would be good for the left coalition, to allow them to purge those who got into the party "to feed some personal interest," an extraordinary comment for a leader who allowed a form of state- sanctioned mafia to develop.<br><br>"I congratulate Mr. Kostunica on his election victory and wish for all citizens of Yugoslavia great success during the new presidency," he concluded.<br><br>In his own television appearance, Mr. Kostunica described his meeting with Mr. Milosevic. "It was ordinary communication, and it's good that we met, because there was a lot of fear over the peaceful transfer of power, especially last night," Mr. Kostunica said.<br><br>"This is the first time for many years in this country that power has been transferred normally, in a civilized manner," he said.<br><br>And he said he pointed out a lesson to Mr. Milosevic: "I talked about how power, once lost, is not power lost forever. You can regain it. This is something that all my experience taught me. The other side couldn't even imagine something like this, but now the other side has accepted this, and it is getting used to this lesson."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTHE NEW YORK TIMES: Milosevic concedes defeat: Yugoslavs celebrate new era``x970912792,44646,``x``x
``xSuccessful force now faces uncertain future <br><br>FROM the minute I saw the workers and peasants of central Serbia march down Knez Milos Street, I knew that these enraged men with arms like legs of mutton would not be leaving Belgrade before they finished their job. <br>Not a few them were carrying weapons. If the order to shoot had been made, the police and the Army would have found themselves with a real battle on their hands. <br><br>These men knew how the day would end. But on Friday morning most other Serbs could scarcely comprehend how deeply their lives had been changed by the 12 hours that saw them seize back their dignity and their future that languished in Slobodan Milosevic's dungeon. <br><br>Many were convinced that he would wrongfoot the opposition at the last moment. It was not until I talked to the most senior opposition leaders on Thursday morning that I realised they had broken a psychological barrier. Cedomir Jovanovic of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) told me: "We are going to storm the parliament and take key state institutions." <br><br>Mr Milosevic's opponents had at last understood that they would bring him down only by using his favoured political currency, naked force. They would not be able to sustain the general strike and the extreme pitch of people's anger for more than a few days. On Thursday, it was do or die. <br><br>Serbia's revolution has come 11 years after those in Eastern Europe. <br><br>Leaving aside the mayhem that he provoked in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, Mr Milosevic has inflicted unimaginable damage on the Serbian state. <br><br>He gutted its judiciary and filled its civil service and education system with witless sycophants. The state-run media earned a special place in the Serbs' misery as it daily regurgitated the mantras of Mr Milosevic's anachronistic authoritarian ideology. <br><br>The police and the military did not guarantee citizens' wellbeing, but was the ultimate sanction of one man's power. The economy is corrupted to the point of collapse, serving only the hugely powerful mafias whose influence will now wane. <br><br>All this was made possible by Mr Milosevic mobilising a rancid, bullying nationalism that became the main motor of destabilisation in the Balkans. Far from achieving his proclaimed national goals, his policies saw Serbs driven out of areas in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo where they had lived for centuries. <br><br>Vojislav Kostunica and the other members of the new leadership in Belgrade face an enormous task in trying to heal those wounds. The constitutional order with its multiple parliaments is a complete mess. Serbia's relationship with Montenegro is profoundly confusing. <br><br>Solving this conundrum is not helped by the fact that Mr Kostunica's relationship with the Montenegrin President, Milo Djukanovic, is cool at best. <br><br>If that wasn't enough, Mr Kostunica's powers as Federal President are quite limited and Mr Milosevic's coalition is the most powerful force in the federal parliament. For that reason, Mr Kostunica and his allies are wooing the SNP, which used to support Mr Milosevic in Montenegro, in an attempt to block the influence of Mr Milosevic's alliance in parliament. <br><br>Furthermore, Mr Kostunica's opposition movement is a broad front in which cracks are already beginning to appear. The new President is overwhelmingly the most popular figure in Serbia. But he could not have swept aside Mr Milosevic without the assistance of several key men. The most important of those is Zoran Djindjic, whose Democratic Party was the backbone of the protest movement. <br><br>According to insiders, the two men, both ambitious, distrust each other. Those are the two figures upon whom the Serbs will depend to solve their most pressing problem. <br><br>The nationalism that led to war in Yugoslavia was fashioned for the sole purpose of winning power for Mr Milosevic in 1987. Thirteen years later, many Serbs have conveniently forgotten how they supported his project in the first place. They have suffered severely for their mistake. <br><br>There has been much uninformed criticism in the West about Mr Kostunica's nationalism. That criticism is based largely on his opposition to American policy in the region and to the Nato campaign over Kosovo in particular. Expressing approval of the Nato campaign within Serbia brings to mind the idea of turkeys voting for Christmas. <br><br>But it is also Mr Kostunica's legitimate democratic right to criticise American policy (everybody else does). The key point is that he is a democrat. He will attempt to solve any problems through negotiation and not violence. <br><br>The process of rehabilitation will still be exceptionally difficult. Serbs will have to address the issue of the war crimes committed either by them or in their name. <br><br>A more public recognition by the West of the crimes committed against Serbs would certainly move the process along. Western Europe must be deeply engaged in assisting the reintegration of this confused, traumatised country. <br><br>An unstable Serbia blocks the regeneration of the entire Balkan peninsula; an undemocratic Serbia can always threaten to destabilise Bosnia and Kosovo. <br><br>There is now a democratic Serbia, but it is by no means yet stable. Thanks to the people's uprising in Belgrade, however, this country and the Balkans, at last, have a real chance. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times: Misha Glenny - The Balkans``x970912863,92165,``x``x
``xBy Irena Guzelova in Belgrade and Stefan Wagstyl in London<br>Published: October 6 2000 19:00GMT <br> <br>Slobodan Milosevic abandoned his grasp on power on Friday night as he conceded defeat in a television address where he congratulated Vojislav Kostunica on his victory in the September 24 elections. <br><br>In a brief recorded adress he said: "I congratulate Mr Kostunica on his electoral victory and I wish much success to all citizens of Yugoslavia. <br><br>"I intend to rest a bit and spend some more time with my family and especially with my grandson Marko and after that to help my party gain force and contribute to future prosperity." <br><br>It was an admission that his days of power were over after his last ally, Russia, deserted him and hailed Mt Kostunica as the rightful president. <br><br>Moscow's move came as Mr Milosevic's power continued to crumble and his allies deserted the former strongman. <br><br>The constitutional court, which had earlier tried to annul Mr Kostunica's election victory, on Friday ruled in his favour; the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church prepared to bless Mr Kostunica and political parties in Montenegro and in Serbia which had previously backed Mr Milosevic said they would work with Mr Kostunica. <br><br>Opposition activists prepared to have Mr Kostunica sworn in as president as soon as possible, probably in the next few days. <br><br>After Thursday's storming of the Parliament and other public buildings, the atmosphere in Belgrade on Friday was calm. Thousands of people remained in the streets celebrating as the drama of the end of Mr Milosevic's brutal rule unfolded. <br><br>Mr Milosevic himself indicated that he had no intention of fleeing the country or leaving politics. It emerged yesterday that he had not abandoned Belgrade but had seemingly hidden with his wife Mira Markovic and other close associates in his heavily-fortified villa in a Belgrade suburb. <br><br>There he was apparently visited by Igor Ivanov, Russian foreign minister, who came out from the meeting saying that Mr Milosevic had renounced the use of force but intended "to continue to play a prominent political role in the country" as the leader of its largest political party, the socialists. <br><br>Earlier, a statement attributed to Mr Milosevic was read on a station controlled by his wife's political party. It said that "violence and destructive riots jeopardise the functioning of the state". But there was no confirmation of Mr Milosevic's whereabouts nor any sign that he had ordered any movements of the security forces. <br><br>During a one-day trip, Mr Ivanov also called on Mr Kostunica and delivered a personal message from president Vladimir Putin. Mr Ivanov said he "congratulated Mr Kostunica on his victory in the presidential elections." <br><br>News of the Russian endorsement was welcomed by western officials, including US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who said: "This is very, very important." <br><br>President Jacues Chirac of France, which currently holds the EU presidency, emphasised the union's support by inviting Mr Kostunica to an informal EU summit in Biarritz on ctober 13-14. Mr Kostunica said he would attend if domestic conditions allowed. <br><br>EU officials said foreign ministers meeting on Monday would probably lift a European oil embargo and end a flight ban but other measures - financial sanctions and a visa ban - would not be removed until late. The EU will also consider aid for Serbia. <br><br>In the summer governments turned down plans from the European Commission to set aside E2.3bn for 2000-6 in case Mr Milosevic was ousted. The decision created fears in the Balkans that aid for Serbia would come at the expense of other south east European states. However, Chris Patten, the European external relations commissioner, said yesterday he expected ministers now to earmark new funds for Serbia. <br><br>In Belgrade, the central bank on Friday halted the sale of hard currency, presumably to maintain reserves and block capital flight. Opposition leaders said they were physically standing guard at the bank and the government treasury to prevent any effort by Mr Millosevic's supporters to remove funds. <br><br>Meanwhile, two Britons and one Canadian held since August on suspicion of terrorism were released. Another Canadian remains in custody. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFinancial Times: Milosevic hails Kostunica as victor``x970912910,51964,``x``x
``xTom Walker, Belgrade, and Stephen Grey <br><br>THE playboy son of Slobodan Milosevic fled Yugoslavia with his family yesterday amid growing signs that the ousted dictator and the henchmen who sustained his brutal regime will escape trial for war crimes. Opposition leaders claimed that Milosevic's cronies were trying to loot state coffers and smuggle money abroad. <br>Vojislav Kostunica was sworn in as president before parliament last night, completing the transfer of power 48 hours after a momentous uprising against Europe's last communist regime. Kostunica was greeted with a standing ovation and loud cheers from deputies. After taking the oath of office he told them that he was determined to preserve the unity of Yugoslavia. <br><br>Milosevic's son, Marko, left Belgrade for Moscow at 8.30am aboard Yugoslav Airlines flight 132 accompanied by his wife Milica and one-year-old son Marko. This was the grandson whom Milosevic had mentioned in his resignation address to the nation on Friday, when he finally accepted that he had lost the election two weeks ago and said he intended to spend more time with his family. <br><br>Marko Milosevic, 26, who amassed a multi-million-pound fortune after his father's regime granted him concessions to import tobacco and alcohol, was known for his love of fast cars and guns. He once held a machine pistol to the neck of a disabled boy whom he accused of looking at him. <br><br>Marko Milosevic's departure followed a confrontation with opposition supporters in the family's home town of Pozarevac. After a crowd stoned his Rolex cafe and smashed a sign outside his Madona nightclub, he drove through the protesters, shouting abuse, then sped away as they surged towards him. <br><br>There was no indication that Milosevic or his wife and political partner, Mira Markovic, were preparing to go into exile. <br><br>However, sources close to Kostunica claimed that Milosevic, whose brother Borislav is Yugoslavia's ambassador in Moscow, had come close to fleeing after he failed to mobilise the army and anti-terrorist police against opposition supporters massed in Belgrade. <br><br>First Milosevic summoned General Nebojsa Pavkovic, his chief of staff, who told him no drivers could be found for tanks poised to roll into the city. Then he turned to anti-terrorist units, which also refused orders to quell the uprising. <br><br>According to the sources, Milosevic ordered the air force at Batnica airbase, north of Belgrade, to prepare the government's Falcon-50 jet for a flight to Athens on Friday. But the aviation authorities rejected the flight plan and Milosevic was effectively grounded. <br><br>Russian officials who mediated between Milosevic and Kostunica said the former president now believed that as long as he remains in Yugoslavia he will be safe from the international criminal tribunal in the Hague, which wants to try him for war crimes in Kosovo. <br><br>Kostunica - whose inauguration had been delayed by procedural wrangling between his coalition and Milosevic's socialist party - does not recognise the tribunal. He has refused to hand over Milosevic, despite pressure from the United States and European countries that had supported the Yugoslav opposition. <br><br>"It would be pretty foolish for the White House to make noises about putting Milosevic on trial in the Hague," said a source close to the Kremlin. "They know Kostunica can't and won't deliver. They know that is probably never going to happen." <br><br>European Union foreign ministers meeting tomorrow are expected to lift sanctions against Belgrade and offer £1.2 billion in aid without insisting that Milosevic be handed over as a condition of the package. They will promise immediate assistance and a programme lasting up to six years partly to pay for reconstruction following last year's Nato airstrikes. "We don't expect Milosevic to be delivered up as part of the deal, certainly not immediately," said a senior diplomat. <br><br>Another said: "We are largely abandoning the stick, but we will continue to wield a pretty big carrot." <br><br>Tony Blair and Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, were said to be "fully committed" to putting Milosevic on trial. However, they indicated that nothing should interfere with reconstruction. "There is a possibility that Milosevic could be tried in Yugoslavia," a Foreign Office spokesman said. <br><br>Milosevic has been indicted for crimes against humanity in Kosovo. Four senior figures in his regime, including President Milan Milutinovic of Serbia, face similar charges. Another 20 Serbs, among them Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, have been indicted over atrocities elsewhere. <br><br>Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the war crimes tribunal, will urge western governments to avoid making deals with Kostunica unless he co-operates. "This is not just about Milosevic," a tribunal official said. "We expect rapid progress in dealing with all these cases." <br><br>As speculation intensified that some members of Milosevic's circle were preparing to escape, American officials said central banks in Europe had been instructed to look out for suspicious financial transactions originating in Serbia. <br><br><br>Two British policemen held in Belgrade on suspicion of spying said they were repeatedly beaten and feared they would be killed. Adrian Prangnell and John Yore flew into Heathrow last night after nearly 10 weeks in detention. <br>"We were subject to beatings. It's a side of things I want to forget for a little while," said Prangnell. "At one point we stopped in a clearing in the woods and a man came from a lorry with some rope. At that point I thought something unpleasant was going to happen." <br><br>He said they were still shocked at their release. "At midday yesterday John and I were walking around the exercise yard in the military prison." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times:Milosevic's family flees to Moscow``x971084442,5804,``x``x
``xBy Tom Hundley<br>Tribune Staff Writer<br>October 8, 2000 9:01 p.m. CDT<br><br>POZAREVAC, Yugoslavia -- Bambiland was locked and shuttered Sunday afternoon, and Milan Vlasic, a man of NFL linebacker proportions, looked as if he had just been demoted.<br><br>Although he was a bit vague about the precise nature of his duties, Vlasic, 22, used to be "the chief" at Bambiland, a dismal little amusement park built by Marko Milosevic, the bad-boy son of Yugoslavia's ex-president.<br><br>Last week, when tens of thousands of demonstrators in Belgrade stormed the federal parliament building and brought down the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, a handful of demonstrators attacked Bambiland to register their resentment of his son's rule in Pozarevac, a provincial city that is the Milosevic family's hometown.<br><br>The demonstrators roughed up a security guard and fired shots into the empty amusement park before police chased them away, according to Vlasic. Then they smashed up several other businesses owned by the 26-year-old first son, including a disco, an electronics store, a radio station and a cafe.<br><br>For many people in Yugoslavia, Marko Milosevic, with his spiky bleached-blond hairdo, shady friends and impunity from the law, epitomized the crude venality and criminality of his father's regime. The attack on these symbols of the Milosevic family's petty tyranny in Pozarevac is a measure of the anger and frustration that ignited last week's revolution.<br><br>But Vlasic doesn't quite understand that.<br><br>"This was not a political object. It was a playground for little children," he said as he guided a visitor past the park's beach volleyball court, a pretend pirate ship and -- the crown jewel -- a swimming pool now filled with slime-green water.<br><br>"Everything that Marko did in this town was for the people. This park was his dream for 10 years. Before it was a garbage dump," he said.<br><br>"I only wish you could meet him, meet the man they were writing such terrible things about. This 26-year-old man was smarter than a 60-year-old," said Vlasic, sighing.<br><br>Bambiland opened a few weeks after the 1999 NATO bombing campaign ended. The regime billed it as a symbol of Yugoslavia's resilience and determination. Most people saw it as an example of the Milosevic family's odd disconnect from reality.<br><br>The park did a brisk business mainly because school children were forced to go there by school principals who owed their jobs to Milosevic's party.<br><br>"Marko could have been a spoiled child, like any president's son," said Vlasic. "But he tried to do something good for this town. People just don't understand."<br><br>Slavoljub Matic, the Democratic opposition leader in Pozarevac, said he does not think young Milosevic was misunderstood by the people of his hometown. Feared and loathed would be more like it, Matic said.<br><br>Residents of Pozarevac are less likely to remember Marko for his keen sense of civic responsibility than for the time he pistol-whipped a handicapped patron in the toilet of his disco.<br><br>Marko complained that the man had given him a "funny look." It later turned out that the man was partially blind.<br><br>Matic, who served on the Pozarevac City Council, recalled a time when he questioned why Marko had received an extraordinarily sweet deal on a local theater he wanted to convert into a nightclub. For his effrontery, Matic received a barrage of death threats.<br><br>"All his methods were illegal. He thought he could always get what he wanted through fear, by threatening people," Matic said.<br><br>Marko demonstrated his business acumen as a trader in black-market cigarettes and gasoline. He hung around with a fast crowd and showed a real talent for crashing expensive cars.<br><br>In Pozarevac, Marko's "friends" were the muscular young men with shaved heads and black leather jackets who drove around in Jeeps with tinted glass and no license plates.<br><br>"Marko controlled the police here, he controlled virtually all functions of the municipality, and of course Mira Markovic was also complicit in all of these activities. It was only harm that they brought to this town," he said. Markovic, the influential wife of Slobodan Milosevic and a deeply despised symbol of the regime, is Marko's mother.<br><br>Matic said he first sensed that the elder Milosevic's grip on power might be slipping last June, when students at Pozarevac's high school were "invited" to hold their end-of-the-year party at Marko's disco.<br><br>"The high school kids tore up the invitations. The school principal was in huge trouble. And it was then that I realized that Milosevic was finished. Every kid was showing us what his family thought," said Matic.<br><br>When the votes in the Sept. 24 presidential election were tallied, Milosevic had failed to carry his hometown.<br><br>Last week, after he was finally forced to yield power, jubilant opposition supporters wanted to trash the Milosevic family homestead, but Matic and others in the opposition coalition blocked them.<br><br>"The house was untouched. We think it should be preserved as a monument to remind us of what the Family Milosevic has done to us," said Matic.<br><br>Meanwhile, Marko boarded a jet for Moscow on Saturday with his wife and young son. He is not expected to return.<br><br>Back at Bambiland no one had told Vlasic.<br><br>"No, no, no, it's not true," the faithful retainer insisted on Sunday. The idea of Marko abandoning his beloved Pozarevac was apparently unthinkable``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xChicago Tribune:Attack reflects Yugoslavs' anger toward Milosevic``x971084611,95760,``x``x
``xBy Dan Bilefsky in Brussels<br>Published: October 8 2000 20:03GMT | Last Updated: October 9 2000 07:47GMT<br> <br>European Union foreign ministers were set to begin lifting sanctions against Yugoslavia on Monday, in a gesture of support for the new government of President Vojislav Kostunica. <br><br>The lifting of the sanctions, imposed last year after President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown in Kosovo, marks a new era of economic and political reconciliation between the EU and Yugoslavia. President Jacques Chirac of France, which currently holds the EU's presidency, has already signalled the group's support by inviting Mr Kostunica to attend this week's EU summit in Biarritz. <br><br>At Monday's meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg, ministers are expected to remove a ban on all commercial flights to Yugoslavia and lift an oil embargo imposed on Serbia during the 1999 Kosovo war. Ministers will also discuss expanding a "white list" of companies exempt from financial restrictions in a move to help kickstart Serbia's ailing economy. <br><br>An EU freeze on financial assets held by people related to the Milosevic regime and a visa ban on the former president and his entourage are expected to remain. An international arms embargo will also stay in place, having been imposed not by the EU but by the United Nations. To help cement diplomatic ties as speedily as possible, ministers will discuss sending a high-level delegation to Belgrade this week, comprising the foreign ministers of France and Sweden, Chris Patten, external affairs commissioner, and Javier Solana, EU foreign affairs representative. <br><br>However, some European officials have expressed concerns that Mr Solana's prominent role in Nato's bombing campaign when he was Nato secretary-general could make him unwelcome in the Serbian capital. <br><br>EU ministers are expected to consider an aid package of E2.3bn ($2bn) over a seven-year period, drawn up by the European Commission in case Mr Milosevic was ousted from office. This summer, governments turned down the Commission proposals on the grounds that aid for Serbia would come at the expense of other states in the region. <br><br>However, with next year's EU budget still under review, the Commission plans to send an assessment mission to Serbia as early as this week to determine how much funding is necessary for economic reconstruction. <br><br>EU officials shrugged off suggestions that Mr Kostunica's resistance to co-operating with the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague could hamper relations. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFinancial Times:EU to start lifting sanctions on Yugoslavia``x971084728,40493,``x``x
``xBy Irena Guzelova and Stefan Wagstyl in Belgrade<br>Published: October 8 2000 19:30GMT | Last Updated: October 9 2000 07:27GMT<br> <br>Vojislav Kostunica was on Sunday fighting to bolster his position by forming political alliances after his weekend inauguration as Yugoslavia's new president. <br><br>As he sought to win over supporters of ousted leader Slobodan Milosevic, Mr Kostunica's aides revealed the extent of the country's economic crisis. <br><br>Mladjan Dinkic, a leading economist, tipped as a future central bank governor, said Yugoslavia needed $500m in immediate aid, and called for a donors' conference to plan longer-term support and an end to sanctions. <br><br>In a first act of support for the new government, European foreign ministers are expected to begin lifting sanctions against Belgrade when they meet in Luxembourg on Monday. <br><br>Romano Prodi, European commission president, on Sunday sent a message to Belgrade lauding Mr Kostunica for his "courageous stand" in favour of democracy. <br><br>"Europe has long said that it would welcome a democratic Yugoslavia with open arms and we look forward to carrying out that promise," he said. <br><br>However, Mr Kostunica's campaign to buttress his position has been complicated by Mr Milosevic's refusal to abandon the political scene. Even though Mr Milosevic has conceded defeat, he has pledged to stay as leader of the Socialist party. <br><br>Mr Kostunica has had lengthy talks between his opposition block and other parties over allocation of seats in the Federal parliament. <br><br>In parliament, his majority depends on an alliance with Montenegro's pro-Yugoslav party, which has until recently supported Mr Milosevic. By late yesterday it still was not clear which side they would back. <br><br>It was reported at the weekend that Marko Markovic, Mr Milosevic's playboy businessman son, had fled to Moscow with his wife and son. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFinancial Times:Kostunica struggles to form alliances``x971084857,74114,``x``x
``xBy Scott Peterson <br>Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor<br><br>BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA <br>The swearing in of Vojislav Kostunica Saturday evening as Yugoslavia's first popularly elected president marks the end to the last vestiges of state-imposed communism in Europe. <br><br>It's also a historic seal on a bloodless revolution that brought to a close Slobodan Milosevic's 13 year reign. Tired of the four Balkan wars instigated by Mr. Milosevic - which spawned the term "ethnic cleansing" - and a decade of international sanctions and isolation, Yugoslavia's populace is now coming to terms with the magnitude of their accomplishment. <br>"We lived in a system without democracy. It exists now," said Mr. Kostunica, the law professor after taking the oath of office late Saturday. He admitted to the legislators assembled in a makehift parliament building in Belgrade that the speed of the transfer of power was "like a dream." <br><br>Indeed, in the streets of Belgrade this weekend there's euphoria and a sense of disbelief. The relatively peaceful overthrow of Milosevic came after years of massive rallies by opposition parties that generally met with brute force and tear gas. Almost all expected that the final push against the autocrat would result in a huge loss of life – and possibly fail. <br><br>But when the first waves of protestors on Thursday surged forward against the teargas swirling around the ornate federal parliament building, the police put up little resistance, and then fled. <br><br>This weekend, many Serbs came to visit the site of the uprising as if to confirm that it had happened. With the crunch of broken glass underfoot and the smell of smoke still thick in the air, the charred parliament building is now a destination for "tourists" of the revolution. <br><br>Couples holding hands stray from one smashed window to another, peering in at aged velvet chairs that escaped the fire, or piles of documents. Among them were piles of ballots from the 24 September election, all dutifully marked - by someone – for Milosevic, and apparently meant for stuffing ballot boxes. <br><br>It was nearly two weeks ago, that the opposition led by Kostunica declared an outright victory in the first round of voting. Milosevic and the electoral institutions under his control said the margin of victory was too thin; a second round run-off was required. But Kostunica and his supporters had other plans. <br><br>Milosevic conceded defeat just before midnight Friday, and the streets echoed with the blaring of horns and whistles of Yugoslavia's revolutionaries. The US and European nations have vowed to lift international sanctions as soon as possible - possibly as early as Monday - and to welcome Yugoslavia back into the European fold. <br><br>But in Belegrade the streets are still full of loud drum-beating, dancing, and drinking celebrants, who charge up and down the main streets in cars, waving Serbian and Yugoslav flags. <br><br>And at the ruins of the parliament building, a steady stream of people simply walk around the building, slack-jawed at the work that they - the people - have wrought. Men take pictures of women in front of piles of cars destroyed during Thursday's uprising. Others picked through the revolutionary debris for souvenirs. <br><br>"See, look at Milosevic!" cries one man, pointing at a pig's head that had been placed on the gray-black burned chassis of a car behind the building. Stuck in the pig's mouth is a business card for Vreme, an opposition magazine. The protest slogan "He's finished" - referring to Miolsevic - is painted in black on the wall behind. <br><br>President Kostunica's message is one of reestablishing law and order, and of no revenge - including against Milosevic, who is indicted for war crimes at the United Nations international tribunal in The Hague. Milosevic says that he will be spending more time with his family, but will be leading the opposition now. He heads Yugoslavia's largest political party. <br><br>Kostunica, who is also an ardent Serb nationalist, vows that he will restore Yugoslav control over Kosovo - which remains under international administration - in a "civilized" way. <br><br>Despite years of authoritarian rule, Serb analysts say their countrymen are ready to embrace democracy. "Serbia has the capacity and the intelligence, and in Serbia civil society has been very strong," says Natasha Kandic, head of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade. <br><br>"We can talk about what happened, and open our borders. That is invaluable for the future."<br><br>People working in the judiciary called opposition officials to warn them of the destruction of the files, some of which was stopped. There was a similar incident at the Foreign Ministry, though of lesser importance.<br><br>Indicative of the problems was the drama on Saturday at the main state bank that clears payments between businesses, an organization known as the Zavod za Obracun Placanja, or Zop. The crisis committee was told that Milosevic officials were transferring large sums of money to private companies to pay for pre-election government purchases of cooking oil and sugar.<br><br>The company that created the bank's electronic data system agreed to crash the computers to stop the transactions, but allow for the payment of important benefits like pensions. The crisis committee then appointed Zivko Nesic, general manager of the bank until fired in 1998, to manage it.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica and his allies are also trying to assert control over the Serbian government and Parliament, which did not go through new elections. It has been dominated by Mr. Milosevic's coalition, which was allied with the Serbian Radical Party. If, however, the Radicals realign themselves with the Serbian Renewal Movement, another party that was sometimes in opposition and sometimes allied with Mr. Milosevic, they could bring down the current government. Both those parties fear that new elections, which Mr. Kostunica wants in both the federal and Serbian parliaments within the next 90 days, will devastate them.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica is trying to convince the Serbian president, Milan Milutinovic, a wavering Milosevic ally who was also indicted by the war crimes tribunal, to dissolve the Serbian Parliament on the grounds that new elections are required to restore political stability. Mr. Milutinovic, not known for bravery, is being told that now is the time to move or face charges.<br><br>If he does not help, and the two other parties do not play along, Mr. Kostunica and his allies are prepared to call for tens of thousands of citizens to rally in front of the Parliament, a form of threat.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Cristian Science Monitor:Yugoslavia's populace coming to terms with their accomplishment``x971084931,36501,``x``x
``xBy Daniel Williams<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Monday, October 9, 2000; Page A16 <br><br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia, Oct. 8 – The dramatic changes in Yugoslavia are being viewed with deep ambivalence here in the capital of Montenegro, the federation's smaller, Mediterranean side republic. There's relief over Slobodan Milosevic's departure, but fears that the triumph of democracy in Belgrade diminishes one of the main arguments for independence. <br><br><br>"What happened in Belgrade was good for Belgrade. What it means for us is very unclear," said Eduard Miler, who is directing a play at the National Theater portraying life in Yugoslavia as hell.<br><br><br>Besides Serbia, Montenegro is all that's left after a decade-long exodus of Yugoslav republics from their Communist-era union. While Milosevic was in power, the case for Montenegro's eventual independence was easy to sustain; the West viewed him as the embodiment of evil, and Montenegro's stand against him was regarded as heroic.<br><br><br>But now that there is democracy in Belgrade, what is the point of separation? Montenegro's population is a mixture of Serbs and Montenegrins who speak the same language and largely share the Orthodox Christian faith. In the new context, the independence-minded government of President Milo Djukanovic is struggling to figure out how to present its case.<br><br><br>"I'm afraid we will just be looked at as troublemakers," Foreign Minster Branko Lukovac said in an interview today.<br><br><br>So far Djukanovic has resisted the temptation to declare outright independence, which would put the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, in a difficult position just as he is trying to consolidate his hold on power. Kostunica insists that both Montenegro and Kosovo – a province of Serbia – should remain part of Yugoslavia.<br><br><br>Djukanovic is pressing for talks with Kostunica to "redefine our relationship," Lukovac said. "We see Kostunica as a partner for dialogue."<br><br><br>From the Montenegrin point of view, such talks should lead to effective independence for the republic of 600,000 people while retaining open borders with Serbia and fluid economic relations.<br><br><br>"We have a funny situation. We are happy that Milosevic is gone, but the problem of our relations remains. Our position is for a new contract with Serbia," Lukovac said.<br><br><br>He expressed concern that Montenegro has lost its position as a staunch opponent of the Milosevic regime. He said the United States and Western Europe may be more interested in shoring up Kostunica than in fulfilling Montenegro's desires.<br><br><br>"In some ways, we were a tool of the West in pressuring Serbia," Lukovac said. "The problem to be resolved was Serbia, not our independence. Now interest will be on Belgrade."<br><br><br>In Washington, a senior Clinton administration official said Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright had spoken "at least" twice with Djukanovic last week to assure him of continued U.S. support. "The basic message to him and to others is, yes, we're going to work with the new Serbian government, but we're going to keep up our work with you," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We've told them quite clearly that we're not going to forget about the others in the region."<br><br><br>Despite their misgivings, Montenegrins express relief that a ruler they considered dangerous has fallen. There was fear that Milosevic would provoke a conflict with Montenegro to whip up support for staying in power.<br><br><br>No one expects Kostunica to threaten Montenegro's stability. Some even hope that the era of conflict in the Balkans is at an end, which would help restore the tourist business that once made up two-thirds of Montenegro's foreign-currency income.<br><br><br>To boost their arguments for independence, advocates fall back on history and the tragedy of having been linked with Serbia. Montenegro was once an independent kingdom, and has its own poets, heroes and easy-going Mediterranean personality. In any case, separatists ask, why should Montengro be required to remain part of a political corpse? "Yugoslavia is dead. It really exists just in the minds of Serbia," said Jevrem Brkovic, a prominent writer.<br><br><br>Brkovic distrusts Kostunica and the Serbs who brought him to power. "They voted him in because Milosevic failed to create a greater Serbia," he said. "They haven't repented for what was done in the name of Serbia."<br><br><br>Brkovic is a confidant of Djukanovic and has advised the president to hold a referendum. He believes 75 percent of voters would choose independence. Other analysts say the margin would be slimmer – perhaps 60 percent.<br><br><br>Younger Montenegrins want to get on with their lives, feeling that they have lost a decade in the chaos and isolation brought on by wars in the Balkans.<br><br><br>"I was 17 when the conflict began," said Yelena Vujovic, a public relations director for the National Theater. "We haven't lived a normal day since."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWashington Post:Montenegro Uncertain of Future``x971084984,98579,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 8 — The Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, struggled today, his first in office, to consolidate his authority over Serbia and his own allies, trying to find a balance between revolutionary justice and legality in the post-Milosevic era.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica is president, but some in the 18-party coalition that backed him are afraid that his concern for legal niceties may prove costly in the uneasy vacuum of power that has followed Slobodan Milosevic's ouster.<br><br>Already, there have been serious behind-the-scenes struggles for control of the police, the courts, the banking system and customs authorities.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica's coalition has formed a "crisis committee" that is a kind of parallel government to the Serbian authorities who were beholden to Mr. Milosevic. They are moving through institutions one by one, trying to ensure support for a new democratic authority.<br><br>"We are against revolutionary transformation, but there are always people for revolutionary change," said Dragor Hiber, a member of the crisis committee.<br><br>Veran Matic, the president of ANEM, the Association of Independent Electronic Media, said the greatest danger to Mr. Kostunica "is the question of the unity of the democratic opposition." <br><br>Mr. Kostunica's problems range from the enormous to the bizarre. One of the most bizarre concerns the visit on Tuesday of the French Foreign Minister, Hubert Vedrine. Mr. Vedrine, along with President Clinton — who called Mr. Kostunica today — and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, were convicted in absentia of war crimes in a pre-election propaganda exercise here. Formally, Mr. Vedrine and the others face arrest and 20 years in jail, and their photographs are up on wanted posters in police stations and at the airport.<br><br>Kostunica officials are afraid that the police may embarrass Mr. Vedrine at the airport. Mr. Kostunica can sign an amnesty, but that is considered politically awkward here. The public prosecutor can void the conviction, but the process is clumsy. So the officials are working, quietly, on the police not to act.<br><br>Mr. Clinton spoke to Mr. Kostunica this evening for five minutes to congratulate him. Mr. Kostunica has been reluctant to have William Montgomery, the ambassador who has been running the "Yugoslav embassy in exile" in Budapest, to be appointed the American ambassador in Belgrade when relations are restored. Mr. Montgomery's office in Budapest helped to run and fund the anti-Milosevic campaign, which Mr. Kostunica regarded as overt meddling in Serbia's affairs.<br><br>But Mr. Kostunica would go along with the appointment, his aides say, if all sanctions against Yugoslavia are lifted, including the so-called outer wall, which blocks Yugoslav access to international financial institutions — and thus to crucial loans and credits.<br><br>Control of the police is a significant issue. The police did not in any serious way oppose the mass protest last Thursday that led to the burning of the federal Parliament, helped along by some prior agreements made with the opposition.<br><br>In today's issue of the daily Politika, Zoran Djindjic, head of the Democratic Party, the backbone of the opposition, said the police "had reorganized, stabilized and realized what the interest of the people is, and the police have become practically immune to orders that could bring them into conflict with the people."<br><br>But knowledgeable officials say former police and security officials with connections to Mr. Djindjic attempted to take provisional control of Belgrade police headquarters on Friday morning and again this morning, telling the chief of police, Gen. Branko Djuric, to hand over his authority and his firearm. General Djuric called other opposition officials, with whom he had promised cooperation, and said he would shoot himself first. He asked for protection and someone to guard him at night. The situation has continued, but with the intervention this morning of Mr. Kostunica himself, it appears to have been calmed, officials said.<br><br>Mr. Milosevic's head of state security, Rade Markovic, is also said to have contacted Mr. Kostunica's aides complaining about death threats from former security officers, and has discussed resigning. Mr. Kostunica met privately today with top security officials.<br><br>On Friday, at the lucrative Customs Department, a close Milosevic ally, Mihalj Kertes, was pressured by armed men working for the opposition to leave office. Weapons were reportedly found in Mr. Kertes' office. To the surprise of Mr. Kostunica and some of his allies, a businessman named Dusan Zabunovic, who is considered close to Mr. Djindjic and owns an import company called M.P.S., was appointed head of customs. The selection caused such an uproar among the opposition leaders themselves that it was rescinded the same day.<br><br>There was another drama at the courts, with senior Milosevic judges like Milena Arezina, chief judge of the Serbian trade court, ordering the destruction of documents relating to sensitive cases, like the government takeover of the I.C.N. pharmaceutical company owned by Milan Panic, a Serb-American, and the cases against ABC Produkt, a publisher that owns an independent daily newspaper, Glas Javnosti.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Kostunica Walks Tightrope to Consolidate His Authority``x971085066,35235,``x``x
``xBalkans: Some fear that the incident in the Yugoslav republic was in fact an assassination attempt by Milosevic's allies. <br><br>By CAROL J. WILLIAMS, Times Staff Writer<br><br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia--President Milo Djukanovic of Montenegro suffered unspecified injuries and was hospitalized Monday night after his limousine crashed on a mountain road despite a security cordon meant to protect a figure whose defiance of Slobodan Milosevic was crucial in toppling the Yugoslav dictator.<br>News of the crash initially triggered alarm in top government offices here because it was assumed to have been an attempt on the pro-Western president's life. One senior official blurted out after hearing of the crash: "There is no way this was an accident! There is no way this wasn't a setup!"<br>A terse government statement surfaced on Montenegrin television five hours after the crash, and it contained neither pictures of Djukanovic, who reportedly was recuperating, nor any footage from the crash scene. In a region rife with conspiracy theories, official attempts to play down the incident could unleash fears of hard-line retaliation if Djukanovic fails to appear in public soon to show that he is not seriously injured.<br><br>Milosevic Loyalists Still Control Armed Forces<br>Although euphoria has reigned in Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, since Milosevic retreated from pro-democracy demonstrators in Belgrade, the capital, on Thursday, razor-sharp tensions still prevail in Montenegro, the federation's smaller republic. Milosevic allies still control the federal armed forces and authoritarian political parties here that claim to represent Montenegro in the Yugoslav parliament.<br>Many here fear that Milosevic is still capable of setting his loyalists against Djukanovic allies in a battle for control of Montenegro. If the suspicious car crash proves to be the work of forces still loyal to Milosevic, Montenegrins may speed up their quest for independence.<br>Djukanovic has about two-thirds support in this republic of about 700,000 residents, but he is regarded as a traitor by many of the rest. He always travels in an armored motorcade with escort vehicles ahead and behind his limousine. The failure of that security vigilance to prevent the 4 p.m. crash cast further suspicion on the contradictory accounts of what happened near the mountain town of Cetinje, 20 miles southwest of Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital.<br><br>Conflicting Accounts of Events, Injuries<br>Three sources close to Djukanovic said a vehicle suddenly appeared in front of the limousine after the forward cars of the motorcade had sped past, although police usually clear the road ahead of the motorcade and halt traffic at crossroads. Two of the sources said it was a car that suddenly pulled in front of the president's vehicle, but the other insisted that it was a motorcycle.<br>Colleagues and confidants of the president gave conflicting accounts of his injuries as well as the possibility that the crash was not accidental.<br>"This is a very dangerous situation," said Deputy Prime Minister Dragisa Burzan, one senior official still unconvinced that the crash was an innocent mishap. "The initial reports are that it was an accident. But I want to see the reports on the police investigation."<br>A family friend leaving the hospital where Djukanovic was being treated said the president suffered a back injury but was in relatively good condition. The television report of the government statement gave no specifics of his injuries, only that he was "recovering successfully."<br>"It's nothing," insisted poet Jevrem Vrkovic, another Djukanovic friend. Vrkovic said the president had injured his foot, but he acknowledged that he had not seen Djukanovic.<br>Another source close to Djukanovic said the president injured his neck when the speeding limousine veered off the road to avoid hitting the intruding vehicle, became airborne as it soared up an embankment and rolled 360 degrees before landing upright. It was not known whether the president was wearing a seat belt, but many in the Balkans regard seat belts as unmanly.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLA Times:Montenegro President Injured in Car Crash ``x971167334,53829,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 9 — The new president of Yugoslavia, Vojislav Kostunica, took a firmer hold on power today, with the resignation of two crucial allies of Slobodan Milosevic and the announcement of early elections to the Serbian Parliament. <br><br>One of those who resigned, signaling the further dismantling of the old federal government, was the Yugoslav prime minister, Momir Bulatovic. Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, who controlled the Serbian police, also resigned.<br><br>In other encouraging news for the new government, the European Union lifted major sanctions and pledged to contribute about $2 billion in aid to help rebuild Yugoslavia.<br><br>Milan Milutinovic, the president of Serbia — the most important of the two remaining republics that comprise Yugoslavia — and leaders of the parties in the Serbian Parliament agreed to dissolve it and call elections for mid-December, probably on Dec. 17.<br><br>The Serbian Parliament, which had been controlled by Mr. Milosevic with the Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj, was not up for election on Sept. 24, when Mr. Kostunica defeated Mr. Milosevic for the federal presidency and elections were held for the federal Parliament.<br><br>Yet it is in Serbia and in its government where real constitutional power lies, not in the federal government. Under Mr. Milosevic, constitutional distinctions mattered less in a system he controlled.<br><br>But under Mr. Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer, the distinctions between the narrow competency of the federal government and the broad powers of the Serbian one will have greater impact. After new elections, almost sure to include voting for a new Serbian president, conflicts within a fragile opposition suddenly in power could become more obvious, and Mr. Kostunica's power may be less sweeping than it appears now.<br><br>In this half-finished revolution, when Mr. Kostunica's allies consider Mr. Milosevic's continuing control over the Serbian police and special police their greatest danger, dismantling the Serbian power structure has been crucial.<br><br>The new government made an important start today, with the agreement for new Serbian elections and the resignation under pressure of Mr. Stojiljkovic, the interior minister. But Rade Markovic, the chief of the secret police, has still not resigned and is feeling more confident about his position, a political leader said tonight.<br><br>New Serbian elections should do much to wipe out the parliamentary position of Mr. Milosevic's Socialist Party and its coalition partner, the Yugoslav United Left of his wife, Mirjana Markovic. For that reason alone, said Ognjen Pribicevic, an adviser to a leader in the new government, the agreements today matter.<br><br>"The Socialist Party will be over for now, that's the most important thing, which means that Milosevic will be over," he said. "It means we are entering a new time."<br><br>He is also very concerned about the situation in the manifold layers of the Serbian police that Mr. Milosevic pampered and nurtured, even if they were unwilling to shoot at protesters last week.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica's allies want the Interior Ministry job for themselves in what would be a provisional, all- party Serbian government to run the republic until the December elections. But negotiations bogged down today with the parties currently in the Serbian Parliament, especially with Mr. Seselj, who wants more seats in the new government but who also spoke trenchantly and bitterly about the extra-legal revolutionary capturing of institutions by some of Mr. Kostunica's supporters.<br><br>"We are not willing to legalize this putsch," Mr. Seselj said. "We have been robbed of the police. Everything being done now is unlawful, and we refuse to give it an umbrella of legitimacy. If there a chance to put things back into legal and constitutional boundaries, we will play along. Revolution is revolution, and a putsch is a putsch. It is honorable to be a counterrevolutionary today."<br><br>Mr. Seselj has broken with Mr. Milosevic and helped Mr. Kostunica challenge election fraud. But he is also trying to protect his party, which could suffer badly in new elections, and negotiate a better deal with the new democratic forces.<br><br>A supporter of Mr. Kostunica, Dragan Veselinov, a party leader from Vojvodina, answered: "This is not about a coup, this is not about a putsch. This is about the will of the people. The people have taken power. That's what this is about. The people spoke at elections you convoked."<br><br>He criticized the Milosevic coalition for hanging on when it has been so thoroughly repudiated and said: "You are the former ones. You are ghosts from the past. This nation is watching you for the last time. Your faces will no longer be around in December. In nine and a half weeks, people will only see smiles here."<br><br>The bitterness is real. Mr. Kostunica talks of constitutional legality, but others in the coalition that backed him fear that if they move too slowly to assert control over every powerful institution, Mr. Milosevic and his allies will take advantage of legal niceties and stage a comeback.<br><br>It is an awkward mix, conceded Cedomir Jovanovic, a top aide to the opposition campaign manager Zoran Djindjic, leader of the Democratic Party. "We started a process and our intention now is to legitimate that process," Mr. Jovanovic said. "But to slow it down or even stop it would be dangerous."<br><br>Mr. Seselj's presidential candidate, Tomislav Nikolic, carried the accusation further. "You would have never proved electoral theft if we had not helped you," he said. "Everything else that carried over into Serbia — which was not at issue in this election — is a putsch. It is not the people's will for you to go into universities and take over," he said.<br><br>"Now you're looking for the government of Serbia to provide you with a veneer of legality," Mr. Nikolic said. "You break down doors. You depose and fire people, you come in with guns and pistols. Have any of these here present dictators, as you routinely call them, ever put a gun to any of your heads?"<br><br>Mr. Seselj then warned that "this revolution, too, will soon start eating its children," especially over the issues of money, benefits and privileges that power brings.<br><br>Despite the criticism, however, the Parliament will be dissolved and a new Serbian government will be negotiated, with opposition membership, that will further dismantle Mr. Milosevic's control.<br><br>The newly elected federal Parliament is still squabbling, but the resignation of Mr. Bulatovic, the prime minister, makes it more likely that his Montenegrin Socialist Party will go into coalition with Mr. Kostunica's supporters in the federal government.<br><br>Because the September election was boycotted by the Montenegrin president, Milo Djukanovic, the pro- Western leader, he has no seats in the new Yugoslav Parliament. But Mr. Kostunica wants to find a federal government, possibly made up of technicians and experts, that Mr. Djukanovic can tacitly support, at least until new federal elections could take place.<br><br>A decision by the Serbian parliament to reject a motion to scrap a Milosevic law banning political activity at universities brought a few hundred students to protest outside the Parliament. They booed Mr. Draskovic and staged a march on Mr. Milosevic's home in the suburb of Dedinje, which was easily deflected by the police.<br><br>There was a moment of drama when Mr. Seselj, a bruising figure, left the Parliament, and some protesters, saying that he was obstructing democratic change, scuffled with his bodyguards. A weapon was fired into the air, but no one was hurt.<br><br>There were more moments of revolutionary revenge today. Workers attacked Radoman Bozovic, a Milosevic ally and director of Genex, the largest state-run import-export company. He tried to flee from his car, but he was caught and beaten. His bodyguards snatched him and moved him into a nearby building for safety. Later, Mr. Bozovic resigned.<br><br>In a plaintive appeal, Yugoslavia's Defense Minister, Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic, urged Mr. Milosevic's allies to rally. Otherwise, he said in an open letter, the Serbs might face extinction as a people, saying that "disunity among the Serbs is inciting the plans of our proven enemies" to occupy the country, referring to allegations that the new government here is subject to NATO control.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Yugoslav Elections Planned as Shift in Power Takes Hold``x971167398,90544,``x``x
``xSerbia's pro-Milosevic government resigned yesterday, as European leaders eased an oil embargo and other international sanctions. <br><br>By Scott Peterson <br>Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>In the end, the people of Yugoslavia have reclaimed their country. After 13 years of harsh sanctions and isolation caused by the authoritarian rule of strongman Slobodan Milosevic, people took to the streets, backing up their democratic vote and bringing his reign to an end. <br><br>Yugoslavia's new president, Vojislav Kostunica, is moving to consolidate his hold on power days after the popular uprising. In a significant boost, the Serbian parliament - separate from the Federal parliament, and controlled by Milosevic allies - resigned yesterday. Parliamentary elections are expected to be held Dec. 19. <br><br>Milosevic's ouster came after people blocked roads throughout the country last week, closed down the largest coal mine - disrupting electricity - and persuaded the military and police not to crack down. <br><br>Those events continued to reverberate as workers stormed a state-run textile factory in Nis, Serbia's third-largest city, demanding the removal of managers loyal to Milosevic. <br><br>Serbs are stunned and still celebrating noisily, since their protests for years were met with brute force and tear gas. Most predicted that the final push of democracy against dictatorship would result in bloodshed. <br><br>Instead, as smoke rose above the sacked parliament and state television last Thursday, riot police gave up their shields and truncheons and fled before hundreds of thousands of protesters. Across Serbia, ordinary people witnessed extraordinary moments of change that add up to a defining moment in European history. <br><br>"Mothers kissed their sons, and husbands told their wives: 'Here are the keys, and there is money,' as if they knew they might not come back," says Alexander, an eyewitness to events who did not want to give his last name. From his town of Cacak, 60 miles south of Belgrade, he watched people drive to the capital to protest. "They were determined. It took 10 years, but then they came to Belgrade to do their job." <br><br>Clearly emotional at Yugoslavia's first-ever peaceful and democratic transfer of power, Mr. Kostunica told parliamentarians after his inauguration on Saturday: "To me, it appears that everything that has been happening is a dream, but a dream that is true when I wake up. <br><br>"If there is something this nation lacks after all the tests, and after all the suffering, all the hardship, it is peace and calm in the most basic sense of the words." <br><br>Kostunica is just beginning the tricky game of consolidating power, though Western leaders vow to immediately end Yugoslavia's isolation. European Union foreign ministers moved quickest, lifting embargoes on oil and commercial flights yesterday and easing other sanctions. A $2 billion aid package over seven years is on the table, and the Americans also want to help. <br><br>But Milosevic's legacy of four disastrous Balkan wars - which gave the term "ethnic cleansing" to the war crimes lexicon - a decade of sanctions and impoverishment, and last year's 78-day NATO bombing campaign, will not be so easily forgotten. <br><br>The Cacak convoy - 13-miles long and carrying a bulldozer to remove police checkpoints - was one element of the opposition strategy that unnerved security forces and forced the democratic victory. "The police saw that these guys [from Cacak] were serious. They had no emotion, no adrenaline. They were cool as a cucumber," Alexander recalls of the first police checkpoint outside Cacak. "The mayor came and negotiated for three minutes, but in that time men with crowbars and hammers pushed two of their vehicles into a ravine." The police gave way. <br><br>Important moments also occurred at the Kolubara mine complex south of Belgrade, where more than 7,000 miners refused to work and faced down the chief of staff of the Yugoslav Army. In Belgrade, the scale of the street protest reminded many of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. <br><br>At the coal mine, a standoff on Wednesday galvanized opposition supporters and showed the first cracks in police might. Miners had never protested Milosevic's rule in that way. "I was surprised to see thousands of cars from everywhere in Serbia, there to support the miners and bring them food," says Natasha Kandic, head of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade. "People said, 'The police can arrest and kill us, but they can't begin production without us,'" she recalls. "Then I asked a policeman, 'What if you get the order to attack?' and he said 'Nobody can order us to attack civilians.' " <br><br>The prelude climaxed with the mass demonstration Thursday in Belgrade in front of the parliament building. Early on, police fired a single volley of tear-gas canisters, but the crowd did not disperse. Opposition leaders had given Milosevic until that afternoon to concede outright defeat in Sept. 24 elections. But the embattled president was silent. <br><br>"There were three times more people than ever before," says Nebojsa Spaic, a protest veteran with the independent Media Center in Belgrade, who was not far from the front line on the parliament steps. <br><br>The Cacak convoy was there too, with the bulldozer - and their resolve. "I saw that those Cacak people were willing to go all the way, and it encouraged us," Mr. Spaic says. <br><br>There were surreal scenes: A boy, about two years old, escaped his parents and got through the police line and somehow walked along the parliament steps. A dog wandered along also, with an opposition "He's finished" sticker on his side. Then a man broke through, and from the steps waved everyone forward. <br><br>"The crush started, and so did the running battle," Spaic recalls. "They [police] did not shoot, use water cannons or horses, and they could have." <br><br>The action shifted to the nearby state television building, and a gun battle there. Emerging from the smoking building, pro-government journalists were set upon by the crowd. "I saw a TV presenter for Radio-Television Serbia, Staka Novovic, who had presented the 3 p.m. news," Spaic says. "She had mud in her hair, and so much spit on her face that her make-up had run. Then I understood it was all over. Now we are entering the period of real transition." <br><br><br>Since then, the parliament building and TV station have become an attraction for "tourists" of the revolution. Couples holding hands stray from one smashed window to another, peering past jagged glass at aged velvet chairs that escaped the fire, or piles of documents. Among them lie election ballots, all dutifully marked for Milosevic, and presumably meant for stuffing ballot boxes. <br><br>Milosevic conceded defeat just before midnight Friday, and the streets echoed with the blaring horns and whistles of Yugoslavia's revolutionaries. <br><br>But all that mattered to those who visited the ruins was the example of years of misrule. "See, look at Milosevic!" cried one man, pointing out a pig's head that had been placed on the burned chassis of a car. The slogan "He's finished" - referring to Milosevic - was painted in black on the wall behind. <br><br>Students swept up glass and ash, but a steady stream of people just walked around the building, slack-jawed at what they had wrough. Some picked through the debris for souvenirs. <br><br>"The system is collapsing, in the same way it did in Eastern Europe in 1989," says Zarko Korac, an opposition leader whose day of revolt included delivering a message on state-run Politika television. <br><br>" 'This is the property of the people now,' I said when I went into Politika," Mr. Korac recalls. The managers left through the back door and the elevator was shut down, so he ran up to the 17th floor studio. "There was music, and then all of a sudden I appeared and people were startled - I didn't know so many people watched Politika," he says. " 'Welcome, this is the new TV. It's free now,' I announced, and then left it to the journalists." <br><br>The result of all these moments was an unexpectedly violence-free coup, a mixture of both revolution and democracy that toppled a die-hard regime. <br><br>"This is a weird, strange ending of the collapse of the Berlin Wall," Korac says. "This was a mutant system, but it was more similar to a communist totalitarian system than a democracy. It was based on fear, lies, manipulation and the secret police. <br><br>"Everybody says 'We are liberated! We are free!" he adds. "Do you know how I felt when I learned that state security is no longer taping our calls?" ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCristian Science Monitor:After Milosevic exit, time to clean house in Yugoslavia ``x971167488,79589,``x``x
``xBy Stefan Wagstyl and Irena Guzelova in Belgrade<br>Published: October 9 2000 19:48GMT <br> <br>Vojislav Kostunica, Yugoslavia's newly elected president, was on Monday night close to success in his attack on the Serbian parliament, a key power base of ousted leader Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Opposition leaders said an early election would be called in Serbia for mid-December, as they sought to capitalise on Mr Kostunica's victory in the presidential poll and on the popular support demonstrated in last week's storming of the federal parliament. <br><br>However, by late Monday night, Milan Milutinovic, the Serbian president and a close ally of Mr Milosevic, had still not dissolved parliament and called elections. Demonstrators vented their anger outside the Serbian parliament by shouting and hurling bricks at Vojislav Seselj, leader of the ultra-nationalist Radical party, who is under pressure to switch allegiance from Mr Milosevic to the opposition. <br><br>The tensions flared as the democratic opposition scored other significant gains with the resignations of two pro-Milosevic ministers, the revoking of draconian press restrictions and progress in the formation of an all-party transitional government, which might include Mr Milosevic's socialist party but not Mr Milosevic himself. <br><br>In Brussels, the European Union partially lifted sanctions against Belgrade, removing an oil ban. EU ministers also removed an air travel ban, which had earlier been suspended. But they left in place financial sanctions aimed mainly at businesses linked with Mr Milosevic. <br><br>On the foreign exchange markets, the Yugoslav dinar strengthened dramatically from about 40 to the Deutschemark to some 25. <br><br>In Beijing, the Chinese authorities turned back Mr Milosevic's playboy son Marko and forced him to return to Moscow, where he had earlier taken refuge after fleeing from Belgrade. The move is a big blow for the Milosevic family, which has long enjoyed Beijing's support and has business interests in China. <br><br>The democratic opposition is bent on early elections in Serbia to secure control of the republic's government, which enjoys stronger powers than the federal institutions. <br><br>Opposition leaders said that despite Monday's events they expected to secure a dissolution of the Serb parliament as soon as this week. They drew heart from the resignations of Momir Bulatovic, the federal prime minister and long-time Milosevic ally, and Vlajko Stojiljkovic, the Serbian interior minister. <br><br>Mr Kostunica will also draw satisfaction from an announcement from Montenegro, Serbia's western-leaning sister republic, that it would participate in talks. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFinancial Times:Serbian election 'by December'``x971167599,17751,``x``x
``xFOLLOWING the euphoria of last week's revolution, Vojislav Kostunica moved yesterday to consolidate his rule in the face of obstruction from the Serbian president and parliament. <br><br>Momir Bulatovic resigned as Yugoslav prime minister, thus bringing down the federal government. The main political parties reached agreement in principle on forming a transitional Serbian administration of experts. Vlajko Stojiljkovic, one of five people indicted by the international tribunal in The Hague for war crimes in Kosovo, resigned as Serbian interior minister. <br><br>Fresh elections for the Serbian parliament were announced for December, but had yet to win approval from the Serbian President, Milan Milutonovic, another indicted war criminal, and Serbian MPs loyal to Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>The EU matched these developments by lifting the oil embargo and the flight ban. It also made clear that one of the priorities for aid would be clearing the Danube of debris from last year's Nato air war.<br><br>So far, so good. The EU's initial moves to bring Serbia in from the cold are nicely calibrated with the removal of obstacles to the full exercise of presidential powers by Mr Kostunica. The task now for the EU and the United States is to ensure that the two continue in step.<br><br>The West has intervened in the disintegration of Tito's Yugoslavia to uphold the principle of self-determination. The same principle should be applied in judging Mr Kostunica's approach to the territories that Milosevic tried to incorporate in a Greater Serbia. Kosovo may lie close to any Serbian nationalist's heart, but there is no hope of ethnic Albanian agreement to union unless attitudes in Belgrade change radically. <br><br>Montenegro, which was edging out of the Yugoslav federation, remains suspicious of Serbian intentions. And in Sarajevo they doubt whether the advent of Mr Kostunica will strengthen the fragile construct prescribed for Bosnia-Hercegovina at Dayton.<br><br>These doubts about the new Yugoslav leader are warranted. He is a much more consistent nationalist than Milosevic. He wants to hold on to the rump federation with which his predecessor was left after being thwarted in Bosnia. And he challenges the right of the Hague tribunal to try Serbs indicted for war crimes.<br><br>That issue has been put on the back-burner by the Western powers. They will be watching first to see how Mr Kostunica deals with the Serbian MPs and Milosevic henchmen still occupying top civilian and military posts. But it remains the ultimate test of the new president's willingness to reintegrate his country into Europe. <br><br>Yugoslavia became a pariah because it tried to force its will on its neighbours and thereby dragged in Nato and the UN in their defence. It is right that those responsible for this revanchism should be brought to account. If Mr Kostunica and the Serbs do not accept that, they do not deserve wholehearted Western support.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Daily Telegraph:Doubts about Kostunica``x971167956,66082,``x``x
``xExperts: Milosevic Dreams of Return to Power <br><br>By Sascha Segan<br><br>Oct. 9 — Slobodan Milosevic has one goal, political psychologists say: to return to power as leader of Yugoslavia.<br> Milosevic has tried various approaches since the Sept. 24 election that boosted Vojislav Kostunica to power.<br> First, he tried to overturn the elections; that failed. When the Serbian people revolted and set his own parliament building on fire, he disappeared, only to return and announce he did not want to abandon politics. He said he wished to remain at the helm of his own Socialist party, offering an opposition challenge to Yugoslavia’s new leadership.<br> Make no mistake, Milosevic won’t be loyal to anyone but himself, and he won’t be satisfied with being in opposition, analysts say.<br> “I would doubt extremely that he is giving up on the power that he has had and would like to have again,” says Richard Bloom, coordinator of terrorism, intelligence and security studies at Embry-Riddle University in Prescott, Ariz. “The question for him is, ‘What do I do to increase the probability of getting back to where I want to be?’” <br>Landing On His Feet <br>Milosevic is certainly startled by the events of the past few weeks,but he’s a patient man who regularly turns crises to his advantage, says Jerrold Post, professor of political psychology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.<br> “This is a man who went from being the Butcher of Belgrade to the Peacemaker of Dayton, oozing charm from every pore,” says Post. Milosevic is a master of playing the victim, the hero, and the martyr, turning on his allies and doing anything necessary to maintain ultimate power, he says.<br> “This man is a true political calculator,” Post says.<br> Milosevic charmed American negotiators during the 1995 discussions in Dayton, Ohio, that led to the end of the civil war in Bosnia. He can appear reasonable, but his charm is “malignant,” according to a personality profile prepared previously by Post.<br> Power comes before all things for Milosevic, Post and Bloom say. The fate of the Serbian people certainly doesn’t figure in his plans; they’re just pawns to serve his power, the experts say. Money also isn’t that important to Milosevic, except as a way to build power, Post says. The ex-dictator is said to have millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts.<br> “Most of the money he used to maintain control. He didn’t live particularly ostentatiously,” Post says.<br> Milosevic certainly won’t retire willingly, the political psychologist says.<br> “For him to be out of the limelight is equivalent to death,” says Post. <br><br>Family First <br>Fewer than a dozen people in the world matter to Milsoevic — his wife, his close family, a few cronies, the experts say. Milosevic and his wife Mira work as a unit, and it’s them against the world, says Bloom. Post calls her a Lady Macbeth-type, even more brutal than her husband.<br> “He and his wife, they kind of made … a contract with each other that it’s a very dangerous world out there, and the name of the game is to grab all you can, being concerned with you and your loved ones but not being concerned with the others,” Post says.<br> Kostunica is just one of “the others” in Bloom’s assessment of Milosevic. People aren’t people to Milosevic, but rather “objects that can be used to satisfy goals, also objects that could be potentially dangerous,” says Post.<br> He says Kostunica, with his nationalist credentials and his appeal to the Serbian heartland, presents the ex-dictator with some problems.<br> “Kostunica is by no means this traitorous opposition he’s tried to paint several other opposition figures in the past as,” Post says. <br><br>Sane But Dangerous <br>Milosevic is dangerous, but not insane, Post warns. He’s a pragmatic survivor who will do whatever it takes for power.<br> “He’s got a lot of narcissistic qualities in his personality, but he’s certainly in touch with reality,” Post says.<br> But a sane ex-dictator shouldn’t be confused with a reasonable one, the analysts say. Milosevic won’t change, and he’ll eventually betray any compromises he makes with the West.<br> “If what you’re really interested in is a rule of law, and some kind of representative democracy, and some kind of viable human rights and civil rights, he is always a danger because his strategic goals do not include that sort of thing,” Bloom says. “It all comes down to his desire for power.” ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News:Down, But Not Out``x971168012,31362,``x``x
``xBy Stefan Wagstyl and Irena Guzelova in Belgrade<br>Published: October 10 2000 19:52GMT <br> <br>Plans to form an interim government next week in support of Vojislav Kostunica, the newly elected Yugoslav president, suffered a blow when two of the four likely coalition partners walked out of talks. <br><br>The Socialist party of ousted President Slobodan Milosevic and the Radicals, led by the ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj, said they were pulling out because the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), the anti-Milosevic umbrella grouping, was encouraging criminality. The Radicals said that everything Mr Kostunica had done amounted to "a putsch, violence against the constitution and the law, and banditry". <br><br>Miroljub Labus, acting prime minister of an informal transitional government established by the DOS, said that the new administration knew it was acting without a formal mandate basis but he hoped the situation would be resolved with the formation of an interim government. <br><br>As Mr Kostunica sought to dismantle the remains of Mr Milosevic's power, workers' committees were on Tuesday taking control of scores of Yugoslav public sector organisations and throwing out managers appointed by Mr Milosevic. <br><br>The Zastava car factory, the Dunav insurance company and the big Genex trading company were among state-controlled business where employees battled to establish their authority. <br><br>In the health ministry, the doctors' trade union took charge following the resignation of the health minister. At Beogradska Banka, the largest bank, the directors resigned, including Borka Vucic, the chief executive known as Mr Milosevic's personal banker. <br><br>Mr Labus said Serbia must avoid chaos. But he said workers had to act to protect socially-owned assets and prevent managers taking away money and destroying documents. <br><br>Tuesday's events followed the decision late on Monday to call elections in mid-December for the Serbian republican government, to follow last month's federal presidential poll in which Mr Kostunica defeated Mr Milosevic. <br><br>The existing republican government is expected to be dissolved in the next few days, which could heighten the sense of uncertainty. <br><br>Meanwhile, western leaders are continuing to express support for Mr Kostunica and preparing to extend aid. Hubert Vedrine, the foreign minister of France, which now holds the EU presidency, was in Belgrade on Tuesday. He said the "absolute priority is to do everything to help with the installation and consolidation of the new democracy". <br><br>Bodo Hombach, head of the south-east Europe stability pact, the main vehicle for aid for the Balkans, is due to visit Serbia on Wednesday, with Italy's prime minister, Giuliano Amato following on Thursday. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFinancial Times:Parties quit Kostunica talks``x971256210,73790,``x``x
``xBy Stefan Wagstyl and Irena Guzelova In Belgrade<br>Published: October 10 2000 19:43GMT <br> <br>Strike committees, workers' committees, lock-ins and lock-outs. Yugoslavia was on Tuesday awash with reports of workers revolting against their Milosevic-era managers and taking over the directors' suites. <br><br>It happened in Novi Sad, in the state lottery company, in Nis, in the tobacco works, and in Belgrade University, where teaching staff and students expelled the rector and his administrators. <br><br>Even by the standards of the overthrow of Communist regimes in eastern Europe the developments in Serbia have followed unprecedentedly fast on the heels of the defeat of the autocratic leader Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Workers took full advantage of Yugoslav's social ownership traditions in which, under socialism, ownership rights were shared between the state, trade unions and workers' representatives. <br><br>Under Milosevic these distinctions mattered little because real power was controlled by his Socialist party and his wife, Mira Markovic's JUL party. With Milosevic rule crumbling, the workers have taken the communist rhetoric literally and taken charge of their enterprises. <br><br>This has generated scenes of mounting confusion over the last few days, culminating in dramatic scenes on Tuesday. In some enterprises Milosevic-period managers locked themselves in their offices for fear of attack. In others, workers hid to avoid security guards loyal to the managers. Arguments also broke out between competing groups of workers' committees, and between existing workers and people sacked for dissent in the Milosevic years who claimed they should return to head the new management. <br><br>A security guard at Dunav insurance's headquarters told a visitor: "Come back in two or three days. There is nobody in charge today." <br><br>The Democratic Opposition of Serbia, the anti-Milosevic umbrella grouping, encouraged people to take action but warned against excesses. Zoran Djindjic, leader of the Democratic party, said: "Citizens have said that they want fast and rapid changes. . . But this can't be a justification for any kind of arbitrariness." <br><br>Some Serb analysts sympathetic to Mr Kostunica also urged the president to restrain his followers to prevent a witch-hunt. "There's a danger they will do what the previous government did in appointing their own people," said Srdan Bogosalvljevic, a public opinion pollster. <br><br>Aleksandar Vlahovic, a consultant with Deloitte and Touche, the accountancy firm, said: "This must stop soon or there will be chaos." <br><br>Miroljub Labus, head of a crisis committee set up by the newly-elected president, Vojislav Kostunica, said the new authorities' priority was in dealing with urgent problems such as fuel shortages, not investigating companies that may have profited from their association with the Milosevic regime. <br><br>Mr Labus said that in those companies where there were outside shareholders, their interests would be taken into account once the initial worker managements were in place. But this may take time as control over the economy is largely in the hands of the Serbian republican government for which elections will not be held until mid-December. <br><br>Resolving ownership disputes arising from the excesses of the Milosevic era, when some companies were allegedly illegally privatised and others allegedly illegally nationalised will be a complex problem for the new administration. Mr Labus said new privatisation laws would be a high priority. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFinancial Times:Workers take charge of the directors' suites``x971256250,93221,``x``x
``xFrance's foreign minister arrived Oct. 10 for talks, as Kostunica grappled with legacy of Milosevic rule. <br><br>By Scott Peterson <br>Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>There is no script for the democrats of Yugoslavia who are now grappling with the legacy of 13 years of authoritarian structures left behind by ousted President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Just days after a popular uprising brought him to power, new President Vojislav Kostunica and his allies are moving faster and more lithely than expected to gain control of state institutions, the Army, and police, analysts say. <br><br>But Mr. Milosevic still lingers in Yugoslavia, and his vow to remain in politics casts a long shadow that could spell trouble. At stake is security in the Balkans, and the speed with which Serbia - after a decade of involvement in bitter ethnic wars - is welcomed back into the European fold. Kicking off an expected stream of foreign dignitaries, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine arrived in Belgrade yesterday. <br><br>"This opposition is more disciplined, organized, cohesive, and prepared than others were in Eastern Europe. They had 10 years to think these things through, and they know what they are doing," says Jim Hooper, director of Balkan policy for the International Crisis Group in Washington. "They are very smart and moving quickly. We're going to see a 100-day plan, but the course of it will be set in the first week." <br><br>After an apparent array of machinations to manipulate the Sept. 24 vote to his benefit and, when that didn't work, cancel it, Milosevic grudgingly confirmed Mr. Kostunica's victory Oct. 6. But experts say it will take time and significant effort to dismantle Milosevic's far-reaching influence at the federal level and in the technically more powerful republic of Serbia. "He hasn't accepted it, despite his public words.... He can exert a real influence on his party and could be very dangerous," Mr. Hooper says. "As long as Milosevic is there, it is a sign to other hard-liners to hang in and ride it out. They can't leave him as a legitimized political figure in Serbia. That is the worst of all possible scenarios." <br><br>Milosevic's Socialist Party already seems to be playing the spoiler by refusing to hand over key ministries, including the post of police chief. The new leadership finds that unacceptable. "The Democratic Opposition of Serbia insists on the Ministry of Police, and there will be no compromise over this," opposition leader Nebojsa Covic said yesterday, according to Reuters. <br><br>Kostunica has made clear that he will not send Milosevic - branded the "Butcher of the Balkans" in the 1990s - to The Hague war crimes tribunal. The legalistic Kostunica views the tribunal as a biased arm of American and Western policy. But the new leadership increasingly speaks about tough local justice and bringing charges in Serbia for crimes such as manipulating elections and stealing state funds. <br><br>Still, while Kostunica and his 18-party coalition take hold of the levers of power - and try to keep from squabbling among themselves for influence - there has been much to make them smile. <br><br>Senior hard-liners loyal to Milosevic, including federal Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic and Serbian Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, resigned Oct. 9. Serbian parties have agreed to dissolve their powerful parliament - which was not at stake in the recent federal vote - paving the way for elections in December. Such moves were not without argument. "This is highway robbery," complained Vojislav Seselj, Serbia's ultranationalist deputy prime minister. "You will not get our blessing for a coup." Later, he was pelted with stones by an angry crowd, prompting his bodyguards to fire in the air. Student demonstrators also staged a march toward the Milosevic home in a suburb of Belgrade, but were turned back by police. <br><br><br>The new leadership plans to create a transitional government of economic experts, and has begun to examine Yugoslavia's dire economic plight, marked by 50 percent unemployment. "We want to implement Polish shock therapy, Scandinavian social security systems, and Slovenia's model of gradual privatizations," economist Mladjan Dinkic, who is considered likely to be named governor of the Yugoslav central bank, told state television. "It takes brains, not a fist, to create an economic miracle." <br><br>The Army and police have both pledged support, though senior ranks are packed with Milosevic supporters. Defense Minister Dragoljub Ojdanic has tried to rally Milosevic loyalists, declaring that the political chaos is "inciting plans of our proven [foreign] enemies." <br><br>There reportedly have been two tussles over control of the police, but the resignation of the pro-Milosevic interior minister - who commanded some 100,000 police - is seen as a blow. <br><br>But the situation remains confused. Yesterday, senior opposition leader Zoran Djindjic said there were sectors in the police that were "closed to the democratic process." Three days before, he had declared police were "practically immune to orders that could bring them into conflict with the people." <br><br>That view is shared by military analysts in Belgrade, though few rule out some rear guard or freelance action. "I think this story about the Army and police is finished. Now, Kostunica has complete control," says Miroslav Lazanski, military commentator for the Vecrnje Novosti daily newspaper. <br><br>"The new coach of the football team wants new players, and he will have a new defense minister and chief of staff," Mr. Lazanski says. "I think the former president has no chance of causing trouble for Kostunica. I hope the future for the Yugoslav Army is for peace, even as a member of NATO." <br><br>Many analysts have been surprised by the relatively smooth transition. "Anyone in Yugoslavia who doesn't respect this moment is stupid," says Igor Pantelic, an attorney who has defended Serb clients at The Hague tribunal. "[Milosevic] can buy a week or two, and provoke something. But after that, what?" Anything in the Balkans is possible, he says, but notes: "In our neighborhood we have very strong NATO forces [36,000 in Kosovo, 10,000 in Macedonia and Albania, and 20,000 in Bosnia] that can defend us. Plus there would be the reaction of the people - a lot of them have arms in their hands. <br><br>"This nation has suffered enough," he adds. "We were the last black hole in this region, and that is unacceptable. There is huge work before us." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCristian Science Monitor:Hurdles for new Yugoslav regime ``x971256300,98598,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 10 — The world began to embrace the new Yugoslavia and its new president, Vojislav Kostunica, in earnest today, with the visit here of the French foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, representing the European Union.<br><br>Praising the ousting of Slobodan Milosevic, Mr. Védrine said: "I have come here to express my admiration to Mr. Kostunica and the Serbian people. Together they have written a huge page in the democratic history of Europe."<br><br>Mr. Védrine arrived the day after the European Union lifted some major sanctions against Yugoslavia and promised $2 billion in aid. Mr. Kostunica will attend a European Union summit meeting in Biarritz, France, probably on Friday.<br><br>Though his own domestic politics remained unsettled, with a good deal of political jockeying, Mr. Kostunica also moved to improve relations with the United States, whose policies he has often criticized, not least NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia over Kosovo. James C. O'Brien, the chief Balkan adviser to President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, is expected here Thursday.<br><br>The United States is eager to restore diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia after Mr. Milosevic's departure and to build a relationship with Mr. Kostunica. <br><br>In a telephone interview, Mr. O'Brien said he "looks forward to a good discussion" with Mr. Kostunica, hoping "to begin to create a normal relationship" and offer help, if wanted, to build democratic institutions after 13 years of Mr. Milosevic's rule. <br><br>Mr. Védrine has kept close touch with Mr. Kostunica, who regards improving relations with Europe as more important and less harmful to Serbia's interests than warming ties with the United States. Still, Mr. Kostunica describes himself as by no means anti-American, but wary of a superpower that, as the guarantor of the 1995 Dayton agreement, kept Mr. Milosevic in power much longer than necessary.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica said today that the European Union's decision to lift sanctions against Yugoslavia will "enable us to move closer to what always has been our natural environment — Europe." The United States is also expected to lift most sanctions, but the process is more cumbersome legally.<br><br>The situation remained muddled with the government of Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Mr. Kostunica and his allies in the 18- party coalition that supported his candidacy continued trying to assert control over the powerful government of Serbia and its Parliament, which was not up for election on Sept. 24. But they found new resistance from Mr. Milosevic's Socialist Party and the Radical Party of the ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj.<br><br>The Serbian Parliament will be disbanded for new elections on Dec. 17, but there is bitter fighting over ministries in the temporary government that is supposed to rule until then.<br><br>Both the Socialists and the Radicals said they were suspending talks on a new, provisional, all-party Serbian government until "the end of riots, violence and lawlessness in cities and against the citizens of Serbia."<br><br>The complaint is seen as a bit disingenuous, given the pattern of Mr. Milosevic's rule, and seems a cover for bargaining about jobs — in particular the Interior Ministry, which controls the police. Mr. Seselj wants that job for his party, and the Socialists want it for themselves, but Mr. Kostunica's allies insist that they must have it to protect their victory over Mr. Milosevic.<br><br>Some Kostunica allies warned tonight that they would bring more popular protest and pressure to bear on the Serbian Parliament if it did not stop obstructing the new order. Velimir Ilic, the mayor of Cacak, a center of the opposition to Mr. Milosevic, said today, "Serbs are so eager to see changes, and I do not know who will protect Socialists, and how, if they continue to drag their feet."<br><br>But the way Mr. Kostunica's more revolutionary allies have moved to assert control over the police, customs operations and some state- owned companies, sometimes with the aid of armed men, has caused wider complaints.<br><br>Major banks, ministries, university faculties and important companies and factories were being taken over, but often by employees who are trying to restore rights, like university autonomy, stripped from them by the Milosevic government. Often, too, companies are removing managers imposed on them by the ruling parties, often the Yugoslav United Left party of Mr. Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic.<br><br>There is concern among the Kostunica group, too. A statement from his economic and policy advisers today appealed to "all employees and those in managing positions in institutions and companies to protect property and prevent various abuses."<br><br>Today, for example, former Prime Minister Milan Panic, a Serbian- American, regained control of a pharmaceutical plant that had belonged to his ICN Pharmaceuticals and was taken over by the Serbian government last year. The government failed to pay the factory for its goods and then took it over. This evening, after a visit and calls by Mr. Panic, shareholders of the Galenika factory met at the request of workers and agreed to return majority ownership to ICN.<br><br>An important member of the coalition that backed Mr. Kostunica, Zoran Djindjic, complained today that the Socialists and their allies were also meddling with the police. State Security, led by a Milosevic ally, Rade Markovic, "is still closed to us," Mr. Djindjic said, warning that telephone tapping had resumed after a break of a few days.<br><br>"There are attempts of consolidation within Secret Service," Mr. Djindjic said. "We have warned them we do not want conflicts. We expect that the people from that service realize that the situation has changed."<br><br>Mr. Kostunica is also trying to mend fences with Serbia's smaller sister republic, Montenegro, and its president, Milo Djukanovic, who wants a new constitutional arrangement with Serbia in a Yugoslavia that would look more like a confederation.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica, as federal president, is chairman of the Supreme Defense Council, which consists of the Serbian and Montenegrin presidents. He announced that the council would meet on Wednesday — the first time it has met in years and the first time Mr. Djukanovic has attended since he broke away from Mr. Milosevic in 1998. But the meeting has been delayed because Mr. Djukanovic is recovering from a minor road accident.<br><br>After meeting Mr. Kostunica, Mr. Védrine and his wife took a walk in central Belgrade and discovered the ambivalence felt by many here toward the NATO countries that bombed Yugoslavia last year over Kosovo.<br><br>France and Serbia have traditionally warm relations, and Mr. Védrine began his walk at a large monument to the two countries' alliance in World War I.<br><br>One man said, "Vive la France!" and others clapped. But another man shouted: "Aren't you ashamed to show your face here? I have my children here. You bombed them."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:European Union Moves to Embrace Yugoslav Leadership``x971256350,29501,``x``x
``xFROM DANIEL MCGRORY IN BELGRADE <br> <br>HE has not been seen for five days, but senior Yugoslav officials dismissed rumours last night that Slobodan Milosevic had slipped out of the country and escaped to Moscow. <br>Many in political circles believe that the ousted President is still holed up in his mansion, known as the White Palace, on the outskirts of Belgrade. The mansion is shrouded from public view by thick woodland that runs the entire length of the perimeter fence. The only entrance is via a pair of imposing white steel gates, behind which Mr Milosevic's hand-picked army of bodyguards remains out of sight. Such is the reputation of former President that no members of the public dare approach the house, while diplomats living near by prefer not to speak of their neighbour. <br><br>When students decided to march on the White Palace on Monday night, the new Government swiftly ordered thousands of police to block the road to it. This was the first time that police had been seen in any numbers since they melted away as demonstrators staged their uprising last Thursday. <br><br>Some of Mr Milosevic's own special force of bodyguards were briefly seen on the perimeter of the police lines. <br><br>President Kostunica knows precisely where Mr Milosevic is, but he is not saying. The French delegation led by Hubert Védrine, the Foreign Minister, who visited Belgrade yesterday, tried their best to tease information out of the lugubrious Mr Kostunica about the old enemy's whereabouts, but were met with a shrug. Mr Kostunica told them: This is a more important matter for you than it is for us. <br><br>His staff say that Mr Kostunica is fed up with Western politicians only wanting to talk about an out-of-work President, but they emphasise that Mr Milosevic will not be allowed to flee. <br><br>The latest rumour of his escape came from Velimir Ilic, a leading opposition figure and the Mayor of Cacak, who claims that he led the charge into the parliament building on Thursday. <br><br>In a cryptic radio interview, Mr Ilic said reliable authorities had told him that Mr Milosevic and his wife, Mira, had gone to Moscow, but he gave no details of how the former President had managed to get away without anyone seeing him. The clue that Mr Milosevic had in fact gone nowhere came soon after this rumour swept Belgrade, in the rapid response by the police to the students' march on the White Palace. <br><br>The police did not bother to barricade the former President's other residence, which is only a short walk away in the Boulevard of Peace in the wealthy suburb of Dedinje. <br><br>Many believe that Mr Milosevic has not moved from the White Palace throughout this crisis and that he and his wife are still inside and still enjoying the lavish comforts provided by the state. <br><br>Senior officials from the Socialist Party said last night that they had not been to see the man who had said on television was still their leader. One official said: We haven't seen him. He has not seen us. <br><br>Instead they mocked the Pentagon, which confidently reported last week that even as the parliament building was being ransacked, Mr Milosevic had fled to his villa near the Romanian border on the first leg of his escape. <br><br>Pentagon officials gave detailed briefings how this property, on Lake Bor, was fitted with a nuclear-bomb proof bunker which was purpose-built as his command post in the event of war. <br><br>A few hours later, Mr Milosevic made nonsense of this intelligence by being filmed with a Russian delegation sitting in armchairs at the White Palace. He was also filmed in the main reception room a day later, saying that he was relinquishing his job to spend more time with his family.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times:Officials deny that Milosevic has fled the country ``x971256383,67592,``x``x
``xFROM MISHA GLENNY IN BELGRADE <br> <br>THE authority of Yugoslavia's new President is under siege as angry workers and activists, acting in his name, rush to seize businesses, assets and lucrative senior jobs in an uncontrolled raid on the power of the old regime. <br>One Western diplomat in Belgrade said yesterday: "There is a danger that unelected forces are amassing considerable power and these could turn President Kostunica into little more than a figurehead." <br><br>If Mr Kostunica does not act more decisively, he could be left hugely popular but effectively powerless as his rivals seize the initiative, warned the diplomat. <br><br>The overworked President yesterday received Hubert Védrine, the French Foreign Minister, and other foreign dignitaries. Just 48 hours after his inauguration, with a tiny inexperienced staff around him, Mr Kostunica is struggling to deal with international issues as disparate as the International Monetary Fund and Serbia's complex relationship with its sister republic, Montenegro. <br><br>But it is the domestic turmoil which may pose a greater challenge. With the partying over, the revolution has taken on a dramatic momentum of its own. <br><br>Since Monday, workers have been storming the offices of factories, banks, universities and the civil service throughout Yugoslavia and using threats and force to expel their old bosses. Directors of most big companies are known to have close links with the Milosevic regime and, it seems, their employees are now bent on revenge. <br><br>At the weekend, activists had wrested control of the National Bank, the Serbian police and the Customs' office from Milosevic supporters. <br><br>Fearing that the situation was running out of control, the leaders of Mr Kostunica's political backers, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), yesterday distanced themselves from the sackings. <br><br>Zarko Korac, a leading member of DOS, which backs Mr Kostunica, said that a crisis meeting was held late on Monday to discuss the issue. <br><br>"A large number of people are hiding behind our name," Mr Korac said. But, crucially, he admitted that the DOS was involved in some of the dismissals. <br><br>Mr Kostunica's greatest threat may come from the radical wing of the coalition backing him, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, heading by Zoran Djindjic, so far his closest ally but a potential rival. <br><br>Djindjic supporters have claimed they felt they had no choice but to install their own people in key posts, for fear of a backlash by pro-Milosevic forces who, they claim, are still active in the army and secret services. <br><br>Even Zoran Sami, a leading member of Mr Kostunica's own party, admitted that the DOS had ordered the takeover of key state institutions to head off deeper chaos. "We want to begin the necessary changes as soon as possible to extract the country out of a deep crisis," Mr Sami said. <br><br>Radoman Bozovic, a former Prime Minister of Serbia, was believed to be in hiding yesterday after he was beaten up by angry staff at Genex, one of Belgrade's largest holding companies. <br><br>Miners at the Kolubara complex, whose strike last week was crucial in the anti-Milosevic uprising, celebrated victory yesterday as news spread that their director, Milan Obradovic, had been sacked. <br><br>Milovan Zunjic, the director of Yugoslav Coal Production, who had threatened miners with violence before the revolution if they did not return to work, was also fired. <br><br>Vladimir Stambuk, a close associate of Mirjana Markovic, Mr Milosevic's wife, was dismissed as dean of the University School of Political Science, by the Teachers' Council, which is dominated by the DOS.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times:Kostunica under siege as activists rush for power ``x971256438,46633,``x``x
``xBy Bob Dole<br>Thursday, October 12, 2000; Page A25 <br><br><br>The civilized world has waited over a decade for the defeat of Slobodan Milosevic and his bloodstained regime. Unfortunately, the euphoria over Vojislav Kostunica's accession to the presidency of the rump Yugoslavia has seriously clouded the judgment of a number of American and European policy makers. <br>Kostunica's election was a democratic triumph for the Serbian people. But it does not mean that Kostunica is a democrat or Serbia a democracy. This obvious point merits repeating as Western policy makers rush to embrace Kostunica. He is an unknown quantity, his brief biographical sketch revealing only a deep--and apparently contradictory--faith in constitutional law and Serbian nationalism.<br>To bring things into perspective, we need to remember that Croatia's late president, Franjo Tudjman, was also democratically elected--and more than once. His tenure was marked by cronyism, discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities, repression of electronic media, and irregularities in the judicial system. The new government of Croatia has been working hard for nearly a year to dismantle Tudjman's cronyism and establish the rule of law. It has also cooperated with the Hague tribunal and turned over indicted war criminals. But Croatia has yet to be admitted to the European Union.<br>Nevertheless, some Western political leaders are advocating that in addition to immediately being relieved of all sanctions, the rump Yugoslavia should be brought rapidly into the European Union, the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and international financial institutions. This view ignores the reality that building a genuine democracy in Serbia will be extremely difficult and time-consuming, given its recent history of violence, institutionalized corruption and cronyism. The possibility that Slobodan Milosevic will remain politically active will make the task even more daunting, if not impossible.<br>What is needed in Serbia is radical reform to establish the basics of democracy: equal rights for all citizens, irrespective of ethnic or religious background; freedom of the press; rule of law; and an economy devoid of corruption and cronyism. Also essential is a campaign to tell the citizens of Serbia the truth about the crimes perpetrated by Milosevic in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia.<br>At the same time, Kostunica must establish a cooperative relationship with the democratically elected leadership in Montenegro and Kosovo. As urgent as internal reform is the need for a fundamental change in Serbia's external relations with its neighbors--Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia--which have been victimized by its brutal aggression and territorial aspirations. Greater Serbia must die with the Milosevic regime.<br>To help achieve such sweeping change, the United States and its allies will need to build a system of incentives that rewards democratic progress and withholds the inclusion of Serbia in various international institutions and forums until critical measures are taken. Specifically, the West must make clear that for Kostunica and his regime to be embraced as a democracy and allowed to participate fully in international organizations, he must:<br><br>* Reject any role for Milosevic in Serbia's political life.<br><br>* Ensure that all ethnic minorities in Yugoslavia are treated as equal citizens with the same rights as ethnic Serbs.<br><br>* Treat Montenegro as Serbia's equal and work with the democratically elected government of Montenegro to establish new terms for the relationship between the two republics.<br><br>* Withdraw support from extremist Serbs in Kosovo who are inciting violence in areas such as Mitrovica and pledge to work with NATO in Kosovo.<br><br>* Publicly renounce the idea of a "Greater Serbia" and all territorial claims beyond the borders of Yugoslavia, in particular Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.<br><br>* Firmly commit to cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague and agree to hand over all indicted war criminals in the territory of rump Yugoslavia, including Milosevic and Ratko Mladic.<br><br>* Like Slovenia and other states, reapply for U.N. membership, rather than restating Milosevic's assertion that the rump Yugoslavia is the sole and legitimate successor to the former Yugoslavia.<br><br>Kostunica may not be able to take all of these actions at once. Nevertheless, until they are taken, Serbia will neither be on the road to democracy, nor ready to join Western democratic institutions.<br>Only by setting the same high standards for Serbia that have been set for all other post-communist states in Central and Eastern Europe can we ensure that true democracy will take hold. And only by building genuine democracies in the territory of the former Yugoslavia can we guarantee regional stability and prevent a recurrence of the violent aggression of the past decade.<br>The writer, the Republican presidential nominee in 1996, is chairman of the International Commission on Missing Persons in Bosnia.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post: Beware Yugo-phoria``x971345689,98897,``x``x
``xYugoslavia: Journalist's widow is one of a growing group that wants to see justice served--in Serbia. <br><br><br>By PAUL WATSON, Times Staff Writer<br><br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia--Branka Prpa visited her husband's grave Wednesday to mark his death 18 months ago and, in her thoughts, to tell him his fight is finally over.<br> Slavko Curuvija was a newspaper editor who stood up to ousted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic like no other. The journalist died April 11, 1999, bleeding to death from gunshot wounds on the street outside his home. He was shot 100 yards from a police station.<br> Curuvija's widow is a historian with the quiet dignity of a woman who has found her own peace. But when street protests forced Milosevic from power last week, she wasn't able to celebrate.<br> "I remember thinking, 'One cannot be happy when one awaits freedom with the dead,' " Prpa said. "In such moments, you always think that our dearest ones, who died in the struggle against our dictator, needed only a little bit more time and they could have been with us to see it."<br> Although street protests drove Milosevic from office, he continues to wield some power as head of the Socialist Party. On Wednesday, his party and its allies still claimed control over much of the government of Serbia, the dominant of Yugoslavia's two republics.<br> Prpa is one of a growing number of people here who want Yugoslavia's new president, Vojislav Kostunica, to avoid the easy way out and to not offer amnesty to political killers and kidnappers. They want to ensure that justice is done--not in some international court, but here in Serbia.<br> There is no doubt in Prpa's mind who ordered her husband's slaying last year less than three weeks into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 78-day air war against Yugoslavia, when challenging Milosevic was tantamount to treason.<br> "Of course, I believe that Slobodan Milosevic is guilty," she said. "It is impossible otherwise, in the middle of the war, in a state of emergency, to kill a man in the middle of the road and then the murderers just walk away.<br> "And for a year and a half, no state organs give any statement regarding the killing of Slavko Curuvija. I am a very serious person, and I don't believe this is possible in a state without it being known at the very top--especially because we all know that this state functioned in a pyramidal system and the top decided everything."<br> About 500 slayings remain unsolved in Serbia after 13 years of Milosevic rule. While not all of them were political, Prpa and others want the files checked again for any hint that Milosevic or his lieutenants had a hand in the killings.<br> While everyone here wonders when Milosevic will dare to show his face in public--he is believed to be staying at one of his homes here--Prpa imagines the day when she will see him in handcuffs in a local court.<br> "I just want it to be possible for us to be normal people in the future," she said. "It's a duty we have to fulfill for future generations. It is not for me anymore--because no one can bring back the dead--but for those who are coming, so that something like this can never happen again."<br> Yet though Kostunica's 18-party coalition has tried over the past week to bring the Serbian government, the last bastion of the Milosevic regime, under control through negotiations, the former leader's forces still wield considerable influence. On Wednesday, in another serious setback, Serbia's pro-Milosevic prime minister, Mirko Marjanovic, said he was asserting control over the republic's 100,000 police officers.<br> The Yugoslav military also threatened Wednesday to resist Kostunica's effort to get rid of top commanders who were loyal to Milosevic. In a statement issued after Kostunica met with chief of staff Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic and other army leaders, the military warned of "possible negative consequences of increased attacks and attempts to discredit certain individuals of the Yugoslav army."<br> Kostunica claims publicly that his alliance has full control over Serbia's police forces, but other leaders of his coalition have contradicted him, saying that some units remain loyal to Milosevic--especially those of the secret police.<br> The secret police are suspected by many here in the slaying of Curuvija, who constantly attacked Milosevic's regime in his newspaper Dnevni Telegraf and magazine Evropljanin. Several months before the NATO air campaign began, the journalist also co-signed and published an open letter to Milosevic that accused the president of ruining the country and bringing shame upon Serbs.<br> Curuvija's photo, a rugged image of a smiling man with a gray-flecked beard, stands just behind his wife's shoulder on a mantle of wood polished to a warm gloss. A couple of months before he was killed, Curuvija said something that Prpa later realized was a hint that he knew what was coming.<br> "He often said, 'They can stop me only if they kill me,' " Prpa recalled. Then, sounding more like a historian than a widow, Prpa explained that she doesn't believe in heroes. "Slavko Curuvija stayed in Belgrade, fully conscious that his life was in danger. He was not a hero.<br> "But there are moments in one's life when you don't want to cross the line of compromise anymore, and when you are ready to even sacrifice your life for that," she said. "For the first time, I understood that doesn't exist only in literature or movies, that it has become my own reality."<br> Curuvija's written words were like an acid that seeped into the cracks of Milosevic's regime and ate it away from the inside, making it simpler to topple than many had dared imagine. <br> "If he had had the opportunity to choose whether he would like to die at the age of 49, in the way he did, or to die of old age at 80, without rebelling, I think he would choose the first option," his wife said.<br> But while Prpa wants to see Milosevic put on trial, Serbian human rights lawyer Nikola Barovic believes that justice is a word better left to university lecturers.<br> He has spent the past seven weeks trying to find Serbia's former president, Ivan Stambolic, the mentor who raised Milosevic from obscurity only to have his protege turn against him. Men in a white van kidnapped Stambolic on Aug. 25 while he was jogging near his Belgrade home.<br> There have been repeated claims by anonymous sources that Stambolic is being held in a Serbian prison. The Justice Ministry has denied that he is, or ever was, in jail. <br> Another tip came Tuesday, claiming that Stambolic is imprisoned in the southern town of Leskovac. Once again, the ministry issued a denial.<br> Although Barovic is careful not to accuse Milosevic's regime directly, he offers clues that suggest the perpetrators were connected to the former leader. For one thing, there was the almost complete silence about Stambolic's disappearance in the state-run media, which only briefly reported the kidnapping and speculated that business associates had turned on Milosevic's former mentor.<br> Barovic said he could probably finger a few suspects linked with Stambolic's kidnapping. But he won't. By not publicly identifying the people he suspects, Barovic hopes they will sense which way the wind is blowing and free Stambolic, if only to save themselves.<br> Since 1991, when the Yugoslav federation began to break apart in a series of brutal wars, Barovic has been hunting for victims of political kidnappings and has learned that keeping his mouth shut is a small price to pay for getting his clients back alive.<br> With Kostunica's "democratic revolution" unfinished, and rogue elements of Serbia's police still answering to Milosevic loyalists, Barovic said justice is still just a theory, and he can't imagine when Serbia might see it in practice.<br> "As a lawyer, I'm not really interested whether someone will be found guilty or not guilty, or go in front of the court at all," he said. "In the last 10 years, I was never really interested in who kidnapped someone, why they kidnapped, who gave the order and who was technically involved.<br> "The only question for me as a lawyer was: 'Does my client get to go with me in my car to his home or not?' " <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLA Times: A Survivor Anticipates Milosevic's Day in Court ``x971345798,1394,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 11 — President Vojislav Kostunica of Yugoslavia said today that he was having "almost as much trouble from my friends as from my enemies" in the transition from the rule of Slobodan Milosevic and that he was concerned that his own authority was being compromised.<br>But Mr. Kostunica expressed confidence that Mr. Milosevic's allies could not stage a comeback, even though they appear to be trying, and that difficulties in negotiating a transitional government for Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia, would be resolved.<br>He said that he looked forward to his first meeting, on Thursday, with President Clinton's Balkan adviser, James C. O'Brien, and other senior American officials and that he was eager to begin a new, more balanced relationship with Washington, including a rapid re-establishment of diplomatic relations broken with the NATO bombing war last year. <br>"The United States has done too much meddling in our internal affairs," Mr. Kostunica said in an interview. "Now it's meddling less than usual, so this will have a positive influence." If re-establishing diplomatic relations is in his competence as federal president, he said, he will do it quickly.<br>Mr. Kostunica spoke in the offices of the federal president in the Palace of Federations as a small number of aides rushed in and out amid a cacophony of telephones, both land lines and cell phones.<br>In the interview, Mr. Kostunica said that some members of the 18- party coalition that supported his presidential candidacy were making policy statements that had not been cleared with him and were using extra-legal procedures to take control of certain ministries and companies that have been run by those close to Mr. Milosevic.<br>"I cannot justify all that's going on," he said. "On the surface there is a peaceful, democratic transition, but below the surface is a kind of volcano, not so controlled."<br>Mr. Kostunica spoke as a leading member of Mr. Milosevic's Socialist Party, Branislav Ivkovic, said that the current Serbian government would not resign and that the current prime minister had also taken the job of interior minister, which controls the police.<br>But Mr. Kostunica said he was confident that early elections for a new Serbian Parliament would take place, as agreed, on Dec. 17. While some parties in the Parliament "are fighting for seats" in a temporary government until those elections, "others are fighting to overturn the outcome" of the popular will, he said. But they would not succeed.<br>Another Kostunica ally with ties to the old regime, Dusan Mihajlovic, warned that Mr. Milosevic had begun to organize his allies to create difficulties and even chaos, including lifting some price controls, that could be blamed on Mr. Kostunica and his team. "We have information that Milosevic is pulling the strings," Mr. Mihajlovic said.<br>Mr. Kostunica has said that he does not recognize the legitimacy of the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague and would be against handing Mr. Milosevic over. <br>Some of Mr. Kostunica's allies, worried that Mr. Milosevic is creating difficulties for the new order, are speaking openly of putting him on trial in Serbia. In Washington, administration officials repeated today that the United States would not press for Mr. Milosevic's extradition right now. Some administration officials believe a trial within Serbia would be the next best thing.<br>Mr. Kostunica's allies are talking about a domestic trial of Mr. Milosevic, perhaps on charges of election fraud, to get him out of political life. <br>Mr. Kostunica expressed concern that some of his own allies in the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, or DOS as the coalition is known, were providing ammunition for the complaints of chaos and illegality made by the Socialists and Serbian Radicals. "Some members of DOS are not so much eating away at my authority — that they cannot do," Mr. Kostunica said. "The problem is that they are compromising that authority." <br>In particular, he and his aides said, the Democratic Party leader, Zoran Djindjic, who leads the strongest party by far in the coalition, is trying to consolidate the popular revolt against Mr. Milosevic, but in a way that has sometimes caused anger. <br>The best-known example was Mr. Djindjic's effort to put an ally, a well- known businessman, in charge of the Customs office after ousting the old minister. The appointment of Mr. Djindjic's ally caused an uproar among other political leaders and it was rescinded in a day. <br>In companies, banks, institutes and universities, Milosevic managers are being ousted, usually by workers tired of political bosses.<br>"Some of this is spontaneous, some of it is not," Mr. Kostunica said. "Some of it is comes from within, and some from the outside. And some of these actions are from people who are in connection with or appear on behalf of DOS or even myself, which is not true. But all together, it's something that worries me."<br>He said that the image of crime and chaos, part of any transition, was harmful. "But we'll settle all this among ourselves," he said. "But if it's an excuse for any foreign intervention, that would be the problem."<br>Mr. Djindjic has also made announcements that Mr. Kostunica has not approved. For example, Mr. Djindjic said that the Yugoslav Army chief of staff, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, would be fired. Mr. Kostunica, who met with the army command today, said he had no intention of firing General Pavkovic — at least for now. The general became a popular hero for his efforts to defend Kosovo. Mr. Kostunica also has no interest now in stirring up a quiescent army while he and his allies try to ensure they control the Serbian police.<br>Mr. Kostunica and his allies obtained the resignation of the Serbian interior minister, Vlajko Stojiljkovic, who ordered the police to attack protesters. But they have not succeeded yet in winning the job for themselves. Mr. Djindjic thinks it is crucial to protect the revolution, and tonight he offered joint control over four key ministries: Interior, Justice, Finance and Information.<br>But if the other parties do not agree to a new transitional government by the end of the week, Mr. Djindjic warned, the opposition will call thousands of people into the streets. Again, Mr. Kostunica seems less than enthusiastic over revolutionary tactics.<br>Mr. Ivkovic's statement to Radio B-92 was a form of challenge. "The Serbian government will go on ruling the republic since it was elected on a four-year mandate and it is the only body that can make legal decisions," he said. Another Serbian government statement, read on YU-Info, a television station close to Mr. Milosevic, accused the opposition of "fomenting violence and lawlessness" and taking over companies and ministries illegally. It urged the police to act and said control of television should be returned to its owners in the state and city.<br>But the police did not respond. And Mr. Djindjic said: "That government can declare itself not only legal but omnipotent but it's a fact of life they have no control over 80 percent of the processes in the country. We are tired of haggling and manipulations."<br>Mr. Kostunica and his staff also bridled at another Djindjic announcement that usurped federal presidential powers.<br>Mr. Djindjic said that Miroljub Labus, an economist, would become provisional prime minister of Yugoslavia. But Mr. Kostunica said today that he would choose a prime minister from Montenegro, as the Constitution required, who would be a member of the Socialist People's Party. The party won nearly all the seats in Montenegro because of an election boycott by the republic's president, Milo Djukanovic.<br>Mr. Kostunica will travel to Montenegro on Friday to meet the local party leaders and Mr. Djukanovic. They will discuss a new federal government and begin to talk about a new, more equal relationship between Serbia and tiny Montenegro within Yugoslavia.<br>Mr. Kostunica said today that he was not wedded to the name Yugoslavia, especially after all the wars of secession, and once favored "The Union of Serbia and Montenegro." <br>"The question is not the name but what sort of state we want," he said. "If the ties are too loose, we lose the sense of unity."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav Chief Upset at Some of His Allies``x971345845,50243,``x``x
``xBy DAVID E. SANGER<br><br><br>WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 — President Clinton is to announce on Thursday that he is lifting many of the trade and economic sanctions against Yugoslavia that were intended to speed the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, immediately ending the ban on American flights and an embargo on oil to the country, senior administration officials said. <br>Mr. Clinton will make a commitment to join with the European Union in sweeping away a variety of additional sanctions over the next several weeks, except for those specifically intended to keep Mr. Milosevic, his family and their political allies from sending millions of dollars in assets overseas.<br>But administration officials said they would retain, at least for the time being, the so-called "outer wall" of sanctions that prevent Yugoslavia from receiving aid from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.<br>That last sanction — a critical one, because foreign investors are unlikely to return to the country without guarantees from those international institutions — will remain in place until the United States has discussed Mr. Milosevic's legal fate with the new government of President Vojislav Kostunica. [Page A10.]<br>"What we needed to do immediately is open the psychological and the economic spigots, get the oil flowing, get the airplanes in," a senior Clinton aide said this evening. Some of the lifting of the sanctions will be more symbolic than substantive — the embargo on oil was notably toothless. However, the ability to trade with the United States is widely considered a prerequisite for economic recovery. <br>The official said that delivering Mr. Milosevic to the international criminal tribunal at The Hague, where he has been indicted on charges of war crimes, may not be a prerequisite for the removal of the rest of the sanctions. He said that the Clinton administration may be satisfied if Mr. Milosevic stands trial in Yugoslavia. <br>"Obviously Milosevic is an issue," the official said. "But it may be an issue that takes care of itself, either because they change their minds, and turn him over, or they try him themselves."<br>So far Mr. Kostunica, who has challenged the legitimacy of the the Hague tribunal as a tool of American policy, has said he would not turn over his predecessor. And even if he decides that removing Mr. Milosevic from the scene will serve his interests, it is far from clear that his tenuous hold on the levers of state power, many of which are still in the hands of Milosevic allies, would give him the power to determine Mr. Milosevic's fate.<br>All these questions will be raised, officials say, as the first American diplomats arrive in Belgrade over the next day to begin discussions with Mr. Kostunica's new government, being formed after last week's popular revolution. Two senior officials are already on their way: William Montgomery, the coordinator of the office of Yugoslav affairs, which is based in Budapest, and James C. O'Brien, the special adviser to the president for democracy in the Balkans.<br>While the first sanctions will be lifted this week, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces embargoes, is working to track financial flows out of Yugoslavia.<br>Already, officials say, there is evidence that Mr. Milosevic's cronies are using the almost nonexistent controls over banks, resulting from the upheaval of recent weeks, to funnel millions of dollars out of the country.<br>One American official said the movement of funds was "reminiscent of Ferdinand Marcos's last days" in the Philippines. It took years to track the former Philippine president's holdings, and even then only a fraction were recovered.<br>Even before Mr. Kostunica has consolidated his power, there is considerable debate in Washington over the extent to which the economic sanctions contributed to Mr. Milosevic's downfall.<br>Not surprisingly, White House officials believe that they played a significant role. Even aides to Mr. Clinton who have previously expressed great skepticism about the usefulness of economic sanctions — especially the sanctions on Cuba — insist that because so many nations worked together in cutting off Yugoslavia's access to goods and financial markets, popular discontent with Mr. Milosevic rose to the surface rapidly.<br>"The reason that people finally rose up and said we are going to get rid of this guy is that their lives are hard," said one of Mr. Clinton's closest aides. "This was a case in which sanctions played a big, big role." <br>But Richard N. Haass, a Brookings Institution scholar who served on the National Security Council under President Bush and has published two lengthy studies of sanctions and their effectiveness, disagreed. <br>"Sanctions at most played a modest role, and those who are suggesting that they were critical in recent events are simply wrong," he said in an interview today. Referring to the peace talks in Ohio that ended the war in Bosnia in 1995, he said: "Sanctions didn't get Milosevic to Dayton; that was the NATO bombing and the Croatian Army. And sanctions couldn't stop the massacres in Kosovo. They had a contributing effect, but not a decisive one."<br>Mr. Haass agreed with the administration, however, that turning over Mr. Milosevic should not be a prerequisite for breaching the "outer wall" of financial aid. "The goal is to make Yugoslavia a normal European country," he said. "I would not make coughing up Milosevic the No. 1 priority. After all, he was largely killing his own people, and he can be tried in his own country."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Clinton to Scrap Belgrade Embargo on Oil and Travel``x971345930,13308,``x``x
``xBy Irena Guzelova and Stefan Wagstyl in Belgrade<br><br> <br>Supporters of ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic on Wednesday mounted a determined bid to recapture control of the security forces. <br>They snubbed attempts by Vojislav Kostunica, newly elected president, and his colleagues to reach multi-party agreement on this and the formation of a transitional government. <br>The moves were the biggest setback so far for Mr Kostunica in his efforts to consolidate power following his poll victory over Mr Milosevic. <br>The Serbian government, dominated by Mr Milosevic's allies, which had widely been expected to resign following talks earlier this week, instead called on the police to seize control of companies and institutions taken over in popular revolts in recent days. <br>It indicated it would appoint Serbian prime minister Mirko Marjanovic to head the police after Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic resigned on Monday. Milosevic supporters accused Mr Kostunica's supporters of violence and illegal acts in seizing control of enterprises ranging from the Dunav insurance group to pharmaceuticals factories and hospitals. <br>"State bodies, especially the prosecutor's office and the police, are obliged to take urgent actions in accordance with the law against the organisers and the perpetrators of illegal actions," said a government statement. It said control over Belgrade radio and television should be returned to the authorities. <br>Democratic leader Zoran Djindjic on Wednesday night warned the overthrown government to co-operate or he said the democratic parties would call the people back onto the streets. <br>However, by early Wednesday evening there was no sign of police taking action. Leaders of the 18 parties that make up Mr Kostunica's alliance who are trying to run a temporary informal administration, met to discuss their response. <br>They said Mr Milosevic was still active behind the scenes. "Milosevic is our main concern because he is still our biggest threat," said acting prime minister of the federal government,Miroljub Labus. "Their strategy now is to do everything they can to turn the economy into chaos." Mr Labus's colleagues said Wednesday's action would greatly complicate Serbia's transition but emphasised there was no turning back. <br>It was not clear on Wednesday night whether the democratic parties would seek the removal of army chief Nebojsa Pavkovic, one of Mr Milosevic's staunchest allies.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFinancial Times: Pro-Milosevic camp tries to regain ground``x971345971,2493,``x``x
``xThe new Yugoslavia Workers hound old guard while prisoners of the Milosevic regime still wait for freedom <br><br>Special report: Serbia <br><br>Jonathan Steele in Belgrade <br>Friday October 13, 2000 <br><br>Ex-President Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist party announced leadership changes yesterday in an effort to stop the exodus of senior members as more and more factory directors switched loyalties under pressure from workers. <br>But there were signs too that the 18-member coalition, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (Dos), which brought Vojislav Kostunica his election victory, was also nervous about the wave of strikes and factory occupations. <br><br>"Some of this is spontaneous, some of it is not," Mr Kostunica was quoted as telling the New York Times. "It is something that worries me." <br><br>The new government is preparing to open Yugoslavia's economy to foreign investors now that sanctions are being lifted and does not want industrial anarchy to develop. "I'm having almost as much trouble from friends as from my enemies," Mr Kostunica added. <br><br>Milan Milutinovic, the Serbian president, was named a vice-president of the Socialist party in an apparent attempt to stop him defecting. A longtime Milosevic loyalist, Mr Milutinovic has made ambiguous remarks about his future and earlier this week suggested he might resign as president. <br><br>Since then, Mr Milosevic has succeeded in persuading the Serbian parliament - still controlled by the Socialists and their allies - to delay moves to dissolve itself and hold early elections. <br><br>Mr Milutinovic had no party job and his nomination to become a Socialist vice-president was seen as a way of buying his allegiance. <br><br>The party's secretary-general, Gorica Gajevic, resigned after taking the blame for the catastrophic performance in the Yugoslav elections. She was succeeded by Zoran Andjelkovic, an ultra-hardliner who was the last Serb governor of Kosovo before Serb forces withdrew last summer when Nato-led peacekeepers arrived. <br><br>Serbia's deputy prime minister and Radical party leader, Vojislav Seselj, threw another spanner into the tense negotiations over forming a new Serbian government yesterday when he made his party's agreement conditional on an end to the takeovers of facto ries and companies which had Socialist party cronies as directors. He described the wave of purges and occupations as part of a "coup". <br><br>"The coup leaders are taking control of one institution after another. That's a criminal act," Mr Seselj declared. "They will have to execute us or lynch us if agreement is not reached." He also urged Mr Kostunica to name a federal Yugoslav prime minister as soon as possible, and "bring things back into the institutions". <br><br>Mr Kostunica is also causing some worry among his supporters by failing to announce any changes in the army high command. Although General Nebojsa Pavkovic, the chief of staff, expressed his loyalty to the new government, he was a longtime Milosevic supporter. General Momcilo Perisic, who leads a small party in the Dos coalition, said last weekend that sacking General Pavkovic would be one of the new president's first acts. <br><br>The forced resignations continued yesterday, with two bosses quitting Beopetrol, a big fuel importer with links to the Socialists and the neo- communist Yugoslav Left (JUL) party of Mr Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic. <br><br>At the Lola Corporation, a large engineering plant a few miles from Belgrade, the general manager, Branko Vlahovic, told the Guardian: "I don't know what the Socialist party's future can be." <br><br>A party member himself, he saw the writing on the wall a few days before last week's uprising in Belgrade which toppled the Milosevic regime. Three days earlier, he agreed with the company's two trade unions on a general strike "for truth". This was the diplomatic wording for an end to the election fraud and for Mr Milosevic to admit defeat in the polling on September 24. <br><br>Mr Vlahovic put no obstacle in the way of scores of workers who went to Belgrade for the mass protests. They were promised full pay for the day. <br><br>"We cooperate with many other big state companies so we cannot work without connections," he said in explanation of his Socialist party membership. "That's why the general manager has to be close to government." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGuardian:Factory anarchy alarms Kostunica ``x971429653,40215,``x``x
``xBy ROGER COHEN<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 12 — The United States and Yugoslavia signaled today that they would move quickly toward the re-establishment of diplomatic relations, which were severed as NATO began its 11-week bombing campaign here last year.<br><br>A first meeting between James O'Brien, the special adviser to President Clinton for the Balkans, and Vojislav Kostunica, the newly elected Yugoslav president, produced no precise timetable for restoring diplomatic ties but demonstrated that a willingness to resolve the matter existed on both sides.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica, who has criticized American "meddling" in Serbia before and since taking office, said there had been "a gap in communication" between Belgrade and Washington — a tactful way of describing often bitter hostility. But he added, "We hope we will bridge that gap and our relations normalize."<br><br>The meeting came as Mr. Clinton lifted the oil embargo and the ban on American flights to Yugoslavia that had been imposed in 1998 after President Slobodan Milosevic cracked down on Kosovo Albanians. Mr. Clinton said more significant sanctions, like the denial of much-needed lending from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, would be reviewed as the democratic transition that began last week with a popular uprising against Mr. Milosevic proceeds.<br><br>In a statement in Washington, Mr. Clinton said: "We have a strong interest in supporting Yugoslavia's newly elected leaders as they work to build a truly democratic society. The removal of these sanctions is a first step to ending Serbia's isolation." Yugoslavia is made up of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro.<br><br>The United States is particularly eager to consolidate the fragile democratic change in Serbia because it is crucial to bolstering the chances of an enduring peace in the Balkans, where four wars in the last eight years have involved a sizable commitment of American resources to an unstable corner of Europe.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica said today that he respected the 1995 Dayton agreement that brought peace to Bosnia, in effect committing himself to respecting Yugoslavia's border with Bosnia and the arrangement that grants Bosnian Serbs considerable self-rule in 49 percent of a Bosnia with a weak central government.<br><br>He also committed himself to United Nations resolutions that provide for wide Albanian self-government in Kosovo.<br><br>Speaking after a 90-minute meeting, Mr. O'Brien said Mr. Kostunica had agreed to "work through some technical issues, with an aim to establishing diplomatic relations." Those issues include a need for him to consult with the Yugoslav Parliament over a decision that is delicate in the light of widespread anti-American feeling here.<br><br>Any over-eager embrace of the United States would tend to undermine Mr. Kostunica's political standing at this stage because a majority of Serbs might see it as a form of moral surrender. Although the new president has enormous good will on his side after the uprising that forced Mr. Milosevic to finally concede defeat in last month's election, his hold on the levers of power is as yet partial.<br><br>In the light of the delicate political situation and the enduring hostility over the NATO bombing, Mr. O'Brien said Mr. Kostunica did not want to appear to be "picking favorites" and favored a restoration of diplomatic ties with Washington that would be simultaneous with "normalizing" relations with Western European nations. This seems likely to occur within the next several weeks, officials said.<br><br>The remaining sanctions provide Washington with some leverage in discussions over whether Mr. Milosevic, who has been indicated by the International Tribunal in The Hague, should stand trial for war crimes. But it was clear that the United States, whose first priority is the consolidation of long-elusive democracy in Yugoslavia, would not push Mr. Kostunica to try the ousted leader or deliver him to The Hague in the near term.<br><br>The Serbian uprising ended not with the violent removal of Mr. Milosevic but with a handshake between him and Mr. Kostunica that sealed an accord on the passage of power. What guarantees, if any, were given to Mr. Milosevic, who remains under guard in Serbia, are unclear.<br><br>The former leader's domestic position appeared to weaken today as his Serbian Socialist Party said their hard-line secretary general, Gorica Gajevic, a woman intensely loyal to Mr. Milosevic, had been replaced by Zoran Andjelkovic, an official from Kosovo.<br><br>The party called a special congress for Nov. 25, and one of its deputies in the Serbian Parliament, Miloje Mihajlovic, said Mr. Milosevic should quit on that occasion because he had lost the support of the members.<br><br>It also appeared that a political rift had opened up between the Socialists and the Yugoslav Left Party of Mr. Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic. The parties, allied in the election they lost to Mr. Kostunica, said they would run separately in Serbian parliamentary elections scheduled for later this year.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica appears quietly certain that his tempered political stance is steadily eroding Mr. Milosevic's support. <br><br>While insisting that Yugoslavia must become more democratic and open to the West, the new president has been sharply critical of the NATO bombing campaign and of the war crimes tribunal, which he has described as a pawn of American political interests.<br><br>Today, Mr. Kostunica renewed his criticism of the United States, but in far more muted terms, saying it had shown scant "understanding" of the political process in Serbia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:U.S. and Yugoslavia to Renew Diplomatic Ties``x971429711,87581,``x``x
``xPresident Clinton lifted sanctions yesterday. But a parliamentary struggle could mean more unrest. <br><br>By Scott Peterson <br>Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>The glaziers of Yugoslavia are everywhere, replacing windows broken in last week's "revolution" that brought President Vojislav Kostunica to power. <br><br>But as trucks laden with plate glass offload at the steps of the burned-out parliament building, and store owners fit new panes, tensions are building over the renewed influence of ousted strongman Slobodan Milosevic and his allies, which could lead to violence - and more broken glass. <br><br>The pro-democracy movement has given Milosevic cronies until today to agree to new elections in the Serbian parliament - a preliminary agreement earlier this week was abruptly rescinded - or face renewed street protests. There were signs yesterday that a deal might be struck, but many Serbs were anxious about the next steps. Milosevic allies still controlled the police force. <br><br>"No doubt Milosevic is pulling the strings. They want to slow down people's anger and momentum," says Bratislav Grubacic, editor of the VIP newsletter in Belgrade. "The sense of revenge is great, and if people go back on the street again, there could be a slaughter." <br><br>From his well-protected home in a Belgrade suburb, Mr. Milosevic reportedly is meeting with a stream of backers, energizing supporters in a way that appeared impossible just days ago, when hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets to force Milosevic to accept defeat in Sept. 24 elections. <br><br>The result is a power struggle that on Wednesday saw the powerful parliament of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, declare it would halt cooperation with Mr. Kostunica's transition team. Both the Yugoslav and Serbian parliaments are controlled by Milosevic's party and its allies. Senior generals also warned against the "negative consequences" of top-rank purges planned by the new leadership. <br><br>Also a problem for Kostunica are emerging differences in his 18-member coalition, and policy freelancing by some members. Pro-Milosevic managers are being pushed out of factories, mines, and hotels by angry staff in dramatic confrontations across the country. Milosevic's Socialist Party accuses the new leaders of bringing "lawlessness and violence" to Serbia. <br><br>"I cannot justify all that's going on," Kostunica said in an interview with The New York Times. "On the surface there is a peaceful, democratic transition, but below the surface is a kind of volcano, not so controlled." <br><br>"I am having almost as much trouble from my friends as from my enemies," he added, in executing the transfer of power. <br><br>One senior pro-democracy leader, Zoran Djindjic, warned on Wednesday that if the Serbian parliament didn't agree to new elections by today, then "we will call the people to the streets to demand new elections." He said the Serbian parliament - which was not up for election in the federal vote that brought Kostunica to power - was overplaying its hand: "It's a fact of life they have no control over 80 percent of the processes in the country." <br><br>On Thursday, however, he reported that a crisis might be averted: "I think we have an agreement that it should be done in a political way, through elections and through some kind of cooperation to keep the country stable without economic or energy crisis." <br><br>Part of the problem, Serb analysts say, is that Kostunica's legal insistence on doing the transfer of power "right" is being taken advantage of by more ruthless adversaries. <br><br>"Kostunica is underestimating what could happen still. He is a very nice person, and very legally inclined, so maybe he can't understand what crooks they are," says Mr. Bratacic. "Milosevic can't reverse the process and retake power, but he can cause trouble. We are dealing with people [who] are not willing to give up power, and if a civil war results [in their view], so be it. <br><br>"With this behavior, [Milosevic] will really force people to kill him. People will say, 'We must hit the snake in the head,'" he adds. "Kostunica must now become a mature politician, or he will be lost." <br><br>Pro-Milosevic forces appeared to be consolidating what remained of their grip on power. The Socialist Party announced the replacement of its hard-line chief Gorica Gajevic with the more moderate Zoran Andjelkovic, who now heads a Serb-run Kosovo government. <br><br>On top of domestic problems, Kostunica has been swamped with European and American visitors, and shows of support from around the world. President Clinton yesterday lifted an oil embargo and flight ban against Serbia, echoing moves earlier this week by the European Union. In a written statement, Mr. Clinton said the US has "a strong interest in supporting Yugoslavia's newly elected leaders as they work to build a truly democratic society." US diplomat William Dale Montgomery arrived in Belgrade Wednesday, and more senior officials are expected soon. <br><br>But the burden of leadership seemed a heavy load for Kostunica, whose appeal to voters has been in part because he had no political background. "It is true he is inexperienced," says Aleksa Djilas, a historian and public-policy scholar currently at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. "He is also a decent person who believes in the rule of law. His advantage is that a lot of people voted for him. And the fact that he has not behaved like a revolutionary could be helpful in the long run." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCristian Science Monitor:A troubled transition in Serbia ``x971429753,12603,``x``x
``xBy Stefan Wagstyl in Belgrade<br>Published: October 12 2000 18:43GMT <br> <br>Vojislav Kostunica, Yugoslavia's newly-elected president, on Thursday won support for his effort to consolidate his victory over ousted leader Slobodan Milosevic from Serbia's smaller sister republic of Montenegro. <br><br>However, within Serbia a power struggle continued between Mr Kostunica's reformists and die-hard supporters of Mr Milosevic, who appeared to be trying to enlist elements of the police. The reformists have threatened more demonstrations unless Mr Milosevic's supporters fulfil a pledge made earlier this week to dismiss the Serbian government and hold early elections. <br><br>The message of support from Montenegro came from Miodrag Vukovic, an aide to pro-west Montegrin president Milo Djukanovic, who expressed support for Mr Kostunica's efforts to create a multi-party interim government. Mr Kostunica, who is due to visit Montenegro on Friday, went out of his way to assuage Montenegro's concerns by suggesting in a television interview that if Montenegrins agreed democratically to pursue independence then that will had to be respected. <br><br>In Washington, US president Bill Clinton expressed support for Mr Kostunica declaring the oil embargo and flight ban would be lifted immediately but financial sanctions would stay in place for some time longer. The International Monetary Fund said it would soon welcome back Yugoslavia as a member. An IMF mission is expected in Belgrade as soon as next week. <br><br>Meanwhile, in Serbia, the reformists have begun to exert control on the economy through the central bank. Mladan Dinkic, reformists' candidate for bank governor, announced that the current bank administration had agreed to start reducing the huge amount of Yugoslav currency in circulation in an effort to stabilise the dinar and begin limiting inflation. <br><br>The central bank would buy dinars from commercial banks using foreign exchange from reserves put at $410m. Mr Mladic's officials said they hoped to have access soon to $1.4bn in blocked overseas accounts. The funds are badly needed to buy winter fuel. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFinancial Times:Kostunica offered support from Montenegro``x971429852,24297,``x``x
``x<br>By Irena Guzelova and Stefan Wagstyl in Belgrade<br>Published: October 13 2000 17:50GMT | Last Updated: October 13 2000 18:06GMT<br> <br><br> <br>The last vestiges of power slipped from ousted Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic on Friday as his supporters prepared to agree the dissolution of the Serbian parliament. <br><br>Backers of the new president Vojislav Kostunica said elections would most likely be held on December 24 for the Serbian republic's government which controls key functions, such as the police. <br><br>They also said they were close to forming transitional governments for the Yugoslav federation and the Serbian republic for the two months until the poll. <br><br>The developments encouraged Mr Kostunica to confirm that he would accept an invitation to attend the European Union summit in Biarritz on Saturday. The European Commission said it would provide E200m ($172m) in emergency aid to help Yugoslavia through the winter, including funds for fuel. <br><br>Dissolving the republic's government will enable Mr Kostunica's supporters to consolidate power and remove fears, both in Serbia and overseas, of a possible Milosevic comeback. <br><br>The Serbian parliament is dominated by Mr Milosevic's Socialist coalition and is more powerful than its federal counterpart. Mr Kostunica's supporters said the tone of the Socialist party members was conciliatory. <br><br>"The moderate wing of the Socialist party has prevailed," said Cedomir Jovanovic, spokesman for the 18-party anti-Milosevic alliance. <br><br>The talks between the supporters of Mr Kostunica and Mr Milosevic came after nearly a week of arguments over the make-up of four key ministries in the transitional government - namely police, justice, finance and information. <br><br>Mr Milosevic appeared on Friday to have lost an internal party struggle to a moderate faction which wants to remodel the party on democratic lines. Mr Milosevic's portrait was removed from the first page of the party web-site, but he still remains party leader. Many Socialist party members have been trying to bring pressure on the leadership to remove Mr Milosevic. <br><br>Borislav Jovic, a Socialist party member and former president of Yugoslavia who split with Mr Milosevic in the mid-90s, said: "There is no other solution but to find a compromise. We should establish a government which will have the largest possible support. We are in a period where we need tolerance and not permanent confrontation." <br><br>Mr Kostunica still faces the delicate issue of establishing full democratic control of the police and army. But stamping his authority over the relevant ministries - interior and defence - is big progress. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe FT: Kostunica wins key Serbian power centre``x971522420,70732,``x``x
``xPresident Clinton lifted sanctions yesterday. But a parliamentary struggle could mean more unrest. <br><br>By Scott Peterson <br>Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br><br>The glaziers of Yugoslavia are everywhere, replacing windows broken in last week's "revolution" that brought President Vojislav Kostunica to power. <br><br>But as trucks laden with plate glass offload at the steps of the burned-out parliament building, and store owners fit new panes, tensions are building over the renewed influence of ousted strongman Slobodan Milosevic and his allies, which could lead to violence - and more broken glass. <br><br>The pro-democracy movement has given Milosevic cronies until today to agree to new elections in the Serbian parliament - a preliminary agreement earlier this week was abruptly rescinded - or face renewed street protests. There were signs yesterday that a deal might be struck, but many Serbs were anxious about the next steps. Milosevic allies still controlled the police force. <br><br>"No doubt Milosevic is pulling the strings. They want to slow down people's anger and momentum," says Bratislav Grubacic, editor of the VIP newsletter in Belgrade. "The sense of revenge is great, and if people go back on the street again, there could be a slaughter." <br><br>From his well-protected home in a Belgrade suburb, Mr. Milosevic reportedly is meeting with a stream of backers, energizing supporters in a way that appeared impossible just days ago, when hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets to force Milosevic to accept defeat in Sept. 24 elections. <br><br>The result is a power struggle that on Wednesday saw the powerful parliament of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, declare it would halt cooperation with Mr. Kostunica's transition team. Both the Yugoslav and Serbian parliaments are controlled by Milosevic's party and its allies. Senior generals also warned against the "negative consequences" of top-rank purges planned by the new leadership. <br><br>Also a problem for Kostunica are emerging differences in his 18-member coalition, and policy freelancing by some members. Pro-Milosevic managers are being pushed out of factories, mines, and hotels by angry staff in dramatic confrontations across the country. Milosevic's Socialist Party accuses the new leaders of bringing "lawlessness and violence" to Serbia. <br><br>"I cannot justify all that's going on," Kostunica said in an interview with The New York Times. "On the surface there is a peaceful, democratic transition, but below the surface is a kind of volcano, not so controlled." <br><br>"I am having almost as much trouble from my friends as from my enemies," he added, in executing the transfer of power. <br><br>One senior pro-democracy leader, Zoran Djindjic, warned on Wednesday that if the Serbian parliament didn't agree to new elections by today, then "we will call the people to the streets to demand new elections." He said the Serbian parliament - which was not up for election in the federal vote that brought Kostunica to power - was overplaying its hand: "It's a fact of life they have no control over 80 percent of the processes in the country." <br><br>On Thursday, however, he reported that a crisis might be averted: "I think we have an agreement that it should be done in a political way, through elections and through some kind of cooperation to keep the country stable without economic or energy crisis." <br><br>Part of the problem, Serb analysts say, is that Kostunica's legal insistence on doing the transfer of power "right" is being taken advantage of by more ruthless adversaries. <br><br>"Kostunica is underestimating what could happen still. He is a very nice person, and very legally inclined, so maybe he can't understand what crooks they are," says Mr. Bratacic. "Milosevic can't reverse the process and retake power, but he can cause trouble. We are dealing with people [who] are not willing to give up power, and if a civil war results [in their view], so be it. <br><br>"With this behavior, [Milosevic] will really force people to kill him. People will say, 'We must hit the snake in the head,'" he adds. "Kostunica must now become a mature politician, or he will be lost." <br><br>Pro-Milosevic forces appeared to be consolidating what remained of their grip on power. The Socialist Party announced the replacement of its hard-line chief Gorica Gajevic with the more moderate Zoran Andjelkovic, who now heads a Serb-run Kosovo government. <br><br>On top of domestic problems, Kostunica has been swamped with European and American visitors, and shows of support from around the world. President Clinton yesterday lifted an oil embargo and flight ban against Serbia, echoing moves earlier this week by the European Union. In a written statement, Mr. Clinton said the US has "a strong interest in supporting Yugoslavia's newly elected leaders as they work to build a truly democratic society." US diplomat William Dale Montgomery arrived in Belgrade Wednesday, and more senior officials are expected soon. <br><br>But the burden of leadership seemed a heavy load for Kostunica, whose appeal to voters has been in part because he had no political background. "It is true he is inexperienced," says Aleksa Djilas, a historian and public-policy scholar currently at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. "He is also a decent person who believes in the rule of law. His advantage is that a lot of people voted for him. And the fact that he has not behaved like a revolutionary could be helpful in the long run." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCS Monitor: A troubled transition in Serbia ``x971522441,77962,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ President Vojislav Kostunica received a strong boost Friday from the United States in efforts to keep the Yugoslav federation together. The support came from U.S. Balkan envoy James C. O"Brien, who told the president of Montenegro that Washington opposes independence for the smaller Yugoslav republic. Although Kostunica assumed the Yugoslav presidency on Oct. 7, he must cut deals with the leaderships of the two republics _ Serbia and Montenegro _ to wield real power. At a meeting in Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital, O"Brien urged Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic to begin talks with Kostunica "on maintaining Yugoslavia." "The U.S. does not favor independence for Montenegro," O"Brien told reporters in Podgorica. Even though Djukanovic opposed then-President Slobodan Milosevic, he boycotted the Sept. 24 presidential election and has said he does not recognize the results. After his talks with O"Brien, Djukanovic indicated in a statement he would cooperate with the pro-democracy government in Belgrade, despite his earlier refusal to recognize Kostunica. "It is of utmost importance that the democratic government in Montenegro ... gives full contribution to strengthening the new authorities in Belgrade," Djukanovic"s statement said. "There is hope that new possibilities will open for a political dialogue in good faith between Podgorica and Belgrade," the statement said. Meanwhile, Kostunica was trying to extend his control over the Serbian government _ still controlled by Milosevic"s followers _ by getting Milosevic"s former allies into agreeing to new parliament elections. Late-night talks between Kostunica"s allies and former Milosevic allies in Socialist party broke up early Saturday without sealing a deal on holding elections in Serbia. Kostunica aide Vladan Batic said there was an agreement in principle for the current Serbian government to resign. Parliament would then approve a new transition government with representatives of both camps, after which the legislature would dissolve pending new elections, possible on Dec. 24. The Socialists, however, said differences still remained before a deal could be signed. "We are negotiating nicely as always, democratically," said the pro-Milosevic Serbian president, Milan Milutinovic, as he left the meeting. Asked when elections would be held, he replied: "When we reach an agreement." Kostunica ally Nebojsa Covic, who attended the talks, blamed the Socialists for the delay. "They are buying time, not realizing their time is up, just as their president, Slobodan Milosevic," Covic said, quoted by the Tanjug news agency, In Podgorica, O"Brien said that "Serbia, Montenegro and the federal government (of Yugoslavia) should enter good faith negotiations on maintaining Yugoslavia." For the last two years, Djukanovic had repeatedly threatened to call a referendum on independence. The West had urged restraint, fearing such a move could trigger another Balkan war. Strong sentiment for independence exists among many of Montenegro"s 600,000 people. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica gets lift from U.S. in effort to form government``x971522461,68776,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Justin Huggler in Belgrade <br><br><br>14 October 2000 <br><br>A rift has opened up between Yugoslavia's new President, Vojislav Kostunica, and some of his most powerful backers, including Serbia's king-maker, Zoran Djindjic, even as Slobodan Milosevic's allies in the Serbian government backed down yesterday and agreed to hand over power. <br><br>At the heart of the dispute are two generals with blood-spattered pasts: the Chief-of-Staff, Nebojsa Pavkovic, who commanded the federal army, the VJ, in Kosovo, where its soldiers are alleged to have committed atrocities; and Momcilo Perisic, who stands accused of shelling civilians in Croatia. <br><br>Powerful voices in the coalition that backed Mr Kostunica for President are demanding that General Pavkovic be sacked as Chief-of-Staff and replaced with General Perisic. Chief among them is Mr Djindjic, whose support was vital in Mr Kostunica's campaign. <br><br>But the appointment of a chief-of-staff lies directly in the President's hands, and Mr Kostunica has let it be known he wants to leave the general staff unchanged for the time being. He has even complained publicly that Mr Djindjic is making policy statements without his approval. <br><br>General Headquarters reacted furiously when Mr Djindjic suggested Mr Pavkovic might be persuaded to resign last week, issuing vague threats of "negative consequences". <br><br>But some at least among Mr Djindjic's faction are refusing to back down. "Kostunica must get rid of Pavkovic within a week," said Zoran Zivkovic, mayor of Nis and a close aide to Mr Djindjic. <br><br>Others looking for General Pavkovic's scalp sought to play down the division. "There is no rift between us, only a difference of opinion," said Zoran Korec, a leading member of the alliance behind Mr Kostunica. <br><br>The office of General Perisic, the favoured candidate to replace General Pavkovic, was fanning the flames. "I won't say how deep the division in DOS goes, but even the slightest division is enough for General Pavkovic and the other leading generals to be sacked," said Dragan Vuksic, and adviser to General Perisic. <br><br>"The majority of officers are against Pavkovic," claimed Mr Vuksic. "If he isn't sacked, they may act to remove him." <br><br>Also in the anti-Pavkovic faction's sights is Dragoljub Ojdanic, the federal Defence Minister, who has been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague. <br><br>General Pavkovic is certainly unpopular. At Mr Kostunica's swearing-in ceremony he was booed by onlookers – it is rare for a soldier to be heckled in Serbia. He has a murky past, as commander of the VJ in Kosovo, where its soldiers have been accused of atrocities. But he has not been publicly indicted by the Hague tribunal. <br><br>General Perisic is accused of shelling civilians in Zadar in the Croatian war in 1991, and has been tried in absentia for war crimes by a Croatian court and sentenced to 20 years. But he, too, has not been publicly indicted by the Hague tribunal. <br><br>Ask Mr Zivkovic why the chief-of-staff should be changed and you get an answer worrying for Serbia's nascent democracy: "We want Perisic because he's our man," he said. General Pavkovic was close to the Milosevic regime, while General Perisic was highly critical of the former president at the time of the Nato air attacks. <br><br>But there is a personal grudge, too. "Pavkovic called up 12 out of 70 Nis city councillors to serve in Kosovo," complains Mr Zivkovic. "Eleven of them were from my party." <br><br>The row simmered on yesterday even as Mr Milosevic's allies backed down from threats to seize back power and agreed to new elections in Serbia on 24 December. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Kostunica faces fresh clash over army chief ``x971522477,6207,``x``x
``xBy ROGER COHEN<br>ELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 13 — The Yugoslav foreign minister, a loyalist to the ousted Slobodan Milosevic, quit today as the new president, Vojislav Kostunica, pursued a steady but scarcely sweeping campaign to assert his authority.<br><br>Foreign Ministry officials said the minister, Zivadin Jovanovic, went to his Belgrade office, collected his things, said goodbye to a few aides and walked out. Mr. Jovanovic's departure was another sign of the haphazard way authority is shifting in this country.<br><br>A week after Mr. Milosevic resigned in the face of a popular uprising, Mr. Kostunica is still battling to take the reins of power. His approach is slow and steady, setting him at odds with Zoran Djindjic, his main ally in bringing democratic change and a man more inclined to move fast in seizing authority.<br><br>Mr. Milosevic, now in theory a private citizen with no more rights than any other Yugoslav, sits in a state villa in the exclusive Belgrade neighborhood of Dedinje protected by soldiers. A member of his Serbian Socialist Party, Nikola Sainovic, said today that he was in daily contact with Mr. Milosevic over policy decisions.<br><br>The country's top military commander, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, long a staunch ally of Mr. Milosevic, remains at the head of the army. While Mr. Djindjic favors moving swiftly to remove Mr. Milosevic from political life and oust General Pavkovic, Mr. Kostunica is more inclined to caution, officials close to Mr. Djindjic and Mr. Kostunica said.<br><br>Mr. Djindjic has a stronger political base than the new president in his Democratic Party, but Mr. Kostunica, whose Democratic Party of Serbia is tiny, has won enormous authority through heading the campaign that overthrew Mr. Milosevic. In practice, the two men need each other, although further tensions appear certain to flare.<br><br>Western governments, eager to consolidate a long-awaited democratic change, are concerned that Mr. Kostunica not lose the political momentum he now has through hesitation, officials said. Mr. Kostunica is to travel to Biarritz, France, on Saturday to meet European Union ministers, who are eager to demonstrate their support for what they call "Serbia's return to Europe."<br><br>In the delicate political conditions set by a transfer of power that is by no means complete, negotiations continued today between Mr. Kostunica's supporters and Mr. Milosevic's party over two central issues: the setting of a date for elections in the Serbian republic and the formation of an interim Serbian government until then.<br><br>Serbia is by far the larger constituent part of what is left of Yugoslavia, and its government runs an 85,000-strong police force that was one pillar of Mr. Milosevic's authority. The former president's party is the largest in the Serbian parliament and controls several of the government ministries.<br><br>After talks today, Vladan Batic, a supporter of Mr. Kostunica, said an agreement had been reached to hold Serbian elections on Dec. 24. Until then, Mr. Batic said, an accord has been fashioned to share control of the most important Serbian ministries between the Socialists and the bloc of parties that propelled Mr. Kostunica to victory.<br><br>But the Socialists did not confirm the election date, previously rumored to be Dec. 17, and it was not immediately clear how power-sharing would work between politicians with diametrically opposing views. Mr. Sainovic, of the Socialist Party, said only that "conditions have been created to lead to an agreement on a Serbian government."<br><br>In practice, the Socialists have to show some flexibility or face the possibility of another outburst of popular ire. But there is little question that Mr. Kostunica's decision to compromise with Mr. Milosevic for now has given the party some breathing space.<br><br>The president is also moving slowly to form a federal Yugoslav government. A central difficulty is the uneasy relationship between Belgrade and the other Yugoslav republic, Montenegro.<br><br>Milo Djukanovic, the president of Montenegro, has congratulated Mr. Kostunica on his victory, but has given no indication that the situation in Serbia will change a central thrust of his policy, which has been to try to create the conditions for the possibility of Montenegro's independence.<br><br>As the price for his cooperation, Mr. Djukanovic is known to want sweeping changes in the Yugoslav Army because of its aggressive stance in recent years in Montenegro. But it is precisely such changes that Mr. Kostunica seems reluctant to make because of his overriding concern with stability.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Milosevic Ally Quits Foreign Ministry Post``x971522493,6027,``x``x
``xBELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslavia"s revolution looked back on track Friday after pro-Western reformers announced a deal with allies of ousted President Slobodan Milosevic to hold early elections for the Serbian parliament. Supporters of new President Vojislav Kostunica also said they had secured an agreement in principle to form a transitional government to smooth the way for the potentially decisive vote, set for December 24. In a further boost to the new rulers, the European Union endorsed an emergency aid package worth nearly 200 million euros ($173 million) to help Serbia get through the winter. Serbia makes up the lion"s share of federal Yugoslavia, torn apart by a decade of ethnic conflict, and its government oversees an estimated 85,000-strong police force as well as the bulk of the nation"s disastrous finances. Though Milosevic was pushed from office following last week"s mass street protests, his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) still dominates the powerful Serbian assembly. Senior SPS official Nikola Sainovic, who, like Milosevic, has been indicted by the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal, said on Friday he was in daily contact with the former president. Milosevic has not been seen in public since conceding defeat in a live television address one week ago. His opponents say he is still pulling strings behind the scenes and Sainovic confirmed that his boss had remained in Belgrade. MILOSEVIC PARTY THREATENED WITH PEOPLE POWER The SPS, fighting for political survival, tried to renege on an election deal earlier this week, putting the brakes on Kostunica"s drive to reform the economically crippled country. More fiery elements of Kostunica"s coalition had warned that they would bring the crowds back to the streets unless an accord was struck by Friday. "I am under the impression that the people from the SPS came to their senses finally," a prominent Kostunica backer, Vladan Batic, said after cross-party discussions. Further talks were scheduled for 10:00 p.m. (2000 GMT) to finalise the settlement. Kostunica"s 18-party coalition, anxious to get down to the business of government, welcomed news of the December vote. "We believe this will ease tensions, that was the main point. This vacuum we are in is now confined to two months," said Zoran Djinjdic, leader of the Democratic Party. One of the biggest headaches facing Kostunica is the dire state of the economy, with inflation running at some 50 percent a month and the unofficial jobless rate also seen at 50 percent. The Yugoslav Central Bank moved Friday to start the long process of stabilizing the local dinar currency by cutting the de facto exchange rate to 30 dinars to the German mark from 20. As his supporters negotiated a way out of the Serbian parliament stalemate, Kostunica held talks with representatives from Montenegro on forming a federal government. Montenegro is Serbia"s junior partner in the federation, but relations between the two are strained to the point of breaking because of disagreement arising out of Milosevic"s rule. Kostunica has to deal with the complex world of Montenegrin political rivalries to garner support for a new government. "I welcome that Mr Kostunica wants to hear the opinion of all parties in the federal parliament and also of the authorities in Montenegro," Predrag Bulatovic, the deputy head of Montenegro"s traditionally pro-Milosevic party, told Reuters. <br><br>WEST WELCOMES KOSTUNICA <br><br>The new president is due to leave Yugoslavia Saturday for the first time since taking office, to attend a summit of European Union leaders in the French resort town of Biarritz and then to hold talks with the Swiss president in Geneva. The West has moved quickly to restore normal ties with Yugoslavia, and EU leaders agreed Friday to give Belgrade funds for medicines and heating oil and to improve food distribution in Yugoslavia as winter approaches. But even as the international community offered Kostunica the hand of friendship, there was a reminder that he still has plenty of other problems at home. Two Serbian police officers were killed and nine wounded when their vehicles drove over a landmine on a road close to the boundary with Kosovo, the Serbian Interior Ministry said. The ministry statement said the mine had been planted by "members of Albanian terrorist gangs from Kosovo and Metohija," using the traditional Serbian name for the province, which is now under the control of the United Nations. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugo reformers win vote deal, get EU boost``x971522516,27380,``x``x
``xBy Justin Huggler in Belgrade 15 October 2000 <br><br>The revolution on the streets may be over, but behind the scenes in Serbia, other revolutions are still going on. While President Vojislav Kostunica is toasted by EU leaders in Biarritz, his allies at home are still trying to prise the last of Slobodan Milosevic's cronies out of the powerful positions they desperately cling to. <br><br>At the same time, Mr Milosevic's former allies look increasingly keen to ditch the discredited former president. His picture has abruptly disappeared from his Socialist Party of Serbia's website. The Glas Javnosti daily newspaper reported yesterday that the Belgrade branch of the Party of Serbia had sent Mr Milosevic a letter "asking for changes in the party leadership", and saying that "state bodies and a part of the party leadership either made improper decisions or betrayed the party". <br><br>All the while, the deposed Mr Milosevic skulks in his Belgrade villa using, say some, what influence he has left to ensure the transfer of power is as difficult as possible, ordering his allies to delay their departure from positions of influence. <br><br>Perhaps most worrying for Mr Kostunica, much of the State Security, the hated secret police, appears to remain faithful to Mr Milosevic. <br><br>Rade Markovic, chief of the murky organisation, has pointedly neglected to recognise Mr Kostunica as the new president, and a lieutenant-colonel who went over to the Kostunica side says that the secret police is still briefing Mr Milosevic on every development. <br><br>But the regular police have joined Mr Kostunica in their droves. Some of them helped in the storming of parliament, and when the defiant Serbian prime minister, Mirko Marjanovic, issued orders to them to regain control of television and other state institutions last week, they ignored him. The move fell flat, and he had to return to the negotiating table. <br><br>Talks to prise Mr Marjanovic and his colleagues out of power continued into the early hours yesterday. Technically, the government of Serbia – the larger of Yugoslavia's two remaining republics – is still in office, as the elections that swept Mr Milosevic aside were on a federal level. Last week, it threatened to rule on, and yesterday backed away from a deal for Serbian elections to take place on 24 December. Mr Kostunica's allies appear to have agreed to the inclusion of a socialist prime minister in the transitional government that will rule until elections do take place. <br><br>Meanwhile, workers have held their own revolutions in state-owned companies across Serbia to eject Mr Milosevic's cronies from boardrooms. Overall-wearing workers are at the helm of huge conglomerations, invoking workers' committee legislation left over from the days of Marshal Tito. <br><br>In many firms, Mr Milosevic's men are resigning. But workers had to storm their own offices at the Progress import/export plant last week, when the chairman of the board refused to resign and attempted to have them barred from the building. That chairman is Mirko Marjanovic. <br><br>With the people, army and police behind him, Mr Kostunica looks safe from any challenge by Mr Milosevic or the socialists. But enemies are not his only worry – he has said he is getting almost as much trouble "from my friends". <br><br>The Chief of Staff, Nebojsa Pavkovic, tainted by his close alliance with Mr Milosevic, is trying to ingratiate himself with the new president. But as he does so, a row is simmering between Mr Kostunica and Zoran Djindjic, the Serbian kingmaker, who wants Mr Pavkovic replaced with his own man. <br><br>The unpopular Mr Djindjic could never have beaten Mr Milosevic in elections – but Mr Kostunica could not have done it without the support of Mr Djidjic's influential Democratic Party. But now that alliance is unravelling. <br><br>While the Socialist Party, even without Mr Milosevic, won't be winning any elections soon, it is worth remembering that, in all of the post-Communist countries of Eastern Europe that had their revolutions a decade ago, "reformed" party cronies and apparatchiks are back in government. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent:Secret police stay loyal to Milosevic ``x971688428,79439,``x``x
``xBELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica"s search for a new government hit trouble Sunday when leaders of Serbia"s sister republic Montenegro rejected a deal giving the prime minister"s post to a political opponent. Kostunica, fresh from a meeting in France with European Union leaders who gave him political and financial support, met leaders of the 18-party Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), his main backers in last month"s elections, to discuss forming a new federal government. A major problem facing the new leader, who ousted strongman Slobodan Milosevic in the elections, is that under the federal constitution the prime minister must be from Montenegro if the president is, like Kostunica, from Serbia. But because of a boycott of the elections by Montenegro"s pro-Western ruling coalition, the only candidates from the coastal republic voted into parliament last month were from the pro-Milosevic opposition Socialist People"s Party (SNP). In a bid to persuade Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic to accept the idea of an SNP premier for Yugoslavia, Serbian opposition leader Zoran Djindjic headed for the Montenegrin capital Podgorica late Sunday for talks with the leadership. Shortly after he announced he was going, however, Montenegro"s ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) rejected the idea, saying in a statement: "We will not accept that kind of trading and will not bargain with Montenegro"s future." And the republic"s Foreign Minister Branko Lukovac said any sort of cooperation with Serbia should be on the basis of Montenegro"s independence, which he said would be achieved "regardless of the international community"s interest to preserve or keep what was left of former Yugoslavia." Analysts said the reiteration of the independence issue, raised frequently during Milosevic"s rule, appeared to be a bargaining tactic ahead of the talks with Serbian politicians. Djindjic was quoted by Beta news agency as saying after Sunday"s meeting that in exchange for what he called "understanding" from the Montenegrin leadership the DOS promised to start "serious talks" on a new relationship between the two republics. Montenegro has long chafed under a federal system which it felt left it virtually powerless under Milosevic"s rule. The DOS is the largest bloc in the federal parliament following the elections, but it lacks an overall majority, leaving control of the assembly in the hands of Milosevic"s Socialist Party and its longtime allies. PARALLEL TALKS ON FORMING NEW SERBIAN GOVT Meanwhile, parallel talks were also going on over the formation of a new government in Serbia, the major partner and key political power-base in the Yugoslav federation, where Milosevic"s Socialists have also been digging in their heels. After talks Saturday night the DOS and Socialists reached broad agreement on a plan to dissolve the Serbian parliament on October 24 and hold new elections two months later. Kostunica supporters, aware that the Socialists have gone back on previous deals for new elections, have given their leaders until Monday to agree to the latest terms after consultation with their members. Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer who likes to operate strictly by the book, says the country needs a new federal government in order to rebuild the economy and process the financial and other aid they have been promised by the West. "I hope in the coming days...in a week to 15 days at most, that we will be able to have a government which can accept everything that is being opened up to us as far as the support of Europe and the democratic world is concerned," he told reporters at the airport on his return from the EU summit. The new president was having talks with Yugoslavia"s exiled Crown Prince Alexander Karadjordjevic, who was making a rare visit to the country from his home in London. Alexander, an outspoken critic of Milosevic, pledged his support for Kostunica soon after the opposition leader took over from Milosevic on a wave of people power. The prince said Sunday that restoring monarchy was not an immediate priority in the country struggling with the legacy of Milosevic. "What we have to do now is to go on with democracy. We can"t waste time," he said after landing at Belgrade airport. But in an interview given to the daily Politika, the Prince said that bringing back monarchy to the Balkan nation was still an open question and it was for the people to decide on the issue. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe ABC NEWS:Kostunica Search for Government Hits New Obstacle``x971688486,57387,``x``x
``xAfter 13 years under Milosevic, some Serbs are looking to South Africa as a model for reconciliation. <br><br>By Scott Peterson <br>Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA <br>An old saying in the Balkans may have new meaning today, as Serbs begin coming to terms with the often-bloody legacy of ousted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>"If Serbia is at peace with itself, there will be a peaceful future," the proverb goes. And with the abrupt end of Mr. Milosevic's rule, his hard-line nationalist policies - which led to four Balkan wars and scores of war-crimes indictments, and turned Yugoslavia into a pariah state - are under new examination. <br><br>A reckoning with the past has occurred from South Africa, Mozambique, and Rwanda to wartime Germany and Latin America, as nations pull out of conflict and try to move toward peace. <br><br>There is growing talk of some kind of reconciliation commission beginning work here within months. Serbs say that now they are in need of forgiveness - among themselves, at least - and that to heal their society there must be a public, probably painful reckoning concerning such questions as: What was done to create a "Greater Serbia?" And who carried out "ethnic cleansing" - against ethnic Croats, Bosnians, and Albanians - in the name of the Serbian nation? <br><br>"Now we have Milosevic out, but there is a tendency to scapegoat him and blame him for all this, and that is dangerous," says Sonja Biserko, head of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. "By now, ordinary citizens are aware of what happened, but we must go back to those who did war - open it up, and find who was responsible. <br><br>"Many people don't know why it was wrong. There has been a lot of criticism of Milosevic for losing those wars, but not for starting them," Mrs. Biserko says. "It is important we go through a catharsis and deal with that, acknowledge that we were part of it. Facing the truth will be important for the future." <br><br>A key element could be the international war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. But new leader Vojislav Kostunica, who assumed the federal presidency on Oct. 7, rules out cooperation with the court or handing over the chief suspect, Milosevic. An ardent nationalist himself - but also a constitutional lawyer, who recognizes the need to find out the truth about the past - Mr. Kostunica shares the view of many Serbs that the tribunal is an anti-Serb political court controlled by the West. <br><br>In any event, creating a new government and democratic order in Yugoslavia are Kostunica's top priority, he says, so war-crimes issues "simply take a back seat." <br><br>Reckoning with the past has already begun elsewhere in the Balkans, though, with citizens in Croatia and Bosnia, who after the end of their 1991-95 conflicts began to reject hard-line nationalist aspirations in favor of a more tolerant global view. Still, some Croats protest almost daily their new government's probes into war crimes. <br><br>But as Serbs contemplate their need for reconciliation, they are facing the ghosts of the worst Balkan atrocities from places like Vukovar, Srebrenica, and Racak. <br><br>"The most positive harbinger for Yugoslavia is the nonviolent revolution, and healing is much better, historically, if it is nonviolent," says Stephen Zunes, head of the Peace and Justice Studies program at the University of San Francisco. "It is no accident that Romania [where President Nicolae Ceaucescu was executed on Christmas day, 1989] has had a difficult time." <br>Part of the equation is economic: Ethnic nationalism became a critical force in Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and Serbia when economic times were tough, Mr. Zunes points out. Rebuilding an economy gutted by a decade of sanctions and economic mismanagement, and restoring an infrastructure severely damaged by NATO airstrikes last year will be key. <br><br>But there are other elements, too. "There needs to be some type of truth and reconciliation, but there is a tricky balance between a witch hunt and Latin American amnesties for all," says Zunes. "South Africa is a good model." <br><br>Prodded by then-president Nelson Mandela, South Africa confronted the crimes of the apartheid era. Under a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, perpetrators confessed their wrongdoing in exchange for amnesty, and victims told their stories. Though imperfect - critics say it was wrong that the crimes revealed were not punished - it soothed a troubled society. <br><br>But that case does not apply here in every way. "South Africa was blessed with a vigorous community full of debate and discussion. They had a lot to build on and some very impressive people," says the Rev. John Langan, an expert on ethics and human rights at Georgetown University. <br><br>"They also had a sense of hope and pride, whereas Serbs have lived through a pretty comprehensive experience of failure, and don't have so much to build on," Mr. Langan says. "What may be necessary is a reeducation campaign." <br><br>Some quarter of a million people died in the Balkan wars, and more than 1 million were displaced. The Serb push to "cleanse" Kosovo - considered by many Serbs to be the cradle of their civilization - of ethnic Albanians last year alone resulted in 40,000 dead. <br><br>"To face the facts is a learning process, because this nation should see, so that it doesn't happen again. The education of the mind is the most important part," says Igor Pantelic, a Belgrade lawyer who has defended Serbs at The Hague tribunal. "Once you start this kind of procedure, it is inevitable. A fair and honest appraisal will take years and years." <br><br>Such an appraisal is not coming from The Hague, which Mr. Pantelic criticizes for inconsistent rulings. He notes that "Serbs and Croats don't want to have foreign influence in their business, whether it is dirty or not." <br><br>But he is convinced that all those indicted by the tribunal will face proceedings - if not in The Hague, then certainly in Serbia, where judgment is likely to be harsh. The new, legalistic leadership is also speaking increasingly of arresting the Old Guard - including Milosevic - and trying them for white-collar crimes. <br><br>"The media will play an important role, as in Croatia and Bosnia, because they are opening all the files - the archives, the souls and the minds," Pantelic says. "Slowly and surely they are speaking of who did what. Kostunica could play a big role to settle hot minds and hot heads." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Cristian Science Monitor:Serbia confronts troubled past ``x971688610,64934,``x``x
``xTom Walker, Belgrade <br><br>THE ousted Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, is facing the growing threat of a trial in Belgrade that could end with his imprisonment for plundering huge sums of money from the state. <br>Legal sources close to President Vojislav Kostunica, Milosevic's successor, say inquiries into the former leader's activities will encompass the fraudulent handling of "anything up to $10 billion" (£6.8 billion). <br><br>This figure includes the contents of private accounts Milosevic froze as Yugoslavia stumbled into war in the early 1990s, public funds that are said to have been misused and the proceeds of racketeering in cigarettes, alcohol, oil and grain. <br><br>To make the strongest possible case against Milosevic, however, lawyers say they may have to concentrate in the short term on hard evidence provided by foreign authorities. <br><br>They will examine banking details provided by the Swiss authorities, which confirmed last week that they had frozen 600 accounts belonging to members of the Milosevic regime, with a value of $57m. Othmar Wyss, the head of the state secretariat for economic affairs, said his investigation would whittle down the account holders to those closest to Milosevic, including his wife Mira Markovic. <br><br>Milosevic's dealings with the domestic Beogradska Bank may be exposed if Borka Vucic, his trusted personal banker, is removed as its head this week. <br><br>The new regime's investigators will also look at attempts by Milosevic, who was untouchable during his 13 years of near-absolute power, to rig last month's elections, which he lost. And they plan to investigate his alleged failure to en-sure that the state television building was evacuated during Nato airstrikes on Belgrade in April 1999. Any finding of wrongdoing could lead to a charge of culpable homicide. <br><br>Kostunica may allow charges to be brought against heavyweights in the former regime such as General Nebojsa Pavkovic, the army chief of staff, whose recent purchase of a £200,000 flat in central Belgrade for his wife Gloria, a cousin of Mira Markovic, raised eyebrows. A military court has previously imposed a suspended sentence on Pavkovic for embezzlement. <br><br>Nikola Sainovic, Milosevic's most trusted adviser, faces a possible investigation into his running of RTB Bor, a copper extraction company that has helped make him one of the richest men in the country. Milan Milutinovic, the Serbian president, could be charged over his supervision of reported Milosevic purchases in Greece, including a villa and a yacht. <br><br>Sainovic busied himself last week with shuttling between the Milosevic residence in the exclusive Belgrade suburb of Dedinje and socialist party headquarters. Bodyguards kept watch over the gates to the residence, through which the occasional motorcade came and went, with Sainovic visible in a BMW that followed two armoured Audis with blacked-out windows. <br><br>Senior policemen in Belgrade have advised Kostunica to proceed cautiously, however, warning that Milosevic's cronies may use hired assassins against their accusers. <br><br>Police sources said Kostunica must establish control before Serbian elections, ex-pected on December 24. "Any new establishment will face the menace of organised crime," one former senior officer said. "If they can't buy into Kostunica's alliance they may decide to do some killing instead." <br><br>Leaving aside war crimes, there have been 562 unsolved murders in Serbia in the past eight years, and the gangland culture is strong in Belgrade. "There are about 150 of them out there," said one officer. "They have missiles and explosives, and right now they fall between the two regimes." <br><br>Diplomats are concerned that Kostunica and Zoran Djindjic, his campaign organiser, have diametrically opposed views on how to overcome the gangs. <br><br>Kostunica is adamant that no compromises can be made. Djindjic's supporters include the most feared of police-cum-mafia groups, Frenki Simatovic's Unit for Special Operations, with 200 men at its core and another 1,000 reservists. Many were involved in ethnic cleansing during the conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. <br><br>Any rift between Kostunica and Djindjic could benefit Milosevic. Diplomats said Milosevic would have keenly noted Kostunica's first public criticism of Djindjic, who, he said, had no authority to claim Pavkovic was to be replaced as chief of staff. The tension increased after it emerged that Djindjic had given Belgrade's airport authorities approval to let Milosevic's son, Marko, leave the country for Russia. <br><br>Kostunica is on more comfortable ground away from the Balkan intrigue. Yesterday he was given a warm reception by European Union leaders at their summit in Biarritz, where he attended a lunch hosted by President Jacques Chirac. The French leader said he rejoiced in Yugoslavia's "democratic evolution". <br><br>One of Kostunica's first moves is expected to be the abandonment of the name Yugoslavia. Aides say Kostunica believes it became redundant when Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia left the federation. Yugoslavia could be renamed Serbia-Montenegro. <br><br>Milosevic's opponents, however, fear the country's 50% inflation and high crime rate could create opportunities for him to exploit discontent. They say Milosevic will remain dangerous until he is either in court or out of the country. <br><br>"It's like a horror movie," said Dusan Simic, a former editor of Danas newspaper. "You have to wait until the end and then you see the same dreaded hand rising again."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times:Milosevic faces $10bn fraud trial ``x971688669,25777,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 16 — Slobodan Milosevic's party ceded its last bastion of power today, by agreeing to share duties in a transitional government of Serbia leading to new elections.<br>The deal was reached in the week of negotiations held since a beleaguered Mr. Milosevic conceded the presidency of Yugoslavia to Vojislav Kostunica of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia.<br>Elections for the Serbian Parliament, which had been scheduled for next fall, will now take place on Dec. 23, and the last duties of the Parliament now in office will be to approve the transitional government, which will be made up of members from Mr. Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia and a third party, the Serbian Renewal Movement, led by Vuk Draskovic.<br>Today's developments confirm the collapse of Mr. Milosevic's authority. The Serbian Parliament and government, always dominated by his allies, are where the real power lies in the republic.<br>Mr. Kostunica has been confirmed as president of the federal republic comprised of Serbia and its smaller sister-state Montenegro, but he has had no legal jurisdiction over the Serbian government or ministries, and so had no official control of the police, the courts or the news media, all tools of Mr. Milosevic's rule.<br>But as members of Mr. Kostunica's party threatened to call supporters back onto the streets, the Socialists agreed to share power. Senior representatives of his party negotiated and signed the deal, but Mr. Milosevic himself, who remains president of the party, was absent from the whole process.<br>Zoran Andjelkovic, the new general secretary of the Serbian Socialist Party and formerly head of the party in Kosovo, said his party had agreed to share power with the other two parties to stop the illegal seizure of government institutions and companies, which have been largely managed by the Socialists and their allies. The agreement was also a recognition of Mr. Kostunica's victory in the Sept. 24 federal elections, he said.<br>"Peace, security and stability, safety of people and property are the highest priority," Mr. Andjelkovic said after signing the agreement. "That's why we agreed to form a new joint government."<br>The job of the transitional government will be to lead the country in the 10 weeks until elections and prepare conditions for a fair vote, something that was markedly lacking in the federal elections. <br>The document guarantees "free activity of all political parties and full protection of public and private property," and a commitment to "jointly creating conditions for democratic elections in an atmosphere of tolerance and respect."<br>It also orders the establishment of a steering committee to run the state-owned Radio and Television Serbia. The broadcast media was notoriously pro-Milosevic for years, refusing access to opposition parties and denouncing their leaders until protesters overran its headquarters in Belgrade and burned part of it during an Oct. 5 rally.<br>Mr. Andjelkovic, not noted for his fairness during his years in Kosovo, promised cooperation.<br>"Our goal is to enable citizens to make their decision in the early elections," he said. "We are sure that they will vote on Dec. 23 for a better future, for peace, tolerance and cooperation." <br>Mr. Draskovic said the agreement meant that the various unsolved killings that occurred during Mr. Milosevic's last years in power, including that of his own brother-in-law and bodyguards last year, could soon be solved.<br>"It is an important document," he said. "We'll have to see how it will be implemented."<br>Zoran Djindjic, who led the negotiations on behalf of the Democrats, described the deal as a compromise. "SPS made a concession, agreeing to call early elections, and DOS made a concession by agreeing to enter into this transitional government," he said. "But the first priority of this government is not how to divide up the ministries but to supply the basic living means to people before the winter."<br>Earlier efforts to get Mr. Draskovic to join with the Radical Party of Serbia to dissolve the Parliament had failed, and the Democrats were forced to negotiate with their former foes the Socialists, even as Mr. Milosevic declared that he would continue to lead his party in opposition.<br>Yet Mr. Milosevic's influence on the party seems to have slipped quickly. He will remain president of the party until the Socialist congress on Nov. 25, party officials have said, but calls for his resignation within the party are growing and his portrait was even removed temporarily from the party's Website last week. <br>Some of his top representatives took part in the negotiations, including close ally Gorica Gajevic, who recently resigned from the post of general secretary of the party, and Nikola Sainovic, who formerly was federal vice president and has been indicted as a war criminal. <br>But the Serbian president, Milan Milutinovic, now vice president of the party and also indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, is seen as the key figure in the party and appears ready to cooperate with the Democrats. The agreement did not mention new elections for the Serbian president and it seems he may be allowed to serve out his term until 2002.<br>The main loser from the agreement is Vojislav Seselj, the leader of the Radical Party of Serbia, which until now was part of the ruling coalition, but will play no part in the transitional government. Mr. Seselj said on state television this weekend that he refused to take part in the transitional government since it was legalizing "revolution and theft." <br>Mr. Seselj has opposed calling early elections, saying that the Democrats would unfairly win a landslide riding the current wave of enthusiasm for Mr. Kostunica. Judging from his party's poor showing in the federal elections, Mr. Seselj is likely to fare badly in Serbian elections, too.<br>No ministers have yet been appointed, but the three parties will together run the prime minister's office and the four key ministries of interior affairs, finance, information and justice. Decisions in those ministries will be made by a board and by consensus.<br>The agreement was signed by Mr. Kostunica, Mr. Milutinovic and representatives of all three parties. <br>The Sse name ocialists will keep the office of prime minister for one of their members, but all decisions will have to be made by consensus with two vice-premiers, one each from the Democratic Opposition of Serbia and the Serbian Renewal Movement. Ministers are expected to be selected in the next few days, Mr. Andjelkovic said.<br>The chief of staff of the Yugoslav Army, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, long an ally of Mr. Milosevic, again expressed his support for Mr. Kostunica to journalists today. He said, however, that he was concerned that part of the Interior Ministry forces and secret service units were not under the control of the authorities.<br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Kostunica Agrees to Transitional Government for Serbia``x971776147,46700,``x``x
``xBELGRADE - Supporters of the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, consolidated their hold on power Monday with a deal securing early elections and a place in government in Serbia, the country's dominant republic. <br>The reformers announced a deal that sets Serbian parliamentary elections for Dec. 23 and provides for a transitional government sharing power among Mr. Kostunica's allies and the Socialists of the ousted president, Slobodan Milosevic. <br>Although a mass uprising forced Mr. Milosevic to admit defeat in last month's presidential election, the Socialists and their backers remained dominant in the Serbian government, the seat of real power in Yugoslavia. <br>But the Socialists recognized that the defeat of Mr. Milosevic on a wave of pro-democracy sentiment meant that they could not continue to run Serbia on their own. <br>''Our goal was to have early elections because we've found ourselves in a very unpleasant situation where existing institutions in Serbia do not have sufficient authority to rule the country,'' said Zoran Djinjic, a top Kostunica backer. <br>Supporters of Mr. Kostunica, a 56-year-old constitutional lawyer sworn in just over a week ago, were anxious at least to neutralize the Serbian government until the elections, at which they aim to sweep the Socialists from power completely. <br>Mr. Milosevic has been indicted by a United Nations court for Kosovo war crimes. But a leading reformer predicted he would face trial at home on more mundane charges such as vote-rigging and fraud. <br>''That is how the career of a dictator will end, not with a huge crime but with simple fraud,'' Zarko Korac, who has been tipped as a candidate to become Yugoslav foreign minister, told the Croatian weekly magazine Fokus. <br>Under the terms of the power-sharing deal, the Socialists retain the post of prime minister, but the new head of government has to make decisions by consensus with two deputy prime ministers, one from each of the two main reformist forces. <br>Four ministries, including the Interior Ministry, with 85,000 police under its command, will be controlled jointly by the three groups in the deal: the Socialists, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia and the Serbian Renewal Movement. <br>''This agreement ensures that the new government works in the interest of the citizens and their future,'' said Zoran Andjelkovic, the Socialists' general secretary. <br>The deal made no mention of the future of the Serbian president, Milan Milutinovic, who has also been indicted on war crimes charges. A close Milosevic associate, he has a mandate until 2002. <br>But Vuk Draskovic, the Renewal Movement leader, said the new government would mark an end to violent rule under Mr. Milosevic. <br>''In a couple of days, the centers of state terrorism in Serbia will be stripped of authority,'' he said. <br>Yugoslavia opened up to the outside world with remarkable speed in the first week of Mr. Kostunica's presidency after a decade of international isolation and four Balkan wars under Mr. Milosevic. <br>Mr. Kostunica plans to travel Tuesday to Montenegro, the other republic which makes up Yugoslavia, as he tries to put together a government at federal level. His task is complicated by political differences in Montenegro. <br>Under the federal constitution, the prime minister must be from Montenegro if the president is, like Mr. Kostunica, from Serbia. But because of a boycott of the elections by Montenegro's pro-Western coalition, the only candidates from the coastal republic voted into Parliament last month were from the pro-Milosevic opposition Socialist People's Party. <br>The government of Montenegro's president, Milo Djukanovic, has insisted it will not accept a prime minister from that party. <br><br>Accord on Clearing Danube <br><br>Yugoslavia's new authorities agreed Monday to lift an objection to clearing the Danube of bridge debris left by the 1999 NATO air campaign, Agence France-Presse reported from Budapest. <br>Specifically, Belgrade approved the appointment of a manager to head an international clean-up project, according to Helmut Strasser, head of the Danube Commission, which oversees navigation of the waterway. <br>''Now, I do not see any substantial difficulty in the future in carrying out this project,'' he said, adding that the river could be open again by next summer. <br>The blockage of the Danube has cost some half a billion euros ($435 million) to shipping along the river, notably in countries downstream like Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine, the commission said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Herald Tribune: Power-Sharing Pact in Yugoslavia``x971776177,75057,``x``x
``xPRISTINA, Kosovo - The most routine plans for self-rule in Kosovo have quickly become urgent necessities. Politicians and citizens here say that Vojislav Kostunica's sudden rise to power in Belgrade means that Kosovo must get its political act together, tame its unruly society and show it can stand on its own as a country.<br>''The world is too quick to kiss Kostunica,'' said Vehbi Rafuna, president of the War Invalids Association, which aids people wounded in the battles last year against Serbian security forces. He is one of them, limping from knee wounds. ''And what about us? We must show we are a state and everybody must understand we are a state. This unclear situation of ours can only hurt. We must make moves.''<br>Two weeks ago, the majority ethnic Albanian population in this NATO-occupied province of Serbia, the dominant republic of the two left in Yugoslavia, gave little thought to the political machinations in Belgrade, preoccupied as they were with their own battle for independence. But with Mr. Kostunica now occupying the president's office and Slobodan Milosevic on the sidelines, they fear that the world will forget or obstruct Kosovo's separatist aspirations.<br>The province is hamstrung by its status as an international protectorate administered by the United Nations since the end of the NATO air campaign from March to June last year. <br>Institutions of self-government are few and the ones that exist are poorly run.<br>With President Kostunica pledging an open and democratic government, Kosovo's deficiencies may begin to stand out, people worry. ''Look at our city; look at the garbage lying around,'' said Murat Zhubi, a travel agent in Pristina, the Kosovo capital. ''Last winter, we had no heat. Criminals come here and can rob, get arrested and be on the street within a few hours. Will we deserve independence if this continues?''<br>So Kosovo's ethnic Albanians are pushing ahead with a step-by-step approach toward getting their affairs under control. <br>Municipal elections are scheduled for the end of this month, and the elected officials will replace ad hoc councils formed largely by remnants of the officially disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, the guerrilla group that led the fight against the Milosevic forces before the NATO offensive. <br>After the municipal balloting, Kosovo Albanians want to hold parliamentary elections within six months, followed by a referendum on independence.<br>''We have the right to a referendum and this should be accepted by the international community,'' said Hashim Thaci, head of the Kosovo Democratic Party, the political offshoot of the Kosovo Liberation Army. ''It's the democratic right of every people.'' <br>In the meantime, he said, ''It's up to us to build local and centralized institutions, and these institutions must be a stable partner for the international community.''<br>Naim Jerliu of the Democratic League of Kosovo echoed that thought: ''The municipal elections are a first step in showing the world we are serious about taking responsibility for ourselves.''<br>In the meantime, Kosovo Albanians are fighting a rear-guard action against the glistening international image of Mr. Kostunica. He is portrayed by many here as a Milosevic in sheep's clothing. Newspapers have prominently displayed a 1998 Associated Press photograph that shows Mr. Kostunica grinning as he held an AK-47 assault rifle.<br>Mr. Kostunica has said many times that Kosovo, still legally part of Serbia despite the current UN administration, cannot break away permanently. But he has also talked in fatalistic terms of being able to imagine a Serbia without Kosovo.<br>He has acknowledged that about 900 ethnic Albanian prisoners were carried off to Serbia before NATO troops entered, and remain in jail. <br>In an interview, he raised a possibility of freeing them, but said he wanted an accounting of the Serbs who have disappeared in Kosovo since NATO troops arrived.<br>''We wait for fuller changes in Serbia,'' said Astrit Salihu, a philosophy professor in Kosovo and independent political analyst. ''Milosevic was not just a person but also a symbol of an ideology of hatred. The Serbs need not only to change their president, but their minds.''<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Herald Tribune: Serbia's New Respectability Makes Kosovars Nervous ``x971776209,79845,``x``x
``xBy Imre Karacs in Berlinand Justin Huggler in Belgrade <br><br>President he may be no longer, but Slobodan Milosevic remains the boss of bosses at the apex of a criminal organisation and has salted away more than $100m (£70m), according to an investigation conducted by the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). <br>The BND believes Mr Milosevic spread his ill-gotten gains in Russia, China, Cyprus, Greece, Lebanon and South Africa. His son, Marko, who was thrown out of China last week and is now believed to be in Russia, is alleged to have deposited millions of dollars in bank accounts in Cyprus and South Africa recently, while Switzerland is also said to be home to millions of pounds of the Milosevic clan's money. <br>The file on Mr Milosevic, leaked yesterday to the German press, names a dozen senior Serbian politicians as cohorts in a mafia that has bled Yugoslavia dry for a decade or more. "Considerable evidence indicates that Milosevic and his entourage constitute an organised crime structure and are engaged in drug dealing, money laundering and other criminal acts," the report said. The file also alleges that about 60 people allied to the ousted Yugoslav president have been ruling the country and have prospered in the shadow of war and chaos. <br>"The near total control of key economic posts by Milosevic followers opened opportunities for illegal capital transfer for personal enrichment and financing for political plans – weapons purchases – and served as camouflage for criminal activity – drug trade," the report alleged. <br>Among the Milosevic cronies named in the report are Dragan Tomic, parliamentary president; Mirko Marjanovic, the Serbian Prime Minister, and Dragan Kostic, the former minister of energy. The long arm of the Milosevic organisation reached the Yugoslav National Bank, the country's Customs and Excise, the airline JAT, the petroleum concern NIS-Jugopetrol and the aptly named communications firm Mobtel. <br>In Belgrade the extent of the Milosevic millions has been speculated on for years, but only rarely has anyone found any proof. <br>With the imposition of international sanctions on Yugoslavia eight years ago, massive smuggling operations began to bring in forbidden goods. The smuggling is said to have been controlled by Mr Milosevic and his cronies, who made vast profits from it. Notable among the profiteers was Mr Milosevic's son, Marko, who fled to Moscow shortly after his father was deposed. <br>The countries named in the German intelligence report have been mentioned in connection with Mr Milosevic's dealings for years, especially Cyprus. <br>Last week, the woman who set up a Nicosia branch of the Belgrade Bank in Cyprus (it was later renamed) was sacked as the head of the bank. Borka Vucic, a 72-year-old woman who is a diehard ally of the deposed president, was marched from her office by armed men and whisked away in a waiting car. Her successor at the bank says he is going to make public the bank's financial records since 1992. <br>Serbian papers report that on Sunday night Ms Vucic returned to her old office in the dead of night for an hour, and it is now rumoured that she was returning to destroy incriminating evidence. Mr Milosevic was the head of Belgrade Bank in the Eighties, and it was there that he met Borka Vucic. <br>Another name to emerge in connection with Belgrade Bank's murky dealings is Miobrag Zecevic, the former head of the Franco-Yugoslav Bank in Paris and best man at Mr Milosevic's wedding. <br>In 1996, the French authorities charged him with fraudulently redirecting 5m Swiss Francs to two banks in Zurich, but the affair was unresolved. <br>Mr Zecevic's successor at the Franco-Yugoslav Bank was Borislav Milosevic, the brother of the deposed president who is still the Yugoslav ambassador to Moscow, where the younger Mr Milosevic is holed up. <br>* Supporters of the new Yugoslavian President, Vojislav Kostunica, tightened their grip on power yesterday with a deal that secures early elections and a place in government in Serbia, the country's dominant republic. The reformers announced a deal setting Serbian parliamentary elections for 23 December and providing a transitional government that will share power among Mr Kostunica's allies and the Socialists of the deposed former president. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Milosevic's secret overseas hoard 'worth over £70m' ``x971776250,58843,``x``x
``xAn ethnically motivated murder in Kosovo this week indicates that 'Greater Serbia' plan is dead. <br><br>By Scott Peterson <br>Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>KOSOVO POLJE, YUGOSLAVIA <br>The dirt track in central Kosovo appeared safe enough: a conveyor belt from a nearby mine followed one side; a thicket of brush lined the other. <br>But along that track - just 200 yards from the house of Radosav Ognjanovic, an ethnic Serb - was a lethal surprise that shows how much minority Serbs are under pressure in Kosovo today from majority ethnic Albanians. <br><br>That surprise illustrates, too, how the once-proud myths of Serbian nationalism - a flame fanned to new life by former President Slobodan Milosevic a decade ago right here in Kosovo, which the Serbs call "the cradle of their civilization" - have been turned upside down. Serbs here are even more uneasy now that Mr. Milosevic was ousted by more moderate nationalist Vojislav Kostunica, fearing that ethnic Albanians will now push their case for independence from Serbia even harder. <br><br>Tension between the few ethnic Serbs who remain in Janina Voda village and their ethnic-Albanian neighbors has never been worse. <br><br>So when Mr. Ognjanovic and his friend Lubinko Andielkovic hopped onto a tractor a couple of nights ago, bumped down the road, and hit an antitank mine, the battle lines were quickly drawn. <br><br>Ethnic Albanian police officers who came with United Nations police to investigate were pushed back and stoned. Local Serbs gathered to bid farewell to Ognjanovic, who died in the blast, and to pray for Mr. Andielkovic, who was badly wounded. <br><br>"You will see how Serbs are dying here," said one family friend. "The Albanian terrorists have been attacking several times, and now they have left this family with no hope." <br><br>"Our Albanian neighbors probably did that ... they want to kill all Serbs," said Marina Verica, daughter of the wounded man. At the sound of a distant explosion, she jumped: "Those mad dogs don't know when to stop." <br><br>The angry aftermath is a potent reminder of the animosity that still afflicts Kosovo, more than a year after the 78-day US-led NATO bombing campaign aimed at reversing an ethnic-cleansing campaign against ethnic Albanian Kosovars by Serbian Yugoslav troops. <br><br>After years of repression at the hands of the Serb minority, ethnic Albanians were forced out of Kosovo en masse. As they came back - demanding independence from Yugoslavia, and with NATO troops and a new UN administration to ensure their safety - the sense of revenge was strong. <br><br>Anti-Serb attacks are still routine, such that UN police had to help this village escort mourners and the coffin from another Serb enclave. The UN reports some 430 murders, most ethnically motivated revenge killings, were carried out in Kosovo between mid-June 1999 and the end of the year. So far this year, there have been 205. <br><br>So it is an irony of history - especially for Serbs under fire today - that it was here, on the 600th anniversary of a spectacular Serbian defeat at the hands of the Turkish Army in 1389, that Milosevic spoke of the "talismanic power" of nationalism, and promised that Serbs would "never again be beaten." <br><br>The result has been the worst violence in Europe since World War II, and finally failure, as Milosevic - who has been indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague - was forced to give up power in Belgrade to President Kostunica two weeks ago. <br><br>"Nationalism existed before Milosevic, but he misused that dream and elevated it to the ideology of the regime," says Slobodan Antonic, a political scientist at the University of Novi Sad. <br><br>"The best treatment for nationalism is that a country experience defeat in war, like Nazi Germany," he adds. "Given that Milosevic managed not to lose one war, but four wars, we can say that Serb nationalism is broken." <br><br>The mine blast Oct. 16, in fact, took place within sight of the stone tower that juts from the rolling fields where the Battle of Kosovo Polje was fought, and from where Milosevic spelled out his plans for "Greater Serbia" to tens of thousands of cheering people. <br><br>Today the monument is protected by a KFOR watchtower. The brass lettering on the monument is telling: Any Serb who "does not come to fight in Kosovo, may he not have any descendants, neither male nor female...." <br><br>Talk of Kosovo being the Serbian holy land is brushed off by local Serbs, however, who say they want to live quietly and are no more than patriots. Prior to NATO intervention in the spring of 1999, that was the exact sentiment of repressed ethnic Albanians, too. <br><br>"It was superb," says Stojanovic Jordan of Milosevic's speech. A relative of the wounded man, he says he has been a member of Milosevic's Socialist Party "since the first day," but stayed in Kosovo throughout the conflict and still works at the railway with ethnic Albanian friends. <br><br>"Nobody supported Serb nationalism," he says. "People supported Serbia, and wanted to protect their country." <br><br>That view is echoed by a local Serb politician, Goran Stankovic, before sitting down to a traditional mourning meal of boiled meat and cabbage, paprika and rough bread. <br><br>"Milosevic is not the only one to blame for what happened here. There wasn't any Serb nationalism," Mr. Stankovic says. "I am a nationalist: I love my nation. But all people in power - even in America - will protect the integrity of their own nation." <br><br>"If there were no Milosevic, we wouldn't be here," agreed Stanislav, another family friend, as others nodded approvingly. Kosovo Serbs voted overwhelmingly for Milosevic in the September election. But now in Kosovo they feel besieged, and even under threat in their enclaves, despite the international troop presence. <br><br>"It's a very difficult task to prevent such a thing," says UN policeman John Wise, a retired Colorado state trooper from Denver, who was at the scene of the mine blast. "You would need thousands more people. We can't do everything." <br><br>Mourners say they are grieving over Ognjanovic's kindness, and random nature of his death. "He fought for unity and fought for everyone," says Vladimir Todorovic, head of the local human rights committee that he says counted the deceased as a member, showing an identity card. "But this is exactly what terrorists do - they don't care about multi-ethnicity."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Cristian Science Monitor: In the ashes of Serb nationalism ``x971862142,86000,``x``x
``xJohn Hughes <br><br>SALT LAKE CITY <br>Mirjana Stefanovic is going home this week. <br><br>She is going home, after an absence of a bit more than a month, to a country recently transformed during her absence. <br><br>Her country is Yugoslavia. When she left, it was in the grip of Slobodan Milosevic, the dictator who, for more than a decade, has spread his murderous influence throughout the Balkans. She returns now after Milosevic has been dramatically toppled. <br><br>Ms. Stefanovic is deputy editor of the Belgrade newspaper Blic. She is a Serb, but one who has little love for Mr. Milosevic. Nor has her newspaper, which has been harassed and hobbled by the Milosevic regime. In her late 20s, she's one of Yugoslavia's brightest post-Communist, and now post-Milosevic journalists. She has spent a month at my newspaper under a program sponsored by the Freedom Forum and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. It is designed to give promising editors from less-free countries a look at how the American press works. <br><br>For Stefanovic, it has not been an easy month. She wanted to study our technology and our on-line operation. As a former investigative reporter, she wanted to see how our investigative reporters worked. She wanted to see how the American media could preserve freedom from political and economic pressures. As it turned out, she had to sandwich all this in between the distractions of watching from a distant vantage point a revolution in her homeland. So in the early hours of the morning, she was on the Internet, or on the phone to colleagues in Belgrade, or scanning our Associated Press and New York Times wire services, to find out exactly how the upheaval was faring. <br><br>She was also a useful source of interpretation for, and argument with, some of our writers and editors. Though she detests Milosevic, she believes it is impossible for the fledgling new government at this stage to turn him over to The Hague tribunal as a war criminal. Though she is warm to Americans, she deplores the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO. In this respect she is at odds with Agron Bajrami, a young editor from Kosovo, who spent a month with us under the same program two years ago. Mr. Bajrami and his newspaper had similarly been harassed by the Milosevic regime, but as an ethnic Albanian, he argued strongly for the NATO bombing. "Without it," he told me by phone after he returned home, "we are finished." <br><br>Both Stefanovic and Bajrami, and their newspapers, have suffered as they sought to tell the truth in the face of oppression. <br><br>As a reporter who published unwelcome stories from Kosovo, Stefanovic was arrested by Milosevic's police and beaten up so badly she could not walk for three days. She was told she could be charged as a spy - with ominous consequences under the Milosevic regime. Her newspaper had to print on a variety of presses, was reduced in size by the regime, was limited in what it could charge for advertising, and was frequently fined. <br><br>Bajrami's newspaper offices were trashed by the Serbian military, who smashed $200,000 worth of computer equipment and $500,000 worth of presses, killing the night watchman. Bajrami himself was in hiding and on the run for 30 days before finding temporary refuge in Macedonia. <br><br>In the past four years, we have played host for a month each year to four editors from Eastern Europe or the former Soviet republics. The first, Andrey Sidorin, had trouble leaving his country of Tajikistan, roiled by an ugly internal war in which 30,000 people had been killed, among them 30 journalists. When he went home, the borders of his country were closed, and he had to hike for six days through the mountains. <br><br>These are journalists who have displayed courage; they represent millions for whom the flame of liberty beckons, even though it may have been hidden for a generation or more. <br><br>As Stefanovic wrote movingly in a column for my newspaper: "How do we Serbians feel about getting our freedom back? About restoring our dignity? I find it difficult to put into words. I have my life back." <br><br>As a journalist, I am particularly sensitive to the struggles of other journalists who face challenges, and sometimes give their lives, in pursuit of freedom. Millions they represent still await the time when they, too, will have their lives back.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Cristian Science Monitor: Journalists as freedom fighters ``x971862189,81838,``x``x
``xMEANWHILE<br><br>BELGRADE - Is he really finished? The question lingers in the air. I recall scenes from horror movies, especially ''Halloween,'' in which a seemingly dead body rises again and again. I've become superstitious and dare not say ''he's finished'' out loud for fear that something might go wrong.<br>This is probably the result of many years of expecting, hoping and daydreaming that Slobodan Milosevic would finally disappear. I remember street protests during the winter of 1996. We were all so convinced that he was finished then that we could not have felt more defeated and disillusioned when the opposition simply disintegrated.<br><br>What about now? Do I really believe the former Yugoslav president is finished? I notice an absence of exaltation and an overwhelming weariness in people. An old lady confides in me: ''I am so tired, as if I've just finished spring cleaning.''<br><br>These days, especially since Oct. 5, when protesters seized Parliament and the state television buildings in Belgrade, this feeling seems characteristic of people who spent the past 10 years opposing Mr. Milosevic's regime. But the situation is entirely different for those in their 20s. They rejoice in the victory wholeheartedly.<br><br>As I pushed through the crowd in the city center on Oct. 5, past the Parliament building and the state TV building on fire, I remembered friends and companions no longer with us. It hit me like a strong blow, expelling the air from my chest. My mother did not live to see the downfall of Mr. Milosevic. She died two years ago, and I know she lived for that day.<br><br>Many other friends did not live to see it, either: Jelena Santic, a<br><br>ballet dancer and champion of human rights; Aleksandar Kron, a philosopher; Stevan Pesic, a writer; Paja Cirovic, the director of the independent paper Svetlost - my old telephone book has turned into a record of disappearances. The price of the change certainly was not high on Oct. 5, but it is enormous if we include all that happened since Mr. Milosevic's accession to power in 1988.<br><br>The federal Parliament in Belgrade had turned into a Serbian Berlin Wall, and many wanted to take a ''piece.'' Those who lament that today are hypocrites. So many things have been destroyed and ruined in this country, and so many lives wrecked, that it is senseless to expect the people to respect an institution that had been no symbol of democracy and civilized life for 50 or so years.<br><br>Before Parliament was stormed, I made a wide circle around it. I saw people rushing to the center from all directions. Particularly touching was a group coming along Prince Milos Street. They came from the poor, industrial suburbs of Belgrade, their clothes dark-colored. Foreigners who stay in Belgrade's centrally located hotels do not see the depths of despair and poverty at the city's periphery.<br><br>Essentially, the Milosevic regime was so worm-eaten that any organized effort to topple it could have been successful. One could especially see it in the eyes of bewildered police.<br><br>Naturally, the day after Mr. Milosevic's fall was the most difficult one. We felt we were in an interregnum of sorts. The military leadership had not spoken up yet. We heard various rumors about Mr. Milosevic and his family. People feared that he would make a last stand and use his special paramilitary units. Long before the regime fell apart, I was haunted by the fear of how those who came through the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, where they carried out secret, criminal missions, would react.<br><br>I bought all the daily papers. In Politika, which was the Milosevic family's favorite, the world was turned upside down. Vojislav Kostunica, the new Yugoslav president, and the Democratic Opposition of Serbia were heroes, and Mr. Milosevic, his family and party friends, villains and cowards. The situation was the same with state TV. Where were the professionalism and sense of proportion of these ''turncoats''?<br><br>They were lost long ago in the purges and persecutions of the past 10 years. Thousands of professional people left the country. The texture of society changed not only through force and persecution but also through the prevailing poverty and ruin of the middle class. It will take a long time for things to start functioning with any degree of normalcy again.<br><br>This is history, I keep telling myself. The feeling of history is rather odd, not at all pathetic or heroic, but rather like stage fright. The heroes are generally ordinary, inconspicuous men whose role ended before anyone understood it. We can only have the vaguest of ideas about what was happening away from our eyes.<br><br>Perhaps I am a bit afraid of normal life. As if everything that has happened over the past 10 years is going to tumble on my head. You lose so many years fighting for a normal and decent life and then suddenly become aware that the loss is irremediable. How many things haven't I done in my small, limited life? How many books have I left unwritten? Is it possible to exchange the days and months filled with trepidation and helplessness for serenity and inner satisfaction? How can a person live with those he knows are vicious and cruel without feeling an urge to cry out for revenge? It is not a happy prospect.<br><br>I will probably keep coming back to these questions as long as I live. But, under the circumstances, perhaps personal happiness is an unnecessary luxury. I will have to pay for the evil deeds of those who will never experience guilt themselves.<br><br>The writer, a journalist and author of seven books, contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times. It was translated from the Serbo-Croatian by Ljilja Nikolic.<br><br>Kostunica has offered to include representatives of Djukanovic's party in a "government of experts." But Milosevic's Montenegrin allies argue that if they can tolerate their rivals, Djukanovic's party, in a federal government, then Kostunica should be ready to consider Milosevic's Socialist Party.<br><br><br>"I cannot see why the Socialists are the problem," said Zoran Zizic, a senior official in the Socialist People's Party of Montenegro, according to the B92 radio station. "We are not fastidious, because now it is not the time."<br><br><br>The only progress Kostunica and Djukanovic made today was to reject Milosevic's threat of military action. In a statement, they agreed that "the parties reached mutual consent on having all disputes that burdened our relations resolved through dialogue."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xHerald Tribune: Is Milosevic Really 'Finished?'``x971862231,23669,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 17 — With a deal for a new Serbian government sealed, President Vojislav Kostunica of Yugoslavia turned his attention today to the challenge of forming a federal government and to forging a new relationship with the independent-minded republic of Montenegro.<br><br>Making his first visit to the small coastal republic since becoming president, Mr. Kostunica met with Montenegro's president, Milo Djukanovic, and with members of his ruling coalition, as well as with Orthodox church leaders. Yet the day only highlighted the difficulties he faces and the constitutional muddle that resulted from the recent presidential election, which Montenegro largely boycotted to protest constitutional changes wrought by Slobodan Milosevic. Mr. Milosevic finally conceded power after admitting that Mr. Kostunica had won the first-round of voting.<br><br>The visit today was low-key with no crowds out to cheer Mr. Kostunica, and only a representative from the small People's Party at the airport to greet him. Because most Montenegrins followed their government's call to boycott the elections, few now regard him as carrying any legitimacy in Montenegro, although there is a general feeling of good will toward him.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica said today that he was pleased with his talks. "I am very interested in some more serious discussions about joint relations between Serbia and Montenegro," he said, using a much more considerate tone toward Montenegro than previously.<br><br>Still, Mr. Djukanovic made it clear that he would not participate in a new federal government, and instead would hold out for more recognition of sovereignty for Montenegro, the last Yugoslav republic still joined with Serbia. But he said he would continue discussions with Mr. Kostunica and the Democratic Opposition of Serbia to work out a future relationship with Serbia.<br><br>Montenegro continues to push for a new alignment with Serbia based on a proposal it made last last year to Mr. Milosevic, who ignored it. The plan called for a very loose confederation of sovereign states, each controlling the troops on its soil, but conducting foreign and economic policy together.<br><br>Just before Mr. Kostunica visited, negotiations abruptly broke off on Monday night in Belgrade over efforts to form a government with the Montenegrin Socialist People's Party, a pro-Milosevic party that did take part in the elections and subsequently won most of the parliamentary seats allotted to Montenegro.<br><br>The Socialist People's Party had demanded that Mr. Milosevic's party also be allowed a ministerial post in any federal government, something that Mr. Kostunica's supporters in the Democratic Opposition of Serbia ruled out immediately.<br><br>For 10 days now, since his inauguration as president of Yugoslavia, Mr. Kostunica has been trying unsuccessfully to solidify his position end the growing estrangement of Montenegro from Serbia that began three years ago under Mr. Milosevic. Mr. Kostunica wants to form a federal government that will run the foreign affairs and defense ministries as well as rebuild all federal institutions.<br><br>He has chosen to negotiate a coalition government, and tried to encourage Mr. Djukanovic to send representatives or experts to participate in the government. But the Montenegrin president has rejected sharing power with his Montenegrin opponents, who until recently supported Mr. Milosevic and his aggressive policy against Montenegro.<br><br>"They are not over-enthusiastic with our coalition with the Socialist People's Party, but we shall continue to collaborate with Djukanovic's party," Mr. Djindjic said in an interview with the Belgrade-based radio station B92. "We need passions to calm down."<br><br>Despite his impressive personal victory at the polls, Mr. Kostunica and the Democratic Opposition of Serbia that supported him do not dominate the federal Parliament. By law, if a Serbian is elected president he must appoint a Montenegrin as vice president.<br><br>A coalition with the Socialist People's Party is the most likely outcome. Both sides have agreed to basic principles of cooperation, and either of the party's two vice presidents, Predrag Bulatovic and Zoran Zizic, have been suggested for the post of vice president. <br><br>Yet talks clearly broke off with some rancor on Monday night with the Democratic Party's leader, Zoran Djindjic, saying he would not accept members of the Mr. Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia in the government. "We will not tolerate blackmail," he said, and threatening to bypass the federal authorities if he had to get foreign aid into the country. <br><br>The wrangling with the Montenegrins is driven to some extent by their own power struggles, but is also a leftover of the damage wrought by the previous government. Mr. Djukanovic is insisting on the replacement of generals of the Yugoslav Army who served under Mr. Milosevic and whom he blames for raising tension in the region. Mr. Kostunica has so far retained the generals, and has commended them for not using violence against the popular uprising on Oct. 5.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: New Yugoslav Leader Tries to Calm Wary Montenegro``x971862292,79259,``x``x
``xBy Julius Strauss in Belgrade<br><br>PRESIDENT Vojislav Kostunica of Yugoslavia is to meet seven other Balkan leaders next week in a summit which will mark the end of the country's regional isolation.<br> <br>The talks, announced yesterday, will be the first face-to-face meeting between a leader of Yugoslavia and the heads of other Balkan states in more than a decade of wars. Diplomats hope that the seizure of power by reformers in Yugoslavia will usher in an era of peace and stability in the troubled region.<br><br>Mr Kostunica has already moved quickly to try to improve ties with Montenegro, Serbia's independence-minded junior partner in the Yugoslav Federation. On Tuesday he held lengthy talks with President Milo Djukanovic. Although no agreement was reached on the future of Yugoslavia, both leaders agreed that a peaceful solution must be sought.<br><br>A more difficult test for Mr Kostunica will come at next month's Balkan Stability Pact meeting, scheduled for Nov 24, when he is expected to meet the head of the United Nations mission in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner. Mr Kouchner said on a visit to Zagreb: "It will be a good occasion to start discussion between the newcoming democrats and the people representing the...UN."<br><br>Kosovo is one of the Balkans' most intractable problems. Ethnic Albanians, who form a 95 per cent majority in the province, insist on being granted independence. Mr Kostunica, by contrast, has vowed to strengthen Serbia's sovereignty over the UN-governed province.<br><br>Serbia has been the motor behind 10 years of turmoil and war in the Balkans which has left the region in a pitiable condition. UN sanctions and corruption have impoverished the Balkan countries. The infrastructure and manufacturing capacity have been ruined.<br><br>Only organised crime has flourished and crosses the ethnic divide. Ethnic Albanian, Serbian and Bosnian gangsters co-operate to smuggle immigrants and drugs into the rest of Europe and stolen cars and money out.<br><br>Balkan leaders say a progressive Serbia is critical to building a more prosperous future for the region. A Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman, Panos Beglitis, said: "The most important factor is the participation of Yugoslavia again. It closes a big black hole in trans-Balkan co-operation, which didn't take off because of Yugoslavia's absence."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Telegraph:Summit will give hope of peace to Balkans``x971953003,63332,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade 19 October 2000 <br><br>The Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), dominated for 10 years by Slobodan Milosevic, is fighting for political survival amid signs of fierce infighting over the fate of the ousted president. <br><br>In an indication of the chaos in party ranks, Mr Milosevic's smiling campaign picture was excised from the party's homepage (www.sps.org.yu) last weekend. By Monday morning his image had been restored. <br><br>Branches of the party in Belgrade and other Serb cities want him out. The head of the Belgrade branch, Ivica Dacic, said: "The people gave us a slap in the face in the elections and afterwards. We have to learn the lesson." <br><br>Zoran Lilic, a former highSPS official who left his post in August, said: "Milosevic should resign as head of the party after this debacle. The SPS brought this country to the verge of civil war after the elections." <br><br>So far, only Gorica Gajevic, the powerful SPS secretary general and one of the closest Milosevic aides, has resigned, forced out at an emergency session of the SPS executive. Members set a date for a party congress on 25 November. <br><br>Mr Milosevic, his whereabouts still undisclosed, appears to have lost his ability to pull strings behind the scenes. If he was in control, SPS members say, Ms Gajevic would have clung to her post. <br><br>The man tipped as a potential new leader is Milorad Vuc-elic, sacked as an SPS official by Mr Milosevic in 1998. "The SPS can find a place in Serbia's political life if it becomes a modern party of the left, but that will require radical changes at the top," he says. "The SPS has to see itself as a constructive opposition from now on, or it will be erased." <br><br>The SPS, which claims up to 500,000 card-carrying members, is a restyled communist party, and, under normal circumstances, could expect to capture 15 per cent of the vote. <br><br>Mr Vucelic says the "unnatural marriage" of his party with the JUL, the neo-Marxist party led by Mr Milosevic's wife, Mira, ruined the SPS. "They ruled with arrogance and terror," he says. <br><br>The JUL imposed itself on the ruling coalition, its members driven by a greed to control state-run enterprises. Analysts believe the SPS has so many skeletons in its cupboard it has no choice but to cause chaos for the new government. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Socialist infighting over fate of former president ``x971953045,38665,``x``x
``xBy ROGER COHEN<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 18 — The removal of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia has opened new opportunities for peace in the Balkan region, but also created a fluid situation where treacherous problems abound.<br><br>For some time, Western strategic thinking on the area has involved the notion that if Mr. Milosevic could be ousted, other problems would fall away. But for a variety of reasons — including the depth of anti-Serbian feeling engendered by nine years of war and the record of Mr. Milosevic's successor — little soothing balm has immediately been felt.<br><br>Vojislav Kostunica, the new Yugoslav president, has been in office for almost two weeks now. He has made clear conciliatory signals toward Croatia, which long battled Belgrade for its independence, and Montenegro, where secessionist currents are strong. Yet his gestures have not convinced a skeptical region.<br><br>"There has been tremendous positive change in Serbia, but it has not had the immediate positive impact on the region that we would have hoped," said William D. Montgomery, the Budapest-based United States ambassador with responsibility for Yugoslavia.<br><br>A new era in the Balkans has opened. Mr. Milosevic, who propelled Yugoslavia into war nine years ago, is gone; Franjo Tudjman, the Croatian president who fanned Mr. Milosevic's flames, is dead; Alija Izetbegovic, the outgunned and stubborn Bosnian president, quit last weekend. It is not surprising that expectations are high.<br><br>But it is not yet clear that Mr. Kostunica is able, or willing, to deliver what America wants. His past nationalism makes some neighbors skeptical, his popularity in the West makes other neighbors envious, and his arrival has come so late in the process of Yugoslav disintegration that it is far from clear that the process can be arrested.<br><br>"The tremors continue from what has been a very strong political shock, and there is some ambivalence in the region," said Zarko Korac, an ally of Mr. Kostunica who visited Croatia last week. "Some people feel that Serbia will now get off the hook too quickly, and there is concern we will get the lion's share of money and attention."<br><br>The American investment in a Balkan breakthrough assuring stability is enormous. Consolidating Serbia's democratic transition and encouraging Mr. Kostunica to reassure Serbia's neighbors are now Washington's twin priorities, officials said.<br><br>With more than 10,000 United States troops still in Bosnia and Kosovo, and hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into Bosnia to consolidate the five-year-old peace there, this two-track policy is rooted in a clear national interest.<br><br>There are encouraging signs. Leaders from Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and other Balkan states are to meet Mr. Kostunica in Skopje, the Macedonian capital, next week — the first such gathering for many years and an indication of the hope engendered by the Yugoslav president.<br><br>But the meeting also illustrates a central point: the problems of the Balkans remain deeply interlinked. Change a border here — in Montenegro or Kosovo, for example — and Bosnia's Serbs may feel justified in demanding union with Serbia or a state of their own. Support Serbia with a lifting of sanctions and Croatia may feel slighted or enraged.<br><br>The question now is how sensitive Mr. Kostunica will be to this regional volatility. Up to now, the signals have been mixed.<br><br>"We would have liked to hear Mr. Kostunica address the Serbs of Bosnia and tell them that while they will always have a special relationship with Belgrade, their future lies unambiguously in Bosnia-Herzegovina," said Jacques Klein, the American who is the chief United Nations representative in Sarajevo. "But it has not happened."<br><br>Rather, Mr. Kostunica has said he respects the 1995 Dayton accords while setting the Bosnian government's nerves on edge by indicating that he may travel this weekend to the Serbian part of Bosnia to attend the emotional reburial of a poet, Jovan Ducic, whose remains are being flown in from the United States.<br><br>When James O'Brien, the special adviser to President Clinton on the Balkans, raised the question last week of the hundreds of Kosovo Albanian detainees in Serbian prisons, Mr. Kostunica said he would examine the matter but also pleaded with the American envoy to "feel the pain that a lot of Serbian families feel over losses in Kosovo."<br><br>This amounted to an appeal for balance. But the fact is the new president has repeatedly shown sensitivity to Serbian national feelings while appearing, up to now, to have difficulty in showing empathy for those in the region who have suffered at the hands of Serbian forces. This stance helped get him elected; it is far from clear that it will be helpful to delicate regional diplomacy.<br><br>The situation in Bosnia remains volatile in the run-up to elections on Nov. 11. Mass graves of Muslims killed by Serbs continue to be discovered, and there have been minor clashes between Muslim and Serbian students. In these circumstances, any encouragement from Mr. Kostunica to the Bosnian Serbs to look to Belgrade before Sarajevo could be destabilizing. <br><br>In Croatia, President Stipe Mesic has welcomed Mr. Kostunica's victory, but has also warned that Yugoslavia must pay war damages for the 1991-95 conflict and insisted on the "importance of applying equal standards in assessing the progress made by each country" in the region.<br><br>Western moves to lift many sanctions on Serbia while people like Mr. Milosevic who have been indicted by the International Tribunal in the The Hague remain at large have enraged many people in Croatia, where the West has made compliance with the tribunal a central issue.<br><br>Mr. Mesic, a moderate liked in Washington, is already under bitter attack from the nationalist Croatian right for being a stooge of the West and undermining Croatia's "war of liberation" by extraditing war- crimes suspects. If Mr. Kostunica shrugs off Serbia's wars and is still embraced by the West, Mr. Mesic's position may be further undermined.<br><br>In Montenegro, the last remaining republic still tied to Serbia in what is left of Yugoslavia, Mr. Kostunica is straining to repair the crippling damage inflicted by Mr. Milosevic. He has the support of Washington because Montenegrin independence is viewed as potentially destabilizing, officials said. As one Western official put it, "The door to Montenegrin independence is now closed."<br><br>But that is not how many supporters of the Montenegrin president, Milo Djukanovic, view the situation. Having encouraged Mr. Djukanovic to go his own way in order to undermine Mr. Milosevic, the United States may now have great trouble in controlling the movement. The pressure for independence from Kosovo Albanians may also be difficult to contain.<br><br>Having talked a tough line on both Montenegro and Kosovo in the election campaign, Mr. Kostunica is now sounding far more moderate. But suspicions of him in those two places remain deep. <br><br>Mr. Korac, a leader of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, which backs Mr. Kostunica, said these suspicions would be overcome. "The preoccupation with borders and sovereignty will now subside in the Balkans," he said. "Milosevic kept this alive. He was obsessed, but Mr. Kostunica is not."<br><br>The daunting task ahead of the new Yugoslav president is to convince his wary neighbors that this is indeed the case, while retaining domestic Serbian support won partly through a patriotic message that offered no apology for the devastating costs of Mr. Milosevic's flirtation with a Greater Serbia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Balkans After Milosevic: Still Perilous Waters``x971953148,27981,``x``x
``xBy Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff, 10/19/2000 <br><br>PODGORICA, Montenegro - For years, Montenegrins prayed for Slobodan Milosevic's ouster. Now, many regret that their prayers have been answered.<br><br><br>While relieved that Milosevic is gone, many Montenegrins fear that the little leverage they had for their goal of independence has been destroyed like the Parliament building in Belgrade, whose storming signaled Milosevic's demise.<br><br><br>The 600,000 people of Montenegro, who with the 10 million people in Serbia form what is left of the former Yugoslavia, are worried that the enthusiasm that Europe and the United States have shown for the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, will push their agenda far to the rear of Balkan priorities.<br><br><br>There has never been much international backing for Montenegrin independence, and all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China, are opposed to it. Last week, the US envoy to the Balkans, James C. O'Brien, came to Montenegro to reiterate the US stance, much to the disappointment of Montenegro's president, Milo Djukanovic, who feels the West owes his country something because it stood up to Milosevic.<br><br><br>A conciliatory Kostunica came here on Tuesday, offering to appoint members of Djukanovic's party to Cabinet positions if they agreed to let the federal prime minister's job go to Montenegrins who supported Milosevic. This was part of an elaborate compromise aimed at shoring up the Serbian opposition's hold on power by bringing former Milosevic loyalists into the fold.<br><br><br>Djukanovic rejected the offer, saying that he and Kostunica must first formalize the relationship between Montenegro and Serbia. The two leaders agreed to keep talking.<br><br><br>Like ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Montenegrins have voiced frustration with the apparent lack of Western skepticism about Kostunica's avowed nationalism.<br><br><br>In an interview, Ranko Krivokapic, vice president of the Social Democratic Party, which supports independence for Montenegro, said he is disturbed by that nationalism. <br><br><br>Krivokapic said: ''Kostunica is a democrat, which is good, but he is an ideological nationalist, which is bad. At the nationalist level, he's worse than Milosevic. Kostunica said to me, `You are Serbian, you are not Montenegrin.' His attitude is that there is no such thing as Montenegro, that we are just part of Serbia.''<br><br><br>Since his victory, Kostunica has sought to appease Montenegrins, even suggesting that there be a referendum to rename the nation Serbia-Montenegro, given that the two republics are all that is left of the former Yugoslavia. But Kostunica has ruled out a referendum on independence, and for separatists like Krivokapic name changes are merely cosmetic. They want independence and feel they have earned it.<br><br><br>Other leaders, however, say independence has to be put to the side while Kostunica consolidates power. Savo Djurdjevac, Montenegro's deputy prime minister and the vice president of the People's Party, part of the ruling coalition, urged patience, saying Montenegro needs to concentrate on a new constitutional relationship with the much larger Serbia.<br><br><br>''We have to be patient. Mr. Kostunica and us have to talk for a long time. Knowing Mr. Kostunica and all the other opposition leaders personally, I would say that Mr. Kostunica has a moral obligation'' to renegotiate Montenegro's status within the Yugoslav federation, Djurdjevac said in an interview. ''He is, like me, a lawyer by vocation, and in solving the disputes between Montenegro and Yugoslavia he will not use tanks and guns. He will use dialogue.''<br><br><br>Until Milosevic's ouster there had been real fear that he was going to launch a military offensive here, if only to divert attention from his electoral problems. The Montenegrin police, in combat fatigues and carrying automatic weapons, were deployed all over the capital and throughout the mountainous country. Cars with Serbian license plates were stopped and searched.<br><br><br>Milosevic stripped Kosovo's autonomy in 1989, in a blatant attempt to appease Serb nationalists. Montenegro, by contrast, enjoys a wide degree of autonomy, and controls just about everything within its borders. The notable exception is the continued presence of the Yugoslav army, nearly all of whose soldiers are Serbs, and who are not wanted here by most Montenegrins. Separatists like Krivokapic call it ''a foreign army, an occupying force.''<br><br><br>''Kostunica should withdraw the troops, except at the border,'' he said.<br><br><br>But there's little chance of that. In all his speeches since he won the vote three weeks ago, Kostunica has said Montenegro must remain part of the Yugoslav federation. Many Serbs are sick of Montenegrin complaints.<br><br><br>''The Montenegrins want all the benefits of being in Yugoslavia, but want independence. I think we should let them go,'' said Milena Cvetkovic, who works for a stone-cutting company in Serbia, and who, like many Serbs, considers Montenegro a drag on the economy.<br><br><br>At 60 percent, unemployment in Montenegro is about twice that of Serbia's. The streets, meanwhile, teem with tens of thousands of refugees from Milosevic's wars and neighboring Albania. The country stays afloat on Western aid.<br><br><br>There is no love lost between Kostunica and Djukanovic. At Djukanovic's request, the vast majority of Montenegrins boycotted the Sept. 24 election, in which Kostunica narrowly won more than 50 percent of the vote.<br><br><br>But because the Montenegrins held back a few hundred thousand votes, the boycott helped only Milosevic, whose efforts to steal the election ended only when the uprising of Oct. 5 demonstrated that the majority of Serbs were against him and the majority of police were no longer willing to prop up the regime.<br><br><br>Krivokapic said that if Kostunica was a true democrat, he would allow a referendum on independence. But despite his strong beliefs, Krivokapic remains more a realist than an idealist. Asked if he expected Kostunica to schedule a referendum, he replied, ''Not this millennium.''``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Boston Globe:In silver lining of Serb vote, Montenegro sees a cloud ``x972040367,25353,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Oct 20 (AFP) <br>Yugoslavia's army may have shown its softer side by staying in its barracks when supporters of the reformist opposition ousted Slobodan Milosevic, but it is still a long way from forgiving NATO for its bombing of Yugoslavia.<br><br>"The wounds are still fresh," General Milen Simic told AFP, referring to the three-month bombing campaign launched by NATO in March last year.<br><br>A NATO official said Thursday that the alliance wants Yugoslavia to join its partnership for peace programme, the first step in the process of integration that most other former communist countries in the region have followed.<br><br>However the soreness of the wounds is evident at Belgrade's War Museum, where an exhibition "Testimony to Aggression" charts the slow break-up of the former Yugoslavia, culminating in NATO's airborne bid to halt Belgrade's crackdown on Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.<br><br>In pride of place is the helmet and life vest of a US pilot whose F-16 fighter-bomber was shot down by Yugoslav troops during the bombing campaign, which Serbs refer to simply as "the aggression".<br><br>Around it are outlawed cluster bombs the Atlantic alliance later admitted to dropping, a photograph of the decapitated head of a Kosovo Albanian refugee allegedly hit by a NATO bomb and -- under thick protective glass -- the remains of depleted uranium rounds found after the bombing.<br><br>The exhibition, like the state media which until recently were controlled by the regime of ousted strongman Slobodan Milosevic, makes little attempt at a balanced exhibition, though one of the curators, Lieutenant Colonel Zeljko Zirojevic, says it represents the "objective truth."<br><br>But next to a teeshirt bearing the logo of a Croatian "paramilitary" group, the insignia of Kosovo Albanian "terrorists" and the identity card of a Bosnian "mujahedeen" fighter, there is no evidence to show that Serbs were anything but victims in a decade of brutal conflict.<br><br>But despite the sense of denial at the museum, the Yugoslav army is making efforts to reform. <br><br>It did not intervene in the popular uprising at the beginning of the month when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to oust Milosevic, calming fears that the ex-president might call them out when his police melted away.<br><br>Simic, a two-star general at the army's staff headquarters, said the army had received no order to step in, and admitted the general staff's response to such an order would have been "negative".<br><br>He said the army enjoys good relations with Milosevic's reformist successor Vojislav Kostunica, under whose new leadership the forces plan to "reorganise and modernise".<br><br>"We want to reduce numbers and to increase effectiveness within economic standards, which we hope will rise" after the end of years of crippling international sanctions last week.<br><br>Defence Minister General Dragoljub Ojdanic said on state television recently he was considering turning the conscription army, in which all men serve 12 months, into a professional force.<br><br>The army, estimated at around 85,000 men, was reformed after the former Yugoslavia shrunk into just Serbia and Montenegro in 1992, changing its name from the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) to the Yugoslav Army (VJ).<br><br>Simic said there was a special unit prepared to return to the breakaway province of Kosovo, administered by the United Nations since the end of the NATO bombing campaign.<br><br>Under the UN Security Council Resolution which set up the UN administration, some VJ troops are allowed to return, but the UN and the NATO-led peacekeepers have said it is too early and Kosovo Albanians have vowed to attack any returning VJ troops.<br><br>Simic said that despite finally having to bow to the NATO forces, his troops "showed great professionalism, military skill and moral strength", as well as preserving most of their military hardware.<br><br>Ironically, it is on the boundary with Kosovo that the Yugoslav army has its most concrete contact with NATO, where contact is maintained in order to administer the boundary and the demilitarised zone that runs along it. <br><br>"We are cooperating well with KFOR, with mutual respect, even though most of its staff are NATO officers," said Simic.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav army reforming, but NATO partnership still long way off``x972040459,42574,``x``x
``xBy Crispian Balmer<br><br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - Everyone knew Yugoslavia's economy was sick, but few realized it was at death's door.<br><br>Two weeks after Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) fell from power, the country's new pro-democracy rulers say they have found the cupboard bare -- emergency food warehouses stand vacant, oil reserves are dry and bank accounts empty.<br><br>``There's nothing there. Zero. We don't know what happened to it all,'' said Nebojsa Savic, a senior research fellow at Yugoslavia's independent Economics Institute.<br><br>``We need donations in the ultra-short term just to survive.''<br><br>The longer-term outlook does not appear much rosier.<br><br>A decade of conflict, corruption and sanctions has reduced what used to be the strongest economy in communist Europe to a shadow of its former self, with gross domestic product in Yugoslavia's largest republic, Serbia, cut by at least a third.<br><br>In the absence of meaningful official statistics, the Economics Institute estimates that inflation over the past 12 months was 120 percent, unemployment topped 30 percent and average wages stagnated at 90 German marks ($40) a month.<br><br>``I don't think the new rulers are aware of the scope and scale of the problems they have inherited, but they are aware of the dangers of failure,'' said Michael Graham, the chief representative of the EU executive in Belgrade.<br><br>Winter Months Crucial<br><br>Anxious to win the hearts and minds of the nation, newly installed President Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites) has appealed for Western aid to get the country through the harsh winter months.<br><br>A surge in the cost of food staples since Milosevic lost power has aggravated the situation. Bread has doubled in price and cooking oil tripled, as rigid state price controls evaporate, leaving the poor struggling to make ends meet.<br><br>Many people survive thanks to an estimated 250 million marks of remittances sent home every month by relatives living abroad, and thriving gray and black markets ensure that shops are well stocked with a wide range of consumer goods.<br><br>But a ramshackle energy sector and a poor harvest this year look certain to strain the system to the limits.<br><br>The European Union at the weekend promised Yugoslavia 200 million euros ($173 million) of winter assistance. However, economics professor Jurij Bajec, a senior adviser at the Economics Institute, thought at least $500 million was needed.<br><br>``In order to establish social stability and set the foundations for future growth we need money now to help pay pensions and salaries,'' he told Reuters.<br><br>Whether the West will give that much cash to a country it holds responsible for many of the Balkans' woes is debatable.<br><br>The United Nations (news - web sites)' special envoy for the Balkans, Carl Bildt, made it clear at the weekend that Belgrade could not expect an extravagant supply of aid.<br><br>``You are not interested in making a Third World economy dependent on handouts,'' he said, stressing that direct corporate investment was the way forward.<br><br>Kostunica's economic advisers are committed to a gradual privatization plan, but what would foreign partners find here?<br><br>Good Geography, Poor Infrastructure<br><br>On the plus side, Yugoslavia enjoys a great location.<br><br>It shares borders with seven countries and straddles the Danube river, making it the perfect place to establish a southeastern European presence. With a population of 10 million, it is also the biggest country in the Balkans.<br><br>The Yugoslav people are probably well equipped to cope with the rigors of a market economy, having evaded Soviet control during the Iron Curtain era and then survived both sanctions and the chaos of Milosevic's state-controlled economic system.<br><br>``People here are very entrepreneurial and eager to work,'' said Bajec. ``If we get over this transitional period we will become the powerhouse of southeastern Europe.''<br><br>On the down side, Yugoslavia's infrastructure has been shattered by a combination of neglect and NATO (news - web sites)'s 1999 bombing campaign, while factories have outdated machinery.<br><br>Greece and Italy have already bought into Telecom Serbia and the beer, cement and food processing sectors look attractive.<br><br>However, heavy industry is close to ruin and the banking system is tottering on the brink of bankruptcy, destroyed by rampant corruption and political meddling that stripped private accounts to pay for Milosevic's war economy.<br><br>Foreign cash reserves stand at a paltry $385 million and the country is in default on its $14 billion of external debt.<br><br>In addition, political uncertainties remain. Kostunica is struggling to put together a federal government and allies of Milosevic still hold positions of importance. The former president himself threatens to remain politically active.<br><br>``The economy operated in various illegal ways and has survived by a miracle. The trouble is that the brutal reality of the problems have not yet hit home,'' said European Commission (news - web sites) representative Graham.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav Economy on the Brink of Meltdown ``x972040539,20080,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Vojislav Kostunica might feel some quiet satisfaction at his first two weeks as Yugoslav president if only he had the time. The 56-year-old constitutional lawyer, catapulted to power on an uprising that forced Slobodan Milosevic to admit defeat in last month"s elections, has plenty to show for the early stages of his presidency. But Kostunica has such a huge task still ahead of him that one of his allies even joked this week he should be taking tablets to keep himself awake day and night. Since taking office two weeks ago on Saturday, the new president"s main achievement has been in restoring ties with the the West, broken off during a decade of Milosevic rule which brought four Balkan wars and international pariah status. He has received and impressed a stream of high-level foreign visitors whose presence in Belgrade would have been unthinkable just a few weeks before, ranging from French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine to U.S. President Bill Clinton"s Balkans envoy. "This is a very smart guy with a very clear vision of how he wants to move ahead," said a Western official who met Kostunica. The new president also felt his grip on power was strong enough to leave the country last weekend for France to attend a European Union summit, where he received a warm welcome. The EU and the United States have both lifted economic sanctions. And after a decade in which Kostunica"s native Serbia has been associated by many of its neighbours with belligerence, he has sent out some conciliatory signals. He dispatched some of his allies to Croatia, visited Montenegro -- Serbia"s estranged partner in the Yugoslav federation -- and plans to attend a summit of regional leaders in the Macedonian capital Skopje next week. TICKING TIME BOMB At home, his supporters have struck a deal with Milosevic"s Socialists to share power in the Serbian government, the real power centre in Yugoslavia, until early parliamentary elections at which they are confident of winning a sweeping victory. And, although his opponents complain of anarchy and chaos as workers boot out Milosevic allies from state companies and institutions, his calm authority and insistence on legality have helped stop revolutionary fervour spiralling out of control. "He managed to do a lot to calm down passions here," said Bratislav Grubacic, editor of the Belgrade newsletter VIP. For ordinary Yugoslavs, the change of power has been reflected in a palpable sense of relief among many and a general opening up of the country"s institutions. Serbian state television, which used to churn out nationalist propaganda, has suddenly started showing the Montenegrin evening news on its second channel. Another station has broadcast a documentary on the work of the War Crimes Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, which has indicted Milosevic and four associates and was long denounced as a political court run from Washington. But for many citizens, the changes have also meant soaring food prices as artificial controls imposed by the Milosevic government to keep social peace fall away. The prices point to the new rulers" biggest challenge -- transforming a bankrupt, run-down state-controlled economy. "We are facing a real economic and social time bomb," said Jurij Bajec, a senior adviser at Yugoslavia"s independent Economics Institute. "I don"t think people realise the pain of transition. We have needed reforms for the past 10 years but they have always been avoided up until now." FACING UP TO THE PAST The president himself will also have his hands full keeping all his allies on board. Kostunica ran on the ticket of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, a disparate alliance of 18 parties which is likely to prove unwieldy over time. "Who are we going to talk to? Monarchists, to talk about getting a king back? Or Social Democrats, to get a republic?" complained Miodrag Vukovic, a senior adviser to Montenegro"s President Milo Djukanovic. Sorting out the future of Montenegro, which provides Serbia with access to the Adriatic Sea, is another priority for Kostunica. The small republic became increasingly independence-minded during the Milosevic years. The status of the province of Kosovo, currently run as an international protectorate, also has to be addressed. The president must also decide what to do with his predecessor and his allies. Milosevic is said to be still in Belgrade and trying to pull political strings behind the scenes. Many key figures in the state under the authoritarian leader, including the army chief of staff and other security bosses, remain in office. Many Serbs would like to see the former president put on trial at home for abuse of power. Some of Kostunica"s allies would also have preferred him to act more quickly and decisively in purging the state of Milosevic appointees. So far the new president has been quiet on these issues and the broader question of how Serbia deals with its recent past. Serbs have spoken a lot in the past few weeks about the wrongs done to them under Milosevic but little about the violence inflicted on others in the name of a Greater Serbia. "We have to pursue a longer process of getting to know what really happened," newsletter editor Grubacic said. "This will be a very complicated and sensitive process here." (Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer and Colin McIntyre) ^ ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe ABC News:ANALYSIS-Kostunica's early days: first steps on long road``x972040597,20828,``x``x
``xBy Paul Wood in Belgrade <br><br>The new Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, has sparked a political row by arranging a visit to the Bosnian Serb republic. <br><br>He will go the south-western town of Trebinje to attend the burial of the remains of the Serb nationalist poet, Jovan Ducic, who died in exile in the United States in 1943. <br><br>President Kostunica has moved to try to calm the diplomatic row over his upcoming visit by calling it a private trip. <br><br>But he's facing new allegations of breaching protocol - and at a very sensitive time when Bosnia prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections. <br><br>Objections <br><br>The Bosnian Foreign Ministry in Sarajevo has already registered its objections to the visit. <br>Now they have been joined by the international community's top official in Bosnia, Wolfgang Petritsch, who says Mr Kostunica should be going instead to the capital, Sarajevo. <br><br>He urged the Yugoslav president to remember there was an election campaign and not to give the impression of siding with any one candidate. <br><br>Mr Kostunica had earlier tried to mollify the Bosnians by writing to the foreign minister: "I have no intentions of making a political demonstration out of a religious and cultural event." <br><br>Bosnia and Yugoslavia don't yet have diplomatic relations and in perhaps the most important part of the letter, President Kostunica said he was looking forward to establishing such formal links. <br><br>He also said that although many issues remained outstanding after the end of the war in 1995, these would be resolved completely in accordance with the Dayton agreements. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBBC:Row over Kostunica's Bosnia visit``x972121623,62096,``x``x
``xBy Roxana Dascalu<br><br>BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Friday promised Moscow's support to help Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica's efforts to stabilize his country following the fall of his predecessor Slobodan Milosevic .<br><br>``Our main task is to give support to President Kostunica, because the elections alone cannot solve the problems confronting Yugoslavia,'' Ivanov told Reuters, speaking on the fringes of a conference in Bucharest.<br><br>Ivanov was referring to elections due later this month in Serbia's southern province of Kosovo, and to Serbian parliamentary elections on December 23, brought forward after Milosevic gave up power two weeks ago on Saturday.<br><br>He cited ``internal political stability'' among problems facing rump Yugoslavia, mainly relations between Serbia and its smaller sister republic of Montenegro. ''The problems regarding Montenegro and the Kosovo province can only be solved in the context of Yugoslavia's territorial integrity,'' he added, speaking through an interpreter.<br><br>Ivanov called for increased Western contributions to support the reconstruction of Yugoslavia, after the European Union lifted sanctions on Belgrade following Milosevic's fall.<br><br>``The fact cannot be overlooked that Yugoslavia suffered important material losses as a result of the NATO<br> aggression,'' he said in reference to the Alliance's air bombing campaign last year to punish Belgrade for its treatment of Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians.<br><br>``We hope that the countries which participated in this aggression will become the main donors for the reconstruction of Yugoslavia's economy.''<br><br>Ivanov, who is attending a one-day meeting of foreign ministers of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation group (BSEC), said Russia would maintain an active role in the Balkan region, which was rocked by four Yugoslav wars over the past decade.<br><br>``We are interested in the Balkans becoming a region of peace and stability.''<br><br>Ivanov said he had outlined Russia's position on Yugoslavia, Romania's western neighbor, to his Romanian counterpart Petre Roman during separate talks earlier on Friday.<br><br>``We understand Russia's point of view on the situation in the Balkans, and especially on Kosovo as part of the Yugoslav Federation,'' Roman said after 90 minutes of talks with Ivanov.<br><br>The two foreign ministers also tackled ways to boost economic relations between Moscow and Bucharest, despite the absence of a long-delayed post-communist treaty.<br><br>The treaty has been stalled over Romania's insistence that the text should include reference to Moscow's seizure during World War Two of Romanian territories now part of Ukraine and Moldova, and on the return of a treasure of gold entrusted to Russia for safe-keeping before World War One. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRussia's Main Task Is to Support New Yugoslav Leader ``x972121671,22088,``x``x
``xSpecial report: Serbia <br>Nick Wood in Presevo Valley <br>Saturday October 21, 2000 <br><br>The handover of power from Slobodan Milosevic's allies to the opposition appears to be making slow progress; nowhere more so than in the Presevo valley, next door to Kosovo and also home to many of Serbia's Albanian minority. <br>The region, about 25 miles south-east of Pristina and tucked between Kosovo and the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, has been swamped by interior ministry police (MUP) and Yugoslav soldiers since the end of Nato's bombing campaign in June 1999. <br><br>For the past year, local politicians have complained of constant intimidation and human rights abuses in Bujanovac, Presevo and Medveda, the three main towns with Albanian populations. They say it is a trend that continued even after Vojislav Kostunica was sworn in as president. <br><br>The Albanian mayor of Bujanovac, Riza Halimi, claims that a family of five was forced to flee its home in the village of Buhic on October 9 after the local MUP commander threatened to kill the three sons. <br><br>Mr Halimi says the mother is now being treated in a hospital in Pristina after she intervened when one of the policemen threatened to cut her sons' toes off with an axe. She allegedly suffered knife cuts and bruising at police hands. <br><br>Further north, the Ismajli family tells a similar story. Imirije Ismajli, 50, is still in bed almost a month after she was attacked in her family's home in the village of Ternovac by four masked men wearing overalls and military boots. They said they were looking for money. <br><br>She was beaten around the head and had to go to hospital in Belgrade. When the family complained to the police, they blamed the attack on "Albanian terrorists". <br><br>"We don't see any radical changes in the Serbian police or soldiers," said Mr Halimi. "We have Serbian checkpoints everywhere near the border with Kosovo. It is impossible to enter an Albanian village without being stopped by patrols." <br><br>In Bujanovac, blue-uniformed MUP officers can be seen checking the papers of casual labourers waiting for a day's work in the town centre. Blue armoured personnel carriers, the workhorses of the MUP in Kosovo during the fighting between 1997 and 1999, also patrol the streets. <br><br>The tension in the region is in part due to continued skirmishes between police and the UCPMB, an Albanian guerrilla movement based in the no man's land between the Yugoslav army and the area patrolled by UN peacekeepers in Kosovo. Two policemen were killed last Friday by mines laid by the group near Bujanovac. <br><br>Unlike Kosovo, demands in the Presevo valley for independence from Serbia are few and far between - Albanians here did not opt to form separate state institutions in the past 10 years. <br><br>The main Albanian political party, the Party of Democratic Action, supports Mr Kostunica's alliance, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (Dos). It accuses Albanians from Kosovo of being the force behind the UCPMB. <br><br>Speaking in the party offices in Bujanovac, a young man who gave his name as Amir dismissed claims that support for the guerrilla movement was widespread. <br><br>"The police accuse us of supporting the UCPMB. This is the 21st century. I can't imagine myself with an AK-47 running around the forests fighting the police," he said. "What I want is a laptop and job in an office." <br><br>Another man, calling himself Toni, was willing to speak of his hopes for Mr Kostunica - but he would only talk in the kitchen of a nearby cafe for fear of being seen by police speaking to a journalist . <br><br>"In Kosovo, it is easy for people to say they want independence, but we are not free people," he said. <br><br>"They can easily say they do not want anything to do with Serbia. They have Nato troops there and they live safely, but we do not, and that is why, for us, Kostunica is better. <br><br>"When we found out he was going to be president we drank champagne." <br><br>But the changes that Toni and his friends hope for seem a long way off. Under the agreement reached between Mr Milosevic's Serbian Socialist party and Mr Kostunica's opposition alliance, the key ministries of justice, information and police are to be shared equally among appointees from both sides. <br><br>Mr Halimi believes the policy of repression in the Presevo valley will not change until new elections are held for the Serbian parliament on December 23, after which a new Serbian government can be formed. <br><br>"There must be new elections, and when they do come things will be better."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Champagne of revolution quick to go flat in valley of fear ``x972121716,28173,``x``x
``xBy George Papandreou .<br>The writer is the Foreign Minister of Greece. He contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.<br><br>ATHENS - Through the recent elections, the Serbian people have sent Europe a clear message: They want democracy, stability and security. And they want to share their future with us. Now is the time for us to answer. That answer must be a strong yes.<br>Southeastern Europe can be a region reunified with Europe and within the European Union. <br><br>This vision led more than 40 nations last year to develop a unique contract between the international community and Southeastern Europe: it was coined the Stability Pact. In my view, the Stability Pact can be the incubator of a new contract for the Balkans.<br><br>ÊGreece has a clear sense of how this can come about:<br><br>First we need to empower this region that has been historically handicapped, dependent and divided by a world community of competing interests and a babble of conflicting signals. <br><br>This Balkanization of the region - in which great powers competed, fought proxy wars and set up spheres of influence in the absence of democratic institutions - must be replaced by coordination of international efforts. It therefore is an optimistic sign that today, international organizations, the EU, the United States and Russia cooperate in the context of the Stability Pact.<br><br>Second, we need to support cooperation within the region. Regional integration can be achieved as the Stability Pact promotes investment in infrastructure projects, democratic leadership training, institution building and education that will bring us together, stimulate economic development and promote systematic cooperation and respect of international law among the states and peoples of Southeastern Europe.<br><br>In the ever changing world of the 21st century, cultural and educational diplomacy should be a vital political priority. Through culture and education, we can fundamentally transform the Balkans. Cultural exchanges will help promote European integration in the Balkans. Educational exchanges among the Balkan candidate countries will be essential to the establishment of peaceful cooperation.<br><br>Ê In response to the challenge posed by the opening of Central and Eastern Europe, the Brussels based College of Europe has made a commitment to provide the necessary European education channels and training with the establishment of a second campus in Warsaw. <br><br>With the opening of the Balkans, the College of Europe, in close cooperation with the European Commission, should commit itself in establishing a third campus in Thessalonika, providing the region with the same opportunities.<br><br>Already Greece's bustling northern seaport has become a commercial and cultural center for our neighboring countries. Today it is the host of the regional office for the Pact and of the seat of the European Union's Reconstruction Agency for Southeastern Europe. Its academic institutions can provide training possibilities for young leaders from the Balkans on EU laws and institutions.<br><br>Finally we need to integrate the region into the wider European family. This translates into providing a road map for the region with clear standards to be achieved by each country prepared to join Europe: improved systems of governance; an effective market; strong democratic institutions and a thriving civil society.<br><br>Central, therefore, to the future of the region is whether the European Union is willing to commit itself, by action, to the eventual integration of the region into the EU.<br><br>The Serbian people have now offered Europe a chance to transform the Balkan region that has been the spark of so many fires. Clearly, this is no time for a failure of vision.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xHerald Tribune:It's Time to Debalkanize the Balkans``x972121861,91536,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Oct 20 (Reuters) - The ultra-nationalist Radical Party quit the Serbian government on Friday, a day before a new transitional administration was expected to be formed without any of its members. In a statement the party said the government had been powerless since what it described as a "coup" by the opposition earlier this month, and it was therefore pulling out its 15 members from the 35-strong Serbian government. A transitional government is due to be formed on Saturday by the 18-party Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) that backed new President Vojislav Kostunica, the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) and the Socialists of ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. The Radicals turned down an invitation to take part in the government, saying they did not want to legalise the "coup." The government will run Serbia, the dominant partner in the Yugoslav federation that also includes Montenegro, until new elections scheduled for December 23. The Radicals, led by Vojislav Seselj, had shared power in Serbia with the Socialists and the Yugoslav Left party headed by Milosevic"s wife Mirjana Markovic. Milosevic was swept from power on October 5 by a popular uprising following a presidential election defeat by Kostunica. "On October 5...a coup was organised that illegally took power from the Serbian government, thus preventing it from running institutions, especially the police and state companies," the Radicals were quoted by Beta news agency as saying in the statement. "The Serbian government is no longer in possession of a single instrument of power, and is not capable of carrying out any policy," it added. Although Milosevic was overthrown, the Socialists and their backers continued to control the Serbian government, which is the real seat of power in the Yugoslav federation. However the Socialists recognised that without Milosevic they could no longer run Serbia on their own, and agreed to share power until early elections in which they are likely to lose many of their seats. The Radicals are also expected to do badly. In elections for the Yugoslav federal parliament last month, the party saw their seats reduced from 25 to 4. Under the terms of a deal clinched earlier this week, the Socialists retain the post of prime minister, but the government head will need the agreement of two opposition deputy premiers for all decisions. Parallel talks on forming a new federal government are bogged down over disagreements with Montenegro"s leadership. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News:Serbian party, facing exclusion, quits government``x972121901,96114,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Plans to name an interim government in Yugoslavia"s main republic snagged Friday when President Vojislav Kostunica"s allies objected to candidates proposed by Slobodan Milosevic"s party. Serbia"s parliament is to meet Saturday to approve a government to serve until Dec. 23 elections in the Serb republic, the last major bastion of Milosevic support. Although Kostunica assumed the federal presidency Oct. 7, the governments in Yugoslavia"s two republics of Serbia and Montenegro are elected separately. Under a deal reached Monday, Milosevic"s Socialist Party agreed to share power in key ministries _ police, information, justice and finance _ with Kostunica"s coalition and another opposition movement until the elections. But Kostunica"s group, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, objected Friday to at least one Socialist nominated for an undisclosed post _ which could delay parliamentary agreement on the transition Cabinet and the December elections, which requires legislative approval. In a letter to Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, Kostunica"s alliance said appointment of "politically compromised" people was unacceptable. The letter singled out Branislav Ivkovic, a top party official who campaigned vigorously against Kostunica"s group in the Sept. 24 election, which brought Kostunica to power and ousted Milosevic after people stormed the streets when Milosevic would not accept defeat at the ballot box. Under the Monday deal, decisions must be taken by consensus in the shared ministries_ a formula Kostunica hoped would prevent Milosevic"s allies from interfering in the December election. "This is not revenge or hatred," Kostunica ally Nebojsa Covic said. "We simply object to any attempt by the Socialists to sneak into the transition government some of the party"s most heavily compromised people." Covic was chosen as deputy prime minister from the Kostunica camp, while Milosevic"s Socialist Party named Milomir Minic, a legislator with a moderate reputation, as its candidate for Serbian prime minister. Meanwhile, the Serbian Radical Party, a longtime Milosevic ally, said its ministers were resigning from the Serbian government "because we do not want to take part in a putsch," a term the radicals have used for the reorganization. The Radicals move had been expected. Serbia"s population is more than 10 times that of Montenegro, and without control of the larger republican government, Kostunica cannot push through democratic reforms. The December election offers Kostunica the chance to capitalize on the euphoria of his rise to power and rid the key Serbian administration of Milosevic stalwarts. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News: Plan to name interim government in Serbia hits snag``x972121957,59188,``x``x
``xSpecial report: Serbia<br><br>Special report: Kosovo <br><br>Jonathan Steele <br>Monday October 23, 2000 <br><br>Strong warnings to the international community not to drop the option of eventual independence for Kosovo because Slobodan Milosevic has been replaced by a democratic government in Serbia are contained in two new reports by international experts. <br>The world should consider moving the largely Albanian-populated former province of Serbia to "conditional independence", according to a report from a commission set up by the Swedish prime minister, Goran Persson, which will be handed to the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, today. <br><br>The world would have to guarantee the security of the new state, oversee the protection of human rights for Serbs and other minorities, and integrate Kosovo into the Balkan stability pact, the report says. <br><br>But world powers must also recognise that although UN resolution 1244, which ended the war in Kosovo, kept the territory within the framework of Yugoslavia, that is not tenable in the long term. <br><br>In a separate report a respected think tank, the International Crisis Group, says Mr Milosevic's departure makes it imperative to accelerate a decision on Kosovo. <br><br>It warns that support for hardliners within the Kosovo Albanian community would rise "if the international community's new-found love affair with Belgrade is seen as compromising Kosovo's desire for independence". <br><br>It also says that the west must be careful not to make the wrong gestures to the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica. In a speech given when he was sworn in, Mr Kostunica called for a strengthening of ties between Serbia and Kosovo. <br><br>Under UN resolution 1244 Yugoslavia is entitled eventually to send up to 1,000 troops back to Kosovo for work at border crossings and to guard historical sites. For the UN to grant that right would be "catastrophic", the ICG warns, and would alienate Kosovo Albanians overnight. <br><br>It would be equally disastrous if the Kosovans became convinced that the arrival of a new government had led the international community to rule out independence. <br><br>To show that the Kosovans' right to self-determination is accepted, the ICG has urged the European Union, which holds a Balkans summit in Zagreb next month, to invite not only Mr Kostunica but also Kosovo Albanian representatives. <br><br>The Kosovo commission offers five options for Kosovo's future status. Renewing the current United Nations protectorate for an indefinite number of years may seem attractive but Kosovan Albanian impatience might lead to parallel underground institutions or outright rebellion. <br><br>Partition might satisfy Serbs in Mitrovice but would lead to the forced relocation of most other Serbs as well as the end of the international community's commitment to maintain the multi-ethnic character of all Balkan states. <br><br>Full independence for Kosovo and the end of the UN mandate would be opposed by Russia and China, create anxieties in neighbouring states, and be resisted by Kosovo's Serb and Roma communities. <br><br>Autonomy within Yugoslavia is impractical, the commission argues: "The simple truth is that no Kosovar will accept to live under Serb rule, however notional, ever again." <br><br>The only viable solution, it concludes, is "conditional independence". <br><br>The commission finds that Nato's intervention against Yugoslavia was "illegal but legitimate" and criticises Nato for "major mistakes" in thinking that the bombing campaign would be short and in not anticipating the Serbian revenge attacks on Kosovan Albanians. <br><br>It urges the United Nations to "close the gap between legality and legitimacy" by preparing a new framework for intervention. <br><br>It also suggests that the general assembly produce a declaration which would sanctify three principles that would have to be met before any humanitarian intervention could be accepted: massive civilian suffering, the overriding commitment to the direct protection of civilians, and the calculation that the intervention has a reasonable chance of ending the catastrophe. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian:Give Kosovo independence or face fresh conflict, UN is told ``x972294176,56740,``x``x
``xSpecial report: Serbia <br><br>Jonathan Steele <br>Monday October 23, 2000 <br><br>Yugoslavia's new president, Vojislav Kostunica, got his regional foreign policy off to a shaky start yesterday by visiting the Serb part of Bosnia for the re-burial of a nationalist poet who was much admired by the indicted war criminal and former Bosnian leader, Radovan Karadzic. <br>The controversial visit was slightly softened after Mr Kostunica, listening to pleas from Bosnian Muslim leaders and the UN's international administrators, agreed to stop briefly in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo before returning to Belgrade. <br><br>No Yugoslav president has visited Bosnia since it became independent in 1992. Few expected Mr Kostunica to apologise for the three-year siege of Sarajevo and the massacres of Muslims and Croats by Serb forces supported by Slobodan Milosevic, but there were hopes that the new president would break from the past by going first to Sarajevo to announce Yugoslavia's official recognition of the new state. <br><br>Instead, he went to Trebinje in the Bosnian Serb entity, Republika Srpska, at the invitation of its deputy president, Mirko Sarovic. Mr Sarovic is a member of the party founded by Radovan Karadzic, the one-time poet and psychiatrist who is the most wanted Bosnian suspect indicted by the UN war tribunal in The Hague. <br><br>The occasion was the re-burial of Jovan Ducic, a supporter of the wartime monarchist and anti-communist Chetniks, who died in exile in the US in 1943. As a poet and diplomat Mr Ducic was on the extreme wing of Serbian nationalism. <br><br>Mr Kostunica's decision to honour him sent extraordinary signals, especially as Karadzic's wife Ljiljana attended parts of the two-day ceremony, including the reburial yesterday. Her husband won the Ducic prize for poetry a decade ago. <br><br>In Sarajevo, the Bosnian foreign ministry expressed outrage that Mr Kostunica's first visit would be to the Serb-ruled part of Bosnia rather than the capital, even though Mr Kostunica attended the reburial privately. <br><br>Other Bosnians tried hard to turn the incident into something positive. About 5,000 people were present at the ceremony, including representatives of the Islamic and Jewish communities in Bosnia and the Muslim mayor of nearby Mostar, Safet Orucevic. <br><br>After the ceremony, Mr Kostunica had lunch with all Bosnian Serb leaders except the pro-western prime minister, Milorad Dodik, who left after the event was over. <br><br>Bosnia's chief international administrator, Wolfgang Petritsch, visited Mr Kostunica in Belgrade on Friday in an attempt to persuade him to change the visit. On Saturday, Mr Petritsch's office announced that following the reburial, the Yugoslav president would fly aboard a UN helicopter for an "official visit" to Sarajevo. <br><br>Mirza Hajric, foreign policy adviser to the Muslim member of Bosnia's three-member presidency, called Mr Kostunica's visit a "positive step". "There's a Bosnian phrase: 'Once bitten by a snake you are afraid of a lizard'," he said. "On the other hand we need to give a chance to the new Belgrade leadership." <br><br>Mr Hajric said the Sarajevo talks would be an important confidence-building move and that Bosnia would propose the unconditional establishment of diplomatic relations. <br><br>Jacques Klein, head of the UN mission in Bosnia, said: "The fact that he is coming shows that he has statesmanship character. The Milosevic era is over." <br><br>President Kostunica's nationalism has already alienated Kosovo and Montenegro. His pledge in his inaugural speech to "strengthen the links between Serbia and Kosovo" has irritated Kosovo Albanians and his determination to appoint a member of the main pro-Milosevic party in Montenegro to the prime ministership of the Yugoslav Federation upset Montenegro's ruling party. <br><br>In Zagreb the new democratic government of Stipe Mesic is watching anxiously to see what Mr Kostunica's first moves towards Croatia will be. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian:Kostunica shows his nationalist colours ``x972294219,68431,``x``x
``xTom Walker, Belgrade <br><br>THE ousted Yugoslav dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, is building a £2m villa next door to the British ambassador's residence in the heart of Belgrade's diplomatic quarter. <br>The villa, just off the prestigious Uzicka avenue in the southern suburb of Dedinje, is intended to be a retirement home for Milosevic and his wife, Mira Markovic. <br><br>Belgrade planning officials say work going on at the half-built house shows that despite the events of the last month, the couple still believe they can maintain their position in the Serbian elite. <br><br>Yesterday, workers swarmed over the building, which is near a network of tunnels dating from the Tito era. When construction started a year ago they were told it was for General Nebojsa Pavkovic, Milosevic's chief of staff. Officials now say Pavkovic will move into an older Milosevic house nearby, while the former president intends to take advantage of the new home's better security and more prominent position. <br><br>One local planning official said an inspector sent to ask who was building the house had been confronted by military police. "This is a state property. Go away and don't come back," they said. <br><br>Dobrica Cosic, an author and neighbour whose nationalist writings inspired Milosevic, has been involved in heated arguments over the felling of trees around the site. <br><br>Aides of the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, have said that all new building projects in Dedinje, the preferred home of Milosevic's inner circle, will be investigated in the coming months. <br><br>Mladen Dinkic, a senior Kostunica aide who may head the central bank, has prepared a list of regime insiders who profited from buying D-marks at an "official" rate of six dinars while the street value plummeted to around 40. Among his suspects is a Milosevic minister who has bought a house in the area that appears to be well beyond his means. <br><br>"They have all used this exchange fiddle and put the proceeds into bricks and mortar," said one western diplomat. <br> <br>One option being considered is to requisition illegally bought properties and sell them to foreign embassies as western ambassadors who left before last year's Nato airstrikes return to Belgrade. <br><br>Disentangling the elite from their ill-gotten gains will be a big hurdle for Kostunica, who is resisting western pressure to hand over Milosevic and his closest allies for alleged war crimes. <br><br>At a meeting last week with Carl Bildt, the European Union's special envoy, Kostunica discussed the possibility of allowing the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to set up an office in Belgrade. The issue could be raised again next weekend, when Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, is tentatively scheduled to make his first visit to the new Belgrade. <br><br>Diplomats believe one compromise acceptable to Kostunica would be to allow tribunal prosecutors to participate in trials in Serbia. They have pointed to a precedent under the Milosevic regime, in which tribunal observers were allowed into local courts considering evidence against three Yugoslav generals indicted for their roles in the Croatian war. <br><br>Another Belgrade-based war criminal with an uncertain future is General Ratko Mladic, who faces a genocide charge for his role in the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian conflict. Mladic lives in the suburb of Banovo Brdo, and last week appeared briefly on his balcony to warn off a journalist. The general, still a folk hero in Serbia, is protected by bodyguards and dogs. <br><br>Diplomats say it is unlikely that aid to Serbia will be conditional on the arrest of Milosevic or even Mladic. "War crimes are not a priority and dealing with them is not linked to Yugoslavia's full readmittance to the United Nations," said one source. <br><br>But he added that Kostunica is expected to make an early gesture of goodwill by freeing many of the 900 Kosovo Albanians held in Serbian prisons. <br><br>In return, Bernard Kouchner, the UN head in Kosovo, will press the Albanian authorities to disclose the fate of hundreds of Serbs missing in Kosovo. <br><br>If Cook visits Belgrade before flying on to Pristina, Kosovo's capital, he will be giving tacit recognition that the province is still tied to Serbia. "It's symbolic, and important," said one official, who said Kostunica would ask the foreign secretary for help in securing a future for Serbs in Kosovo. <br><br>Last week ethnic Albanian extremists destroyed a Serbian house just outside the Kosovo border in a mortar attack, further destabilising an exclusion zone around the province that is meant to be patrolled only by Nato's Kfor force. <br><br>Nato officials were monitoring an increase in cross-border firefights in the run-up to municipal elections in Kosovo next weekend. <br><br>For the moment Kostunica remains focused on events in Belgrade, where he appears determined to cling to the vestiges of a normal life. He has been seen buying hamburgers from his favourite kiosks. <br><br>Additional reporting: Alex Todorovic and Emily Milich ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Sunday Times:Milosevic builds £2m Belgrade villa``x972294273,74608,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>TREBINJE, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Oct. 22 — Vojislav Kostunica today made the first visit to Sarajevo by a Yugoslav head of state since war broke out here eight years ago, hastily starting a dialogue of peace to soften what many see as his support for Serbian nationalism.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica had planned today's journey to Trebinje, high in the mountains that divide Bosnia from Montenegro, as a personal and symbolic pilgrimage to honor Jovan Ducic, a Serbian poet and diplomat born here and reburied with great pomp today, 57 years after he died in the United States.<br><br>But the trip to the Serb-ruled part of Bosnia, where many inhabitants still hope to rejoin neighboring Yugoslavia, quickly turned into a highly political act, threatening to raise tensions barely two weeks after a popular uprising swept Mr. Kostunica, the elected president, into power in place of Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Mr. Milosevic has long been seen as a fulcrum of the Balkan wars of the past decade, and the instigator of the Serb attack on independent Bosnia that set off a war that claimed an estimated 200,000 lives and drove some 2 million of Bosnia's 4.3 million inhabitants from their homes.<br><br>Under pressure from international officials in charge of Bosnia, Mr. Kostunica flew to the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, for a short meeting at the airport with Bosnian officials after attending the emotional and patriotic reburial of Mr. Ducic.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica did not venture into Sarajevo itself, a city which was bombarded and besieged by the Bosnian Serbs throughout the war, restricting himself to meeting at Sarajevo airport with Bosnian Croat officials and the Muslim and Serb members of the tripartite presidency that runs the still deeply divided country. He said afterward, "I would say we are opening a new page in relations."<br><br>The immediate goal was to discuss the resumption of diplomatic relations between Bosnia and Yugoslavia, although according to Halid Genjac, the Muslim member of the presidency, talks did not go very far, Reuters reported from Sarajevo.<br><br>Asked if he would apologize for Serbian actions during the war, Mr. Kostunica reiterated his stance that everyone's actions should be examined and that "one-sided statements" would not solve anything.<br><br>"I am one of those politicians who will not use empty words, empty promises and empty apologies to in some way overcome all the complications of our relations," Reuters quoted him as saying. "With all that has happened, all the crimes that were carried out and the victims there were on all sides, all this can be cured only by the truth."<br><br>"We need a return of confidence, an examination of all that happened a few years ago and maybe a few decades ago," Mr. Kostunica added, alluding apparently to the World War II feuds and killings that helped stoke the disputes and wars of the 1980's and 90's.<br><br>In a significant change from previous comments, Mr. Kostunica indicated that he would cooperate with the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, which has indicted high-level Serbian officials and generals for their actions in Bosnia and, for his actions in Kosovo, Mr. Milosevic.<br><br>"When it comes to The Hague tribunal, we know it is a part of the Dayton accord and there are elements of it which can and must be implemented and we will take certain steps in that direction," Mr. Kostunica said, referring to the peace accords that ended the Bosnian war and divided the country into the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic.<br><br>Mr. Milosevic visited Bosnia only once during the war, in 1993, when he urged the Bosnian Serbs to accept an international peace settlement which they rejected.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica, a lawyer who espouses Serbian patriotism but has criticized ethnic cleansing and the paramilitaries involved in it, was apparently determined to attend the reburial of Mr. Ducic, despite the evident concern of foreign diplomats who effectively administer Bosnia.<br><br>Jacques Klein, a retired American general who heads the United Nations mission to Bosnia, flew personally to take Mr. Kostunica to Sarajevo. He called the trip a brave one on Mr. Kostunica's part, considering the Yugoslav president is still grappling with the supporters of Mr. Milosevic.<br><br>"Kostunica deserves great credit. His advisers probably would have said, `Don't do this. It's going to cause you problems in Belgrade,' " Mr. Klein said.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica was applauded by hundreds of bystanders as he arrived at the newly-built Church of the Annunciation, where Mr. Ducic was to be buried.<br><br>"Long life, Mr. President," said one onlooker. Following dozens of Serb Orthodox priests in colored robes and glittering miters, Mr. Kostunica accompanied Bosnian Serb politicians around the church and inside for an hours-long service. Beside him stood his host, Mirko Sarovic, vice president of the Serb Republic and a leader of the nationalist Serbian Democratic Party.<br><br>"It's a private visit, but it is turning into a public occasion," said Vladeta Jankovic, a leading adviser to Mr. Kostunica. "People tend to see this as a provocation, which it isn't."<br><br>"This is certainly not meant to be a demonstration of Serb nationalism and that is why he is going to Sarajevo." Mr. Kostunica's visit to Trebinje had been planned long before he had even thought of running for president, Mr. Jankovic said.<br><br>But many Serbs attending saw it as an important political moment. "All these people are from Serbia and for us the border does not exist. Of course, I want this to become part of Yugoslavia, and not Bosnia," said Nikola Miljanovic, a businessman. <br><br>This open desire to change Bosnia's borders alarms the Muslim and Croat inhabitants of Bosnia, many of whom suffered at the hands of Serbian forces during the war. In Trebinje, as in many other places, the Muslims were expelled and their mosques destroyed.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica did not speak at Trebinje and bore an expression of detachment as he stood listening to the speeches and sermons. The occasion was replete with the kind of religious and patriotic symbols that nationalist Bosnian Serb leaders made their hallmark during the 1992- 1995 war.<br><br>A popular Serbian poet, Matija Beckovic, spoke of the miracle that had brought the body of Mr. Ducic back to Trebinje at the very moment that Serbia found freedom and democracy under Mr. Kostunica, who defeated Mr. Milosevic in elections on Sept. 24. His speech won applause at almost every sentence.<br><br>The Church of the Annunciation was paid for by a Serb living in Chicago, and is designed as a smaller version of the Serbian Orthodox monastery at Gracanica in Kosovo.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Yugoslav Leader Treads Softly at Poet's Rite in Bosnia``x972294338,27795,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Oct 23 (Reuters) - A fact-finding mission from two major world lending bodies arrived in Belgrade on Monday and immediately ran into criticism from Montenegro, Yugoslavia"s sister republic in the Yugoslav federation. The presence of two delegations from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund has aroused worries in Montenegro that its own efforts to achieve more independence will suffer if such bodies rush to readmit Yugoslavia into the international fold. The two missions are due to spend five days holding talks with the new Yugoslav rulers about the country"s return to the World Bank and IMF, but Montenegrin critics say the Yugoslav federation is not authorised to negotiate on its behalf. "These negotiations will be held between Serbia and those institutions. Montenegro has not given its consent. That is the prevailing mood within the Montenegrin ruling coalition," a source close to the Montenegrin government told Reuters. He was largely echoing demands by many in Montenegro for it to have its own place in the world even after pro-democracy groups toppled Slobodan Milosevic as Yugoslav president. Montenegrin Foreign Minister Branko Lukovac was quoted in a magazine article on Sunday as calling for Serbia and Montenegro to each have full independence, and to form a loose association without any special international and legal status. "Should Yugoslavia be readmitted under its present name that would be a clear signal to Montenegrin authorities to call a referendum on independence," Srdjan Darmanovic, head of the non-government Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM) basedin the Montenegrin capital Podgorica, told Reuters. However, Darmanovic said pro-independence forces in Montenegroshould not make problems for Serbia in its efforts to get aid. "Montenegro has been getting foreign aid over the past three years. It"s now Serbia"s turn to get some. Montenegrin authorities do not wish to spoil Serbia"s quick return to the world, but they do not want it to happen under the name of Yugoslavia," Darmanovic said. Nebojsa Medojevic, a Montenegrin member of G17, an independentYugoslav think tank, said the republic should make clear that it did not recognise the federal authorities and therefore gave no mandate to them to negotiate with foreign creditors on its behalf. But Medojevic, who advocates Montenegrin independence, told Reuters that the coastal republic should not block Serbia"s way back to the world, particularly not now when the international community wants Yugoslavia to rejoin its institutions. "It looks like Yugoslavia will rejoin the United Nations by early December and the International Monetary Fund before New Year. Montenegro should lodge a protest to these institutions to make sure they know Montenegro wants its own seat," he said. He said that U.N. special envoy for the Balkans Carl Bildt had made it clear during his recent visit to Belgrade that the U.N. and the United States did not want an independent Montenegro. "That"s why they rush with Yugoslavia"s readmission to these institutions. They want to pre-empt a re-birth of nationalism. The World Bank is talking with Yugoslavia, not Serbia and Montenegro," Medojevic said. The bank and the IMF left Belgrade in mid-1991 when the old Yugoslav federation started to fall apart. Yugoslavia has been expelled from these bodies since 1992 as part of sanctions imposed on Belgrade for its role in wars in Croatia and Bosnia. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIMF's Belgrade trip arouses Montenegrin suspicion``x972372879,14806,``x``x
``x^Associated Press Writer BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Followers of deposed President Slobodan Milosevic delayed Monday"s resumption of negotiations with Serbia"s pro-democracy alliance on forming a transitional government. Talks in Serbia"s parliament stalled over a list of Milosevic loyalists which the 18-party Democratic Opposition of Serbia wants to see removed from the government and other top jobs. Rade Markovic, chief of state security, was blacklisted by new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica"s alliance, as was Branislav Ivkovic, a top official of Milosevic"s Socialist Party. Ivkovic has offered to stay out of the new government, the Politika daily reported in its Monday edition. Monday"s parliament session, which was delayed two hours, was also expected to formally call early Serbian parliamentary elections that have been tentatively scheduled for Dec. 23. Milosevic"s party, which still holds a majority in Serbia"s 250-parliament, broadly agreed last week to reshuffle the government and call elections, but disputes continue over the exact makeup of the transitional power-sharing Cabinet. The Socialists would keep the post of Serbian prime minister, while key ministries, such as police, information, justice and finance, would be run jointly by the Socialists, Kostunica"s alliance and another opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement. Kostunica"s alliance is eager to get rid of the last vestiges of Milosevic"s authority by taking control of Serbia"s government. Pro-democracy officials have accused Milosevic"s allies of "obstructing" the formation of the new Serbian government in order to create chaos. "They want to portray DOS as incapable of running the country as nothing seems to function now," said Nebojsa Covic, a pro-democracy official. He was referring to a lack of heating in Belgrade homes, despite subfreezing temperatures overnight, because the old pro-Milosevic Serbian government did not leave behind any heating oil reserves. On Sunday, a top leader of Kostunica"s alliance, Vladan Batic suggested calling supporters to take to the streets if Milosevic"s people keep opposing the terms for transition. Meanwhile, Zoran Andjelkovic, a negotiator for the Socialists, accused pro-democracy leaders of demanding ever more personnel changes that are opposed by his party. Also Sunday, Kostunica made his first visit in Bosnia since taking office and subsequently held talks in Podgorica, the Montenegro capital, on forming a new federal government. He met with Zoran Zizic of the Socialist People"s Party, the likely new prime minister of Yugoslavia. Seeking to achieve stability in the two-republic federation, Kostunica has offered the party the chance to represent the tiny republic on the joint, federal level and work together with his Serbia-based DOS alliance. The other main Montenegrin party, the pro-independence Democratic Party of Socialists that wants to transform Yugoslavia into a loose alliance of Serbia and Montenegro with only a minimum of central administration, opposes the move. Kostunica"s office in Belgrade issued a statement, urging Montenegrins to "show good will." He also said that, once in place, a new Serbian government would ensure a "meaningful dialogue about future relations between Serbia and Montenegro." Zizic said the country urgently needs a new government in order to start the long-awaited integration into major world organizations. Under Milosevic, Yugoslavia was under punitive international sanctions. By his token visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, Kostunica averted a diplomatic debacle. He had planned to attend the reburial service for a prominent Serb poet in Trebinje, located in part of Bosnia which the Bosnian Serbs seized in the 3{-year war. The Croat and Muslim members of Bosnia"s three-person multiethnic presidency considered it an insult that the new Yugoslav leader, who is a Serb, would choose an event with nationalistic Serb overtones for his first visit. But Bosnian leaders cautiously applauded Kostunica"s brief visit Sunday in which Kostunica told them that "new pages in the relations between Bosnia and Yugoslavia have been opened." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic's camp, pro-democracy alliance resume talks on transition``x972372911,50567,``x``x
``x<br><br>By Stephen Castle in Belgrade <br><br><br>24 October 2000 <br><br>Europe's aid to Serbia should start to flow within four weeks, Chris Patten, the EU's commissioner for external affairs, pledged yesterday as he visited the heart of the Yugoslav state. <br><br>After a meeting with the new Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, in Belgrade, Mr Patten outlined plans to get fuel, emergency medicine and food supplies flowing quickly to stave off a winter crisis. <br><br>But the urgency of the situation was underlined when the mayor of the southern city of Nis revealed that his municipality has just a couple of days' supply of fuel remaining, and his colleague from Pancevo described an environmental catastrophe unfolding in her city. <br><br>The European commissioner, making his first visit to Belgrade since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, held a half-hour meeting with Mr Kostunica in the grandiose federal palace in Belgrade. <br><br>Their joint press conference was followed by a pledge from Mr Kostunica to start a "real, profound change in the building of democracy". In a meeting with local mayors, the backbone of opposition to Mr Milosevic's regime, Mr Patten said that many inside the EU "take democracy for granted. <br><br>"You have had to work and literally fight for democracy and have had to show incomparably more courage in standing up for [it] than I have had to do," he added. <br><br>Afterwards Mr Patten told the mayors that 200m euros of emergency assistance pledged by EU leaders at their recent summit in Biarritz would be put in place within weeks. <br><br>"It is still going to be a couple of weeks before we have everything in place but we hope that our assistance will start to be provided during the second half of November," the commissioner said. <br><br>He said the priority was to help the resumption of fuel supplies. Several sectors will be tackled, including oil and diesel for electricity generators to help restore regular power supplies throughout the country; the replacement of damaged equipment in power plants; and the purchase of electricity on the regional grid. <br><br>Early attempts will be made to provide heating for schools and hospitals, medical supplies and emergency food aid. <br><br>The mayors hammered home the scale of the task ahead, none more so than Zoran Zivkovic, mayor of Nis, the southern city that defied Mr Milosevic by accepting fuel aid from Europe under the Energy for Democracy scheme. "Our resources, as far as I know, are for just a couple of days," Mr Zivkovic said, adding that schools and hospitals were particularly vulnerable. <br><br>His colleague from Pancevo, Borislava Kruska, said the bombing by Nato of her city had resulted in an "environmental disaster", with the release of up to 10,000 times the permitted limit of one carcinogenic chemical known as VCM, and eight tons of mercury. Officials said that, during his meeting with the President, Mr Patten raised the question of Yugoslavia's co-operation with the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. The sensitive issue of the fate of Mr Milosevic, an indicted war criminal, has been put to one side as the EU concentrates on shoring up the new regime. <br><br>Mr Kostunica, meanwhile, said that the focus was on the "long-term assistance" he was looking for, although he did not spell out a specific financial target. Earlier this year the European Commission proposed spending 2.3bn euros between 2001 and 2006, but that has not been approved either by the EU member states or the European Parliament. <br><br>* The party of the former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, agreed yesterday to the demands of pro-democracy politicians concerning the make-up of a new transitional government to rule Serbia until elections in December. The speaker of the Serbian parliament, Dragan Tomic, a crony of Mr Milosevic, confirmed that an agreement had been reached to approve the new government and to hold early elections on 23 December.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: EU aid to avert winter fuel crisis in Yugoslavia ``x972372940,47448,``x``x
``x<br>By LJUBINKA CAGOROVIC, Reuters<br><br> PODGORICA, Yugoslavia--Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica said after talks with political leaders in Serbia's independence-minded partner Montenegro on Sunday that a new federal government should be formed this week. <br> Speaking to reporters after talks with Montenegro's opposition Socialist People's Party (SNP), loyal to ousted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, Kostunica said he accepted the party's candidate for federal premier, Zoran Zizic. <br> Under the constitution of what remains of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro, the prime minister must be Montenegrin if the president is from Serbia. <br> The candidate is from the opposition party because the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) boycotted last month's elections, called by Milosevic, and is refusing to serve in the new government. <br> Formation of a new Yugoslav government is regarded as a priority so that the country can handle millions of dollars in foreign aid promised it following the overthrow of the authoritarian Milosevic. <br> To complicate matters even further, the Montenegrin leadership raised the prospect on Sunday of scrapping the present Yugoslav federation and replacing it with a looser partnership of two independent states with some shared authority. <br> KOSTUNICA CALLED FOR SHOW OF GOODWILL <br> The West has made it clear they do not see an independent Montenegro, a mountainous country of just 640,00 people, as a viable option, and are pressing for it to stay with Serbia, which has a population of 10 million. <br> As Kostunica flew in to the Montenegrin capital Podgorica the republic's government denied a report that it was poised to approve a new program for talks with Belgrade based on two independent states with limited shared responsibilities, effectively consigning Yugoslavia to the dust-bin. <br> His visit also coincided with remarks by Montenegrin Foreign Minister Branko Lukovac, a long-time advocate of independence, that the two should separate and forge a loose partnership between sovereign states. <br> Shortly before arriving in Montenegro from a milestone visit to the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, Kostunica issued a statement calling on Montenegro's leadership to show good will and not rush into decisions on the republic's status before the formation of a Serbian parliament and government. <br> "Once these institutions are set up it will be possible to initiate meaningful, accurate and, what is very important, democratic dialogue on relations between Montenegro and Serbia," the statement issued by the presidency said. <br> SERB-MONTENEGRIN RELATIONS A TOP PRIORITY <br> A new transitional government in Serbia, the Yugoslav federation's dominant partner, is expected to be formed on Monday, to run the country until new elections in December. <br> Kostunica said in his statement that dialogue between the two republics should start with talks between expert groups, stepping up to contacts between parliamentary delegations. <br> The statement reiterated an earlier pledge from Kostunica that he would call a referendum on the future of the two republics if there was backing for it. <br> It was Kostunica's second visit to Montenegro since taking office, making good on a pledge to make relations with the restive republic a top priority. <br> After his first visit last Tuesday he said he was satisfied with the talks, during which he and Montenegrin leader Milo Djukanovic agreed that all problems between the two republics would be resolved peacefully. <br> Earlier on Sunday Montenegrin spokesman Miodrag Vucinic said the government "has not received any initiative on defining a new platform for talks with Serbia on relations between the states." <br> He appeared to be responding to a report in the daily Vijesti that the republic's government wpt kith Serbia based on two independent states with some shared functions in the fields of security, foreign affairs and economic and financial policy. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLA Times: Yugo Govt Should Be Formed This Week-Kostunica ``x972372966,42605,``x``x
``x<br> Balkans: Yugoslav president takes first step toward healing ethnic hatreds, but his prickly nationalism irritates some regional officials. <br><br>By RICHARD BOUDREAUX, Times Staff Writer<br><br> TREBINJE, Bosnia-Herzegovina--Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica entered the Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina to help rebury a Serb nationalist hero Sunday, then rushed to bestow belated recognition on the ex-Yugoslav republic's multiethnic leadership in Sarajevo. <br> The symbolism of the back-to-back events in the country most bloodied by recent Balkan wars was both powerful and contradictory. Since Kostunica replaced deposed strongman Slobodan Milosevic, other regional leaders have welcomed his peacemaking gestures while chafing at his prickly Serb nationalism. <br> Kostunica took his initial step toward healing Bosnia's ethnic hatreds under strong pressure from international officials supervising the ethnically partitioned republic, where more than 200,000 people died in a 1992-95 war. Milosevic, who backed Bosnian Serb fighters in the conflict, never visited postwar Bosnia or moved to normalize relations. <br> "We are opening a new page in our relations," Kostunica declared in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, standing beside the Serb and Muslim members of Bosnia's three-man presidency and its foreign minister, a Croat, after agreeing to hold further talks on establishing diplomatic ties. <br> The 30-minute meeting was arranged on less than 24 hours' notice after Muslim and Croat officials protested that Kostunica's plan to attend a partisan Serb ritual on his first visit to their country was a breach of protocol that undermined his promise to respect its independence. <br> Two weeks into his presidency, Kostunica has also made conciliatory gestures to Croatia, which won its own bloody war of independence from the former Yugoslav federation, and Montenegro, which remains with Serbia in the rump Yugoslavia but is rife with secessionist sentiment. <br> So far, however, he has shown more sensitivity to ethnic Serbs than to those in the Balkans who have suffered at the hands of Serb forces. <br> His appearance here Sunday before 500 Serb nationalists was meant to show that he is one of them. <br> In a brand-new Serbian Orthodox chapel, perched on a hilltop above Trebinje, Kostunica stood reverently throughout a two-hour religious service Sunday for the late Serb poet Jovan Ducic, then sat and applauded another two hours of speeches in the poet's honor. "God bless our president and all Christians," intoned an Orthodox bishop in gleaming gold and white vestments. <br> Serbs revere Ducic for opposing communism and celebrating their ethnic heritage. He moved to the United States when World War II broke out, died in 1943 and was buried near Chicago. He had expressed a wish to be reburied in a church in his hometown, and that became possible when the hilltop chapel was completed this year with $1.5 million in donations from a Serb emigre to Chicago. <br> Aides to Kostunica said he had planned months ago to come to the reburial ceremony as a private citizen. His unwillingness to cancel the visit after taking office became one of the most controversial decisions of his presidency. <br> The Bosnian Foreign Ministry objected, worried that any encouragement from Kostunica to separatist Bosnian Serbs could destabilize the still-volatile country, where mass graves of Muslims killed by Serbs continue to be discovered. <br> Bosnia's top international official, Austrian diplomat Wolfgang Petritsch, finally persuaded Kostunica to meet with the Bosnian leadership. <br> U.N. officials sent a helicopter to fly him from Trebinje to Sarajevo for the talks, which were held in an airport VIP lounge. <br> "He decided to go to Sarajevo to prevent the malevolent interpretation that this religious ceremony is a provocative act, which it is not," said Vladeta Jankovic, an aide to Kostunica. <br> But a stridently nationalist mood prevailed among the Bosnian Serb crowd here--the kind of Serbs who turned against Milosevic not for starting ethnic wars but for losing them. <br> Among those present was the wife of Radovan Karadzic, the wartime Bosnian Serb leader who is wanted by an international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Many worshipers voiced hope that their territory, an autonomous republic within Bosnia, would eventually become part of Serbia. <br> "If you ask me, we have no borders with Serbia," said Nikola Miljanovic, a 31-year-old businessman here. "I have Muslim and Croat friends, but it would be better for all of us if we were not pushed to live together." <br> Kostunica declined an invitation to speak at the ceremony but was greeted with full military honors by Bosnian Serb cadets. <br> Later, in Sarajevo, a Bosnian journalist asked him whether normal relations between the two countries would bring a formal apology for Milosevic's wrongdoings against Bosnians. <br> Kostunica was cautious. "I am one of those politicians who will not use empty words, empty promises and empty apologies to in some way overcome all the complications of our relations," he said. <br> "With all that has happened, all the crimes that were carried out and the victims there were on all sides, all this can be cured only by the truth. One-sided statements . . . will resolve nothing in our relations." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica Offers Homage to Serb Hero, Nod to Leaders in Bosnia Visit ``x972373000,23653,``x``x
``xBy AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE<br> <br>PRISTINA, Kosovo, Oct. 23 — Unidentified attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade tonight at the last Serbian community remaining in Pristina, the capital of the Serbian province, the NATO-led peacekeeping force said.<br><br>There were no reports of injuries, they said.<br><br>A resident of the building said each apartment on the targeted staircase was occupied by a Serbian family.<br><br>A police officer, either a member of Kosovo's multinational United Nations force or a Serbian officer from the Kosovo Police Service, is billeted in each apartment to bolster security, the resident added. A platoon of British marine commandos is based on the building's ground floor.<br><br>Kosovo's Serbian minority has been a frequent target of ethnic attacks since the arrival in the province of a NATO-led peacekeeping force in June last year. Hundreds have been killed or injured and about 170,000 have fled the province, according to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees.<br><br>About 40,000 Serbs fled Pristina, leaving a few hundred living mainly in the apartment block that was attacked tonight.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe NY Times: Rocket Fired at Serbian Building in Kosovo``x972373029,63308,``x``x
``xBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 24 (AP) — Yugoslavia's new president publicly acknowledged today for the first time that Yugoslav forces committed widespread killings in Kosovo last year. Although falling short of an apology, the statements by the president, Vojislav Kostunica, marked the first time any Yugoslav leader had expressed regret for the conflicts in the Balkans. <br><br>In an interview to be broadcast by CBS News tonight on "60 Minutes II," Mr. Kostunica spoke about Belgrade's role in starting — and losing — four Balkan wars in the past decade.<br><br>So far he has refused to extradite anyone, including the man he replaced as president, Slobodan Milosevic, for trial on war crimes charges before a United Nations tribunal in The Hague. But he raised the possibility of trying suspects in Yugoslavia.<br><br>"I am ready to accept the guilt for all those people who have been killed," he said. "For what Milosevic had done, and as a Serb, I will take responsibility for many of these, these crimes."<br><br>Yugoslav state television broadcast the interview today with a voice-over in Serbian.<br><br>President Kostunica also strengthened his grip on power today by winning important concessions from the Serbian parliament, which approved a transition government to administer the republic until new elections on Dec. 23. Serbia is the dominant of the two republics remaining in the Yugoslav federation; the other is Montenegro. <br><br>Mr. Milosevic's party agreed to share power with reformist forces in the transition government — a major concession because the current administration could have served until regular elections in the fall of 2001. Mr. Kostunica's supporters held only three seats in the 250-member legislature.<br><br>Establishment of new administrations at both the federal and republic levels are preconditions for receiving millions of dollars in emergency aid from the West to rebuild Yugoslavia's shattered economy.<br><br>Mr. Milosevic's Socialists, who hold 110 of the 250 seats in the republic's parliament, agreed to the transition government plan on Oct. 16 but parliamentary approval was delayed because of differences with Mr. Kostunica's Democratic Opposition of Serbia on individual appointments.<br><br><br><br>U.S. Official to Meet Kostunica<br><br>PRISTINA, Kosovo, Oct. 24 — Richard C. Holbrooke, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said today that he would meet President Kostunica on Wednesday in Macedonia.<br><br>Mr. Holbrooke arrived in Kosovo today to show his support for Kosovo's first post-war elections, scheduled for Saturday, and to allay ethnic Albanians' concerns over the political changes in Serbia, of which it is technically still a province. <br><br>At a news conference here, he said Mr. Kostunica had suggested that they meet during a gathering of regional leaders in Skopje, Macedonia's capital.<br><br>"I want to hear what he will say," Mr. Holbrooke said. "He is the first democratically elected leader of Yugoslavia ever."<br><br>The meeting will be a continuation of talks held in Belgrade by James O'Brien, special adviser to President Clinton on the Balkans, and will range over all the issues that loom over peace in the Balkans, including implementation of the 1995 Dayton peace accords in Bosnia, the prosecution of war crimes and Yugoslavia's re-entry into the United Nations, Mr. Holbrooke said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Yugoslav Leader Admits the Serbs' Role in Fomenting War``x972471959,14788,``x``x
``xBut critics warn that the desire to support Serbian democracy compromises any trial. <br><br>By Alex Todorovic <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>BELGRADE <br><br>Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica recently indicated that he is prepared to allow the United Nations' international war crimes tribunal to reopen a Belgrade office to gather evidence against alleged war criminals. <br><br>That would be an important first step, diplomats and analysts say, in confronting the crimes perpetrated in the name of Serbian nationalism. But whether Mr. Kostunica will prosecute or hand over to The Hague for trial those, like former President Slobodan Milosevic, who have been indicted on war crimes charges is still an open question. <br><br><br> Many experts say it is a compromise that Kostunica must make with the West in order to gain the aid needed to rebuild this country - sinking under a decade of international sanctions. <br><br><br>Access to money <br><br>"A Hague tribunal office in Belgrade would meet the American standard of compliance, at least for now," and would allow Yugoslavia access to international financial institutions, says a senior Western diplomat. <br><br>Diplomats say Yugoslavia is still far too unstable to seriously press the issue of war crimes. Their immediate priority is to stabilize Kostunica's still-shaky position and to prevent the political revival of Mr. Milosevic, who resides in Belgrade and remains a potent political force. <br><br>Part of a US foreign aid bill currently in Congress demands evidence of compliance with the tribunal in order for Yugoslavia to gain access to international financial institutions, but the standards for compliance are low, experts say, and European governments are making no demands at all. <br><br>Moreover, the European Union is rushing in with emergency aid to keep social peace over winter as prices skyrocket due to price liberalization. <br><br>"Europeans have made it clear they intend to make Yugoslavia full partners in international financial institutions with no conditions," says Nina Bang-Jensen, executive director of the Coalition for International Justice, a Washington-based advocacy organization for The Hague tribunal. "I see the short-term appeal, but it's a disaster in the long run." <br><br>Critics say the international community is giving Kostunica a free ride on cooperating with the tribunal, and that Western diplomacy appears to be moving toward a compromise position that threatens to undermine the international court. <br><br>"Anything short of extradition compromises the legitimacy of the court," says Ms. Bang-Jensen. <br><br>The tribunal was established in 1993 by a UN charter to prosecute war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. Belgrade first opened a tribunal office as part of the 1995 Dayton peace accord that ended the war in Bosnia. But the office was closed in early 1999 when Yugoslav authorities denied tribunal officials access to Kosovo. <br><br>Kostunica's stated position on war crimes is that the UN chartered war crimes tribunal is a puppet of American foreign policy, and he has vowed not to extradite indicted war criminals. <br><br>But he recently indicated to senior Western diplomats that he has "no objection" to the tribunal re-opening a Belgrade office to gather evidence on suspected war criminals. <br><br><br><br>Abiding by Dayton <br><br>"Mr. Kostunica has said he intends to fully abide by the Dayton accords, and that includes re-opening the tribunal office in Belgrade," says British diplomat Robert Gordon, who was present at a meeting with Kostunica along with another senior British diplomat when the issue was discussed. "A new federal government should be in place in two weeks, and we can expect movement after that." <br><br>Critics say the international community is giving away too much for too little, and that a double-standard is being used for Croatia and Serbia. <br><br>"This is precisely the time when a clear message must be sent to the Yugoslav leadership," says Bang-Jensen. "The same standard that was applied to Croatia must be applied to Serbia; a demand for the surrender and transfer of war criminals. All member states are supposed to abide by this, and there is no reason why there should be an exception here." <br><br>Critics say more rigorous demands were made of Croatia. <br><br>"In the fall of 1997, Croatia surrendered 10 indictees to The Hague, in part because the US signaled it took the tribunal seriously, while the new government led by President Stipe Mesic arrested a number of generals. Croatia took tremendous political risks, while Serbia is being welcomed with open arms," says Bang-Jensen. <br><br>"It's uncomfortable to have to deal with justice. It's being regarded as inconvenient to creating a functional bilateral relationship with Yugoslavia," says Jim Hooper, director of Balkan policy at the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization that specializes in crisis prevention. <br><br>Of several options for possible trials, the most controversial scenario is that Milosevic be tried in Belgrade on mere corruption charges. <br><br>A locally held Milosevic trial would not necessarily receive the international community's official stamp of approval, but it may be enough to satisfy Western governments. <br><br>"Even a corruption trial for Milosevic would be accepted by the international community. They might not accept it officially, but would wink at it, so long as long as Milosevic is not free and causing trouble," says the senior Western diplomat. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Cristian Science Monitor:Kostunica gives nod to war-crimes tribunal in Serbia ``x972472010,4098,``x``x
``xBy Andrew Sparrow, George Jones, Benedict Brogan and Neil Tweedie <br><br>SERIOUS shortcomings in Nato's conduct of the Kosovo war, including a "limited and disappointing" British contribution, were identified in a report by MPs yesterday.<br>They said that Nato's confused response called into question whether the alliance should repeat the kind of offensive it launched in the Balkans last year. The Commons defence select committee's catalogue of criticism coincided with confirmation that Britain's fleet of 12 nuclear hunter-killer submarines could be out of service for months because of a reactor flaw.<br><br>In angry exchanges in the Commons, the Tories accused the Government of trying to conceal the fact. In its 153-page report, the cross-party defence committee was highly critical of Britain's role in Kosovo.<br><br>It said British planes suffered from a lack of precision-guided "smart" weapons and took part in less than five per cent of all Nato sorties. Its pilots had to be retrained to use unguided, "dumb" bombs.<br><br>The Ministry of Defence told the committee that the accuracy of dumb bombs was "considerable". But during the summer, after the committee had finished taking evidence, a leaked MoD report said that only two per cent of 1,000lb unguided bombs had hit the target.<br><br>"The MoD's professed faith in the great utility of dumb bombing suggests that it has been economical with the truth, if not attempting to mislead us," the MPs said. They criticised the fact that RAF pilots could not communicate securely with one another. It was a "major shortcoming" that RAF airmen were sometimes unable to communicate with their American counterparts.<br><br>"Overall, despite the heroic efforts of air crew and support staff, we must conclude that the United Kingdom's contribution to the air campaign, in firepower rather than support, was somewhat disappointing."<br><br>The report is a blow to the Government, which has sought to claim the Kosovo campaign - and the withdrawal of Serbian forces from the province - as a major success. It also contains what will be seen as implicit criticism of Tony Blair, who appeared at the early stage of the conflict to rule out a ground attack.<br><br>The MPs said it was "unwise" of alliance leaders to have suggested that a humanitarian disaster could be averted from the air. "On the contrary, all the evidence suggests that plans to initiate the air campaign hastened the onset of the disaster."<br><br>The MPs spelt out the difficulties facing a coalition of 19 countries launching Nato's first offensive operation in its 50-year history. They criticised the Nato leadership for failing to agree on its willingness to use military power.<br><br>One of the most serious problems was "lack of an unambiguous determination in all members of the alliance to see the job through". To rule out a ground attack during much of the campaign was "a serious error of judgment" in military terms.<br><br>It also "hamstrung" the alliance's diplomatic leverage and gave comfort to former President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. The MPs said: "Kosovo has, fortunately, dispelled the illusion that Nato is an instrument that can readily be used in a precise and discriminating way to support diplomacy."<br><br>It showed that "the use of military means to manage crises cannot always be approached wearing velvet gloves". Either politicians must be determined to do a job properly or be able to decide not to do it at all.<br><br>The MPs suggested that Nato, which was created as a defensive organisation, should stick to that role. "The hesitant and cumbersome approach of Nato when acting as a crisis management organisation precludes much decisive action. The risks of failure are so immense that the necessary boldness of action is very difficult to achieve.<br><br>"This must lead us to ask whether Nato is really going to be able to overcome those impediments to effective operation we have identified. Unless it can, it will not be guaranteed success in future crises." The MPs said that the scale and brutality of the expulsion of ethnic Albanians had taken Nato by surprise, adding that it "must be counted a failure of imagination in assessing how effectively an adversary like Milosevic was likely to identify the alliance's Achilles heel".<br><br>John Spellar, the armed forces minister, insisted that Nato's intervention could "fairly be counted a success". He added: "The departure of Milosevic's troops from Kosovo, the return of Kosovar Albanians and now the rejection of Milosevic's dictatorship by the people of Serbia has shown that Nato's approach was right."<br><br>Mr Spellar came under fire in the Commons over the withdrawal of the hunter-killer submarines. He was summoned to answer an emergency question after the Ministry of Defence had refused an Opposition request for a statement on the security of the nuclear deterrent.<br><br>The Tories accused Geoff Hoon, Defence Secretary, of trying to "slide out" of announcing the withdrawal. The MoD has admitted that a flaw found in Tireless could affect all seven boats of the Trafalgar class and all five boats of the older Swiftsure class.<br><br>A full inspection of the fleet is being carried out and even those boats declared free of the defect will be in port for weeks. Mr Spellar said the problem did not affect the four Vanguard class boats that carry the Trident nuclear deterrent.<br><br>But defence sources said that without the hunter-killers to serve as escorts the Trident fleet would be left vulnerable. Iain Duncan Smith, the shadow defence secretary, criticised Mr Hoon for refusing to make a Commons statement and for leaving Mr Spellar to take the flak.<br><br>He said: "The Government has tried to avoid giving any full answers on this situation and yet again tried to deny the House and the public the truth about this issue."<br><br>It was a "damning position" that the Opposition had to bring the Government to the Dispatch Box on a matter affecting the defence of the realm. Mr Duncan Smith said that news of the recall of all hunter-killer boats had been slipped out over the weekend when the House was not sitting.<br><br>The MoD said that no snub to the Tories had been intended and that Mr Spellar had answered the private notice question because he was armed forces minister. "Mr Hoon was not in London, but even if he had been he would not have answered the question because it is Mr Spellar's issue."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Telagraph:MPs attack Nato role in Kosovo war``x972472058,74712,``x``x
``xBy Julijana Mojsilovic<br><br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslavia took another step out of the shadow of Slobodan Milosevic Tuesday when the Serbian parliament appointed a power-sharing government to run the country's dominant republic until early elections.<br><br>The new government shares power between the ousted Yugoslav president's Socialists, who dominated the old administration, and reformist allies of his successor Vojislav Kostunica .<br><br>Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia also looked certain to be excluded from a new Yugoslav federal government. The Yugoslav federation is composed of Serbia and much smaller Montenegro.<br><br>``At this moment...we have the position that no one from the SPS should get a seat,'' Zoran Zizic, the federal prime-minister designate, was quoted as saying by the Beta news agency after a meeting with Kostunica Tuesday evening.<br><br>Forming the federal government is important to allow Yugoslavia to receive aid and conclude other international agreements with Western governments who have rushed to offer assistance since Milosevic's downfall.<br><br>The main seat of power inside the country, however, is the Serbian government, making Tuesday's parliamentary decision an important advance for Kostunica and his supporters.<br><br>As part of the deal on the government, Serbian parliamentary elections will take place on December 23, when the Kostunica camp has high hopes of sweeping the Socialists from power.<br><br>The formation of the new government will be welcomed by the West, which shunned Milosevic for his role in four Balkan wars and wants to see the network of power he dominated for more than a decade dismantled as soon as possible.<br><br>Socialist Premier<br><br>Under the power-sharing deal, Socialist Milomir Minic, regarded as a relative moderate, becomes prime minister. But he can make decisions only in consensus with two deputies from groups previously in opposition.<br><br>``The time of this government is limited and so are its tasks,'' Minic told parliament. ``Its two main missions are to stabilize economic policy and urgently address the economic needs of the citizens.''<br><br>Years of international sanctions, state mismanagement and corruption have ruined the Yugoslav economy, once fairly prosperous by Socialist standards.<br><br>Reformers said the new government was far from perfect but should at least be able to arrest Yugoslavia's decline.<br><br>``Political reason has prevailed and it's important that we now have the transitional, technical government to avoid a deeper political and economic crisis,'' said Dragan Veselinov, leader of one of the 19 groups which back Kostunica.<br><br>The ultra-nationalist Radical Party, junior partners in the outgoing government, staged a walkout to delay the approval of the government but were unable to prevent it. Of 136 deputies remaining in the chamber, 133 backed the new government.<br><br>Kosovo A Priority<br><br>Minic said Kosovo was also a priority. The province has been an international protectorate since NATO bombing last year drove out Serb forces repressing the ethnic Albanian majority.<br><br>``The government will continue its policy of protecting our people who are in many ways endangered in this province of ours,'' said Minic, a former federal parliament speaker, adding that a United Nations resolution on Kosovo should be strictly implemented.<br><br>Minority Serbs in Kosovo have been the victims of numerous attacks by vengeful ethnic Albanians.<br><br>Cabinet jobs were shared out among Socialists, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) bloc behind Kostunica and another ex-opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement.<br><br>Four key ministries -- interior, finance, information and justice -- will be under joint control. The Interior Ministry has an estimated 85,000 police under its command who were a key element in Milosevic's hold on power.<br><br>A parliament spokesman said the new government would ask Serbian President Milan Milutinovic to dissolve the assembly. After his order, expected Wednesday, the parliamentary president would officially call elections for December 23.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica Camp Wins Serbian Government Seats ``x972472090,50606,``x``x
``xSKOPJE, Oct 25 (AFP) <br>New Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica faced a warm welcome but also close questioning Wednesday from his Balkan neighbours and a senior US envoy at the first such meeting since he took office.<br><br>At a summit marking Belgrade's return into the Balkan fold, Kostunica was notably to hold talks with US ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke, the most senior Washington official to meet him since Slobodan Milosevic's ouster.<br><br>The one-day summit of heads of state of Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Turkey and Yugoslavia will address peace and stability in a region scarred by conflict in the past decade.<br><br>The EU-backed Balkans Stability pact coordinator, Bodo Hombach, has also joined the gathering as an observer, along with Javier Solana, the European Union's security and foreign policy high representative.<br><br>Macedonian president Boris Trajkovski, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the SEECP, has decribed the summit as an "historical event" but warned against undue expectations.<br><br>"There is a lot of prejudice from the past in this region, so I do not expect that this summit will suddenly provide a solution for all the problems," he said.<br><br>"But it is a good chance to initiate a lot of good things," he said.<br><br>Kostunica's attendance at the meeting of the Southeastern European Cooperation Process (SEECP) will mark the first meeting between heads of state from Belgrade and Skopje since 1995. <br><br>That occasion was followed by a car bomb attack on the Macedonian president, widely believed to have been orchestrated by the Yugoslav secret service, giving Wednesday's meeting particular significance.<br><br>The meeting with Holbrooke, a Balkans veteran who played a crucial role in brokering the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, will be closely watched, in light of the central role the US played in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia last year.<br><br>The discussion is likely to include talks on the thorny question of the future of the Kosovo province, run by the UN since the end of the NATO-led bombing on Yugoslvia last year, diplomats say.<br><br>International aid is crucial for Yugoslavia after being economically crippled by sanctions, and the country is still excluded from international financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF. <br><br>Even the Albanian President Rexjep Meidani has travelled to the summit, despite initial reports that representatives from the country were not prepared to share a conference table with Kostunica due to the decade of Serb-led repression of ethnic Albanians in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo.<br><br>Albanian leaders have nonetheless clearly expressed their reserve over the changes embodied by Kostunica, as the West has rushed to embrace the man who defeated Milosevic.<br><br>The presidents of Bulgaria and Romania, Petar Stoyanov, Emil Constantinescu are present, as are the prime ministers of Turkey and Greece, Bulent Ecevit and Costas Simitis.<br><br>Bosnia and Croatia have been invited to the meeting as observers. They are represented by the chairman of Bosnia's tripartite presidency Zivko Radisic and Croatian Vice Prime Minister Goran Granic respectively.<br><br>Trajkovski noted that it is the first meeting since the departure of the "Dayton trio", the three leaders who put their names to the treaty for peace in Bosnia, Croat president Franco Tudjman, Alija Izetbegovic, the former Muslim leader as well as former Yugoslav president Milosevic.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica to meet Balkan leaders, US envoy at summit``x972472131,16491,``x``x
``xSpecial report: Kosovo <br><br>Nick Wood in Skopje <br>Thursday October 26, 2000 <br><br>The Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, raised the political temperature in Kosovo yesterday when he called for the province's elections, due on Saturday, to be postponed. <br>He said the ballot, which is being organised by the United Nations, would produce a "mono-ethnic result", referring to an anticipated lack of Serb participation in the vote. <br><br>His announcement came during a summit of Balkan heads of state in Skopje, Macedonia, designed to welcome the change of administration in Belgrade, and to discuss the future of the region. <br><br>"I am not sure that circumstances are such that the product of the elections would be satisfactory," he said. "I think it would be better that these elections [are] postponed." <br><br>The statement is unlikely to be well received among Kosovo's overwhelmingly Albanian population, many of whom see this weekend's polls as a step towards independence. <br><br>Mr Kostunica's comments were a stark reminder of the problems that face the leaders of region after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>The summit was organised at short notice by the South Eastern European Cooperation Process, a group which brings together eight Balkan states as well as Turkey. The meeting was also attended by EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, who is setting the groundwork for the EU's summit on the Balkans in Zagreb in November. <br><br>All of the governments stated their desire to see the flow of international aid and investment to the region increased, and stressed their desire for renewed cooperation. A joint statement called for the quick implementation of aid packages agreed to under the stability pact for south-eastern Europe in 1999. <br><br>However, attempts to smooth over the differences were overshadowed by statements from several countries. <br><br>The Albanian president, Rexhep Meidani, demanded that Serbia pay compensation for the shelling of Albanian border towns, carried out by the Yugoslav army during the conflict in Yugoslavia in 1999. He also urged Serbia to support increased autonomy in Kosovo, contrary to President Kostunica's wishes. <br><br>Mr Meidani also demanded the immediate release of Kosovo Albanian prisoners held in Serbia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGuardian:Delay vote in Kosovo, says Kostunica ``x972551148,57113,``x``x
``xBy RICHARD BOUDREAUX, Times Staff Writer<br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia--Former President Slobodan Milosevic's party opened its last stronghold to democratic forces Tuesday as the Serbian parliament replaced a Socialist-dominated Cabinet with a power-sharing administration to manage Yugoslavia's main republic until Dec. 23 elections. <br> The vote ratified a deal reached after more than two weeks of negotiations following an uprising that forced Milosevic to concede electoral defeat Oct. 6 and yield the presidency of Yugoslavia to Vojislav Kostunica of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia. <br> Sworn in late Tuesday, the caretaker Cabinet met and acted quickly to fill a power vacuum left by the tumultuous end of the Milosevic era. <br> The Cabinet moved to bring down soaring prices by restoring subsidies on milk and bread production and hinted at price curbs on monopoly providers of other commodities, such as cooking oil and meat. The Socialist-led regime had abandoned subsidies and price controls two weeks ago, claiming that the victorious democrats didn't want them. <br> With temperatures near freezing and scattered blackouts hitting Serbia's cities, the new administration also must replenish dwindling fuel supplies and cover what it estimates to be a $7-million monthly shortfall in pension and unemployment obligations to millions of citizens. <br> Kostunica has narrow formal authority as president of the Yugoslav federation, which consists of Serbia and the smaller republic of Montenegro. Until Tuesday, his victorious democrats had no jurisdiction over key institutions that sustained Milosevic in power for 13 years. <br> The new president's allies now must establish a new Yugoslav administration to be eligible for tens of millions of dollars in aid pledged by the West to ease a democratic transition here. The Yugoslav parliament that was elected last month is expected to form such a government, without Milosevic's old ministers, as early as next week. <br> Serbia's new 36-member Cabinet is led by a Socialist prime minister, Milomir Minic, deemed by the opposition to be untainted by the corruption that pervaded the old regime. But a few Milosevic loyalists hated by the opposition, including the chief of the secret police, have kept their posts for now. <br> Under the power-sharing deal, two deputy prime ministers--one from Kostunica's coalition and one from the smaller opposition Serbian Renewal Movement--have the same weight as Minic in making decisions. <br> Similarly, the three political factions assumed tripartite command of the four ministries overseeing Serbia's police, courts, media and treasury. They divided the other 21 ministries among them, with the Socialists getting 11 and the other two factions getting five each. <br> They also agreed on the makeup of a commission of 18 nominally nonpartisan judges that will supervise elections for a new Serbian parliament two months from now. <br> Kostunica's 18-party coalition is favored to win those elections and control Serbia's next government. The uprising against Milosevic forced his demoralized followers to agree to hold the Serbian elections nearly a year ahead of schedule. <br> An interim power-sharing deal was agreed upon in principle last week. But it was delayed by bickering over which Socialists would be allowed to keep their jobs and by opposition from the Serbian Radical Party, a onetime ally of the Socialists. <br> In the end, the Socialists agreed to strike some provocative figures from their slate of ministers but kept others, including former Milosevic spokesman Ivica Dacic, who will help run the Information Ministry. <br> They also refused to fire state prosecutor Dragisa Krsmanovic and secret police chief Rade Markovic but hinted that both might be dismissed by the caretaker administration. Milosevic's foes suspect Markovic's hand in the 1999 slaying of crusading journalist Slavko Curuvija and the disappearance two months ago of Ivan Stambolic, a Serbian president of the pre-Milosevic era. <br> The 250-member parliament, dominated by 110 Socialist deputies, ratified the power-sharing deal by a vote of 133 to 1 after 83 Radical Party deputies walked out. It was parliament's last act before its expected dissolution today. <br> The Radicals called the power-sharing deal a coup. They railed in parliament against a series of student and worker takeovers that have ousted Socialist and Radical bosses from scores of hospitals, universities, companies and other state-run institutions. <br> Minic, the new prime minister, told reporters that he agreed to lead the caretaker Cabinet "not because of fear" but "because of a sense of responsibility for Serbia." <br> "A wave of violence and lawlessness has spread over Serbia," he said of the mostly peaceful takeovers. "When the government and security forces are not able to secure peace and respect for institutions and law, the only solution is a political solution." <br> The Cabinet is expected to name a new leadership board at Radio Television-Serbia, which switched abruptly from being Milosevic's mouthpiece to promoting the ideas of the Kostunica allies who now dominate the network. <br> Radical deputies were infuriated when the network refused to telecast Tuesday's parliamentary session, depriving them of a forum for their filibustering against the power-sharing deal. Parliament had voted to order live coverage, but the network pleaded technical difficulties. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLA Times:Serbian Lawmakers OK a Power-Sharing Deal ``x972551196,24548,``x``x
``xBy Peter Finn and R. Jeffrey Smith<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Thursday, October 26, 2000; Page A28 <br><br>BELGRADE –– Facing political extinction, the Socialist Party of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic is adopting the language of democratic reform in an effort to save itself. And there are increasing rumblings among disaffected members of the party that the key to its salvation is ditching Milosevic, who remains its leader. <br><br><br>"The Socialist Party of Serbia should turn back to its original principles and become a democratic party of the left," said Zoran Andjelkovic, the party's new general secretary, in his first extensive interview since Oct. 7, when a popular uprising forced Milosevic to step down following his election defeat. "It's quite logical to have some changes."<br><br><br>Andjelkovic, who assumed his post after the election, would not discuss Milosevic. But tellingly, in a party that was once dominated by Milosevic, Andjelkovic did not endorse him either. "It is very difficult and incorrect for me to speak about that," Andjelkovic said when asked about Milosevic's future.<br><br><br>One leading Socialist said that a special party congress next month will "push" Milosevic into a face-saving but "non-active" position. By all accounts, the break would be real, and not a political ruse by which he could continue to exercise power from behind the scenes. But that may not be enough for the party's grass-roots members, who were stunned by the election defeat, the uprising and its aftermath--in which numerous party officials were forced out of plum jobs in state-controlled companies and institutions.<br><br><br>Internal dissension flared most publicly in the southern city of Nis, where the leader and deputy leader of the local party branch blamed Milosevic for a "catastrophic failure" and declared that he no longer deserved to be party leader.<br><br><br>The target of their resentment is apparently holed up in one of his Belgrade residences, surrounded by a high stone wall and metal gates. Troops wearing red berets and carrying automatic rifles have been stationed on the street outside. It is not clear if the tight security is intended to protect Milosevic or hold him under house arrest, but officials of the new government have raised the possibility of seeking his indictment on a charge of electoral fraud.<br><br><br>Milosevic is in regular telephone contact with party officials, Andjelkovic said, although he would not discuss the nature of the former president's political activities. Allies of the new president, Vojislav Kostunica, say that Milosevic is attempting to stamp out the rising Socialist dissent.<br><br><br>Milosevic's Socialists are descendants of the communist party that ruled the six-republic Yugoslav federation after World War II; its platform in recent years, many people here feel, was little more than keeping Milosevic wealthy and in power and dispensing jobs and other favors to people in cities, towns and villages who would back the party at the polls. In its new, democratic form, the incoming leadership says, it will be something like the left-of-center social democratic parties of Western Europe, stressing public welfare in a free-market economy.<br><br><br>Every day, it moves a bit further from its old form. For instance, the party recently ended its alliance with the Yugoslav United Left, a party chaired by Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic. Some Socialists now revile that organization as little more than a vehicle to enrich its members at the expense of Yugoslav citizens.<br><br><br>The Socialist Party "allowed itself to be governed by" the United Left, said Zoran Lilac, former deputy Socialist leader who resigned from the party in August. "The SPS has forgotten its own identity."<br><br><br>Ivica Dacic, chairman of the Socialists' Belgrade branch, said that the party nonetheless has deep reserves of strength within Serbia--the dominant republic of the current Yugoslav federation--which it can build on despite the changes that have convulsed society here.<br><br><br>"We got 1.9 million votes, the same as we did in 1997, even more," Dacic said of the recent elections. "A party like that cannot disappear, but it must be transformed into a modern party. . . . I think most of the people at the top of the party will be changed."<br><br><br>Andjelkovic said the Socialists have begun to demonstrate their willingness to adapt to the new environment by agreeing with Kostunica supporters to an interim power-sharing arrangement in Serbia. "I don't diminish the victory of Mr. Kostunica," said Andjelkovic. "I respect it."<br><br><br>Andjelkovic said his primary short-term goal is to ensure a respectable showing in elections for the Serbian parliament Dec. 23, although he acknowledged that the party may be forced into a period in opposition. Kostunica's supporters believe the Socialists and their allies will be decimated in the elections, but Andjelkovic called that wishful thinking.<br><br><br>"The SPS is not a party that has to be in power," he said. "But it is quite clear that the SPS is a significant political party and has the structure of support to remain so." He noted that the alliance that backed Kostunica is made up of 18 separate parties and could easily break up, providing the Socialists with an opportunity to find new partners to form a government.<br><br><br>Meanwhile, to maintain its electoral base, Dacic said, the party has "opened a process in which our members from the lowest level are saying what they think." Those thoughts will get their first full airing at the party congress next month. Andjelkovic said he wants the session to be dominated by grass-roots members, not the leadership--a process that would turn the party's internal workings upside down. "We're looking to the future," he said. "And the crucial word belongs to the people on the ground."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post:Socialists Begin to Break From Milosevic ``x972551239,65328,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>SKOPJE, Macedonia, Oct. 25 — Yugoslavia will soon apply to join the United Nations, indicating a clear change in policy under its new president, Vojislav Kostunica, the American ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, said today after meeting with Balkan leaders.<br><br>"It is clear that Yugoslavia will join the United Nations in a very short time," Mr. Holbrooke said. "We are very pleased to hear that."<br><br>Mr. Holbrooke, who was the first prominent member of the Clinton cabinet to meet with Mr. Kostunica, said he had long argued over the issue of Yugoslavia's membership in the United Nations with the former president, Slobodan Milosevic, who insisted that his country was the sole successor to the old Yugoslavia, even after four of its republics obtained independence, and he refused to apply to join the United Nations.<br><br>Because of that, the old Communist flag of Tito's Yugoslavia still flies outside the headquarters of the United Nations, which has left issues of the property and liabilities of the former Yugoslavian republics frozen.<br><br>Those countries also urged Mr. Kostunica in a joint communiqué today to respect the equality of the states that emerged from the nation's breakup.<br><br>The issue was just one of many that Mr. Kostunica grappled with today, just weeks into his new job as president, and still without a federal government or even a foreign minister.<br><br>After his meeting with Mr. Holbrooke he also said that he would cooperate with the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, but that it was not high on his agenda. "There is an interest for truth of events, but it is not a priority," he said.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica also said he was working on releasing some 800 Kosovo Albanians being held in Serb prisons, and suggested that a law granting them amnesty was a possibility.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica's discussions with Mr. Holbrooke, a longtime negotiator in the Balkans, centered on the Dayton accords that ended the war in Bosnia, as well as on Kosovo and the United Nations resolution under which that province is now governed. The issues of Albanian prisoners in Serbia and the missing Serbs and Albanians were also discussed.<br><br>Mr. Holbrooke played down any differences, saying that the changes in the way Yugoslavia is run following the departure of Mr. Milosevic would be enormous. In particular, he said, there would be an end to the subversion by Milosevic allies and Interior Ministry police.<br><br>Working with Mr. Kostunica on Bosnia would be easier, one senior American official predicted, but serious differences on Kosovo remained.<br><br>"He is a nationalist and he is proud to be one," the official said of Mr. Kostunica. "To a Serb nationalist, Kosovo is part of the Serbian state. But he repeatedly said he was a pragmatist, that Dayton was a part of international law, and that he recognizes that the economic future for Yugoslavia lies in these things. It is encouraging." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Yugoslavia Is Expected to Rejoin United Nations``x972551278,58407,``x``x
``xBy Kole Casule<br><br>SKOPJE (Reuters) - Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica won praise from the United States on Wednesday after telling leaders of neighboring states that Belgrade was now committed to cooperation instead of conflict.<br><br>The Balkan neighbors welcomed Yugoslavia back into the fold after a decade of wars blamed by the West largely on Kostunica's predecessor Slobodan Milosevic .<br><br>Richard Holbrooke, chief architect of Washington's Balkans policy, gave a full seal of approval to the new Yugoslav leader.<br><br>``I congratulate President Kostunica on behalf of the United States,'' Holbrooke told reporters after two hours of talks with Kostunica in the Macedonian capital Skopje.<br><br>``Mr. President, I cannot thank you enough, for the admiration for your achievement is absolutely limitless,'' Holbrooke, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations , told Kostunica.<br><br>He said Yugoslavia would be able to fully restore its status at the United Nations ``in the very near future.''<br><br>At the summit, top officials from Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Turkey, Bosnia and Croatia met Kostunica for the first time and said his presence was a sign of an end to Yugoslavia's international isolation.<br><br>But a carefully worded joint statement indicated Yugoslavia's neighbors wanted more action from Belgrade.<br><br>Urges Good-Neighborliness<br><br>``We strongly encouraged the commitment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to follow a policy of good-neighborly relations, reconciliation and mutual understanding in the region,'' the statement said.<br><br>Kostunica succeeded Milosevic 20 days ago after a bloodless uprising forced the veteran leader to admit election defeat.<br><br>``The Balkans need peace and stability and Europe needs a peaceful and stable Balkans,'' he said. ``There is only one way to achieve that -- through political dialogue and economic and other types of cooperation.''<br><br>But Kostunica also said it would take a long time to transform his country.<br><br>``We have the difficult job of a thorough reorganization of the state, constitutional reconstruction, redefining relations with Montenegro and full stabilization of Kosovo in accordance with resolution 1244 of the Security Council,'' he said.<br><br>``None of that will happen in one night. We do not need radical and revolutionary moves, they would be deadly for our still weak democracy,'' said the new Yugoslav leader.<br><br>Hobrooke also said it would take a long time to bring the Balkans back to normal.<br><br>``This a beginning of a very complicated and difficult, probably protracted process which I believe will lead ultimately to the first full integration of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans into an integrated and unified Europe,'' he said.<br><br>``But it will take a long time.''<br><br>Want Proof From Kostunica<br><br>After a decade in which Slovenians, Bosnians, Croatians and Kosovars have all faced conflicts with Serb forces, their leaders want proof that Kostunica is the democrat he claims to be as well as a self-proclaimed moderate nationalist.<br><br>Both Western and regional governments saw the summit as a chance to consign the recent past to the history books and establish a new spirit of cooperation.<br><br>But, despite efforts to demonstrate harmony, the summit also showed there were still serious disputes, with the future of Kosovo topping the list.<br><br>Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski said boundaries in the region should not be changed -- a position not shared by Albania which says Kosovo, the Yugoslav province with an ethnic Albanian majority, should have the right to choose independence.<br><br>Kostunica told a news conference after the summit that Kosovo's municipal elections on Saturday should have been put off but he was resigned to the fact they would take place.<br><br>Kosovo has been run as an international protectorate since Serb forces withdrew last year after NATO's bombing campaign to end Serb repression of ethnic Albanians.<br><br>Holbrooke, who was in Kosovo earlier in the day, and Kostunica said they had discussed Kosovo but details would remain confidential. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica Welcomed Into Balkan Fold, Praised by U.S. ``x972551327,60814,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>27 October 2000 <br><br>In one of the final twists of the Milosevic regime, the outgoing Yugoslav justice minister, Petar Jojic, yesterday raised a fresh challenge to the new president, blocking attempts to pardon the jailed human rights activist Flora Brovina. <br><br>"She was tried because of a serious crime," Mr Jojic told journalists as he dismissed President Vojislav Kostunica's appeal for clemency. <br><br>"Kostunica did not name a single justified reason for me to pardon her," Mr Jojic said. <br><br>Dr Brovina, 51, an ethnic Albanian who has become a cause célèbre for Kosovars, was sentenced by a Serb court last December to 12 years in prison for "supporting terrorism" in Kosovo. Like thousands of ethnic Albanians, she was arrested in 1999 during the Nato air campaign. Her case drew international condemnation. <br><br>Mr Jojic himself attracted international attention earlier this year with an open letter to Carla Del Ponte, head of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, that opened with the words: "To the international whore, Carla Del Ponte." <br><br>The outgoing minister is a member of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj and will remain in his post until Monday. Mr Kostunica's government, which will include a majority of ministers from the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, will be inaugurated next week. <br><br>This means that Dr Brovina and at least 900 ethnic Albanians who remain in Serbian prisons since the mass arrests in Kosovo may yet be released within weeks. <br><br>One of President Kostunica's first moves when he came to power earlier this month was the introduction of a general amnesty bill. <br><br>The Yugoslav Committee of Lawyers for Human Rights, a prominent human rights organisation in Belgrade, is working on the draft of the new law, which will, in theory, extend to all victims of political repression under Mr Milosevic's regime. <br><br>Mr Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer, views the amnesty as an important step aimed at showing profound differences between the old regime and the new government. The law is expected to be endorsed by the new federal parliament at its first session next month. <br><br>Many ethnic Albanians have been held in detention without trial for more than 18 months, their lawyers say. Most are young men who were rounded up in their homes and villages for no reason other than being ethnically Albanian. <br><br>But the general amnesty will also extend to Serbs who refused to take part in military actions in Kosovo, and were treated by Milosevic's regime as "deserters". More than 20,000 of them were given five to 20 years in prison for draft dodging. <br><br>* The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) appealed yesterday for urgent aid for Yugoslavia, warning that 700,000 refugees from a decade of Balkan wars faced a "brutal winter". It said that although Yugoslavia, now with a new government, was attracting more aid offers for long-term economic development, "the needs are immediate for the refugees to survive the cold during this transition". <br><br>The agency said it had been hit by a severe funding shortfall, forcing it to cut back on its assistance programme. <br><br>The UNHCR's operational budget for Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro has been slashed to $37.5m (£26m) from $65m, leaving "funds for life-saving aid only, such as heating and food, for the coming critical months". ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent:Kostunica defied over amnesty for dissidents ``x972632491,63109,``x``x
``xBorn-Again Socialists Stress Democracy and Founding Ideals<br><br>By Peter Finn and R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Service<br><br>BELGRADE - Facing political extinction, the Yugoslav Socialist Party of former President Slobodan Milosevic is adopting the language of democratic reform in an effort to save itself. <br>There are increasing rumblings among disaffected members of the party that the key to its salvation is ditching Mr. Milosevic, who remains its leader despite being forced to resign the presidency. <br><br>''The Socialist Party of Serbia should turn back to its original principles and become a democratic party of the left,'' said Zoran Andjelkovic, the party's new general secretary, in his first extensive interview since Oct. 7, when a mass street uprising forced Mr. Milosevic to step down in the wake of election defeat. ''It's quite logical to have some changes.''<br><br>Mr. Andjelkovic, who assumed his post after the election, would not discuss Mr. Milosevic. But, tellingly, in a party that was once dominated by Mr. Milosevic, Mr. Andjelkovic did not endorse him, either.<br><br>''It is very difficult and incorrect for me to speak about that,'' Mr. Andjelkovic said when asked about Mr. Milosevic's future.<br><br>One leading Socialist said that a special party congress next month would ''push'' Mr. Milosevic into a face-saving but ''nonactive'' position. By all accounts, the break would be real, and not a political ruse by which he could continue to exercise power from behind the scenes. But that may not be enough for the party's grass-roots members, who were stunned by the election defeat, the mass uprising and its aftermath - in which numerous party officials were forced out of plum jobs in state-controlled companies and institutions.<br><br>Internal dissension flared most publicly in the southern city of Nis, where the leader and deputy leader of the local party branch blamed Mr. Milosevic for a ''catastrophic failure'' and declared that he no longer deserved to be party leader.<br><br>The target of their resentment is apparently holed up in one of his Belgrade residences, surrounded by a high stone wall and metal gates. Troops wearing red berets and carrying automatic rifles have been stationed on the street outside. It is not clear if the tight security is intended to protect Mr. Milosevic or to hold him under house arrest, but officials of the new government have raised a possibility of seeking his indictment on a charge of electoral fraud.<br><br>Mr. Milosevic is in regular telephone contact with party officials, Mr. Andjelkovic said, although he would not discuss the nature of the former president's political activities. <br><br>Allies of the new president, Vojislav Kostunica, say that Mr. Milosevic is attempting to stamp out the rising Socialist dissent.<br><br>Mr. Milosevic's Socialists are descendants of the Communists who controlled the six-republic Yugoslav Federation after World War II.<br><br>Its platform in recent years, many people here feel, was little more than keeping Mr. Milosevic wealthy and in power and dispensing jobs and other favors to people in cities, towns and villages who would back the party. <br><br>In its new, democratic form, the incoming leadership says, it will be something like the left-of-center Social Democratic parties of Western Europe, stressing welfare in a market economy.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Herald Tribune: Milosevic's Party Moderates Its Tone ``x972632557,41582,``x``x
``xThe Associated Press<br><br>BUCHAREST - Yugoslavia was admitted Thursday into an international Balkan development program, opening the door to further multinational support for President Vojislav Kostunica's efforts to build democracy following the departure of former President Slobodan Milosevic. <br>The German head of the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe, Bodo Hombach, handed a Yugoslav official, Goran Svilanovic, a large copper key symbolizing Yugoslavia's full membership in the group. <br><br>''The international community grabs the outstretched hand of the Yugoslav people,'' Mr. Hombach said. ''They voted Milosevic out and democratic forces in.'' <br><br>Yugoslavia had been excluded from the organization due to the policies of Mr. Milosevic, who has been widely blamed for the wars and bloodshed in the region over the past decade. <br><br>''A very high price in human lives was paid by all our people,'' Mr. Svilanovic said. ''It will be a challenge for all our neighbors to work for long lasting peace in the region.'' <br><br>Mr. Svilanovic said that Yugoslavia would have a new federal government next week, and that he had been ''warmly welcomed'' by the country's neighbors, including Albania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania - all of which had disputes with Belgrade under the Milosevic regime. <br><br>He added that Yugoslavia hoped to soon join the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.<br><br>The Stability Pact was constituted by the European Union in June 1999. The organization is aimed at providing economic support to nations of Southeastern Europe and promoting democracy in the region. <br><br>Referring to European efforts to reward democratic changes, Mr. Hombach said that $175 million in emergency food, medicine and energy assistance had been promised by the European Union to help the Balkan nation through the winter. <br><br>With nearly 700,000 refugees from a decade of Balkan conflicts, Yugoslavia urgently needs blankets, mattresses, beds, stoves and fuel, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Herald Tribune: Balkan Economic Body Welcomes Yugoslavia``x972632599,67437,``x``x
``xMinority Serbs plan to boycott tomorrow's poll, which could mark a step toward Albanian self-rule. <br><br>By Scott Peterson <br>Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>KOSOVO MITROVICA, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>In what many see as a popular referendum on independence from Yugoslavia, majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo go to the polls tomorrow to choose municipal leaders in the Serbian province's first-ever internationally supervised elections. <br><br>But minority Serbs plan to boycott the vote, in part to protest attacks against them, 16 months after American-led NATO airstrikes sought to reverse the "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians by Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>The significance of the vote - and of Kosovo's final status - has been thrust to the top of the Balkan agenda this week. Yugoslavia's new president, Vojislav Kostunica, has conceded that Serbs committed war crimes in Kosovo - but also insists that Yugoslav troops must be allowed to return to the province, if only symbolically. <br><br>But a report commissioned by the United Nations on Monday recommended eventual independence for Kosovo if certain conditions - such as guaranteed safety for minorities - are met. "It's not realistic or justifiable to expect the Albanians in Kosovo to accept rule from Belgrade," the report said. <br><br>"They don't want to live together anymore. I'm very sorry for that, but this is my personal, day-to-day reality," says Bernard Kouchner, the UN's top official in Kosovo. <br><br>"This is normal after centuries of confrontation. You cannot change it, as if with a miracle, in 16 months," says Mr. Kouchner, the former French minister. "How long has it taken in Beirut, Cyprus, in Londonderry [Northern Ireland]?" <br><br>The divisiveness that prevails is easy to see in Mitrovica, a city split along ethnic lines. Despite the presence of heavily armed French peacekeeping troops to prevent ethnic Albanian retaliation against Serbs, a bridge over the Ibar River linking the two sides is a regular flashpoint. <br><br>Skendar Hoti could be called one of the sparks. Three times in the past year, he pushed the limits of tolerance by setting up an office for his firmly pro-independence Albanian political party on the northern, Serb side of town. Three times, that office was burned to the ground. "There is no democracy in even one Serb," he says. "They never showed a shred of proclivity to live with other people." <br><br>Serb officials dismiss Mr. Hoti as a provocateur. After weapons were found in one office, he was detained briefly by UN police. Now he is prohibited from visiting the north. <br><br>"He put a red [Kosovo Albanian] flag in the north," says Oliver Ivanovic, a Serb community leader in Mitrovica. "It's like waving a [matador's] cape in front of a bull. <br><br>"Nationalism is a destructive force, and they are playing the nationalist card," adds Mr. Ivanovic, a moderate. <br><br>But Albanians are wary of the new president, a moderate nationalist, and concerned that Western aid money once destined for Kosovo might go to bolster Mr. Kostunica's pro-democracy position. "People in Kosovo are afraid because of the changes, and some politicians say it was better with Milosevic," says Baton Haxhiu, editor of Koha Ditore, Kosovo's largest-selling Albanian-language newspaper. "But this means they are not ready to be face to face with democratic Serbia. Kostunica has toppled Milosevic, but he has not changed Serbia. Now we have 'rational nationalists.' " <br><br>Moreover, the "substantial autonomy" called for by the UN Security Council decisions also require, eventually, the presence of federal Yugoslav troops - the same forces responsible for last year's ethnic-cleansing campaign that prompted NATO's involvement. <br><br>But "It is a provocation" for Yugoslav troops to return anytime soon," the UN's Kouchner says. "Kostunica knows they would be killed, that it would start a bloodbath." <br><br>He goes on to say that "Serbs have to discover that [Albanian] Kosovars are not criminals or terrorists. They are people." <br><br>Tomorrow's vote comes as Kosovo's final status is again in the spotlight. Meeting other Balkan leaders in the Macedonian capital of Skopje, Kostunica said on Tuesday that he sees a "symbolic presence of the Army [in Kosovo] and one day, when the situation allows it, the issue of the return will come up on the agenda." <br><br>In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes II" that aired Tuesday, he also admitted that Serbs were involved in atrocities in Kosovo and during three other Balkan wars of the past decade. Milosevic and four senior officials have been indicted for war crimes by the international tribunal in The Hague. "For what Milosevic had done, and as a Serb, I will take responsibility for many of these, these crimes," Kostunica said. <br><br>Kosovo's election pits Ibrahim Rugova - a longtime pacifist, who was tarnished by a wartime meeting with Milosevic - against three main parties that emerged from armed factions of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force. KLA commanders hurt their reputation in the months after the NATO air campaign by abusing civilians, forcibly extracting taxes, and other unpopular acts of thuggery. "The vote is for legitimacy, to know who is who in Kosovo," says Mr. Haxhiu, the newspaper editor. <br><br>The vote is likely to help clarify Kosovo's future, though many problems remain, says Llazar Semini, head of the Kosovo office of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, in Pristina. "At the moment, all Albanians will say: 'There should be no Serbs here.' But if you ask: 'Why? Has every Serb committed a crime?' they will say 'No, not every individual.' " <br><br>The risk of failure is high. The UN's Kouchner says he believes the "way ahead" is the continued presence of 36,000 NATO-led troops in Kosovo, huge economic assistance, and "substantial autonomy." <br><br>"This is what we have to do if we want to avoid a Middle East conflict, a new Palestinian crisis, in the heart of Europe," he said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Cristian Science Monitor:Kosovo vote energizes Albanians, worries Serbs ``x972632661,32897,``x``x
``xPresident Vojislav Kostunica has been stressing Yugoslavia's historic ties with Russia ahead of his trip to Moscow to meet Russian leaders. <br>As well as seeing his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, Mr Kostunica will hold discussions with the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexei II. <br>His visit to Russia - his fourth since he assumed the presidency - is his most sensitive so far because of Moscow's staunch support for former president Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Mr Kostunica said he planned to address economic issues during his visit, particularly the need to restart supplies of Russian gas. <br><br>Ambiguous start <br><br>After ambiguity over the result of the Yugoslav election, President Putin is keen to show his support for the new Yugoslav President. <br><br>BBC Russian affairs analyst Stephen Dalziel calls the visit "a fine example of how pragmatism often triumphs in international diplomacy". <br><br>Mr Putin and the Russian parliament were quick to accept the result given out by Slobodan Milosevic's camp, following the Yugoslav presidential election on 24 September. <br><br>Belgrade's old regime accepted that Mr Kostunica had come first, but said he had not achieved the necessary 50% plus one vote. <br><br>Meanwhile, Moscow criticised western governments for suggesting that Mr Kostunica had won outright. <br><br>Mr Putin even offered to act as mediator, if both Mr Kostunica and Mr Milosevic would come to Moscow for talks. <br><br>But our analyst says Mr Putin has already shown himself a skilful enough politician to shrug off the potential embarrassment of Mr Kostunica's arrival in his new position. <br><br>Slav nationals <br><br>Moscow has taken up Yugoslavia's cause ever since Mr Kostunica's election was confirmed, calling for the scrapping of all sanctions imposed on the country by the international community. <br><br>The Chairman of the Russian parliament's international affairs committee, Dmitry Rogozin, met Mr Kostunica in Belgrade on Tuesday. <br><br>He carried the message that Moscow was willing to do everything in its power to help end Yugoslavia's isolation. <br><br>Russia has always stressed its friendship with Yugoslavia, because of their shared Slav nationhood and Christian Orthodox religion. <br><br>Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II has repeatedly expressed his concern about the safety of Orthodox places of worship in Yugoslavia, especially those in Kosovo. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBBC: Kostunica rebuilds ties with Russia``x972632709,3274,``x``x
``xBy KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer <br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica 's office on Thursday disputed a CBS News broadcast that quoted him as acknowledging atrocities committed in Kosovo under the government of his predecessor, Slobodan Milosevic .<br><br>The statement released by Kostunica's office, addressed to the president of CBS News, said the segment aired Tuesday on ''60 Minutes II'' was ``unprofessional and unethical.''<br><br>Kostunica was quoted in the broadcast as saying: ``I am ready to ... accept the guilt for all those people who have been killed. ... For what Milosevic had done, and as a Serb, I will take responsibility for many of these, these crimes.''<br><br>The interview, which was reported by The Associated Press, was considered the first time a Yugoslav leader publicly acknowledged that Yugoslav forces committed widespread killings in Kosovo last year. Milosevic, who was forced from office this month, never admitted wrongdoing in Kosovo or former Yugoslav republics where he helped instigate armed conflicts.<br><br>Kostunica's office, in a statement translated by the AP, said the journalists conducting the interview taped about 100 minutes of conversation with him, but broadcast ``only a few minutes'' of his answer to a single question, ``and even that was taken completely out of context.''<br><br>The president's office specifically protested excerpts of the interview released on the CBS Web site a day before the broadcast.<br><br>That contained ``a series of untruths and words which President Kostunica did not use,'' his office said. Given the huge amount of publicity the CBS broadcast received in other media, it ``could have inflicted much political damage to the president and the forces leading the democratization in Yugoslavia,'' the statement said.<br><br>Government officials refused to elaborate Thursday about the ``untrue words.'' Cabinet Chief Ljiljana Nedeljkovic, who released the statement, was unavailable for comment Thursday. Her office said she was in a meeting with Kostunica.<br><br>Kostunica, considered a nationalist in his own right, came to power accusing Milosevic of ruinous policies that harmed many nations in the region, including Serbs.<br><br>CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley, who conducted the interview, said the story was edited to concentrate on the two subjects of most interest to international viewers: whether Kostunica would move against Milosevic and whether he acknowledged war crimes.<br><br>``He was very evasive, particularly on the Milosevic question,'' Pelley said. ``We had to go back to him again and again and again to get a straight answer.''<br><br>CBS had quoted Kostunica as saying that ``those are the crimes and the people that have been killed are victims,'' and ``there are a lot of crimes on the other side, and the Serbs have been killed.''<br><br>Pelley said he believed the interview, as aired, was ``absolutely fair.'' And he said he wasn't surprised by Kostunica's statement criticizing CBS.<br><br>``He is trying to stabilize a government with enemies conspiring all around him,'' he said. ``When he took the courageous steps to be frank in our interview, I think he knew that telling the truth was going to cause trouble for him.''<br><br>Kostunica's office said Thursday it felt ``compelled to demand an explanation regarding the unprofessional and unethical behavior of your company in connection with the interview.'' ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica Disputes CBS Broadcast ``x972632764,44082,``x``x
``xDeposed Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic may be ousted from his Serbian Socialist Party, leaving him open to criminal prosecution. <br>He faces a simmering rebellion within the political party that helped him rule unchallenged for 13 years. <br>In the wake of his earlier fall this month, the Serbian Socialist Party called a convention for November 25 amid signs of a growing move to dislodge Milosevic from the party's leadership, leaving him even more vulnerable to criminal prosecution for ruining Yugoslavia during his rule. <br>Several top–ranking Socialist officials and co–founders of the party, which succeeded the Communist Alliance of Yugoslavia in 1991, have spoken against Milosevic. <br>The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they fear reprisals, said the party could offer Milosevic a title with dignity but without any real role in running the organization. He would be replaced at the helm by a five–member presidency of party moderates. <br>But Milosevic is clearly trying to hold on. He still lives in his residence, protected by troops of the army's elite Guard Brigade. He left his compound for the first time after the October 5 uprising to preside at the party's main board session. <br>Moderated in the party fear it has no future unless it rids itself of the stain of Milosevic. <br>Nebojsa Spaic, a political analyst of the independent Media Center, believes the Socialists will split into rival factions. <br>"One faction will remain loyal to Milosevic, and will gradually disappear," Spaic said. <br>"The other side, if it really splits from the old–style Milosevic party, has some chance of becoming a respectable left–wing party." <br>Earlier this month, 40 long–time party members – some of whom were dismissed of opposing Milosevic, called in an open letter for a top–to–bottom reform of the party to restore basic principles of "social justice and a market economy". <br>The reform movement includes Branislav Ivkovic, the party's Belgrade leader, and two members of Yugoslavia's former collective presidency, Borisav Jovic and Zoran Lilic. <br>"If the Socialist party doesn't purge Milosevic, it cannot hope to become a serious party again," Jovic said. Jovic was once one of Milosevic's closest allies. <br>"Milosevic made catastrophic mistakes, and he must go," said Milorad Vucelic, the party's former vice president. <br>Even some of those recently associated with Milosevic are hinting that it's time for change. Socialist party spokesman Ivica Dacic said "the party must elect new leadership, consisting of uncompromised people." <br>The first sign of a mutiny within Socialist ranks surfaced shortly after the September 24 presidential election in the southern city of Nis. <br>The local party leadership accused Milosevic of a "catastrophic election failure" and demanded his ouster. Similar calls came from party groups in small Serbian towns. <br>"People began raising their voice, and a major democratization of party occurred," Ivkovic said. <br>As a first step toward rehabilitation, the party jettisoned its alliance with the Yugoslav Left, led by Milosevic's ambitious wife, Mirjana Markovic. Her group had branded all supporters of new President Vojislav Kostunica as Western spies and lackeys. <br>Some analysts believe the party may still have a political future in Yugoslavia. <br>"If they manage to implement proposed reforms, the Socialists might be able to rise to power again in three to four years, as it happened in other former communist countries," Belgrade analyst Milica Kuburovic said. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent: Milosevic faces party rebellion ``x972723905,56502,``x``x
``xBy Ben Aris in Moscow and Alex Todorovic in Belgrade <br>PRESIDENT Vojislav Kostunica of Yugoslavia made a lightning trip to Moscow yesterday to reassure Russia that his administration will not turn its back on Serbia's oldest ally.<br>President Kostunica: emphasised the links between Orthodox Russia and Serbia <br>Ties between Russia and Yugoslavia, both Slavic nations, have always been strong and they are natural partners, but many analysts suspect they could weaken now that Slobodan Milosevic has been ousted. President Putin and Mr Kostunica released a joint statement that pledged economic and technological co-operation. Mr Putin praised the Yugoslav president for overcoming the constitutional crisis three weeks ago without resorting to force.<br>The Yugoslavs are still smarting from last year's Nato bombing campaign and Russia, too, has little love for the alliance as it expands eastwards. The start of the bombing in Kosovo last summer led to angry protests by Russians outside the American embassy in Moscow, which the crowd peppered with ink and stones. To cement the relationship, Mr Putin promised that Russia would provide "tangible" aid to help Yugoslavia rebuild its shattered economy after nearly a decade of war and civil unrest.<br>Yugoslavia relies on Russian fuel and gas to heat the country, but already owes more than £260 million in unpaid gas bills. Mr Kostunica is hoping to secure fuel deliveries before winter, but Russia can offer little else as it hardly has the resources to help itself. Mr Kostunica's trip is a timely piece of diplomacy on his part, designed to reassure Russia that Yugoslavia still considers it a friend and partner, but it also provides him with a useful bargaining chip in negotiations with the West for aid.<br>In the steps of the late Yugoslav leader, Marshal Tito, Mr Kostunica appears poised to strike an independent position between Russia and Western Europe, exploiting their competing interests in the Balkans. On his first visit to Moscow as Yugoslav president, Mr Kostunica emphasised the links between Orthodox Russia and Serbia, saying he hoped the "historical and religious ties" would become stronger.<br>He took with him Patriarch Pavle, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, as well as two other influential Serbian church leaders. The Yugoslav delegation met Russian Patriarch Alexei II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Shortly before Mr Kostunica and Mr Putin met, Igor Ivanov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said Russia had always strongly supported the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia, making the point that Kosovo belongs to Yugoslavia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xElectronic Telegraph: Kostunica in Russia to revive links``x972723949,40285,``x``x
``xParis, Saturday, October 28, 2000<br>By Michael Dobbs Washington Post Service<br>BELGRADE - The last of Eastern Europe's great anti-Communist revolutions is entering its fourth week, and millions of Serbs are without heat and electricity. Yugoslavia's new leaders fret that ''social anarchy'' looms this winter unless foreign governments provide extensive economic help. <br>The crisis comes home to Olga Mitrovic when the lights go out in her three-room apartment.<br>It is the fifth major power cut in as many days, and Olga Mitrovic, a 55-year-old health worker, is furious. Furious with Slobodan Milosevic for reducing this once prosperous corner of the Balkans to penury and misery when he was the president of Yugoslavia. Furious with the power company for turning her electricity off as lights continue to blaze in a half-dozen nearby high-rise apartment buildings. And furious with the West for failing, as she sees it, to provide necessary aid on time.<br>After the euphoria of the revolution, when cheering crowds stormed the Yugoslav Parliament and state-run Serbian television, forcing Mr. Milosevic to accept outright electoral defeat and step aside this month, a cold economic reality is sinking in.<br>The energy crisis tops a long list of problems facing Yugoslavia's new leaders. It is an emblem for the bankruptcy of the old government and a symbol of the headaches facing Mr. Milosevic's successors as they try to introduce economic reforms while preserving a brittle social peace.<br>Olga Mitrovic calls the state-run electric company on a line reserved for reporting life-threatening power blackouts. Miraculously, she somehow gets through and finds herself talking to the head of the Belgrade power distribution system and a visiting American reporter.<br>''Western politicians promised to help us, but do nothing,'' said Olga Mitrovic, who voted for Mr. Milosevic's opponent, Vojislav Kostunica, in the presidential election last month. ''If help doesn't come soon, the new regime will be endangered. Serbs showed that we want democracy and an opening to the West, but we also cannot survive without hot water, gas and electricity. We are normal people. We want a bath occasionally.''<br>To survive the winter, officials say, Yugoslavia needs $600 million for energy supplies. Russia has refused to deliver natural gas until $300 million in debt is paid by Serbia, the dominant republic in the Yugoslav federation, with Montenegro.<br>Soon the new government is likely to face a brutal choice: Keep the lights on in Belgrade and other cities or meet the monthly payrolls of the police force and army.<br>With its plentiful hydroelectric reserves, Yugoslavia had traditionally been an energy exporter. But over the past few years it became a net importer and now owes billions of kilowatt-hours of electricity to its neighbors. Water reservoirs, which would normally be full at this time of year, have been depleted by a drought.<br>Some of Yugoslavia's energy problems can be traced to the damage that was done last year to the Serbian power grid by NATO air strikes. But the problems are mostly a result of inept economic policies of the neo-Communist Milosevic government, Yugoslav and Western experts said.<br>To remain in power, Mr. Milosevic constantly postponed market reforms because they risked provoking a social explosion. The energy sector, like the rest of the economy, was allowed to deteriorate.<br>Miroslav Labus, Mr. Kostunica's principal economic adviser, said Mr. Milosevic's surprise decision to call a presidential election in September was dictated by the looming energy crisis. Mr. Milosevic and his aides ''knew what was going to happen,'' Mr. Labus said.<br>Mr. Labus, an economics professor, heads a group of experts called G17 Plus, which has effectively taken over the management of the economy and the banking system during the transition from one government to another.<br>The group's headquarters, overlooking Belgrade's central square, are a mix of academic research organization, financial nerve center and never-ending news conference. In a crowded warren of rooms, Mr. Labus and his colleagues negotiate with foreign financiers, issue instructions to the central bank and the customs office and devise a new energy strategy, while fending off an endless stream of reporters and job-seekers.<br>One colleague is Mladan Dinkic, the group's executive director and the top candidate to head the national bank.<br>''The most critical problem we face right now is how to survive the next few weeks,'' Mr. Dinkic said. ''People are already blaming us for what is going on. They assume that because we won the elections, we are already controlling the whole economy.''<br>Around the corner from G17 Plus, at the headquarters of the Serbian electric company, officials said power cuts were likely to continue for some time, even under the best of circumstances.<br>''We are facing the most serious energy crisis in our history,'' said power industry spokesman, Momcilo Cebalovic. ''We are entering the winter with absolutely no reserves.''<br>Mr. Cebalovic and other experts trace the crisis to Mr. Milosevic's failure to undertake market-oriented reforms in the late '80s, when neighboring East European countries were making the transition from communism to capitalism.<br>Although Mr. Milosevic jettisoned Communist ideology in favor of Serbian nationalism, he continued to rely on the old socialist methods of running the economy, and energy prices were therefore kept artificially low.<br>Serbian consumers pay around 1 U.S. cent per kilowatt-hour of electricity that costs about 3 cents to import, and that is sold in neighboring countries for 5 cents or more. Accustomed to low prices, Serbs have come to rely on electricity for heat in winter and have had little incentive to shift to more efficient energy use.<br>For years, the power company was able to replenish depleted energy supplies over the summer, when Serbs traditionally use 30 percent to 40 percent less electricity than in winter. Last summer, however, this cycle was disrupted. Strapped for hard currency, the Milosevic government insisted that the power company run at full capacity, repaying electricity debts to neighboring countries in kind rather than in cash. Maintenance work on thermal power plants was postponed.<br>Instead of cutting costs and making more efficient use of its operations, the electric company has become a socialist dinosaur. Managers say the 62,000-member work force should be slashed by half, a move that has proved politically unacceptable until now.<br>The long-term solution to Yugoslavia's energy crisis is clear enough: the introduction of market prices and the creation of a modern, cost-efficient energy industry. But sharp increases for energy prices seem out of the question at a time when the average monthly salary is around $30, down from about $300 a decade ago. Serbian consumers already are reeling from increases in food prices over the past few weeks.<br>Unable to tackle the root causes of the crisis, Yugoslavia's new leaders are relying on short-term fixes. For example, temporary arrangements have been made with Hungary for gas to heat Serbian homes for the next few weeks.<br>The European Union has promised about $165 million in emergency economic assistance, most of which is likely to go to the energy sector. But Yugoslav officials complain that it is tied up in red tape and is unlikely to arrive before the end of November.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xHerald Tribune: Yugoslav Leaders Fear 'Social Anarchy' in Energy Shortage``x972723988,20876,``x``x
``xParis, Saturday, October 28, 2000<br>UNITED NATIONS, New York - The new Yugoslav government of President Vojislav Kostunica on Friday formally requested membership in the United Nations, a UN spokesman said. <br>Yugoslavia, a founding member, has held an uncertain status in the organization since 1992, after Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia declared independence from Belgrade and left only Serbia and Montenegro remaining in the Yugoslav federation.<br>The General Assembly said then that Belgrade should apply for membership, as the others did. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xHerald Tribune: Belgrade Applies To Join the UN``x972724015,8691,``x``x
``xAlbanian nationalists are buoyed by Washington's readiness to support a break from Yugoslavia<br><br>Ewen MacAskill in Pristina <br>Monday October 30, 2000 <br><br>The US is ready to break rank with its Nato partners by conceding for the first time that Kosovo can become independent from Serbia. <br>The shift in policy, discussed in secret talks this month between the US special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, and US diplomats in the Balkans, will anger Britain and other Nato members and risks creating a rift with Russia, which retains close ties with Serbia. <br><br>The change of direction emerged in the Kosovan capital, Pristina, as votes were being counted yesterday in the province's first democratic elections. The three big Kosovan Albanian parties all stood on an independence platform. The Kosovan Serbs almost unanimously boycotted the elections, for local authorities. <br><br>The Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), led by the moderate nationalist Ibrahim Rugova, was sweeping to power throughout the province, according to independent observers. The official results are expected today. <br><br>Nato and the UN security council have maintained that, in spite of the Nato-led war last year which forced Serbian troops out of the province, Kosovo should remain a sovereign part of Yugoslavia. <br><br>British officials recently ruled out independence as an option, saying that further fragmentation in the Balkans would increase instability and that a state as small as Kosovo would be unsustainable. <br><br>Security council resolution 1244, passed in June last year at the end of the war, reaffirmed "the commitment of all member states to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia". <br><br>But a senior US official in Pristina, who spent last week with Mr Holbrooke, has for the first time disputed the widely-held interpretation of the resolution. <br><br>He said that 1244 "explicitly recognises the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia but it does not mean Kosovo cannot be independent". <br><br>US government lawyers spent the past few weeks looking at the resolution in detail and they concluded that it did not rule out independence. <br><br>The US source agreed that independence was fast becoming a reality on the ground because almost half the Kosovan Serbs had left the province and the Kosovo Albanians were setting up their own judicial and political system. <br><br>Acknowledging that few Kosovo Albanians were prepared to consider even a loose federation with Belgrade, he said: "Kosovo will not be pushed back into Serbia." <br><br>The US is unlikely to go public on its policy switch in the near future in case it undermines Yugoslavia's new democratically elected president, Vojislav Kostunica. <br><br>The loss of Kosovo, which is an important historical symbol for Serbia, would inflame Serbian nationalist hardliners. <br><br>The US source ruled out partitioning the province between the northern part, predominantly populated by Serbs, which would join Serbia while the rest of the country, mainly Kosovo Albanians, would enter into a Greater Albania. <br><br>He hoped the Kosovo Serbs and Albanians could reach an accommodation. "They will never be friends sitting around the campfire singing Kumbaya... but they will learn to live with one another." <br><br>The elections held in Kosovo on Saturday were for control of the province's 30 municipalities, but the Kosovo Albanians treated them as a referendum on independence. The main contenders were Mr Rugova's LDK and the Democratic Party of Kosovo, led by Hashim Thaci, a nationalist hardliner and former commander of the Kosovan Liberation Army, which fought a guerrilla campaign against the Yugoslav army. <br><br>Mr Thaci wants Kosovo to become independent from Serbia as soon as possible and join Albania. Mr Rugova also wants independence but at a more cautious pace and for Kosovo to be a state in its own right, free of both Serbia and Albania. <br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: US shift on independent Kosovo angers allies ``x972896613,59444,``x``x
``xBy SNJEZANA VUKIC, Associated Press Writer <br><br>ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) - Nine years after the former Yugoslavia disintegrated, the new democratic government in Belgrade has acknowledged it is not the only country with a claim to the assets of the former Yugoslav state.<br><br>Yugoslavia is now made up of two republics, Serbia and Montenegro, but it used to have four more: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia. Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) always insisted that his truncated Yugoslavia was the only ``successor state'' of the former Yugoslavia, which once extended from the Alps to the Greek border.<br><br>But his successor, Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites), has taken another tack.<br><br>His position - which he confirmed Friday at a Balkan summit in talks with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (news - web sites), Richard Holbrooke - means the former Yugoslav republics have a claim on billions of dollars in assets. The concession also opens the door for modern Yugoslavia to gain admission to the United Nations and other global institutions.<br><br>It may take years to resolve the claims: Divisions and mutual hostility run deep between Yugoslavia and its former republics. Milosevic opened talks with the breakaway states in 1992 on the issue but they soon stalled.<br><br>``Things are moving ahead, but they're far from being settled,'' said Bozo Marendic, the Croatian negotiator on the issue.<br><br>The four former Yugoslav republics say they should share in the assets and property which old Yugoslavia held in 1990, a year before Slovenia and Croatia broke away - the first to do so. That includes government-owned property in the Balkans and abroad, assets of the Yugoslav army, foreign currency reserves and gold. The Croats estimate the total at $100 billion. They must also share in paying off Yugoslavia's old debts - an estimated $17 billion.<br><br>Under Milosevic, Yugoslavia disputed those numbers. The former republics hope the new leadership will be easier to deal with.<br><br>``Mr. Kostunica said nothing about these concrete disagreements, and I'm eager to hear his views on them,'' Croatia's Marendic said.<br><br>Croatian Vice President Goran Grancic said the question of dividing up assets and debts ``is no longer a political issue, it's a technical question now.'' A Slovene negotiator, Miran Mejak, said there is a ``realistic expectation'' that the talks may resume.<br><br>Still, the negotiations are likely to be slow. Only Macedonia seceded peacefully. The others fought wars which deepened distrust between them and Belgrade.<br><br>Marendic also noted that Belgrade has controlled the vast majority of assets since 1991 and many of them have accrued in value. How much is likely to be a thorny issue.<br><br>The dispute over successor-state status has long prevented normal relations between Yugoslavia and the breakaway countries. Slovenia has refused to establish diplomatic relations with Belgrade until the issue is settled. Croatia recognized Yugoslavia in 1996 but has said relations cannot develop normally until all successor issues are resolved. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCountries To Share Yugoslav Assets ``x972896633,81117,``x``x
``xBy Anna Husarska International Herald Tribune<br><br>WARSAW - The Belgrade weekly Nin recently conducted a poll on what Serbs want to do with the former dictator of Yugoslavia. Fifty-three percent of the 2,000 people questioned said Slobodan Milosevic should not stand trial for war crimes anywhere, 30 percent wanted him to face charges in Serbia and 9 percent favored sending him to the international tribunal in The Hague.<br>Belgrade's radio B2-92, whose web site's visitors are a sophisticated group both politically and logistically, reports that 76 percent of those who voted online foresee a trial in Serbia and 14 percent in The Hague, while 2 percent expect Mr. Milosevic to ''continue a political career'' and 6 percent think he will have a ''peaceful retirement.''<br><br>When asked why they expect ''trial in Serbia,'' most Serbs say it is because Serbs have suffered most under the Milosevic dictatorship, so they, as his main victims, should judge him.<br><br>Whether ignorance of the four wars he started and the hundreds of thousands of deaths he provoked is genuine or feigned, it stands in the way of owning up to Serbs' own past - what the Germans, experts in repentance, call Vergangenheitsbewältigung.<br><br>The man who may decide on the fate of Mr. Milosevic, President Vojislav Kostunica, has made clear that he will not deliver his predecessor to The Hague. But on the subject of war crimes and genocide committed in the last decade by Serbs outside Serbia's borders, he sends mixed signals.<br><br>First came the so very welcome words of recognition of guilt. Asked in an interview with the American network CBS, aired on Oct. 24, whether there was any doubt that the Yugoslav army and police were guilty of genocide in Kosovo, Mr. Kostunica said: ''I am ready to, how to say, to accept the guilt for all those people who have been killed, so I'm trying to, taking responsibility for what happened on my part. For what Milosevic had done and as a Serb I will take responsibility for many of these, these crimes.''<br><br>''A watershed,'' The Daily Telegraph enthused in London. ''Un geste spectaculaire,'' said Agence France-Presse.<br><br>For foreign dignitaries and officials from the donor organizations, for human rights monitors and for political analysts this was a first, promising sign that the Yugoslav president would courageously confront the past and thus help his nation come to terms with the fact that, yes, war crimes were committed by their leader in their name.<br><br>But then Mr. Kostunica himself felt that he had to protest. Two days after the broadcast, an angry three-paragraph letter was addressed by his chief of staff to the head of CBS asking for explanations for the ''unprofessional and unethical behavior'' of the network.<br><br>There were indeed things to be explained. Someone not used to Western television ways can require training in the art of boiling down a 100-minute exchange to a few sound bites. Someone raised on the state media in Yugoslavia would never dream of putting their new president's remarks on a web site under the irreverent title ''A Madhouse in Yugoslavia.'' as CBS did.<br><br>But no, the problem, as it turned out, was that world media reported these utterances, and such publicity ''could have inflicted much political damage on the president and the forces leading the democratization in Yugoslavia.''<br><br>In other words, publicizing a mea culpa is harmful to the image of the new leader in Belgrade and to his coalition of democratic forces.<br><br>The international community insists that Mr. Milosevic be tried in The Hague. The Serbian people see no need. There are creative precedents to copy: the Hague tribunal for war crimes committed in Rwanda sits in Arusha, Tanzania; the defendants in the Lockerbie bombing are tried in The Hague but under Scottish law.<br><br>But if the Serbs are to accept that Mr. Milosevic be tried in a court set up by the United Nations, the most urgent task is to make them understand what crimes against foreign citizens Mr. Milosevic is indicted for. Once they start accusing him not only of electoral fraud, corruption, nepotism and repression against Serbian media but also of waging foreign wars against non-Serbian ethnic groups, of ordering mass murder and rape of foreign citizens, then they may want to expurgate him from their midst.<br><br>Perhaps then, when Mr. Kostunica says ''Sorry,'' his office will not be rushing to explain that it was a slip of the tongue.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Internacional Herald Tribune:The New President of Yugoslavia Gets Sound-Bitten``x972985692,62716,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>PRISTINA, Kosovo, Oct. 30 — Ibrahim Rugova, the Kosovo Albanian who led his people on a 10-year campaign of peaceful protest for independence from Serbia, was confirmed today as the winner of the elections held on Saturday. His party won 21 of 27 contested municipalities.<br><br>With close to 90 percent of votes counted, international election organizers released preliminary results showing Mr. Rugova's party, the Democratic League of Kosovo, with 58 percent of the votes and the former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci with 27 percent.<br><br>Mr. Thaci, who was political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army before he turned to politics last year after the NATO bombing campaign to drive Serbian forces from the province, won six municipalities. Another rebel commander, Ramush Haradinaj, took about 7 percent. Turnout was close to 80 percent; three municipalities in northern Kosovo populated only by Serbs did not take part in the elections.<br><br>Louis Sell, of the International Crisis Group, an independent research organization, said the results indicated that Kosovo Albanians had voted for stability and the father figure of Mr. Rugova, an intellectual and professor who led a campaign of passive resistance through the 1990's against the government of Slobodan Milosevic. It was also a vote against Mr. Thaci, Mr. Sell said, and the violence associated with many Thaci supporters.<br><br>Despite his clear disappointment, Mr. Thaci said today that he would accept the election's outcome and promised to work together with other parties in sharing power in the local councils, and to continue to work for the people and prepare for general elections next year. <br><br>"I want to assure the citizens of Kosovo that we are here to continue to work for an independent and democratic Kosovo," he said.<br><br>That Kosovo was able, for the first time, to hold free and democratic elections was a victory for the Kosovo Liberation Army, he said.<br><br>Nevertheless, the results represent a blow to Mr. Thaci, 30, who has played the leading role in Kosovo politics since he emerged into public view last year as the political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and headed the negotiation team at peace talks with Serbian officials in Rambouillet, France. <br><br>After the NATO bombing campaign ended last June and peacekeeping troops entered Kosovo, Mr. Thaci and his fellow commanders quickly set up their own provisional government and took charge in all 27 of the Albanian-dominated municipalities. <br><br>Although the United Nations administration, which is charged with running the province, has gradually established its power in the territory, Mr. Thaci and his supporters continued to dominate local affairs. Now they will have to relinquish both offices and power in many areas.<br><br>While the newly elected councils will not wield much power, they will have responsibility for education, transport, health care and other local services as part of the United Nations plan to develop Kosovo into a self-governing territory.<br><br>The poll is being seen as an indication of how a general election for a national leader, which could take place by the middle of next year, would proceed. What that means for negotiations on Kosovo's final status is unclear. Mr. Rugova may appear to be more moderate than Mr. Thaci, but he has stubbornly held out for independence for a decade and his first comments on claiming victory on Sunday were to call for immediate independence from Yugoslavia.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Kosovo Voters Side With the Rebel Who Took the Path of Peace``x972985733,6573,``x``x
``xBy BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer <br><br>WASHINGTON (AP) - The Clinton administration called on Yugoslavia's new president to accept election results in Kosovo.<br><br>Preliminary results show the party led by Ibrahim Rugova, a moderate, trounced one led by Hashim Thaci, the former political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The Saturday elections determined seats in city and town halls. Provincewide elections have yet to be declared.<br><br>On Sunday, new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica insisted that a Serb boycott made the vote invalid. Monday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that while the results were inconclusive, ``the elections were held in a free and fair manner.''<br><br>Boucher said Kosovar Serbs had the chance to register to vote and ``we regret that most of them chose not to do so.''<br><br>The elections were the first in Kosovo since NATO bombing last year forced former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw Serbian troops and special police, ending a bloody crackdown against ethnic Albanians, who are in the majority.<br><br>Asked how Belgrade should respond, Boucher said ``generally, we would hope and expect that people in the region would welcome the furtherance of a cause of democracy in the region, and that it's important.''<br><br>Boucher congratulated Kosovars for successfully holding the municipal elections, and called the balloting a key step toward implementing the U.N. plan for general elections and autonomy - but not independence - for the province.<br><br>Kosovo should develop democratic institutions before the province's final status is determined, he said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.S. Urges Belgrade on Election``x972985772,6594,``x``x
``xBy Beti Bilandzic<br><br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - An ally of Yugoslavia's reformist President Vojislav Kostunica said Monday the country could be admitted to the United Nations within days.<br><br>Vladan Batic, a leader of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia alliance that backs Kostunica, said he did not believe objections from Montenegro -- Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation -- would hold up the process.<br><br>Senior Montenegrin officials, who want more autonomy or independence for the coastal republic, have said Yugoslavia should not join international bodies until the federation's future and relations between its constituents are resolved.<br><br>But Batic told reporters in Belgrade all members of the U.N. Security Council who could block Yugoslavia's membership had unofficially said they would let the country join.<br><br>``I think that despite reactions from Montenegro, there are realistic chances that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia...will be admitted as a member of the U.N. within the next few days,'' he said.<br><br>Yugoslavia has been stuck in limbo at the world body since 1992 after Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Macedonia declared independence from the old Yugoslav federation.<br><br>The U.N.'s General Assembly ruled that the rump Yugoslavia could not continue automatically in the seat of the old Yugoslavia and should submit a new application for membership. Kostunica's administration submitted that application Friday.<br><br>The government of Kostunica's ousted predecessor Slobodan Milosevic had long refused to do so, and outgoing Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Nikolic Monday accused Kostunica of violating the constitution, state agency Tanjug said.<br><br>``This is an unauthorized request because the federal government conducts foreign policy and not the president of Yugoslavia,'' Tanjug quoted him as saying.<br><br>In a statement carried by Tanjug, the outgoing government -- which resigned on October 9 -- said neither it nor any of its members had filed for Yugoslavia's readmission to the world body.<br><br>The government said it ``cannot take upon itself any consequences this move (the application) may have on Yugoslavia's state interests.''<br><br>A new government made up of Kostunica's allies is expected to be set up this weekend.<br><br>Batic said Montenegrin leaders were wrong to assert that joining the U.N. would pre-judge talks on Yugoslavia's future.<br><br>``I consider that Montenegro's understanding of this as something that will obstruct the future organization of the state is not correct,'' he said, adding that if Serbia and Montenegro separated they could quit the U.N. and reapply. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia Sees U.N. Membership Within Days ``x972985800,18383,``x``x
``xZAGREB, Oct 31 (Reuters) - The upcoming European Union summit in Zagreb is expected to welcome Yugoslavia into the family of EU aspirants but its organisers face the tricky issue of who will represent the troubled federation. "With the recent democratic changes, Yugoslavia has met conditions to activate its status in the so-called Stabilisation and Association countries," Neven Madej, a Croatian foreign ministry official who heads the organising committee for the November 24 summit, told a news conference on Tuesday. The SAA was created by the EU to encourage Balkans countries -- Croatia, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Macedonia and Albania -- in their efforts to win associated and eventually full membership of the EU, after a decade of ethnic conflicts. Presidents or prime ministers from the 15 EU countries will attend the high-profile summit along with the five SAA countries and Slovenia, another former Yugoslav republic. Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, who replaced veteran leader Slobodan Milosevic after popular protests forced him to concede defeat in September"s election, is also expected to attend although his office has yet to confirm it officially. But while Yugoslavia still formally includes Montenegro and Kosovo, last year"s conflict in the province and autonomy moves by Montenegro have raised questions over its borders. "(U.N. administrator) Bernard Kouchner will probably be the only one from Kosovo," Madej told reporters, adding that ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, whose party emerged strongest at recent local Kosovo elections, was not likely to attend. Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic may also not come. "That is a very sensitive political issue which we cannot comment on now," added Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Drobnjak. CROATIA HOPES TO START TALKS WITH EU Croatia, which split from Socialist Yugoslavia in 1992, expects to open talks on an SAA agreement with the EU on the day of the summit provided the European Commission gets the go-ahead from the EU ministerial council in Brussels four days earlier. "But the talks (on associated membership) will begin in earnest in December and if everything goes well may be completed in some six months," Drobnjak said. A centre-left reformist coalition ousted nationalists from power in Zagreb in January and set about redrawing the country"s image abroad by implementing democratic and economic reforms. The associated membership is the first step towards the EU and does not automatically guarantee that a full status will be achieved at a later stage. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News: EU summit in Zagreb faces tricky Yugoslav issue``x973072260,86723,``x``x
``x'Hostages' a Thorny Issue for Kostunica<br>Paris, Wednesday, November 1, 2000<br>By Michael Dobbs Washington Post Service<br>POZAREVAC, Yugoslavia - ''I consider myself a hostage of war,'' the Kosovo student leader, Albin Kurti, announced as he was escorted into a chilly prison interview room by his Serbian jailers.<br>Arrested by Serbian police during the Kosovo conflict last year and sentenced to 15 years in prison on terrorism charges, Mr. Kurti is one of approximately 800 ethnic Albanians still being held in Serbian jails nearly four weeks after the street revolution that overthrew the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>The question of what to do with them has emerged as one of the most thorny issues facing Yugoslavia's new president, Vojislav Kostunica, as he attempts to consolidate power. The United States and other Western countries have called for their immediate release. Mr. Kostunica has suggested he wants to do that, but there is little political support for such a step within Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic, at a time when hundreds of Serbs are missing in Kosovo.<br><br>Mr. Kurti and the other ethnic Albanian detainees, members of Kosovo's majority population, were rounded up during the 11-week NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia last year. They were transferred to prisons outside Kosovo just before the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav Army withdrew from Kosovo and NATO forces took over.<br><br>According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Serbian authorities at one time held around 2,000 ethnic Albanian prisoners, but the number has decreased sharply as a result of partial releases over the past 18 months. Many of those who remain in Serbian jails have been sentenced to long prison terms.<br><br>In a rare interview with a foreign visitor, Mr. Kurti, 25, projected an image of total defiance, insisting that his prison experience had strengthened his determination to fight for a fully independent Kosovo, which remains officially a part of Serbia. While welcoming Mr. Milosevic's overthrow as a ''very positive event,'' he depicted Mr. Kostunica as no better than his predecessor on the question of rights for ethnic Albanians.<br><br>The remaining ethnic Albanian prisoners are scattered in jails throughout Serbia, including in Nis, Sremska Mitrovica, and in Pozarevac, Mr. Milosevic's hometown. Mr. Kurti said he shared a 21 foot by 30 foot (6.3 meter by 9 meter) prison cell with 40 other ethnic Albanian prisoners, most of whom were detained during the war.<br><br>Like other prisoners, Mr. Kurti complained of harsh beatings by his Serbian jailers during the early days of his detention, particularly when he was still being held in Kosovo. But he said that conditions had generally improved since his transfer to Pozarevac. He spends much of his time in jail reading books sent to him by relatives in Kosovo, including works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jean-Paul Sartre, James Joyce and Bertolt Brecht.<br><br>The prison food, said Mr. Kurti, is so poor that he and other Albanians rely almost entirely on food packages from Kosovo. ''Usually, we eat only the bread,'' he said.<br><br>In the interview, he spoke in English, but his words were translated into Serbian at the insistence of two Serbian prison guards who monitored the interview. <br><br>While most of the ethnic Albanians being held in Pozarevac have been sentenced for political crimes, such as subversion and conspiracy, a minority are ordinary criminals, convicted of crimes such as robbery and murder. Mr. Kurti called on the Serbian authorities to release all the Albanian prisoners at once.<br><br>''The ordinary criminals should be sent to serve their sentences in Kosovo,'' he said.<br><br>Initially, Mr. Kostunica linked the release of Kosovo Albanian prisoners to progress on tracking down an estimated 1,000 Serbs who had disappeared in Kosovo since the end of the war. More recently, however, his aides have said the president is considering a general amnesty for Albanian political detainees, to be submitted to the Yugoslav Parliament in a few weeks. Attempts to arrange the early release of a prominent Albanian physician and poet, Flora Brovina, who is being held in the Pozarevac women's prison, have run into a series of snags, according to Kostunica aides.<br><br>The outgoing Yugoslav minister of justice, Petar Jojic, who belongs to the extreme nationalist Radical Party, refused to authorize Mrs. Brovina's release, arguing that she had committed ''very serious crimes.''<br><br>The Justice Ministry of Serbia readily agreed to a reporter's request to visit the Pozarevac jail, but said it was unable to authorize a meeting with Mrs. Brovina on the grounds that her case was still under review by the courts. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xHerald Tribune: Jailed Ethnic Albanians Await Belgrade Decision``x973072316,53597,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Oct 31 (AFP) <br>The defining moment of Yugoslavia's October revolution may have been the storming of Belgrade's parliament four weeks ago, but the political upheaval soon spread to other bastions of Slobodan Milosevic, notably to Serbia's boardrooms and its factory floors.<br><br>The ousting of the former president has turned Yugoslavia's cash-strapped industry upside down, with near-anarchy prevailing in some cases, and dozens of company bosses being sacked by emboldened workers impatient to reap the benefits of headline-grabbing change.<br><br>Since the October 5 uprising, pro-reform supporters of new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica have nominated so-called "crisis committees" in the main state-controlled companies run by former Milosevic placemen.<br><br>Nowhere is the daunting scale of the much-needed reconstruction more apparent than in the boardroom of the GOSA heavy engineering firm, whose new managing director Slavomir Radomirovic was swept to power in a boardroom coup two weeks ago.<br><br>Established with French capital in 1923, and later renamed after a Serb World War II hero, GOSA is a national emblem in more ways than one, a weathervane of Yugoslavia's catastrophic decline over 13 wasted years of Milosevic misrule.<br><br>During that time the firm continued to employ 7,500 people -- more out of solidarity with its workers than because it had orders to fill -- the company's year-on-year balance sheet all too graphically mapping the impact of world trade sanctions.<br><br>Still blinking at the rapid turnaround as he sits in the GOSA boardroom in downtown Belgrade, Radomirovic concedes the bottom line has been rock bottom for as long as he can remember.<br><br>Turnover at the firm's Smederevska Palanka plant, 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of the capital, has shrunk from over 100 million marks (43 million dollars) in 1987, the year Milosevic grabbed power in Belgrade, to only 4.9 million marks (2.1 million dollars) in 1999.<br><br>"The political changes encouraged the workers to speak out, to demand a new team for a new challenge, that of revitalising the company, but this is not just about personalities. It is also a race against time," Radomirovic told AFP.<br><br>"The wheel of history never rolls backwards. We won't get back to 1987, and there will be no more of Milosevic. All we're asking for is the unconditional lifting of international sanctions.<br><br>"Our problems are political conditions, the aftereffects of Kosovo, Dayton (the 1995 accord that ended the Bosnia war), The Hague (seat of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia), not the economic ones, like prices and debts, you always hear people talking about."<br><br>Yet Radomirovic's appeal to laissez-faire principles, and his urging that all Yugoslav companies really need is a level playing field to compete, was punctuated by appeals for the faster delivery of international aid.<br><br>Soon after Kostunica took office on October 7, the European Union announced a 200-million-euro (172-million-dollar) package to get fuel, emergency medicine and food supplies to Serbia before the harsh winter sets in.<br><br>But EU Commissioner for external affairs, Chris Patten, informed Kostunica during a landmark visit to Belgrade last week that the package would be held up until the end of November.<br><br>Budimir Miladinovic, GOSA's new deputy boss, says Yugoslavia's long-term need is for foreign investment, not aid dependency, but he acknowledges that the EU money will at least stop fuel shortages bringing industry to a standstill this winter.<br><br>"I like to put essential problems before everyday ones, but that doesn't mean everyday do not exist. Let the European Union not hold up its aid indefinitely. Because as soon as we can buy Russian gas, production can start up and we can get down to the real job of helping ourselves," he said.<br><br>During talks with Kostunica in Moscow last Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to resume gas supplies to Yugoslavia, cut off due to the 300-million-dollar (360-million-euro) bill run up by the previous regime in Belgrade.<br><br>Miladinovic said GOSA had been hit by the widespread fuel shortages created by the gas crisis, observing that power cuts had halted production at Smederevska Palanka for three hours on each of the two preceding days.<br><br>"It is of course implicit that we need foreign credits to kick start production, in our case this would involve updating equipment, but we have world-class expertise here," he said.<br><br>"Given the right tools, we would be able to reintegrate into world markets in a very short time, if only we were allowed to work freely.<br><br>"We have everything here to make a success in business -- a full production system, competitive prices, regular clients, new offers, big markets -- all we are asking is that sanctions be removed in practice, and not just in words," Miladinovic added.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xShock of Serbia's October revolution brings hope to industry``x973072359,56460,``x``x
``xBy Michael Dobbs<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Wednesday, November 1, 2000; Page A25 <br><br>BELGRADE, Oct. 31 –– Serbian democracy leaders called today for the dismissal of Serbia's chief of secret police following the circulation of a document purporting to link him to the murder last year of a prominent critic of ousted Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br><br>The demands for removal of the police chief, Rade Markovic, threatened to plunge Serb-led Yugoslavia into a new political crisis, upsetting the delicate balance of power that has been established here since Milosevic, defeated at the polls, was overthrown in street protests Oct. 5. Markovic is one of the key holdovers of the old regime and a symbol of the country's unfinished revolution.<br><br><br>Widely regarded as a trusted Milosevic henchman, Markovic remained head of the shadowy State Security organization by publicly transferring his loyalty to Yugoslavia's new rulers. But his position has been seriously undermined by the emergence of evidence suggesting that the secret police may have played a role in the April 1999 slaying of Slavko Curuvija, a newspaper publisher who fell out of favor with the Milosevic family.<br><br><br>The evidence comes in the form of a two-page document that is allegedly a report from secret policemen assigned to trail Curuvija on the day of his killing. The document indicates that the tail was removed on instructions from State Security headquarters 13 minutes before the publisher was gunned down outside his Belgrade apartment by three killers who escaped by car.<br><br><br>If the document is genuine, legal experts said, it likely will lead to demands for a full-scale investigation of the secret police agency's role in a series of assassinations of opponents and associates of the Milosevic family over the last two years. The removal of the police tail on Curuvija just before his murder would strengthen widespread suspicions that State Security either ordered the killing or knew what was about to happen.<br><br><br>It is also possible that the document is a clever forgery circulated by Markovic's opponents in the security forces in an attempt to force his removal. The document was mailed to opposition politicians and human rights activists in Belgrade, along with an anonymous note accusing Markovic and one of his subordinates of responsibility for the murder.<br><br><br>The document recounts Curuvija's movements on the day of his killing, including a visit to a restaurant in central Belgrade and a stroll in the park with his wife, Branka Prpa. According to friends, Prpa is convinced of the accuracy of the document and will announce at a news conference Wednesday that she plans to initiate legal proceedings against Markovic.<br><br><br>The document, a copy of which has been seen by The Washington Post, identifies Curuvija by the code name "Curav," Serbian for "turkey." It says that the surveillance order for the newspaper publisher was signed by the head of the Belgrade branch of State Security, Milan Radonjic, a direct subordinate of Markovic.<br><br><br>Curuvija's killing took place on the Orthodox Easter, during the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. The week before the killing, a commentary had appeared in a pro-government newspaper accusing Curuvija of being a traitor who had urged NATO to bomb Yugoslavia in the conflict over Kosovo. It said that such acts would neither be "forgiven nor forgotten."<br><br><br>Pro-democracy leaders said today that if Markovic is not fired, they will withdraw from the caretaker government that has been appointed to run Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, until parliamentary elections in December. The transitional government includes representatives of Milosevic's Socialist Party and opposition parties supporting his elected successor, Vojislav Kostunica.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post:Serbs Seeking Secret Police Chief's Ouster``x973160841,98277,``x``x
``xBy Anne Penketh <br><br>2 November 2000 <br><br>The future status of Kosovo remains an open question as far as the US administration is concerned, Richard Holbrooke, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said yesterday. <br><br>Reacting to a report in The Independent, quoting a State department official, Mr Holbrooke denied that the United States had changed its policy on Kosovo by deciding that the UN resolution which set up an interim administration for the Serbian province provided for Kosovo independence. <br><br>He said that during his recent trip to the Balkans, "all I was doing was reaffirming something Madeleine Albright and I have long said. We do not believe UN Security Council resolution 1244 precludes independence as one possible option". The UN Security Council adopted in June last year the resolution which recognises the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia". <br><br>Mr Holbrooke said the resolution left the door open on Kosovo's future by providing for an international conference. While Russia and China believed the resolution decided that Kosovo would remain part of Yugoslavia definitively, "the US believes that issue is open". Asked whether Kosovo should become independent, Mr Holbrooke told the BBC World Service that that was "up to the people of the region to decide". ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIndependent:Kosovo status remains open, says Holbrooke ``x973160900,60445,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>PRISTINA, Kosovo, Nov. 1 — Flora Brovina, a prominent doctor, poet and activist for Kosovo Albanians, was freed from a Serbian prison today by a special pardon from the new Yugoslav president. Arriving home to a tumultuous welcome, she dropped to her knees to kiss the ground as she crossed into Kosovo, her home province.<br><br>Her first words were for some 800 Kosovo Albanians still in Serbia prisons. "I cannot feel myself free until all those mothers, fathers and brothers feel the same as I do," she said. "I am tired, and upset, full of emotions. It's not easy to leave your friends behind even though I have promises they are going to be released soon."<br><br>Several hundred people, including children from an emergency medical center she set up during the war in Kosovo last year, were at the provincial border to greet her, singing, cheering and waving banners that read, "Welcome to Kosovo, our mother."<br><br>Dr. Brovina, 50, a pediatrician, was arrested outside her Pristina apartment by the Serbian police on April 20 last year during the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. She was sentenced to 12 years in a Serbian court last year on charges of conspiring to commit terrorism and aiding the rebel force, the Kosovo Liberation Army.<br><br>She was one of 2,000 Albanian detainees transferred from Kosovo when Serbian forces withdrew and NATO-led peacekeeping troops took control of Kosovo after the war ended in June 1999. Over half have been gradually released, and the return of the remaining 818 has become an urgent concern for the United Nations officials running Kosovo, who say the prisoners are an obstacle to the reconciliation of Serbs and Albanians.<br><br>Dr. Brovina's release indicated that President Vojislav Kostunica, who has been in power for less than a month since a popular revolt forced Slobodan Milosevic to step down, regards the issue as one of human rights. A presidential representative, Filip Gobulovic, accompanied Dr. Brovina all the way from the women's prison in Pozarevac — Mr. Milosevic's hometown — to the Kosovo border. "It is a start of the procedure for the release of every political prisoner," Mr. Gobulovic said. "Here is no difference, whatever nationality they are."<br><br>Two prominent Serbian journalists, both considered political prisoners by human rights organizations, have been released from prison since Mr. Kostunica became president, as have two Britons and two Canadians detained on what their countries called trumped-up charges. Most Albanians in prison are also considered political prisoners because many were picked up by the police, often from refugee columns during the NATO bombing, and sentenced on scant evidence of wrongdoing, lawyers say.<br><br>Three Kosovo Albanian men, all arrested during the NATO bombing campaign, were released at the same time as Dr. Brovina, and arrived this evening. They had completed 18-month sentences. Eleven other Albanian men, still awaiting trial, were released on Saturday.<br><br>Bernard Kouchner, head of the United Nations administration in Kosovo, welcomed Dr. Brovina's release and praised Mr. Kostunica for making a "crucial step toward healing the wounds that exist between Serb and Albanian communities."<br><br>In a statement, he urged the release of the rest of the Albanians being held. "That would be justice, that would be a major stride toward a meaningful dialogue and a lasting peace," he said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Kosovo Albanians Cheer the Return of a Doctor Freed in Serbia``x973160943,66460,``x``x
``xThursday November 2, 2000 7:40 am<br><br>UNITED NATIONS (AP) - After years of ostracism, Yugoslavia entered the United Nations with a promise to be a trustworthy new member and a good neighbor in the troubled Balkans - but without a commitment to hand over ousted President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>At a meeting to admit Yugoslavia's new democratic government into the United Nations on Wednesday, the United States and others reminded Belgrade that membership carries obligations that include turning over suspects to the U.N. war crimes tribunal at The Hague. <br><br>``Nobody can bring back the victims of the hostilities in southeast Europe,'' Croatia's U.N. ambassador, Ivan Simonovic, told the assembly. ``However it is our legal, political and moral duty to cooperate in prosecuting war crimes, in resolving the destiny of missing persons and in preventing a repetition of the tragedy.'' <br><br>His comments, which reflected the continued unease of Yugoslavia's former republics with the new leadership in Belgrade, came after the 189-member assembly overwhelming approved Yugoslavia as a new U.N. member state. <br><br>The decision was greeted by a loud round of applause in the assembly hall. It ended eight years of international isolation for Yugoslavia, which had refused to apply for U.N. admission as a new country following the breakup of the Yugoslav socialist republic in the early 1990s. <br><br>As a result, Yugoslavia was barred from speaking or voting in the General Assembly, although it remained a U.N. member and the communist-era flag flew at U.N. headquarters. <br><br>On Wednesday, that flag was lowered for the last time and the flag of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - identical to the old red, white and blue one but without the red star in the middle - was raised in a nighttime ceremony. <br><br>``This indeed is a historic day for the United Nations, and for the Balkans - for all of Europe, indeed for all of the world,'' U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said. ``We welcome Yugoslavia as the United Nations' newest member.'' <br><br>But Holbrooke stressed that following its pledge to respect the U.N. Charter, Yugoslavia must understand that it should cooperate with the tribunal. <br><br>Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica has made it clear he does not intend to extradite Milosevic or other Serbs to the U.N. war crimes tribunal - which many Serbs regard as a tool of the Americans - even though he has admitted that Yugoslav forces did commit crimes during the Serb crackdown on Kosovo last year. <br><br>Milosevic still could face trial at home for crimes allegedly committed during his 13-year rule. On Wednesday, three Serb soldiers went on trial in a Yugoslav court on charges of killing an ethnic Albanian couple for refusing to leave their home during the Kosovo conflict - the sort of prosecution human rights groups are hoping to see more of under Kostunica's government. <br><br>Kostunica's envoy to the United Nations, Goran Svilanovic, promised to respect the ``noble goals and principles'' of the U.N. charter, but made no specific pledge to surrender suspects to the tribunal. <br><br>Svilanovic, who is considered the leading candidate to be Yugoslavia's next foreign minister, offered ``assurances'' that Belgrade was willing to work with governments, in particular its neighbors, to overcome the problems that divide them. <br><br>``To that end, Yugoslavia will be a trustful neighbor and a conscientious member of the international community and will invest its best efforts to promote peace and stability in the region as well as worldwide,'' he said. <br><br>He thanked ambassadors for welcoming Yugoslavia back into the U.N. family and asked that they continue supporting the country as it tries to recover from years of economic mismanagement and isolation under Milosevic. <br><br>At the flag-raising ceremony, Svilanovic urged governments to help provide the children of Yugoslavia and its neighbors with a stable and prosperous future, saying, ``This is what they deserve and this is the promise we have to keep.'' <br><br>As the flag flapped in the chilly night air, he added: ``Thank you very much for this bright moment in the history of our country.'' ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia Admitted to U.N. ``x973160998,63332,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Plainclothes guards apparently loyal to Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) on Thursday turned away building inspectors attempting to investigate reports of an illegal addition at the former president's private home.<br><br>When the city building inspectors turned up at the entrance of Milosevic's residence in the exclusive Dedinje district, guards who identified themselves as Serbian police showed them what they claimed was a construction permit for the addition and told the inspectors to leave.<br><br>The city officials had earlier said that no construction permits had been issued by Belgrade authorities for work at the residential complex. The officials' first attempt to inspect the premises failed Wednesday after they were turned away by guards.<br><br>Although the residence at 33 Tolstojeva Street is officially Milosevic's family address, the former president now resides at his other home on nearby Uzicka Street.<br><br>Since Milosevic conceded election defeat in the Sept. 24 election and stepped down in the face of mass street demonstrations, he and his wife have seldom ventured outside the building on Uzicka Street. There, they are guarded by a paramilitary force of some 100 men and Milosevic's longtime trusted bodyguard. The couple's daughter, Marija, is believed to be staying with them.<br><br>The house on Uzicka Street is part of a complex of renovated villas that used to be attached to Milosevic's official residence, which was destroyed by NATO (news - web sites) bombs last year. Milosevic is believed to receive visitors only rarely, and communicates with close aides and remaining friends by telephone. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGuards Block Milosevic Villa Access ``x973240997,52175,``x``x
``xMilosevic Backers Derided for Quick Shift <br><br>By Michael Dobbs Washington Post Service<br><br>BELGRADE - A few days after the massive street demonstrations that brought down the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, an opposition activist, Zeljka Ilic, showed up at the radiological institute where she works, her face swollen after a police beating.<br>The institute's director, a member of Mr. Milosevic's Socialist Party, greeted her as if she were a returning heroine.<br><br>''Congratulations!'' he said effusively. ''We won!''<br><br>Mrs. Ilic, who had spent 10 year struggling against the Milosevic government, looked at him in amazement. A week before, he had treated her like a dangerous troublemaker and had displayed no sign of political dissent.<br><br>''What do you mean 'We won?''' she asked indignantly. ''In the past, you refused to have anything to do with me.''<br><br>''I have always been a sympathizer of the opposition,'' the director replied. ''Only I could not show it.''<br><br>The phenomenon of political turncoats is so widespread in Yugoslavia - a country that has gone through a succession of bewildering ideological changes in the last 15 years, from communism to nationalism, and now, tentatively, to democracy - that there is a special phrase for them in the Serbian language. Such people as the director are known as ''tumbling pigeons,'' after a breed of pigeon that performs dazzling flips and somersaults in flight.<br><br>Tumbling pigeons can be found everywhere these days in the wake of the revolutionary upheavals that put an end to the 13-year Milosevic era: in politics, in the media, in business and in the security services. <br><br>After years of loyal service to Mr. Milosevic, newspaper editors, hospital directors, police generals and businessmen have spent the past weeks desperately trying to ingratiate themselves with Yugoslavia's new leaders.<br><br>''It's disgusting,'' said Milan Paunovic, curator of the Belgrade Museum of Natural Sciences, who feels the comparison with the animal world is grossly unfair to the pigeons. <br><br>''The pigeons can't help themselves. They are bred for this kind of behavior, over many generations. Humans, on the other hand, are fickle. They know exactly what they are doing.''<br><br>Political turncoats are hardly unique to Yugoslavia. The same phenomenon occurred on a large scale a decade ago in East European nations after the collapse of communism. In many cases, the Communists-turned-democrats of Eastern Europe proved more effective at administration than people with impeccable dissident credentials, and were able to work their way back to responsible positions after a brief period of disgrace.<br><br>The beginnings of the same process are already evident here.<br><br>Yugoslavia's most successful private businessman, Bogoljub Karic, is a fine example of the human ''tumbling pigeon.'' Over the last decade, he has accomplished a series of spectacular political somersaults, alternately befriending the Milosevic family, using his political connections to promote his business interests and distancing himself from the regime when the going got tough.<br><br>A former accordion player from Kosovo, Mr. Karic, 46, runs a multimillion-dollar business empire with assets stretching from Uzbekistan to Canada. In Serbia, he owns the largest private bank, the leading mobile telephone company and a popular Belgrade television station. Putting together such a vast empire would have been impossible without ties to people in power, as he himself concedes.<br><br>''I had to cooperate with the regime to a certain extent,'' said Mr. Karic, who remains on a list of about 400 prominent Yugoslav politicians and businessmen barred from traveling to the United States or to Western Europe. ''Otherwise, I would have been expelled from the country and lost everything.''<br><br>Although Mr. Karic denies that he was ever close to Mr. Milosevic, he acknowledges that he was at one time on friendly terms with his politically influential wife, Mirjana Markovic, whom he depicts as a kindred spirit in the battle against Serbian nationalism. Mr. Karic financed publication of Ms. Markovic's memoirs in a half-dozen countries, including Russia, Canada and Ukraine.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Herald Tribune:Like 'Tumbling Pigeons, 'Some Serbs Switch Sides``x973241048,8303,``x``x
``xBy Michael Dobbs<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Friday, November 3, 2000; Page A24 <br><br>BELGRADE, Nov. 2 –– Yugoslavia's new president, Vojislav Kostunica, has met with the president of Russia, the foreign minister of France, the former secretary general of NATO, and a host of other top foreign dignitaries. But he draws the line at a meeting with President Clinton or Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. <br><br><br>"It might be too early," Kostunica said in an interview today, four weeks after ousting Slobodan Milosevic in Eastern Europe's last great anti-communist revolution. "One should heal the wounds, not hurt them."<br><br><br>According to well-placed Yugoslav sources, Clinton and Albright have sent separate informal feelers to Kostunica, suggesting that they would like to visit.<br><br><br>Albright has personal reasons for wanting to visit Yugoslavia. The daughter of a Czechoslovak diplomat, she lived in the capital, Belgrade, both before and after World War II. According to Yugoslav sources, Albright sent a friendly handwritten letter to Kostunica last month in which she mentioned her long experience with Serbs, a message greeted with some derision here.<br><br><br>Speaking on condition of anonymity, a State Department official said: "The two sides have agreed to have normal relations at all levels with specific meetings arranged at an appropriate time as part of the process of reestablishing ties. Albright sent a note to that effect, and also expressed congratulations and good wishes."<br><br><br>While Kostunica appeared to rule out an early Yugoslav-U.S. summit, he made clear he welcomed the dramatic improvement in relations with Western countries since the collapse of the Milosevic government. Formal diplomatic ties between Yugoslavia and leading NATO countries, including the United States, could be reestablished as early as next week, according to Western diplomats.<br><br><br>Milosevic severed relations with the United States and other Western countries at the outset of last year's NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, in which hundreds of civilians died in "collateral damage."<br><br><br>One Yugoslav official described both Albright and Clinton as symbols of NATO aggression, and therefore personae non gratae.<br><br><br>Kostunica said he thought a visit by the president or secretary of state should wait for the change of administration in January. He added, however, that events can move "very quickly" in the Balkans.<br><br><br>In general, conditions in Yugoslavia "have been changing for the better, and it is an impressive change," said Kostunica, who was an outspoken critic of the NATO air offensive, which battered Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic. The campaign was aimed at forcing Milosevic to accept a U.S.-brokered peace settlement in the Serbian province of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians are the majority population.<br><br><br>Kostunica, who is a Serb, said he was particularly encouraged by the crumbling of what he depicted as a psychological wall around Serbia. The Western news media engaged in "the satanization of Serbs" during the Milosevic period, he said.<br><br><br>Kostunica and his aides have made clear over the past few weeks that they place a higher priority on relations with European nations than with the United States. They resent the fact that the so-called "outer wall" of sanctions--limiting Western aid and investment in Serbia--remains technically in place.<br><br><br>Last month, Congress approved a $100 million aid package for Yugoslavia, with the proviso that the assistance be cut off after March 2001 if Belgrade failed to cooperate with an international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Among other things, the tribunal has insisted that Yugoslavia extradite a dozen Serbian leaders, including Milosevic, whom it indicted last year.<br><br><br>Kostunica said he was ready for some form of cooperation with the tribunal, which he described as "a fact of life." Such cooperation, Yugoslav officials said, could include allowing the tribunal to open an office in Belgrade and gather evidence. The Yugoslav constitution bars extradition of Yugoslav citizens to foreign courts.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post:Kostunica Hesitant On Talks With U.S.``x973241107,69997,``x``x
``xBy Alex Todorovic in Belgrade <br><br>SERBIA'S democratic movement and human rights groups yesterday demanded the immediate resignation of Rade Markovic, the secret police chief, after a leaked document implicated the security agency in last year's assassination of a dissident journalist.<br>Slavko Curuvija was murdered in April last year shortly after the start of the Nato bombing campaign. At one time he had been friendly with the former first family, Slobodan Milosevic and his wife, Mira Markovic, but later became one of their fiercest critics.<br><br>The state security document leaked to the Belgrade press describes the last hours of Curuvija's life, based on surveillance monitoring by security agents. It appears to indicate that an order was given to suspend the surveillance shortly before he was killed.<br><br>"At 16:27 the subject emerges from the restaurant with his wife and further control is stopped by agreement with the department chief . . . The subject did not display obvious signs of caution," the document reads.<br><br>Curuvija was shot dead by three assassins 40 minutes later in front of his wife, Branka Prpa. Many in the opposition suspected that state security was involved, but the document is the first hard evidence pointing to the DB, as the agency is known. <br><br>The disclosure has intensified the pressure on Mr Markovic, the DB chief since 1998, to step down. High-level discussions on his fate were under way in the transitional government last night. Curuvija published a glossy magazine and a newspaper, both of which were considered among the best independent journals in Yugoslavia.<br><br>His stinging editorials reportedly enraged the Milosevic family. Curuvija pointed to the string of high-profile Belgrade murders that reached a peak during Mr Markovic's tenure at state security. Mr Markovic is friends with the Milosevic family and personally escorted Milosevic's son, Marko, to a civilian plane bound for Moscow the day after the Yugoslav revolution last month.<br><br>Serbia's democratic opposition is refusing to participate in Serbia's newly constituted transition government until Mr Markovic resigns. Zoran Djindjic, president of the Democratic Party, said: "We don't care how he goes, as long as he goes. <br><br>"We lived in a country where the state and mafia were linked and where there were political assassinations. Even if state security wasn't behind them, Mr Markovic's very presence makes people nervous."<br><br>In further moves to confront the abuses of the Milosevic regime, President Vojislav Kostunica of Yugoslavia began releasing Albanian political prisoners from Serbian jails on Tuesday. Among the first to be freed was Flora Brovina, a paediatrician and poet who was arrested in Kosovo by Serb police during Nato's bombing campaign and sentenced to 12 years for terrorism.<br><br>She was greeted by hundreds of Kosovars on her return to Kosovo and immediately highlighted the plight of more than 800 Albanian prisoners still in Serbian jails. Three other Albanian men were released with Dr Brovina and 11 more are to be freed tomorrow.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Telegraph:Serb police chief linked to murder``x973241144,48769,``x``x
``xA row over the head of Serbia's secret service is threatening to paralyse the country's new interim government. <br>The refusal of Rade Markovic, a staunch ally of former President Slobodan Milosevic, to resign is causing a split in President Vojislav Kostunica's interim cabinet. <br> <br>Key members of the government, made up of Milosevic's Socialist Party, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) which backs President Kostunica, and the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), failed to reach agreement on Mr Markovic's future at an emergency meeting on Thursday night. <br><br>There have been repeated demands of Mr Markovic's resignation following allegations from human rights groups, that he was involved in a series of politically-related murders. <br><br>Political crisis <br><br>President Kostunica attended the crisis meeting as did Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, who is expecting to lead the inter-party government until next month's elections.<br> <br><br>The pro-Milosevic Socialists have rejected calls for Mr Markovic's resignation. <br><br>But DOS and SPO ministers insist that they will not participate in the work of the government until Mr Markovic resigns. <br><br>"Milosevic's Socialist Party does not consider our demand being justified," says Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Spasoje Krunic. "We shall walk out of a government that does not function." <br><br>Negotiations continue <br><br>Further meetings are planned for Friday to try to end the deadlock. <br><br>Nebojsa Covic, the DOS deputy prime minister, said that Mr Kostunica had instructed the government to "continue with talks and find solutions so the work of the cabinet can be unblocked." <br><br>Mr Markovic, who has been under intense pressure to resign following Mr Milosevic's departure last month, has denied that his secret service department was involved in politically motivated crimes in Serbia. <br><br><br>But the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre (HLC) says it has documentary evidence that Mr Markovic was behind the killing last year of newspaper editor Slavko Curuvija, a harsh critic of former President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Hit men <br><br>The HLC claims that Mr Curuvija was under surveillance on the orders of Mr Markovic, but that the undercover agents were withdrawn a few minutes before Mr Curuvija was gunned down. <br><br>"For years we have had the feeling that some dark things are happening within the secret service," says Natasa Kandic, the head of HLC. "This is the start of revealing those secrets." <br><br>His newspaper the Dnevni Telegraf was banned in 1998 for "spreading fear, panic and defeatism" about possible Nato air strikes on Yugoslavia. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbia deadlocked over spy chief fate``x973331877,38305,``x``x
``xMilo Djukanovic: Favours alliance of sovereign states<br><br>The Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro is pressing ahead with a planned referendum on loosening ties with Serbia, despite the democratic changes in Belgrade. <br><br>I think it would be a great error to erect barriers between us<br> <br>Montenegro's pro-Western government agreed to hold the referendum by the end of next June. <br><br>But it is still unclear whether voters will be asked about full independence, or a looser confederation with Serbia. <br><br>That depends on the outcome of talks - expected to start early next year - over Montenegro's relations with Serbia. <br><br>Montenegro and Serbia are the last partners in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, after Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina broke away. <br><br>Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said on Thursday that he favoured an alliance of separate sovereign states with certain common aspects. <br><br>'No rush' <br><br>He told Serbian TV: "Our proposal is for an alliance between Montenegro and Serbia covering three key functions: a common army, a common foreign policy and a common currency." <br><br>However there was no rush, the Montenegrin president said, to find a suitable framework for redefining ties between the two countries. <br><br><br>Vojislav Kostunica has backed democratic change for Montenegro<br> <br>"It is in Serbia's and Montenegro's interest to find quality solutions which are acceptable both to our citizens and to the international community," he said. <br><br>Mr Djukanovic said that the proposal would need revisiting after the Serbian general election, expected to be on 23 December. <br><br>"Even if we were two independent states, I think it would be a great error to erect barriers between us," he said. <br><br>Although he welcomed Yugoslavia's re-entry into the United Nations, Mr Djukanovic signalled that he would seek international recognition of Montenegro's sovereignty. <br><br>"My view is that our states could have two seats at the United Nations if the people of Serbia and Montenegro opt for this solution," he said. <br><br>New era <br><br>Relations between the two partners came under massive strain earlier this year when then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic pushed through constitutional changes that diminished Montenegro's standing in the federation. <br><br>But Vojislav Kostunica, who defeated Mr Milosevic in 24 September presidential elections, has insisted that things have now changed. <br><br>He says that, with the new situation in Serbia, "the conditions will be met for the democratic authorities" in the two republics to "make a democratic decision over the future destiny of their peoples". ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBBC News: Poll threatens Yugoslav unity``x973331938,62447,``x``x
``xPresident Kostunica: Deal with Montenegro set to boost hold on power <br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Backers of Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica have signed a deal to create a new federal coalition government, promising economic reforms and international cooperation. <br><br>The Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) signed the pact on Friday cementing a new federal administration with two parties from Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic in the Yugoslav federation. <br><br>Within Serbia, however, the government of the dominant republic remained deadlocked after former President Slobodan Milosevic's secret service chief refused to heed calls for his resignation, a Cabinet member said. <br> <br>The country's new pro-democracy leadership insists that the resignation of Rade Markovic, one of Milosevic's top associates and head of the notorious secret service, is a key condition for Serbia's transition to democracy. <br><br>"Markovic's dismissal is necessary so that we can turn to important issues on the Cabinet's agenda," Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Spasoje Krunic told reporters. <br><br>"Milosevic's Socialist Party does not consider our demand being justified," he said. "We shall walk out of a government that does not function." <br><br>The deadlock meant that while the various "ministries were functioning and doing their jobs, the Serbian Cabinet was not meeting nor making any decisions," Krunic added on Friday. <br><br>Energy crisis spreads<br>Power cuts also spread across Serbia on Friday sparking the worst energy crisis in years and signalling the enormous task Yugoslavia's new leaders face in modernising the country. <br><br>Nearly 40 percent of the republic was left without electricity as authorities stepped up power rationing. <br><br>"We apologise to the citizens because of the restrictions," said Momcilo Cebalovic of Serbia's state power company, EPS. <br><br>"We are doing all we can, both technically and financially, to improve the situation." <br><br>Serbia's power system is in an alarming state because of years of poor maintenance under Milosevic and an overall economic decline. <br><br> <br>Last year's NATO bombings crippled Serbia's power system <br>The power grid was further damaged in last year's NATO bombing and is believed to be in need of a major overhaul. EPS officials say only 30 percent of necessary regular repairs have been made this year. <br><br>Severe drought in the Balkans over the past several months has added to the hardship because Serbia partly relies on hydroelectricity to supply power. <br><br>Cebalovic said that the increased power restrictions were required to prevent the system from breaking down altogether, the Beta news agency reported. <br><br>He warned that levels in the Danube and the Sava rivers were so low that drawing water from them might be halted. <br><br>Residential areas were primarily affected by the selective blackouts, with hospitals and other crucial users not affected, officials said. <br><br>According to EPS officials, Serbia is short of about 20 million kilowatts of electricity daily. <br><br>Deal aimed at rebuilding<br>Reformers hope securing the deal with Montenegro will be an important sign that they are beginning the rebuilding process ahead of Serba's elections in December. <br><br>Parliament is due to appoint the new government on Saturday. <br><br>The coalition pact pledges Yugoslavia will enter all international political and financial institutions after a decade of isolation under Milosevic, who was shunned by the West for his role in four Balkan wars in the 1990s. <br><br>"We are pleased with the contents of the coalition contract and especially with that part dealing with the economy," said Deputy Prime Minister-designate Miroljub Labus after signing the deal in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica. <br> <br>Zoran Zizic of the Socialist People's Party (left) becomes Prime Minister under the deal organised by Kostunica's (right) supporters <br>Labus, an economist and the top DOS representative in the government, will play a key role in co-coordinating international financial relations as the new rulers try to revive an economy ruined by corruption and state mismanagement. <br><br>Montenegro's Socialist People's Party, previously in coalition with Milosevic's Socialists at the federal level, is the DOS's main coalition partner. It provides the new prime minister, Zoran Zizic. <br><br>A much smaller Montenegrin party, the Serb People's Party, is the other member of the coalition. <br><br>The federal administration has relatively little power in comparison with the governments of the two republics but its formation will allow the reformers to strike international agreements and restore full diplomatic ties with the West. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCNN: Deal seals new Yugoslav government``x973332004,2780,``x``x
``xThe wheels of justice begin to turn in Belgrade, closing in on the former dictator's family and atrocities by his secret services <br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br>4 November 2000 <br><br>Slobodan Milosevic, ousted a month ago as Yugoslav president, still lives behind closed doors in one of his residences in the exclusive Dedinje neighbourhood of Belgrade. But not for long. In a small way, the wheels of justice in Belgrade are beginning to turn. <br><br>Despite a flurry of rumours at the time of the popular uprising that swept his regime from power on 5 October, there is no evidence that Mr Milosevic has left the premises on Uzicka Street since that day. <br><br>Holed up with him are his wife, Mira Markovic, and their 36-year-old daughter, Marija, with his loyal bodyguard, the police general Senta Milenkovic, and a special élite guard unit of the Yugoslav army. <br><br>"Milosevic knows that only while he is in there will the guard protect him," says Zoran Djindjic, a leader of the victorious Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition. <br><br>When Mr Milosevic resigned, he talked of returning as leader of the the Socialist Party. But the chances of that look slim. Several requests for criminal investigation against him and his family have been submitted to the public prosecutor. Mr Djindjic says: "We only have to wait until the judiciary system starts functioning." <br><br>One inquiry deals with Mr Milosevic's attempt to tamper with the election results, to cover the victory by Vojislav Kostunica. If found guilty, he faces up to three years in prison. Another inquiry may begin after a two-part account of backstage events on the day of the revolution appeared in the Belgrade weekly Nedeljni Telegraf. <br><br>Quoting military sources, the paper said Mr Milosevic presented a list of 50 people to his military top brass on 5 October, allegedly demanding the execution of six key DOS leaders. The author of the story has been questioned by an investigating judge, who is demanding that Mr Milosevic submits to the same procedure. <br><br>And this week city planners visited a major construction site in Dedinje, where the Milosevic family lived until July 1997. The site belongs to Mr Milosevic and it does appear that a huge house is being built there illegally. <br><br>But many Serbs think solid evidence will surface on much more serious crimes committed by Mr Milosevic and his family. They say they want him to be tried for thoroughly ruining their lives and their country for the past decade. The responsibility for wars in former Yugoslavia and war crimes can be established later, they say. <br><br>That view is shared by President Kostunica, who insists Mr Milosevic should be tried in Belgrade for crimes against his own nation before facing the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague. Only Mr Milosevic's 28-year-old son Marko can rest easy, for a time. The unscrupulous "businessman" who became rich through smuggling fled to Moscow on 7 October with his wife and baby son. <br><br>The forged Yugoslav passport he used, with the name "Marko Jovanovic", means two years in jail. Marko tried to enter China later, but was forced to return to Moscow because of visa irregularities. <br><br>Now he lives in the Yugoslav embassy in Moscow where his uncle, Milosevic's brother Borislav, still holds the title of Belgrade's ambassador. <br><br>Marko's kitsch Madonna discotheque, and several firms he ran in his parents' hometown of Pozarevac, were ransacked by an angry mob in October. Local authorities are still trying to establish if Marko had any ownership documents for all the property in Pozarevac and also where he got the funds to build his empire. <br><br>The chance of finding answers is small: the smuggling of cigarettes, gasoline and narcotics, widely accepted as the basis for Marko's fortune, leaves few traces. <br><br>His sister, Marija, has suffered a nervous breakdown. She is trying to sell her TV station, Kosava. It was founded years ago with funds siphoned from several Serb firms connected to her parents. The companies include a bank, Beogradska Banka, run by Borka Vucic, and Jugopetrol, a fuel-supply business. <br><br>Two days before the revolution, Marija waved a gun around in the Kosava studio in an effort to prevent the staff from taking the station off the air. Her threats were in vain. <br><br>Now it is unclear who lives at Marija's luxurious three-floor house in Dedinje that she shared with her chubby, bald lover, Dragan Hadzi Antic, who headed the largest Serbian newspaper company, the pro-regime Politika. <br><br>On the day of the revolution, he fled the Politika headquarters through a back door, and is now hiding in a monastery in south-western Serbia. <br><br>Mira Markovic could be in trouble too. She is rumoured to have ordered the assassination of at least one of her political adversaries, the journalist Slavko Curuvija, gunned down in Belgrade last year. After the leak of surveillance reports, it is clear the secret police were involved in his murder. <br><br>Mrs Markovic is also believed to be involved in the murky business transactions of JUL, the neo-Marxist party that she leads. The party has been heavily involved in extortion from the few remaining successful businesses in Serbia. <br><br>When she created the party in 1994, Mrs Markovic allegedly asked her associates what was the most successful organisation in the world. The Mafia, they said. "That's how we'll work," she replied. The results were soon visible all over Serbia. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIndependent News: Law knocks at the gate of Milosevic's bolt-hole ``x973332065,11743,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>6 November 2000 <br><br>For the first time in 55 years, Yugoslavia has a non-communist dominated government, strengthening the reformist administration of President Vojislav Kostunica. <br><br>The formation on Saturday night of the new 16-member cabinet cemented the electoral victory of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) political coalition, whose sympathisers took to the streets last month to force Slobodan Milosevic to admit his defeat in the country's presidential elections. <br><br>DOS now holds nine of the 16 portfolios in the new cabinet, including the key ministries of economics, foreign affairs and the interior. The seven other portfolios, including that of prime minister, are held by the Montenegrin Socialist People's Party (SNP), once a staunch Milosevic ally. The new Yugoslav Prime Minister is Zoran Zizic, 47, who promised to keep following the reformist programme of DOS, "in whom the people put their trust" in the September elections. <br><br>The post of Deputy Prime Minister went to Miroljub Labus, 53, an economist who has worked in the United States. He belongs to the think-tank responsible for drawing up the DOS economic programme. The new Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic, 37, is a long-time human rights activist, a lawyer by education. He attended last week's ceremony in New York where federal Yugoslavia was readmitted to the United Nations. <br><br>Mr Svilanovic told reporters that he expected relations with four big Western powers – the United States, France, Britain and Germany – to be re-established in coming days. The Milosevic government cut all diplomatic ties at the start of the Nato air campaign in March 1999. <br><br>Mr Svilanovic backed the idea of opening a Belgrade office of International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY), based in The Hague, which has indicted Mr Milosevic and four of his top aides for war crimes in Kosovo. <br><br>He said: "It is correct that [President] Kostunica said that Milosevic's extradition to The Hague was not a priority, but he also said that the ICTY office will soon be opened in Belgrade and that it would be able to investigate whatever it needs to." One of the new government's most important tasks is to have good relations with neighbouring ex-Yugoslav republics, Mr Svilanovic added. <br><br>Zoran Zivkovic, 40, mayor of Serbia's third-largest town Nis, became Interior Minister. He promised to put Mr Milosevic behind bars and fight organised crime, adding: "We'll open all the secret police files too." <br><br>The programme of the new federal government is essentially the opposite of the Milosevic administration. It calls for swift re-establishment of relations with the major international institutions and pro-market reforms. One of its tasks is to bring Yugoslav legislation into line with EU legislation, in the hope that Yugoslavia will eventually qualify to join the EU. <br><br>The federal administration has relatively little power but it does have a leading role in fostering international relations. <br><br>The parliamentary session that appointed the new government had to be held in Serbia's parliament building. The federal parliament was damaged during the uprising which toppled the Milosevic regime. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIndependent: Reformists cement hold on Yugoslavian cabinet ``x973511452,81127,``x``x
``xBy Misha Savic <br><br>6 November 2000 <br><br>Yugoslavia could patch up diplomatic relations with the United States and major European powers in a week or two and start cooperating with the U.N. War Crimes tribunal, the country's new foreign minister said Sunday. <br><br>"It's only normal that we have close cooperation with the United States, with Russia," Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic told Beta news agency, one day after the new government was inaugurated. <br><br>Svilanovic, an ally of Yugoslavia's new President Vojislav Kostunica, also said relations could be restored within the next couple of weeks with countries who severed ties last year during NATO's air campaign, including the United States, Germany and Great Britain. <br><br>Following the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic, Kostunica has been struggling to end a decade of Yugoslavia's international isolation. <br><br>Svilanovic became the foreign minister in a parliamentary vote late Saturday when the country's first non–communist government in more than half a century, was sworn in. Kostunica's Serbia–based, 18–party DOS alliance and the Montenegro–based Socialist People's party make up the new Cabinet. <br><br>Restoring relations with Western countries, as well as speeding up privatisation and carrying out reforms by European Union standards, are also goals of the country's new Prime Minister Zoran Zizic. He also pledged to respect international obligations, such as peace deals for Bosnia and Kosovo, signed by Milosevic. <br><br>Milosevic and three of his associates were indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal at The Hague for alleged atrocities committed in Kosovo. <br><br>While both Kostunica and Zizic have expressed skepticism about the court's impartiality and ruled out immediate extraditions of the suspects, Svilanovic said the country must take responsibility for war crimes. <br><br>"We cannot and must not avoid to face the consequences of the war," he said. "We need to do everything to reveal to our public everything that was done, whether in the name of alleged Serb national interest or against Serbs." <br><br>He suggested the tribunal could reopen an office in Belgrade to help war crimes investigators in gathering evidence, as well as the formation of a truth commission for Kosovo, similar to the one in South Africa. <br><br>In addition he said Yugoslav embassies will get new personnel, including ambassadors in key places, such as the U.N. headquarters in New York and Moscow, where Milosevic's brother Borislav has held the post. <br><br>Shortly after its inauguration late Saturday, the Cabinet held its first meeting in the early hours Sunday. Vice prime minister Miroljub Labus said ministers were busy "formulating economic policy and defining budgets for the next year." <br><br>Svilanovic also announced efforts toward full diplomatic relations with the former Yugoslav republics, especially with Slovenia and Bosnia–Herzegovina, that seceded from the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. <br><br>The new Cabinet also said it would try "harmonise" relations internally, between Serbia and Montenegro, Yugoslavia's two remaining republics which each have their own government. <br><br>Montenegro's government is controlled by pro–independence parties which boycotted the recent federal elections, demanding constitutional changes to make the federation a loose union of virtually sovereign Serbia and Montenegro. <br><br>The ruling parties in Montenegro severed most ties with the central government in Belgrade by 1998, protesting against Milosevic's autocratic rule. They have now praised Kostunica's democratic credentials, but reiterated Sunday that they intend to ignore decisions made by the federal government. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIndependent: Yugoslavia may allow war crimes tribunal to move into Belgrade ``x973511481,61617,``x``x
``xBy DAVID HOLLEY, Times Staff Writer<br><br>Sunday, November 5, 2000 <br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia--After eight hours of sometimes bitter wrangling, the Yugoslav parliament approved a new federal government Saturday in a key step toward ending this country's international isolation and consolidating democratic change under newly elected President Vojislav Kostunica. <br> New Prime Minister Zoran Zizic, who previously supported ousted President Slobodan Milosevic, told a joint session of parliament that the "return of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to the international community [while] keeping national and state dignity" will be the government's first priority. <br> Its other top goals, Zizic said, will be to quickly secure foreign economic and humanitarian aid; to improve relations between Serbia and Montenegro, the two republics that make up Yugoslavia; and to implement social, economic and legal reforms that will make Yugoslavia's formerly Communist system much more like those of West European countries. <br> The new government was formed by an unwieldy coalition of former rivals. It combines the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, an 18-party group that brought Kostunica to power, and two Montenegrin parties that had supported Milosevic: the Socialist People's Party and the Serbian National Party. <br> The two sides see a common interest in promoting orderly, constitutional change rather than a revolutionary overthrow of existing institutions, and both want quick acceptance of Yugoslavia back into the international community. <br> Kostunica's alliance received nine of the 16 ministerial posts. It named new Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic and also got the top spots in the police, justice, traffic, health, agriculture, telecommunications, sports and ethnic minorities ministries. New Defense Minister Slobodan Krapovic and six other ministers were chosen from the Socialist People's Party. <br> The coalition was needed to form a federal government because pro-independence parties that support Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, a Milosevic rival, boycotted the Sept. 24 national presidential and parliamentary elections. That left all of the republic's parliamentary seats controlled by pro-Milosevic forces. <br> "We must use all institutions like this parliament to try to ensure peaceful transition, not to declare revolution and cancel these institutions," Democratic Party President Zoran Djindjic, a key leader in the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, said in an interview. <br> "We think we are strong enough to make this compromise, although it is very, very painful for us to be in government with former supporters--very, very enthusiastic supporters--of Milosevic," Djindjic said. "But we think the goal to bring this country back to Europe again is important enough to make this compromise." <br> Yugoslavia hopes to rejoin the International Monetary Fund in December, Djindjic added. <br> "This government needs to do many things rather quickly," said Zarko Korac, president of the Social Democratic Union, a part of the pro-Kostunica alliance. "There are huge electrical power cuts in Serbia. This is becoming a serious human and political problem. We have no money. The country's bankrupt, basically. The government has to fight on many fronts." <br> But Vojislav Seselj, leader of the ultranationalist Radical Party, blasted the new coalition as an unholy marriage of convenience. <br> "This is not the rule of continuity but the rule of compromise--between you from the Socialist People's Party who represent continuity, crime and corruption and the Democratic Opposition of Serbia as representatives of discontinuity and putsch," he declared. <br> Saturday's session, which lasted far longer than scheduled because of the fierce debate engendered mainly by the Radicals, was held in Serbia's parliament building because the federal parliament was looted and set ablaze during the Oct. 5 mass uprising that forced Milosevic to recognize Kostunica's electoral victory. <br> In his speech, Zizic, 49, who is also a vice president of the Socialist People's Party, repeatedly criticized "aggression" against Yugoslavia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a reference to NATO's 78-day bombing campaign last year to force Milosevic to end his repression of ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo. But Zizic still called for ties with NATO members. <br> "We will gradually move in the direction of restoring diplomatic relations with those European countries with which relations were interrupted by the NATO aggression on our country," he said. Yugoslavia, which rejoined the United Nations last week, is expected to restore diplomatic ties with the United States and some European countries within the next few weeks. <br> Zizic accused international peacekeeping forces and the U.N. administration in Kosovo of "support [for] the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Montenegrins and all non-Albanians conducted by the allegedly transformed Kosovo Liberation Army." <br> A majority of the estimated 200,000 Serbs who lived in Kosovo before the NATO bombing fled after a peacekeeping force entered last year, many of them together with the withdrawing Yugoslav army but others in subsequent weeks after a wave of revenge attacks on Serbs by ethnic Albanians. <br> Zizic said that cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, which has indicted Milosevic for war crimes, "is not a priority of the federal government to which it would subordinate any other tasks." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLA Times: Yugoslavia Forms New Government in Bid to Rejoin Global Community ``x973511514,48586,``x``x
``xSpecial report: Serbia <br><br>Srdjan Ilic in Sremska Mitrovica <br>Tuesday November 7, 2000 <br><br>Serb inmates angry about poor living conditions and a possible amnesty that would apply only to jailed ethnic Albanians held talks with justice ministry officials yesterday, after a riot that forced guards to pull back to the outer perimeters of their prison. <br>The riot, in the prison at Sremska Mitrovice, 50 miles northwest of Belgrade, began late on Sunday at one of the jail's three buildings. It spread early yesterday to the second and third buildings, where about 150 Kosovo Albanian prisoners are held. <br><br>The prison houses 1,300 inmates, including 50 foreigners and six prisoners on death row. <br><br>The Beta news agency reported that the prisoners were demanding that they be allowed to air their demands on state-run Serbian television. <br><br>The amnesty law, suggested by President Vojislav Kostunica, is still at the discussion stage. It would affect political prisoners, most of them Kosovo Albanians. More than 600 ethnic Albanians, arrested under former president Slobodan Milosevic, remain in detention on charges or convictions related to the fight for Kosovo's independence. <br><br>Dragan Subasic, one of three senior Serbian justice ministry officials negotiating with inmates, told the state Tanjug news agency yesterday that the "rebellion was under control," and that "more serious consequences were avoided". <br><br>He also said that the inmates were demanding that the new amnesty law be broadened to include prisoners who have committed some non-political crimes. <br><br>Unconfirmed reports said that the prisoners had set fire to the printing press and the carpentry workshop, as well as a cabinet containing inmate records. A prison security officer, Milorad Peric, denied earlier reports that that three or four inmates were injured in the riots. <br><br>Smoke was still seen rising from within the prison compound late yesterday as more riot police troops were deployed around the prison compound. <br><br>Some of the prisoners appeared to be brandishing iron bars as they stood near windows or on roofs. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian:Prison rebels Amnesty plan prompts riots at Serb jail ``x973590079,97014,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>7 November 2000 <br><br>Yugoslavia's new government moved yesterday to deepen diplomatic cooperation with the West, indicating that an office of The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) will open in Belgrade shortly. <br><br>"The date hasn't been set yet for the opening of an ICTY office, but it will happen soon," the Yugoslav Foreign Minister, Goran Svilanovic, said yesterday. "We should not and we cannot avoid facing either the results of the Balkan wars in the 1990s, or the accompanying responsibility for war crimes." <br><br>Mr Svilanovic also outlined plans for a "truth commission" in Yugoslavia to hear evidence in an effort to fully establish the deeds of the former regime. <br><br>The decision breaks one of the last taboos maintained by the ousted president Slobodan Milosevic: that there were no crimes against non-Serbs in the wars that broke up the former Yugoslavia. Milosevic propaganda presented Serbs as the sole victims of Croat, Muslim or Albanian aggression. <br><br>In effect the decision means that both ICTY and local experts will gather evidence on war crimes with the full cooperation of Belgrade. The war crimes tribunal has indicted Mr Milosevic and four of his top aides for atrocities committed in Kosovo. <br><br>Mr Svilanovic, a long-time human rights activist, belongs to the Civil Alliance, the legal brains of Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS). The Alliance has been the most prominent anti-war party in Serbia since 1991: its leaders were constantly accused by the former regime as "disregarding Serbs as a nation" or being "anti-Serb". <br><br>Along with the new Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, Mr Svilanovic was among the rare opposition leaders who avoided contact with the Milosevic administration. He was sacked in 1998 from Belgrade's law school after he opposed a repressive university law imposed by Mr Milosevic's allies. <br><br>In a recent interview, Mr Kostunica described cooperation with ICTY as "unavoidable", saying it followed logically from the Dayton peace accords on Bosnia signed by Mr Milosevic. But he made it clear that Mr Milosevic's extradition to The Hague is not a priority yet <br><br>For the time being, the new Yugoslav administration is busy with the task of international reintegration. After being re-admitted to the UN last week, Yugoslavia is also set to rejoin the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). President Kostunica reapplied to the OSCE yesterday, eight years after Yugoslavia was expelled from the organisation. <br><br>Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero Waldner, whose country is chairing the OSCE at the moment, visited Belgrade yesterday and said the move represented "a very important day for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia". <br><br>For the first time in years, the OSCE will be allowed to monitor elections in Yugoslavia, Ms Ferrero Waldner said. Serbia is to have early parliamentary elections on 23 December. <br><br>Meanwhile, Mr Milosevic is also facing legal problems on much lesser scale: illegal reconstruction at his house. The DOS said yesterday that Mr Milosevic contacted through his lawyer a Belgrade district authority which has started legal proceedings against him for illegal work on his house in Belgrade's Dedinje district. <br><br>Plainclothes guards apparently loyal to the former Yugoslav president last Thursday turned away building inspectors attempting to investigate. <br><br>* Serbian inmates angry over alleged torture by prison guards and a possible amnesty for jailed ethnic Albanians only, rioted yesterday, forcing guards to retreat and call in policereinforcements. The riot, in one of Yugoslavia's largest prisons, began late on Sunday. Footage shown on Serbian TV showed an unidentified prisoner with head bandages complaining: "They used to beat us like horses." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent:Belgrade to co-operate with war crimes tribunal ``x973590115,84670,``x``x
``xMonday November 6 3:07 PM ET<br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - It's unclear when, if ever, Slobodan Milosevic will be prosecuted on war crimes charges, but the former Yugoslav strongman is already entwined in legal action over far less serious allegations: He is accused of unlawful renovations on his house.<br><br>The Democratic Party , part of the 18-party alliance that runs the new Yugoslav government, said Monday that Milosevic has made contact - through his lawyer - with a Belgrade district authority that has started legal proceedings against him for construction at his residential complex.<br><br>Milosevic is not currently living at the house in question, a complex worth millions of dollars in Belgrade's richest neighborhood. He has taken refuge at a heavily guarded home nearby since he conceded defeat in the Sept. 24 election and stepped down in the face of mass protests.<br><br>When city building inspectors turned up at Milosevic's longtime residence last week, guards who identified themselves as Serbian police showed them what they claimed was a permit for the reconstruction - and showed them the door.<br><br>City officials had earlier said Belgrade authorities never issued a permit for the work, and the inspectors, who were turned away twice last week, issued an order requiring Milosevic to submit permits by Tuesday.<br><br>In a statement Monday, the Democratic Party praised Milosevic for responding to the allegations - but added a warning suggesting accusations of more serious wrongdoing are to come.<br><br>``The Democratic Party welcomes the fact that Milosevic has started respecting the law,'' it said. ``At the same time, we express hope that Milosevic will be equally cooperative in other lawsuits that Serbia intends to bring.''<br><br>Milosevic has been indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in connection with the Kosovo conflict. But the new president, Vojislav Kostunica has made it clear he does not intend to extradite Milosevic or other Serbs to the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands<br><br>Milosevic still could face trial at home for crimes allegedly committed during his 13-year rule.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic Eyed in Unlawful Building ``x973590142,91872,``x``x
``xBy Ellen L. Lutz , NOVEMBER 8, 2000 <br><br>MEDFORD, MASS. <br><br>Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica may have been swept into power by the strongly democratic yearnings of his people, but he now faces a host of daunting challenges, not the least of which is how to bring to justice the man who masterminded the "ethnic cleansing" of Bosnia and Kosovo. <br><br>Slobodan Milosevic's victims and many human rights advocates fear that, notwithstanding his indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, Mr. Milosevic will escape justice because Yugoslavia or some other nation will grant him safe haven. <br><br>But Yugoslavia's new democrats have higher priorities than dealing immediately with Milosevic. They now are focused on consolidating their hold on government and rebuilding their country's desecrated political and economic institutions. <br><br>Whether a trial happens sooner or later, in Yugoslavia or at The Hague, victims and observers should have patience, because bringing Milosevic to justice is in everyone's interest. History shows that a thriving democracy with lasting peace can only be assured when crimes of the past are acknowledged and peoples' need for justice is met. <br><br>Even though Mr. Kostunica does not support The Hague tribunal, his administration chose not to "cut a deal" with Milosevic before driving him from power - even after Jiri Dienstbier, the UN human rights envoy for Yugoslavia, announced that he was in favor of granting immunity from prosecution in return for Milosevic's resignation. <br><br>Furthermore, Yugoslavia's new foreign minister, Goran Svilanovic, supports the formation of a truth commission of independent experts to investigate responsibility for crimes and the suffering of victims of all parties to the Yugoslav wars, and the opening of an office of the ICTY. <br><br>Significantly, Kostunica has not ruled out the possibility of trying Milosevic in Yugoslavia. <br><br>But Kostunica has his hands full trying to unify his country, and he doesn't want to alienate any of the constituencies he needs. Those who would rush Milosevic to justice ahead of the other priorities set by Kostunica need to imagine themselves in the new president's shoes before condemning his choices. <br><br>At the same time, demands for justice do not disappear with time, as evidenced in the recent upsurge in legal proceedings against Nazi survivors for crimes committed at the time of World War II. Whether Kostunica wants them to or not, those demands will assert themselves onto a democratic agenda and force their way up the priority list. <br><br>In time, they will supplant other priorities that he now puts on the front burner. This is what happened in Chile. From the day Augusto Pinochet ceded power, many Chileans called for his prosecution for human rights abuses. Anti-cipating this demand, Mr. Pinochet declared himself "senator for life," with accompanying amnesty from judicial prosecution. <br><br>But the longtime dictator's arrogant assumptions caught up with him; he failed to anticipate a dramatic shift in international norms in the 1990s. Following the creation of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and large-scale consensus to create a new International Criminal Court, self-amnesties lost their legitimacy. <br><br>Once European governments were willing to arrest Pinochet for crimes he committed in Chile, Chileans demanded the right to bring one of their own to justice. In August, a decade after Chile's return to democracy, the country's Supreme Court stunned the world by declaring that Pinochet, and many of his "amnestied" cadres, could be tried under Chilean law. <br><br>The pace of justice in Chile was painfully slow for victims and their families, as it may be in Yugoslavia. But Chile shows that patience pays off. <br><br>While the international community seeks to try Milosevic before an international tribunal, The Hague is a long way from Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav people may want to bring Milosevic to justice themselves for the full panoply of crimes he committed, including not only war crimes and crimes against humanity in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, but political fraud, corruption, and massive repression of his own citizens. <br><br>As Yugoslavia creates a new democracy, headed by a man whose reputation is founded on his respect for law and the independence of the judiciary, Milosevic's trial in Yugoslavia should not be rejected out of hand by the international community. Ultimately, justice is local. If it can be accomplished close to or where the crimes took place, and with genuine assurances of fairness and due process, then The Hague may not be the best forum. But in the tumult of transition, even that cannot be determined. Kostunica's current reluctance to do more than ensure that Milosevic is permanently politically disabled is understandable. <br><br>Peace and justice in Yugoslavia must go hand in hand if future abuses are to be prevented and an enduring democracy established. The Clinton administration's decision to lift sanctions while linking foreign aid to Yugoslavia's cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal reflects its respect for the complexity of the problems Kostunica is juggling and its recognition that democracy, peace, and justice are inextricably linked. <br><br>Kostunica needs the support, patience, and understanding of the United States - indeed, the international community - as he struggles to set Yugoslavia aright. At the same time, he must understand that if he sweeps justice under the rug, his efforts to secure lasting peace and democracy will be in vain.<br><br><br>Ellen L. Lutz is executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor:Bringing Milosevic to justice ``x973672158,29394,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Nov. 7 — A bitter conflict has broken out between the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, and his political allies over the fate of the director of the Serbian secret police and the commander of the Yugoslav Army, both of whom were major pillars of the government of Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica, a constitutional scholar trying to consolidate his position, wants to keep the main instruments of state power under his control. He says he will retain the secret police commander, Radomir Markovic, and the army chief of staff, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, at least for now.<br><br>But Mr. Kostunica's coalition allies, led by the Democratic Party leader, Zoran Djindjic, want them fired. They have put particular focus on Mr. Markovic, who they say is working with former President Milosevic to destabilize the country before the crucial Serbian parliamentary elections on Dec. 23.<br><br>The public squabble has limited the work of the temporary Serbian government at a time when sudden shortages of electrical power, price increases on basic foods and even uprisings in Serbian prisons have complicated the post-Milosevic period, leading to unproven accusations of organized destabilization by those loyal to the old government.<br><br>Mr. Milosevic's Socialists are struggling to redefine their party and find a new leader before the elections, and Mr. Kostunica and his allies remain widely popular. <br><br>Mr. Kostunica's own popularity has soared since his election, with recent opinion polls giving him a favorable rating of more than 85 percent. But the public splits within the coalition and the new uncertainties and struggles of daily life could undermine that popularity.<br><br>On one level the fight over Mr. Markovic is about the benefits and the dangers of Yugoslavia's self-limiting revolution, which has left in place many of the top officials appointed by Mr. Milosevic, especially those in charge of security, even if they are thought to have blood on their hands.<br><br>Is it less dangerous and destabilizing to leave them in place for now, as Mr. Kostunica believes, or to remove them, as some of his allies argue? Those allies include Mr. Djindjic and Momcilo Perisic, who once had General Pavkovic's job and knows something about the security forces.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica, his aides say, wants a duly elected government in Serbia, the larger part of Yugoslavia, before making significant changes, to preserve legality and the popular will. Mr. Markovic, for example, heads the Serbian state security agency, so legally Mr. Kostunica cannot fire him. His allies want Mr. Kostunica to agree to fire him anyway.<br><br>But Mr. Kostunica said in a weekend statement: "The hasty removal of people from leading positions in the state and the army undoubtedly runs counter to state interests, since it inevitably leads to destabilization of those very institutions and society as a whole and can endanger democratic change." He noted that neither the police nor the army had fought to save the Milosevic government.<br><br>Mr. Djindjic and others say that the momentum of the popular revolt that overthrew Mr. Milosevic on Oct. 5 is already ebbing, that Milosevic allies are regrouping and that the Serbian people want more rapid and fundamental changes in their government and their lives.<br><br>Mr. Djindjic has demanded that Mr. Kostunica explain his reasons for keeping Mr. Markovic and Mr. Pavkovic and argues that those members of the security forces who sided with the revolt are at risk now from an unchanged leadership. <br><br>"It is sure that Milosevic has his fingers in everything that is happening in the part of state security where Markovic is the boss," Mr. Djindjic said.<br><br>Mr. Perisic said that Mr. Markovic and Mr. Pavkovic "are protecting Milosevic and his interests," and that "if they are not removed, the police and the army will be destabilized," part of a general effort by Milosevic supporters to sabotage normal life, including electricity supplies and prices.<br><br>But on another crucial level, the battle is about who will control the army and the secret police and all of its files. How will those files be used and to what end, Mr. Kostunica asks, and who will name the successors to Mr. Markovic and General Pavkovic and have the best access to the secrets of the old government?<br><br>There have already been leaks from some of those files, of uncertain authenticity, intended to undermine Mr. Markovic's position and embarrass Mr. Kostunica. <br><br>One document purports to be a surveillance report on Slavko Curuvija, an anti-Milosevic publisher, from the day he was murdered, April 11, 1999, during the NATO bombing campaign. While it is widely believed that Mr. Curuvija was killed by the Milosevic government, probably by people working with state security, the document, even if authentic, proves only that surveillance ended before the murder.<br><br>More important, the files are presumed to be full of information damaging to most of the leaders of the democratic opposition, especially those like Mr. Djindjic, who has been a political and commercial player in Serbia for many years. Mr. Kostunica, who was a relatively marginal political figure and had no connection with Mr. Milosevic, is thought to have little to fear from the files.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica evidently does not want Mr. Djindjic to control the secret police or the files, while Mr. Djindjic and others in the opposition do not want the old leadership to control them, either.<br><br>On another, broader level, the struggle is over political power in the new Serbia. While Mr. Kostunica is the federal president, real power lies in Serbia, which makes up 95 percent of the country, with its tiny sister republic, Montenegro, accounting for the rest. That is why the Serbian elections on Dec. 23 matter so much.<br><br>Those around Mr. Kostunica need Mr. Djindjic and his well-organized party, which was the backbone of the anti-Milosevic coalition, but they do not trust him. They believe that Mr. Djindjic wants to control Serbia and be its prime minister, and that other political leaders, in particular the current deputy prime minister of the temporary Serbian government, Nebojsa Covic, would be a better choice.<br><br>Their view is that Mr. Djindjic, by making such an issue of Mr. Markovic, is trying to tie Mr. Kostunica to a defense of an indefensible part of the old government. While those around Mr. Kostunica insist that they have no illusions about Mr. Markovic and his efforts to save himself, they also say that he has behaved responsibly, offering help to the new Yugoslav president and not trying to blackmail anyone.<br><br>For the Serbian elections, the 18- party coalition that backed Mr. Kostunica, still known as the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, or DOS, will stay together and run a single list of candidates. The coalition wants Mr. Kostunica's name on the ballot, so the list would be called, "DOS — Vojislav Kostunica."<br><br>But officials close to the coalition say that Mr. Kostunica is not willing to allow his name and popularity to be used to bring Mr. Djindjic to power in Serbia, and that Mr. Kostunica is pushing for a list of candidates that will include more of his own party members and supporters.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Yugoslavs Bicker Over Army and Secret Police``x973672209,24993,``x``x
``xBy DRAGAN ILIC, Associated Press Writer <br><br>NIS, Yugoslavia (AP) - Fire and shooting broke out Tuesday in one of three Serbian prisons where inmates rioted to demand better treatment as well as amnesty for some convictions, while riot police sealed off another facility as inmates jeered them from rooftops.<br><br>The spreading unrest was the newest demonstration of the problems facing the government of the new president, Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites), as he tries to prevent the pent-up discontent that accumulated under the past regime from spilling over into anarchy.<br><br>Spectators who gathered outside the prison in Pozarevac, east of Belgrade, saw flames shooting from at least four buildings inside the compound and heard gunfire immediately afterward. The fires appeared to have burned out or been doused several hours later and the situation appeared calm.<br><br>The prison's warden, Stipe Marusic, said guards shot in the air. But some of the inmates told reporters contacted by telephone that they were shot at and that several prisoners were injured - at least two seriously.<br><br>Police vans were seen driving overnight into the prison - one of the largest in Europe - in the city about 80 miles east of Belgrade.<br><br>The riots at Pozarevac, Nis and Sremska Mitrovica appear linked by common demands focusing on an end to alleged ill treatment and inclusion of Serbs jailed for some criminal activities into a proposed amnesty law that would free Kosovo Albanian political prisoners who had been put behind bars under former President Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites).<br><br>It was not disclosed which crimes the inmates wanted covered in an amnesty.<br><br>The amnesty law, suggested by Kostunica, is still at the discussion stage. It would affect Kosovo Albanians arrested for activity in or support of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army.<br><br>At Pozarevac, witnesses saw inmates perched on the prison's rooftops, some brandishing signs: ``We go out, JUL goes in.'' They were alluding to the neo-communist Yugoslav Left party that ruled Yugoslavia together with Milosevic's Socialists until the former president lost elections and was then toppled in a revolt on Oct. 5.<br><br>Other signs hoisted by inmates since the unrest began Sunday have expressed support for Kostunica, in an indication that backing for his pro-democracy policies and rejection of the Milosevic era extends deep into all segments of Serbian society.<br><br>Still, the unrest could hurt Kostunica and his supporters.<br><br>They now control government on the federal level but not in the two Yugoslav republics. With elections in Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic, only six weeks away, the riots give their pro-Milosevic opponents fresh ammunition in allegations that the new authorities are unable to deal with growing anarchy that would not have been tolerated under Milosevic.<br><br>Although opinion polls now project a solid victory for Kostunica's Democratic Opposition of Serbia in the Dec. 23 elections, his camp is worried that their support could erode until then, as pro-democracy euphoria is replaced by disenchantment over price hikes, growing energy shortages and other hardships. While the economy was destroyed under Milosevic, there is fear that his successors will harvest the blame.<br><br>In the southern city of Nis, hundreds of helmeted riot police, toting submachine guns, took up positions around the prison Tuesday, while hundreds of jeering inmates climbed to the rooftops inside the compound.<br><br>The prisoners had earlier rejected an offer to meet with chief warden Miodrag Djordjevic and other prison officials, and said they would wait instead for senior justice ministry officials to negotiate on demands that they be included in the proposed amnesty for Kosovo Albanian prisoners.<br><br>About 1,000 inmates at Nis began a hunger strike Monday in a show of solidarity with Serbian prisoners in the northern city of Sremska Mitrovica. The inmates in Sremska Mitrovica began rioting late Sunday; they claimed they were beaten by guards and demanded an expansion of the proposed amnesty law.<br><br>Police stormed the prison in Nis late Monday, firing tear gas in an attempt to contain the riot, but they withdrew as Serbian inmates burned their cells and took to rooftops.<br><br>One prisoner, 30-year-old Vasilije Kujovic, slipped and fell from a rooftop early Tuesday. He later died a hospital in the southern city of Nis after suffering brain damage, the state Tanjug news agency reported.<br><br>Later, three more inmates, suffering minor injuries from the overnight rioting, walked out of the prison compound and were driven away by ambulances.<br><br>An ethnic Albanian inmate who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone said all 300 Albanian prisoners in the prison were locked in a separate block, sitting in the dark because the electricity had been turned off. The inmate, who did not give his name for fear of reprisal, said the Serbs had asked them to join the riot but that they declined.<br><br>Beyond the demand that the proposed amnesty law be expanded to cover Serbs doing time for certain criminal offenses, the Nis inmates also wanted jail terms in general to be reduced and prison management replaced.<br><br>The Pozarevac unrest began with almost 200 prisoners starting a hunger strike Monday, said the Beta news agency. It did not specify their demands. By Tuesday all the Serbian inmates - about 900 - had joined in, said Beta. The prison also holds more than 300 ethnic Albanians.<br><br>Prison officials in Sremska Mitrovica, west of Belgrade, said ethnic Albanian political prisoners there were evacuated and taken to an undisclosed location, and three people were hospitalized with slight injuries.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFire, Shooting in Serbian Prison ``x973672254,89382,``x``x
``xWASHINGTON, Nov 9, 2000 -- (Reuters) The United States expects to restore relations with Yugoslavia "very soon" and will not wait until it fixes up its damaged embassy because that could take several months, the State Department said on Wednesday.<br><br>The United States sent inspectors to look at the Belgrade building in the hope that diplomats could start working there as soon as the two countries restore ties.<br><br>But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that would not be possible. "The old chancery is not currently in a physical condition to serve as a working office. We expect it will be several months before the building can serve as fully functioning embassy," he said.<br><br>"But we continue to proceed with the procedures that are involved in reestablishing relations... and we expect to formally establish relations very soon," he told a briefing.<br><br>Yugoslavia broke off relations with the United States in March 1999 after NATO planes attacked Yugoslav targets in the war over the province of Kosovo.<br><br>Newly elected Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, who defeated Slobodan Milosevic in presidential elections in September, has agreed to restore relations.<br><br>Boucher said the United States was rotating diplomats in and out of Belgrade from its embassy in the Hungarian capital Budapest. They have found places to work in Belgrade.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.S. Won't Wait On Belgrade Repairs To Restore Ties``x973766696,59057,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Nov 9, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Serbian Prime Minister Milomir Minic, an ally of former strongman Slobodan Milosevic, avoided injuries when his vehicle collided with another car whose driver died of his wounds, Belgrade's Vecernje Novosti newspaper reported in its Thursday issue.<br><br>Minic suffered no injuries, nor did his driver and another passenger in his BMW, but Goran Jovanovic, the driver of the other car, died of wounds on the way to the hospital, the daily said, quoting an investigative judge.<br><br>On October 24, Minic was elected Prime Minister in the Serbian power-sharing interim government which is to rule Serbia until early elections set for December.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbian Prime Minister in Car Crash that Kills One``x973766733,9997,``x``x
``xThursday November 9, 2000 <br><br>SREMSKA MITROVICA,Yugoslavia (AP) - They're doing time for murder, armed robbery and other violent crimes. But the inmates at the core of prison riots that threatened Yugoslavia's new pro-democracy government with anarchy say the real criminals still haven't been punished. <br><br>And it isn't difficult to know whom they're talking about. Like most Serbians, the thousands of inmates who rioted demanding reduced sentences and better conditions say the real bad guys were linked to the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, the ousted strongman-president. <br><br>``We are guilty,'' declared Milan Jeremic, one of those who negotiated the convicts' demands. ``But we are small fish, compared to the real criminals and Mafiosi, who robbed the whole nation.'' <br><br>Jeremic was one of the leaders of the prisoners' uprising that started at Sremska Mitrovica prison Sunday. Over the next three days it spread to four other correctional centers, including some of the biggest detention centers in Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic. <br><br>Buildings were burned, shots fired, rapes reported and one person killed. The violence ended early Wednesday after government negotiators agreed to the main demands in exchange for a pledge of a return to normality. <br><br>Although inmates continued to have the run of the prisons, plans were to slowly permit guards back in, starting Friday, the inmates said. If that happened, Serbia's justice ministry pledged to expand a law originally meant to grant amnesty to ethnic Albanian political prisoners jailed during the Kosovo conflict. It would now include sentence reductions for Serbs jailed for some types of nonpolitical crimes. <br><br>Resentment of Milosevic and his cronies grew during his 13 years in power, with growing perceptions that his clique was growing richer even as poverty enveloped Serbia because of his ruinous economic policies and the Balkan wars he fomented. <br><br>With Milosevic's ouster last month after he lost presidential elections, the administration of his successor, Vojislav Kostunica, has started investigations against Milosevic, his family and friends on suspicion they bilked the country of billions of dollars. Other close associates are suspected of involvement in political murders. <br><br>No wonder that Jeremic and his pals feel they deserve some consideration. <br><br>``We don't ask to be released,'' said Jeremic, as other grim-faced convicts nodded, arms crossed over beefy chests clad in prison garb of rough homespun wool. ``But we committed crimes in a regime where ... the state of law didn't exist. <br><br>``We ask for just a bit of forgiveness.'' <br><br>He and others detailed mindless torture under chief warden Trivun Ivkovic, a 1994 Milosevic appointee arrested Wednesday. One inmate, chained to his bed for 12 days for fighting, tried to bite through his wrists as soon as he was unlocked, in a desperate suicide bid, said convict Dragan Drovnjik. <br><br>Inmate Sasa Jokic said guards swung baseball bats at will at prisoners. Food was horrid, medical care next to nonexistent. <br><br>Ivkovic was fired soon after Kostunica took office last month, raising hopes that conditions would soon improve, ``but even afterward, the mistreatment continued,'' said Jokic's buddy, Dragan Dimitrovic. That's when ringleaders decided to riot. <br><br>Despite the calm at Sremska Mitrovica, Nis and Pozarevac, the protests were not over. Hundreds of inmates at Padinska Skela prison just outside Belgrade and at a juvenile detention center in the central Serbian town of Valjevo joined in Wednesday, refusing to go on work detail and in some cases declaring hunger strikes. <br><br>Ahead of crucial elections in Serbia, the unrest presented a new challenge to Kostunica. His administration must move carefully, allowing the release of some frustration pent up under Milosevic's rule, without letting the country slide into anarchy. <br><br>Although Kostunica and his supporters control the federal government, whoever controls Serbia effectively controls Yugoslavia. While Kostunica supporters are the overwhelming favorites six weeks ahead of the Dec. 23 vote, the prison unrest could bolster the popularity of Milosevic's Socialists, who argue that lawlessness is spreading under Kostunica. <br><br>The unrest was triggered last week in part by reports that authorities were considering amnesty for about 900 Kosovo Albanian prisoners, two-thirds of them jailed on charges of terrorism during the government crackdown on their independence movement in Serbia's southern province of Kosovo. Angered Serb convicts claimed discrimination.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGuardian:Inmates Resent Milosevic Regime ``x973766786,74184,``x``x
``xBy DRAGAN ILIC, Associated Press Writer ,Wednesday November 8 <br><br>NIS, Yugoslavia (AP) - Protests by Serb inmates spread Wednesday to two more prisons despite government promises to improve conditions and reduce some of their terms as part of a proposed amnesty law that originally was to apply mostly to ethnic Albanians.<br><br>Unlike in previous days, when inmates rioted, burning buildings and reportedly raping female inmates at one facility, Wednesday was quiet. Although prisoners still roamed outside their cells at Sremska Mitrovica, Nis and Pozarevac, and guards were forced to remain outside the prisons, there was no violence reported in the fourth day of the protests.<br><br>However, hundreds of inmates at Padinska Skela prison just outside Belgrade and at a juvenile detention center in the central Serbian town of Valjevo joined in Wednesday, refusing to perform work assignments and in some cases declaring hunger strikes to back protesters' demands.<br><br>Three days of rioting left at least one prisoner dead, an unspecified number of people injured, and several buildings damaged by fire. There were also allegations of rape at the Nis prison. Justice ministry and corrections officials have not commented on the allegations.<br><br>Ahead of crucial elections in Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic, the unrest presented another challenge to the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites), whose government is faced with the consequences of 13 years of authoritarian rule, corruption and mismanagement by Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites), his predecessor.<br><br>Whoever controls Serbia effectively controls Yugoslavia. Although Kostunica supporters are the overwhelming favorites six weeks ahead of the Dec. 23 parliamentary vote, the prison unrest could bolster the popularity of Milosevic's Socialists, who argue that anarchy is spreading under Kostunica.<br><br>In talks with the convicts, Dragan Subasic, one of three justice ministers in Serbia's new government, said the ministers pledged to ``form a special committee which will carry out inspection in all prisons,'' and look into allegations about ``the obviously inhumane living conditions.''<br><br>The unrest was triggered last week in part by reports that authorities were considering amnesty for about 900 ethnic Albanian prisoners, two-thirds of them jailed on charges of terrorism during the government crackdown on their independence movement in Serbia's southern province of Kosovo.<br><br>Angered by what they perceived as discrimination, Serb convicts started rioting, taking control of the detention facilities, amid fears their violence would target ethnic Albanian convicts. Government officials, however, said the ethnic Albanian and Serb convicts were together, negotiating as one group in the talks with the authorities.<br><br>Subasic also said that provided there is no more violence, authorities would in coming days look into one of the prisoners' demands - expanding the amnesty law to include sentence reductions for some crimes by a third for first-time offenders and almost a third for multiple offenders.<br><br>The amnesty law would be adopted when the new Serbian parliament is formed, following the parliamentary elections.<br><br>Subasic confirmed the prisoners had been given extremely low-quality food, were frequently mistreated by some prison guards, and that health care in the prisons was virtually nonexistent.<br><br>He said that Trivun Ivkovic, chief warden of the prison in Sremska Mitrovica, had been arrested. Inmates had also demanded dismissals of corrections officials appointed under former Milosevic, accusing them of corruption.<br><br>In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Yugoslav government ``to take all necessary measures to ensure the security and well-being of all prisoners, and in particular, the Kosovo Albanian detainees,'' a U.N. spokesman said. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb Protests Hit 2 More Prisons ``x973766813,25567,``x``x
``xZAGREB, Nov 9, 2000 -- (Reuters) Representatives of some 150 Croatian companies will visit Yugoslavia next week, as former foes rush to establish economic ties after 10 years of wars and instability, the Croatian Chamber of Economy said on Wednesday<br><br>Chamber head Nadan Vidosevic will hold talks with his counterpart Milutin Cirovic about opening representative offices in Zagreb and Belgrade, it said in a statement.<br><br>The highlight of the trip will be a "match-making" event on November 16 in Belgrade, where Croatian businessmen will have an opportunity to meet their potential partners from Serbia.<br><br>The warm-up in relations comes after Serbia's long-time dictator Slobodan Milosevic - widely seen as the main culprit for a decade of wars and misery in the Balkans - stepped down last month among popular protest.<br><br>Milosevic yielded power to Western-oriented reformist Vojislav Kostunica, whose opening remarks were received with cautious optimism in Zagreb.<br><br>But many top Croatian companies made clear they were very interested in returning to the familiar Yugoslav market of more than 10 million people, which is at their doorstep.<br><br>Most enthusiastic are top flight companies, such as drugs firm Pliva and food group Podravka, whose brands are widely recognized in the neighboring country.<br><br>Oil and gas group Ina and oil pipeline operator Janaf were the first to say they could supply energy-strapped Yugoslav market with oil derivatives and crude.<br><br>Ina owns a network of 187 petrol stations and seven storage facilities in Serbia, which were expropriated in 1990. It still hopes to get them back through succession talks, due to start soon after years of blockade by Belgrade.<br><br>OPTIMISTIC SCENARIO<br><br>Croatia was a republic of the federal Yugoslavia before the federation's violent break-up in 1991, and its economy never quite recovered from the loss of the common market.<br><br>Croatian exports to Yugoslavia rose fivefold to USD 70 million in the first nine months of the year, with imports growing at a much slower pace of 25 percent to USD 18 million.<br><br>But before trade picks up in earnest, the two countries will have to remove a number of obstacles ranging from highly sensitive political issues to merely technical ones.<br><br>First and foremost, Zagreb expects an official apology for what is said were crimes Yugoslav troops committed during the 1991-95 war.<br><br>Then there is the potentially explosive issue of dividing the property of the former federation, including the former central bank gold reserves, embassies abroad and access to former government archives.<br><br>Finally, the neighbors will have to find ways of lowering extremely high trade barriers with duties currently ranging from 50 to 100 percent for most products, according to the economy ministry.<br><br>They will also have to re-establish a mutual payments system, which does not function at the moment. Firms trade on a cash basis.<br><br>Economy Minister Goranko Fizulic recently said Croatia's exports to Yugoslavia could surge to USD 1 billion in the next two to five years.<br><br>He based this optimistic prediction on a simple calculation that exports to Bosnia - another former Yugoslav republic half the size of and much poorer than Serbia - grew in recent years to more than USD 500 million.<br><br>If this scenario takes place, Serbia will once again become Croatia's Number One export market, topping long-term partners such as Italy, Germany and Slovenia.<br><br>(C)2000 Copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters Limited.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCroatia Looks to Yugoslav Market after 10 Years``x973853229,33919,``x``x
``xPARIS, Nov 9, 2000 -- (Reuters) France effectively resumed diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia on Wednesday by nominating a new ambassador to Belgrade.<br><br>Yugoslavia broke ties with France during last year's NATO air war but the recent downfall of president Slobodan Milosevic has opened the way for a return to normality.<br><br>French government ministers agreed at a cabinet meeting to appoint Balkan expert Gabriel Keller to head France's diplomatic mission to Yugoslavia, saying that it was now up to Belgrade to approve the choice.<br><br>"This proposed nomination marks the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Paris and Belgrade," government spokesman Jean-Jack Queyranne told reporters.<br><br>France and Yugoslavia have traditionally had close ties and French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine was one of the first western European ministers to travel to Belgrade last month after Vojislav Kostunica replaced Milosevic as president.<br><br>(C)2000 Copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters Limited.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFrance Names Ambassador for Yugoslavia``x973853291,99278,``x``x
``xBy Brian Pozun <br>Nov 10, 2000 -- (Central Europe Review) On Wednesday 1 November, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRJ) became the newest member of the United Nations (UN). Yugoslav President Vojislav Koštunica sent a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan last Friday, formally requesting membership for Yugoslavia, and the international community—reportedly under pressure from US Permanent Representative Richard Holbrooke—jumped into action.<br><br>On Wednesday, just five days after the request, the Permanent Representative of France introduced a draft resolution concerning the formal application of Yugoslavia for membership, supported by all members of the Security Council, as well as the other successor states to the former Yugoslavia. The General Assembly passed the resolution unanimously without discussion. The flag of the former Yugoslavia, which had flown in front of UN Headquarters in New York since 1945, was lowered at the end of the General Assembly session and the flag of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was hoisted in its stead.<br><br>Yugoslavia and the United Nations<br><br>In 1945, the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) was a founding member of the United Nations. In 1992, after the fall of the joint state, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina (BiH) and Macedonia all joined the UN as new members, while Slobodan Miloševic insisted that his Yugoslavia was the only legal successor to the old SFRJ and thus had no need to apply for a new membership.<br><br>In 1992, although the General Assembly decided that the FRJ was not able to maintain the seat of the SFRJ and had to submit a new application, Yugoslavia was permitted to continue to maintain representation at the UN and to receive and circulate documents. The FRJ Mission to the UN was, however, led by a Charge d'Affaires instead of a Permanent Representative, since a Permanent Representative would have to present credentials to the Secretary General, who would not have been able to accept them.<br><br>Koštunica's decision to seek a new membership also follows several letters to the General Assembly by Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia demanding that the FRJ be excluded from the United Nations until it submits a membership application. In recent months, United States Permanent Representative Richard Holbrooke echoed those demands.<br><br>Implications for the successor states<br><br>A new seat at the UN for the FRJ is of great importance for Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia, since it clearly shows Koštunica's Yugoslavia has backed down from the position that the FRJ is the sole legal successor to the former, pre-1991 Yugoslavia. This paves the way for resolutions to issues related to the collapse of the former Yugoslavia that have been deadlocked for a decade.<br><br>The five states should now be able to make progress in talks to divide the assets and debts of their former joint state. Talks had begun in Brussels in 1992, but the FRJ stance precluded any agreement. Slovenia recalled its representation to those negotiations six years into the process, in 1998, in frustration.<br><br>The assets of the SFRJ may amount to as much as USD 100 billion. This includes assets held by federal bodies, such as the National Bank, JAT national airlines and the People's Army, as well as embassies around the world and other international property. The gold and foreign currency reserves of the SFRJ would also be divided amongst the five countries. The SFRJ's debts only amount to some USD 17 billion. It was the decision of the Contact Group for the Former Yugoslavia that all five successor states would get a share of the assets (and debts) as they stood at the end of 1990; however, that may be revised given that the assets may have accrued more value in the interim.<br><br>Diplomatic relations after a decade?<br><br>Croatia established loose diplomatic relations with the FRJ in 1996, but like Bosnia-Hercegovina, Slovenia has no diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This situation has made it impossible for Slovenia to collect tax monies owed to it, among other relatively minor problems, but it has also created a situation disturbing to the Slovene public: with no diplomatic relations, the Slovene government can do nothing to help Slovene citizens accused of crimes or imprisoned in Yugoslavia.<br><br>This was highlighted in early August, when two Slovene citizens were arrested in Montenegro. While one was released after three days, the other was held in custody for several days awaiting trial for photographing sensitive military objects. Fortunately, he received only a light sentence. Both returned to Slovenia about 20 days after the initial arrest.<br><br>Slovene Foreign Minister Lojze Peterle gave a press conference on Thursday where he said that he is pleased with Yugoslavia's new membership in the UN, but that this does not affect Slovenia's relations with Montenegro. In recent months, Slovenia has emerged as a staunch supporter of Podgorica in the face of Belgrade. Peterle also said, however, that the government of Slovenia has named a special representative to assist with humanitarian aid to Belgrade.<br><br>Bosnian Permanent Representative to the UN Mohamed Saèirbej addressed the UN General Assembly on Thursday and said that his country was one of the many co-sponsors of the draft resolution, even though the FRJ must co-operate fully with the International Tribunal at the Hague. BiH, however, believes that this should be a prerequisite for FRJ membership in the UN.<br><br>The Permanent Representative of Croatia to the UN, Ivan Simonoviè, also addressed the General Assembly on Thursday, and reiterated Saèirbej's concerns about Yugoslav co-operation with the Tribunal.<br><br>Regardless of the concerns, Yugoslavia becoming a new member of the UN can only be seen as a huge step forward for regional stability. When the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe was created last year, it was understood that no real stability could be created in the Balkans without Yugoslavia. Now, with talk of the FRJ becoming a member of the Pact, it seems that, while real stability may be generations away, the first important steps are being made.<br><br>Real diplomatic relations among the successor states to the Former Yugoslavia are of tremendous importance to even the average citizen of those states, and the resolution of the open questions surrounding the collapse of the former federation would automatically create a significantly higher degree of stability in the Balkans.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xHave a Seat : Yugoslavia Joins the UN``x973853330,50783,``x``x
``xSTRASBOURG, Nov 9 (AFP) - <br>Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica sought membership Thursday for his country in the 41-nation Council of Europe, the latest step to pull Belgrade out of international isolation.<br><br>He was to put his case to a meeting of the Council's foreign ministers arguing for Belgrade's admittance now that Yugoslavia is back on a democratic path after the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>The foreign ministers are also considering requests for membership from Armenia and Azerbaijan in the body which focuses mostly on human rights and social affairs.<br><br>Later in the day, Kostunica will meet members of the Council's parliament.<br><br>Since taking power in Belgrade last month, Kostunica has already managed to recover Yugoslavia's seat at the United Nations and on Friday the country will be officially admitted to membership of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.<br><br>He has also met the 15 leaders of the European Union who issued a special invitation to him to attend their meeting last month in Biarritz, southwest France.<br><br>The Council of Europe was created as the first major pan-European institution following World War II.<br><br>But it has since seen its influence wane as other, more politically powerful, organisations entered the breach.<br><br>Although eclipsed in sheer importance by the European Union, NATO and the European Commission, the Council has regained much of its prestige and a major role in the continent since the collapse of the Soviet bloc and absorption in the Council's ranks of eastern and central European states.<br><br>A summit of 10 western European countries agreed to form the Council in London on May 5, 1949. <br><br>The aim was to reinforce cooperation in areas linked to the continent's common heritage and "economic and social progress" -- as the first article of the Council's statute proclaimed -- but the organisation made quick inroads in areas such as human rights and social protection.<br><br>The European Convention on Human Rights, drawn up by the Council in 1950, provided the basis for all later initiatives on the issues, including that of a European Court of Human Rights, established in 1959. A parallel convention known as the European Social Charter was signed in 1961.<br><br>Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the council's work has been reinvigorated by a tide of new membership from eastern and central Europe, enabling the organisation to focus its attention on sharing sound democratic practice and tips for restructuring moribund public sectors.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica seeks Yugoslav membership in Council of Europe``x973853360,80925,``x``x
``xBy BLOOMBERG NEWS<br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia, Nov. 9 — Montenegro will stop using the Yugoslav dinar next week, ending a dual-currency system in which both the dinar and the German mark were used. The republic, Serbia's often reluctant junior partner in the remnants of the old Yugoslavia, decided last week to set up its own central bank but chose not to issue currency. Accounts and cash will be converted at a rate of 36 dinars to the mark, officials said.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Marks Only in Montenegro``x973853406,2593,``x``x
``xNis: Serbia's new authorities vowed immediate action to improve living conditions at run-down jails in an effort to end a spreading prison revolt, which entered its third day yesterday.<br><br>Mr Dragan Subasic, co-Minister of Justice in the transitional Serbian Government, said emergency funds would be provided for three jails where riots have broken out among prisoners demanding better living conditions and an amnesty.<br><br>Speaking after visits to the prisons, he also promised that the Government would prepare an amnesty law if the protests ended, though he gave no details.<br><br>"Living conditions are far from satisfactory in all three prisons we visited," he said, after talks with inmates in the prison in the southern city of Nis.<br><br>"The main reason for that is the general poverty. Not a single prison hospital has drugs, and the prison management is not able to provide sufficient food."<br><br>Special Justice Ministry commissions would be formed to inspect Serbian prisons and to look into possible abuse of positions by senior prison officials, Mr Subasic said.<br><br>Unrest spread to a third prison when hundreds of inmates rioted at a jail near Pozarevac, the home town of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Inmates of Sremska Mitrovica prison, in northern Serbia, launched a revolt on Sunday night, and on Monday a prison in Nis erupted with violent protests.<br><br>The prison revolts added to the long list of woes needing urgent attention from the pro-democracy alliance backing Yugoslavia's new President, Mr Vojislav Kostunica, who took office a month ago after defeating Milosevic in elections.<br><br>At the United Nations in New York, the Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, issued a statement urging the new Government "to take all necessary measures to ensure the security and well-being of all prisoners and, in particular, the Kosovo Albanian detainees".<br><br>One Nis inmate died in hospital yesterday after falling from a prison roof. Two prisoners and a guard were injured in Pozarevac, Beta news agency said.<br><br>In Nis, 35-year-old Bosiljka, who gave only her first name, said she and three other women had been evacuated from prison custody yesterday. She said she had been hiding in the dark all night, fearing rape.<br><br>"There are wounded people in there," she said. "I never saw anything like this even in the movies; everything was on fire last night. I saw a man who had his ear cut severely because he refused to join the rebellion." The moderate ethnic Albanian leader Dr Ibrahim Rugova has urged Western governments and Belgrade to recognise Kosovo's independence from Yugoslavia, saying it would settle tensions in the region.<br><br>Associated Press``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xJail improvements promised amid riots ``x973853443,66298,``x``x
``xBy Michael Dobbs<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Saturday, November 11, 2000; Page A26 <br><br>BELGRADE –– On the evening of Oct. 5, Yugoslav democracy activist Milan Stevanovic led a small team of commandos to capture a strategic Belgrade radio station from forces loyal to President Slobodan Milosevic. The following day, with the help of heavily armed reinforcements, the same men took over the state customs service, regarded by many as the financial pillar of the Milosevic government. <br><br><br>The logical next step, Stevanovic recalls thinking, was the arrest of Milosevic himself. This was a man who had been indicted for war crimes by an international tribunal and had just attempted to steal a democratic election. Stevanovic says he spent much of Oct. 6 waiting for the order. The decision rested with a crisis committee of opposition leaders that was effectively running the country.<br><br><br>The order never came.<br><br><br>"It was a big mistake," says Stevanovic, a Belgrade marketing executive responsible for shaping the anti-Milosevic propaganda message during the late summer election campaign. "The population voted for a change of system, not just a change of government."<br><br><br>Yugoslavia's newly elected president, Vojislav Kostunica, strongly disagrees. The Serbian people, he says, are tired of "radical" solutions to the country's problems. They crave peace and stability and democratic gradualism. He acknowledges he has been labeled a procrastinator, but insists that time will prove him right. "One should have patience," he says.<br><br><br>A month after the street uprising that forced Milosevic to recognize his Sept. 24 election defeat, Yugoslavia's democratic revolution is in a state of limbo and self-questioning. There are those who would like to push forward much faster, revealing the "crimes" of the Milosevic era immediately for all to see. And there are those--led by Kostunica--who reject the whole idea of revolutionary upheaval.<br><br><br>In the meantime, groups in the ruling coalition have formed informal alliances with rival wings of the police and armed forces, some of which were implicated in war crimes during Yugoslavia's decade of ethnic conflict.<br><br><br>The result is a confused political situation in which power is effectively shared among Kostunica, his frequently squabbling coalition allies and erstwhile Milosevic supporters.<br><br><br>And there are plenty of that last group. The commander of the Yugoslav army is a former Milosevic associate, as are the newly appointed Yugoslav prime minister, the president of Serbia and the head of the Serbian secret police. (The republics of Serbia and Montenegro are all that is left of the rump Yugoslav federation, following the secession in the early 1990s of Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia and Macedonia.)<br><br><br>The next step in this multistage revolution is set for Dec. 23, when parliamentary elections are scheduled in Serbia. The political parties, all 18 of them, that backed Kostunica for Yugoslav president say they will campaign in the Serbian election as a united coalition under the banner of DOS, which stands for Democratic Opposition of Serbia. But few expect DOS to survive intact for very long after the election.<br><br><br>"We disagree on everything with the exception of two key points," said a DOS strategist, who asked to remain anonymous. "One, Milosevic had to go. And two, in order to fully rid ourselves of Milosevic and his remaining supporters, DOS has to stay together, at least through the Serbian elections."<br><br><br>The ideological spectrum within DOS ranges from the conservative Serbian nationalism of Kostunica to the liberal, pro-Western views of the party headed by Zoran Djindjic. Djindjic's party has the strongest organizational base, with hundreds of branches around the country.<br><br><br>But Kostunica is way ahead of Djindjic in the opinion polls, with a current approval rating of more than 80 percent. During the Yugoslav presidential campaign in September, Djindjic recognized that Kostunica had the best chance of defeating Milosevic and agreed to serve as the DOS campaign manager. But tensions between the two men persist.<br><br><br>The strongest disagreements within DOS have concerned the security services, and particularly the Serbian secret police, which continues to be led by a Milosevic appointee, Rade Markovic. Djindjic supporters have accused Markovic of being behind a string of murders and kidnappings, including the April 1999 killing of an independent newspaper publisher, Slavko Curuvija. They allege that the secret police engaged in a wide variety of dirty tricks on behalf of Milosevic, including tapping the phones of political opponents and overseeing a huge smuggling network.<br><br><br>Kostunica has rejected demands from Djindjic and other DOS leaders for Markovic's immediate removal from office. The president explained in an interview that he was afraid of opening "a Pandora's box" and preferred to wait until a new Serbian government had been formed after the Dec. 23 election.<br><br><br>"We need a government that will deal in a very principled way with that problem, and how to control that service," he said. "To do so now [before the election] would be very unsafe."<br><br><br>Some analysts said Kostunica sees Markovic as a political counterweight to pro-Djindjic elements in the security forces. Such people include General Mihajlo Ulemek, commander of the Special Operations Unit, alleged by Western human rights groups to have committed atrocities in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Ulemek himself is better known by his assumed wartime name, Legija, or Legion, which he acquired as a result of service in the French Foreign Legion.<br><br><br>According to several sources, Ulemek approached Djindjic in the days leading up to the Oct. 5 street demonstrations that finally toppled Milosevic. He promised that he would not allow his troops to be used to break up the street protests, and would oppose any move by the army to crush the demonstrations. Djindjic aides now speak admiringly of Ulemek and his Red Berets as people who can still perform a valuable service to the Yugoslav state and need to be "protected" from retaliation by Markovic.<br><br><br>The ability of people like Markovic and Ulemek to survive Milosevic's overthrow and find new patrons in DOS is a bad sign, said Sead Spahovic, a co-minister of justice of Serbia who was nominated by the Serbian Renewal Movement, which refused to join DOS. "Markovic symbolizes the essence of what is left of the Milosevic regime," he said. "As long as people like him are around, we are not going to solve the mysteries of the past few years."<br><br><br>Still, Kostunica and his camp contend that the events of Oct. 5-6 set in motion democratic change that is irreversible. Already, in cities and towns all over Serbia, workers and pro-democracy activists are ousting Milosevic allies from their positions. Truth commissions are being formed to investigate the corruption and skulduggery of the Milosevic years, a process that could end with the arrest and trial of Milosevic himself.<br><br><br>But the pessimistic view is that the old order, even without Milosevic at its head, could adapt itself to the new, and undermine Serbia's new democracy. In an interview last week with the Belgrade weekly Vreme, Djindjic compared the Milosevic government to a hydra-headed monster that has been shattered into dozens of component parts, each of which is capable of functioning autonomously, without direction from above.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post:In Yugoslavia, a Revolution in Limbo``x973934272,97514,``x``x
``xFriday, 10 November, 2000, 16:33 GMT <br><br>The new Yugoslav authorities have accepted an invitation to rejoin the European security organisation, the OSCE, after an absence of eight years. <br>An OSCE official visiting Belgrade said Yugoslavia could become a member by the end of the month, which would mark the latest step in Yugoslavia's rehabilitation by the international community. <br><br>In a separate move, the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia gave a cautious welcome to a statement from Belgrade that it was now willing to co-operate with war crimes investigators. <br><br>But the tribunal emphasised that co-operation had to be complete, including the arrest and handing over of those charged with war crimes. <br><br>President Vojislav Kostunica on Monday handed over a letter to Austrian Foreign Minister and OSCE chairwoman Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who is part of a team visiting Belgrade. <br><br>War crimes suspects <br><br>In it, he acknowledged that Federal Yugoslavia was only one of the successor states to the former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia - a vital condition for membership of the OSCE. <br><br>The other four former Yugoslavia republics - Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Croatia - have been admitted to the OSCE as independent states. <br><br>Mr Kostunica also discussed with Ms Ferrero-Waldner the Yugoslav authorities' decision to allow the war crimes tribunal to open an office in Belgrade. <br>Earlier on Monday, Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic said the Serbs could not avoid facing the consequences of war and the responsibility for crimes. <br><br>But beyond the opening of the tribunal office, he did not spell out the extent of Yugoslavia's co-operation. <br><br>Mr Kostunica reportedly told the Austrian foreign minister that the move did not indicate a shift in position over the fate of former President Slobodan Milosevic, wanted for trial for crimes against humanity. <br><br>So far, the new authorities have indicated that he is unlikely to be handed over, and that war crimes would not be a priority for the fledgling government. <br><br>Back in the UN fold <br><br>Yugoslavia is believed to be sheltering a number of suspects accused of war crimes during the Bosnian conflict. <br><br>In particular, the tribunal wants former Bosnian Serb political and military leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to be handed over. <br>The new Yugoslavian government is still considering putting people on trial in Yugoslavia. <br><br>But the BBC's diplomatic correspondent, Barnaby Mason, says the tribunal, headed by chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, has the prior claim on war crimes and other crimes against humanity. <br><br>He says tribunal officials say Yugoslavia must meet exactly the same conditions as Bosnia or Croatia, which under its new government is handing over suspects and giving full cooperation.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBBC:Belgrade back in fold``x973934336,72243,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Nov 13, 2000 -- (Reuters) Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica said on Sunday there was no need for hasty personnel changes in the security forces, resisting pressure to dismiss former allies of ousted leader Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>"I am sure that it is not the will of people at this moment to destroy institutions such as the army and police," Kostunica said in an interview with the pro-government daily Politika.<br><br>"Nor is the will of the people to replace everybody in the various institutions just because they were members of (Slobodan Milosevic's) Socialist Party of Serbia."<br><br>Kostunica's backers, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), responded with dismay and one source close to the leadership forecast a split with the president, who rode to power in September on a wave of popular support.<br><br>The 18-party DOS is pressing Kostunica to remove the army's chief-of-staff, General Nebojsa Pavkovic, and the head of state security, Rade Markovic, arguing they were close Milosevic allies in the last two years of his repressive rule.<br><br>The DOS and another opposition group, the Serbian Renewal Movement, have said they would boycott Serbia's new transitional government unless Markovic was replaced.<br><br>"Some think the most powerful people in the army and police should not be replaced to avoid the destruction of these institutions," Zarko Korac, a DOS leader, said in a television interview late on Saturday.<br><br>"But I think the opposite. These people will destroy these institutions. People are watching this and wondering what are they (the DOS) doing now?"<br><br>A source close to the DOS leadership told Reuters on Sunday that Kostunica was wrong to try "to decide what people want and what they do not want".<br><br>"This sounds a bit like Milosevic who always used the term people when he wanted to excuse himself for deciding on his own," said the source, who asked not to be named.<br><br>He said a split with Kostunica appeared increasingly likely after parliamentary elections in Serbia on December 23.<br><br>Momcilo Perisic, another DOS leader, tried to play down talk of a split, however. "There is no conflict that could lead to a confrontation on the eve of the elections," Beta news agency quoted him as saying.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica Rules Out Purge Of Yugoslav Army, Police``x974112515,378,``x``x
``xMonday, 13 November, 2000<br><br>By Jacky Rowland in Belgrade<br>A court in Belgrade is due to give its verdict on Monday morning in the case of five men accused of spying for France and of murdering two Kosovo Albanians during the Nato bombing campaign last year.<br><br>Lawyers for the men have called for their release saying that no reliable evidence against them has been presented during the trial.<br><br>But human rights activists in Belgrade say they have the eye-witness testimony from a Kosovar Albanian which proves that three of the defendants are guilty of murder. <br><br>The five men were arrested a year ago and accused of terrorism and spying for the French secret services.<br><br>The former Yugoslav authorities said the men belonged to a shadowy organisation called Spider and that they planned to assassinate former President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Death penalty call<br><br>This last charge did not appear on the indictment. <br><br>The prosecutor appealed for all five to be convicted of espionage and asked for the death penalty for three of them accused of murdering two Kosovo Albanians.<br><br>The Spider affair is a complicated case. <br><br>Human rights activists agree with the defence team that the trial was politically motivated, an attempt by the former regime to blame war crimes in Kosovo on foreign agents rather than Serbian security forces. <br><br>But they have come into conflict with the defence by producing a witness statement from Kosovo which, they say, proves the murder charges against three of the accused. <br><br>The prosecutor has accepted this evidence, a decision which human rights lawyers describe as a breakthrough in a legal system which was, until recently, tightly controlled by the government. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBBC:Belgrade 'Spider five' await verdict``x974112577,97105,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Nov. 12 — The new Yugoslavia has been welcomed back to the world almost uncritically by a United States and a Europe that cannot quite believe their luck. Slobodan Milosevic, the autocrat who stirred such turmoil in the Balkans for so long, is gone. <br><br>But the new Yugoslav and Serbian governments are finding that Mr. Milosevic's rule left enormous holes in their budgets for basic needs like electricity, food and pensions, and a West that never believed Mr. Milosevic would fall so quickly has been caught unprepared, promising quick aid but scrambling to deliver it.<br><br>Elections for a new Serbian Parliament and government — and Serbia is where the real power lies here — are on Dec. 23, and should be the vital moment when the anti-Milosevic coalition, already bickering viciously, is consolidated in power.<br><br>But since Mr. Milosevic was overthrown in early October, the people of Serbia have suffered prolonged electric shortages and power cuts and price rises on basic foods that brought inflation in October alone to 27 percent, after the artificially restricted increases of 2 to 3 percent a month under Mr. Milosevic.<br><br>The weather has been mild but will soon turn cold, putting sharp new strains on energy supplies before the election; the pension system is broke, and there are significant shortages of cooking oil, sugar and medicine.<br><br>Western diplomats and officials recognize the need for speedy support for the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, and his allies in the 18-party coalition still known as DOS, or the Democratic Opposition of Serbia.<br><br>Serbian officials say they need $500 million in energy, food, medicine and pension support to get through the winter — $2 million a day alone for electricity and natural gas. Western help is coming, but slowly, tied up with bureaucratic and political restrictions.<br><br>"Serbia needs assistance right now and a timely supply of the fuel and electricity will consolidate democratic processes in the country," said the Serbian deputy prime minister, Nebojsa Covic.<br><br>Goran Pitic, an opposition economist who has suddenly become the Serbian minister for foreign economic cooperation, said: "People are proud of getting rid of Milosevic and will put up with lots of sacrifice. But already people grumble about why we seem incompetent at providing basic needs."<br><br>Nada Maricic, a pensioner of 78, said she lacked electricity for six hours a day and most of the night. "When we were bombed, we had electricity until the end, and now, not," she said, referring to the 78 days of bombing by NATO last year. "The new ones will learn. I just hope they will learn fast."<br><br>Katarina Bogicic, a student of 18, said, laughing: "It would almost be better to cut off the electricity altogether. It shuts off when I come home and starts up just when I'm ready to leave. It really gets on my nerves." Still, she said, "I'm proud of people."<br><br>"We know if we don't have electricity now, we'll have it next year," she said.<br><br>The Milosevic government used most of its reserves to get through the election of Sept. 24, said Miroljub Labus, the federal deputy prime minister. Now, he said, the opposition must prove its mettle, and it needs help from the West that promised it.<br><br>"Frankly speaking, we have enough in promises, and we're grateful," he said. "But disbursement is another problem — it's a question of timing. The European Union is moving incredibly fast by their standards, but it's not fast enough for us. We're in the middle of an energy crisis, and below that, we have a deep social crisis, with low wages and people very nervous about their future."<br><br>Mr. Pitic said: "We appreciate all help but we need more, especially from the big players. Our message is: cash. We don't have to see that cash, but there are bills to be paid. We're a transitional government before the elections, and our main task is heating, electricity, food and wages. Then we can worry about price stability and economic transformation."<br><br>The European Union, spurred by Christopher Patten, its foreign-policy commissioner, has been pushing its varied countries and officials to get electricity and oil to Yugoslavia as fast as they can.<br><br>"We've been bending every rule to get help here even a day sooner, especially energy, food and medicine," said Michael Graham, the European Union ambassador here. "But with the best will in the world, it's complicated."<br><br>When Mr. Milosevic fell, "money for Serbia wasn't even there," Mr. Graham said. "Three months ago, everyone yawned and said Milosevic would be in power for at least another year."<br><br>Mr. Patten and the European Union wrenched 200 million euros ($165 million) for Serbia out of special reserve funds. Some $66 million will go for energy, and the rest for food, medicine, schools and support for the news media. But even that aid cannot flow until after a European ministerial meeting on Nov. 20.<br><br>The United States is offering a total of $100 million for this year (nearly three times the $35 million given last year), but the first $10 million, to be used urgently to buy electricity, is being held up by Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who wants assurances on American policy toward possible independence for Montenegro.<br><br>Congress has also put conditions about Belgrade's cooperation with the Hague tribunal on war crimes on the use of the aid after March 31. Washington has authorized an extra $20 million in emergency food aid to be distributed by the World Food Program, aimed at pensioners and internally displaced people in Serbia — which now has more refugees from its wars than any other country in Europe — and the Europeans have done the same. The average salary here is now about $40 a month, down from $100 in 1997.<br><br>But most of the American aid will not arrive until next year.<br><br>To get started quickly, the European Union resurrected a program devised last year to help cities then ruled by the anti-Milosevic opposition to get oil. The first shipment arrived at the border of Bosnia and Serbia on Saturday, with 10,000 tons of fuel, worth some $1.5 million, arriving over the next 20 days for those seven cities.<br><br>"It's not enough," Mr. Graham said. "But it takes a strain off the system."<br><br>Serbian officials have been scrambling, with Bulgaria supplying extra electricity in return for promises of money from the United Nations mission in Kosovo, which owes Serbia $19 million for electricity used last year. Even the Serbian republic in Bosnia has been providing extra electricity to Belgrade.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica went to Moscow to get promises of natural gas supplies, vital to heat large parts of Serbia, but the Russians, already owed nearly $300 million, are offering only about a month's supply, and that on credit. Mr. Labus is grateful, given Moscow's own financial problems, but more negotiations are necessary.<br><br>There have also been offers of aid from individual European countries, including Italy (some $50 million), Germany ($25 million), Greece ($7 million for electricity imports) and Norway ($9 million and a loan vital to Belgrade's reentry into the International Monetary Fund).<br><br>The British are offering just $1.75 million over the next two months, half of that for energy. In general, Mr. Labus said, promises of aid total about $455 million, "but timing is everything."<br><br>Still, opinion polls show that Mr. Kostunica and his allies are widely popular, while Mr. Milosevic's Socialists are scrambling to redefine themselves. Despite the economic problems and internal squabbling, the democratic coalition is expected to hold together long enough to win the elections next month and form a government. <br><br>"But then the real problems begin," said Jurij Bajec, a respected economist. "There are 10 years of isolation to fix," with a painful process of economic change and market transition that will inevitably create further unemployment, inflation and political unhappiness.<br><br>"People will vote for DOS, but after a few months they will ask, legitimately, for real improvement in their lives and their wages," Mr. Labus said. "I need to boost economic activity in the spring, and right now I really don't have any instruments to do it."<br><br>Serious aid for reconstruction will not arrive until mid-2001, he said. "But what do I do between February and June?"``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Yugoslavia Is Cheered but Faces Cheerless Times``x974112630,82897,``x``x
``xSunday November 12<br><br>ZURICH (Reuters) - Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will be arrested soon on war crimes charges, the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte was quoted as saying Sunday.<br><br>Swiss newspaper SonntagsBlick quoted Del Ponte, Switzerland's former federal prosecutor, as saying: ``Milosevic will be arrested soon.''<br><br>Commenting on news that Yugoslavia had approved the setting-up of an office by the Dutch-based Tribunal in Belgrade, she said, ``With that, the days of Milosevic and other war criminals are numbered.''<br><br>Del Ponte said she did not want to lose any time in dealing with indicted war crimes suspects, adding she would also tackle crimes against the Serb people. ``We are here for justice and we want to prove we can contribute to peace.''<br><br>Officials at the Tribunal in the Hague have said that they want to give Yugoslavia's new leaders some time before demanding the handover of Milosevic and other suspects.<br><br>Milosevic has been indicted with three aides and a general for crimes against humanity for orchestrating a ``campaign of violence and terror'' against Kosovo Albanians last year.<br><br>Del Ponte has requested a meeting with new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica , but a date has not been agreed so far. Kostunica took office last month. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xTribunal Prosecutor Expects Milosevic Arrest Soon ``x974112775,22341,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Nov 13, 2000 -- (Reuters) Yugoslav leaders and international officials met on Monday in Belgrade to discuss ways to get aid flowing as quickly as possible now the country has embraced democracy.<br><br>The two-day gathering, under the auspices of the European Union's Stability Pact for the Balkans, was the first international conference in the Yugoslav capital following the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic last month.<br><br>Marking another step in Yugoslavia's swift march away from international isolation under Milosevic, the conference attended by hundreds of delegates was to focus on providing local help to city and town councils across Yugoslavia.<br><br>"Humanitarian aid must be concrete. It must have a human face," said new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, pleading for direct help tailored to local municipalities' needs.<br><br>"We are sincerely and truly grateful for the aid we are receiving for the coming winter, but we want to work," he added. "That is why we need investment and export credits in order to revive the economy and get back on our own feet."<br><br>Bodo Hombach, the pact's German co-ordinator, said international officials had carried out a swift survey of municipalities across the country to assess their needs.<br><br>He said the conference was held under in the belief that there was much truth in the old adage "all politics are local".<br><br>"That's the only standard we can accept for politics - is it in a position to improve peoples' real lives?" he said.<br><br>The Stability Pact, set up after the Kosovo war, brings together governments and international organizations and focuses on building and restoring infrastructure in the Balkans.<br><br>Yugoslavia's new Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic appealed to mayors and local council members from around Yugoslavia gathered in a 1970s conference hall not to fall victim to the corruption which became endemic under Milosevic.<br><br>He told them they would have to resist the temptation to abuse aid funds for personal gain.<br><br>"All the states in transition faced this challenge because they didn't want to be Mafioso states," he said. "We must be accountable to all our citizens."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xStability Pact Meets in Yugoslavia to Discuss Aid``x974196314,99565,``x``x
``xPRISTINA, Nov 14, 2000 -- (Reuters) Tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians swamped the center of the Kosovo capital Pristina on Monday in a demonstration to demand the release of friends and relatives in Serbian jails.<br><br>Members of the province's ethnic Albanian majority have been campaigning since the conflict ended for the release of the prisoners detained during last year's Kosovo war.<br><br>The most recent protests have also focused on fears that the Albanian prisoners could be targets for violence in revolts taking place in several Serbian jails over the past two weeks.<br><br>Reporters watching the latest protest in Pristina estimated there could be up to 100,000 people on the streets.<br><br>Demonstrators carried placards saying "There is no freedom without the release of prisoners" and "Freedom doesn't make sense without them". They called on international authorities to do more to secure the prisoners' freedom.<br><br>Kosovo's United Nations-led administration said its head, Frenchman Bernard Kouchner, had been in touch with a number of governments to try to help resolve the issue.<br><br>"We are also regularly in touch with the co-minister of justice in Belgrade as well as with human rights lawyers in Belgrade," spokeswoman Claire Trevena said.<br><br>Prisoners started revolts in three of Serbia's main jails early last week. Serbian officials have said the ethnic Albanian prisoners have been evacuated from the jails or are safe within them.<br><br>According to International Red Cross sources in Pristina, 729 ethnic Albanians are in Serbian prisons and 3,500 are registered as missing.<br><br>Kosovo remains legally part of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia but has been run as a de facto international protectorate since the end of the conflict in June of last year.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xCity Center Swamped In Kosovo Prisoner Protest``x974196378,13470,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Nov 14, 2000 -- (Reuters) The European Union has lifted a visa ban on several former close associates of Slobodan Milosevic including the Yugoslav army's chief of staff and the head of Serbia's secret police.<br><br>The revised list was agreed last week and formally adopted without fanfare by EU development aid ministers, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.<br><br>One diplomat said the list was shortened on the advice of Yugoslavia's new authorities, including President Vojislav Kostunica. But a senior Yugoslav pro-democracy leader expressed surprise at the changes.<br><br>A comparison of the new and old lists of those banned on the web page of the EU's official journal showed army chief General Nebojsa Pavkovic had been removed. So had Rade Markovic, the chief of Serbia's DB secret state security service.<br><br>Pavkovic commanded the army in Kosovo during NATO's bombing campaign last year, when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees fled the province in fear of repression.<br><br>The UN war crimes tribunal has publicly indicted Milosevic and four associates, but not Pavkovic, for atrocities carried out during the bombing.<br><br>Pro-democracy leaders have accused Markovic's secret police of involvement in politically motivated kidnappings and killings under Milosevic. He has denied the charges and a row over his future has hampered the work of Serbia's caretaker government.<br><br>SURPRISE AT LIFTING OF BAN<br><br>The leader of the largest party in the Democratic Opposition of Serbia alliance, which united behind Kostunica as its candidate for president, said he was surprised by the end of the bans and the suggestion that the DOS had approved the changes.<br><br>"This is a misuse and a manipulation because at the last DOS meeting, nobody knew anything about it," Zoran Djindjic told Belgrade's Blic newspaper.<br><br>"This proposal (for the removals) was made by someone with sympathies towards the Milosevic regime. I was most surprised by the removal of Rade Markovic from the list," he said.<br><br>Also removed from the list were former Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, former Serbian Justice Minister Dragoljub Jankovic as well as several senior members of Milosevic's Socialist party.<br><br>An EU source in Brussels said the new list was "shorter by more than 100 names but less than 200". "The main category to be shortened was the military. It was very substantially reduced," he told Reuters.<br><br>The source said further reductions of the visa ban list were expected in future as it was refined with the help of the Kostunica team from the original 600 or so names "which had to be put together quickly with no cooperation from Belgrade".<br><br>Sources at NATO said they expected removing Pavkovic, Markovic and Bulatovic would "probably raise some eyebrows around here".<br><br>Some allies, while anxious to see Kostunica succeed, might wonder what these people had done to merit being granted permission to travel in the EU, one source acknowledged.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xEU Lifts Ban On Former Milosevic Aides``x974283801,35400,``x``x
``xPARIS, Nov 14, 2000 -- (Reuters) Officials from the Group of Seven rich nations and international financial institutions met on Tuesday to review their Balkans policy in the wake of the fall of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>The brief gathering was expected to proffer warm words of encouragement for new President Vojislav Kostunica rather than pledges of fresh aid.<br><br>It was also convened to reassure Yugoslavia's neighbors that a new improved relationship with Belgrade would not deprive them of international funding.<br><br>"There will be a clear statement of support for the region and Yugoslavia," said Jean Lemierre, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), before heading into the half-day meeting.<br><br>A news conference was scheduled for 1:15 p.m. (1215 GMT).<br><br>Besides the EBRD, the World Bank, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and European Union Commission also sent senior delegations to the talks.<br><br>The EU has already promised an emergency package of EUR 200 million (USD 166 million) to help Serbia through the coming winter and provide a breathing space to look at what kind of assistance was needed for the longer term.<br><br>However, delegates arriving for the Paris talks warned that Yugoslavia's massive debt arrears represented a hurdle to releasing desperately needed funds for a country impoverished by a decade of war, sanctions and gross mismanagement.<br><br>Belgrade owes the World Bank alone some USD 1.7 billion and senior officials from the organization said this week that they would not issue new credit lines until they had reached a restructuring agreement with the new Yugoslav authorities.<br><br>"The World Bank never writes off debt," the official said. "Before Yugoslavia renews its membership of the bank, it will have to agree to a plan to clear these arrears," he added.<br><br>EBRD MEMBERSHIP AROUND THE CORNER<br><br>Membership of the EBRD will be an easier matter, because it is a relatively new body and Belgrade does not owe it money.<br><br>Lemierre told reporters on Tuesday that he expected Belgrade to be enrolled by the end of the year, opening the way to the rapid implementation of funding projects.<br><br>One of the earliest programs will be direct assistance to small and medium-sized companies. "That is the way to finance the real economy," said Lemierre, who declined to speculate how much cash would be made available.<br><br>"All we can say is that we won't have problems funding projects," he said.<br><br>Analysts say the Yugoslav economy is in dire straight, with fuel and food reserves exhausted and basic infrastructure in a terrible state of repair following last year's Kosovo conflict.<br><br>The country is in default on virtually all its external debt - estimated at between USD 12-14 billion - while its foreign reserves in October stood at a paltry USD 385 million.<br><br>The Paris meeting was held under the auspices of the so-called High Level Steering Group, which was set up during the Kosovo war to oversee the work of the European Commission and World Bank in coordinating aid to the Balkans.<br><br>Finance officials said international aid donors would meet in Brussels on December 12 to discuss specific Belgrade requests for assistance. "That is when we will get into the nitty-gritty of funding," said one senior executive.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xG7, Financiers Ponder Yugoslavia Assistance``x974283846,99373,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Nov. 15 — For President Vojislav Kostunica of Yugoslavia, trying to manage a difficult transition from the regime of Slobodan Milosevic while respecting legal niceties and holding together his broad coalition, the elections for a new Serbian government next month cannot come soon enough.<br><br>But the rush to build a new democracy cannot be done radically, without building on the foundations of the existing state, Mr. Kostunica said in an interview, rejecting arguments from his allies for a rapid purge of top commanders of the secret police and the army.<br><br>"I'm eager for a systemic transformation in the police, the army, the judiciary and other institutions," Mr. Kostunica said. "But they cannot be transformed without the election of a Parliament and a very serious public debate."<br><br>In particular, he insisted, "it would be irresponsible to start experimenting" with the police, the secret police and the army "when we have no Parliament in Serbia and a strange type of transitional government."<br><br>The Oct. 5 uprising that forced Mr. Milosevic to recognize Mr. Kostunica's election did not by itself change the Serbian government, where real power lies here. But pressure, negotiations and threats caused the Serbian government and Parliament to dissolve, with a provisional government in place and early elections called for Dec. 23.<br><br>After those elections, Mr. Kostunica said, with a newly elected Parliament and government, "then there could be a parliamentary commission that might dismiss all the top functionaries of the secret police or the police generally or the interior ministry, and that's another situation." <br><br>"Now," he said, "it would be quite irresponsible, at the moment when we are controlling things, to start experiments with the police and the secret police." <br><br>Mr. Kostunica (pronounced kosh- TOON-eet-zah), slumped in one of the vast and vastly uncomfortable red velvet armchairs in his office, smiled. "Dec. 23 can't come fast enough," he said.<br><br>While the country is relatively stable, a sharp and all-too-public debate rages within the 18-party coalition, known as the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, or DOS, about the pace of change.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica wants a deliberate process of elections and legality. Much of the coalition, dominated by the Democratic Party leader, Zoran Djindjic, argues for more rapid and visible change now, both to satisfy public anger and to remove from power those most associated with the repressive pillars of Mr. Milosevic's rule: Radomir Markovic, the head of the secret police, and Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, the army chief of staff.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica spoke delicately of "different approaches" within the coalition.<br><br>But an important part of the subtext is that Mr. Kostunica and Mr. Djindjic simply do not trust each another. Mr. Kostunica does not want Mr. Djindjic to control the secret police or its files; Mr. Djindjic thinks Mr. Kostunica is not sufficiently committed to systemic change. Mr. Kostunica has a small party but is hugely popular; Mr. Djindjic has a large party but small electoral support, with high negatives.<br><br>In that sense, they need each other. But it is also obvious that the DOS coalition will split — whether before or after Dec. 23 remains a question. Some around Mr. Kostunica believe he should capitalize on his own popularity to run his own slate of candidates for the Serbian Parliament and let Mr. Djindjic and those who follow him fend for themselves. But most believe that it is symbolically important for coalition to remain together through the elections and form a responsible Serbian government, breaking into two or three factions later, and Mr. Kostunica and Mr. Djindjic have been urged to work more closely together. <br><br>Mr. Kostunica, as federal president, is also trying to preserve the Yugoslav federation, including tiny Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic. President Milo Djukanovic of Montenegro broke with Mr. Milosevic in 1998 and moved toward the West. But with the election of Mr. Kostunica, the West has urged Mr. Djukanovic to forgo independence and work out a new relationship with Belgrade — in part to ensure that a Yugoslavia exists in which Kosovo can be a part, to avoid immediate demands for Kosovo's independence.<br><br>But Mr. Djukanovic, whose position at home has been weakened by Mr. Kostunica's election, now argues that Yugoslavia no longer exists. That infuriates Mr. Kostunica, who is open for negotiating a new relationship or even separation, so long as the process is transparent and capped by referendums in both republics.<br><br>In the interview, Mr. Kostunica noted that Yugoslavia must exist, because it was just readmitted to the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "It seems the whole world sees something Djukanovic does not see," Mr. Kostunica said tartly. "In that semi-autistic view Djukanovic reminds me a little of Milosevic — Milosevic also saw things the world did not see."<br><br>On Thursday, Yugoslavia is expected to reestablish normal diplomatic relations with the United States, Britain, France and Germany, four NATO powers with whom it severed ties during NATO's war on Serbia last year.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica also objected to Mr. Djukanovic's statement that problems between Serbia and Montenegro predated Mr. Milosevic, noting that Mr. Djukanovic and his representatives voted for Mr. Milosevic as federal president as late as 1997.<br><br>In Kosovo, the Serbian province run by the United Nations and patrolled by NATO-led troops, Mr. Kostunica is insisting that security be improved for the Serbs who remain. He and the army are also troubled by Albanian attacks on Serb police on Serbian territory near Kosovo. <br><br>And he wants a better effort made to account for Serbs who are missing in Kosovo. On Tuesday night, for instance, he met with the wife of a Serb doctor, Andrija Tomanovic, who disappeared in Pristina on June 24, 1999, after NATO forces entered Kosovo. And a top aide will soon visit Serbs in Kosovo's jails.<br><br>The distortion of the society did not begin with Mr. Milosevic but with the victory of the Communists 56 years ago, Mr. Kostunica said. <br><br>"The law has to be equal for everyone," he said. "I'd never want something that looks like the revolutionary justice described in Stalin's textbooks."<br><br>He stopped for a moment, then said: "If we think about guilt and responsibility for the last 13 years of Milosevic, what of the responsibility for the last 56 years? There are so many examples of revolutionary leaders who committed very serious crimes but under the revolutionary flag, and they are still alive, and some try to appear now as democrats or liberals."<br><br>Justice must be done, he said, but carefully done. The system corrupted so many people, Mr. Kostunica said, that "many may ask, `Why me, and not someone else?' " ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Case for a Serbian Democracy (Without Purges)``x974377515,8746,``x``x
``xBy Alex Todorovic in Belgrade and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Strasbourg<br><br>FEEDING Yugoslavia's people this winter is a higher priority than punishing war criminals, President Vojislav Kostunica told the European Parliament yesterday. He said: "We'll get to other matters later, but for now our priority is the survival of our people."<br>The new Yugoslav leader side-stepped demands for a commitment to extradite Slobodan Milosevic to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague following his indictment last year. Any prosecution over the ousted president's role in orchestrating mass killings should take place in Serbian courts, he said. "Mr Milosevic is responsible for many things, but he is most responsible before his own people."<br><br>The European Commission said yesterday that emergency aid deliveries to Yugoslavia began on Saturday as part of a £120 million package to boost the transition to democracy. About 20 lorries a day are arriving with food, medicine and heating oil. A commission official said: "We're determined to show that it's not bound up in red tape, that it's being delivered on the ground, so that everybody can see that democracy makes a difference."<br><br>But the message is not getting through in Yugoslavia. Most Serbs fear that their first winter of freedom will be marked by widespread hardship. Political disillusionment is growing, and Milosevic's allies are seeking a comeback in elections due next month.<br><br>Belgraders such as Angelina, a dental technician, are becoming familiar with a lack of electricity and the techniques needed to cope. Many evenings she now heats coffee over a candle. She said: "Prices have sky-rocketed, my salary is the same and I spend hours each day without power."<br><br>Six weeks after the Yugoslav revolution, Angelina, like many Serbs, is dumbfounded that things seem to be going from bad to worse. She said: "I don't understand how we had more electricity while Nato bombed our country than we do now."<br><br>People throughout the country are saying the same. The euphoria following Yugoslavia's revolution has been replaced by frustration over the collapsing infrastructure and the continuing political crisis. Milosevic allies enacted sweeping price liberalisation that has left poor families worse off than ever. The state of the health system is even more dire than that of the electricity grid.<br><br>Gordana Todorovic, an administrator in a Belgrade hospital, said: "We are performing only the most urgent of operations because of a shortage of fundamental supplies such as surgical gloves, surgical thread, gauze and standard medications."<br><br>Some critics allege that the power shortages are being organised by Milosevic cronies in an attempt to influence next month's elections. True or false, the crisis is having an effect on some Serbs. One Belgrade shop worker said: "Everything is going to rot."<br><br>European Union aid cannot arrive soon enough. In addition to the 20 lorries a day, Germany has begun delivering emergency electricity supplies which should alleviate some power cuts, although a sharp drop in temperatures could have dire consequences.<br><br>Yet the faith of many democrats remains undimmed. They are still hoping that the problems will be temporary. Angelina said: "Of course it's a nuisance not to be able to prepare a meal or iron your clothes when you want. But at least I don't have to listen to Milosevic's lies any more on the evening news."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Telegraph:Plea for aid to prop up Yugoslav democracy``x974377888,52083,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Nov 16, 2000 -- (Reuters) The Yugoslav army said on Wednesday the security situation in a tense region of Serbia bordering Kosovo was worsening and the number of ethnic Albanian guerrillas there had tripled.<br><br>Army spokesman Colonel Svetozar Radisic said mortar attacks had intensified and Serb police had suffered casualties.<br><br>"The number of terrorists has tripled in the last month... and that is linked to the policies of Albanian parties after the municipal elections in the province," Radisic told a news conference, without elaborating.<br><br>Western diplomatic sources said there had been an increase in attacks in recent weeks, with mines being laid in local roads, but doubted that Albanian guerrilla numbers had tripled, putting their strength at "a few score".<br><br>A NATO source said the Kosovo peacekeeping force was as active as ever in seeking to prevent material support reaching the guerrillas - who did not appear to have much backing among the local Albanian population.<br><br>Radisic was referring to last month's local polls in Kosovo, a de facto international protectorate after the NATO bombing campaign from March to June 1999.<br><br>Kosovo's first free democratic elections on October 28 were won by the Democratic League of Kosovo of moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, defeating the more radical party of former guerrilla commander Hashim Thaci.<br><br>It was not immediately clear which parties Radisic was referring to at his news conference, nor how this had influenced the situation in the boundary area.<br><br>POLICE TARGETTED BY MINES<br><br>An ethnic Albanian group calling itself the Liberation Army for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB), named after three municipalities in the region, is believed to have been involved in several clashes with Serb police over the last year.<br><br>The area is predominantly populated by ethnic Albanians, who have complained about police harassment and intimidation.<br><br>Last week, a policeman was killed when his car hit an anti-tank mine and two others died in an incident on the same road on October 13.<br><br>The NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo has tried to cut supply lines of the UCPMB, which is based in the village of Dobrosin.<br><br>Radisic said relations between the Yugoslav Third Army and KFOR and UN police in a five km (three mile) security zone along the administrative border were correct.<br><br>"We meet regularly once a week and the cooperation is correct, in a spirit of the military-technical agreement," he said.<br><br>KFOR and the U.N.-led civilian administration took control of Kosovo under the 1999 agreement following NATO's bombing campaign to halt Yugoslavia's repression of ethnic Albanian majority in the province.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav Army Says Kosovo Border Situation Worsening``x974377935,4290,``x``x
``xGillian Sandford in Belgrade<br>Guardian<br>Friday November 17, 2000<br><br>The Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, moved yesterday to restore diplomatic relations with the US, Britain, France and Germany, the countries that spearheaded last year's Nato bombing campaign in Kosovo. <br><br>"There is no harder moment for a government than a break up of diplomatic relations," the prime minister, Zoran Zizic, said. "And there is no better moment than establishing them." <br><br>In Washington, a national security council spokesman, Daniel Cruise, said: "We look forward to the necessary formalities being completed and relations being formally restored in the coming days." <br><br>Reopening ties with Washington is particularly significant because, unlike Britain, France and Germany which re-established limited consular, commercial and cultural functions after the bombing, the US had no diplomatic representation in Belgrade. <br><br>The move comes more than a year after former president Slobodan Milosevic cut ties at the start of Nato's 78-day air offensive, launched after Belgrade's crackdown on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. <br><br>Since Mr Milosevic was forced from power after the September 24 election, Yugoslavia has rejoined the UN - after eight years in the wilderness - and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Mr Kostunica has also attended an EU summit and held talks with several world leaders. <br><br>President Bill Clinton's Balkans envoy, James O'Brien, discussed restoring relations during talks in Belgrade on Wednesday. But Mr O'Brien said substantial US aid would only follow if Yugoslavia cooperated with the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague. <br><br>He confirmed that Congress was ready to approve $100m (£69m) for Serbia and $89m (£62m) for Montenegro. <br><br>Mr Kostunica has balked at efforts to send Mr Milosevic and a handful of his loyalists to stand trial in the Hague, but said they may face prosecution in Yugoslavia. <br><br>Yesterday the Yugoslav foreign minister, Goran Svilanovic, said that his government would allow the tribunal to work in Yugoslavia. He made no mention, however, of any change in Mr Kostunica's position on Mr Milosevic or anyone else wanted by the tribunal. <br><br>Britain is providing £11.5m in aid to support the transition to democracy and is a strong advocate of Belgrade's rapid return to world bodies such as the UN. The British trade minister, Richard Caborn, visited the country last week. <br><br>Since coming to power, Mr Kostunica has moved quickly to end Belgrade's international isolation. He addressed the European parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, clearly stating his wish for Yugoslavia to join the EU. <br><br>Last Tuesday, Belgrade hosted a two-day meeting of the stability pact for south-eastern Europe, which also recently opened its doors to Mr Kostunica's administration. <br><br>The renewal of diplomatic relations comes as US diplomat Richard Holbrooke hosts a conference of Balkan leaders today in Dayton, Ohio, marking the fifth anniversary of the Dayton peace accords which ended the war in Bosnia. <br><br>On the agenda is the next phase of the Dayton agreement, as well as the future status of Kosovo and Montenegro. Nato's secretary general Lord Robertson, Kosovan leaders and Montenego's president, Milo Djukanovic, will attend, but Mr Kostunicais sending his foreign politics adviser, Pavle Jevremovic. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGuardian Unlimited: Kostunica courts Serbia's old foes ``x974457356,16918,``x``x
``xNovember 17, 2000<br>By PETER S. GREEN<br> <br>Just over a month has passed since Yugoslavia's emerging democrats sent President Slobodan Milosevic packing and Western countries began lifting sanctions. Already, foreign investors are sifting through the physical and economic wreckage for investments and markets in Yugoslavia, a country they say should be the engine of Balkan recovery.<br><br>Trade delegations from Greece, Austria and the Czech Republic have visited. American and European companies are considering investing or reviving dormant links, and some that weathered the storm have expansion plans.<br><br>"My client list has doubled since the changes," said Benoit Junod, a former Swiss diplomat in Belgrade whose Geneva-based consulting firm, A&S, is scouting Serbia on behalf of foreign clients, particularly construction concerns.<br><br>In 1989, Yugoslavia was the wealthiest and most open country in the Communist world. Ten years of ethnic hatred, economic mismanagement and war have left its economy devastated and its infrastructure in tatters. But where many citizens see misery, investors see opportunity.<br><br>With eight million people in Yugoslavia, plus or minus two million Kosovars and two million Serbs in the diaspora, it is one of the Balkans' biggest and most important markets. Brand-conscious consumers with a surprising amount of money are thirsting for a better life. Labor is cheap, and the country sits astride the main road, rail and river routes linking Europe and the Balkans.<br><br>The economic reformers behind Yugoslavia's new president, Vojislav Kostunica, say speedy privatization is a high priority. Crucial assets for sale include the huge tobacco factory in Nis; electric, oil and gas companies; cement factories; and the government's 51 percent stake in Telekom Srbija.<br><br>The possibilities have piqued interest. An Austrian construction company, Bau Holding Strabag A.G., is exploring the loans and grants promised to Serbia for rebuilding by the European Union and others. "We are looking at projects like reconstruction of bridges over the Danube, highways, etc.," said Bau's chairman, Roland Jurecka.<br><br>Svetozar Janevski, managing director of the Pivara Skopje brewery in Macedonia, said he hoped to recapture Serbian markets lost when Macedonia seceded from Yugoslavia in 1992. "We have to think that Serbia is a market of 10 million people, and we can't cover that with one brewery in Skopje," Macedonia's capital, he said. Pivara Skopje, 51-percent- owned by a joint venture of the Dutch brewer Heineken N.V. and the Greek Coca-Cola bottler, the Hellenic Bottling Company, will be looking at some of the 10 major breweries in Serbia and at mineral water bottlers.<br><br>The Austrian bank Raiffeisen Zentralbank Group, a leading lender across the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, is moving to set up in Yugoslavia. "We have already made contacts with several Yugoslav banks to become their correspondent partner, and the second step would be to open our own operation," said a spokesman, Andreas Ecker. <br><br>Experts say the key is whether the government that emerges from the December elections can push significant reforms through the regional parliaments in Serbia and Montenegro and whether the governments can hold together through the pain of reforms. Serbia makes up 95 percent of Yugoslavia's population; Montenegro, its tiny sister republic, constitutes the rest.<br><br>Statistics show that average incomes are under $50 a month and unemployment is over 50 percent, and the economy is shrinking at over 7 percent a year. But that is not the full story, said Srdjan Bogosavljevic, director of the Strategic Marketing and Media Research Institute, a privately owned concern in Belgrade. <br><br>"There is no gas, but people are driving cars everywhere," he said. "There are no visas, but people are traveling. There are no salaries, but the restaurants are full."<br><br>Vastly skewed official statistics and a thriving gray economy help explain the apparent paradox. And remittances from Serbs abroad, Mr. Bogosavljevic said, are an estimated $100 million to $150 million a month.<br><br>So with even a small sign of recovery, markets for consumer goods in particular are likely to take off. "The future looks very bright," said Ephram Jeffy, general director of IBP Beograd A.D., the authorized Coca- Cola bottler in Yugoslavia. IBP operated during the Milosevic regime.<br><br>Anti-American sentiment during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia last year did not dent sales, he said; Coke sold 24 million cases of soft drinks in Yugoslavia and he expects to double that in two years.<br><br>"The war has shifted into subconsciousness," said Srdjan Saper, chief executive of the I&F McCann Erickson Group, an advertising agency in Belgrade. Mr. Saper says he is already hiring to meet an expected advertising boom.<br><br>Vladimir Joksic, the deputy general manager of the agency, a unit of the Interpublic Group, added: "One of the huge potentials here is the mindset of Yugoslav consumers. They know how to read advertising, and most of the Western brand goods were already here — they were present on the black market."<br><br>The McDonald's Corporation has 16 restaurants in Yugoslavia. At the height of economic sanctions, it was able to obtain locally some 80 percent of its supplies and keep operating. That loyalty to the local market has built customer loyalty. "A lot of people will be surprised how fast this market will pick up," said Branimir Lalic, vice president for purchasing at McDonald's Central Europe operations, who is looking at sites for new restaurants on Serbia's highways.<br><br>Other businesses are already reaping the benefits of President Kostunica's arrival. ICN Pharmaceuticals of Costa Mesa, Calif., whose chairman, Milan Panic, is a former Yugoslav prime minister and opponent of Mr. Milosevic, won back control of its Belgrade pharmaceuticals factory, which had been confiscated by the Milosevic government. The company sees the Belgrade plant as crucial to winning export markets in the Caucasus and Turkey.<br><br>Yugoslavia's open past should help it avoid the slow learning curve that has dragged down development in other former Communist nations.<br><br>"We are at the center of the Balkans here, and have many people who for 20 or 30 years have been doing business with the West," said Dusan Mitevic, general manager of ICN Yugoslavia. "If the government assures stability, this country has the resources and the people, so it can very quickly rejoin the world."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:In Yugoslav Misery, Investors Knock``x974457401,36626,``x``x
``xThursday November 16 4:14 PM ET<br>By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer <br><br>WASHINGTON (AP) - After an exchange of diplomatic letters, the United States and Yugoslavia will re-establish a relationship that soured in the conflict over Kosovo: They will reopen their embassies in each other's capital within the next few days.<br><br>In an interview Thursday with state radio in Belgrade, President Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites) said Yugoslavia was ``returning to the world swiftly, its head high up, and with dignity.''<br><br>He also said his government would focus its relations mostly on Europe and Russia, while also forging ties with ``the most powerful country in the world - the United States,'' and others.<br><br>Earlier, the Yugoslav government announced it was ready to restore diplomatic relations with Germany, France and Britain as well.<br><br>Still, more than a hint of discord remains. Kostunica has refused to send Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) and a handful of the former president's loyalists to The Hague, Netherlands, for trial on war crimes charges.<br><br>Kostunica has said they should face justice in Yugoslavia. But Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic on Thursday said visas would be issued to tribunal personnel to reopen an office in Belgrade.<br><br>``I'm not aware that the new government has fully moved ahead on a number of matters,'' a State Department spokesman, Philip Reeker, said while welcoming Belgrade's invitation to renew ties that Milosevic suspended under bombardment by NATO (news - web sites) warplanes last year.<br><br>The assault, led by the United States, forced Milosevic to withdraw Serb troops and special police from Kosovo, where they had been accused of repression of secession-minded ethnic Albanians, who comprise a majority in the province.<br><br>Kosovo's links to Serbia are based on strong cultural and religious ties.<br><br>``We hope to restore the strong ties that have historically characterized the relations between our two countries and peoples,'' Reeker said. ``We expect to complete the procedures for doing so within the next few days,'' he said.<br><br>The Yugoslav embassy in Washington and the U.S. embassy in Belgrade will be open for consular services and staffs will be hired. Also, Reeker said, the United States was reviewing restrictions on travel here by former Yugoslav officials.<br><br>The U.S. ambassador, William Montgomery, will exchange presidential letters and diplomatic notes with the Yugoslav foreign ministry in the next few days. And then, Montgomery said in Belgrade, the U.S. embassy would be ``up and running.''<br><br>Relations with Milosevic were virtually nonexistent toward the end of his 13-year rule. The Clinton administration did not disguise its hope that Kostunica would take the presidency from him in an election in September.<br><br>A legal scholar, the new president questions the independence of the war crimes tribunal, which has indicted Milosevic and other senior Serbian military and political officials.<br><br>The United States and its allies, meanwhile, have made no effort to arrest them.<br><br>The Clinton administration has promised a rapid expansion of U.S. aid to Yugoslavia along with other actions to help the new government prosper and regain respect for the country in the world community.<br><br>Yugoslavia's prime minister, Zoran Zizic, told reporters in Belgrade that his country sought to renew ties with the United States, Britain, France and Germany to end its isolation.<br><br>``There is no harder moment for a government than a breakup of diplomatic relations,'' Zizic said. ``And there is no better moment than establishing them.''<br><br>Britain and France also welcomed the move.<br><br>Since Milosevic's ouster, Yugoslavia has rejoined the United Nations (news - web sites) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation (news - web sites) in Europe.<br><br>Kostunica also has attended a European Union (news - web sites) summit and held talks with several world leaders. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.S., Yugoslavia Re-Establish Ties ``x974457435,24706,``x``x
``xThursday November 16 3:52 PM ET<br>By Gordana Kukic<br><br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - Several hundred relatives of Serbs missing in Kosovo marched in Belgrade Thursday calling for help in tracing sons, father and brothers they fear have been kidnapped or detained.<br><br>They blocked a street in front of the Serbian parliament demanding the release of Serbs they said had been abducted or arrested in Kosovo, a de facto international protectorate after last year's NATO (news - web sites) air-campaign on Yugoslavia.<br><br>The protesters, carrying pictures of missing sons, fathers and husbands, had banners reading ``Where are our children?'' and ''Return for everybody.'' They demanded equal treatment for ethnic Albanians imprisoned in Serbia and Serbs detained in Kosovo.<br><br>``I expect the international community to put pressure on Albanians to tell us where are the Serb fathers, sons and children,'' said Rajko Djinovic, head of the Belgrade-based Association of Families of Kidnapped Persons from Kosovo.<br><br>``We have a list of around 1,300 missing and kidnapped persons. We want to know where they are and whether they are alive,'' he told Reuters.<br><br>Protester Milivoje Todorovski, a doctor who worked in Pristina for 35 years, said his son Aleksandar was kidnapped in June 1999. ``I even asked my Albanian friends to help me. But there is a code of silence on their side,'' he said.<br><br>The demonstration came a day after tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians took to the streets in the Kosovo capital Pristina in the latest in a long line of mass rallies calling for the release of their ethnic kin held in Serbian prisons.<br><br>Serbian Minister Visits Kosovo<br><br>Also Wednesday, a Serbian minister visited Kosovo and promised measures which the United Nations (news - web sites) said could ease the suffering of Kosovo Albanians in Serbian jails and their relatives.<br><br>The visit by Dragan Subasic, the co-minister for justice in Serbia's transitional government, was thought to be the first by a Serbian cabinet member since the end of the war between Serbs and members of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority last year.<br><br>International officials say more than 729 ethnic Albanians are in Serbian prisons and 3,500 are registered as missing. Their fate is one of the most emotive issues in postwar Kosovo.<br><br>Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites) said in an interview Thursday that the chief of his cabinet, Ljiljana Nedeljkovic, the previous day had visited Serbs held in prisons in Pristina and near the town of Urosevac.<br><br>Hundreds of Serbs who fled Kosovo after last year's NATO bombing campaign have returned to the province in recent months, the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday.<br><br>Maki Shinohara, spokeswoman for the Belgrade office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said at least 1,000 Serbs had gone back to Kosovo on their own, mainly from southern and central Serbia.<br><br>``What we're seeing in Kosovo right now is that there are actually people returning,'' she told a news conference. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xRelatives of Missing Kosovo Serbs March in Belgrade ``x974457464,79134,``x``x
``xBy Joshua Kucera<br> BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — U.S. aid to Yugoslavia will start to be tied to specific concerns — such as cooperation with international war crimes prosecutors — after April 1, President Clinton's Balkan envoy, James O'Brien, told reporters yesterday. <br> Congress last week approved $189 million for the country, nearly evenly split between the two republics of Serbia and Montenegro. For the time being, that aid has no strings attached, Mr. O'Brien said.<br> But starting in April, that aid will depend on the cooperation of the new government of President Vojislav Kostunica, he said. That means allowing investigators from the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague to have access in Yugoslavia and assisting in the apprehension of war-crimes suspects.<br> "This is part of a being a normal state in the international community," Mr. O'Brien told a small group of foreign reporters in the United States' temporary offices in a luxury hotel here. The U.S. Embassy has been shuttered since it was vandalized and looted during the NATO bombing raids here last year.<br> Mr. O'Brien arrived in Belgrade on Tuesday and has met with Mr. Kostunica, Prime Minister Zoran Zizic and other top political figures as well as media and independent nongovernmental organizations.<br> "It was a normal and intensive exchange between countries that have got a working relationship," he said.<br> The two countries have not had diplomatic relations since the United States and other NATO countries bombed Serbia to stop Yugoslav army repression of ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo.<br> Mr. Kostunica took power last month after he defeated former President Slobodan Milosevic and massive crowds in Belgrade stormed parliament to force Mr. Milosevic to accept the results.<br> The new government has said it is ready to resume relations with the United States and with France, Germany and Great Britain. Mr. O'Brien said that only technical issues remain to be resolved before that happens, and that once the Yugoslav government acts, it could happen any day.<br> Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic has said the resumption of relations with the United States will happen soon, possibly this month.<br> Almost immediately after Mr. Kostunica came to power, the international community began pressing him to turn Mr. Milosevic over to the international court. Mr. Kostunica argues that his government faces more immediate problems, and that ultimately the former president should be tried in Yugoslavia for his crimes against the country's citizens.<br> Mr. O'Brien said the United States does not object to Mr. Milosevic being tried in Yugoslavia.<br> "Our point is that there are other victims such as Kosovar Albanians," he said. "Those victims also deserve their day in court."<br> In his first month in power, Mr. Kostunica has faced domestic criticism that too many members of the former regime remain in power. Mr. Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer, has emphasized the need for gradual reform, and Mr. O'Brien said the United States respects that.<br> "The international community recognizes that there need to be some compromises in order to consolidate democracy," he said. "But we'll be looking at important figures to make sure they're dedicated to carrying out the democratic will of the people."<br> Mr. O'Brien also downplayed the possibility that a new administration in the United States could change its policy toward the Balkans. Texas Gov. George W. Bush has caused consternation in the region by suggesting that the American involvement in peacekeeping here ought to be scaled back.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Times: Future aid tied to cooperation ``x974457520,8453,``x``x
``xThursday November 16 2:47 PM ET<br>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States, recognizing that Yugoslavia has changed, is reviewing its list of Yugoslavs ineligible for U.S. visas, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said on Thursday.<br><br>The visa ban, imposed in 1998, applied to more than 800 people, many of them closely associated with former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites), who lost elections in September to President Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites).<br><br>The European Union (news - web sites) has a very similar list and last week it lifted the ban on visas for several former Milosevic associates, including the Yugoslav army's chief of staff and the head of Serbia's secret police.<br><br>Reeker said the United States would review both the list of names and the guidelines for giving visas to other former members of the Milosevic government.<br><br>``We are consulting with the European Union and with the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on that process,'' the spokesman added.<br><br>The United States, unlike the European Union, never publicized the list for U.S. domestic legal reasons.<br><br>The visa ban review is part of the rapid rapprochement between Washington and Belgrade in the weeks since popular outrage drove Milosevic out of office in October.<br><br>The Yugoslav government decided on Thursday to renew diplomatic relations with the United States and three other Western countries with which it broke ties during last year's NATO (news - web sites) air war over Kosovo.<br><br>Reeker said restoring relations would come about through an exchange of presidential letters and diplomatic notes. ``This will occur in a meeting between (Yugoslav) Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials and Ambassador (William) Montgomery in the next few days,'' the spokesman added.<br><br>``The actual technical exchange of letters won't probably happen until tomorrow,'' a State Department official said.<br><br>Montgomery, head of the U.S. Office of Yugoslav Affairs, is considered the most likely ambassador.<br><br>Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic said the diplomatic move was in line with the government's priority of speedy re-integration with the world. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xState Department Reviewing List of Banned Yugoslavs ``x974457552,44283,``x``x
``xSteven Erlanger New York Times Service Friday, November 17, 2000 <br><br>BELGRADE For President Vojislav Kostunica of Yugoslavia, who is trying to manage a difficult transition from the regime of Slobodan Milosevic while respecting legal niceties and holding together his broad coalition, the elections for a new Serbian government next month cannot come soon enough.<br>But the rush to build a new democracy cannot be done radically, without building on the foundations of the existing state, Mr. Kostunica said in an interview this week, rejecting arguments from his allies for a rapid purge of top commanders of the secret police and the army.<br>"I'm eager for a systemic transformation in the police, the army, the judiciary and other institutions," Mr. Kostunica said. "But they cannot be transformed without the election of a Parliament and a very serious public debate."<br>In particular, he said, "it would be irresponsible to start experimenting" with the police, the secret police and the army "when we have no Parliament in Serbia and a strange type of transitional government."<br>The Oct. 5 uprising that forced Mr. Milosevic to recognize the election of Mr. Kostunica did not by itself change the Serbian government, where real power lies here. But pressure, negotiations and threats caused the Serbian government and Parliament to dissolve, with a provisional government in place and early elections called for Dec. 23.<br>After those elections, Mr. Kostunica said, with a newly elected Parliament and government, "there could be a parliamentary commission that might dismiss all the top functionaries of the secret police or the police generally or the Interior Ministry, and that's another situation."<br>"Now," he said, "it would be quite irresponsible, at the moment when we are controlling things, to start experiments with the police and the secret police."<br>Mr. Kostunica, slumped in one of the vast and vastly uncomfortable red velvet armchairs in his office, smiled. "Dec. 23 can't come fast enough," he said.<br>While the country is relatively stable, a sharp and all-too-public debate rages within the 18-party coalition, known as the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, about the pace of change.<br>Mr. Kostunica wants a deliberate process of elections and legality.<br>Much of the coalition, dominated by the Democratic Party leader, Zoran Djindjic, argues for more rapid and visible change now, both to satisfy public anger and to remove from power those most associated with the repressive pillars of Mr. Milosevic's rule: Radomir Markovic, the head of the secret police, and General Nebojsa Pavkovic, the army chief of staff.<br>Mr. Kostunica spoke delicately of "different approaches" within the coalition.<br>But an important part of the subtext is that Mr. Kostunica and Mr. Djindjic do not trust each another. Mr. Kostunica does not want Mr. Djindjic to control the secret police or its files; Mr. Djindjic thinks Mr. Kostunica is not sufficiently committed to systemic change. Mr. Kostunica has a small party but is hugely popular; Mr. Djindjic has a large party but small electoral support.<br>In that sense, they need each other. But it is also obvious that the coalition will split - whether before or after Dec. 23 remains a question.Most analysts believe that it is symbolically important for the coalition to remain together through the elections and form a responsible Serbian government, breaking into two or three factions later.<br>Mr. Kostunica, as federal president, is also trying to preserve the Yugoslav Federation, including tiny Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic.<br>President Milo Djukanovic of Montenegro broke with Mr. Milosevic in 1998 and moved toward the West. But with the election of Mr. Kostunica, the West has urged Mr. Djukanovic to forgo independence and work out a new relationship with Belgrade - in part to ensure that a Yugoslavia exists in which Kosovo can be a part, to avoid immediate demands for Kosovo's independence.<br>But Mr. Djukanovic, whose position at home has been weakened by the election of Mr. Kostunica, now argues that Yugoslavia no longer exists. That infuriates Mr. Kostunica, who is open for negotiating a new relationship or even separation, so long as the process is transparent and capped by referendums in both republics.<br>Mr. Kostunica noted that Yugoslavia must exist, because it was just readmitted to the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "It seems the whole world sees something Djukanovic does not see," Mr. Kostunica said.<br>The distortion of the society did not begin with Mr. Milosevic but with the victory of the Communists 56 years ago, Mr. Kostunica said.<br>In Kosovo, the Serbian province run by the United Nations and patrolled by NATO-led troops, Mr. Kostunica is insisting that security be improved for the Serbs there. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Herald Tribune:Kostunica, Barring Purges, Aims for Democracy of Laws ``x974542659,74733,``x``x
``xSpecial report: Kosovo <br><br>Nicholas Wood in Pristina <br>Saturday November 18, 2000 <br><br>Police in Kosovo, backed by British and Norwegian peacekeeping troops, say they have broken an international trafficking and prostitution ring by raiding bars, hotels and homes in the town of Kosovo Polje, near the provincial capital Pristina. <br>Officials of the Nato-led peacekeeping force K-For said the operation had revealed the involvement of both Serbs and Albanians in the province's sex slave trade. <br><br>Twelve women, all from the republic of Moldova, were found as the police and troops searched the area. <br><br>The K-For spokesman, Flight Lieutenant Martin Perin, said the trade was centred on Albanian-owned bars in the town. Serbs had been identified as controlling prostitutes in private houses and flats. <br><br>"There has been a considerable amount of cooperation between Albanian and Serb pimps, with women being exchanged between them." <br><br>Teams of royal marine commandos used sledgehammers to smash down the doors of a house and several flats. Sniffer dogs were sent in to search for explosives. <br><br>Most of the women were found in the Black Lady bar, on the ground floor of a block of flats. Red velvet curtains covered what used to be a shop window, and a disco ball lit up the centre of the room. <br><br>Six women were led away by police officers to a waiting van while three men, the bar's owners, were handcuffed and photographed. Nobody tried to resist arrest. One of the men held the womens' passports. <br><br>A Royal Ulster Constabulary officer seconded to the UN said the women were nearly all there against their will. <br><br>"Some may be victims of trafficking, others women who got into prostitution but were held against their will. They don't have freedom of movement and they are not being paid," he said. <br><br>He said the raids had been made with the support of residents. "The local community are fed up with pimping and prostitution going on in their backyards." <br><br>Elsewhere, police officers said they found drugs and syringes. Seven people were arrested and four pistols were seized. A police spokesman said several of the suspects were believed to be former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. <br><br>A senior former KLA commander, Sabit Geci, was detained in Pristina last month, accused of threatening to kill the owner of strip bar. <br><br>The sex slave trade has boomed since the UN took control of Kosovo 17 months ago. The women are smuggled into the province from Serbia and Macedonia, and sold for as little as £350. <br><br>Many are tricked into leaving their homes, mainly in eastern Europe, by the promise of work in the west. <br><br>The arrests follow the creation of 22-strong trafficking and prostitution unit. The UN's police spokesman, Derek Chapelle, said the military's concentration on combating the high murder rate and inter-ethnic violence had left the sex trade to grow largely unhindered. <br><br>"This is the first large-scale effort directed against the problem," he said. "Until now people have felt fairly safe here, there has been a climate of impunity. The message now is that we will direct our resources against any aspect of criminality." <br><br>The 12 women will be given the opportunity to return to Moldova if they were brought to Kosovo against their will. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGuardian:Kosovan sex slave ring is smashed ``x974542698,45119,``x``x
``xUNITED NATIONS, Nov 17, 2000 -- (Reuters) The UN administrator for Kosovo on Thursday called for parliamentary elections in the Yugoslav province within months but said he did not have the means to organize voting for Serbia's December election.<br><br>Bernard Kouchner, supported by U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, suggested to the UN Security Council that parliamentary elections in Kosovo be held "early next year, possibly in the spring."<br><br>In his briefing to the council, Kouchner said parliamentary elections were "even more pressing now" following the municipal poll organized by his UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) on October 28.<br><br>"We now have to accelerate the process of defining substantial autonomy and develop institutions of self-government, with the Kosovars sharing more and more responsibility in the administration of Kosovo," Kouchner said.<br><br>At the same time, however, he said that he could "in no case" organize elections in Kosovo on Dec. 23 for Serbia's parliament. But after harsh criticism from Russia, he left the door open to do see what he could do.<br><br>"I would like to affirm today before you that the UN Mission in Kosovo can in no case organize such elections ... for technical reasons," Kouchner said in his opening remarks.<br><br>He said this would involve more NATO troops and monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), many of whom had left the country. He also said there were no electoral lists for Serbs living in Kosovo. And he said he had received no formal request from Belgrade.<br><br>In later comments to the 15-member council, Kouchner, however said: "I shall provide all the support that I am capable of. We shall see to it that these arrangements are brought about."<br><br>Both elections go to the heart of Kosovo's future status, as an independent, mainly ethnic Albanian state, as a Yugoslav province with substantial autonomy or as a province of Serbia, without the right to secede.<br><br>An ambiguous Security Council resolution 1244 adopted in June 1999 suspended Serbia's right to government in Kosovo but upheld Yugoslavia's sovereignty over the territory.<br><br>The resolution, which put Kosovo under UN control, followed an 11-week NATO bombing campaign that forced the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops and police who had been oppressing the Albanian inhabitants.<br><br>Since then, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has been ousted from office, replaced by the new Belgrade government headed by Vojislav Kostunica.<br><br>Holbrooke, in endorsing all of Kouchner's positions, said many observers, including some from the OSCE, wanted to postpone the Kosovo parliamentary elections for a year.<br><br>"I think the idea you need a year to prepare them is ridiculous. The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be to conduct them and the more likelihood that they will turn on the wrong set of issues," Holbrooke said.<br><br>On the Serbian elections, Holbrooke said that he agreed that UNMIK, and by extension the NATO-led force stationed in Kosovo, could not supervise the vote. He said NATO commanders had told him they would need "a significant number of additional combat battalions" which were not available."<br><br>But Russia's envoy, Gennady Gatilov, said Kosovo's Serbs could not be excluded from voting in Yugoslav elections and wondered why "some elections can be held and others cannot."<br><br>He also called for lifting of the UN arms embargo against Yugoslavia, the last sanctions in place, against Belgrade after the Balkan wars of the 1990s. "This would demonstrate confidence in the new leadership of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," Gatilov told the council.<br><br>Gatilov said Kosovo, where Albanians now persecuted the Serb minority, was not well placed for any elections and that the October municipal vote was dominated by illegal demands for independence.<br><br>In response Kouchner said: "Sometimes I get the impression you are more royalist than the king."<br><br>Both Russia and Yugoslavia's representative, Vladislav Mladenovic, said it was time for a limited contingent of Belgrade's army to return to Kosovo as provided in the 1999 council resolution.<br><br>But Kouchner said such a move was far too premature. "How can you think that would be possible only one and a half years after the war?<br><br>Mladenovic pledged his government would work toward "achieving substantial autonomy" for Kosovo through peaceful means. Any other solution he said was "fraught with unforeseeable consequences" for the region as a whole.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUN Official Calls For Kosovo Parliamentary Vote``x974542729,71740,``x``x
``xYugoslavia: Otpor, a key group in ousting Slobodan Milosevic, warns that it is not letting down its guard. <br><br>By DAVID HOLLEY, Times Staff Writer<br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia--The television commercial shows a black-jacketed hoodlum making deals in a rundown warehouse with a politician wearing a suit and tie. Suddenly, they are surprised by an approaching bulldozer. <br> The camera zooms in on a stubble-bearded man somberly staring at the corrupt pair from the driver's seat, and a message from the student-led resistance movement Otpor flashes on the screen: "Just Watching You." <br> The advertisement has been airing as a warning to remnants of the old regime and to the new Yugoslav authorities that Otpor, which played a key role last month in toppling Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, is not letting down its guard. <br> The bulldozer has become a symbol here of people's power, a reminder of how such a machine was used Oct. 5 to break down the front door of the state television offices and enable protesters to take over that bastion of power. The middle-aged driver, Ljubivoje Djokic, better known as "Joe," plays himself in the commercial. <br> Otpor, which uses a raised fist in its logo, wants to keep the pressure on corrupt holdovers from the past, discourage newly empowered politicians from making unseemly compromises with pro-Milosevic forces and warn the erstwhile opposition leaders now in power not to be corrupted by their new status. <br> The student group is trying to document cases of corruption and abuse of power that occurred during the Milosevic years, change the way Yugoslavs and their politicians view the work of government, and promote honest elections ahead of Dec. 23 voting for a new parliament in Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia. <br> "I'm not saying the new government is bad. But we don't know that it's good," said Dejan Randjic, a 27-year-old university student and key figure in organizing Otpor's media campaign. "We want to put pressure on the [pro-Milosevic] Socialists on one side: 'You will go to jail--why not?--for some bad things.' " <br> To former opposition figures now in power, he said, Otpor's message is: "You have to be different, or you will not be in the government anymore." <br> The people of Yugoslavia "really should get it into their heads that once you give someone power, they have a tendency to misuse it," explained Miljana Jovanovic, a 26-year-old student and another key leader of Otpor. "Professional politicians shouldn't feel they are like God. There is a very big force liberated now: ordinary people." <br><br> An Implicit Threat <br> Otpor has plastered Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, with billboards and posters showing the "Just Watching You" slogan and images of the bulldozer, with its implicit threat of street demonstrations. <br> The posters declare: "In our Serbia there are 5,675 registered bulldozers and a couple million potential drivers. Watch what you're doing!" Below that, playing on the meaning of Otpor as resistance, is the slogan, "The People Are the Resistance." <br> "Our aim was that everyone [in government] can recognize themselves as the target of the bulldozer," Randjic said. <br> Started two years ago by young people frustrated with the inability of traditional opposition parties to unite and oust Milosevic, Otpor claims about 50,000 activists and broad support among the Serbian people. <br> For some Otpor members, Milosevic is an example of what people need to worry about. When he came to power, a large majority of Serbs "thought he was a saint, and it turned out he was the devil himself," said Vesna Petkovic, 24, a student. "So you always have to be careful about power politics. <br> "Most of the [opposition] parties had some problems in the past involving corruption," she added. <br> Otpor has launched a team of 30 volunteer lawyers to investigate corruption. It has dubbed the effort "Service for the Extortion of Truth," a play on the idea that gangsters and corrupt politicians may demand money but these attorneys are simply demanding the truth. <br> For two hours every evening, the lawyers gather material from citizens who report evidence of corruption to Otpor's headquarters. <br> "We're investigating all sorts of frauds and abuse, helping out our legal system in dealing with this situation," said Dragan Palibrk, a 30-year-old attorney with the project. "We as a team of lawyers decided to do it because for 10 years it was virtually impossible to come by that data. We think now is a good time; the conditions exist for us to do this." <br> The service takes as a model the Chicago law officers who went after gangster Al Capone. "We want to create some kind of 'Untouchables,' " Randjic said. <br> Nenad Konstantinovic, 27, one of the founders of Otpor and a lawyer involved in the corruption investigations, said the long-term goal is "to establish a system of responsibility in this society." <br> "We are trying to find who are the individuals who did crimes in the past 10 years, corruption especially, and abuse of power," he said. "From that we will file criminal complaints, and after that, the public prosecutor will start the process. After that, we will try to be the monitor of those services and press them to do their job." <br> The project has collected important evidence on corruption at several major state-owned companies, said Otpor leader Jovanovic. <br> Jovanovic stressed that corruption was not limited to pro-Milosevic authorities. Many city governments controlled by the opposition during the past few years also were involved in corruption, she said. <br> New Belgrade Mayor Milan Protic, viewed by many Otpor activists as among the cleanest of the former opposition politicians, said that since taking over City Hall from another faction opposed to Milosevic, "we have found that over 750 apartments were given away to people" who were friends or relatives of city officials. The city also owns about 25 luxury cars, he said. <br> "I believe those young people have the right to send a warning," Protic said about Otpor. <br><br> Some Not Thrilled <br> Zoran Djindjic, president of the Democratic Party and another key figure in the new power structure, was less enthusiastic when asked about Otpor's new campaign. <br> "Nobody is in a privileged position to observe the other one," said Djindjic, a longtime pro-democracy leader who is viewed as suspect by some partly because of his preference for high-quality suits. <br> Konstantinovic, the lawyer, said it is important for the new democratic authorities to face criticism from other democratic groups such as Otpor, not just from the Socialist remnants of the old regime. <br> Otherwise, he said, if the new government falters, voters could turn to the Socialists again as they did in the 1990s with ex-Communists in many former Soviet Bloc countries after center-right governments imposed painful economic reforms. This way, angry citizens can turn to another democratic force, he noted. <br> Ironically, Otpor has been accused of corruption by some--mainly supporters of Milosevic before the Sept. 24 election that led to his ouster by new President Vojislav Kostunica. These critics put up posters showing the Otpor fist, but full of dollars, with the slogan: "It's Finished--With Treason." One of Otpor's key election slogans had been "He's Finished." <br> Otpor does not deny receiving foreign financial support but argues that taking the aid was a patriotic rather than anti-Serbian act. <br> "I never felt like a traitor or a foreign mercenary because whatever amount we got from outside or foreigners, we always used it the way we thought we should," Jovanovic said. "We always kept the Serbian national interest in mind." <br> Such outside support helped Otpor surreptitiously print about 60 tons of posters and leaflets in the months before the election, Jovanovic said. <br> In the run-up to the September vote, Otpor also ran humorous and effective political ads on municipal television stations controlled by the opposition. One showed a housewife holding a T-shirt with an image of Milosevic on it and declaring: "For the last 10 years, I've been trying to get rid of this stain. I've tried everything." But now there is a way, she says, gesturing to a washing machine that stood for the election. She pops in the T-shirt and, sure enough, Milosevic is washed away. <br> The more recent bulldozer ad will be followed by another ad in December targeted mainly at the Serbian Electoral Commission. After the September balloting, the panel's federal counterpart initially denied that Kostunica had won an outright victory and ordered a new election, which could have prolonged Milosevic's rule. <br> "In the next clip," Randjic said, "this bulldozer driver 'Joe' will be checking up the machine, being sure there's enough oil and gas--just in case." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLA Times:Student Muckrakers Ready to Bulldoze Corrupt Politicians ``x974716779,33956,``x``x
``xSix weeks after Milosevic's dramatic ouster, Yugoslavia faces rising prices, no power. <br><br>By Alex Todorovic <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA <br><br>As she patiently heats a Turkish jezba over a large candle to make coffee, Jelena Janic voices exasperation with Yugoslavia's first winter of freedom. "When I was watching the parliament building go up in flames, I'm not sure what I expected, but I know it wasn't this," says the unemployed anthropologist. "Prices have skyrocketed, and I've spent hours each day without electricity." <br><br>Six weeks after mass street demonstrations toppled former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in the wake of elections generally considered fraudulent, most citizens are dumbfounded that things seem to be going from bad to worse. The wave of euphoria following Mr. Milosevic's ouster has been replaced by frustration over electricity outages, rising prices, stagnant salaries, and the continuing influence of Milosevic loyalists in key sectors of the economy and political life. His supporters still control the parliament of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, although that's expected to change with elections in late December. <br><br>"This is going to be a very tough winter for us. There's no way around it. It will take months to root out the old guard and the transition will be slow," says Dragan Vucinic, an adviser to the government of new President Vojislav Kostunica. <br><br>Citizens are just learning the full extent of the decay that set in during the former regime - under United Nations sanctions for the past eight years. State and private media are reporting for the first time on the desperate state of the country's health, power, and school systems. The former regime, for instance, borrowed electricity from nearby countries last winter, then squeezed Yugoslavia's electric company this summer to return the borrowed power, while delaying needed repairs and maintenance work. <br><br>"The power grid is literally falling apart. In retrospect, it's fairly obvious why Milosevic scheduled early elections in September. He knew once the temperatures dropped, the electric grid would fail," says Dr. Vucinic. <br><br>One thousand citizens gathered recently in Milosevic's hometown of Pozarevac to demonstrate against power outages. "We don't have power for 12 hours a day, but they keep the lights on at Bambipark all night," says demonstrator Slobodan Perovic, referring to the amusement park owned by Milosevic's son Marko, who is now in exile. <br><br>In addition to a collapsing infrastructure, some Milosevic loyalists appear determined to punish citizens for support of the democratic movement. "Let's see what they do now. Here's your democracy," a former Milosevic coalition partner reportedly quipped as Serbia's parliament passed sweeping price liberalizations that sent food prices skyrocketing. <br><br>The state of the country's health system is even more dire. "We are currently performing only the most urgent of operations due to a shortage of fundamental supplies," says Gordana Todorovic, an administrator in one of Belgrade's largest hospitals. "If they can afford it, patients sometimes bring their own surgical supplies for operations. Without help from charities, we wouldn't be able to feed patients." <br><br>The short-term goal of the new government is to keep social peace during a difficult winter. <br><br>Foreign governments and organizations have pledged billions in long-term aid to Yugoslavia, but emergency aid has been slow to arrive. Late last week, $20 million from Germany put the lights back on in central Belgrade. <br><br>"Emergency aid will be a key issue this winter.... The aid is arriving slowly, and we have yet to see what will happen once temperatures drop," says Vucinic. <br><br>Even though citizens are frustrated by the sudden deterioration in living standards, opinion polls show a majority are optimistic about the country's general direction. "I was determined to leave ... if Milosevic stayed in power," says Janic. "Now I will stay and build my life here. I don't have to listen to their lies on television anymore and that's enough for now."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor:Along with winter, cold reality sets in for Serbs ``x974716840,37533,``x``x
``xMonday November 20 2:01 PM ET<br>By DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press Writer <br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Six weeks after handing over power, Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) is still living comfortably in his posh villa, recuperating from the shock of his ouster from the presidency and plotting a political comeback.<br><br>Socialist Party officials say Milosevic has been encouraged by the new government's inability to curb Yugoslavia's economic slide as well as simmering public discontent with the new pro-democratic leadership and bickering among the forces that ousted him.<br><br>``Milosevic is not giving up politics,'' said Zoran Lilic, who resigned last month from the Socialist Party. ``Milosevic is considering his best possible survival options, and counting on things going downhill'' for the democratic movement that ousted him.<br><br>Milosevic's allies say the former president is devoting much of his time to planning for Saturday's congress of his Socialist Party. Moderates plan to use the session to try to unseat Milosevic as party leader.<br><br>However, Milosevic hopes to retain control.<br><br>``Milosevic is seeing many people,'' said the party's general-secretary, Zoran Andjelkovic. ``Many people communicate with Milosevic personally or over the phone. Milosevic is communicating with the outside world directly. I can assure you that.'' He would not elaborate.<br><br>Several other Socialist Party officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Milosevic has recovered from the shock suffered when crowds rioted in Belgrade after the disputed September election, forcing him to concede defeat to Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites).<br><br>With Kostunica refusing to extradite Milosevic to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the former first couple has shelved plans to flee the country. Instead, Milosevic and his wife, Mirjana Markovic, have been seen strolling hand-in-hand in the garden of the white brick house on Uzicka Street in the capital's Dedinje district, where they moved weeks before he was ousted.<br><br>In some ways, their life is not so different from the final months of his rule, when the president rarely ventured out in public. He and his wife are guarded by a paramilitary force of some 100 loyal, well-armed troops, commanded by his longtime personal bodyguard, police Gen. Senta Milenkovic.<br><br>Their daughter Marija is staying with them, while son Marko, who has been linked to several murky business deals, is believed laying low in Russia after he was turned back from entering China shortly after his father's downfall.<br><br>The Milosevic home is in a complex of renovated villas near what had been his official residence until it was destroyed by NATO (news - web sites) bombs last year. The villa has a spacious living room with white sofas, green marble walls, small bedrooms upstairs and a large grassy garden planted with roses and pine trees.<br><br>When the former first couple do venture out, it is in secret, using small cars with tinted windows, officials say.<br><br>Those who claim to have seen Milosevic recently say the former strongman insists he never lost to Kostunica at the polls, but was forced out in an ``illegal and violent street coup.'' He has convinced himself that he stepped aside to spare the nation from bloodshed.<br><br>His wife, a member of an elite communist political clan, curses army and police generals who refused to use force against demonstrators.<br><br>According to party insiders, the Milosevics are pinning their hopes on the country's deteriorating economy - which critics blame on his disastrous economic policies and nearly a decade of international sanctions.<br><br>He hopes that as Yugoslavs struggle through a winter of power outages, no heat and soaring prices, they will again take to the streets - this time against the new leadership. In the meantime, Milosevic expects the 18 parties that form Kostunica's Democratic Opposition of Serbia will break apart because of internal bickering.<br><br>That may not be so far-fetched.<br><br>There are signs that the Kostunica coalition may unravel after the Dec. 23 elections in Yugoslavia's main republic, Serbia, because of increasingly public infighting between its leaders over numerous economic, political and other issues.<br><br>Among those issues is Kostunica's refusal to arrest Milosevic or to replace secret police chief Rade Markovic and army commander Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic. Kostunica said he considers U.N. tribunal anti-Serb. He insists firing Markovic and Pavkovic would threaten internal security.<br><br>Markovic, who is no relation to Milosevic's wife, commands the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit, Milosevic's crack troops in the Balkan wars. Pavkovic, despite his declaration of loyalty to Kostunica, is considered by some opposition leaders as unreliable since he had been among Milosevic's strongest supporters.<br><br>``Without Milosevic's arrest and the removal of Markovic and Pavkovic, we are faced with an unfinished revolution and a real danger of the former dictator's comeback,'' said Velja Ilic, a Kostunica ally. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic Plots Political Comeback ``x974801050,55703,``x``x
``xWIRE:11/20/2000 19:17:00 ET<br> BELGRADE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic stepped boldly back into the spotlight on Monday after more than a month of seclusion, appealing for party unity in his first television appearance since being forced to quit as Yugoslav president. The longtime Serb leader, blamed by the West for a major role in four Balkan wars over the past decade, was shown on Yu-Info state television making a forceful speech to officials in his Socialist party ahead of a congress due on Saturday. "It is the utmost necessity that this congress is a congress of unity," Milosevic, appearing confidant and defiant, told the gathering at an unspecified location. The report on Yu-Info, a station widely regarded as having close links to Milosevic"s entourage, also said the meeting had shown great support for the former president to be re-elected as leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia at the congress. Milosevic has had no public profile since October 6, when he appeared on television to admit defeat to reformer Vojislav Kostunica in presidential elections after a mass uprising. He made no public or television appearances, although he was reported to have attended several Socialist party meetings. He is believed to be living behind the well-guarded walls of a presidential villa in the exclusive Belgrade suburb of Dedinje. Western governments have insisted there can be no political role for Milosevic, indicted by a U.N. court on Kosovo war crimes charges, in a democratic Yugoslavia and his opponents at home have stated he is getting weaker by the day. But Monday evening"s television appearance suggested Milosevic had no plans to bow out. MILOSEVIC ACCUSES OPPONENTS The ex-president, wearing a dark suit jacket, light-colored shirt and red tie, mounted a strong attack on his opponents. "There were scenarios to overthrow the state, to destroy the economy, to destroy our party, because our party is the only guarantee for the defense of the people"s state and national interests," Milosevic said. He accused the party"s opponents of attempting to engineer a crisis in Socialist ranks. "All our opponents are trying with all their might to make this congress the congress of arguments, disintegration and disorientation," he fumed. Stunned by Milosevic"s defeat and the party"s drubbing at the hands of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia alliance backing Kostunica, the Socialists have been plunged into turmoil. Several leading figures have left the party. But Milosevic insisted the party could do well in parliamentary elections in Serbia, Yugoslavia"s dominant republic, scheduled for December 23. "If the congress is a congress of unity and transmits that message to the public as well, the consequences in the elections on the 23rd will be positive," he said. Some Socialists hope to benefit from discontent as Yugoslavia makes the difficult transition from a state-run economy to a market system under Kostunica and his allies. Opinion polls, however, have so far given little cause to back up this theory. Some polls have shown the Socialists, successors to the all-powerful Communists who ran Yugoslavia for decades after World War Two, with percentage support barely in double figures. Milosevic was flanked at the meeting by Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, who has also been indicted on Kosovo war crimes charges by the U.N. tribunal, and party general secretary Zoran Andjelkovic, a former governor of Kosovo. Yu-Info said the meeting had taken place on Monday in Belgrade but gave no further details of the time or location.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News:Milosevic Steps Boldly Back Into TV Spotlight``x974801141,95067,``x``x
``xWIRE:11/20/2000 18:08:00 ET<br><br> WASHINGTON, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright hopes to meet new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica for the first time at a security conference in Austria, her spokesman said on Monday. "The secretary would like to meet President Kostunica if it could be worked out during their very limited time in Vienna," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. Albright is expected to arrive in Vienna on Sunday for bilateral meetings before attending a plenary session of the foreign ministers of the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that begins on Monday. Austria, which is chairing the OSCE, has also invited Kostunica for bilateral meetings, to mark Belgrade"s readmission to Europe"s top human rights and security body. The readmission was approved 10 days ago. For Albright, meeting Kostunica would draw a line under the campaign to oust his predecessor, Slobodan Milosevic, whose dramatic exit by popular revolt last month she described as the most important moment in her nearly four years in office. Yugoslavia and the United States last week resumed the diplomatic ties that Belgrade broke off last year in response to a 78-day NATO bombing campaign. President Bill Clinton had already ended a fuel embargo and flight ban on the Balkan country and promised to review crucial U.S. support for funds from international lending bodies. Albright was arguably the strongest proponent of the bombings, undertaken to get Milosevic to stop his campaign against ethnic Albanians in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, now a de facto international protectorate. DERIDED AS "MADAME WAR" She became a hate figure in the region, was dubbed "Madame War" by communists in Russia and faced accusations at home of not giving diplomacy enough time to work. "It was called Madeleine"s war, and they made a lot of fun of me," she told a Women"s Foreign Policy Group luncheon earlier on Monday. "But it turned out all right, and I"m very proud of that," she added, reflecting on her proudest moment in four years in the job that she will probably lose when the next president is inaugurated in January. "It"s no secret that I was criticized a lot for that and made to feel inadequate as a civilian woman and was accused of being emotional and that I didn"t understand about what American forces were for," she said. Albright heard of Milosevic"s impending political demise by telephone from Washington while she was flying home from Middle East peace talks in Egypt on Oct. 5. She made no effort to hide her delight on hearing that protesters had stormed the Yugoslav parliament at the start of a revolt that forced Milosevic to accept that he had lost an election. Albright rushed to the back of her plane to tell reporters of the events, comparing them to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Czechoslovak-born daughter of a diplomat who fled first the Nazis and then communist rule, Albright made ending conflict and division in Europe a strong theme of her term in office.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News: Albright hopes to see new Yugoslav chief in Vienna``x974801214,42385,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br>21 November 2000 <br><br>The ousted president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, who lost the support of his people last month, is now being deserted by his party, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). <br><br>Eight of the party's highest- ranking officials resigned from its executive at the weekend. One was Mihailo Markovic, who was preparing the party's annual congress, due to be held on Saturday. <br><br>The SPS congress was hastily convened when Mr Milosevic was forced from power after a popular uprising in October, but now the former president might have to stand alone on the podium. <br><br>In their resignation statements, the officials expressed their "strong disagreement with those who are trying to prevent the transformation of the Socialist party into a modern, European and democratic organisation". That was a clear reference to Mr Milosevic, who is widely believed to be trying to maintain his grip on the party. <br><br>In a further sign that the party is disintegrating, two splinter groups, headed by once-prominent aides of Mr Milosevic, have formed political parties in the past week, called the Serbian Social-Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialist Party. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIndependent: Milosevic deserted by party officials ``x974801256,86360,``x``x
``xZAGREB, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Five Balkan countries, four of them successors of communist Yugoslavia, are hoping a European Union summit in Zagreb on Friday will help them leave behind a decade of political and economic misery. The meeting will bring together for the first time the wealthy 15-member bloc and Europe"s former trouble spots -- Croatia, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Macedonia and Albania. Another former Yugoslav republic, Slovenia, will also attend, although its drive for EU membership is well ahead of the bloc"s Stabilisation and Association (SAA) programme designed especially for the Balkans. Launched by France in July to intensify the isolation of then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, analysts say the summit is intended to impress on the Balkan states that they do have a future in Europe. The opportunities unlocked by last month"s ouster of Milosevic in presidential elections have significantly raised its importance, they say. "In return for a clear commitment to sustained reform, regional cooperation and respect for democratic standards and international obligations, the EU is offering these countries a road to Europe as potential candidates for membership," said an EU statement released on Wednesday. The EU leaders will announce 4.65 billion euros in aid for reforms in the region until 2006, assess each country"s progress, encourage further reforms and urge more regional cooperation via a relaxation of the existing trade regime. Macedonia will sign an SAA agreement with the bloc, while Croatia will start talks on the same subject during the summit. A DECADE OF WAR The Yugoslav federation, set up by the late communist leader Josip Broz Tito and often seen as a buffer zone between the West and the rigid communism of the Soviet bloc, disintegrated in 1991, plunging the region into instability and war. Ethnic Serbs took up arms to fight the independence drive of Croatia in 1991 and of Bosnia a year later, carving out their own territory, ethnically cleansed of Croats and Muslims. The wars in Bosnia and Croatia came to an end with the signing of the Dayton peace treaty by Yugoslav, Croatian and Bosnian leaders in late 1995. By that time, other former communist countries -- most notably Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia, had started implementing democratic and market reforms and already fixed their sights firmly on European Union membership. "The summit proves that the EU does not want to limit its expansion to the existing candidate countries, it will encourage other countries as well," Croatian Foreign Minister Tonino Picula told Reuters in an interview last week. "We are talking about the countries that have been left outside the mainstream of EU"s expansion, due to traumatic historic circumstances," he said. YUGOSLAVIA IN FOCUS Yugoslavia, apparently rid of Milosevic"s brand of nationalism, is expected to join the family of EU aspirants at the summit. Its delegation will be led by President Vojislav Kostunica, who has managed in a short period of time to return his country to most international institutions, from the United Nations to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Yugoslavia"s republic of Serbia was the only Balkan country to wage an open war with the West, during NATO"s three-month bombing campaign last year to force Milosevic out of Kosovo. The campaign halted a Serbian purge of the province, populated mainly by ethnic Albanians. Kosovo was put under U.N. administration but its future status -- like that of Serbia"s pro-Western sister republic Montenegro -- is still unclear. Kosovo will be represented at the summit by its U.N. administrator Bernard Kouchner. Montenegro"s independence-minded President Milo Djukanovic has said he will come only if he is allowed to address the summit as a head of state. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News:Balkans hope for fresh start at EU Zagreb summit``x974891984,52404,``x``x
``xBy Dusan Stojanovic<br>Associated Press<br>Wednesday, November 22, 2000<br><br>BELGRADE, Nov. 21 –– Slobodan Milosevic was declared the only candidate for Socialist Party chief today, underlining the ousted president's desire for a political comeback. <br>The leadership nominated Milosevic as the sole candidate for party president, a position the Socialists will fill Saturday at a special congress, said top party official Zivorad Igic. Many analysts expect he will be reelected.<br>The decision indicates that Milosevic, who was ousted as Yugoslav president in a popular revolt Oct. 5 after refusing to concede electoral defeat, still has a following among some party members, mostly hard-liners.<br>Several of the more moderate Socialist leaders have quit the party in recent days, protesting Milosevic's desire to remain in politics, and disgruntled former Milosevic allies formed two separate left-wing parties this week.<br>On Monday night, Milosevic was shown on television urging resistance to the new government of President Vojislav Kostunica. It was Milosevic's first TV appearance since Oct. 6, when he conceded defeat a day after Kostunica's supporters stormed parliament and other government buildings.<br>The brief report on Yu Info television showed a confident Milosevic, under indictment for war crimes and accused by many of his countrymen of bringing economic and social misery, calling on Socialist Party associates to maintain unity.<br>"There are scenarios to destroy the state, to destroy the economy, to destroy the party because [the Socialist Party] is the only guarantee for the defense of the national interests," Milosevic said, waving an index finger.<br>Party officials said the former president has been encouraged by the new government's inability to curb Yugoslavia's economic slide and by bickering among the forces that ousted him.<br>According to sources within the party, a document prepared and approved by Milosevic for the congress says the Socialists have a "big chance" of a comeback in the Dec. 23 parliamentary elections in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia.<br>Allies of the new government said Milosevic's public reappearance indicates the former Yugoslav autocrat is trying to escape responsibility for all he has done to the state and its people by finding shelter within his party.<br>Milosevic and his wife, Mirjana Markovic, are guarded in their upscale Belgrade villa by a paramilitary force of about 100 loyal, well-armed troops, commanded by his longtime personal bodyguard, police Gen. Senta Milenkovic.<br>Milosevic is said to hope that as Yugoslavs struggle through a winter of power outages, no heat and soaring prices, they will again take to the streets, this time against the new leadership. In the meantime, Milosevic expects that Kostunica's Democratic Opposition of Serbia, composed of 18 parties, will break apart because of internal bickering.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post:Milosevic Looks For a Comeback As Party Chief``x974892073,43355,``x``x
``xBy EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer , November 21 <br><br>UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The chief international war crimes prosecutor on Tuesday challenged the world's quick embrace of Yugoslavia's new leader, saying his refusal to immediately surrender former president Slobodan Milosevic for trial is unacceptable.<br>``It would be inconceivable to allow Milosevic to walk away from the consequences of his actions,'' prosecutor Carla Del Ponte told an open meeting of the U.N. Security Council. ``Milosevic must be brought to trial before the international tribunal. There simply is no alternative.''<br>Later, she told reporters that her office has gotten very good cooperation from Cyprus and other countries in freezing Milosevic's assets. ``It is a huge, huge amount of money that was stolen (from) the Serb population,'' she said, refusing to disclose the amount until the investigation is complete.<br>Del Ponte praised the international community for resisting the temptation to offer Milosevic ``an easy escape route'' following his defeat in Sept. 24 presidential elections by a democratic coalition led by Vojislav Kostunica .<br>Del Ponte, who was barred from visiting Yugoslavia when Milosevic was president, has been invited by Kostunica to Belgrade and welcomed the opportunity to establish good relations. She will reopen the tribunal's office there, which has been closed since NATO's bombing campaign last year. Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham said the United States was ``delighted'' at these first steps.<br>But in no-nonsense language, Del Ponte made clear that Kostunica's reluctance to deal with the issue of Milosevic will be at the top of the agenda during her visit in the next few weeks.<br>``The world has embraced President Kostunica despite the fact that he has repeatedly said that cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia 'is not a priority' for him,'' she said.<br>``Whatever President Kostunica may say, the surrender of Milosevic is a priority. It is a priority for him; it is a priority for me; and it should, in my submission, also be a priority for the Security Council of the United Nations '' she said.<br>Kostunica, a legal scholar, questions the independence of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, which has indicted Milosevic for his actions in Kosovo, the province of Serbia that the United States and its NATO allies helped put on a path of self-rule.<br>The new president has made clear that he will not arrest or extradite Milosevic.<br>The prosecutor also had sharp words for Croatian President Stipe Mesic, who was elected earlier this year, accusing his government of refusing to allow access to witnesses and to hand over material for use as evidence by the tribunal.<br>The chief prosecutor also complained that NATO-led forces in Bosnia were arresting far fewer indicted war criminals than in the past, noting that the latest arrest was in June. Unfortunately, she said, her proposal to create a special police task force with responsibility to apprehend indicted fugitives throughout Bosnia has not yet been adopted.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xU.N. Prosecutor Probes Kostunica ``x974892130,19753,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Nov. 22 — Yugoslav authorities warned today that the region could be facing the risk of a new war after violence grew with attacks on Serbian targets in Kosovo and southern Serbia.<br><br>The head of Kosovo's United Nations administration, Bernard Kouchner, also expressed concern in a statement reading in part: "As I have repeatedly said, Kosovo remains in crisis. The conflict between the two communities is not over."<br><br>The warnings came after a bomb exploded in Pristina on Tuesday night, half demolishing the home of the Serbian representative in Kosovo, killing one man and injuring several others. Fighting also flared on the boundary between Kosovo and Serbia, with the Serbian government reporting that one policeman was killed and three were missing.<br><br>The violence was immediately blamed on Albanian extremists beginning a new campaign against the Serb community in Kosovo and a new offensive in an ethnic Albanian area of southern Serbia.<br><br>The Democratic Party leader, Zoran Djindjic, also warned of increasing instability as Serbia and Kosovo continue to adjust to changes in the region.<br><br>Dr. Kouchner said that the attack was aimed at the United Nations mission in Kosovo, known as Unmik, which was trying to encourage reconciliation between Albanians and Serbs and to allow for thousands of displaced Serbs to return to the province. <br><br>In one attack, Stanimir Vukicevic, the head of the Yugoslav government's liaison committee with the international administration in Kosovo, escaped injury in the blast to his home on the outskirts of Pristina. Two people were injured and one, a driver, died later in a hospital. <br><br>Serbian officials in Belgrade linked the bomb blast to an attack on Serbian police officers in the southern Presevo region near the Kosovo boundary. They said Albanian gunmen crossed over from Kosovo in the night and began an attack with mortars and artillery. The Serbian policeman died when he and other officers went to investigate.<br><br>The Presevo valley is an area mostly populated by ethnic Albanians but is outside Kosovo and remains under control of the Serbian military and police. Albanian rebel fighters have control of one or two villages in the area and frequently attack Serbian policemen in the area, laying mines on the roads and engaging in firefights.<br><br>American troops, part of the NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo, are stationed on the boundary of eastern Kosovo, and their job is to prevent the movement of weapons and guerrillas across the boundary. <br><br>Western diplomats and peacekeepers have also put pressure on Albanian leaders to cease support for the insurgents who number at the most a few hundred. A spokesman for the Kosovo peacekeeping force confirmed they had seen some small- arms and mortar fire on the Serbian side of the boundary Tuesday. But he dismissed claims that large numbers of guerrillas had crossed into Serbia overnight.<br><br>Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic and Mr. Djindjic, both leaders of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia that swept former President Slobodan Milosevic from power last month, demanded an urgent meeting between the peacekeeping officials in Kosovo and Yugoslav security forces.<br><br>"We warn the international public that tolerating such incidents could lead to a new hotbed in the Balkans," Mr. Djindjic said. "We demand that international organizations ensure security in the region." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Strife Flares in Kosovo; U.N. Aide Says 'Crisis' Persists``x974978133,21423,``x``x
``xFrom his Belgrade villa, ex-president vanquishes rebels<br><br>Special report: Serbia <br><br>Jonathan Steele <br>Thursday November 23, 2000 <br><br>Yugoslavia's former president, Slobodan Milosevic, has shown he remains a powerful political force by putting down a revolt against his leadership of Serbia's largest party. <br>Efforts by rebels to use an emergency party congress on Saturday to oust him now look set to collapse, so that it will be Mr Milosevic who leads the party into crucial elections for the Serbian parliament next month. <br><br>Though he lost the Yugoslav presidency after his election defeat and a popular uprising this autumn, the main power in the country rests with the Serbian authorities rather than those of the Yugoslav Federation which Serbia dominates. Whichever party wins the December election will have ultimate control. <br><br>When plans were laid, in the aftermath of last month's uprising in Belgrade, for an emergency congress of the Socialist party of Serbia (SPS), Mr Milosevic's critics hoped to use the momentum that forced his shock departure from the Yugoslav presidency to dump him as party chief. <br><br>But from his private villa in the elite Belgrade suburb of Dedinje, Mr Milosevic has been rallying his supporters over the telephone or by summoning them to meetings. He is thought to make occasional forays into town in small cars with tinted windows. <br><br>The party congress this weekend is to take place in the Sava Centre, a large conference hall in the suburb of New Belgrade, but Serb journalists said yesterday that no details have been given as to whether the press will be allowed in or if Mr Milosevic will attend. <br><br>In a rare appearance this week on Yu Info, a state TV channel he created, Mr Milosevic was seen urging party associates to maintain unity. <br><br>"There are scenarios to destroy the state, to destroy the economy, to destroy the party because it is the only guarantee for the defence of the national interests," he declared. If the congress sent a message of unity, "the consequences in the elections on December 23 will be positive". <br><br>It was unclear where the televised meeting with party colleagues was held but viewers noted that the Serbian president, Milan Milutinovic, - once thought ready to break from Mr Milosevic - was sitting meekly in the audience. <br><br>"Milosevic is seeing many people," said the party's general-secretary, Zoran Andjelkovic, a loyalist who was Belgrade's last governor in Kosovo before the Nato intervention in the Serbian province last year. "Many people communicate with Milosevic personally or over the phone. Milosevic is communicating with the outside world directly. I can assure you of that." <br><br>Former colleagues now concede that they have failed to generate enough strength to remove Mr Milosevic. <br><br>Zoran Lilic, a past president of Yugoslavia, who left the Socialist party a few weeks ago, has set up his own party. "Milosevic is not giving up politics. He is considering his best possible survival options, and counting on things going downhill for the movement that ousted him," he said. <br><br>The SPS's former vice-president Milorad Vucelic, who split with Mr Milosevic at the end of 1998, had been considered the most likely replacement as party president. Now he too is planning to form his own party and says he may not even attend the congress. <br><br>"If I thought I could serve any purpose, I would come," he said. "But, as matters stand, my presence would not facilitate a democratic dialogue." <br><br>Mr Vucelic belongs to a group calling itself the "SPS founders", which has been calling for Mr Milosevic to resign in favour of a temporary secretariat to run the party. <br><br>The group includes another former Yugoslav president, Borislav Jovic, and the former head of the Belgrade branch of the party, Slobodan Jovanovic. <br><br>None of these men is a liberal and most were involved in the virulent nationalism of the early 1990s during the wars with Croatia and Bosnia. At that time Mr Vucelic ran Radio Television Serbia, the main state channel, which protesters burned down last month. <br><br>The latest defector from the SPS is Ratko Markovic, a former deputy prime minister, who led the negotiations for autonomy in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999. He denounced Mr Milosevic for taking control of drafting all documents for the congress without consultation. <br><br>The platform says that the Socialists have a "big chance of a comeback because of the deteriorating economic and social situation in the country", according to the party sources. <br><br>Mr Milosevic is also counting on clear strains among Yugoslavia's new leaders. President Vojislav Kostunica is at odds with Zoran Djindjic, his campaign manager, who has made no secret of wanting to be Serbia's next prime minister. <br><br>But independent Serbian journalists say public support for the new leadership is still high. Foreign aid is providing fuel and this has meant fewer power cuts than a year ago. <br><br>Mr Milosevic's party is expected to get a maximum of 20% in the December elections, and possibly much less. Some observers believe the SPS will do worse with him at its head, so they see his defeat of party rebels before Saturday's congress as a plus. <br><br>"Staying in charge of his party does not mean he can make a comeback. But Milosevic wants to send a message to the country and the world that he's still very much politically alive and a political fact," an experienced Belgrade analyst said yesterday. <br><br>As SPS head, Mr Milosevic will also continue to control large party funds. This helps him command the obedience of potential rebels. Because most were involved in making money under his mafia-style rule as well as in war crimes, he can also use blackmail. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xGuardian: Milosevic keeps grip on party and its cash ``x974978178,20800,``x``x
``xSARAJEVO (Reuters),Wednesday November 22 - Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic will have to face justice for his role in Balkan wars but he will not be extradited to the U.N. war crimes court for now, Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic said on Wednesday.<br><br>``At this moment, the position of the government of the federal Republic of Yugoslavia is that there will be no extradition,'' Svilanovic told a news conference he held with his Bosnian counterpart Jadranko Prlic.<br><br>The International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicted Milosevic last year for atrocities committed by his forces against ethnic Albanians in the southern province of Kosovo that prompted NATO to launch a 77-day air war.<br><br>Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte of the ICTY told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that Milosevic must be extradited and stand trial before The Hague-based court.<br><br>``There simply is no alternative,'' she said.<br><br>Svilanovic said Milosevic would have to answer for ``the decisions he has taken for the wars in Croatia, in Bosnia and the sufferings of the citizens of these two countries and the citizens of Yugoslavia in all its parts.''<br><br>``Thus I belong to those who want his personal responsibility to be established and I believe that this will be happening in the following months and years,'' he added.<br><br>But whether Milosevic -- ousted last month by reformists after a decade of authoritarian rule -- will be handed over to U.N. court ``is the question that will be answered in the future.''<br><br>``But no one who was indicted for war crimes can escape justice, and this in full cooperation with The Hague tribunal,'' he said, adding that there was no place for Milosevic in Serbian politics.<br><br>``He cannot come back to political life...any hints of his come back will have to receive a very hostile reception by ordinary people,'' Svilanovic said.<br><br>Milosevic appeared in Serbian media this week for the first time since his ouster on October 6 and an ally declared him the only candidate to lead his Socialist party. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugo Minister Says No Milosevic Extradition for Now ``x974978216,86821,``x``x
``xBy Peter Finn<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Thursday, November 30, 2000; Page A29 <br><br>BUJANOVAC, Yugoslavia, Nov. 29 –– Heavily armed Yugoslav police in the disputed Presevo Valley today reentered an ethnic Albanian village they had abandoned last week, causing 1,000 local people to flee toward the U.S.-patrolled section of neighboring Kosovo and adding to tensions in the area. <br><br><br>Backed by two armored vehicles, the police retook the village of Lucane without resistance from the so-called Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, an offshoot of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, according to news reports from the scene. Guerrillas continued to hold positions on wooded bluffs about 500 yards from the village but held their fire.<br><br><br>Today's action was the latest development in a week-old crisis involving Yugoslavia's new democratic government and NATO authorities in Kosovo. The move by police of the Interior Ministry of Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic, appeared designed to send a signal that any widening of the rebel-controlled area would not be tolerated. Uniformed members of the rebel group had entered Lucane last week.<br><br><br>At the same time, Yugoslav officials stressed that their forces had not entered a three-mile-wide buffer zone that separates Yugoslav forces from the NATO peacekeepers who have patrolled Kosovo since last year. Under an agreement that ended NATO's 78-day bombing campaign, heavily armed Yugoslav forces must keep out of Kosovo and the buffer zone.<br><br><br>Most of Kosovo's people are ethnic Albanians. The same is true in the Presevo Valley just outside its border, and guerrillas who want to unite it with Kosovo have stepped up attacks against Yugoslav authorities in the past week, killing four policemen. Often they use the buffer zone to conduct training and launch attacks.<br><br><br>Immediately outside Bujanovac, the buffer zone was eerily deserted today. Just outside the zone, Yugoslav authorities have flooded the area with troops and police special forces equipped with armored cars and machine guns mounted on American-made Humvees. People going in and out of the valley were routinely searched, and troops armed with small artillery pieces stood watching the hills deeper in the valley.<br><br><br>Last week, the new democratic government of President Vojislav Kostunica threatened to launch a counterattack against the guerrillas, but backed off under pressure from the West. But the government remains deeply angry at the killing of the police officers and its inability to take effective action because of the buffer zone.<br><br><br>Yugoslav authorities, who estimate that there are 1,200 to 1,500 guerrillas operating in the area, have accused NATO of not doing enough to seal the border and prevent the shipment of arms from Kosovo into the valley.<br><br><br>Western officials, who have condemned the rebels, remain uncertain about how to resolve the problem because the agreement locks both sides into positions three miles apart, giving the rebels free rein in between.<br><br><br>Today, NATO Secretary General George Robertson reaffirmed the alliance's opposition to "extremists" and "terrorist-related activity." He said NATO would step up patrols and establish closer working-level contacts with local Serbian police to enhance security in the buffer zone.<br><br><br>He denied reports that NATO and Yugoslav troops might conduct joint patrols in the area.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post: Serb Police Retake Town Near Kosovo``x975581118,22393,``x``x
``xBy Michael Dobbs<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Wednesday, November 29, 2000; <br><br>BACKA PALANKA, Yugoslavia –– Two dozen empty warehouses in this Danube River town stand as a monument to the Yugoslav politician who has come to epitomize the thuggery and corruption of the Milosevic years. <br><br><br>Until last month, Mihalj Kertes was director of the Yugoslav Customs Bureau, a title that barely hints at his real role in recent Balkan history. Unctuous and smooth, Kertes served as behind-the-scenes treasurer and hatchet man to ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic for more than a decade. He financed ruthless paramilitary groups that waged war in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and was the key figure in a vast smuggling operation designed to evade Draconian international sanctions.<br><br><br>The empty warehouses are all that remains of a grandiose money-making scheme: a huge duty-free zone in Kertes's home town of Backa Palanka, on the border with Croatia. According to local residents, the plan was at once a way for Kertes to enrich himself and his associates, ensure continuing off-the-books funding for secret Milosevic projects and provide jobs for his own political supporters.<br><br><br>The dream of transforming this provincial backwater on the flat Danube plain into another Hong Kong or Macao died Oct. 6, when heavily armed democracy activists burst into the Yugoslav customs headquarters in the capital, Belgrade, and caught the sharply dressed Kertes shredding hundreds of documents. Hours later, Milosevic went on television to concede defeat in the Sept. 24 Yugoslav presidential election, marking an end to his 13 years of authoritarian rule.<br><br><br>"Kertes was the perfect symbol of a corrupt system," said Milan Stevanovic, a strategist with the Democratic Opposition of Serbia movement who led the raid. "He was the second man of the regime, the man who controlled the finances."<br><br><br>A member of Serbia's ethnic Hungarian minority, the bland, eager-to-please Kertes owed his remarkable political ascent to his willingness to do Milosevic's bidding without question. Like his patron, he was neither a true nationalist nor a doctrinaire communist. Instead he was a unique mix of Balkan warlord and old-style machine politician.<br><br><br>Attempts to interview Kertes for this article were unsuccessful; he has dropped out of sight since Milosevic's overthrow. But memories of him are vivid in Backa Palanka, a town of 25,000 on the Danube in the Vojvodina region of Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Even though Kertes, 59, lived in Belgrade, townspeople here often saw him riding through the streets in an armored limousine en route to his mother's heavily guarded house.<br><br><br>As the undisputed boss of Backa Palanka, Kertes controlled much of the local economy. He used the police force and paramilitary squads to harass the political opposition. But he also took care of his own, rewarding supporters with jobs, cars and assorted customs booty. The town provided roughly 800 customs officials to a total work force of 2,300 in Serb-led Yugoslavia.<br><br><br>"Kertes was God here," said Bogoljub Trkulja, a longtime political opponent. "Nobody could make a speech here, or appear on local television, without first thanking Kertes."<br><br><br>At Christmas, Kertes even arranged for local kindergarten children to receive elaborately wrapped toys, fruit and candy that customs had confiscated from travelers. The children were told that "Uncle Kertes" had collected the presents from Santa Claus at the border.<br><br><br>'Not Afraid of Serbia'<br><br><br>As a mid-level Communist Party official, Kertes shot to prominence in 1988 when he led a march of 150,000 Milosevic supporters on the provincial capital, Novi Sad, during the "yogurt revolution" named for the pots of yogurt that were hurled at an assembly building by Kertes and his supporters.<br><br><br>At the time, Serbia was in the grip of a nationalist frenzy that was exploited and manipulated by Milosevic, who had just taken over as leader of the Communist Party. Even though Kertes was from a minority group, he understood that history was moving in Milosevic's direction. One remark, in particular, made him famous: "How can you Serbs be afraid of Serbia when I, a Hungarian, am not afraid of Serbia?"<br><br><br>Two years later, after Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia, Backa Palanka found itself on the front line in a vicious border war. According to Serbian officials, Milosevic put Kertes in charge of smuggling weapons to ethnic Serbs, first in Croatia and later in Bosnia. Kertes also took the lead in forming paramilitary units that were subsequently accused by international human rights groups of many of the worst atrocities of the war.<br><br><br>The leader of an extreme-right Serbian nationalist party, Vojislav Seselj, named Kertes in 1993 as the de facto commander of Serbian paramilitary units in the Slavonia region of Croatia, across the Danube from Backa Palanka. Other Serbian officials have linked Kertes to a secret police group known as the Frenkijevci (Frankie's men), after its commander, Franko Simatovic. The black-clad Frenkijevci are believed to have been responsible for mass killings in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.<br><br><br>The paramilitary units were largely financed through smuggling operations, an arrangement formalized in 1993 when Milosevic appointed Kertes head of the Yugoslav customs service. It was a position that permitted Kertes to levy whatever tax he chose on a vast array of goods, including oil and cigarettes, that were being smuggled into Yugoslavia despite U.N. sanctions.<br><br><br>"He was the most powerful head of the customs service in the history of this country," said Vladan Begovic, one of a trio of lower-level officials appointed to run the service after Kertes's ouster. "It was as if he administered a shadow state budget."<br><br><br>Among the people who benefited enormously from Kertes's tenure as customs chief was Milosevic's playboy son, Marko. According to Serbian businessmen, Marko Milosevic formed an alliance with Kertes that gave the younger Milosevic control over all Philip Morris cigarettes sold in Serbia, an extraordinarily lucrative business in a country where the average adult smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. The profit on one truckload of cigarettes smuggled into Serbia in defiance of sanctions was about $250,000.<br><br><br>"In business circles, there was a rule, 'Don't touch Philip Morris; this is Marko's business,' " said Dusan Zabunovic, who operated a rival import business. "What was permitted to Marko was forbidden to everybody else."<br><br><br>Zabunovic, one of the leaders of the group that stormed the customs headquarters on Oct. 6, discovered the rules of the game the hard way in 1995 when he had a run-in with Marko Milosevic. He said the president's son approached him with an offer to buy a lucrative duty-free shop that he operated on Serbia's southern border with Macedonia. When he refused to sell, Kertes sent in the bulldozers. A few months later, a company closely associated with Marko Milosevic built a shop on virtually the same spot.<br><br><br>The Office Stash<br><br><br>When Zabunovic and other Democratic Opposition of Serbia activists burst into the Belgrade customs headquarters they discovered Kertes and a handful of aides throwing documents into a shredder. "They were all white in the face," recalled Zabunovic. "They pleaded with us not to maltreat them."<br><br><br>Among the documents waiting to be shredded was a pile of thank-you notes to Kertes from Milosevic supporters around the country acknowledging various favors, such as the gift of a tractor or the loan of a car. Investigators are using these documents to try to understand the elaborate system of patronage that Kertes financed on the basis of customs seizures and shakedowns.<br><br><br>Other items found in Kertes's office suite, officials of the new government say, included about $1.3 million in German marks and Yugoslav dinars, 18 pounds of drugs, 20 pieces of gold jewelry, 15 sniper rifles and 32 pistols. In the garage, opposition activists found 10 bulletproof cars, including several BMWs and Mercedes. At a nearby warehouse, they discovered large amounts of cigarettes, liquor and high-tech equipment, along with a pile of smoldering inventory cards, suggesting a hurried attempt to destroy incriminating documents.<br><br><br>Shortly before the takeover of customs, according to Zabunovic, Kertes ordered a truckload of cigarettes and whiskey to be dispatched to a special police unit in Vojvodina. Opposition activists say this represented a last-ditch attempt by Milosevic aides to rally support for his doomed government from the same paramilitary forces that had behaved so ruthlessly elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia.<br><br><br>After his brief detention, Kertes was permitted to leave the customs office, although he now faces a variety of lawsuits and is a prime target for prosecution.<br><br><br>Back in Backa Palanka, meanwhile, townspeople are making a difficult transition to the post-Kertes era. An electoral map of Serbia shows the municipality was the only one in western Serbia to cast a majority of votes for Milosevic in the election. The Kertes system--a mixture of patronage and intimidation--ran extraordinarily deep here.<br><br><br>"All the illegal activities in this town can ultimately be traced to Kertes," said Milos Gagic, a member of the student resistance movement Otpor, whose family was shaken down for $2,000 by armed thugs in league with police officers. "In a country as poor as Serbia, it does not require much money to make people afraid or buy them off. Kertes held all the strings."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post: Crash of Yugoslavia's Money Man``x975581166,57430,``x``x
``x Vojislav Kostunica has become wildly popular since the uprising that brought him to power. But some reformists wonder if his cautious nature has stalled the revolution. <br><br>By RICHARD BOUDREAUX, Times Staff Writer<br>Wednesday, November 29, 2000 <br><br> BELGRADE, Yugoslavia--In 1983, a Serbian legal scholar named Vojislav Kostunica coauthored a book that reflected on political revolutions. Such turning points, he wrote, are "rare moments" when those with power can "act unbound" to remake the world around them. <br> Now Kostunica finds himself in exactly that position, thrust into the presidency of Yugoslavia by a "bulldozer revolution" in which people power and earthmoving equipment enforced his electoral victory over Slobodan Milosevic. <br> Yet at his moment of opportunity to sweep away the entire Milosevic regime and bury its venomous Serbian nationalism, the new leader has switched off the bulldozer and begun building a new order on the foundations of the old. <br> As the face of Eastern Europe's final uprising against a Cold War-era strongman, Kostunica is a cautious legalist who inspires both passionate hope and troubling doubt that the Balkan region can at last overcome its decade of ethnic bloodshed. <br> He is an ethnic nationalist who backed the ideal of a Greater Serbia--an expansion of the former Yugoslav federation's dominant republic to embrace Serbs elsewhere--but not the massacres committed in its name. He sees no conflict between this narrow patriotism and his desire to lead a normal European democracy. <br> He is a conservative in every sense, as uneasy with the notion of radical institutional change as he is with the tumult his job has brought to his own very private, parochial life. The country is sick of upheaval, he says, and longs for stability. <br> He is, above all, a lawyer. Even as his care for legal niceties slows reform at home, it also binds him to Western-supervised accords that ended wars in the Serbian province of Kosovo and in Bosnia-Herzegovina on terms unfavorable to the Serbs. He upholds those accords despite his long distrust of Western aims in the Balkans. <br> "If he's an extremist about anything, it is legality," says Liljana Bacevic, a pollster and former academic colleague. <br> A large man who looks dwarfed by his vast new office here in the Federation Palace on Lenin Boulevard, the 56-year-old Kostunica admits being awed and still a bit apprehensive about the speed of change since he outpolled Milosevic on Sept. 24. <br> "I expected things would develop more slowly here, like the 'Velvet Revolution' in Prague," he said in an interview, recalling the former Czechoslovakia's smooth passage from communism in 1989. "I underestimated the bulldozer factor." <br> Kostunica (pronounced kosh-TOON-eet-zah) is soft-spoken, and his mop of dark hair gives him the look of a rumpled professor. Ask him a question and, unlike a typical Balkan politician, he pauses to think. His answers are direct, coolly analytical and devoid of extreme language. <br> Some believe his aloof manner masks insecurity and indecision in a man who had never before run anything bigger than a 5,000-member political party. But he has clearly set Yugoslavia's new course with two key decisions--one of them modified under pressure. <br> The first came the night of Oct. 5 as he faced hundreds of thousands of supporters outside City Hall in Belgrade, capital of both Yugoslavia and Serbia. <br> They had seized and burned the Yugoslav parliament building and Serbian television studios that afternoon, and Milosevic's police were in full retreat. The next step, many thought, should be the arrest of Milosevic himself, a man accused of corruption, war crimes and attempted theft of the election. <br> "To Dedinje!" people shouted, eager to storm the Belgrade suburb where Milosevic lives. <br> "Dear Serbia," Kostunica told the crowd. "No one is marching to Dedinje. You are staying here with me. I am staying here with you." <br><br> Cleaner Break Sought <br> That decision set a pattern for what some democracy activists now fear is a revolution stalled. Kostunica took office two days later, but the disgraced Milosevic is still free, and was even reelected head of the Socialist Party over the weekend after a fiery speech. <br> Most allies of Kostunica are demanding that he make a cleaner break with the past by firing two of its most hated figures: the Yugoslav army chief of staff, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, and the Serbian secret police chief, Rade Markovic. But Kostunica, who has pledges of loyalty from both men, has chosen a step-by-step transition. <br> Legally, he points out, the police chief answers not to him but to a caretaker Serbian administration. A new Serbian parliament and government are to be elected Dec. 23, and he wants them in place before overhauling the police, army and judiciary. <br> To tinker with armed institutions now, Kostunica explains, "might provoke some sort of disorder" and "jeopardize the democratic changes that we have started." For the same reason, he's in no hurry to arrest Milosevic. <br> Kostunica's second key decision was to start a peace dialogue with ethnic Croat and Muslim leaders in Bosnia. Their capital, Sarajevo, had been besieged and destroyed by Bosnian Serb shelling during the deadliest Balkan war of the 1990s. <br> His late-October visit did not start out as a healing mission. To the dismay of authorities in Sarajevo, the new president first announced a "private pilgrimage" to the Serbian part of Bosnia for the ceremonial reburial of a nationalist Serb ideologue and poet, Jovan Ducic, whose remains had come home from Chicago. <br> Kostunica did not seem to understand at first how provocative this was. He had supported the Bosnian Serbs' losing wartime effort to form their own state and link it with Serbia. He had visited Bosnian Serb trenches and collected blood for their hospitals. <br> Now, for his first appearance as president in another Balkan country, he had chosen a Serbian Orthodox Christian ceremony in Trebinje, a town "cleansed" of its Muslim inhabitants and mosques. Might not this be construed, he was asked, as a blessing for lingering Bosnian Serb separatism? <br> Finally he adjusted his plan, at the urging of allies at home and Western officials in the region. He went to the Serbian ceremony but sat silently through hours of nationalist speeches. Then he flew straight to Sarajevo and voiced support for the 1995 Dayton peace accords, which aim to preserve Bosnia as a multiethnic country run by Croats, Muslims and Serbs. <br> That decision displayed Kostunica's willingness to balance nationalist sentiment with the demands of statesmanship. He now spends the biggest part of his time courting Balkan and Western leaders, lobbying to end years of isolation and economic sanctions against Serbia. In an impromptu meeting Monday, he shook hands with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at a European security conference in Vienna. <br> "He's proud to be a nationalist . . . but he's also a democrat and, as he has said repeatedly to us, a pragmatist, a realist," says Richard Holbrooke, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "When he says the Dayton agreement is part of international law, when he recognizes that his [country's] economic future lies in these things, it's encouraging." <br> Others are not convinced that the leopard can change its spots. "Serb hegemony is heavily wounded. But it's not eliminated," warns Adem Demaci, an ethnic Albanian separatist leader in Kosovo. "Kostunica himself is one of the very important ideologues of Serb hegemony." <br> The president's first steps, however, are playing well in the rest of Serbia, where he won an 84% approval rating in the first survey of his presidency. <br> "He has a calming effect on people," says Svetlana Stamenkovic, a 30-year-old Belgrade accountant. "We see him reaching out to the world. He looks wise. Likable. Normal. Without promising anything concrete, he gives us a sense that our life can be normal." <br> The Serbs have endured a most abnormal history: They threw off five centuries of Turkish rule in 1878. They resisted Nazi occupation. After World War II, the Communists closed their Orthodox churches. Milosevic lost most of the Yugoslav federation in four wars; the last of these, against the separatist Albanian majority in Kosovo, brought 78 days of bombing last year by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. <br> The Serbian feeling of victimization by outsiders is legendary, particularly in the rural Serbian heartland known as Sumadija, where Jovan Damljanovic, the new president's great-grandfather, settled in the 19th century. He served in the first Serbian legislature after Turkish occupation and adapted the name of his village, Kostunici, as his own. During his election campaign, Vojislav Kostunica stopped there to tout his "authentic Serbian roots." <br> He was born in Belgrade on March 24, 1944. He likes to inform Westerners that he has survived two Anglo-American bombings--last year's NATO strikes and a 1944 Easter attack that was aimed at the Nazis but damaged much of central Belgrade, including his parents' home. <br> His father, a rural judge who moved here from the village, served six months on Serbia's postwar Supreme Court. The new Communist authorities fired him for opposing their political purges of public servants. <br> Kostunica inherited his father's Serbian Orthodox faith, aversion to communism and distaste for any brand of revolutionary justice. The future president's 1983 book, "Monism or Political Pluralism," detailed how Marshal Josip Broz Tito's Communists dismantled a budding multi-party democracy in the early postwar years and then erased it from history texts. <br> The young Kostunica, an only child, played basketball and listened to Elvis Presley but didn't socialize much. Radomir Diklic, a year behind him in high school, remembers a brilliant student so quiet and unsmiling that classmates called him starmali, one who is young but acts old. <br> "His family had been pushed out of the mainstream," Diklic says. "I think that's why he has always been a bit of a loner." <br> Kostunica's wife of 24 years, Zorica Radovic, is from a like-minded family. The two met at Belgrade University Law School. She is a lawyer, and one of her first cousins is the top Serbian Orthodox prelate in Montenegro, the smaller of Yugoslavia's two remaining republics. The couple have no children. <br> Like his father, Kostunica took up law, used it to challenge the system and lost. In 1974, he was fired as a law school teaching assistant after defending a nationalist colleague who was jailed for criticizing Tito's attempts to dilute Serbia's constitutional power within the Yugoslav federation. <br> The young lawyer took refuge at the state Institute for Philosophy and Social Theories, an academic ghetto where leading dissidents were allowed to work but not teach. There he translated the Federalist Papers and wrote scholarly analyses of Alexis de Tocqueville and other liberal democratic thinkers. <br> In 1989, the dissident ghetto spawned the Democratic Party. Kostunica, a co-founder, quit in 1992 to start his own Democratic Party of Serbia. More nationalist-minded than others in the democratic camp, the party shunned alliances, refused to take Western aid and remained small. <br> "It was more like a religious sect than a political party," says Ognen Privicevic, a former member. <br> Kostunica gained fleeting notoriety on a 1998 visit to rally besieged Serbs in Kosovo. Someone handed him an assault rifle, and a camera clicked. The newspaper photo gave the impression--false, he says--that he supported Milosevic's brutal crackdown on Kosovo Albanians. <br> "My nationalism is greater than the normal nationalism of, for example, the French, because Serbs objectively suffered more than any other people in Yugoslavia," he says now. "Serbs sometimes made big mistakes, but when you add and subtract everything, their destiny is quite apocalyptic. I couldn't be indifferent. But I never hated or sinned against other peoples." <br> His otherwise lackluster career as a party leader looks brilliant in hindsight. When 18 parties formed the Democratic Opposition of Serbia this year and searched for a candidate, Kostunica emerged with the fewest negatives; he was the only contender untainted by corruption or evident collaboration with either the West or Milosevic. <br> Crisscrossing the country in his battered white 1990 Yugo, visiting two or three cities a day, he campaigned as the anti-Milosevic and mentioned God in his speeches. Enthusiastic crowds drew him out of his shell. He promised an end to "stormy and difficult events" with an administration that would be law-abiding "and, if you like, boring." <br> That now sounds like wishful thinking. On a recent Saturday, he complained that his presidential burdens, far from being dull, keep him awake all but three to five hours a night and rob him of weekends at a country cottage near his ancestral village. <br> "We are conquering some new realms of freedom" for Yugoslavia, he said with a weary sigh, "but I'm losing myself, some realms of my personal freedom." <br> His top priority is persuading a restless Montenegro not to secede--a move that would bring the remaining federation to an end, since it would leave only Serbia, making Kostunica's Yugoslav government superfluous. But he has promised to respect the Montenegrins' choice. <br> To countries demanding apologies for Serbian atrocities, he is offering a "truth commission" to investigate crimes of all Balkan belligerents, and hinting that Milosevic will be tried eventually at home--not extradited, as the United States demands, to face an international tribunal in The Hague. <br><br> The West an Asset <br> And inside Serbia, he faces a challenge from Zoran Djindjic, the most powerful party leader in his coalition, whose followers have seized control of some state enterprises and banks and continue to demand a purge of the army and police. The two rivals teamed to oust Milosevic but have never trusted each other. <br> Kostunica's biggest asset in these battles is the West. Persuaded by his sincerity, both the United States and the European Union were quick to lift some sanctions and promise hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. That has bolstered Kostunica's enormous popularity at home. <br> One interesting measure of Serbia's psychological isolation over the years is the new president's surprise over this breakthrough--as if he had truly believed the Serbs were doomed to remain pariahs and victims. <br> "The prejudices are breaking down much sooner than I expected," he said with a look of amazement. "To hear Americans saying that one can be accepted as a democrat regardless of some disagreements with official American policy was a strange experience. I had no idea that our so-called moderate nationalism could ever be accepted in Washington." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLA Times: Hope vs. Doubt in Yugoslavia ``x975581239,77486,``x``x
``xCritics see Serbian plot to save ex-leader from Hague trial <br><br>Gillian Sandford in Belgrade <br>Thursday November 30, 2000 <br><br>Slobodan Milosevic will face some form of court proceedings in Serbia for fraud soon after the republic holds elections on December 23, according to an interview given to a Belgrade newspaper by Zoran Djindjic, the man likely to be Serbia's next prime minister.<br>The scheme reflects the new authorities' determination not to give up the former Yugoslav president for prosecution at the international war crimes tribunal at the Hague. Those who believe Mr Milosevic should face the Hague tribunal view Mr Djindjic's scheme as a fudging device.<br><br>The court, Mr Djindjic said, "will examine three issues: election fraud, the issue of his wealth and the way he acquired it, and the question of who ordered the several murders and assassinations [in Yugoslavia]."<br><br>Cedomir Jovanovic, a spokesman for Mr Djindjic's party, said he expected this to take place in January. There was a need to assign responsibility for what happened in Serbia in recent years: "We need some answers from Milosevic."<br><br>Mr Djindjic gave the first details of his plan in an interview with the Belgrade-based daily Glas Javnosti. Specifically, he referred to the attempted killing of Vuk Draskovic, leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, and the assassination of a leading Belgrade editor and journalist, Slavko Curuvija.<br><br>"He [Milosevic] will have to appear during an investigation process, maybe as a witness, but he can't avoid coming to court. And that will be immediately after elections," he said.If, as expected, the party of President Vojislav Kostunica wins the December elections in Serbia, Mr Djindjic will very likely become the republic's prime minister.<br><br>Under Serbia's system, preliminary inquiries are carried out by an investigating judge, who decides whether charges and a trial are justified.<br><br>Whether the new government will actually go beyond an initial court interrogation and allow a full prosecution of Mr Milosevic, is open to question. He has just been triumphantly reelected as head of the republic's largest party, the Socialists, and has been allowed to live freely in his Belgrade villa with military protection.<br><br>Sonja Biserko, president of the Helsinki commission for human rights in Belgrade, reacted with dismay to the news of the Serbian proceedings. Despite threats against her, she has long advocated cooperation with the Hague.<br><br>"Milosevic is responsible for many more things than election fraud," she said. "He is responsible for perpetrating the wars in former Yugoslavia, for war crimes in Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo - and for isolating Serbia."<br><br>Zarko Korac, leader of the small Social Democratic Union which belongs to the anti-Milosevic coalition and supports the Hague tribunal, said: "The indictment of Milosevic is much more serious [than the issues Mr Djindjic listed] ... My firm opinion is that this has to be done in cooperation with the Hague."<br><br>Aleksandar Popovic of Mr Kostunica's Democratic party of Serbia - which is anti-Hague - said Mr Djindjic had failed to talk to members of the anti-Milosevic coalition before speaking. "Politicians should not interfere with the judicial system. We need an independent judiciary," he said.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Serbian court to interrogate Milosevic ``x975581279,64464,``x``x
``xWIRE:11/30/2000 00:49:00 ET<br> PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Even though it"s outside the tense province, the threat of new Serb-ethnic Albanian violence is clouding a scheduled Thursday visit to Kosovo by NATO"s secretary general and its top military commander. Lord Robertson, the secretary general, and U.S. Gen. Joseph W. Ralston are visiting at a time of confrontation in a region where a recent rebel ethnic Albanian offensive claimed at least five lives. Robertson and Ralston are expected to consult with senior NATO commanders in Kosovo during their visit. They also will meet with ethnic Albanian leaders to talk about how to stop rebel incursions into Serb-controlled territory. Ethnic Albanians make up the vast majority of the population in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia"s main republic. Kosovo has been under international control since last year, and many residents want full independence for not only Kosovo but also the heavily ethnic Albanian Presevo Valley region in nearby Serbia proper. In the three-mile buffer zone between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, days of attacks by the independence-minded rebels earlier this week left at least four Serb policemen dead and a main road under rebel control. On Wednesday, though, Serb police moved into region and reclaimed the village of Lucane. Backed by two armored vehicles and armed with automatic weapons, police zigzagged from house to house as they cautiously entered the village. The strategic village is the first recaptured by Serb forces since last week"s rebel offensive. It brought Serb security troops closer to the ethnic Albanian militants entrenched on nearby hills. They now face each other from a 500-yard distance. A high-ranking Serb police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said his forces would not enter deeper into the buffer zone. He said the officers plan to set up a "permanent presence" in the village. Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since last year to force an end to former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic"s campaign of repression against the ethnic Albanian majority. Tens of thousands are believed to have died in Milosevic"s crackdown. Last week"s attacks by the rebels triggered protests by Western governments and fears of more bloodshed in the region. Yugoslavia"s new pro-democratic leadership _ claiming the militants are crossing from Kosovo _ demanded that NATO troops stationed in the province stop the incursions into southern Serbia. In Kosovo, NATO spokesman Maj. Peter Cameron said Wednesday that NATO-led peacekeepers intercepted a truck inside Kosovo carrying anti-tank weapons, mortar rounds and other ammunition. The truck also contained uniforms with the insignia of the rebels fighting in the buffer zone, Cameron said. Several people were arrested. Cameron said NATO did not know whether the truck was heading out of the province and into the buffer zone. Elsewhere Wednesday, Russia proposed lifting the U.N. arms embargo on Yugoslavia but keeping it for Kosovo. The U.N. Security Council adopted the ban in March 1998 to try to halt the Serb crackdown in Kosovo. But since then, a new, democratic leadership has taken over in Belgrade. A Russian draft resolution distributed to Security Council welcomed the new leadership and its efforts to promote reconciliation and stability in the region. It noted that the conditions laid out for lifting the embargo have been met. But the British and French ambassadors said the timing wasn"t right to lift the embargo, particularly with parliamentary elections in Yugoslavia coming up Dec. 23, council sources said. The United States and European countries pledged to lift all sanctions against Yugoslavia following Milosevic"s ouster. While U.S. and EU economic measures have been lifted, the arms embargo has remained in place.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News: Threat of Serb-ethnic Albanian violence clouds NATO leaders' Kosovo visit``x975581336,27868,``x``x
``xWIRE:11/29/2000 11:33:00 ET<br> BELGRADE, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Montenegro said on Wednesday it would not allow the Yugoslav central bank to resume control over the coastal republic"s monetary policy now that it was firm in its aim to gain independence and international recognition. A top adviser to Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said the position had already been made clear to new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica. "President Milo Djukanovic told Mr. Kostunica that Montenegro can"t provide legitimacy to federal institutions," Djukanovic"s political adviser Miodrag Vukovic told reporters. "Monetary experts in Montenegro have said the National Bank of Yugoslavia is not recognised by Montenegro," he said on the sidelines of a seminar on ties between Yugoslavia"s two estranged republics, Serbia and Montenegro. Yugoslavia"s new central bank governor Mladan Dinkic has vowed to restore payments between the republics within 100 days. Kostunica"s party, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, called on Dinkic to accept Vuk Ognjanovic, a Montenegrin, as his deputy on Wednesday, but Dinkic said to do so would ruin his credibility as Ognjanovic was governor in 1992 at the start of a period of fierce hyperinflation. But Vukovic said there was no way the Yugoslav central bank could in any form return to Montenegro. "That"s impossible. We will not give our authorities back to the federal level." Since Kostunica"s victory in September"s presidential election, Montenegro has ditched the Yugoslav dinar and set up its own central bank. The German mark is its only legal tender. Instead of mending ties in their federation, Vukovic, a member of Djukanovic"s Democratic Party of Socialists which has shifted from pro-Yugoslav to pro-independence policies over the past three years, said both republics must become independent. Once independent, Montenegro would agree to a monetary union and joint diplomacy and army with Serbia. "But the future union would have no attributes of a state," he said. But Djordije Blazic, a Montenegrin deputy justice minister who said he was speaking as a legal expert, questioned who would benefit from a union of independent states. "Who will the new joint army with two commands serve? How can we have joint diplomacy and two seats in the United Nations? How can we have a monetary union with two different monetary systems? Will this all be for the well-being of the nations or to satisfy the needs of political elites?" he said. SERBS CAUTIOUS, SEEK PATIENCE Serbian legal experts warned against hasty decisions and sought patience from Montenegro, at least until after December 23 parliamentary elections in Serbia. Montenegro has threatened to break away unilaterally if it does not reach a political deal with Serbia. Dusan Janjic, an analyst at the Institute for Social Science, said keeping Serbia and Montenegro in a single state could mean an end to Djukanovic"s rule. "One must agree to a dialogue and show patience until Serbia elects a new government. If there is a political deal Djukanovic goes, if not Serbia and Montenegro will split apart," he said. Janjic said giving Montenegro independence would create other problems in the Balkans, including in Kosovo and Bosnia. "It would be better for the two to stay together. It makes no difference whether it"s a loose or strict federation. It"s worth making an effort," Jan Svejnar, director of the William Davidson Institute at University of Michigan, told Reuters. The institute was picked by the U.S. State Department to study and aid transition in the Balkans. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News: Montenegro won't let Yugo cbank resume control``x975581385,81462,``x``x
``xFriday, December 1 12:06 AM SGT <br>VELIKI TRNOVAC, Yugoslavia, Nov 30 (AFP) - <br>Moderate Albanians in southern Serbia have called on Belgrade to put an end to the ethnic discrimination of the Slobodan Milosevic era, or risk facing an upsurge of armed separatist attacks.<br><br>"I am one of those who think the political options for solving the problems of Albanians are far from exhausted," Galip Beqiri, mayor of the Albanian-populated town Veliki Trnovac told AFP.<br><br>The town is in an ethnic Albanian area of southern Serbia, currently the focus of attacks by rebels, calling themselves the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB), seeking to unite the area with UN-run Kosovo.<br><br>Beqiri acknowledged that not everyone in his area had the same outlook, and among 8,000 inhabitants of the town, there was a number who "have joined the guerrillas and have taken up arms."<br><br>Seeking to bolster influence in the area, much of which is located in a demilitarised buffer zone, the guerrillas have found they can still count on lingering resentment of Milosevic-era nationalism.<br><br>And, local leaders say, this will have to change if Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica is to avoid further violence.<br><br>"Sixty-two percent of the 50,000 inhabitants of Bujanovac are Albanians, but they are under-represented in the public institutions," a local leader from the Party for Democratic Action (PDD) explained.<br><br>Albanians "are non-existent in the police forces, they have no radio station or newspapers, and the availability of education for the young is limited."<br><br>Kostunica, who took office in October, has already shown a will for a dialogue with the minorities living in Serbia, a move which has raised hopes here.<br><br>But for the Albanians, time is running out, and the complaints of Milosevic-era discrimination continue to rear their head. Most complaints have centered on the behaviour of police towards them, and an alleged increase in humiliation, harassment and, sometimes, beatings.<br><br>The Belgrade leadership may be new, local leaders argue, but its make-up has yet to change.<br><br>"Some of these policemen are criminals who have sullied their names in Kosovo" during the 1998-99 war, one Veliki Trnovac official said.<br><br>"We want to be equally represented in the local police units," he insisted.<br><br>But Colonel Novica Zdravkovic, the chief of the Serbian police in the region, admits that the behaviour of some of his men has not always been in accordance with the demands of the service.<br><br>"We have recently taken disciplinary measures against five of them," he told AFP.<br><br>Zdravkovic said that the priority was to secure the region and normalise the traffic on the road leading to Kosovo, controlled for almost a fortnight by the UCPMB guerrillas.<br><br>He noted that in recent months, some 90 serious incidents between the guerrillas and his units were recorded, in which about a dozen people were killed.<br><br>Acts of terrorism, notably bomb attacks, have also multiplied in southern Serbia, he said.<br><br>And moderate Albanians recognise this has not created an atmosphere that is conducive to cohabitation. The two communities live almost entirely separately. Albanians and Serbs have their own areas, meeting places, shops and schools.<br><br>"The guerrillas are causing fear among moderate Albanians, but if our right to work, movement and a normal life is not respected, the UCPMB might gain on the ground," one PDD official warned.<br><br>But there are some glimmers of hope, albeit few and far between. This week, one rumour was spread in Bujanovac that the house of the only Serbian resident in a nearby village was burned down by the Albanians.<br><br>But the house of 80-year-old Obrad Ristic was still standing, and, in absence of its owner, who has fled following increased tensions in the area, an Albanian neighbour has been feeding the chickens and a dog belonging to the old Serb.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbia's Albanians warn of discrimination behind rebel attacks``x975666720,44848,``x``x
``xFriday, December 1 1:42 AM SGT<br>BUJANOVAC, Yugoslavia, Nov 30 (AFP) - <br>Belgrade wants "to expel Albanian terrorists" from the buffer zone between southern Serbia and Kosovo "as soon as possible," acting Serbian Prime Minister Milomir Minic said Thursday.<br><br>Minic, an ally of ousted strongman Slobodan Milosevic, also condemned NATO-led peacekeepers for failing to disarm ethnic Albanian separatists operated in the buffer zone.<br><br>Speaking during a visit to the troubled region, he said: "Our goal is to expel Albanian terrorists from the ground security zone as soon as possible and to be able to ensure peace and security again for all the citizens."<br><br>Separatists from the ethnic Albanian Liberation army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) -- named after towns in southern Serbia with a strong ethnic Albanian population -- aim to "transfer the crisis from Kosovo" to this region, Minic warned.<br><br>He condemned NATO-led multinational forces in Kosovo (KFOR), which "have failed to accomplish their mandate and disarm the terrorist gangs in Kosovo."<br><br>"What is positive is the reaction of the international community which also notes these as terrorist acts," said Minic, who since October has headed the interim Serbian government put into place until elections are held next month.<br><br>But he stressed that Belgrade "is awaiting concrete action" by the international community against Albanian separatists.<br><br>Meanwhile, Yugoslav Minister for Minorities Rasim Ljajic, who is an ally of reformist President Vojislav Kostunica and who also visited the area, called on KFOR to "halt" the infiltration of UCPMB guerillas into the buffer zone.<br><br>Trouble erupted in the area last week when three Serbian policemen were killed after ethnic Albanian guerillas launched a surprise offensive in the narrow zone on Serbia's side of the border.<br><br>Under an accord with NATO last year, only lightly armed Serbian police are allowed into the zone, which is also closed to NATO-led Kosovo peacekeepers.<br><br>The five-kilometer wide (three-mile) strip was set up as a buffer between Serbia proper and the Albanian-populated province of Kosovo, currently administered by the UN.<br><br>Ljajic also urged local residents, mostly ethnic Albanians, who have fled their homes in recent weeks, to return to the area.<br><br>"Serbian state institutions must guarantee security both for the Serbs and the Albanians, and to integrate local Albanians into political and social life in Serbia as soon as possible," Ljajic said.<br><br>More than 4,000 ethnic Albanians in the area have fled to Kosovo in fear of renewed fighting between Kosovo separatist rebels and Serbian forces, the UN refugee agency said Thursday.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBelgrade wants "to expel terrorists" from southern Serbia: PM``x975666765,96605,``x``x
``xBy Peter Finn<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Saturday, December 2, 2000; Page A19 <br><br>MALI TRNOVAC, Yugoslavia, Dec. 1 –– At a former Yugoslav police checkpoint at the bottom of a wooded ravine outside this village, Commander Hairy, so named because of his thick beard and hair, pulls up in a black Yugo car. <br><br><br>A cluster of young uniformed men--who, with automatic weapons and hard stares, now man the sandbagged shack--are under Hairy's command. And their presence on this patch of brown earth, about a mile from hardened Yugoslav troops on one flank and a mile from NATO on the other, is testament to the growing confidence of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medveda and Bujanovac. The ethnic Albanian guerrilla group is known as UCPMB, its initials in Albanian.<br><br><br>"People feel much safer with us here," said the 36-year-old commander, who refused to give his real name. The people he claims to protect are the ethnic Albanians of Serbia's Presevo valley, which runs along the U.S.-patrolled section of eastern Kosovo.<br><br><br>The valley is the latest flash point in the Balkans. Last week, the guerrillas took this checkpoint in a brief firefight. Elsewhere, they ambushed and killed four Serbian Interior Ministry policemen.<br><br><br>Things were calm today, but in places the valley felt eerily like Kosovo in the months before NATO bombed Yugoslavia in response to its brutal counterinsurgency campaign against the Kosovo Liberation Army: pillaged farmhouses, refugees in tractor-drawn farm wagons, cocky guerrillas and, in the near distance, Yugoslav troops.<br><br><br>The difference is that this time NATO and Yugoslavia are united in trying to prevent another Balkan conflict. The Yugoslavs are holding back their attacks; NATO troops are trying to cut off a flow of weapons to the guerrillas from Kosovo, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic.<br><br><br>"Our cooperation is better than before, and there is a will to improve it," said Stevan Nikcevic, co-head of the Serbian Interior Ministry. "We are exchanging information" with NATO.<br><br><br>"This is a very real problem," said a senior Western diplomat in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital. "But we have been very pleased with everything we have heard from the government of [new, democratically elected President Vojislav] Kostunica. That's the good news."<br><br><br>Still, the UCPMB's numbers have swollen to close to 1,000, and it appears to have a ready supply of small arms, including grenade launchers and mortars. Most appear to come from hidden caches of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian militia group that--despite its claims to have disbanded after NATO's entry--maintains a shadow presence in the province.<br><br><br>The paradox for NATO is that the agreement it signed with Yugoslavia to end the bombing last year spawned the UCPMB. A demilitarized buffer zone that the deal set up between NATO and Yugoslav forces has come to provide an almost perfect vacuum in which the guerrillas can build their organization. Only lightly armed Yugoslav police can legally enter the zone, and those who do are killed.<br><br><br>A drive along mountain roads in the buffer zone today suggested that the guerrillas, some of them teenagers, were in firm control, manning checkpoints, standing guard with old AK-47 assault rifles, grenades strapped to their waists.<br><br><br>"What business do Serb police have here?" asked Xhevat Hasani, a 39-year-old guerrilla in the village of Muhovac, where a dozen or so UCPMB members gathered at a farmhouse serving as their local headquarters with a map on the wall, binoculars on the desk and AK-47s leaning against the wall.<br><br><br>The local commander in Muhovac, Muhamed Xhemaili, wore a uniform with KLA insignia, as did a number of other guerrillas in the valley. And many admitted they had fought in Kosovo and were spoiling for another fight with the Serbs.<br><br><br>"I've been in the war for 2 1/2 years," said a fighter named Isuf, who said he was from near Prizren.<br><br><br>And Kaltaima Pajaziti, a 16-year-old from the Kosovo capital, Pristina, said she was here to "maybe kill a Serb" when asked why she was in uniform in a place that was not her home.<br><br><br>Many of the guerrillas want to unite the area with Kosovo. They argue that the Presevo valley was part of the province until the internal borders of the former Yugoslavia were redrawn in 1957.<br><br><br>"Between the dictatorship of Milosevic, and the dictatorship of Kostunica, the only difference is the outside sheen," said Isuf Bajrami, who sympathizes with the group. "Since the borders were put there without the approval of the people, you can't blame the people for wanting to change them."<br><br><br>But some, including Commander Hairy, suggested that they could find a place within a democratic Serbia. "We want to live as the rest of the world lives, without hurting people," he said. "The Serbs of Bujanovac never did any harm to Albanians, and I have great respect for them."<br><br><br>The Yugoslav authorities have complained that Serbia's border with Kosovo, some of which is rough, forested terrain, is not adequately guarded by NATO and that the guerrillas move personnel and weapons into the valley at will. Many outside analysts agree, saying that Western governments, fearing casualties, have been loath ever since last year to use NATO troops aggressively to root out the KLA and its arms.<br><br><br>NATO has said it recently stepped up security at the border to stop the infiltration of guerrillas and weapons. Today it announced that 250 British troops will join the effort. At major crossings, U.S. and Russian troops work together and search almost every car. But elsewhere, the scrutiny is much more slack. At a crossing manned by Russian troops, cars drove in and out without being stopped, including one Audi that dropped an armed man within sight of the soldiers, who were lounging in chairs.<br><br><br>For now, the Yugoslavs have chosen to wait, though their army could probably rout the guerrillas in 48 hours. Commander Hairy acknowledged as much today, saying, "we know our limits." Kostunica's government, which is courting Western support, wants to avoid the brutality of the rule of former president Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br><br>"They realize they have to be smarter than they were in Kosovo," said the Western diplomat in Belgrade. "The tactic of seeing guerrillas shoot[ing] from a farmhouse and then destroying the village is not going to work."<br><br><br>When Yugoslav forces reentered the village of Lucane, just outside the buffer zone, this week, they acted with restraint, firing no shots and assuring elderly people whose relatives had fled that it was safe to return. They even allowed Western news agencies to accompany them when they moved into the village.<br><br><br>That approach contrasts sharply with a raid on Mali Trnovac this summer when Yugoslav special forces entered the village where the UCPMB had been active. Several months later, most homes in the village still have broken windows, smashed furniture and graffiti on the walls. With the UCPMB now in control, residents have begun to trickle back, further bolstering the guerrillas' reputation as the people's only defense against the government in Belgrade.<br><br><br>To press the point that the Milosevic era is over, Kostunica has visited the area and sent representatives to meet with local ethnic Albanians in an effort to resolve the crisis and address some of the genuine grievances of the Albanian population.<br><br><br>In Bujanovac, for instance, voting districts are gerrymandered to ensure Serbian control of the region even though ethnic Albanians are in the majority. There are no ethnic Albanians in the local police or judiciary. Their numbers in the local administrations are minuscule, and there is clear discrimination in the allotment of services to Serbian and Albanian villages. Moderate local ethnic Albanian leaders here said Kostunica could sideline the UCPMB with genuine political reform coupled with military restraint.<br><br><br>"What we have in mind is that the democratic authorities of Serbia acknowledge that we are equal citizens of this state living here," said Galip Beqiri, president of the village of Veliki Trnovac. "What we are hearing [from Belgrade] would give us some hope, but we have not felt any change here yet."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post:Rebels With a New Cause``x975757091,78157,``x``x
``xBy Glenn Kessler<br>Washington Post Staff Writer<br>Saturday, December 2, 2000; Page A20 <br><br>U.S. Treasury investigators have concluded that at least $1 billion was spirited out of Yugoslavia by associates of ousted president Slobodan Milosevic and flowed through banks in Cyprus to other destinations, Yugoslavia's central bank governor told reporters in Belgrade yesterday. <br><br><br>"It is apparently the money which the former regime had transferred to Cyprus in the course of 1990s," central bank governor Mladjan Dinkic said at a news conference. Investigators do not yet know where the money may have ultimately gone.<br><br><br>The new Yugoslav leadership has frequently accused Milosevic and his ruling elite of transferring state funds abroad, but the Treasury investigation has apparently provided the first major evidence of large-scale money transfers.<br><br><br>The investigation, which is about eight months old, involved a detailed examination of bank accounts and internal bank records in Yugoslavia and Cyprus. Both Yugoslav and Cypriot authorities are cooperating in the probe, which is being conducted by Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control.<br><br><br>The office administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions against targeted foreign countries. Until recently it monitored compliance with the sanctions imposed on the Milosevic government by the United States.<br><br><br>Dinkic, a prominent opposition economist during the Milosevic era, this week became central bank governor. "Our aim is that the money, which belongs to the Yugoslav people, is repatriated," he said.<br><br><br>Dinkic indicated that the Yugoslav government would seek technical assistance from Treasury as it seeks the funds.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post:Milosevic Cronies Took $1 Billion, U.S. Learns``x975757124,97530,``x``x
``xBy Jacky Rowland in Belgrade <br>Serbian political parties begin campaigning on Friday for parliamentary elections at the end of December, amid signs that the alliance headed by the Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, could win by a landslide. <br><br>The alliance hopes to consolidate on its gains in federal elections more than two months ago. <br><br>Most market research suggests that the pro-Kostunica alliance, calling itself the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, will win by a wide margin. <br><br>A list of election candidates will be submitted under President Kostunica's name. The man who would form a potential Serbian Government would be the leader of the Democratic Party, Zoran Djindjic. <br><br>Despite its strong showing in the polls, the coalition is not resting on its laurels and officials will be unveiling their election campaign on Friday. <br><br>Political limbo <br><br>President Kostunica and other leaders have been in a political limbo since Yugoslav elections at the end of September, because real power lies at the Serbian level. <br><br>They do not feel that currently they have the power or the mandate to make fundamental reforms. <br><br>All that could change with a convincing win in Serbian parliamentary elections. <br><br>The Socialist Party, which was defeated in September, is hoping to stage a comeback. <br><br>The party re-elected Slobodan Milosevic as its president last week - a decision which is widely regarded as a vote loser.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBBC:Serbian election campaign kicks off``x975757170,90703,``x``x
``xBy Kim Sengupta, Andrew Buncombe and Richard Lloyd Parry <br><br>4 December 2000 <br><br>Three British paratroopers are to be court-martialled over the killing of two armed Albanians in Kosovo last year. <br><br>The decision to court-martial the three 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment soldiers, who claim they acted in self-defence, has outraged soldiers and the Opposition. The shadow Defence Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, described it as "an utterly disgraceful move". He said: "The proceedings should be stopped, and an apology made to these men who are heroes, not villains." <br><br>The legal proceedings will also be highly embarrassing to the Government, which has been promoting the peace-keeping role of the Army abroad. <br><br>The investigation into the deaths of Fahri Bici, aged 20, and Avni Dudi, 24, members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, had been a closely guardedsecret within the Ministry of Defence. Senior military personnel say they are aware of the political sensitivity of the matter. The MoD would confirm only that charges had been laid and that they could involve murder or manslaughter. <br><br>The Independent has learnt that a pre-trial hearing has already been held and a full court martial is due to take place soon. <br><br>Although the inquiry into the killings was carried out by the MoD, the final decision to charge the men involved local prosecutors in the Kosovan capital, Pristina, appointed by the United Nations. <br><br>The three soldiers have been under investigation by the MoD's special investigation branch over the shootings in Pristinaon 3 July 1999, when ethnic Albanians celebrated their "independence day". There has been little reaction or demand for retribution by Albanians in Kosovo. <br><br>There has been widespread publicity about the case of another Nato peace-keeper charged over a killing in Kosovo – the US Army sergeant Frank J Ronghi, who was convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old Kosovan girl. The incident led to the US Army ordering a full investigation into the role of American forces in Kosovo. <br><br>The rules of engagement in Kosovo for British soldiers are broadly similar to Northern Ireland. K-For soldiers carry a green card authorising them to kill in self-defence, but only after a verbal warning. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent:British soldiers charged over killing of Albanians ``x975931975,63597,``x``x
``xBy Christian Jennings in Muhoc, Yugoslavia <br><br>4 December 2000 <br><br>Serb troops and policemen have attacked Albanian rebels fighting inside a pocket of disputed Serbian territory on the boundary between Serbia and the province of Kosovo, wounding two, in contravention of a ceasefire agreed between the two warring factions, Albanian rebel leaders claim. <br><br>Muhamet Xhemaili, a commander of ethnic Albanian rebels in the tiny south Serbian village of Muhoc, 2km across the Kosovan border, said yesterday Serb forces wounded two of his men in an attack on Friday. "Even during the ceasefire the Serbs have been attacking," he said. "Two days ago, using silenced weapons, they attacked our positions, wounding two men. <br><br>"They attack at dusk and dawn; they have fired with mortars during the ceasefire and are breaking the accord by advancing into the territory that we leave when we withdraw. We are ready to respond should Serb units move forward." <br><br>In a small farmhouse in Muhoc, Mr Xhemaili sat surrounded by Albanian fighters armed with Chinese belt-fed machine-guns and 82mm mortars, as well as Russian anti-tank rocket-launchers and automatic rifles. <br><br>Four Serb policemen were killed last month by the rebels of the Liberation Army for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, or UCPMB, who name their year-old breakaway guerrilla group after three local towns which lie inside Serbia but are home to many of the 70,000 ethnic Albanians living in this rural part of southern Serbia. <br><br>Attacking with mortars, anti-tank rockets and automatic weapons, the Albanian rebels, estimated at some 200-strong, occupied three local villages, driving the Serb forces back to the town of Bujanovac. <br><br>The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said more than 4,600 displaced people had fled the area of the Presevo valley into neighbouring Kosovo in the past 10 days, fleeing fighting and an increasing build-up of Serb forces. <br><br>The Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, has blamed Nato peace-keepers in Kosovo for failing to comply with their obligation to provide security in the area. He says the Albanian rebels are operating inside the internationally agreed 5km-wide security buffer zone between Serbia and Kosovo, which was put in place after the peace-keepers entered Kosovo last June. <br><br>Serb forces are not allowed to deploy heavy weapons, troops or forces other than local police within this area, known as the Ground Safety Zone, which runs along the Serb side of the Kosovo boundary. <br><br>The Albanian rebels in the Presevo valley want their area to be united with Kosovo, which though formally part of Serbia is no longer under Belgrade's effective control. <br><br>They are unlikely to get their way. Although economically undeveloped, the valley is strategically significant.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent:Ceasefire breaks down as Belgrade forces drive out Albanian rebels ``x975932023,13082,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER, December 3, 2000<br>VIENNA -- When Slobodan Milosevic emerged in public last week, live and in color, to be re-elected president of his Socialist Party of Serbia, he sent a little shiver down a lot of spines.<br><br>But Mr. Milosevic is today considered more of a spent force than a threat, less the evil plotter than someone who still doesn't understand quite what hit him on Sept. 24, when Serbs voted for Vojislav Kostunica and then banded together to pull down the old regime. <br><br>Nonetheless, the Socialists are still expected to be the largest opposition party after Serbia's crucial elections on Dec. 23, getting up to 15 percent of the vote. But even senior American officials believe that having Mr. Milosevic as its president will delay any revival of the party.<br><br>In fact, Yugoslavia has moved to a new stage, with a new, hidden drama: the effort of Mr. Kostunica, the federal president, to translate his extraordinary popularity as a hero of democracy into enduring political power in Serbia, where real power lies.<br><br>According to all the opinion polls, the 18-party coalition behind Mr. Kostunica should gain a big majority in the December voting. But it is a diverse bunch, and strains between Mr. Kostunica and his coalition ally and political rival, Zoran Djindjic, are expected to break the coalition apart within a year.<br><br>Ever since the Serbs forced Mr. Milosevic to resign on Oct. 6, however, the West has been tripping over itself to help Mr. Kostunica and the prospect of a normal, benign Serbia. Western leaders have provided him quick emergency aid and swallowed any criticism of his performance.<br><br>In Vienna, at last week's meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the slightly rumpled Mr. Kostunica was greeted like a star, with even Austria's Jorg Haider attending a lunch in his honor. <br><br>But as federal president, Mr. Kostunica is formally in charge of the military, foreign relations and the air-traffic system, and not much else. The Serbian government controls most of everyday life, including the police (both secret and regular), and it is Mr. Djindjic, as the leader of the largest party in the coalition, who is expected to become Serbian prime minister.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica has already succeeded in demanding the same number of seats on the coalition's parliamentary list for his once-marginal party as Mr. Djindjic will get for his much larger one. But Mr. Kostunica will be able only to influence events in Serbia, not control them. <br><br>That is because Mr. Kostunica is the president of a legal entity, Yugoslavia, whose existence is something of a collective illusion, and whose main constituent parts are restive or in flux:<br><br>¶ Kosovo, the majority-Albanian province of Serbia run by the United Nations and NATO-led troops, is increasingly explosive, with armed Albanian militants infiltrating Serbia and killing policemen.<br><br>¶ Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic, is still pressing for independence despite Mr. Milosevic's fall, to the intense annoyance of the same West that backed Montenegro so lavishly when it seemed a little anti- Milosevic aircraft carrier.<br><br>¶ Serbia, with 95 percent of the population, is being run by a shaky provisional government full of Milosevic supporters, which is why the elections matter so much.<br><br>Washington and the West do not want Yugoslavia to fall apart. First, because it would leave Mr. Kostunica, whose probity has impressed them, essentially jobless. And second, because its further breakup would create new crises and expectations for independence in the region — not just in Kosovo and Montenegro, but in the Republika Srpska (the Serb-dominated part of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and a deeply divided Macedonia. <br><br>"The battle to come is still Djindjic-Kostunica," said a senior European diplomat in Belgrade, where the parlor game is to guess along what lines the democratic coalition will split. "Come January, with an active, functioning government in Serbia, Kostunica and the federal government are going to look very pale. A lot of the donor community, including governments, might prefer to deal with Djindjic."<br><br>Mr. Djindjic is also a democrat with a history of opposition, so what's the problem? In fact, the two men distrust each other intensely, with the quiet, legally minded Mr. Kostunica regarding the elegant, entrepreneurial Mr. Djindjic as unreliable and even unscrupulous. That is a worry shared by many who admire Mr. Djindjic's organizational skills and who fear, along with Mr. Djindjic, that Mr. Kostunica is too professorial and indecisive, and has not moved quickly enough to dismantle the old regime.<br><br>Aleksandar Tijanic, a slashing writer and analyst, summarizes the problem neatly, if a bit unfairly. "Kostunica regards Parliament as a cathedral," Mr. Tijanic said. "Djindjic regards it as a casino."<br><br>For the moment, however, the test for Mr. Kostunica has been Kosovo, where Albanian militants in the Presevo Valley of Serbia have been trying to provoke him into overreacting with military force, as Mr. Milosevic did so often, undermining Belgrade's newly friendly relations with the West.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica's enemies, like Mr. Milosevic, were quick to exploit the violence and call it a sign of Serbia's new weakness. Mr. Djindjic, too, unpopular for his ties to NATO countries in the Kosovo war, was quick to portray himself as a Serbian patriot, warning loudly that Serbia would defend itself.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica understood he had to be seen to threaten force, but could not use it. So the army moved tanks to the border of the security zone from which the Kosovo peace agreement bans them and brought journalists down to film their resolve. Next, he tried to turn the crisis into a test for the West. In Vienna, he criticized NATO and the United Nations for failing to do their job in Kosovo while urging them to seal the border.<br><br>NATO and Western officials, eager to help him and nervous about renewed Albanian militancy, promised a new crackdown. Even Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, whom Serbs regard as the champion of the bombing campaign against them, a campaign Mr. Kostunica opposed, praised him. She assured his foreign minister that American forces would do all they could to rein in the very fighters they called allies less than a year ago in Kosovo.<br><br>"Everyone wants to get Kostunica and the democrats past this election," a senior Western official said. "If anyone says they're thinking much beyond Dec. 23, they're lying."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: The Balkans Are Still Trouble``x976013599,79116,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL,December 5, 2000 <br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 4 — A United Nations envoy urged the Serbian government and the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo today to act fast to prevent tensions from worsening on the border.<br><br>Eric Morris, who represents the United Nations high commissioner for refugees in Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, spoke on his return from the Presevo valley in southern Serbia. Albanian militants attacked the Serbian police there 10 days ago and seized control of a three-mile-wide buffer zone along Kosovo's eastern boundary. <br><br>The police, meanwhile, reported another attack and a member of President Vojislav Kostunica's Yugoslav coalition called for the police to use force to rout the militants.<br><br>Mr. Morris told reporters in Belgrade: "It is urgent that all the concerned parties, including the Yugoslav government, act as quickly as possible so that the Presevo region does not get out of hand, because the consequences are potentially very, very great."<br><br>People on both sides of the fight want the situation to explode, he said, and that means there is an urgent need for extra measures. "We are very concerned about a large-scale exodus," he said. "There are a number of Albanians living close to the concentration of security forces." <br><br>On Sunday, Serbian policemen came under mortar attack while on patrol just inside the buffer zone, said Novica Zdravkovic, the regional police chief. No one was injured. <br><br>On a visit to the region today, the Democratic Party leader, Zoran Djindjic, vowed to send troops into the region immediately after the Dec. 23 Serbian parliamentary elections if NATO-led peacekeepers fail to check the rebel activity. Mr. Djindjic, a leading member of the coalition that supported Mr. Kostunica for president, is expected to be appointed prime minister if the coalition, as expected, wins the elections.<br><br>"We need to ask the international community if those goals can be reached by putting pressure on the Albanians," Mr. Djindjic said. "If not, then Serbian forces should enter the buffer zone and sweep out the terrorist formations."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Warning by U.N. Kosovo Envoy``x976013669,22939,``x``x
``xWIRE:12/04/2000 15:44:00 ET<br> ATHENS, Greece (Reuters) - Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica said Monday his country needed humanitarian aid after a decade of wars and international isolation but would not become dependent on it. He also called for more economic cooperation with Greece during a visit to the EU"s only Balkan member state. Greece has had historically good ties with fellow Orthodox Christian Serbia, the main republic in federal Yugoslavia. "Yugoslavia at this time, due to sanctions, the (1999 NATO) bombing, the difficult situation, needs humanitarian aid but it is not among our intentions for our country to depend on humanitarian aid," Belgrade"s first democratic leader told reporters. "We believe cooperation with Greece is more than important, it has been traditionally close and it will contribute to stability in the region," he said, speaking after visiting the all-male monastic community of Mount Athos in northern Greece. U.N. agencies appealed Monday for $181 million in 2001 to meet humanitarian and other needs in Yugoslavia, citing widespread poverty, inadequate basic services and one of the largest displaced populations in Europe. Kostunica arrived in Greece Sunday and spent the night at one of the several Byzantine monasteries, the predominantly Serbian Orthodox Hilandariou where women have been banned for centuries. Foreign Minister George Papandreou was among the first European officials to visit Belgrade after Kostunica swept to power by a popular uprising that forced predecessor Slobodan Milosevic to admit election defeat. Kostunica said he would return to Greece for an official visit later, after his country began to return to normalcy. "There is much to be done in Yugoslavia to return my country to Europe and international organizations."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News: Kostunica says Yugoslavia won't rely on foreign aid``x976013753,48565,``x``x
``xWIRE:12/04/2000 17:34:00 ET<br> LUCANE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Ethnic Albanian militants fired mortars at a Serbian police patrol in a tense area next to Kosovo in the first reported breach of an unofficial cease-fire, police said Monday. There were no casualties in the Sunday incident, said police Col. Novica Zdravkovic. He blamed the attack on ethnic Albanian "terrorists" operating in the buffer zone along the Kosovo boundary with southern Serbia. A key ally of President Vojislav Kostunica warned Monday that Yugoslavia must be prepared to use force if peaceful efforts fail to persuade ethnic Albanians to stop the attacks. "Time is working against us," Zoran Djindjic told the Beta news agency. "The terrorists have dug in along the whole boundary and there is a status quo there. Each day that passes strengthens their position and weakens ours. Therefore, we have to act with determination and swiftly." Djindjic voiced similar warnings on Sunday _ but he was quickly contradicted by Kostunica, who said it was not the time for "war cries" and urged restraint. Although allied in the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, Djindjic and Kostunica have been at odds since the collapse of Slobodan Milosevic"s authoritarian regime in October. Djindjic is expected to become Serbian prime minister after Dec. 23 elections in Yugoslavia"s main republic. Their recent statements have suggested a possible rift in the Belgrade leadership over how to deal with the rash of attacks by ethnic Albanian militants in the Presevo Valley on the frontier between Kosovo and Serbia. The crisis has presented a difficult challenge to the new Yugoslav government. It must show the public, police and army it is willing and able to defend the country, while avoiding the brutality that marked Milosevic"s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. The crackdown led to international isolation and a 78-day NATO bombing campaign, which ended with Yugoslavia handing Kosovo over to the United Nations and a NATO-led peacekeeping force in June 1999. Under the 1999 peace agreement, a three-mile-wide buffer zone was established between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia. Ethnic Albanian militants from Kosovo have been operating in the zone in an attempt to drive the Serbs from predominantly Albanian areas. Sami Azemi, a leader of the rebels, said his men will not retreat or compromise, urging Serbian police to observe an unofficial cease-fire that has been in place in recent days. "For the moment, our soldiers are very vigilant, and they are watching every movement of the Serbian police and army. If they try to come toward our positions, they will be confronted with fire, with all the power that we have," Azemi said. "I would appeal to the Serb side that after they agreed to the cease-fire they should respect it, otherwise confrontation is inevitable," he added. Referring to what he called "Djindjic"s threats," Azemi said, "The moment we took up weapons we knew we would be threatened. And we will not put down our weapons without a solution to the problem of this region." Kostunica, meanwhile, warned Monday that an independence declaration by ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo itself could touch off new wars in the Balkans. In an interview with the Athens, Greece, daily Ta Nea, Kostunica insisted that any attempt to change the region"s borders would trigger violence. "Any change in the existing borders would drive us to new conflicts, new wars and new adventures in the Balkans," Kostunica said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News: Mortars fired at Serb police, no casualties``x976013809,58373,``x``x
``xBy ALEKSANDAR VASOVIC, Associated Press Writer <br><br>VRANJE,December 5 Yugoslavia (AP) - Ethnic Albanian militants fired at Yugoslav army positions and Serbian police in two attacks near the rebel-controlled buffer zone between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, police said Tuesday.<br><br>No one was injured, Vranje police chief Novica Zdravkovic said.<br><br>Several shots were fired at army positions on the Serbian side in the first attack around midnight Monday, he said. The army did not return fire. The shots reportedly came from the ethnic Albanian village of Grabe, located within the three-mile buffer zone.<br><br>In the second attack early Tuesday, a machine gun was fired at Serbian policemen near Sveti Ilija, also in the buffer zone, Zdravkovic said.<br><br>The shootings occurred despite an unofficial cease-fire between Yugoslav forces and the Liberation Army of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja - known by its Albanian-language acronym UCPBM.<br><br>The midnight attack marked the first time the rebels had fired at the Yugoslav army. Last month, the insurgents killed four Serb policemen, who unlike soldiers are allowed in the buffer zone.<br><br>On Monday, Serbian officials claimed the militants fired mortars at a Serbian police patrol in the buffer zone. There were no casualties in that incident.<br><br>The zone was set up in June 1999 to prevent Yugoslav forces from threatening the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. The United Nations and NATO took control of the province in June 1999 after the Western alliance's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.<br><br>That campaign was launched to stop a crackdown by former President Slobodan Milosevic against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo.<br><br>It is believed that some leaders of the separatist insurgency are behind the current clashes in the Presevo Valley.<br><br>The Yugoslav army cannot enter the buffer zone, even though it is Yugoslav territory. Ethnic Albanian militants have exploited the ban by setting up their own positions inside the zone.<br><br>In Kosovo, the U.S. Army announced Tuesday that peacekeepers arrested eight Kosovo Albanian men after they tried to evade a checkpoint and sneak across the boundary last weekend.<br><br>Troops found UCPMB identification cards, uniform patches and small amounts of ammunition in their vehicle, the U.S. military said.<br><br>The NATO-led peacekeeping force promised to step up security along the boundary after Yugoslav authorities complained the alliance had failed to curb infiltration of armed men into Serbia.<br><br>In wake of the attacks, Momcilo Perisic, former head of Yugoslav army and an ally of President Vojislav Kostunica, urged that the buffer be extended by additional three miles into Kosovo territory and that NATO peacekeepers step up control.<br><br>Perisic, who toured police positions at the buffer's edge, said Tuesday the international community should pressure ethnic Albanian ``terrorists'' to leave the area.<br><br>The militants want to drive Serbs from the zone, which is just outside the boundary of Kosovo and therefore not under U.N. and NATO control. The militants have urged ethnic Albanians who fled the area to return to maintain a presence there.<br><br>In Geneva, Kris Janowski, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said about 600 people have returned to the area in the last three days.<br><br>In Belgrade, the daily newspaper Blic, citing a state security document, said special units of Serbian police have been sent to the Presevo Valley to bolster Serb forces.<br><br>``Albanian terrorists probably managed to sneak behind (NATO's) Kosovo Force checkpoint on the road to Presevo Valley ... and smuggled in heavy artillery, rocket launchers and machine guns,'' Blic quoted the document as saying. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav Army, Serb Police Shot At ``x976095680,95873,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 5 — A Serbian law student went on trial today in the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica for genocide in the killings of 26 Albanian men during the NATO bombing campaign last year.<br><br>The case remains one of the most painful episodes for the Albanian residents of the bitterly divided town.<br><br>French gendarmes who investigated the case last year managed to trace the missing men to a mass grave and arrested six Serbian men. At the time it was celebrated as a case of swift and good investigative work that promised justice for the Albanian victims.<br><br>But the trial that began today appeared to fall short on several counts. Only one defendant appeared in court: Igor Simic, 24. The other five Serbs charged with him in the original indictment escaped from the United Nations-run prison in Mitrovica several months ago and remain at large, probably in Serbia. Mr. Simic had tried to escape with them but was caught.<br><br>None of the families of the victims attended the trial. The courthouse is in the northern, Serbian-dominated part of town, where few Kosovo Albanians dare to go. And Mr. Simic appeared before a panel consisting mainly of Albanian judges, a practice that has been severely criticized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe as unfair in such highly charged trials of ethnic- related crimes.<br><br>The prosecutor in the trial, Michael Hartmann, is an American, and a Swedish judge, Christer Karphammer, is presiding. But the other four members of the judicial panel — one other judge and three citizens who deliberate with the others as lay judges — are Kosovo Albanians.<br><br>Courts in Kosovo are staffed almost entirely by the ethnic Albanians who make up most of the population. Serbs have been wary of taking part because they accuse the United Nations-led administration of being biased against them.<br><br>Those courts have begun to try Serbs for genocide and other war crimes, but after blatant evidence of ethnic bias, the United Nations administration has started to include judges from outside Kosovo in the system.<br><br>The European security organization, in a damning report released in October, contended that such serious cases should be tried by international panels of judges or a panel on which a majority of judges are from outside. Mr. Simic, like most of the Serbs being tried for war crimes, has been in custody nearly a year and a half awaiting trial, which raises serious concerns about human rights violations and about the efficiency and competence of the United Nations- run legal system in Kosovo.<br><br>Mr. Simic is accused of taking part in the killings of the 26 Albanian men, who were forced out of their apartments, with their families, by masked gunmen on April 14 of last year, at the height of the killings and expulsions of Kosovo Albanians by Serbs in Kosovo.<br><br>The men were separated from the women and children and made to lie face down in a line along an alley leading from the street. The families were then ordered to leave and never saw the men again.<br><br>The men were killed shortly afterward and buried in a mass grave 10 miles away. French investigators, through witnesses, traced the grave and found the bodies. Some had been shot, some stabbed.<br><br>The investigators arrested six Serbian men, including a father and son and Mr. Simic, all of whom lived in Popovic Street and were neighbors of the victims. All six men were local and were still living in Mitrovica, in the northern, Serbian-dominated side of the town.<br><br>Mr. Simic pleaded not guilty today. He testified that he had been aware of the events that occurred, but did not take part, said a United Nations official who attended the trial. The trial will continue on Wednesday, when the first witness, a Kosovo Albanian, will be called. It is expected to continue into January.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Serb on Trial For Genocide Of Albanians In Kosovo``x976095719,75365,``x``x
``xNIS, Dec 7, 2000 -- (Reuters) Three Serb men accused of planning a revolt and plotting to kill then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic walked out of jail on Wednesday, saying they had been pardoned by new President Vojislav Kostunica.<br><br>"We were not expecting anything like this. Our families were not here to wait for us," said Milutin Pavlovic, holding a document from Kostunica's office on their release.<br><br>The Beta news agency said Kostunica had pardoned the three on a proposal from the Justice Ministry supported by Yugoslav army chief-of-staff Nebojsa Pavkovic.<br><br>The three men had also been accused of plotting to kill Pavkovic.<br><br>Pavlovic said wardens at the prison in the southern town of Nis had told him, Boban Gajic and Radovan Djurdjevic "to pack our bags and go".<br><br>After his release, he took a taxi to his home town 50 km (30 miles) away. "I wanted to surprise my family."<br><br>The three were sentenced by a Serb military court last April to five years in jail for conspiring to carry out hostile activities. Three other men received less harsh sentences, and were later freed.<br><br>At a new trial at the supreme military court in November, the sentences for those released on Wednesday were cut by up to two-and-a-half years.<br><br>The six were members of a shadowy group called the Serb Liberation Army. They were arrested in December last year and charged with forming a terrorist organization with the aim of toppling the constitutional order by force.<br><br>The group had also been accused of plotting to assassinate Milosevic and Pavkovic, but the judge made no mention of this when he read out the sentence seven months ago.<br><br>The defendants denied during the trial that they had planned to kill Milosevic and to overthrow the state, saying they only wanted to protect Serb territory in Kosovo, now under de facto international rule after last year's NATO air war.<br><br>Pavlovic said the former Yugoslav authorities had arrested them in order to frighten people. "They wanted to use this trial to scare the other people and to show that one cannot speak or think freely in this country."<br><br>A popular uprising two months ago forced Milosevic to accept defeat in September presidential elections won by Kostunica.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica Pardons Milosevic Murder Plot Suspects``x976185334,11974,``x``x
``xBUJANOVAC, Dec 7, 2000 -- (Reuters) Yugoslavia's prime minister visited a tense area of southern Serbia on Wednesday, declaring that ethnic Albanian guerrillas could be eliminated quickly but that his government preferred a diplomatic solution.<br><br>Prime Minister Zoran Zizic said the situation in the area near the border with the majority Albanian province of Kosovo had stabilized after an upsurge in guerrilla activity last month that left four Serbian police dead.<br><br>But he also stressed that the situation should be resolved soon and that the government would not let it drag out, emphasizing that the rebels must leave a five kilometer (three mile) wide buffer zone inside Serbia proper bordering Kosovo.<br><br>"Those terrorists who infiltrated here can be eliminated in two days, army and police readiness is so high, even better than I expected," Zizic told reporters by Yugoslav army positions near the southern town of Bujanovac in the boundary area.<br><br>"But the federal government wants a diplomatic solution, by using political means," he said.<br><br>Zizic said this was why it sent a letter on Tuesday to the UN Security Council calling for urgent steps to have the "terrorists" return where they came from.<br><br>NATIONAL PRIDE IN QUESTION<br><br>He said a small group of guerrillas held part of the security belt, where they are believed to be based.<br><br>"They (the international community) have to understand it is our national interest -- our national pride is in question. We certainly did not give even a centimeter of our territory," he said.<br><br>The guerrillas say they are protecting local Albanians from harassment by Serbian police. Belgrade insists they are separatists intent on joining the Presevo Valley area of Serbia to independence-minded Kosovo.<br><br>The upsurge in violence about two weeks ago alarmed both the new Yugoslav government and Western capitals hoping that the downfall of ex-President Slobodan Milosevic would usher in an era of stability in the volatile Balkans.<br><br>In response, Yugoslav army and special Serb police reinforcements were sent to the area without entering the security zone itself, where only local police are allowed to patrol under a 1999 agreement between NATO and Belgrade.<br><br>Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic, accompanying the prime minister, said there were now sufficient army and police forces to act against the guerrillas and force them back.<br><br>"We are patient, but we shall certainly not spend the whole winter under such a serious threat if diplomacy does not succeed," he said.<br><br>The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, trying to cut off supplies and other support to the guerrillas from inside the province, last week said both sides had agreed to suspend fighting indefinitely.<br><br>Despite this, Serb police sources reported three separate incidents between Sunday and Tuesday in which they said guerrillas fired at either police or army positions.<br><br>But local police chief Novica Zdravkovic told Reuters on Wednesday that there had been no incidents in the past 24 hours.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav Prime Minister Stresses Diplomacy In Tense Serbian Area``x976185376,59978,``x``x
``xKOSOVSKA MITROVICA,12/06/2000 Yugoslavia (Reuters) - A Kosovo Serb man accused of genocide denied Wednesday involvement in the killing of 26 ethnic Albanians, saying he had stayed inside when special police rounded up his Albanian neighbors. Igor Simic, 24, and five other Kosovo Serbs are charged with killing the Albanians on April 14, 1999, in Kosovska Mitrovica, the northern Kosovo town where their trial is being held. Simic pleaded not guilty when the trial started Tuesday. The five others, charged with killing the Albanians during NATO"s March-to-June bombing campaign last year, escaped from a Mitrovica jail earlier this year. The presiding international judge, Sweden"s Christer Karphammar, said it was the most important war crimes trial so far in Kosovo following last year"s conflict. "This is not the first, but this is the first big case when it comes to the number of killed people," he told Reuters in the courthouse. As the trial continued in a chilly, makeshift courtroom Wednesday, Simic took the stand in his own defense. With his family watching, he recounted events on that day almost 20 months ago in a calm voice. In response to questioning, he said a special Serbian police unit dressed in camouflage uniforms and helmets rounded up Kosovo Albanians from his apartment building. He said he had been able to see what was happening by looking in a reflection of the window of his apartment. "I did not see the separation (of men from women and children), but I saw special police taking Albanians out of the building," Simic said. "We were confused and frightened because of screaming and crying in the street, so we stayed in the apartment," he said. "I didn"t want to think about what was going on outside." PRESSED ABOUT EVENTS Pressed as to why he had not tried to find out what was happening outside, Simic grew agitated. "There was a threat directed to us by a person checking us, saying if he found we were hiding an Albanian, our lives could be in danger," he said, his voice rising. "It was a warning that something could happen to us, too." Simic said he had believed the Kosovo Albanians would be "exiled" by the special police unit. A court indictment said French investigators were told where to find the graves of those who were killed. Michael Hartmann, international prosecutor in the case, said he expected 11 witnesses to take the stand when the case resumes on Dec. 13. "We have 11 witnesses who claim to have seen Mr. Simic -- masked or unmasked -- assisting, aiding or abetting in the eventual death of these people," he told Reuters. Kosovo remains legally part of Yugoslavia but has been a de facto international protectorate since June 1999, when NATO-led peacekeepers and a U.N.-led civilian administration replaced Yugoslav forces and authorities in the province. The NATO alliance launched the bombing campaign in March 1999 to halt Belgrade"s repression of Kosovo"s ethnic Albanian majority. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News:Serb says not involved in killing Kosovo Albanians``x976185421,20797,``x``x
``xThursday December 7 8:41 AM ET<br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - Ethnic Albanians who fled to Kosovo after an upsurge in violence in southern Serbia last month have started returning home, partly reflecting an easing of tension, the U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday.<br><br>Maki Shinohara, spokeswoman for the United Nations (news - web sites) High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Belgrade, said that 400 people had gone back on Wednesday alone to their villages in Serbia proper near the Kosovo boundary.<br><br>She said that about 3,600 of those who had left remained in Kosovo, compared to nearly 5,000 following an increase in ethnic Albanian guerrilla activity more than two weeks ago that left four Serbian police dead.<br><br>``They heard positive news about the situation in the area, therefore they decided to return,'' Shinohara told a news conference, adding that a cease-fire had been holding and that there had not been recent clashes.<br><br>The guerrillas say they are protecting local Albanians from harassment by Serbian police. Belgrade says the guerrillas are separatists intent on joining the Presevo Valley area of Serbia to independence-minded Kosovo.<br><br>Some of those who had gone back to Serbia proper had also said they could not stay too long in Kosovo, feeling they would become a burden to their host families, she said.<br><br>In response to the guerrilla attacks, Belgrade sent army and police reinforcements to the area about a fortnight ago.<br><br>Villagers had referred to some harassment and intimidation by police. ``However, we have not heard of any reports of atrocities or attacks against civilians by these police and army,'' Shinohara said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xEthnic Albanians Returning to Tense Serbian Area ``x976273321,71630,``x``x
``xBeogradska Banka funded the Yugoslav dictator's cronies and paid off potential foes. Irena Guzelova glimpses the dealings<br><br> December 7 2000 20:29GMT<br>A loan to the president's hairdresser; an advance to his daughter's radio and television station; credits to ministers for flat renovations. <br><br>The collapse of Slobodan Milosevic's regime in Serbia is starting to reveal a web of transactions through which he supported family, friends and political associates. <br><br>While most of the regime's finances remain secret, documents shown to the Financial Times provide a glimpse of the internal workings of Mr Milosevic's 13 years in power. <br><br>Within his administration state-controlled financial institutions were as important as the security forces. They acted as sources of money and as channels for diverting funds to recipients, both within Serbia and overseas. At the heart of the network was Beogradska Banka, one of the largest in Belgrade and known as Mr Milosevic's personal bank. <br><br>Documents from Beobanka, a Beogradska Banka subsidiary, describe about 100 credits given to regime members and their families. The loans include DM1m (E511,000, $446,000) lent to "Studio Kosava", the station owned by Mr Milosevic's daughter Marija. On another occasion, the bank lent DM500,000 to Snezana Radosevic, the Milosevic hairdresser, to redecorate her chrome and marble-lined salon. <br><br>Among other recipients were Mihajl Kertes, federal customs director, and Nada Popovic-Peresic, minister of culture. The loans were made in cash without any form of guarantee and were granted to "refurbish" business premises or apartments. "There were some 800 loans granted and these are probably the least important. That's why we could get our hands on them," says one Beobanka employee. Most of the credits have not been repaid, leaving Beobanka with bad debts of $1bn. <br><br>Miroljub Labus, the deputy prime minister, estimates that Yugoslavia owes $12bn overseas. Economists say Mr Milosevic and his associates accumulated as much domestic debt, nearly half owed to ordinary citizens, such as savers whose foreign currency deposits were sequestrated in the early 1990s. "Every time I open a file I'm surprised, the debt keeps going up," says Mr Labus. <br><br>Much of the money was used to pay salaries in Serbia's vast industrial complexes to prevent workers going on strike and demanding political change. <br><br>The appointment of former opposition economist Mladjan Dinkic to head the central bank last week has reinvigorated attempts to recover money taken illegally by Mr Milosevic. Mr Dinkic says much of the money was taken abroad - transported in cash in aeroplanes, trains and buses to destinations as far afield as China. Bank notes were allegedly packed into suitcases and hand luggage and sent out as diplomatic post. <br><br>Authorities in Switzerland, Austria and the US have frozen accounts belonging to associates of Mr Milosevic. Investigators for Vojislav Kostunica, the new president, are looking into reports that the main route for illicit funds ran through Cyprus where 7,500 Yugoslav offshore companies are registered. <br><br>Last Friday Mr Dinkic announced that the US Treasury had traced $1bn transferred to Cyprus and that the central bank would work with the US Treasury to repatriate the funds. <br><br>Mr Milosevic ran Beogradska Banka himself in the early 1980s and later maintained close ties through its chairwoman, Borka Vukic. Beogradska's role grew steadily under Mr Milosevic's rule, notably in 1999 when Beogradska took over Beobanka and 21 other banks. "Beogradska Banka was like a mother bee who took all the honey from the other banks," says the Beobanka employee. <br><br>Beogradska Banka also had a branch in Nicosia. Mrs Vukic, a tough-minded 74-year-old, was a frequent visitor until the Cypriot authorities closed the branch in June this year. <br><br>After Mr Milosevic's defeat, Mrs Vukic too was ousted. She was seen leaving the bank with two large bags, the contents of which have since been the subject of much speculation. <br><br>However, despite her departure Beogradska employees are frustrated at the slow pace of change. Most of the old management remains, allowing them to destroy evidence. <br><br>Bank employees suspect a deal was struck between supporters of Mr Kostunica and the old management not to expose too much. <br><br>Others remain suspicious of the lingering power of Mr Milosevic and are too scared to talk. "I have two children to feed and you know the phones are bugged," says one manager. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xFinancial Times: Milosevic's bank delivers secrets``x976273415,17907,``x``x
``x WIRE:12/07/2000 10:22:00 ET<br> BELGRADE, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Yugoslavia"s parliament appointed a Montenegrin deputy central bank governor on Thursday, ending a row over the post that threatened to postpone Belgrade"s return to the International Monetary Fund this month. The parliament"s approval of Radivoje Rasovic as the deputy governor came some two weeks before the country was expected to rejoin the IMF, the key to helping Yugoslavia attract fresh foreign funding. The fund had been due to meet on December 14 to discuss Yugoslavia"s membership but Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus had said it had been nervous about the row. Central bank governor Mladjan Dinkic, chosen by the bloc backing Milosevic"s successor Vojislav Kostunica, had objected to the initial proposal of Vuk Ognjanovic, also a Montenegrin, because Ognjanovic had been governor in 1993 when the state faced hyperinflation. Ognjanovic was chosen by former Milosevic allies in the Socialist People"s Party (SNP) of Montenegro, Yugoslavia"s smaller republic, as part of a power-sharing arrangement agreed after Milosevic"s fall from power in October. The SNP says its main goal is to preserve Yugoslavia as the federal state of Serbia and Montenegro. Since Kostunica beat Milosevic in September"s presidential election, the Montenegrin government has ditched the Yugoslav dinar for the mark and set up its own central bank. "We have had constructive talks with the National Bank of Yugoslavia governor and members of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS)," Predrag Bulatovic, vice-president of the SNP, told reporters. Earlier this week the SNP said it also wanted the posts of the vice-governor in charge of currency operations, general manager for the credit-monetary policy and general manager of the bank control sector. "We have made a small compromise and instead of having the post of the general manager of the bank control sector we have got the post of the treasury sector," Bulatovic told reporters.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News: Yugoslav parliament appoints c-bank deputy governor``x976273471,82350,``x``x
``xFriday December 8, 2000 9:50 am<br>LUCANE, Yugoslavia (AP) - The hulking Serb policeman secured his Kalashnikov rifle across his back, stooped over, gently took the hands of two children and led them across the street. Then he pivoted, readjusted his gun and returned for two others obediently waiting their turn. <br><br>This is the new face of the Special Units, the once-dreaded Serbian police force known for its ruthlessness during the rule of former President Slobodan Milosevic. Now that he's out - and a democratic government is in - the police are sprucing up their image. <br><br>The transformation is taking place throughout Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic. It's part of a concerted effort at all levels to adapt to the pro-democracy vision of President Vojislav Kostunica. Serbia's Interior Ministry announced the broad action shortly after the new government came to power in October. <br><br>The new policy includes trials for police brutality and the establishment of units responsible for fighting organized crime and corruption within the police forces. <br><br>Early reports say it is working, with some opinion surveys indicating that the level of trust among the people is rising rapidly. <br><br>The policy has even made its way down to Milos, a commander of a crack unit sent to this tiny village near Kosovo to drive out ethnic Albanian gunmen who had seized the territory weeks before. He spoke on condition that only his first name be used. <br><br>``You are not allowed to shoot indiscriminately,'' he said, wagging his finger. ``You are not allowed to damage any private property unless in dire need.'' <br><br>Such restraint has not always been the hallmark of the Serb special police. In the province of Kosovo, just over the hills from this southern Serb village, Serb police are widely accused of burning houses and killing anyone who got in their way while they tried to crush the Kosovo Liberation Army, an ethnic Albanian rebel group. <br><br>Those heavy-handed tactics provoked the 78-day NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia last year. The clashes ended with war crimes indictments against Milosevic and others. <br><br>The police's change in attitude stems in part from the change in government. Unwilling to subject Yugoslavia to the pariah status it faced under Milosevic, Kostunica must handle ethnic Albanian extremists launching attacks in southern Serbia without provoking international condemnation. <br><br>``We are the police of the country that is fighting for its international recognition and we have to be immaculate,'' Milos said. <br><br>The police did not have to fire a shot in retaking Lucane, a tiny village in the tense region that lies between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia. <br><br>Still, they didn't know what to expect. Supported by two armored vehicles and armed with automatic weapons, police zigzagged from house to house, entering the village with caution. <br><br>They found only a few elderly ethnic Albanians. Most of Lucane's estimated 1,000 inhabitants had fled earlier, fearing the onset of fighting. <br><br>Instead of shooting, the elderly villagers were summoned to attention by knocks at their doors. <br><br>``Greetings to you and your family,'' one officer cheerily told two frightened couples holed up in a shack. ``Feel safe. We come in peace.'' <br><br>They exchanged cigarettes and struck a deal: Village elders promised to urge others to return, and the police pledged they would be safe. <br><br>``We have to move into a house or two, but the state will compensate all costs,'' Milos told the ethnic Albanians, who looked shocked and nodded. <br><br>During the Lucane operations, lesser trained police reservists did break holes in the wall of a house to fire though. But the owner complained, and they were ordered to buy cement and a bucket of paint. They repaired the damage. <br><br>The new style has not faced a major test, because the ethnic Albanian extremists here have not chosen to fight since a spate of attacks last month killed four Serb policemen. But Milos insisted the change is genuine. <br><br>``For the first time ever, I have a feeling that I have a firm state behind us,'' he said. <br><br>Later, as he stood at his checkpoint, a family of ethnic Albanians appeared, asking if it was safe to come home. <br><br>``People, I beg you, return to your homes,'' he said. ``We are running out of bread to feed your chickens.'' ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Serb Police Becoming More Cordial ``x976273532,70125,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL, December 8, 2000<br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 7 — Anticipating a sweeping victory in Serbian parliamentary elections in two weeks, the leaders of an 18-party coalition that toppled Slobodan Milosevic in October have agreed on how they plan to share power in a new government. <br><br>The Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic heads the coalition's list of candidates and would be in line to become prime minister and thereby responsible for forming a government, coalition leaders said today. Mr. Djindjic also confirmed he has named five deputy prime ministers, all leaders of parties belonging to the alliance, known as the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, which supported Vojislav Kostunica for the presidency against Mr. Milosevic. <br><br>But strains do exist within the coalition, in particular between Mr. Kostunica and Mr. Djindjic, and may be the reason no one has yet been chosen to head the Interior Ministry, which controls the Serbian police forces that, under Mr. Milosevic, became a tool of political control and repression. Mr. Djindjic said that he and Mr. Kostunica would have to decide on the post together, and he suggested that it might not happen until after the Dec. 23 elections, perhaps not until January. <br><br>Mr. Djindjic said he would prefer a judge or lawyer for the post. "I would like a moderate who would gain the confidence of the public, a lawyer or a judge," he said. "The Ministry of Police should become a public service in which the citizens believe." <br><br>The alliance and Mr. Kostunica are both so overwhelmingly popular now that the Democratic Opposition of Serbia is expected to win in a landslide and have no trouble forming a government, which will be a mixture of opposition party politicians, technocrats and business professionals, Mr. Djindjic said. <br><br>Opinion polls have found that the coalition leads with 61 percent, while Mr. Milosevic's Socialist Party continues to fall, at 16 percent in a recent survey. The Radical Party of the nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj may get just 5 percent, while the other once powerful opposition figure, Vuk Draskovic, is polling only some 3 percent. Meanwhile, Mr. Kostunica had an approval rating of 74 percent last week, the highest rating that Srdjan Bogosavljevic, director of Strategic Marketing and Media Research Institute, said he had ever seen for a politician in Serbia. <br><br>Mr. Kostunica has used his popularity to demand the same number of parliamentary seats as Mr. Djindjic's much larger party. Their parties will both take 26 percent of the total seats won by the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, and the smaller parties will divide the rest.<br><br>Mr. Djindjic has insisted on forming a government ahead of the elections, so that no time is lost afterward. "Time is our biggest problem," he said at a news conference on Wednesday. "Serbia is at its lowest possible level in history."<br><br>So far, he has appointed deputy prime ministers for finance, states issues, crime and culture. The fifth deputy prime minister post, in charge of the judicial system has been offered to the leader of the Serbian Christian Democratic Party, Vladan Batic, but he has yet to accept, Mr. Djindjic said.<br><br>Mr. Djindjic promised change. "We have to completely dismantle the system of power," he said. "Our plan is to be a government of change and not just to take power." He also promised transparency in government and to explain Serbia's precarious situation: "People do not want to face reality. People are hoping for a magic wand to annul 10 years of history." <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Serbian Coalition Reaches Accord on Power``x976273588,94481,``x``x
``xFriday, December 8 7:50 PM SGT <br>BELGRADE, Dec 8 (AFP) - <br>Former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic's regime funneled at least four billion dollars into foreign bank accounts during its 13-year rule, central bank chief Mladjan Dinkic was quoted as saying Friday.<br><br>"According to my estimates, just during the period of hyperinflation, about 4 billion dollars were taken out of the country," Dinkic told the Belgrade daily Politika. <br><br>Federal Yugoslavia was struggling with a bout of hyperinflation during 1992-1993.<br><br>Dinkic said that "a part of that money was spent, the other was returned to the country, while the remainder is still in private accounts and the former regime's leaders have no intention of giving it back."<br><br>Last week, Dinkic said that US treasury officials informed the central bank that they had tracked down one billion dollars that the former regime had transferred to Cyprus and then to other countries.<br><br>Dinkic told Politika that the bank has set up a "special commission tasked only with returning the money which was illegaly taken out," estimating the total loss during Milosevic's rule at "several billion dollars."<br><br>He added that former officials had said that the funds were transfered to help the country deal with the financial situation under sanctions imposed on Belgrade.<br><br>"The problem is that no one knows where the money is since it has been put into the accounts of private individuals," Dinkic said.<br><br>The money "was taken out in sacks" mostly to Cyprus, from where it was later transferred to other countries.<br><br>"The search for that money starts immediately, but this is not an easy process," Dinkic said.<br><br>Dinkic, a 36-year old neo-liberal economist, was elected governor of the central bank by the Yugoslav parliament on November 28 after getting the nod from reformist President Vojislav Kostunica.<br><br>Before being elected for central bank chief, Dinkic was at the reins of the G17 think tank which has produced an economic programme for Kostunica and his political backers in the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS).<br><br>The reformers have accused Milosevic and former influential political figures of moving the country's financial reserves abroad and using it for their own personal enjoyment.<br><br>Switzerland and Cyprus officials have already pledged to help the new Yugoslav authorities find the funds. <br><br>Milosevic stepped down from the Yugoslav presidency in October following a popular revolt that followed elections won by Kostunica.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic regime funneled 4 billion dollars abroad: central bank chief``x976356309,20309,``x``x
``xBy ALI ZERDIN, Associated Press Writer, Friday December 8 2:13 PM ET<br><br>LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) - The last two of Yugoslavia's former republics to break away in bloodshed announced Friday they would establish diplomatic relations with Belgrade just over two months after a new, pro-democracy leadership replaced Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites).<br><br>The separate announcements by the governments of Slovenia and Bosnia appeared to reflect rapidly improving ties between what is left of Yugoslavia and former republics that declared independence starting in 1991.<br><br>Slovenia's government said in a statement broadcast on national television that an agreement to establish relations is to be signed on Saturday during the visit of Yugoslavia's Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic.<br><br>In Sarajevo, Bosnian Foreign Minister Jadranko Prlic said in a statement that he will meet with Svilanovic in Belgrade on Dec. 15 for the expected signing of a protocol formally establishing ties. The statement, carried by the state-run Onasa news agency, said the Bosnian presidency decided Thursday to establish diplomatic relations.<br><br>Svilanovic will be one of the most senior Yugoslav officials to come to Slovenia since 1991, when Yugoslav army launched a 10-day war here trying to prevent Slovenia's secession. The fighting then spread to other ex-Yugoslav republics, Croatia and Bosnia.<br><br>Croatia and Yugoslavia established diplomatic ties in 1996. Macedonia, the only ex-republic to break away peacefully, agreed to formal ties with Belgrade in 1994.<br><br>Svilanovic already visited Bosnia late last month.<br><br>During the war, the Bosnian Serbs, backed by the Yugoslav Army, tried to secede from Bosnia and join Yugoslavia.<br><br>A peace agreement ending the conflict, also signed by Yugoslavia, ordered both countries to recognize each others borders and establish diplomatic relations.<br><br>But the regime of Milosevic insisted that Bosnia must first drop charges of aggression and claims of war reparations against Yugoslavia at the World Court. Friday's statement from Bosnia said the country continued pressing those charges.<br><br>Slovenia also had shown interest in establishing relations before Milosevic's fall. The former dictator had refused, saying Slovenia was the first to ``stab'' Yugoslavia in the back.<br><br>Milosevic's regime also insisted that present-day Yugoslavia should be considered the only successor of the old federation's assets - a claim Slovenia and other ex-Yugoslav countries have fiercely disputed.<br><br>Milosevic's successor, Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites), had dropped that claim, paving the way for mutual recognition.<br><br>Slovenia's Cabinet, however, has insisted on a clause stating that today's Yugoslavia - composed of Serbia and Montenegro - and Slovenia are equal heirs to the old federation's assets. Millions of dollars, gold bars and real estate are at stake.<br><br>Talks on Yugoslavia's succession are to reopen later this month in Belgium.<br><br>Slovenia's parliament also said it would continue cooperating with Montenegro, a pro-Western Yugoslav republic, and would keep its consulate there. Slovenia had supported Montenegro's attempts to develop closer ties to the West during Milosevic's regime.<br><br>The new Yugoslav government said this week that it has nothing against Slovenia having its consulate in Montenegro.<br><br>Both Bosnia and Slovenia stand much to gain by closer ties with Yugoslavia, whose 11 million people represent a potentially strong market for their products.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSlovenia, Bosnia Reach to Belgrade ``x976356352,96022,``x``x
``xFriday December 8 3:13 PM ET<br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - The wife of ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) complained on Friday about media bias, bringing a bitter smile to former opposition journalists who chafed under her husband's firm control of the state media.<br><br>Mirjana Markovic made her comments, her first in public since her husband was ousted two months ago, in an unprecedented meeting with the media during a break in a session of the Yugoslav parliament, where she is a deputy.<br><br>Her remarks are likely to be viewed with more than a little irony by the couple's opponents in the West and at home, who found Yugoslavia under Milosevic a country filled with state-run propaganda and authoritarian restrictions.<br><br>Markovic is leader of the small Yugoslav Left party and is seen as a major political influence on the former president.<br><br>Asked about proposals by her husband's political foes to file charges against him, she said: ``You cannot have such a conversation with me. I have accepted a correct conversation and please keep the agreement we have.''<br><br>Although he has been indicted by the U.N. war crimes court, some Serbian politicians have suggested putting Milosevic on trial at home for corruption and electoral fraud during more than a decade in power.<br><br>She said she doubted that her party would stage protest rallies ahead of December 23 parliamentary elections, saying there was ``no freedom of thought or freedom of movement'' necessary for organizing such a campaign.<br><br>Markovic was elected to public office for the first time on September 24, the same day as Milosevic lost the presidential vote to opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites).<br><br>She represents the eastern region around Pozarevac, the couple's home town.<br><br>She complained about the state media, which now side overwhelmingly with Kostunica and his allies. ``I think that parties which do not express the opinion that is dominant in the state media are not represented at all,'' she said.<br><br>Markovic did not allow television cameras to take part in her chat with reporters.<br><br>She also lamented the break-up of the old coalition government involving her party and Milosevic's Socialist Party.<br><br>``I still think the Left needs to be united. Not only in one country, but in the region, in the world, on the planet.''``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic's Wife Speaks Out Against New Yugoslavia ``x976356411,88649,``x``x
``xFriday December 8 3:18 PM ET<br>VRANJE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Ethnic Albanian guerrillas attacked a Serbian police patrol on Friday in a tense area of southern Serbia, but pulled back after fire was returned, a local police chief said.<br><br>Novica Zdravkovic, police chief in the southern town of Vranje, said the attackers used automatic weapons and grenade launchers in a buffer zone bordering Kosovo.<br><br>The area saw an upsurge in guerrilla activity last month that left four Serbian police dead.<br><br>``The terrorists carried out another of their actions today around 2 p.m. (8 a.m. EST),'' Zdravkovic told Reuters. ``The police responded to the attack and the terrorists withdrew after that.''<br><br>The attack took place as the Yugoslav parliament discussed the situation in southern Serbia for a second day in Belgrade.<br><br>Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic told the assembly about the incident, saying there had been no injuries, B-92 radio reported.<br><br>``A group of around 20 terrorists opened fire from personal arms on a 12-man police patrol. Nobody was injured,'' he said.<br><br>The incident, which occurred about 10 km (six miles) north of the town of Presevo, appeared to be the most serious in the boundary area since the outbreak of fighting two and a half weeks ago that left the four police dead.<br><br>Serb police earlier this week reported three separate incidents between Sunday and Tuesday with guerillas firing at police or army positions, saying they had not returned fire and that there were no casualties.<br><br>Zdravkovic said Friday's incident had been the fourth involving the guerrillas since the police were killed and the first police had responded to. He said the area was now calm.<br><br>A spokesman for the NATO (news - web sites)-led KFOR peacekeeping force told Reuters on Tuesday it still had confidence in a cease-fire it helped broker after last month's clashes.<br><br>The guerrillas say they are protecting local Albanians from harassment by Serbian police. Belgrade insists they are separatists intent on joining the Presevo Valley area of Serbia to independence-minded Kosovo.<br><br>In response to last month's violence, Yugoslav army and special Serb police reinforcements were sent to the area without entering the security zone itself, where only local police are allowed to patrol under a 1999 accord between NATO and Belgrade.<br><br>KFOR, trying to cut off any supplies and other support to the guerrillas from inside Kosovo, has stepped up monitoring of the boundary in recent weeks.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb Police Say Fired on by Albanian Guerrillas ``x976356445,43581,``x``x
``xBy Michael Dobbs<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Monday, December 11, 2000; Page A01 <br><br>BELGRADE –– In a softly lit conference room, American pollster Doug Schoen flashed the results of an in-depth opinion poll of 840 Serbian voters onto an overhead projection screen, sketching a strategy for toppling Europe's last remaining communist-era ruler. <br><br><br>His message, delivered to leaders of Serbia's traditionally fractious opposition, was simple and powerful. Slobodan Milosevic--survivor of four lost wars, two major street uprisings, 78 days of NATO bombing and a decade of international sanctions--was "completely vulnerable" to a well-organized electoral challenge. The key, the poll results showed, was opposition unity.<br><br><br>Held in a luxury hotel in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, in October 1999, the closed-door briefing by Schoen, a Democrat, turned out to be a seminal event, pointing the way to the electoral revolution that brought down Milosevic a year later. It also marked the start of an extraordinary U.S. effort to unseat a foreign head of state, not through covert action of the kind the CIA once employed in such places as Iran and Guatemala, but by modern election campaign techniques.<br><br><br>While the broad outlines of the $41 million U.S. democracy-building campaign in Serbia are public knowledge, interviews with dozens of key players, both here and in the United States, suggest it was much more extensive and sophisticated than previously reported.<br><br><br>In the 12 months following the strategy session, U.S.-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-Milosevic drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote count. U.S. taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milosevic graffiti on walls across Serbia, and 2.5 million stickers with the slogan "He's Finished," which became the revolution's catchphrase.<br><br><br>Regarded by many as Eastern Europe's last great democratic upheaval, Milosevic's overthrow may also go down in history as the first poll-driven, focus group-tested revolution. Behind the seeming spontaneity of the street uprising that forced Milosevic to respect the results of a hotly contested presidential election on Sept. 24 was a carefully researched strategy put together by Serbian democracy activists with the active assistance of Western advisers and pollsters.<br><br><br>In the long run, many people here say, Milosevic's overthrow was inevitable, if only because of the economic and military disasters that befell Serbia during his 13 years in power, first as head of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, and then as head of Yugoslavia itself. But there was nothing inevitable about the timing or the manner of his departure.<br><br><br>"Without American support, it would have been much more difficult," said Slobodan Homen, a student leader who traveled to Budapest and other European capitals dozens of times to meet with U.S. officials and private democracy consultants. "There would have been a revolution anyway, but the assistance helped us avoid bloodshed."<br><br><br>"The foreign support was critical," agreed Milan Stevanovic, who oversaw the marketing and message development campaign for the opposition coalition, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia. "In the past, we did what we intuitively thought we should do. This was the first campaign where our strategy was based on real scientific research."<br><br><br>Had Yugoslavia been a totalitarian state like Iraq or North Korea, the strategy would have stood little chance. But while Milosevic ran a repressive police state, he was never a dictator in the style of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. His authority depended on a veil of popular legitimacy. It was this constitutional facade that gave Serbian opposition leaders, and their Western backers, an all-important opening.<br><br><br>A Unified Opposition<br><br><br>The fall of 1999 was a difficult time for the Serbian opposition. Although Milosevic had long been unpopular, he appeared to have had some success in tapping into the upsurge of patriotic feeling caused by the Kosovo war a few months before. The 59-year-old Yugoslav president was seeking to depict himself as the rebuilder of the country following NATO bombing raids. Attempts by some opposition parties to topple Milosevic through street protests were getting nowhere.<br><br><br>Milosevic's strongest political card was the disarray and ineffectiveness of his opponents. The opposition consisted of nearly two dozen political parties, some of whose leaders were barely on speaking terms with one another. While the opposition politicians recognized the need for unity in theory, in practice they were deeply divided, both on the tactics to use against Milosevic and the question of who should succeed him.<br><br><br>It was against this background that 20 opposition leaders accepted an invitation from the Washington-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) in October 1999 to a seminar at the Marriott Hotel in Budapest, overlooking the Danube River. The key item on the agenda: an opinion poll commissioned by the U.S. polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates.<br><br><br>The poll reported that Milosevic had a 70 percent unfavorable rating among Serbian voters. But it also showed that the big names in the opposition--men such as Zoran Djindjic and Vuk Draskovic--were burdened with negative poll ratings almost as high as Milosevic's.<br><br><br>Among the candidates best placed to challenge Milosevic, the poll suggested, was a moderate Serbian nationalist named Vojislav Kostunica, who had a favorable rating of 49 percent and an unfavorable rating of only 29 percent.<br><br><br>Schoen, who had provided polling advice to former Yugoslav prime minister Milan Panic during his unsuccessful 1992 campaign to depose Milosevic, drew several conclusions from these and other findings of the poll.<br><br><br>First, Serbian voters were receptive to simple anti-Milosevic messages focusing on the terrible economic situation. Second, they wanted change to come through the ballot box, not demonstrations. Finally, and most important, only a united opposition had a chance of deposing Milosevic. "If you take one word from this conference," Schoen told the delegates, "I urge it to be unity."<br><br><br>The unity message did not catch on immediately with Serbian opposition leaders. "They had seen Milosevic rise before," recalled Debra Alexander, who was in charge of the National Democratic Institute polling operation. "There was a sense they were going up against insuperable odds."<br><br><br>In the following months, however, the opposition politicians came to believe the polling evidence and shape a strategy for defeating Milosevic with the help of the Western consultants. Djindjic, leader of the largest, best-organized opposition party, agreed to set aside his presidential ambitions in favor of a less polarizing candidate and serve as coalition campaign manager.<br><br><br>Things moved into high gear in July, when Milosevic called elections. For the first time in Serbian political history, Western advertising techniques were used to test political messages. The messages were tested in a similar way to soft drinks or chewing gum, according to Srdan Bogosavljevic, head of the Strategic Marketing firm, which ran a series of focus groups on behalf of the opposition coalition and the Otpor student resistance movement with financial support from Western democracy groups.<br><br><br>"We approached the process with a brand to sell and a brand to beat," said Bogosavljevic, one of Serbia's best known pollsters. "The brand to sell was Kostunica. The brand to beat was Milosevic."<br><br><br>According to Stevanovic, the coalition marketing expert, every word of the opposition's one-minute and five-minute core political messages used by opposition spokesmen across the country was discussed with U.S. consultants and tested by opinion poll. Coalition candidates running for the Yugoslav parliament and tens of thousands of local government positions received extensive training on how to stay "on message," answer journalists' questions and rebut the arguments of Milosevic supporters.<br><br><br>Visa restrictions imposed by the Milosevic government made it impossible for the U.S. consultants to travel to Serbia, so they organized a series of "train the trainers" sessions in Hungary and Montenegro. The trainers then went back to Serbia to spread the word.<br><br><br>Kostunica's selection as the opposition presidential candidate in August was shaped, in large measure, by the opinion polls. "The polls showed that Kostunica could defeat Milosevic in the easiest possible way," recalled Dusan Mihajlovic, leader of the New Democracy party, one of 18 political parties that made up the coalition. Part of Kostunica's appeal, the polls showed, was that he was widely perceived as anti-American. Because he was an outspoken critic of the NATO bombing of Serbia, it was difficult for the Milosevic government to label him a Western stooge or a traitor to Serbian interests.<br><br><br>Kostunica was also the one opposition leader strongly opposed to accepting U.S. campaign assistance. "I was against it, never got any myself, and thought it was unnecessary," he said in an interview.<br><br><br>To many opposition activists, Kostunica's denials ring a little hollow. While it is true that his own party, the Democratic Party of Serbia, rejected anything that smacked of U.S. aid, his presidential campaign benefited enormously from the advice and financial support the opposition coalition received from abroad, and particularly from the United States.<br><br><br>Lessons in Resistance<br><br><br>The U.S. democracy-building effort in Serbia was a curious mixture of secrecy and openness. In principle, it was an overt operation, funded by congressional appropriations of around $10 million for fiscal 1999 and $31 million for 2000.<br><br><br>Some Americans involved in the anti-Milosevic effort said they were aware of CIA activity at the fringes of the campaign, but had trouble finding out what the agency was up to. Whatever it was, they concluded it was not particularly effective. The lead role was taken by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government's foreign assistance agency, which channeled the funds through commercial contractors and nonprofit groups such as NDI and its Republican counterpart, the International Republican Institute (IRI).<br><br><br>While NDI worked closely with Serbian opposition parties, IRI focused its attention on Otpor, which served as the revolution's ideological and organizational backbone. In March, IRI paid for two dozen Otpor leaders to attend a seminar on nonviolent resistance at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest, a few hundreds yards along the Danube from the NDI-favored Marriott.<br><br><br>During the seminar, the Serbian students received training in such matters as how to organize a strike, how to communicate with symbols, how to overcome fear and how to undermine the authority of a dictatorial regime. The principal lecturer was retired U.S. Army Col. Robert Helvey, who has made a study of nonviolent resistance methods around the world, including those used in modern-day Burma and the civil rights struggle in the American South.<br><br><br>"What was most amazing to us was to discover that what we were trying to do spontaneously in Serbia was supported by a whole nonviolent system that we knew nothing about," said Srdja Popovic, a former biology student. "This was the first time we thought about this in a systematic, scientific way. We said to ourselves, 'We will go back and apply this.' "<br><br><br>Helvey, who served two tours in Vietnam, introduced the Otpor activists to the ideas of American theoretician Gene Sharpe, whom he describes as "the Clausewitz of the nonviolence movement," referring to the renowned Prussian military strategist. Six months later, Popovic can recite Helvey's lectures almost word for word, beginning with the dictum, "Removing the authority of the ruler is the most important element in nonviolent struggle."<br><br><br>"Those Serbs really impressed me," Helvey said in an interview from his West Virginia home. "They were very bright, very committed."<br><br><br>Back in Serbia, Otpor activists set about undermining Milosevic's authority by all means available. Rather than simply daubing slogans on walls, they used a wide range of sophisticated public relations techniques, including polling, leafleting and paid advertising. "The poll results were very important," recalled Ivo Andric, a marketing student at Belgrade University. "At every moment, we knew what to say to the people."<br><br><br>The poll results pointed to a paradox that went to the heart of Milosevic's grip on power. On one hand, the Yugoslav president was detested by 70 percent of the electorate. On the other, a majority of Serbs believed he would continue to remain in power, even after an election. To topple Milosevic, opposition leaders first had to convince their fellow Serbs that he could be overthrown.<br><br><br>At a brainstorming session last July, Otpor activist Srdjan Milivojevic murmured the words "Gotov je," or "He's finished."<br><br><br>"We realized immediately that it summed up our entire campaign," said Dejan Randjic, who ran the Otpor marketing operation. "It was very simple, very powerful. It focused on Milosevic, but did not even mention him by name."<br><br><br>Over the next three months, millions of "Gotov je" stickers were printed on 80 tons of imported adhesive paper--paid for by USAID and delivered by the Washington-based Ronco Consulting Corp.--and plastered all over Serbia on walls, inside elevators and across Milosevic's campaign posters. Printed in black and white and accompanied by Otpor's clenched-fist emblem, they became the symbol of the revolution.<br><br><br>A Fair Vote Count<br><br><br>Had Yugoslav border officials been paying attention last summer, they would have observed an extraordinary increase in the number of Serbian students visiting a revered Serbian shrine in southern Hungary. "Making a pilgrimage to Saint Andrija" became the favorite excuse for opposition activists en route to another U.S.-funded program, this one in the Hungarian town of Szeged, just 10 minutes' drive from the Serbian border.<br><br><br>Its purpose was to train election observers. "We set up mock polling stations with ballot boxes and went through the balloting process in detail with them," recalled John Anelli of the Republican institute, describing what became a key component in Milosevic's downfall. "We trained about 400 election monitors who went back to Serbia and trained another 15,000 monitors."<br><br><br>Without a massive monitoring operation, and an equally massive parallel vote count organized by the Serbian Center for Free Elections and Democracy, this fall's effort to unseat Milosevic would almost certainly have failed. Opposition parties suspected him of stealing previous elections, most notably in 1997, but were unable to offer conclusive proof. This time, they made sure they had the means to detect election fraud.<br><br><br>Drawing on their experience of elections in such places as Indonesia and Mozambique, IRI consultants simulated vote-counting scams and ballot-stuffing techniques. "They trained us to spot fraud and react quickly," said Goran Rapoti, an opposition election monitor from the town of Backa Palanka, who attended the seminar. "It was really useful."<br><br><br>The United States paid for the training in Szeged and the second level of training back in Serbia. By Election Day, the opposition parties were able to place at least two trained monitors at every polling station in the country. Each monitor received about $5 in Western-provided money, a significant sum in a country where the average monthly wage is less than $30.<br><br><br>"Without the monitors, Milosevic's people would have stolen the elections again," said Alexander Trkulja, the coalition campaign manager in Backa Palanka. "They are masters in stealing elections."<br><br><br>An iron rule for both the coalition and Otpor was never to talk about Western financial or logistical support. To have done so would have played straight into the hands of the Milosevic propaganda machine, which routinely depicted opposition leaders as "traitors" or "NATO lackeys."<br><br><br>"It was dangerous to be connected publicly with the American authorities," said Randjic, the Otpor activist, recalling a 12-hour police interrogation in which he was grilled about his "Washington controllers."<br><br><br>Even today, nearly two months after Milosevic's fall, the topic is sensitive. Although the U.S. effort was clearly aimed at Milosevic, the Clinton administration prefers to depict it as a neutral democracy-building operation. "Our job was to level the playing field," said Paul Rowland, head of the Democratic institute's Serbia program. "We worked with parties that wanted to make Serbia a genuine democracy."<br><br><br>Serbian opposition leaders, meanwhile, view the U.S. support as atonement for past mistakes. They note that for many years U.S. officials treated the Yugoslav president as the linchpin of America's Balkan diplomacy, an indispensable interlocutor for Bosnia peace negotiator Richard C. Holbrooke and other high-level emissaries. Far from undermining Milosevic's grip on power, U.S. policy had actually served to strengthen it, they contend.<br><br><br>"In the past, we had the impression that the West was supporting Milosevic," said Homen, a 28-year-old lawyer who served as Otpor's intermediary with Western diplomats and aid organizations. "This was the first time that we felt that Western governments were actually trying to get rid of Milosevic."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post:U.S. Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition``x976531629,25982,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Dec 10, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic blamed NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo for the recent clashes between police and ethnic Albanian rebels in southern Serbia, the news agency Beta said on Saturday.<br><br>Milosevic, who was taking part in a meeting of his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), said that under UN resolution 1244, KFOR had to disarm the ethnic Albanian guerrilla movement, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).<br><br>"I can still remember the day when a KFOR general announced in the name of UN forces that the UCK (KLA) had been disarmed," Beta quoted Milosevic as saying.<br><br>"These disarmed people use heavy armaments against Serb villages in Kosovo and come into Serbia in brigades with full military equipment, crossing the security zone under the surveillance of American helicopters," he said.<br><br>Milosevic was linking the KLA to a new ethnic Albanian separatist group, the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB), which has emerged since has emerged since KFOR troops moved into Kosovo at the end of the NATO bombing on Yugoslavia in June 1999.<br><br>In recent weeks, the UCPMB, which wants the mainly ethnic Albanian communities of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac to become part of an independent Kosovo, has clashed with Serbian police, killing at least three, inside a buffer zone established after the war to separate Kosovo from Serbia proper.<br><br>On Friday, the Yugoslav parliament interrupted a two-day meeting on the conflict in southern Serbia, near the demarcation line with UN-administered Kosovo, without reaching any conclusions. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic Blames KFOR for Conflict in Southern Serbia``x976531671,78850,``x``x
``xLJUBLJANA (Reuters),December 9 - Slovenia and Yugoslavia on Saturday established diplomatic ties, nine years after Slovenia's declaration of independence from former Yugoslavia triggered off a brief war that killed 64 people.<br><br>The agreement on establishing diplomatic relations was signed during the first official visit of Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic to Slovenia.<br><br>The move is one of the steps by the government of new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica to end Belgrade's international isolation and normalize relations with its neighbors after a decade of war.<br><br>Yugoslavia already has diplomatic relations with the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Macedonia and plans to establish ties with Bosnia next week.<br><br>The agreement is expected to lead to more economic cooperation between the two countries.<br><br>Trade with Yugoslavia at present represents only about one percent of Slovenia's total trade.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSlovenia And Yugoslavia Establish Diplomatic Ties ``x976531699,22457,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Dec 12, 2000 -- (Reuters) The Yugoslav army said on Monday that ethnic Albanian "terrorists" were still infiltrating southern Serbia from Kosovo and it expected new attacks.<br><br>Army spokesman colonel Svetozar Radisic accused the international community of failing to take sufficient action to deter the guerrillas, who operate mainly in a five km (three mile) wide buffer zone bordering Kosovo.<br><br>"The conflict may spread and destabilize the situation in that part of Serbia which can cause wider geostrategic problems," he told a news conference.<br><br>Guerrillas killed four Serbian police in the border area last month.<br><br>Radisic said the situation was now under control, but he warned that guerrillas were trying to provoke an escalation and draw the army into a conflict.<br><br>Army positions are now only about 300-400 meters from the "terrorists" in a part of the security zone near the village of Konculj, he said. "The Yugoslav army is practically touching with the terrorist forces now."<br><br>He added that the army could prevent the rebels from entering Serbia beyond the buffer zone. But inside the zone, only local Serb police are allowed to patrol, according to the terms of the agreement which ended NATO's air war against Belgrade last year.<br><br>The NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo has stepped up security along the administrative boundary between Serbia proper and Kosovo, but was still not fully stopping the armed guerrillas from crossing into the buffer zone, he said.<br><br>"It is obvious the Kosovo Albanian terrorists entered the ground security zone with the permission of KFOR troops," Radisic said.<br><br>Radisic said that the present status quo situation favored the guerrillas.<br><br>"Terrorists are fortifying positions in the areas they have taken over, organizing communication, establishing links and conducting training," Radisic said.<br><br>"The longer this lasts the better they will be organized and the greater potential they will have to make problems in the area. Time is not working for Yugoslavia," he said. <br><br>(C)2000 Copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters Limited.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav Army Expects New Guerrilla Attacks``x976617562,26717,``x``x
``xROME, Dec 12, 2000 -- (Reuters) Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica said on Monday he supported future autonomy for the province of Kosovo within the borders of federal Yugoslavia.<br><br>"I am for a common state of Serbia and Montenegro, for the essential autonomy of Kosovo in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia -- a truly multinational state with all human and minority rights," he said in an address to Italian parliamentarians during his first official visit to Rome.<br><br>Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, whom Kostunica replaced after disputed elections in September, revoked Kosovo's autonomy in 1989.<br><br>The ethnic Albanian majority in the province, who outnumbered Serbs by almost nine to one, came under severe repression by Serb military forces, which led to the bombing of Yugoslavia last year by NATO.<br><br>Referring to the bombing campaign, Kostunica said: "These are things you cannot forget, but you must live looking to the future."<br><br>A United Nations resolution set up to provide a mandate for Kosovo stated that the territory remained under Yugoslav sovereignty but said nothing about it being part of Serbia.<br><br>Three possible solutions have been flagged for Kosovo -- an independent, mainly ethnic Albanian state, a Yugoslav federal republic with full autonomy or as a province of Serbia.<br><br>Kostunica did not elaborate on his ideas for Kosovo but vowed to secure democracy throughout Yugoslavia.<br><br>While Kostunica and his political allies have largely secured control of Yugoslav institutions, the outcome of Serbian parliamentary elections slated for December 23 will be the key to cementing his grip across the federation.<br><br>Kostunica told Italian parliamentarians that his country needed foreign capital to protect and develop its fledgling democratic political system.<br><br>"The new democratic institutions in Yugoslavia should be strengthened with the necessary economic aid," he said, adding that Italy had understood that need and was helping to meet it.<br><br>Kostunica earlier met President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, who welcomed Yugoslavia's transition to democracy and pledged Italy's support and investment in the country.<br><br>The foreign ministers of both countries signed a raft of economic deals, including an agreement to protect and promote each other's economic investments.<br><br>KOSTUNICA MEETS POPE<br><br>Kostunica, whose country is predominantly Christian Orthodox, also had an audience with Pope John Paul following his address in the Italian parliament.<br><br>"(President) Kostunica expressed the desire to work for peace in Yugoslavia and the Balkans," Chief Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a statement after the meeting.<br><br>"During the talks, the two men discussed the efforts made by the Holy See during these difficult and tragic years, and (both) wished that the situation will reach a meeting of minds and social peace," he added.<br><br>(C)2000 Copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters Limited.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica Says He Backs Autonomy for Kosovo``x976617610,53231,``x``x
``xWIRE:12/12/2000 00:11:00 ET<br> BELGRADE (Reuters) - A Serbian regional court found nine men guilty of kidnapping a war crimes suspect in Serbia who was later handed over to NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia, Serbia"s Beta news agency reported. The court in the central town of Uzice sentenced the group to a total of 46 years in prison for kidnapping Stevan Todorovic, who was transported from Bosnia to the U.N. war crimes tribunal at The Hague in September 1998. The alleged leader of the group, Ignjatije Popovic, was tried in absentia and sentenced to seven years. Others were present at the trial and received sentences ranging between 8-1/2 and 1-1/2 years. The war crimes tribunal has asked the NATO-led Stabilization Force in Bosnia for details of the arrest after Todorovic said he was captured by mercenaries at his holiday home in central Serbia. In 1995, the tribunal indicted Todorovic, former police chief in the Bosnian town of Bosanski Samac, and five other men accused of orchestrating a campaign to ethnically purge the town during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. A SFOR spokeswoman said at the time of the arrest Todorovic had been in Bosnia when he was detained. The Serbian court"s presiding judge said it was clear the defendants had received $22,900 for kidnapping Todorovic, Beta reported. Relatives of the defendants said the verdict was politically motivated and the court was under the influence of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who has himself been indicted by the Hague tribunal on war crimes charges. The court convicted the group on kidnapping charges but not of terrorism as prosecutors had demanded.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News: Serbian Court Finds Group Guilty of Kidnapping``x976617666,69753,``x``x
``xBy Nick Antonovics<br><br>BRUSSELS,December 12(Reuters) - Yugoslavia's government appealed on Tuesday for international aid to help rebuild the country's shattered economy, promising no more war in the Balkans.<br><br>``Our vision is to break with the past. There will be no more war in the Balkan region. There will be no more isolation of my country,'' Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus told a news conference midway through talks with donors in Brussels.<br><br>``We need some assistance from abroad to break with the past, and we are ready to pursue adequate policies for that,'' he said.<br><br>The donors meeting, hosted by the World Bank and European Commission, was the first to which Yugoslavia had been invited since President Slobodan Milosevic quit in October, following elections won by Vojislav Kostunica.<br><br>Labus said Yugoslavia used to be a donor country itself, and the government's aim was to ``exit from this situation'' in which the country was dependent on foreign aid.<br><br>He admitted, however, that political and economic obstacles were considerable.<br><br>``Open political issues'' threatened the macroeconomic outlook, he said, citing fighting between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Presevo.<br><br>``My government is strongly committed to solving all of these issues by peaceful and democratic means,'' Labus said.<br><br>Yugoslavia's $11.7 billion in foreign debt, much of which is in arrears, could be larger than its gross domestic product (GDP), he said, although a reliable measure of the size of the economy was not yet available.<br><br>A World Bank official said $2.8 billion in debt was to the private sector, while $4.6 billion was toward other governments. The balance was owed to international financial institutions, including the World Bank, he said.<br><br>Debt Arrears<br><br>At the talks, donors added $160 million to $240 million in emergency aid already pledged to pay mostly for food and energy supplies that were identified in a recent United Nations report.<br><br>A further $110 million was pledged to meet unspecified needs, the EC and World Bank said in a statement.<br><br>The statement said that, following the talks, unmatched needs, likely to have to be met in the next five months, totaled<br><br>$300 million, of which $120 million was for natural gas supplies from Russia.<br><br>A resolution of the arrears issue is one of the conditions that international lenders have set for disbursement of longer-term reconstruction assistance.<br><br>However, Labus was optimistic that Yugoslavia would join the International Monetary Fund by the end of December and also rejoin the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.<br><br>The statement reiterated that the donors aim to meet again next spring to discuss longer-term needs on the basis of a joint EC/World Bank report expected to be ready by April. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslavia Pledges 'No More War' at Donors Meeting ``x976702421,93605,``x``x
``xBy Alex Todorovic in Belgrade,Wednesday 13 December<br><br>THE deposed Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, struck a defiant and self-righteous tone last night in his first interview since the country's revolution two months ago.<br>Milosevic said: "I can sleep peacefully and my conscience is completely clear." Milosevic, an indicted war criminal, referred to the mass uprising that swept him from power in early October as a "coup", adding that he doubted whether his successor, President Vojislav Kostunica, had won a first-round victory in September's elections.<br><br>Milosevic was toppled by crowds of pro-democracy supporters in October after he insisted on a second round of elections against Mr Kostunica despite evidence that he had lost the first. Though Milosevic's name is synonymous with wars and corruption, he claimed that he had struggled for peace. He defended his actions during the past blood-stained decade which left hundreds of thousands dead.<br><br>Milosevic relaxed on a black couch while speaking on a wide range of subjects. He denounced the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, which has indicted him for atrocities in Kosovo, and claimed he had nothing to fear from the courts in Serbia. Milosevic said: "That institution is a political institution which is one of the means for carrying out genocide against the Serbian people."<br><br>Milosevic praised the assassinated warlord and gangster, Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, as a patriot. He suggested that the militia leader's murder, nearly one year ago, was part of a wider plot against Serbia. Milosevic said: "He would have stood against the events that were about to happen. It is the only way for me to explain the political background of this murder."<br><br>A generally staid Milosevic appeared most animated when he defended his son, Marko, who has been accused of physically attacking enemies in his hometown, Pozarevac, and being involved in Yugoslavia's criminal underworld. Milosevic said: "Marko has done nothing wrong." Marko fled Yugoslavia with his girlfriend and son the day after his father was toppled.<br><br>In an already outlined strategy to return to power on a wave of economic discontent, Milosevic claimed that the country was going to rot. He said: "Is there anyone who does not see how much worse it is now than it was at the end of September?"<br><br>Milosevic's appearance is likely to further annoy western leaders who want to see him removed from Yugoslavia's political stage and eventually placed behind bars. With Serbian elections less than two weeks away, polls show Milosevic's party lagging far behind Mr Kostunica's Democratic Opposition of Serbia. Yet the disgraced president still wields enough influence to be a thorn in the side of the new government.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Telegraph:My conscience is clear, says Milosevic``x976702454,40420,``x``x
``xDAVIDOVAC,12/13/2000<br>Yugoslavia (AP) _ Thousands of angry Serbs blocked key roads near the Kosovo border Wednesday, demanding that authorities drive out the ethnic Albanian militants entrenched in the area. Some 3,000 people used cars, trucks and tractors to shut down routes in and out of the town of Bujanovac, as well as the railway line and all the roads that link Serbia with Macedonia and Greece to the south. The blockade _ set up by Serbs from Kosovo and local residents _ intensifies pressure on President Vojislav Kostunica"s government to use force against the ethnic Albanian rebels fighting for the region"s independence from Serbia. In the village of Davidovac, which lies on the road to Macedonia, protesters said they will continue their demonstration until the rebels are pushed out. Protesters include Kosovo Serbs who cannot return to their homes because ethnic Albanian are in control of key roads leading into the province. On Wednesday, Kostunica appealed for an emergency Security Council meeting on the issue, saying in a letter to the council that the people of Yugoslavia need to know that the international community will protect them. Council members issued a statement, proposed by council president Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov, saying they "condemned acts of violence by armed groups in southern Serbia and reiterated their call for immediate cessation of violence in this area." Also Wednesday, ethnic Albanian militants opened fire on Serb police in the village of Lucane, just outside the buffer zone, state television reported. Police did not return fire, and there were no casualties. In an offensive last month, the rebels killed four Serb policemen and took control of several villages in a three-mile demilitarized zone with Kosovo. They have refused to pull out, triggering fears of renewed clashes. So far, Kostunica"s pro-democracy government has shown restraint, launching a diplomatic initiative to gain international support in its struggle against the rebels. But its reluctance to use force could backfire at home ahead of crucial elections later this month. Kostunica"s pro-democracy coalition ousted former President Slobodan Milosevic in October. Kostunica has been eager to distance himself from Milosevic"s belligerent policies, which led to NATO"s bombing campaign last year and establishment of the joint U.N. and NATO administration in Kosovo. Pro-democracy official Cedomir Jovanovic warned that the ethnic Albanian rebels are preparing a new offensive after Dec. 20, around the time when parliamentary elections are held on Dec. 23. Any new attacks could play into the hands of Milosevic"s hard-liners at the polls. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News:Angry residents in southern Serbia block major roads``x976790340,70537,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Dec 14, 2000 -- (Reuters) Allies of Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica warned on Wednesday that ethnic Albanian guerrillas were planning new attacks to co-incite with this month's Serbian parliamentary elections.<br><br>A spokesman for the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) bloc, which has a clear lead in opinion polls, said they had information the attacks would come between December 20 and 30.<br><br>The election is on December 23.<br><br>The area by the Kosovo boundary saw an upsurge in guerrilla activity last month that left four Serb police dead and alarmed both the new Yugoslav government and Western capitals hoping for stability after the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>The spokesman, Cedomir Jovanovic, told a news conference the DOS had launched an urgent diplomatic initiative.<br><br>This, he said, aimed at gathering support from neighboring countries for Yugoslavia's demand that the international community take a more active role in dealing with what he called Albanian extremism in Kosovo.<br><br>"The most important thing for us is that other countries from the region join Serbia in protecting ourselves from that kind of extremism that can have disastrous effects not only for Serbia but for this (whole) part of the Balkans," he said.<br><br>Zoran Djindjic, a DOS leader and tipped to become new Serbian prime minister, warned of a new Balkan war.<br><br>"The situation is very, very critical and we could face a new war in a few months if we do not react quickly," Djindjic told Reuters while campaigning in the eastern town of Pozarevac.<br><br>"We are trying now to involve regional states, Macedonia and Greece, to help us," he added.<br><br>He was speaking as some 3,000 Serbs blocked a key road in southern Serbia demanding that the guerrillas be expelled from a buffer zone bordering Kosovo.<br><br>The guerrillas say they are fighting to protect local Albanians from harassment by Serbian police. Belgrade insists they are separatists intent on joining the Presevo Valley area of Serbia to ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo.<br><br>The NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force, blaming the guerrillas for last month's violence, has stepped up monitoring and surveillance of the boundary to stop any support from Kosovo.<br><br>A KFOR spokesman, asked about Jovanovic's statements, said the peacekeeping force had not monitored any violation of a ceasefire it helped broker after last month's violence.<br><br>"From our perspective it appears that the ceasefire is holding," said KFOR spokesman Major Steven Shappell.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica Allies Warn of New Guerrilla Attacks``x976790373,9701,``x``x
``xBy Alex Todorovic <br>Special to The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>BELGRADE,THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2000 <br><br>More than two months after a mass uprising forced former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to step down Oct. 5, he doesn't seem to have noticed. <br><br>The indicted war criminal continues to occupy the presidential palace built by Communist dictator Josip Broz Tito. Mr. Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic, still attends sessions of the federal parliament, where she represents their home town of Pozarevac. <br><br>Last month, Milosevic was reelected chief of his Socialist Party, and on Tuesday a private Belgrade television station broadcast a defiant two-hour interview, in which he claimed the uprising - which forced him to recognize defeat in September's tainted presidential elections - was a "coup." <br><br>Milosevic insisted he had "struggled to preserve peace" and denounced the United Nations war-crimes tribunal as an illegitimate institution that is "one of the means for carrying out genocide against the Serb people. <br><br>"I can sleep peacefully, and my conscience is completely clear," he declared. <br><br>The appearance was another reminder for the government of new President Vojislav Kostunica, of the lingering problem his predecessor represents, and the need to sweep away remnants of the former regime. Though he no longer poses the kind of security risk that he did immediately following the revolution, Milosevic still wields a degree of influence in the judiciary and police, say analysts. Many business leaders also owe their positions to Milosevic. <br><br>More worrisome, say members of the new government, is that Milosevic remains an international liability. "Though Milosevic is no longer a security threat, he and others are a moral and political liability in dealing with the international community," says Zarko Korac, a leader in Kostunica's ruling coalition. "It does not help the country's new democratic image to have an indicted war criminal appearing on television and involved in the country's political life," says another coalition leader, who requested anonymity. <br><br>Despite Milosevic's denials that he was campaigning, the interview came as Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, prepares for elections Dec. 23. Though Milosevic is not a candidate, his party is the largest opposition to Kostunica's 18-party coalition. It is not expected to fare well, according to opinion polls. <br><br>The Hague war crimes tribunal wants Milosevic arrested and extradited, and strongly objects to his casual public appearances. "It's unbelievable to see someone who is under an international arrest warrant appearing so obviously," says Florence Hartmann, a spokeswoman for the tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte. <br><br>Milosevic may be hoping for an eventual comeback, fueled by discontent over recent price hikes, say analysts. "Is there anyone who does not see how much worse it is now than it was at the end of September?" Milosevic asked during Tuesday's interview. Prices for many staples have risen between 30 and 50 percent. <br><br>The overwhelming local reaction to Milosevic's first post-revolution TV appearance was that the fallen leader had lost touch with reality. "When someone speaks for two hours about his successes, contrary to all objective facts, something is wrong with that personality. He has a difficult time understanding the problems he's created," says Ratko Bozovic, a political author. <br><br>Corruption investigations of Milosevic officials began this week, including the former head of customs and three members of the federal election commission, which opponents say tampered with September's elections results. In Pozarevac, Milosevic's son, Marko, is under investigation for alleged assault. <br><br>The West's priority so far has been to stabilize Kostunica's uneasy coalition, but local leaders and Western diplomats say next year pressure will be applied to deal with war criminals. "I think aid will eventually be conditioned on a Milosevic trial and trials of other indicted war criminals in Belgrade," says Mr. Korac. <br><br>What kind of trial remains to be seen. A corruption trial would beg the moral issues surrounding the former regime, say critics. "According to Milosevic, nothing wrong has happened. Unlike this view of the world, the country has to ask what has happened over the past 10 years," says Bozovic.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor:Milosevic: Yugoslavia's unresolved problem ``x976790415,5752,``x``x
``xBy CARLOTTA GALL, December 15, 2000 <br>PRISTINA, Kosovo, Dec. 14 — International peacekeepers and administrators here said today that they would not tolerate Serbian police or army use of force to reassert control of a three-mile-wide buffer zone along Kosovo's eastern border that ethnic Albanian rebels control.<br><br>Brig. Gen. Dennis E. Hardy, the American who commands peacekeepers, including 6,000 American troops, in the eastern part of Kosovo, said in an interview, "That's not the way to solve it." <br><br>General Hardy explained that the Serbs in the many villages and enclaves in the area under his command would immediately suffer retaliatory attacks from ethnic Albanians. He also said he would not like to see fighting over villages that are in some cases just yards from American troops posted on the boundary.<br><br>The commander commented as a prominent member of a new governing party warned that Albanian rebels were preparing to attack Serbian police positions in the period around Serbia's parliamentary elections, on Dec. 23. Cedomir Jovanovic, an aide to the leader of the Serbian Democratic Party, Zoran Djindjic, warned that the authorities would not tolerate further police or military casualties. Mr. Djindjic is quite likely to be prime minister of the new government after the elections.<br><br>Four Serbian police officers were killed on Nov. 20 in a skirmish with Albanian militants who seized virtually the whole buffer zone. Belgrade then moved army units, with tanks and artillery and special police forces, to the edge of the zone. Serbia has asked NATO to let those forces enter the zone to regain control.<br><br>Under the military agreement that ended the war in Yugoslavia last year, only lightly armed Serbian police officers can patrol the area, 16 of whose 17 villages are Albanian.<br><br>"We have a lot of patience and understanding for the world's sympathies," Mr. Jovanovic said. "But with all these sympathies, we are losing state territory. So we are sending a clear warning to all that we will not allow the situation of Nov. 20 to repeat. This is not war drums beating." <br><br>Mr. Djindjic has issued similar statements, warning that he will order the police into the region after the elections. <br><br>The two men's remarks contrast with the approach of the Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, who has put the onus to contain the rebels on the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo and who advocates a political solution. Last week, after Mr. Djindjic's comments, he warned, "This is not the time for war drums."<br><br>Mr. Djindjic and Mr. Kostunica joined forces to oust Slobodan Milosevic and are still running together in their 18-party alliance, DOS, for the elections. But their differences appear to be developing into a power struggle. Whether or not Mr. Djindjic's statements about force are serious, members of the peacekeeping effort called the idea unacceptable. Although they have been quick to condemn the Albanian militants, the peacekeepers say any use of force would only worsen the problem. <br><br>"The most important thing is to talk to the leaders and tell them it is not in their best interest," Gary Carell, the United Nations police chief of eastern Kosovo, said of the Albanian rebels.<br><br>Peacekeepers have sealed the border, increased border patrols and detained more than 30 suspected rebels and supplies of weapons.<br><br>Asked whether they would allow Serbian forces to flush out the rebels if that could be carried out in a quick clean operation, a Western diplomat said, "I don't think the Serbian forces are capable of that."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: NATO Won't Allow Serbian Use of Force in Three-Mile Buffer``x976876719,12182,``x``x
``x Thursday, December 14, 2000 <br> THE HAGUE--A former Bosnian Serb police chief Wednesday admitted to war crimes, then dropped complaints that U.S. troops had illegally arrested him. <br> The plea bargain between Stevan Todorovic and prosecutors ended a legal standoff that had threatened to incapacitate the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. <br> The U.N. tribunal relies on U.S. and other NATO-led peacekeepers to arrest suspects. Todorovic had alleged that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization illegally paid mercenaries to capture and turn him over to U.S. forces. <br> Todorovic, 40, is only the third suspect to plead guilty before the U.N. court since it convened war crimes trials in 1996. Fourteen convicts have been sent to prison for terms ranging up to 45 years. <br> Under the plea bargain, prosecutors agreed to withdraw 26 counts--including torture, sexual assault and murder--in exchange for Todorovic's guilty plea on a single count of persecution as a crime against humanity. He had pleaded innocent in 1998. <br> He faces a maximum sentence of life, although prosecutors agreed to recommend no more than 12 years. <br> The court still must consider whether Todorovic's plea was made "on a voluntary and informed basis" before issuing its final finding Jan. 12. <br> Prosecutors allege that, as the former police chief of Bosanski Samac in northern Bosnia-Herzegovina, Todorovic planned the detention and forced deportation of thousands of Muslims and Croats during the nation's 1992-95 war.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xLos Angeles Times: Bosnian Serb War Crimes Suspect Pleads Guilty, Drops Arrest Charge ``x976876776,81905,``x``x
``xWIRE:12/15/2000 02:34:00 ET<br> BUJANOVAC, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Allies of deposed President Slobodan Milosevic are urging daily protests at the tense border with Kosovo, where Serbs have blockades major roads to demand that the government drive ethnic Albanian rebels from the area. A Thursday statement from the Socialist Party office in Bujanovac demanded that the Yugoslav government "urgently solve problems" created by the rebels, who launched attacks and seized police posts here. The move by the local branch of Milosevic"s party appears aimed at undermining Yugoslavia"s democratic government ahead of Dec. 23 elections in Serbia, the nation"s main republic. It also reflects the government"s complicated dilemma in dealing with Kosovo and the surrounding areas, where Serbs and ethnic Albanians have been clashing for years. Ethnic Albanians make up the vast majority of the population in Kosovo, a province of Serbia. Kosovo has been under international control since last year, and many residents want full independence for not only Kosovo but also the heavily ethnic Albanian Presevo Valley region in nearby Serbia proper. In an offensive last month, the rebels killed four Serb policemen and took control of several villages in a three-mile demilitarized zone where Kosovo and the rest of Serbia meet. They have refused to pull out, triggering fears of renewed clashes in the area _ and sparking anger from Serbs, who make up much of Yugoslavia"s population but are the minority in this region. Pressure is mounting on President Vojislav Kostunica, who succeeded Milosevic following an uprising in October, to use force against the rebels. However, Yugoslav forces are not allowed to move heavy weapons into the zone. They are banned from doing so under agreements which ended last year"s bombing of Yugoslavia and handed over Kosovo to U.N. and NATO administrators. NATO-led peacekeepers also are not authorized to enter the zone, which is inside Yugoslav-controlled territory. That has enabled the ethnic Albanians to operate there with impunity. Several thousand Serbs stayed through the night Thursday near parked trucks, garbage containers and burning tires blocking roads to Bujanovac. The protesters, who put up the blockades Wednesday, also shut down the rail line and main roads linking Serbia with Macedonia and Greece to the south. The protesters denied their blockade was politically motivated, despite reports that they included Milosevic supporters. Milosevic is hoping to stage a political comeback in this month"s elections. His aides have repeatedly accused Kostunica and his pro-democracy coalition of selling out Serb national interests, and drawing attention to the impasse in the zone threatens to portray Kostunica as weak and inept. The situation in the zone also has created a rift within Kostunica"s camp. Kostunica has urged restraint and appealed for help from NATO to stop the rebel attacks. But his key ally, Zoran Djindjic, said Thursday it is "imperative" to react "immediately and without compromise." Djindjic, who is likely to become the new Serbian prime minister after the December vote, warned that the ethnic Albanian extremists are preparing a new offensive next week which could enflame the whole Balkans. In neighboring Macedonia, NATO troops stepped up border patrols to prevent arms from being smuggled to the Kosovo-area militants. Maj. Gen. Volker Loew said some weapons and ammunition for the militants had come from Albania through Macedonia. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News: Milosevic's party urges continued blockade of roads near Kosovo border``x976876837,61345,``x``x
``xWIRE:12/14/2000 13:43:00 ET<br> BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Cutting one of the last ties to Slobodan Milosevic"s era, Yugoslavia on Thursday issued new currency notes and ended restrictions on holding dollars and other foreign money. "The breach with Milosevic"s old monetary policies must be both in theory and in practice," National Bank governor Mladjan Dinkic said. "What better way is there but to have a new, different dinar?" Constantly cash-starved, Milosevic"s government had frozen hard currency savings in personal bank accounts and imposed other obstacles to free circulation of dollars, German marks and other foreign currencies. In a drastic reversal, the state bank announced that starting Friday, Yugoslavs would be allowed to exchange unlimited amounts of dinars into foreign money. "This is a historic day for Yugoslavia," Dinkic said. "It will help the world to see us as a serious country, in the process of important economic reforms." Dinkic, appointed bank governor by the new pro-democracy government of President Vojislav Kostunica after Milosevic"s ouster in October, is pushing for monetary reforms to bring the country closer to mainstream Europe and the International Monetary Fund. But Montenegro, the junior republic in the Yugoslav federation after Serbia, abandoned the dinar earlier this year and set its own monetary policy as a step closer to independence. Milosevic"s restrictions on hard currency prompted a money black market that included exchanges and illegal street trading in foreign currency, mostly German marks to which the dinar had been pegged. By allowing individuals to exchange and purchase hard currency legally, the state bank hopes to channel black-market cash back into the national economy and motivate black marketeers to open legal exchanges. The new bank notes and coins will be introduced gradually as old dinars are being withdrawn, Dinkic said. The process is unlikely to be completed before February next year. Dinkic also said he hoped that the new dinar _ smaller and with different colors from the Milosevic-era money _ will be exchanged at exchange offices and banks in pro-Western Montenegro. However, that was up to Montenegrin authorities, he said. The new 20-, 50- and 100-dinar bank notes come in hues of green, violet and blue, each with yellow highlights _ unlike the former versions of ochre, blue and gray. A former Serbian ruler, reformer and poet have been replaced with a Serb composer, a Serb scientist and a Montenegrin poet-ruler on the motif. The new 2-dinar coin bears the relief of the Serbian Christina Orthodox monastery of Gracanica in Kosovo, the southern province now run by NATO and a U.N. mission but which Serbs consider their ancestral spiritual heartland.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC News: For post-Milosevic era, Yugoslavia launches new bank notes, coins``x976876913,2029,``x``x
``xBELGRADE,12/16/2000 Yugoslavia (AP) Nine years after Yugoslavia began cracking apart a breakup that triggered a string of bloody ethnic wars one of the four republics that broke away has followed its neighbors and agreed to renew ties with the Yugoslav government. Bosnia, whose 3{-year war was the deadliest conflict spawned by Yugoslavia"s collapse, established diplomatic ties with what remains of the Yugoslav nation on Friday. For some here, the move bolstered hopes for lasting peace in the fragile Balkans. The diplomatic agreement "creates conditions for wars to become unthinkable in the future," Bosnian Foreign Minister Jadranko Prlic said after a signing ceremony Friday in Belgrade. Slovenia established diplomatic ties with Yugoslavia a week ago; Croatia did so in 1996. Macedonia, the only ex-republic to break away peacefully, agreed to formal ties with Belgrade in 1994. The newest agreement is among the signs of change in the Balkans following the October ouster of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and the rise of pro-democratic leaders. Milosevic is widely blamed for fomenting four wars in the Balkans during his 13-year rule. His successor, Vojislav Kostunica, has pledged to carry out democratic reforms and improve ties with his neighbors and the West. Yugoslavia, where ethnic identity and nationalism were stifled for years after World War II, began to crack along ethnic lines as the communist era came to a tumultuous end in Eastern Europe a decade ago. The fighting started in 1991, when the Yugoslav army launched an unsuccessful 10-day war to prevent tiny Slovenia from seceding. In Croatia, more than 10,000 people died in a war sparked when ethnic Serbs rebelled against a 1991 declaration of independence from the former Yugoslavia. The next year, Bosnian Serb troops launched a three-year war to prevent Bosnia"s split from Yugoslavia. Some 200,000 died. The U.S.-brokered Dayton agreement ended the Bosnian war in 1995 and required Bosnia and Yugoslavia to establish diplomatic ties, but Milosevic demanded that Bosnia first drop charges of aggression and claims of war reparations against Yugoslavia at the World Court. Bosnia has said it will continue pressing those charges. Milosevic"s regime also insisted that present-day Yugoslavia now made up of Serbia and Montenegro should be the only successor to the old federation"s assets, a claim the other four ex-Yugoslav countries have fiercely disputed. Kostunica dropped that claim, paving the way for mutual recognition. Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic, who signed the agreement on diplomatic ties with Prlic, said issues of succession and ownership would remain open and subject to further talks. Svilanovic said Yugoslavia will guarantee Bosnia"s territorial integrity but will insist on "special relations" with the Serb entity within Bosnia. Those special ties are provided for under the Dayton agreement, although they are not well defined. Bosnia is divided into a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Bosnian Serb republic tied together by a federal parliament, a three-member presidency and other federal institutions as well as an international administration. Five years after the Dayton accord, divisions among the three communities remain deep. On Saturday, Mirko Sarovic of the Serbian Democratic Party was to assume the presidency of the Bosnian Serb republic. The November election of Sarovic, whose party was founded by indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, was a setback for the United States and its Western allies, who had hoped for a better showing by multiethnic parties and candidates committed to the Dayton accord. In the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, the chief international official, Wolfgang Petritsch, welcomed the establishment of relations with Yugoslavia as "long overdue" and important step. Petritsch said it will allow the countries to tackle problems including refugee return, trade, illegal immigration, the prosecution of indicted war criminals and cross-border travel.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xABC:Yugoslavia, Bosnia establish diplomatic ties``x976961020,11883,``x``x
``xBELGRADE,December 15 (Reuters) - Serbs demanding that ethnic Albanian guerrillas be expelled from a buffer zone bordering Kosovo ended a three-day blockade of a key road in a tense area of southern Serbia on Friday, Beta news agency reported.<br><br>The roadblock, set up on Wednesday near the town of Bujanovac, was lifted after Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic addressed the protesters.<br><br>He told them that the Serbian and Yugoslav governments -- formed after the downfall of former President Slobodan Milosevic in October -- would hold a joint session in Bujanovac on Saturday to discuss the situation in the area.<br><br>The boundary area near Bujanovac saw an upsurge in ethnic Albanian guerrilla activity last month when four Serbian police died.<br><br>The guerrillas say they are fighting to protect local ethnic Albanians from harassment by Serbian police. Belgrade insists they are separatists intent on appending the Presevo Valley area of Serbia to ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo.<br><br>The protesters had also demanded that the road linking Bujanovac with the Kosovo town of Gnjilane be re-opened to all traffic. The road passes through territory where the guerrillas are believed to hold positions and Serbs do not dare to use it.<br><br>In addition, they called on Yugoslav authorities to make solving the situation in Kosovo itself their priority and demanded an urgent meeting with President Vojislav Kostunica .<br><br>Backers of Kostunica have accused Milosevic's Socialist Party of organizing the blockade, saying it was part of their campaign for a Serbian parliamentary election on December 23. The protesters have angrily denied the allegation.<br><br>One of the organizers of the blockade read out a letter from Kostunica to the protesters, saying the new authorities were doing everything in their power to resolve the situation through diplomacy rather than by force.<br><br>``There are many people willing to capitalize on the misery of others for their cheap political objectives. The terrorists are intimidating both the Serbs and the ethnic Albanians in this area,'' Kostunica's letter said.<br><br>``We expect the NATO secretary-general to come up with concrete proposals on how the situation could be improved,'' it said. ``We mustn't make any hasty decisions, to avoid the sort of no-choice situation the former regime put us in so many times.''<br><br>The buffer zone was created as part of the deal last June which ended NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. It governed the withdrawal of Yugoslav and Serb security forces from the province and the deployment of NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo.<br><br>According to the deal, no Yugoslav army soldiers or Serb special police are allowed inside the three-mile (five-km) wide buffer zone which runs along the Serbian side of the boundary. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xProtesters Lift Road Blockade in Southern Serbia ``x976961056,64925,``x``x
``xBELGRADE,December 15 (Reuters) - Police on Friday detained a close ally of ousted president Slobodan Milosevic on suspicion of fraud involving millions of dollars, the Serbian interior ministry said.<br><br>It was the first arrest of a senior figure in the Milosevic administration, whose decade in power was marked by conflict, economic mismanagement, and sanctions which fuelled smuggling.<br><br>The ministry said Mihalj Kertes, former head of Yugoslav customs, was suspected of having deprived the Yugoslav government budget of $1.84 million and of $597,000 through abuse of power.<br><br>``There is well-founded suspicion that Kertes had also charged and made illegal payments in the amount of $1.32 million and $462,000 for unlawful customs duties while he was the federal customs office director,'' the statement said, without elaborating.<br><br>Earlier this week police took Kertes in for questioning as part of efforts to unveil corruption and power abuses during the Milosevic era.<br><br>The new Belgrade leadership has promised they will break with the old system and bring all those involved in corruption before the courts.<br><br>Kertes was a senior member of the Socialist Party (SPS) of Milosevic, ousted from power in early October after a popular uprising forced him to concede defeat to Vojislav Kostunica in presidential elections on September 24.<br><br>He was forced to resign from the position as director of the Yugoslav customs office immediately after Milosevic's downfall.<br><br>He was quoted earlier this month saying his office had financed the Socialists.<br><br>``It is true that the federal customs office financed the SPS through me. I believe that parties forming occasional coalitions with the SPS were financed from the same source through the SPS,'' he told the Nedeljni Telegraf weekly.<br><br>The interior ministry said police would continue to investigate the responsibility of other individuals whose work was directly or indirectly related to the federal customs office, its property and resources. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerb Police Nab Milosevic Ally for Suspected Fraud ``x976961116,40642,``x``x
``xBy MISHA SAVIC, Associated Press Writer <br><br>BELGRADE,December 15 Yugoslavia (AP) - Expressing no regrets about her husband's years in power, Slobodan Milosevic's wife pledged Friday to stick to communist principles while leading her party in the upcoming Serbian elections.<br><br>At her first news conference since Milosevic's ouster from the presidency in October, Mirjana Markovic denounced the U.N. tribunal in The Hague that has indicted her husband for war crimes, calling it the ``Gestapo of the late 20th century.''<br><br>``Its prisons are concentration camps and gas chambers'' intended for ``people of different political persuasion and unruly nations,'' Markovic said.<br><br>Markovic is a highly controversial figure in Yugoslavia as the power behind the throne during Milosevic's 13-year reign. The couple went into hiding in a heavily guarded Belgrade villa after Oct. 5 riots made Milosevic concede defeat to Vojislav Kostunica in the Sept. 24 election.<br><br>Markovic, dubbed by her enemies as ``the Lady Macbeth of the Balkans'' and ``the Red Witch,'' played a key role in Milosevic's climb to power.<br><br>When Milosevic's popularity plummeted in 1993 because of his shift from communism to nationalism, Markovic formed her own party, the Yugoslav Left, to keep dedicated Marxists behind her husband.<br><br>The party - which suffered widespread losses in the September elections - is in turmoil ahead of Dec. 23 Serbian parliamentary balloting after several of its top officials deserted the ranks.<br><br>Polls show it may not win any seats in the Serbian parliament, especially since Milosevic's Socialists decided to run alone without its former coalition partner.<br><br>During the news conference, Markovic accused Serbia's new leadership of repression and working in the interest of foreign powers. She claimed her party was ``being satanized in the media now and almost excluded from coverage.''<br><br>Speaking in her party's sumptuous downtown mansion, Markovic dismissed allegations of incompetence, belligerence, corruption and manipulation leveled against the former regime.<br><br>``My family hasn't gotten rich,'' she said. ``I can't say that everything we did was the best in the world. But there was great effort to make the circumstances more bearable, more humane.'' ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic's Wife Has No Regrets ``x976961152,91460,``x``x
``xBy R. Jeffrey Smith<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Monday, December 18 <br><br>PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Dec. 17 –– A huge poster behind Bernard Kouchner's desk here in Kosovo portrays three men--an ethnic Albanian, a Serb and a Gypsy--sharing a cup of coffee above the words: "Let's talk about us; the future starts with tolerance." <br><br><br>The poster was crafted for a U.N. campaign of tolerance in Kosovo's schools, but it is a fantasy for this Serbian province at large; it is the kind of conversation that never occurs here, even after 18 months of international peacekeeping and nation-building under Kouchner's leadership as the top U.N. official in Kosovo.<br><br><br>It has been a wearying and frustrating assignment for Kouchner, who plans to resign next month; Danish Defense Minister Hans Haekkerup will succeed him.<br><br><br>For Kouchner, today was hardly different from any other over the past year and a half. There were frantic morning phone calls from the U.N. representative in the northern Kosovo town of Leposavic about rioting Serbs, an overnight arson attack on the U.N. police station and the seizure of some Belgian soldiers for seven hours at a NATO base. He also heard from an aide in the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica that an ethnic Albanian was found shot to death in a Serbian neighborhood.<br><br><br>Serbs in Leposavic, he learned, were angry about two things: the death of a Serbian nationalist who was injured during ethnic riots in Mitrovica nearly a year ago, and the arrest Saturday by U.N.-hired Serbian police of a former member of a Serbian militia, who was charged with speeding and possession of illegal communications equipment. In the resulting riot, two Serbs reportedly were killed; the Belgrade government blamed NATO soldiers for firing irresponsibly, while NATO blamed the Serbs for interfering with law enforcement.<br><br><br>Those reports came in before U.S. troops assigned to the NATO peacekeeping operation here reported being shot at around lunchtime, purportedly by ethnic Albanians. The soldiers were in the process of blowing up a road used by ethnic Albanian militants to smuggle arms from Kosovo into southern Serbia, where they have been challenging government security forces. No Americans were wounded in the incident, the first use of force against the militants since the U.S. military promised to seal Kosovo's eastern boundary early this month.<br><br><br>There have been many ethnically inspired shootings, arsons and riots throughout Kouchner's tenure, during which he and his U.N. colleagues have struggled to obtain adequate financing and manpower to stabilize Kosovo--a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic. Lacking sufficient numbers of trained police and impartial judges, they have failed to halt a succession of violent attacks by Kosovo Albanians on the province's Serbs and other minorities--an ethnic cleansing in reverse by those whom the Serb-led Yugoslav government sought to drive from the province at gunpoint, leading to NATO military intervention and the present U.N. administration.<br><br><br>Kouchner has endured furious criticism from the Yugoslav government and its Russian allies with each step the United Nations has taken to help Kosovo govern itself, including municipal elections in October that brought political moderates to power and displaced ethnic hard-liners. And Kouchner said he and other U.N. officials here have watched with amazement as the Western countries that fought to protect Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanian population from the Yugoslav government last year have rushed to embrace its newly elected leader, Vojislav Kostunica. Kouchner said he expected more reticence until Belgrade granted amnesty to ethnic Albanians in Serbian jails or made other efforts to atone for its bloody repression of the Kosovo Albanians.<br><br><br>But Kouchner said in an interview that he remains optimistic a better future awaits Kosovo, the only U.N. protectorate in Europe and a territory that is neither independent nor subject to the dictates of Belgrade, capital of both Serbia and Yugoslavia.<br><br><br>"It is a dream to make peace right now," Kouchner said when asked what message he wanted to send President-elect Bush and his advisers, who have expressed skepticism about keeping U.S. troops in the Balkans for a long time. "It is our common dream. But we need to be realistic. . . . It is not possible for Serbs to have freedom of movement at the moment [because of security risks]. . . . This is a long run and not a sprint."<br><br><br>"We need the Americans," Kouchner said. "We need the forces we have. . . . This [peacekeeping] is a common aim for all those involved in fighting [former Yugoslav president Slobodan] Milosevic," whose policies of Serbian nationalism stoked animosities and led to a decade of bitter divisions and human rights abuses. Milosevic, defeated for reelection by Kostunica in October, was ousted in a subsequent popular uprising.<br><br><br>Those who think that Kosovo's residents will be adequately protected by the arrival of democracy in Belgrade after Kostunica's victory are naive, Kouchner said. "I'm sorry, that's not the way it works," he said, calling such notions disturbingly "colonial." Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo demand independence, and their bitterness over the war remains so great that any of their leaders who try to talk with Kostunica's government would risk being killed by extremists, he said. "Intolerance is a . . . political fact," not easily or quickly remedied, he said.<br><br><br>Kouchner, a physician who helped found the humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders, says he is leaving Kosovo because he is restless. He unsuccessfully sought the position of U.N. high commissioner for refugees and is now headed for an unspecified French government assignment in Paris. His obvious empathy for human suffering and openly emotional style have won him many supporters among Kosovo residents, but many locals and Westerners have accused his team of being disorganized and faulted its slow repair of utilities and other basic services.<br><br><br>Kouchner says he has made mistakes but feels the United Nations performed better in Kosovo than in other peacekeeping assignments, particularly because its territory and citizenry were so damaged by the fighting here. He added that he hopes his experience will guide the United Nations to do a better job in similar circumstances in the future.<br><br><br>The first and most important lesson to be learned from Kosovo, he said, is that peacekeeping missions need a judicial or law-and-order "kit" made up of trained police officers, judges and prosecutors, plus a set of potentially draconian security laws or regulations that are available on their arrival. This is the only way to stop criminal behavior from flourishing in a postwar vacuum of authority, Kouchner said.<br><br><br>"We did not succeed with the police," Kouchner said, noting that more than 50 countries contributed officers to the 4,000-member force but that they never trained for the mission. He acknowledged that his own staff had repeatedly spurned proposals to bring in foreigners who could prosecute crimes impartially. His staff was "absolutely wrong," he said, adding that Kosovo needs more such foreign judges and prosecutors now.<br><br><br>Kouchner says he has no regrets about moving as quickly as possible to organize elections and begin handing power back to the citizens of Kosovo.<br><br><br>After decades of authoritarian or communist rule, he said, they needed to learn it was their own responsibility.<br><br><br>With backing from the Clinton administration, Kouchner has been pressing for additional elections soon after he departs, this time for a Kosovo-wide parliamentary assembly. Belgrade has opposed the idea, arguing that the balloting would make Kosovo Serbs feel even more excluded from the political process, but Kouchner argues that if such an election is postponed, ethnic Albanian militants will stoke new violence.<br><br><br>Kouchner says that peace will be more secure in Kosovo after new elections are held, more jobs are created, ethnic Albanian prisoners are freed from Serbian jails, and missing Kosovo Serbs are accounted for. But he also says that Serbia needs to see Kosovo's majority population not simply as terrorists but as people "like they are, normal people."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xWashington Post:Kosovo Still Seethes as U.N. Official Nears Exit``x977139252,40591,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 16 — Bombed by NATO during the Kosovo war and then burned by pro-democracy demonstrators, Serbia's state television and radio network remains an enormous prize for the new authorities as they work toward consolidating power in elections for a new Serbian government on Dec. 23.<br><br>How they handle the bloated and degraded network is also a test of whether the new leaders, and the journalists themselves, can really break with the authoritarian past.<br><br>Initial signs are discouraging. The new leaders, gathered in a broad 18- party coalition still known as the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, or DOS, have applied considerable political pressure on the temporary managers of the broadcasting empire. In general, even without the obvious abuses of the past, the journalists have slipped easily into being cheerleaders for the new democrats.<br><br>Along with the police and the army, state television was considered an essential pillar of Slobodan Milosevic's 13-year rule. Its newscasts glorified the government, smeared the opposition, demonized the West, distorted facts and history and helped inspire Serbs to patriotism, paranoia, nationalism, conquest and war crimes against their neighbors.<br><br>The network, owned by the government of Serbia and known by its initials, RTS, was among the first targets of the demonstrators who pushed Vojislav Kostunica into power. On Oct. 5, the downtown studios were seized and burned and the network's director, Dragoljub Milanovic, was nearly beaten to death.<br><br>About 9 p.m., with the police capitulating and army troops remaining in their barracks, it was on Serbian state television that Mr. Kostunica wanted to show his face, to symbolize that he and his allies were now in charge. He was driven to a suburban studio with a handpicked interviewer, cameraman and editor. His words were not especially memorable, but for many Serbs his appearance was the real confirmation that Mr. Milosevic's power had crumbled.<br><br>The overstaffed, underequipped and much derided network is an emblem of who is in charge in Serbia, and how much — or how little — has changed. <br><br>"RTS represents not just a media problem but a problem of the whole society," said Snjezana Milivojevic, who has studied RTS for over a decade. "We need a new legal and moral framework, with institutional guarantees, to ensure that the last 10 years can never happen again."<br><br>Ms. Milivojevic, who is on a panel compiling new media regulations, said the future of the media in Yugoslavia would depend on the way RTS reorganized. But despite talk in the first days of the revolution about a "new" RTS — democratic, open and free from undue political influence — the new leaders seem reluctant to allow much independence.<br><br>They have provided political advice and instructions on what to cover and whom to invite from the very first night, Oct. 5, said Gordana Susa, the acting editor in chief of news at RTS. She heads an independent television production company and is president of the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia.<br><br>"Some leaders of the opposition act in the old way and want to put everything under their control," Ms. Susa said. "Every day there is pressure from the political parties."<br><br>The open pressure is especially troubling, Ms. Susa said, because the network's employees are so accustomed to toadying to power and so frightened for their jobs that they would favor the new authorities without even being asked. In the meantime, she admits, the news is awful: boring, predictable and uncritical. <br><br>Zarko Korac, leader of a party in the coalition that unseated Mr. Milosevic, said the television presented "a Darwinian problem of natural selection." Current employees "can't think and just follow political instructions — they couldn't make good programs even if they wanted to."<br><br>Milivoje Mihajlovic, who worked for RTS, said it remained Serbia's worst television. "It's obvious they still work in the same way. They've just changed their master." <br><br>The problems are similar at Politika, the once respected state newspaper that became a mouthpiece for Mr. Milosevic. "Of course people in RTS and Politika do what they are used to doing," said Aleksandar Nenadovic, 72, who was fired as Politika's editor by Tito, Yugoslavia's Communist ruler for 35 years. "It's a function of the level of political evolution here. Everything is in ruins, so everyone is trying to reserve a place for themselves, and with the elections it's crucial to maintain control."<br><br>Ms. Susa said the problems stemmed in part from the appointment of Nenad Ristic as acting director. Mr. Ristic, 60, ran RTS from 1985 to 1990 and then moved, under political pressure, to producing harmless shows, he said, about "ecology, bugs and insects."<br><br>Ms. Susa said, "DOS called an old man to be the new general manager who accepts all their requests." The station's crisis committee, acting like a temporary management board, has fired him four times, but "each time," she said, "DOS tells them to calm down and not create chaos" before the elections.<br><br>The new authorities also put pressure on RTS to stop a documentary about the way the station had been used to foment war and hatred, and then urged that further segments be shown late at night. "It was DOS's first effort to censor us," Ms. Susa said.<br><br>Mr. Ristic says he is doing his best with a bad situation. He has brought key editors back from 1990 and urged about 60 people, editors and prominent reporters most associated with the old regime, not to come to work "for their own safety." He has banned well-known faces from the air. He has also stopped stealing new movies and television shows without benefit of copyright. The result has been a run of cheap talk shows, films from the 1930's and archival material.<br><br>As for the news, Mr. Ristic said, "there is slavishness, and it's true that DOS gets most of the airtime." As the election nears, with other parties more active, there has been some improvement in balance.<br><br>Mr. Ristic is presiding over a damaged, sick elephant built for a much larger and differently run country, Tito's Yugoslavia, with three state television channels and numerous radio stations. The equipment is old, most of it dating from the late 1970's and 1980's. <br><br>RTS currently has 8,018 employees on its books, Mr. Ristic said — twice as many as CNN employs worldwide. While salaries for all but the loftiest were meager — between 2,000 and 3,000 dinars a month, about $33 to $50 — RTS had become a kind of social welfare agency for journalists too untalented or afraid to seek work elsewhere.<br><br>Caught between a vague desire to modernize and a stronger wish to avoid violence, Mr. Ristic seems reluctant to let go even the most incompetent or compromised journalists.<br><br>"The first night we agreed there would be no revenge" against those who served Mr. Milosevic, Mr. Ristic said. "Most journalists here felt they had to do it. They didn't do it because they believed in it." <br>December 17, 2000 Single-Page Format <br>Milosevic's Servile Network Now Bows to Its New Masters <br><br>But Mr. Mihajlovic says that too many journalists were working for the Milosevic regime, and journalists must take responsibility for their own profession. "We have a dirty yard, and someone has to clean it. It would be better if journalists did, to teach people not to let it happen again. I think there is already too much forgiveness."<br><br>Mr. Mihajlovic was an editor at Radio Pristina, and says there was both censorship and self-censorship. He has been asked to return to work in nearby Prokuplje to help cover Kosovo. "They said to me, `You were kicked out, you were not theirs.' But I said: `I have to be honest. I worked as honestly as I could, but I was their editor. I don't have the moral right to pretend otherwise. I stayed. I needed the money to feed my family. I know I have to pay for that in one way or another.' "<br><br>Mr. Mihajlovic's candor is rare.<br><br>Ruzica Vranjkovic, 35, was an editor of the last evening news while covering energy. She still covers energy, but she is not allowed to have her face on television. "It's silly," she said, but doesn't argue. "Everything's unsettled, and there's a lot of fear.People treated it like a job. It was hard to stay, but I worked to live."<br><br>Ms. Milivojevic, the media critic, said that journalists must be held to professional account for falsifying news and history and fomenting conflict. She and Ms. Susa agree that RTS must be taken away from the government, and politicians should not serve on its board. They feel one channel should be a public service news channel, the second more commercial and the third should be privatized.<br><br>But it is not clear that the new Serbian government will go along. Even Mr. Kostunica has decided to keep open the federal television, YU- Info, started less than two years ago by Mr. Milosevic and his Information Minister, Goran Matic. New top editors will be named by the parties in the ruling coalition, just as in the past.<br><br>"The crisis in journalism is similar to the crisis in the judiciary and the universities and other institutions," Ms. Milivojevic said. Even after 10 years of writing about RTS, "I was shocked when the doors finally opened at how old, unprofessional and poor the whole thing was — it was like a virtual reality, a cover for a regime that had rotted from within."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Milosevic's Servile Network Now Bows to Its New Masters``x977139296,21871,``x``x
``xBy Raymond Whitaker <br><br>17 December 2000 <br><br>Yugoslavia's former dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, is facing his final showdown. On Saturday Serbia holds parliamentary elections in which his socialist SPS party is expected to suffer a crushing defeat, bringing closer the day when he may be put on trial. <br><br>Opinion polls show the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, the 18-party coalition which supports President Vojislav Kostunica, is likely to win 70 per cent of the vote. The SPS, which reaffirmed Mr Milosevic as its leader after a "people's revolution" ousted him from power in October, is far behind at 20 per cent. On these figures, the coalition will gain the decisive victory it needs to bring the Milosevic era to an end. <br><br>For the October revolution was far from complete. While Mr Kostunica took over the presidency, real power resides with the security forces, ministries and state-owned companies of Serbia, which have remained in the hands of Milosevic allies. <br><br>Despite many changes that would have been unthinkable only weeks ago, such as the establishment last week of full diplomatic relations with Bosnia, the new president has had to tread carefully. <br><br>But on Friday police arrested Mihalj Kertes, the former head of Yugoslav customs, on suspicion of defrauding the nation of millions of pounds. He was the first close Milosevic ally to be detained, but his former boss may soon be in the dock beside him. <br><br>Zoran Djindjic, likely to be Serbia's prime minister by next weekend, said Mr Milosevic would face proceedings soon after the election to examine "three issues: election fraud, the issue of his wealth and the way he acquired it, and the question of who ordered the several murders and assassinations [in Yugoslavia]". <br><br>What this list leaves out are war crimes and genocide in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, for which The Hague tribunal has indicted Mr Milosevic. The US-based Human Rights Watch said Saturday's election should end the international "grace period" for Mr Kostunica. <br><br>This implies that Western governments should start pressing him on issues such as the release of Albanian prisoners and the extradition of his predecessor and other war crimes suspects to The Hague. But Mr Kostunica is a strong Serbian nationalist who will insist that Yugoslavia can tryits own. <br><br>The new government is likely to see other matters as more pressing, not least Yugoslavia's economic collapse. Mr Milosevic, shamelessly ignoring his own responsibility for years of corruption and decline, is attempting to blame his successor for power cuts and bread shortages as another freezing Balkans winter sets in. <br><br>Mr Kostunica is also struggling with the ethnic hatreds bequeathed to him, which have led to armed clashes between Serbs and Albanians near Kosovo. US peacekeepers in Kosovo said two cars carrying Serbs were raked with gunfire on Friday across the border in the Presevo valley. One man was wounded. Albanian militants staged an offensive in the area last month, killing four Serb policemen and seizing several villages in a buffer zone along the Kosovo border. <br><br>Last week, Serbs blocked the main road and rail routes to Macedonia and Greece demanding that Belgrade crack down on the rebels, but they lifted their barricades after an appeal from President Kostunica. <br><br>It showed a drastic change of style from that of Mr Milosevic, who rarely missed an opportunity to exploit ethnic tension, but Mr Kostunica can expect no reward from Albanian militants, who want the area to be incorporated into Kosovo. Mindful of such problems, Western governments are unlikely to bring their honeymoon with the new Yugoslavian president to a close as soon as the elections are over, as Human Rights Watch wants. <br><br>The organisation said a new election law and the presence of foreign monitors should ensure the poll was free and fair. For the international community that will probably be enough to be going on with.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIndependent:Showdown time for Milosevic after Serbia goes to the polls ``x977139345,23330,``x``x
``xLocal Serbs assume control of law and order after days of unrest <br><br>Special report: Kosovo <br><br>Nicholas Wood in Leposavic <br>Tuesday December 19, 2000 <br><br>The United Nations appears to have lost control of a key part of northern Kosovo after a weekend of violence in which a Serb man was shot dead by Belgian peacekeeping troops. <br>The UN Mission in Kosovo has ordered its international and locally recruited police service and all UN personnel to withdraw from the town of Leposavic. <br><br>Late yesterday afternoon the town and surrounding villages had no international presence - troops from the Nato-led peacekeeping force, K-For, had been confined to barracks. <br><br>An improvised roadblock of logs had been erected by locals outside the town's UN police station. <br><br>Responsibility for the enforcement of law and order appeared to have been assumed by local Serbs. <br><br>Serbian parliamentary elections are due throughout Serbia - including Kosovo - on Saturday. <br><br>The UN staff were pulled out after Milan Jokovic, 20, was shot outside the police station late on Saturday as a crowd of 200 people surrounded the building. Soldiers used teargas and fired warning shots in attempt to disperse the crowd. <br><br>A Belgian officer admitted on Sunday that Jokovic had been struck by a bullet which ricocheted off a wall. K-For officials now say they do not know who fired shot. <br><br>Earlier on Saturday six Belgian soldiers and a civilian had been seized by the crowd and held hostage. Two guns and 150 rounds of ammunition were stolen in the process. The hostages were released three hours later, after negotiations with a senior Belgian officer. <br><br>UN officials say the violence was sparked off by the arrest of a Serb man for reckless driving. <br><br>Jokovic's funeral, on a hilltop three miles to the south of Leposavic, was attended by more than 500 people. A trailer towed by a mechanised plough carried his coffin between the trees and funeral plots marked by Orthodox crosses and the Serbian flags. <br><br>The presence of four foreign journalists attracted the attention of a stout man, dressed in a black leather jacket. As we moved away from the cemetery he demanded to see identity cards. An American photographer working for the Liaison photo agency saw the man move a pistol to his pocket. He then produced what appeared to be a police badge. <br><br>"This is a people's revolution," he explained as he demanded the right to see our papers. "This is Serbia, not Kosovo. Kosovo is part of Serbia." <br><br>For 20 minutes he walked alongside us back to our car, with one hand placed in his pocket. He said the victim of the shooting was the son of a fellow policemen. "If it happened to him it could happen to my son". He eventually let us go after two of us produced out-of-date Serbian press accreditation. <br><br>A senior British UN official based in nearby Mitrovice said later that dozens of policemen were believed to be employed in the region, paid by Serbian government officials north of the border. The official, who refused to be named, admitted that the policemen had considerable control over the local population. <br><br>A UN spokesman, Frank Benjaminson, denied that the UN had lost control of the area. <br><br>"We will return them [the UN police and staff] as soon as possible. We still have K-For in the area, even though you can't see them," he said. <br><br>South of Leposavic, on the road to Mitrovice, a check point previously manned by Belgian soldiers was guarded by Greek troops, who are seen by the Serb community as more sympathetic. <br><br>In the south of the province K-For was coming under increased pressure after an attack on a joint Russian and American patrol on the boundary with Serbia. <br><br>The shooting followed the destruction by the troops of a road believed to have been used by Albanian guerrillas for smuggling arms and men into Serbia. <br><br>The troops returned fire and then retreated. There were no casualties. <br><br>It is not clear who fired the shots, though K-For officials suspect the rebel group of ethnic Albanians fighting for the independence of three Albanian municipalities in Serbia and their attachment to Kosovo. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian:UN quits key area of Kosovo ``x977214943,87657,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 18 — The Yugoslav government is urging NATO to let Belgrade's military and police forces move more freely in a security zone that borders Kosovo, to beat back Albanian militants, President Vojislav Kostunica said today.<br><br>Belgrade has proposed renegotiating the military agreement that ended the 1999 Kosovo war to narrow the three-mile-wide security zone, where the Albanian militants operate with near impunity. The Yugoslav Army and NATO forces are not allowed in the zone, which is in Serbia. <br><br>With crucial elections for a new Serbian government less than a week away, Mr. Kostunica and his allies are under domestic pressure to react with force against Albanian militants, connected to the former Kosovo Liberation Army, who are conducting attacks in southern Serbia. <br><br>Mr. Kostunica has heeded Western calls to respond with patience and not violate the zone that separates the Yugoslav Army from the NATO- led peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Just the Serbian police, with light weapons, may enter the zone, and they have been attacked by an Albanian militia called the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, three heavily Albanian towns in Serbia that the militants want to annex to Kosovo.<br><br>In an interview, Mr. Kostunica said Belgrade had proposed to American officials that the zone be narrowed "to one or two kilometers" from the current five kilometers, to squeeze the militants and keep them farther from major towns and a main road.<br><br>A senior Western official said today that "the zone must be fixed" but that to renegotiate or narrow it would take time and had to be coupled with "confidence-building measures" for the Albanians who live there, including aid programs and efforts to recruit them for the local police.<br><br>The zone itself is an issue for the alliance, not just Washington, the official said. While praising Mr. Kostunica's restraint, the official said any obvious concession to the Serbs, if not carefully handled, could be explosive in Kosovo, which is "already volatile."<br><br>On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council is to meet to discuss Kosovo and the problems in the security zone. In a statement, the Yugoslav and Serbian governments demanded that the Council issue a condemnation of the Albanian attacks and set "the shortest possible deadline for measures for an urgent pullback of Albanian terrorists," or Yugoslavia "will invoke its legitimate right to solve the problem itself."<br><br>Although the threat is considered largely for domestic consumption before the election, a senior American official, James Pardew, visited Kosovo to warn Albanian leaders of the dangers if they did not restrain the militants.<br><br>American and NATO officials acknowledged that the buffer provided a haven for the militants, who have killed Serbian police officers and attacked villages and that NATO forces — Americans and British — had increased their efforts in the last two weeks to seal the border.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica and his government have begun regular contacts with the peacekeeping force and the United Nations administration in Kosovo. "We face problems," Mr. Kostunica said, "before our domestic public and even before history whether the Albanian terrorists will remain in the ground safety zone or not. We cannot let them stay."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Belgrade Presses NATO to Let Its Forces Into Serbia Buffer Zone``x977214994,12502,``x``x
``xBY JANINE DI GIOVANNI IN PRISTINA AND MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR, TUESDAY DECEMBER 19 <br> <br>BRITISH soldiers were sent to southern Kosovo yesterday to protect the border after rebel Albanian separatists fired at American and Russian troops from within the five-kilometre buffer zone between the Yugoslav province and Serbia. <br>As Belgrade said that another Balkans war could erupt if the Nato-led Kosovo force (Kfor) failed to stop attacks from within the security zone, 150 troops from The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment took up positions near the southern Kosovo border, overlooking the disputed Presevo Valley. <br><br>The British reinforcements were dispatched after shots were exchanged between the ethnic Albanian rebels and American and Russian troops which control the southern section of Kosovo. <br><br>The gunmen opened fire after Kfor soldiers destroyed a road near Gornje Karacevo, used by rebels of the so-called Liberation Army of Presevo, Medveda and Bujanovac (UCPMB) to smuggle arms from Kosovo into the security zone. The UCPMB is fighting to unite three largely ethnic Albanian regions of southern Serbia with Kosovo. <br><br>None of the peacekeepers was injured during the exchange — believed to be the first time American and Russian troops opened fire jointly against a “common enemy” since the Second World War. <br><br>The Russian troops come under the tactical command of the Americans in the southeastern sector of Kosovo. They first served together under the same command when Nato-led troops were deployed to Bosnia in the mid-1990s. <br><br>After the latest gunfire from within the security zone on Sunday, Zoran Djindjic, a pro-democracy leader in Belgrade who could become Vice-Prime Minister after the Serbian parliamentary elections this weekend, said: “The situation in southern Serbia has the potential for a new Balkans war.” <br><br>The security zone separating Kosovo from Serbia was set up as part of the militarytechnical agreement signed by the Serbs after the end of Nato’s 78-day bombing campaign last year. Only lightly-armed Serb police are allowed in the zone and they have been repeatedly attacked by the UCPMB rebels, armed with mortars and machineguns. <br><br>British military sources said that although there were about 8,000 American and Russian troops in the southern Kosovo sector, it was a hilly area and impossible to close all the cross-border points. The presence of British troops with Warriors and other armoured vehicles would allow American units to carry out mobile patrols along the border. <br><br>The United Nations Security Council is meeting today to discuss the latest Balkans flashpoint. Last week Nato foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels, condemned the violence by the “extremists”. Last month the rebels killed four Serb policemen and seized several villages inside the buffer zone. <br><br>Mr Djindjic said that if the rebels tried to cut off the main road that led to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Greece, “it would trigger new clashes in the Balkans”. <br><br>Vladan Batic, another pro-democracy leader, said that Yugoslavia might be forced “to take things into its own hands and clean the terrorists from every inch of its territory”. <br><br>Nato sources said that although Kfor had “put a lid on the troubles”, they were not yet resolved. Serbian intelligence sources said they had information that the UCPMB was planning an offensive on December 27. According to Lieutenant-General Vladimir Lazarevic, a rebel offensive of “several thousand terrorists” was being planned. <br><br>Nato is looking forward to this weekend’s elections in Serbia in the hope that prodemocracy representatives will win. “When we have a government in Serbia which we’re confident is not interested in invading Kosovo, then we can start taking a different approach towards the security zone,” one Nato source said. <br><br>The possibility of joint Kfor and Serb military patrols in the security zone has been discussed at Nato, although the prevailing view in the alliance is that the more likely option will be to allow the Serb Ministry of Interior police (MUP) into the zone, monitored by observers from the European Union or the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. During the Serb “ethnic cleansing” of Albanians in Kosovo last year, MUP forces were blamed for much of the violent suppression.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times:British troops sent to quell Kosovo rebels ``x977215085,25362,``x``x
``xBRUSSELS,December 18 (Reuters) - Officials from Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia began talks Monday on the thorny issue of how to divide an estimated $100 billion worth of assets of the old Yugoslav Federation.<br><br>``This is the first meeting of all the delegations since March 1999. They are meeting to discuss the way forward,'' said a spokeswoman for Bosnia's mission to the European Union in Brussels, where the two-day talks were taking place.<br><br>NATO launched a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in March 1999 over the Kosovo crisis.<br><br>The recent democratic changes in Belgrade, which swept President Slobodan Milosevic from power, have enabled the delegations to resume their talks.<br><br>The division of former Yugoslavia's assets and liabilities has been a stumbling block for years in establishing full relations between rump Yugoslavia, which comprises Serbia and tiny Montenegro, and its four newly independent neighbors.<br><br>So-called succession talks are also an imperative for Belgrade to rejoin the International Monetary Fund .<br><br>The disputed property includes embassies abroad and the whole range of state assets including factories, shipyards, pipelines and railways.<br><br>The spokeswoman said the delegations would hold bilateral talks Monday with Sir Arthur Watts, who represents an international Peace Implementation Council formed to mediate in the row over the division of the assets.<br><br>The delegates will then hold a plenary meeting Tuesday.<br><br>Belgrade puts the value of the state property at around $220 billion, while other republics say it is worth $100 billion.<br><br>The new Yugoslav leader, Vojislav Kostunica , has signaled that he will drop Belgrade's former insistence that it is entitled to the assets of the old Yugoslavia -- a claim unacceptable to the other countries. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xEx-Yugoslav States Discuss Division of Assets ``x977215116,6750,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Dec 20, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Belgrade will respond with "all possible means if attacked by terrorists" in the tense southern Serbian region bordering Kosovo, deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic said Tuesday, quoted by the Beta news agency.<br><br>"This is not a threat, but a statement," said Covic, who heads a recently created government body overseeing the region, where ethnic Albanian separatists have recently stepped up attacks on Belgrade police.<br><br>Covic said that Belgrade's security forces have counted "1,600 terrorists" in the demilitarized zone five kilometers (three miles) wide between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, noting that snipers were also seen in one of the villages.<br><br>On Monday, the rebels opened fire on Serbian police from two villages within the demilitarized zone, but the security forces did not return fire, Covic said.<br><br>Only lightly armed Serbian police can enter the buffer zone, under an accord signed between NATO and Belgrade after the Atlantic alliance bombed Yugoslav troops out of Kosovo in 1999.<br><br>The guerrillas of the self-proclaimed Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) want these three towns and their hinterlands, which have a large ethnic Albanian population, to be part of an independent Kosovo, currently under UN administration.<br><br>Belgrade is keen for the UN to help solve the crisis in the zone, where ethnic Albanian separatists have clashed violently with police in the last month, killing three policemen and taking control of several villages.<br><br>As part of a wide diplomatic initiative launched by Belgrade, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic was to attend a UN Security Council session Tuesday focusing on the situation in the region.<br><br>And former army chief Momcilo Perisic, one of the leaders of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), the coalition backing reformist President Vojislav Kostunica, said he was convinced the problems in the area would be solved "by diplomatic means."<br><br>But he insisted that the Yugoslav army and the police "could solve it in couple of hours," Beta reported.<br><br>"Diplomatic pressure has been exerted on the international community to obtain the withdrawal of the Albanians terrorists, since it was them who enabled them to be armed and to cross" into the territory of Serbia proper, Perisic said.<br><br>"If they fail to do so, we will have to do it after the elections" in Serbia, to be held on Saturday, Perisic said.<br><br>Kostunica said Tuesday that NATO-led peacekeepers were unable to solve the unrest in the region and called for other ways of tackling the situation to be considered, including a possible reduction in the size of the buffer zone. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBelgrade Will Respond With "All Possible Means" if Attacked in South``x977307484,89076,``x``x
``xBRUSSELS ,December 19 (Reuters) - Officials from rump Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia have held talks on dividing up an estimated $100 billion worth of assets of the old Yugoslav Federation, officials said on Tuesday.<br><br>The division of former Yugoslavia's assets and liabilities has been a stumbling block for years in establishing full relations between rump Yugoslavia, which comprises Serbia and tiny Montenegro, and its four newly independent neighbors.<br><br>So-called succession talks are also an imperative for Belgrade to rejoin the International Monetary Fund .<br><br>``All delegations have shown a willingness to resume negotiations... and to reach an agreement fairly quickly,'' said Arthur Watts, who represents an international Peace Implementation Council formed to mediate in the assets row.<br><br>``The atmosphere was constructive and full of hope,'' he told reporters after two days of talks in Brussels.<br><br>He added that the delegations had not yet got down to detailed negotiations on the division of the assets but had tentatively agreed to hold further talks in February, probably in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana.<br><br>It was the first time that the delegations had met since the start of NATO 's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia over the Kosovo crisis.<br><br>The recent democratic changes in Belgrade, which swept President Slobodan Milosevic from power, enabled the delegations to resume their talks.<br><br>The disputed property includes embassies abroad and the whole range of state assets including factories, shipyards, pipelines and railways.<br><br>Belgrade puts the value of the state property at around $220 billion, while other republics say it is worth $100 billion.<br><br>The new Yugoslav leader, Vojislav Kostunica , has signaled that he will drop Belgrade's former insistence that it is entitled to the assets of the old Yugoslavia -- a claim unacceptable to the other countries.<br><br>On Tuesday, Watts commended Yugoslavia's change of stance.<br><br>``The prospects for a constructive move from the Yugoslav delegation are good,'' he said.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xEx-Yugoslav States Hold Talks on Dividing Up Assets ``x977307532,20367,``x``x
``xFROM JANINE DI GIOVANNI IN CAMP SOBROAN, IN THE OSTROVICA HILLS, KOSOVO,DECEMBER 20 <br> <br>AS BRITISH troops moved in to seal off a potential new flashpoint on the Serbia-Kosovo border, President Kostunica of Serbia demanded yesterday that the buffer zone be narrowed to allow Belgrade to “cleanse” the area of Albanian rebels. <br>The President wants the 1999 ceasefire pact with Nato revised to allow Serbs to carry more than sidearms in their struggle to keep out Albanian guerrillas infiltrating from Kosovo. <br><br>In this remote corner the newly arrived British troops are setting up camp ready to tackle the very problem that concerns the President. Home for the 60 men of the 1st Battalion the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment for the forseeable future are two unheated tents with hay floors where they will sleep when not patrolling the trails and backwoods of these freezing hills. <br><br>A little more than 4 miles away is the Serbian border, straddling the hotly contested Presevo Valley, scene of mounting tensions since the highly ambiguous 1999 Security Council Resolution that helped to end hostilites declared this area a buffer zone. <br><br>Kosovan Albanian separatists, armed and gaining both momentum and popularity, demand that the region be part of Kosovo. It has been inhabited largely by Albanians since the Tito-era, but after July 1999 it fell within Serb boundaries. Serb villagers here feel under threat from the “terrorists”, as they call them, and are demanding an end to the build-up. Last Friday a group of Serbs driving near by had their windshield sprayed with bullets. Since Sunday, after a firefight involving troops with Kfor, the Nato-led force in Kosovo, and rebels, there is fear among experts and locals that this 3-mile wide region may be the spark that triggers yet another bloody Balkan conflict. <br><br>Mr Kostunica’s calls for action are all the more urgent because he is facing crucial elections at the end of the week. He is under increasing pressure at home to try to rein in the Albanians. While he has listened to Western calls for patience, it is clear that the Serb President is anxious to solve the Presevo dilemma. <br><br>“We face problems,” he said. “Before our domestic public and even before history, whether the Albanian terrorists will remain in the ground safety zone or not. We cannot let them stay.” <br><br>Hence the arrival of the British troops who, within 24 hours, have set up a base camp on top of this chilly hill.Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen Kilpatrick, heading the operation, believes they will mount operations in “a low-key, out of the way, self-contained way. We want to spread our influence right across the valley. Although we don’t need to be everywhere, we want to give the impression that we are everywhere”. <br><br>In all, 150 men were deployed early on Monday morning. While some are based further down the mud-trail near an American base, others will be closer to the front line, going on patrols in the hills, trying to block off supply routes and confront the rebels. <br><br>Although this is technically the American Kfor sector, the British were called out because of their expertise and skill in handling difficult terrain and obstacles. “We work 25-hour days,” says Corporal Marcus Daniel. Hill patrols, each of eight men in teams of four, will set up observation posts to watch the Albanians, and the VJ (Yugoslav Army), apparently massing on the Serbian border. <br><br>The Americans, unfamiliar with the terrain and dealing with civilians who may be armed, use a more heavy-handed approach. On the road to the British camp, a group of Albanian civilians were lined up in the wet and cold, having been herded out of their cars to be searched. <br><br>“We stopped doing that years ago,” one Briton says. “We learnt from our mistakes. That kind of thing just intimidates the local population.”``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times:Britons dig in at Kosovo flashpoint ``x977307592,6658,``x``x
``xUNITED NATIONS, Dec 20, 2000 -- (Reuters) The UN Security Council on Tuesday condemned violence by ethnic Albanian extremists in southern Serbia and called for such groups to be dissolved and their members to leave the area.<br><br>The session had been called at the request of Belgrade's new president, Vojislav Kostunica, on the crisis along a buffer zone between Yugoslavia's Kosovo and Serbia. Under UN resolutions the zone, known as the Ground Safety Zone, is to be demilitarized.<br><br>In a statement read at a formal meeting, the council said it "strongly condemns the violent action by ethnic Albanian extremist groups in southern Serbia and calls for an immediate and complete cessation of violence in this area."<br><br>Kostunica said on Tuesday that the buffer zone should be narrowed to give Yugoslavia more means to "cleanse" the area of ethnic Albanian rebels because NATO, which along with the United Nations controls Kosovo, had failed to do the job. He also suggested Serb security authorities should be allowed to use heavier weapons to neutralize guerrillas infiltrating from Kosovo.<br><br>The guerrillas say they are fighting to protect local Albanians from harassment by Serbian police. Belgrade insists they are separatists intent on joining the Presevo Valley area of Serbia to ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo.<br><br>Yugoslavia's Foreign Affairs Minister Goran Svilanovic, who traveled to New York, told council members that since June 10, 1999, "Albanian terrorists" had committed more than 400 armed attacks on the zone's lightly armed Yugoslav police, killing 11 police officers and eight civilians.<br><br>"More than 1,000 terrorists ... equipped often with heavy weapons, have entered the zone and are still there," Svilanovic said.<br><br>The buffer zone in southern Serbia was set up in June 1999 to prevent Yugoslav forces from threatening the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.<br><br>The United Nations and NATO took control of Kosovo in June 1999 after the Western alliance conducted an 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, aimed at thwarting Milosevic's drive to expel ethnic Albanian separatists from the province.<br><br>Svilanovic said the guerrilla presence was dissuading Serbs from returning home who had fled Serbia's southern Kosovo province after former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched a crackdown there against ethnic Albanian separatists.<br><br>Yugoslavia was committed to pursue an end to the violence through dialogue and negotiation but a worsening of the situation could "lead to unforeseeable consequences" and "jeopardize the democratic process in Yugoslavia and the stability of the region as a whole," he added.<br><br>Kostunica took power after his Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) alliance defeated Milosevic in September elections and a mass uprising later forced Milosevic to quit.<br><br>The council, in the statement read by Russian ambassador Sergei Lavrov, this month's council president, said it "welcomes the start of a dialogue between the Serbian and Yugoslav authorities and representatives of the affected communities which could facilitate a lasting settlement to the problem."<br><br>It also urged Kosovo Albanian leaders "to contribute to the stability of the situation."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xUN Council Condemns Extremist Violence in Southern Serbia``x977307627,8315,``x``x
``xR. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Service,Thursday, December 21, 2000 <br><br>Trial Reflects a New Attitude by Belgrade<br> <br>NIS, Yugoslavia In late March 1999, as NATO warplanes streaked over Kosovo, a Yugoslav Army colonel named Ljubisa Micic, based in Kosovo, heard what to him was alarming talk: Soldiers had murdered civilians in two villages outside Pristina, the capital.<br>He decided to investigate.<br>Colonel Micic knew he would find trouble after seeing a young man's body lying in the road on the outskirts of Saskovac, a farming village. And soon afterward he came across two more bodies, both severely burned.<br>Soldiers he met in the village told him that members of a military water supply unit had boasted about burning a house with five ethnic Albanian civilians trapped inside.<br>But he could not find out who was responsible. So he went on to the neighboring village of Susica, and there things were clearer. A soldier led him to the grave of two elderly ethnic Albanians who, he was told, had been shot because they had refused the military's order for a general evacuation.<br>Thus began a remarkable crusade in which Colonel Micic learned who had killed the pair, obtained written confessions and lodged criminal charges with the army prosecutor.<br>A year and a half later, the charges have led to the trial of three Yugoslav soldiers here in Nis.<br>The trial suggests that under the two month-old government of President Vojislav Kostunica, Belgrade is taking some tentative first steps toward coming to terms with the crimes of a decade of ethnic war.<br>And it also shows that even during the repressive rule of President Slobodan Milosevic until October, people like Colonel Micic took great risks to oppose ethnic crime and tried to use the legal system to uphold their beliefs.<br>Military officials said the trio appeared to be headed for conviction, a verdict that would be the Yugoslav Army's first official acknowledgment that any of its men had committed an atrocity during the 1999 Kosovo conflict, which included a powerful NATO air assault on Yugoslavia.<br>The case involves the deaths of just two ethnic Albanians, an elderly couple named Feriz and Rukija Krasniqi. When measured against the claims of international prosecutors that Mr. Milosevic and other political and military leaders engineered crimes against humanity on a massive scale in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, the trial seems small.<br>But human rights activists see it as an important precedent, in particular for ethnic Albanians. "It's important that they know one military judge wants to see justice for victims," said Natasa Kandic, director of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, which monitored the case.<br>In the five-week trial, which opened only after President Milosevic was deposed in early October, there has been no hint that anyone above the rank of captain was involved in the slayings. The charges, moreover, are murder and not war crimes.<br>But Colonel Radenko Miladinovic, the presiding judge, said that more trials like this were likely soon. "I am telling people, and some people just don't want to believe it, but it may be that men in the army did things like those we have heard about," he said in an interview. The new cases will take time to emerge. "People were trying to cover their tracks; war is a good way of covering tracks."<br>"These were children," he said. "Bombs were falling. People were afraid. Under those conditions, things were done that would ordinarily never be done."<br>One of the Krasniqi sons, Agron, sent the judge an emotional letter on Nov. 12, saying he hoped the probe would help disclose where his parents' bodies were buried. He also said he wanted "to salute all the honorable men in the court."<br>A farming village with about 200 homes, Susica before the war was a peaceful community populated by Kosovo's two main ethnic groups, Albanians and Serbs.<br>In 1998 and 1999, ethnic Albanian militants who wanted Kosovo to secede from Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, stepped up attacks on government installations. The Yugoslav Army responded with a brutal crackdown, leading NATO to start its bombing on March 24, 1999.<br>Colonel Micic was stationed at the time in Pristina. He was a political officer, a remnant of the Communist world's system of putting party members into army units to guard against ideological heresy. Killing civilians did not fit his idea of military honor.<br>When he heard rumors of the killings in the two villages, he was eager to investigate, he told the court here several weeks ago, standing before the judge in civilian clothes. "I wanted to prevent things like that from happening in our army."<br>Court records, testimony and interviews with some of the principals indicate that the incident began when the Yugoslav Army's Fifth Bakery Platoon, composed of dozens of men whose job was to bake bread in the field and who had never seen battle, moved to Susica from the Serbian town of Gracanica on March 27 to hide from NATO warplanes.<br>Others in their battalion, known as War Unit 5778, arrived March 28 following a NATO strike on the army barracks in Pristina. Two soldiers died in that attack and seven others were wounded.<br>Many of Susica's ethnic Albanians had already fled. The bakery platoon's first mission was to "cleanse" the village of the rest so soldiers could hide there. They got orders to shoot at anything that moved. They threw a grenade onto the top floor of one house to force a cousin of the elderly Krasniqis and his wife out of the basement. The cousin left but Feriz Krasniqi did not.<br>Wearing a dark blue suit and standing in the front yard of his home, he told the soldiers his wife, Rukija, was paralyzed and unable to leave her bed. So Captain Petrovic, the bakery platoon's 33-year old commander, turned to two reservists and said that if they refused to leave "shoot them," according to accounts given by two soldiers at the scene.<br>Tomica Jovic, one of the reservists, fired a burst from an automatic rifle into the man's back; then the other, Nenad Stamenkovic, shot the woman point blank on her bed, a soldier named Nebojsa Dimitrijevic, who was at the scene, told the investigative judge. "Two people were cleansed today," he wrote in his diary that night, an event he later said triggered months of nightmares.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Herald Tribune: Angry Yugoslav Colonel Traces Ethnic Killers ``x977396686,70888,``x``x
``xFROM JANINE DI GIOVANNI IN PRISTINA,THURSDAY DECEMBER 21 <br> <br>BRITISH troops sent to quell tensions near the Serbian-Kosovo border seized 13 armed Albanian guerrillas and an arms cache near the village of Draghibac Mahala. <br>“It is an unprecedented and extremely successful operation,” Major Tim Pearse, spokesman for the Multinational Brigade Centre, said. <br><br>The suspects were observed moving in four vehicles and two tractors in and out of the “ground safety zone”, a three-mile wide buffer zone between Serbia and Kosovo. They were detained inside Kosovo, about 35 miles southeast of the capital, Pristina. <br><br>The British troops, from the 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, were deployed into the American-controlled Kfor sector in southeastern Kosovo on Tuesday following a skirmish between American and Russian troops and Albanian rebels, believed to be part of an armed group known as UCPMB (Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedaj and Bujanovac). The group claims to represent the 70,000 ethnic Albanians living in southern Serbia, near the Kosovo border. <br><br>The British troops, who have set up a temporary base at Camp Sobroan, seized a cache of weapons, including two light machineguns; seven long-barrelled weapons; five AK47 rifles; 30 rocket-propelled grenade warheads; two rocket launchers; 50 hand grenades; eight anti-tank mines; two pistols; two 12.7mm machineguns; three .50 calibre machineguns; one box of explosives; four rocket launchers with warheads; as well as ammunition and military uniforms. <br><br>The successful British operation will embarrass the Americans who claim joint victory. It is widely agreed that the British troops were sent to the Presevo region this week because the Americans have been largely unsuccesful at curbing the Albanian guerrillas. <br><br>There are reports of tension between the Americans and their Russian counterparts, who are under US command. “The Americans are not used to working in this kind of environment, and we have been doing it for a long time,” explained one Briton who refused to be identified. Reporters working in the region have criticised the heavy-handed approach of the Americans and their lack of confidence in dealing with civilians. <br><br>The Britons, under Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen Kilpatrick, were deployed from their base in Podujevo on Monday. The 150 men have been monitoring thousands of paths and trails leading into the buffer zone between Serbia and Kosovo, setting up observation posts and patrolling the region. The success of the British operation in so short a time is a testament to its skill at adjusting to unfamiliar and remote terrain, as well as its confidence and ability. <br><br>The Presevo Valley, largely inhabited by Albanians, has become a flashpoint in the past few months as the UCPMB and other Albanian rebel groups have been building up arms. The area lies within the boundaries of Serbia, but sovereignty has been contested since the 1999 United Nations Security Council resolution declared it a buffer zone and out of bounds to Yugoslav forces. <br><br>Lieutenant-Colonel Kilpatrick, speaking to The Times on Tuesday, said that the British troops were confident of weeding out the rebels. He said: “We’ve already stopped them getting arms and food. <br><br>“It’s nothing dramatic, but it’s a sensible approach. British forces bring a fresh approach to these problems and have different skills.” <br><br>Major Pearse said: “Soldiering at a personal level is one of their strengths. It’s a balance of technology and individual skills. The British are recognised as having those personal skills.” <br><br>The suspects arrested by the British are being detained and interrogated by the Americans at Camp Bondsteel, the American base.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times: British forces seize Kosovo guerrillas ``x977396783,70180,``x``x
``xOfficial campaigning ends on Wednesday ahead of Serbia's parliamentary election on 23 December. <br>The elections are the first since the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, took office. <br><br>It is still not clear whether voting will take place in Kosovo. There is confusion over whether the United Nations authorities who run the province will provide facilities for the vote.<br><br>Though the 18-party Democratic Opposition alliance led by Mr Kostunica is expected to win convincingly, observers say it may struggle to maintain unity after the election and will be under pressure to deal quickly with ethnic violence in Kosovo. <br><br>The election could see the final removal from power of the Serbian Socialist Party of former president Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>New start? <br><br>BBC central European reporter Nick Thorpe says that much has changed in Serbia in the 11 weeks since the dramatic fall of Mr Milosevic and his regime. <br><br>There is a new mood in the country, spearheaded by a media freed of the restraints placed on it by the old authorities. <br><br>A new dinar, the Yugoslav currency, has been launched. <br><br>Some officials have been replaced, but far fewer than the more radical voices in the Democratic Opposition would like. <br><br>Gas and oil shortages have been alleviated by deliveries from Russia and European countries, but the longer-term energy crisis remains. <br><br>International community <br><br>In foreign affairs, the country has been re-admitted to international bodies, including the United Nations and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. <br><br>And difficult talks have begun with other republics of the former Yugoslavia over the division of assets and debts. <br>Our correspondent says the real power in this country rests with the Serbian Government, not with the Government of the Yugoslav Federation - making this election more important in some ways than the vote in September which ended with Mr Milosevic's fall from power. <br><br>In a further sign of the changing times, Mira Markovic, the wife of ousted former president, has complained about the about bias in the state media - once firmly under the control of the Milosevic regime. <br><br>Mr Milosevic himself complained at a party congress last month that the media was now in the hands of "foreign intelligence services". <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xBBC: Serbian election campaign closes``x977396834,32326,``x``x
``xBy Mark Heinrich<br><br>BELGRADE,December 20 (Reuters) - The leader of the 18-party reformist bloc poised to sweep Serbia's parliamentary election vowed Wednesday to forge ``modern, uncorrupted'' government that will crack down on endemic graft and gangsterism.<br><br>After a decade of wars, U.N. sanctions, the impoverishment of millions and the enrichment of a few ten thousand in ruling circles, polls show reformists will crush long-dominant nationalists in Saturday's parliamentary election.<br><br>Zoran Djindjic, premier-designate of the Democratic Alliance of Serbia (DOS), told its final campaign rally that Yugoslavia's main republic could expect honest government dedicated to democracy, the rule of law and peace with neighbors.<br><br>``Let us try to win in peace, we don't want wars any more. Let's make the 21st century an era of peace in the Balkans,'' Djindjic, 48, told thousands of supporters in Belgrade's main Sava convention center.<br><br>``We first have to change ourselves ... we should not make compromise with our shortcomings. We should start with our home, and that is our government, and it must be clean and uncorrupted and must be capable,'' he said.<br><br>``Then we will clean the institutions to make this country an example of a modern, organized state.''<br><br>Djindjic said there would be no campaign of vengeance against figures from the fallen authoritarian regime of Slobodan Milosevic , ``but there won't be any amnesty either.''<br><br>Among the overriding priorities of a DOS government would be rooting out networks of corruption linking senior state officials, police and business figures which have bled state coffers dry over the past decade, Djindjic has said.<br><br>Milosevic's tenure was marked by the rise of a politically connected elite enriched by black marketeering and import monopolies while most Serbs were driven by hyper-inflation and international sanctions into poverty.<br><br>Billions Of Dollars Missing<br><br>Yugoslavia's new reformist central bank governor Mladjan Dinkic said recently that several billion dollars were spirited abroad during Milosevic's rule in the 1990s.<br><br>Milosevic was toppled in a popular uprising 10 weeks ago sparked by his attempt to annul the victory of DOS challenger Vojislav Kostunica in Yugoslavia's presidential election.<br><br>When the dust cleared, the new federal rulers found the cupboard bare -- empty bank accounts, food warehouses vacant and oil reserves dry. Belgrade is counting on European Union aid and local improvisation to get through the winter.<br><br>But the key to rebuilding and modernizing Yugoslavia over the longer term will be wholesale economic and legal reform in its dominant republic, Serbia, whose size and 10 million people dwarf its federal partner Montenegro.<br><br>``If our country is to be successful it must have determined political leadership and stable democratic institutions,'' Djindjic told the DOS gathering.<br><br>``For us Serbia is not just a territory, not just a population, for us Serbia is a great idea and a great obligation,'' he said to applause.<br><br>The latest poll by Belgrade's Strategic Marketing agency put DOS support in Saturday's election at 62.8 percent with Milosevic's Socialist Party (SPS) far behind at 12.7 percent.<br><br>Milosevic, indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for alleged atrocities in Kosovo, has lashed out against ``foreign intelligence services'' he says are now running Yugoslavia. But the SPS eschewed campaign rallies for ``security reasons.''<br><br>A former SPS coalition partner, the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party, attracted eight percent, the poll found.<br><br>The Serbian Renewal Movement, whose firebrand leader Vuk Draskovic once co-led Serbia's opposition bloc with Djindjic but dropped out over largely personal differences, bordered on the minimum five percent needed for parliamentary seats.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xDemocratic Bloc Vows Clean Govt. Before Serb Vote ``x977396872,51769,``x``x
``x21 December 2000 <br>The fact that ethnic Albanian separatist guerrillas have finally turned their weapons against American and Russian troops in Kosovo should come as no surprise to regular readers of Jane's Intelligence Digest (JID). Our leading Balkan analyst examines the escalating risk to the whole UN mission. <br><br>JID has been warning since early 1999 that the lack of a coherent long-term policy over the future of Kosovo -- which remains internationally recognised as an integral part of Federal Yugoslavia -- would leave KFOR, the multi-national peace-keeping force, exposed once the ethnic Albanian militants realised that their aims of independence were effectively blocked by the presence of the UN administration.<br><br>Having entered Kosovo as the perceived 'liberators' of the ethnic Albanians from the Serbs, KFOR troops have come into increasingly bitter conflict with the heavily armed guerrillas, many of whom are closely linked to the officially disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). However, although the KLA ceased to exist on paper on 30 September 1999, the frequency with which illegal arms caches are being uncovered by KFOR proves beyond all doubt that the KLA -- or at least its more militant wing -- is still armed and active.<br><br>Albanian guerrillas attacked KFOR troops on 17 December on the border between Kosovo and southern Serbia. That this location would be the next Balkan flashpoint was made clear in a JID article last year (1 October 1999) when we warned that the Albanian-speaking areas of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja in southern Serbia would be the scene of further conflict. Now, with the rise of the Albanian Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB), our warnings have proved correct.<br><br>The nightmare scenario of a fresh Balkan war cannot be ruled out. Links between the ethnic Albanian guerrillas of Kosovo and the substantial Albanian minority in neighbouring Macedonia could easily lead to further destabilisation and possible disintegration of Macedonia itself -- precisely the disaster which Western strategy has been aiming to avoid at all costs. <br><br>JID predicts that there will be further attacks against KFOR targets as the troops attempt to neutralise the threat posed by the UCPMB. This may include the planting of bombs like the one that was found, and defused, close to the British military headquarters in Pristina in August along with more gun battles near the southern Serbian border. With around 50,000 international peacekeepers in Kosovo, the prospect of a conflict with a local guerrilla force that knows its own territory and has the sympathy of at least a significant section of the Kosovan Albanian population may well end in a bloody fiasco.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xA Balkan disaster in the making ``x977482416,47048,``x``x
``xGillian Sandford in Belgrade, Friday December 22, 2000 <br>The last bastions of parliamentary power held by ex-president Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist party are expected to fall to reformist candidates in Serbia's elections tomorrow. <br>Supporters of President Vojislav Kostunica are forecast to win a landslide victory and secure control of Serbia's government, the most important power centre in Yugoslavia. <br><br>The election should give Serbia its first government for more than 50 years not led by the Socialists or their communist predecessors. It will be a fresh humiliation for Slobodan Milosevic who was removed from power following a popular uprising. <br><br>He remains controversially protected by a special army unit and police guard in Beli Dvor (White Palace), which was once the home of Marshal Tito, in the Belgrade suburb of Dedinje. <br><br>The man who ought to live in the palace, the new federal president Mr Kostunica, is busy travelling around the world re-establishing ties that Mr Milosevic severed. <br><br>In just two months since the 5 October uprising, when Serbia overthrew Mr Milosevic, Mr Kostunica has brought Yugoslavia back into the world community, rejoining the United Nations and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and raising its long term aim of joining the European Union. <br><br>During this time his popularity has soared to an unprecedented 91% approval rating. <br><br>According to many opinion polls, members of the anti-Milosevic coalition, DOS (the Democratic Opposition of Serbia), will gain more than 70% of the vote. <br><br>The latest survey showed DOS with 63% - which would translate into a larger majority in parliament, because some parties will not clear the 5% threshold. <br><br>The Socialists, with a projected 13% of the vote, look set to win a few seats in parliament, but not to have any serious power. Two splinter parties will further divide the leftwing vote and the Yugoslav Left party of Mr Milosevic's wife Mira Markovic is not expected to gain a single seat. <br><br>Rebeka Srbinovic, vice-president of the DOS party New Democracy, said it was important that in the elections, DOS wins more than two thirds of the seats in parliament. This would give them the mandate to change the Serbian constitution and jettison the one that Mr Milosevic tailor-made for himself. <br><br>On Serbia's streets, people see the elections as being their chance to stamp out Mr Milosevic. Car mechanic Vladimir Dacevic, 62, hurrying home from work on 27 March Street in central Belgrade, said: "These elections are very important. We need to finish the changes that we started on 5 October and to get rid of the Reds [Socialists], to put normal, young people into jobs - and not old thieves." <br><br>The DOS coalition has already announced that the Democratic party leader, Zoran Djindjic, will be prime minister and parties in DOS have agreed a share-out of seats in the parliament and in the cabinet. <br><br>Mr Djindjic has named the key cabinet positions and the only top post still in question is that of minister for police. <br><br>The new police chief will take over from an ally of Milosevic, Rade Markovic, whom Mr Kostunica controversially kept in power. <br><br>The minister will be responsible for overseeing the secret police and so will control access to the files that Mr Milosevic's secret service gathered on his political enemies - many of whom are now DOS leaders.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Serbian voters prepare to heap more humiliation on Milosevic ``x977482531,33910,``x``x
``xFROM JANINE DI GIOVANNI IN PRISTINA <br> <br>IT’S Christmas in Pristina. Shops and windows are decorated with cheap coloured lights and plastic fir trees. <br><br>Albanian families are preparing dishes and buying presents and trees for their families. International aid workers are travelling to Gracanica, a nearby Serb village, to buy pork in the market for dinner. <br><br>Santa Claus — in the shape of a Finnish Nato soldier — has arrived by helicopter on the outskirts of town and children run through the streets, clutching wrapped presents given to them by soldiers from the peacekeeping force, Kfor. <br><br>Expectation bathes the devastation and grimness of this postwar city, Kosovo’s provincial capital, in a festive glow. Hope, however, is sparse. <br><br>It is the second Christmas since Nato-led troops "liberated" ethnic Kosovo Albanians from repression by Slobodan Milosevic, yet they now risk hostilities from the very people they fought so hard to save. <br><br>An Albanian war leader in the south of the region said: "If they come here without first reaching an agreement, we would resist them as we resist the Serbs. We know we could not win, but we would take some of their men with us." <br><br>Increasingly it seems that Kfor will have to join forces with the Serb military to curb the activities of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, operating within the three-mile security buffer zone. <br><br>There is a great sense of activity in the town. In a kindergarten called Our Happiness, Royal Marines are giving out wrapped presents, books and toys to tiny children whose parents watch gratefully. <br><br>In the Illeria School, in southeast Pristina, soldiers are still determined to break the cycle of ethnic violence that has defined Kosovo’s pivotal Balkan role as they hand out football strips to traumatised Albanian children, many of whom witnessed relatives being killed during the war. <br><br>"I haven’t got a present in a long time," said Osman, 12, whose mother died during the Nato bombing. His friend, Ramsi, whose father and grandmother were "massacred", said that seeing the British soldiers quietened the fear that had remained with him since the war. "I used to think men in uniforms meant Serb police who were going to hurt me on the way to school," Osman said. "Now it is the English soldiers, who are friends." <br><br>Despite the football strips and the fence that the British are building round the school to protect the children, Osman cannot recall the days of the bombing campaign without bursting into tears. "I do feel safer now," he said. "Because the soldiers are here, but I can’t forget what happened." <br><br>Although the soldiers, who work closely with the Pristina community, both Serb and Albanian, are anxious to promote a sense of healing and reconciliation in the battered city, it is a mammoth task. The wounds of the war that opened 21 months ago, and the years of ethnic conflict leading up to it, are still far too close. <br><br>On the other side of town a small group of Royal Marines is holding out against the freezing winter in a half-built Orthodox church to protect it from Albanian extremists who would destroy it were they not there. The four sleep in a tent inside the church. The tent has a lopsided Christmas tree, decorated with baubles, a television and a copy of the video Good Will Hunting. Christmas dinner will be rations. <br><br>In another part of town, a group of Royal Marines is working on a trickier operation. A grim community centre known as Dardagna has opened in time for the holidays; the Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas and New Year on January 6 and January 14. It is an enclave for 180 terrified Serbs left in Pristina, but there is little sense of festivity. They cannot leave without soldiers escorting them; they cannot go to buy a pint of milk without being harassed by ethnic Albanians. They cannot go to the clubs and bars that they went to all their lives. <br><br>Their children must be bused to Gracanica to go to school. But since the British troops arrived, the crime rate has been reduced by 55 per cent and the next project is to get a full-time doctor and dentist. The Serbs cannot be treated at the Albanian hospital. "They would get harassed or ignored," one soldier said. <br><br>Major Dave Wilson is with 45 Commando Group; it is his job to try to provide a sense of hope for the Serbs, who numbered about 45,000 before the war. "Our goal is to let the people live safely in the city," Major Wilson said. "But it isn’t easy. People know this is where Serbs live and it is a target for Albanian extremists." <br><br>There are 600 to 700 Serbs in Pristina. Those living outside Dardagna run the greatest risk; the soldiers have to check on them every 48 hours. <br><br>Diana, a 29-year-old geological engineer who now works with the British soldiers, lost her job at a big mine in Kosovo during the war and left the province. She returned with her two children because she refused to be a refugee. Diana has left her old life, including her flat on the other side of the city, and her Albanian former friends. The former mine director manages the Dardagna community centre. <br><br>Some British troops will be celebrating on Kfor hill, where parties are planned, but for the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment which conducted a highly successful operation this week, capturing 13 armed Albanians just after setting up camp near the Presevo Valley at Camp Sobroan, it will be a cold and foggy Christmas. <br><br>A few miles away, up to 2,500 fighters from the liberation army have virtually declared war on them. Lieutenant-General Carlo Cabigiosu, the Kfor commander, has hinted that after today’s Serbian parliamentary elections the agreement with Belgrade could be changed, to allow Serb forces into the buffer zone to protect themselves against the Albanian militia. <br><br>Officially, the agreement cannot be changed; but the reality is that in just 18 months the face of the Kosovo enemy has changed. Mr Milosevic’s autocratic regime has been replaced by democracy; and both Nato forces and Serbs face attacks from Albanians determined to secure the independence that they came so close to in June 1999.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times:Kosovo Santas aim to deliver gift of peace ``x977572507,2630,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Dec 23, 2000 -- (Reuters) Serbs voted on Saturday in an election expected to sweep Slobodan Milosevic's Socialists out of government, prevent the former Yugoslav president from contemplating a comeback and fix their country's new course towards democracy.<br><br>Voting started in cold weather at 7 a.m. (0600 GMT). Around 6.5 million registered voters will be able to cast their ballots until 8 p.m. (1900 GMT) at some 8,700 polling stations across impoverished Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic.<br><br>The first projected results are due during Saturday night.<br><br>Serbs pushed the Balkan demagogue off his pedestal in a street uprising in October, after he lost elections for the federal Yugoslav presidency and parliament but refused to go.<br><br>All opinion polls indicate they will now vote en masse to send his Socialist underlings packing in the Serbian election.<br><br>"We have to finish them off completely," said 26-year-old Srdjan, voting in Belgrade.<br><br>Venceslav Dionic, 40, said he hoped the elections would lead to better times, blaming the country's devastated economy on almost five decades of communist and socialist rule. But, he added, "I know it will not change for the better overnight."<br><br>The alliance behind new President Vojislav Kostunica is predicted heading for a 60-80 percent share of the vote -- more than Milosevic got in 13 years in power.<br><br>That would give Kostunica's Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) a firm grip on Serbia's government, the key Yugoslav power center.<br><br>But they face daunting tasks -- to stem economic collapse, stop Kosovo unrest spreading into Serbia proper, face up to war crimes and demands for Milosevic to face an international trial, and keep DOS and Yugoslavia from falling apart.<br><br>In Kosovo, in U.N. hands since 1999 when NATO bombing drove out Yugoslav forces, Serb officials aim to organize polling stations for some of the 100,000 beleaguered Serbs there.<br><br>The move has enraged members of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority who want independence for the formerly Serbian- controlled province. NATO-led peacekeepers will be on alert for violence sparked by the poll.<br><br>SERBS START JOURNEY LATE<br><br>For many Serbs the journey towards Western democracy, that most of their neighbors began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, is 11 years late.<br><br>They once prided themselves on belonging to eastern Europe's most progressive and prosperous country, the former Yugoslavia. But they have regressed, while neighbors who envied them are in NATO and readying for talks on joining the European Union.<br><br>Serbia dwarfs Montenegro, its only remaining partner in a Yugoslavia that has shrunk after a decade of war and break-up as Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia all left the federation.<br><br>Montenegro is now considering pulling out too.<br><br>Milosevic, blamed by Serbs for their descent into corrupt economic chaos and by the West for fomenting a decade of Balkan wars, miscalculated by calling September's federal poll.<br><br>Shocked by his foes' unprecedented unity under the DOS umbrella, he denied his defeat until forced out by the historic Belgrade mass protests.<br><br>This time, the Socialists' fate should be clear in hours, and provisional official results are likely by Monday, a normal day for Orthodox Serbs who celebrate Christmas on January 7.<br><br>Polls give the Socialists just 10-to-20 percent in the proportional representation vote to elect 250 deputies.<br><br>The ultra-nationalist Radicals, one party with whom they have shared power since the 1997 general election that many DOS parties boycotted, are battling to stay above the five percent of the national vote needed to get back in.<br><br>The Serbian Renewal Movement, the main opposition last time under the erratic Vuk Draskovic, and the United Left (JUL) run by Milosevic's wife Mira Markovic, may not even make the cut.<br><br>TRANSPARENT VOTING<br><br>The vote will be observed by monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and local groups.<br><br>Novelties in what many observers say will be modern Serbia's first truly free and fair vote are transparent ballot boxes, an invisible security spray and compulsory signing of voter lists.<br><br>DOS is confident enough to have sketched out a new cabinet, with vocal opposition leader Zoran Djindjic as prime minister.<br><br>The 18-party group's surge seems largely due to the personal popularity of Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer who has put Belgrade on the fast track back to the international community.<br><br>He is more popular than Milosevic ever was, despite the latter's nationalist populism and wily control of the media.<br><br>But Kostunica's "honeymoon" reflects desperate hopes that a better life is just round the corner for ordinary Serbs -- hopes that are all too likely to turn to disappointment before long.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xSerbs Vote in Poll Likely to Rout Milosevic Party``x977572544,63094,``x``x
``xMilosevic's Exit Was No Cure-All <br><br>By Peter Finn<br>Washington Post Foreign Service<br>Monday, December 25, 2000; Page A30 <br><br>BELGRADE, Dec. 24 -- In the end, no one drove a stake through Slobodan Milosevic's heart. No one had to. The "butcher of the Balkans," the autocrat who started and lost four wars, nearly destroying his multi-ethnic country in the process, was felled by the ballot in an election that for all the poisoned history here was sublimely boring.<br><br><br>The democratic coalition that cracked the foundations of Milosevic's rule through a popular and bloodless revolution on Oct. 5 coasted to victory Saturday in elections for the powerful Serbian parliament, where the old regime had clung to the dregs of power.<br><br><br>For the first time in 50 years, non-Socialists will govern Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Early results showed the Democratic Opposition of Serbia reform bloc that backed Vojislav Kostunica for the Yugoslav presidency this fall won 65 percent of the vote, giving it 177 of 250 seats in the Serbian parliament. Milosevic's Socialists had 14 percent.<br><br><br>"This is the biggest change in the order of Serbia since World War II," declared the Belgrade daily Politika. The newspaper is itself a symbol of that change; while it now trumpets the power of the vote, for 10 years it pumped out government propaganda, demonizing the regime's domestic and foreign enemies.<br><br><br>It is easy to forget that just six months ago Milosevic appeared to be as entrenched as ever as Yugoslav president. And despite the seemingly seismic events, it is just as easy to forget that Milosevic's political passing is not the tonic many had long predicted.<br><br><br>The fallout from NATO's 1999 air assault on Yugoslavia -- and the unsettled status of ethnic Albanians in Serbia, including the U.N.-administered province of Kosovo, as well as in Macedonia and Montenegro -- will continue to dog the Balkans.<br><br><br>Already, ethnic Albanian insurgents in southeastern Serbia, hard by the border with the U.S.-patrolled sector of Kosovo, are attacking Serbian forces. In their irredentism, they are drawing NATO into ever closer cooperation with the country it bombed for 78 days.<br><br><br>Moreover, according to Western officials, there are worrying signs that arms are flowing from Kosovo to Macedonia, which has a large ethnic Albanian minority. So the longtime Serbian assertion that the danger in the Balkans was not a "Greater Serbia" but a "Greater Albania" is beginning to gain currency in Western circles where it was long dismissed as cant.<br><br><br>Despite the occasional bellicosity of their language, the new leaders in Belgrade seem loath to seek a unilateral solution to rid their territory of guerrillas and seem only too happy to have NATO engage them. With a collapsed economy and a pressing need for Western aid, they see no percentage in Yugoslav guns shelling ethnic Albanian villages and rekindling the excesses of the former government.<br><br><br>For the incoming administration in Washington, the Balkans may prove as complicated as ever. In that environment, Europeans will fiercely resist any withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Balkans, as Condoleezza Rice, President-elect Bush's designated national security adviser, has suggested. European diplomats argue that NATO's role in Kosovo remains as critical as ever and that the United States shares responsibility for the region.<br><br><br>NATO continues to walk a delicate line with the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo, a province of Serbia. It speaks softly about the U.N. resolution that confirms Serbian sovereignty and elicits all the right noises about the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the province. But it effects no real change and is not squeezing the radical remnants of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army to force them to clamp down on their violent brethren within and outside the province.<br><br><br>The unspoken rationale for this unstated policy is a desire not to inflame the province. But, ultimately, the desire of Kosovo Albanians for independence will have to be faced, and with it a plethora of difficult issues, including the status of minorities and borders across the region.<br><br><br>There are, nonetheless, reasons to hope that politics can trump extremism. In Kosovo, as recent local elections showed, moderates are ascendant at the ballot box even though political thugs stalk the streets. In the Presevo Valley, where ethnic Albanian guerrillas are operating in the safety zone between NATO and Yugoslav forces, there is strong anecdotal evidence that the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medveda and Bujanovac is not as popular among the local people it purports to defend as it would like to believe.<br><br><br>In the end, the willingness of ethnic Albanians to tolerate the use of a strong arm to build a multi-ethnic democracy may be underestimated, just as the invincibility of Milosevic was long overestimated. And as diplomacy grinds toward the final settlement of a host of political issues, it won't have Milosevic to kick it around anymore.<br><br><br>Milosevic's Socialist Party may be the second-largest party in the newly elected Serbian parliament, but like all losers, he is prey for the picking. The new government may prosecute him for crimes committed within the kleptocracy he created in the past 10 years. The West would like to whisk him off to the international tribunal in The Hague to stand trial for war crimes in Kosovo, charges that could be broadened to cover atrocities that took place during earlier ethnic wars in Bosnia and Croatia. And his party, looking to reconstitute itself as a real post-authoritarian alternative, may dump him.<br><br><br>As he voted Saturday, Milosevic wished everyone "a happy New Year." For him, sooner or later, the season's greeting may be the clang of a prison door followed by a deafening silence.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Washington Post:Serbian Voting Validates New Leaders' Clout ``x977741953,24950,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 24 — Promising swift work to better the lives of Serbia's people and to root out injustice, Serbia's democratic coalition celebrated today after a landslide victory in parliamentary elections on Saturday, as partial but official results confirmed the collapse of Slobodan Milosevic's 13-year rule.<br><br>Zoran Djindjic, the 48-year-old German-educated politician who will become Serbia's prime minister, said he would complete his cabinet by Jan. 10, three days after the Serbian Orthodox Christmas.<br><br>"This is going to be the first government that will not be fighting for itself but for the interests of the citizens, and people will soon see an improvement," Mr. Djindjic said.<br><br>The 18-party coalition that supported the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, won 64.5 percent of the vote and more than two-thirds of the 250 seats in the Serbian Parliament, according to results from more than 93 percent of the vote counted today by the Republican Election Commission.<br><br>So long as the coalition holds together, it can govern nearly unchallenged and easily alter Serbia's Constitution with the 176 seats it is expected to hold. <br><br>Another leader in the coalition, Nebojsa Covic, signaled that the new government would move rapidly to indict Mr. Milosevic and key aides on domestic charges that could range from tax evasion to conspiracy to murder, saying, "A precondition for the rule of law is to immediately call to account the very top of the former authorities."<br><br>But Mr. Djindjic, like Mr. Kostunica, opposes sending Mr. Milosevic to the United Nations tribunal in The Hague to face war crimes charges over Kosovo.<br><br>For the new Serbian government, a more urgent topic will be talks to try to keep Serbia's tiny sister republic, Montenegro, in the Yugoslav federation. Montenegro's president, Milo Djukanovic, is moving rapidly toward independence and promises a referendum before the summer. Mr. Kostunica, as president of Yugoslavia and a constitutional lawyer, will play a role in the talks, concerned that a deal between Mr. Djindjic and Mr. Djukanovic could leave the Yugoslav federation almost meaningless, undermining his own position.<br><br>The major surprise of this election was the showing of strongly nationalist parties, aided by a lower turnout than expected, some 60 percent of the electorate. The Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj won more than 8.5 percent of the vote and an estimated 23 seats. Another nationalist coalition, built around the Party of Serbian Unity, founded by the late paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, appears to have taken 5.3 percent of the vote, just over threshold required to win seats in Parliament, getting 14.<br><br>The nationalist coalition was probably aided by the prominence given to attacks by ethnic Albanian militants in areas of Serbia bordering Kosovo, which Mr. Djindjic himself emphasized during the campaign as a threat to the Serbian state. The coalition was also helped by publicity from two popular television stations owned by one of its leaders.<br><br>"The fact that such a party will be represented in Parliament is just one more proof of how carefully society must be healed and radical demagogy avoided," Mr. Djindjic said.<br><br>Adrian Severin, the chief representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitored this election, said, "The forces of extreme nationalism are still alive, and the danger they represent should not be forgotten or underestimated."<br><br>The nationalist coalition and Mr. Milosevic's Socialists together won 27.4 percent of the vote and 74 seats, which could be important if the democratic coalition fractures — something that many Serbian experts expect to happen next year.<br><br>The Socialists won about 13.5 percent of the vote and 37 seats, but the Yugoslav United Left party of Mr. Milosevic's unpopular wife, Mirjana Markovic, was humiliated, winning less than 0.4 percent of the vote. Mr. Milosevic was described today as "calm and cool" when told of his party's results on the telephone by an aide, Dusan Bajatovic. "He told me to be patient because the time for our renovated party is yet to come," Mr. Bajatovic said.<br><br>Vuk Draskovic, once the main opposition figure to Mr. Milosevic, paid dearly for his refusal to back Mr. Kostunica in the Sept. 24 federal election that defeated Mr. Milosevic. Mr. Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Party won only 3.3 percent of the vote, under the threshold for seats.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:New Serbian Leader Vows Fast Improvements``x977742003,29861,``x``x
``xBy Alex Todorovic in Belgrade, Tuesday 26 December 2000<br>SERBIA'S government in waiting has pledged to put Slobodan Milosevic on trial following its trouncing of his Socialist Party in parliamentary elections.<br> <br>Slobodan Milosevic: future will be decided in the courts <br>President Vojislav Kostunica's 18-party coalition took 64 per cent of the vote while Milosevic's party was left with a mere 13.5 per cent, marking the official end of more than a decade of his dominance of Serbia. Zoran Djindjic, the new prime minister, said: "Milosevic's future will be decided in the courts."<br><br>His comments signalled the beginning of a new and dangerous phase for the former Yugoslav strongman. He has been manoeuvring in the political shadows since October when a popular uprising forced him to step down after he refused to concede defeat in the presidential election.<br><br>The authorities are expected to pursue corruption investigations of former Milosevic allies, climaxing with a trial of Milosevic sometime next year. This, however, would be in Belgrade and not in The Hague, where he is wanted for war crimes. Mr Djindjic said Rade Markovic, the head of the Yugoslav secret service, had already left his office.<br><br>Mr Djindjic said: "We must clean [our] house and remove the people who represented the former regime." Milosevic would not be given amnesty once evidence was uncovered, he said. The Yugoslav United Left, the party led by Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic, got just 0.33 per cent of the vote. Her party was the single most powerful institution in Serbia before October.<br><br>Mr Kostunica's coalition won more than two thirds of the seats in parliament.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xElectronic Telegraph: Milosevic to go on trial after poll humiliation``x977827252,78719,``x``x
``xBy STEVEN ERLANGER, December 26, 2000<br>PRAGUE, Dec. 25 — The Montenegrin president, Milo Djukanovic, made his first visit to Belgrade in two years today, another indication that the era of Slobodan Milosevic is truly over.<br><br>But Mr. Djukanovic's visit is also a reminder that the status of a post- Milosevic Yugoslavia is still uncertain, with both Montenegro and Kosovo pressing for independence from even a newly democratic Serbia. An 18-party, anti-Milosevic coalition won a landslide victory in elections on Saturday for a new Serbian Parliament and government.<br><br>Mr. Djukanovic, who broke with Mr. Milosevic in 1997, arrived to attend a meeting of Yugoslavia's Supreme Defense Council, led by the man who defeated Mr. Milosevic for federal president, Vojislav Kostunica. Mr. Djukanovic is eager to have Mr. Kostunica replace the Yugoslav Army commanders that Mr. Milosevic placed in Montenegro and to disband a special militarized police battalion that Montenegrins considered a threat to their government.<br><br>Now that Serbia will have a new democratic government, to be led by Zoran Djindjic as prime minister, talks will begin in earnest among the Serbian, Montenegrin and Yugoslav federal authorities on the future of the state. Any resolution will require constitutional changes and referendums in both Serbia and Montenegro, the two remaining republics in Yugoslavia.<br><br>But Mr. Djukanovic has already set up his own army-like police force with Western help, and he appears to be pressing harder for independence now than when Mr. Milosevic was in power. His position has angered Mr. Kostunica, who beat Mr. Milosevic in the Sept. 23 federal elections despite a boycott of the vote by Mr. Djukanovic and his supporters.<br><br>Mr. Kostunica is eager to keep tiny Montenegro inside Yugoslavia on better and fairer terms, so long as, he said in an interview last week, "there are the minimal standards of a federal state."<br><br>He sees those as including a joint federal government and military establishment, and an overall foreign policy, currency and central bank. But Mr. Djukanovic has already moved to make the German mark Montenegro's currency, even now that the Yugoslav dinar has been made convertible. Montenegro also has its own Central Bank, even without a currency of its own to manage.<br><br>Montenegro has also pressed for diplomatic representation abroad, and Mr. Djukanovic now talks of a confederation of two sovereign states, both with seats at the United Nations and other international bodies, an idea that the United States and the European Union oppose.<br><br>The West, Mr. Kostunica and now Mr. Djindjic, too, are concerned that an independent Montenegro could increase pressure from the Albanian majority in Kosovo, the Serbian province run by the United Nations and patrolled by NATO-led troops, for rapid independence. New border changes in the Balkans could continue, undermining Macedonia and Bosnia, as well.<br><br>Serbs got another reminder today that the elections are over, when they were hit with long new power cuts of up to 12 hours and the news that electricity prices will rise. The Serbian energy minister, Srboljub Antic, said emergency blackouts would increase, affecting as many as 75 percent of consumers for longer periods.<br><br>Serbia has been "borrowing" electricity from neighboring countries without authorization, Mr. Antic said, and must stop. Otherwise, it could be cut off from the regional grid and be unable even to purchase extra electricity with the millions of dollars of emergency energy aid being provided by Europe nations and the United States.<br><br>War damage and a long drought have compounded the problem, with rivers too shallow to provide cooling at coal-power stations or much hydropower. Russia also is cutting back on natural gas supplies because of Serbia's debts, putting more strain on the electric grid for heating.<br><br>Today, Mr. Djindjic repeated warnings that Mr. Milosevic will be the subject of rapid investigation by the new authorities on charges ranging from tax evasion and corruption to conspiracy to murder. Mr. Djindjic, while insisting that politics would not affect the workings of justice, suggested that Mr. Milosevic would find himself behind bars in a matter of weeks.<br><br>"He will first have to answer in Serbia for all the terrible things he has done — starting from corruption, crime, election fraud and ordering murders," Mr. Djindjic said.<br><br>Cedomir Jovanovic, a close Djindjic aide, said there was a pile of incriminating material against the old government, which is already being leaked through newspapers close to Mr. Djindjic. "Milosevic is the person all roads lead to, and it is realistic to expect that he will soon be answering some questions," Mr. Jovanovic said. "There won't be vengeance, but no one who broke a law can count on an amnesty either."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Montenegrin Pays Visit to Belgrade After 2 Years``x977827319,63363,``x``x
``xTuesday December 26, 2000 8:00 am<br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - In a season when much of the world is bedecked in festive lights, Yugoslavs are coping with a severe electricity shortage as the country struggles with its worst energy crisis in years. <br><br>The power company in Yugoslavia's main republic Serbia - home to more than 90 percent of the country's 10 million people - announced eight-hour blackouts Monday throughout the country because of ``the alarming state of production and supply systems.'' <br><br>As if that weren't enough, the power company warned that additional cuts may be necessary because of frequent outages at two key power plants <br><br>Officials cite several reasons for the energy shortage. A summer drought and an abnormally mild winter has lowered the levels of the Danube and Sava Rivers, cutting back on hydroelectric production. <br><br>Yugoslavia and other countries of the Balkans are tied together in a regional power grid, which allows them to import electricity from the other in times of need. However, because of high demands elsewhere and Belgrade's severe economic problems, officials say imports can make up only about 20 percent of the shortfall. <br><br>The power grid was poorly maintained during the administration of ousted President Slobodan Milosevic, when the government was severely strapped for cash because of international sanctions imposed in response to the ethnic wars in the Balkans. <br><br>As a result, only about a third of the necessary maintenance was conducted on the network this year, officials admit. <br><br>In addition, power stations were targeted during last year's NATO bombing campaign, launched to force Milosevic to end his crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. <br><br>Power cutbacks, coming at a time when temperatures hover around freezing, have not been well-received by a public eager for improvements in life after Milosevic's ouster in October and rise of a democratic government under President Vojislav Kostunica. <br><br>In Nis, Serbia's third-largest city, protesters hurled stones Monday at the local power company offices. Residents of another Nis neighborhood blocked streets, burned tires and set fire to garbage containers to protest power outages. <br><br>The Nis police chief, Jovan Milic, said the protesters were asking for shorter outages, even if they were more frequent. He said police did not intervene, in part because they sympathized with the demand. <br><br>Meanwhile, about half of the capital Belgrade was without electricity for most of Monday. Power company workers tried to keep service uninterrupted to hospitals and other high priority customers.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian: Serbia Plunges Into Energy Crisis ``x977827377,29891,``x``x
``xBy DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.<br><br>KOSOVO POLJE,December 27 Kosovo — At 5 a.m. the train station is empty, save for a Norwegian peacekeeper swinging his assault rifle in a slow arc, checking for trouble in the pools of light beneath the few remaining bulbs. The smell of creosote hangs heavily.<br><br>By 5:15 a castoff East German locomotive drags five cars with dark compartments lurking behind shattered windows into the station, where a mere dozen people wait. By 5:25 there is a scuttling of nervous shadows from the parking lot, and within minutes the "Serb train," as it is known to locals and the United Nations officials who run it, is full.<br><br>The train connects this grimy town, which takes its name from the field where the Serbs' defining battle was fought in 1389, to other Serbian communities in northern Kosovo. <br><br>In between is territory populated by the majority Albanians, who have staged almost daily revenge attacks on the minority Serbs since NATO troops entered Kosovo in June 1999.<br><br>As the train creaks out into the darkness, Greek infantrymen in flak vests fill its doorways, scanning the streets and fields. When tensions are high, a helicopter or an armored personnel carrier races ahead, scanning for angry mobs or anything placed on the tracks to derail the train.<br><br>More peacekeepers guard all 10 stations between Kosovo Polje and Zvecan, the village near Mitrovica where the passengers disembark; they are now in "Serbian land," running all the way to Belgrade. The ride to Zvecan is free, but in "Albanian towns" like Vucitrn, no one gets on or off.<br><br>The United Nations and military officials who have run this train since February are proud of themselves. To them it is a secure artery connecting cut-off pockets of Serbs. To many Albanians, remembering their mistreatment at the hand of Serbs, it is anathema; the train is regularly stoned or shot at and has been attacked by crowds, and last summer its tracks were blown up.<br><br>The driver, Sgt. Karlheinz Hauser of Germany's 104th Armored Division, says grown men make throat- slitting signs as he passes, "and every one or two days, another broken window is normal." The stone-throwers, he adds, are mostly children.<br><br>"Serfs in the Middle Ages had more freedom of movement than we do," said Diana Ivanovic, a Serbian woman riding the train one recent day. "I don't bring my children with me, because there is no civilization left here." <br><br>The one time she did, she said, a bomb was found on the tracks. The train backed away, and the passengers slept in it all night.<br><br>Mrs. Ivanovic, 30, has moved north but comes back to see her parents, toting bags of canned vegetables, coffee and pie crusts. She is a bookkeeper, and with her glossy black hair, black sweater and gold rings, looks severe and prosperous beside Stanja Radovanovic, who is 44 and in a coat that matches her flyaway gray hair. Mrs. Radovanovic has stayed and is carrying empty shopping bags.<br><br>Mrs. Ivanovic's thoughts escaped her tightly pressed lips singly, like razor blades, while Mrs. Radovanovic's sloughed out with a weary shrug, but the words they used were identically cruel. <br><br>Even Mrs. Radovanovic's pleasant 10-year-old daughter, Maria, said she no longer played with her childhood Albanian friends and could not imagine ever having another, "because Albanians are evil."<br><br>There was one difference. Unaware that the multilingual translator she was speaking through was Albanian, Mrs. Ivanovic routinely referred to Albanians using a common insult.<br><br>Mrs. Radovanovic's mother is a retired textile worker, her father a civil servant who now will never finish earning his pension, because, she said, "he cannot get to Pristina to work with Albanians each day — he'd probably be killed." ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:Aboard the 'Serb Train,' Bitterness, and Hope Too``x977913905,52770,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Dec 27, 2000 -- (Reuters) The odd couple leading Serbia's democratic transformation may see their marriage of convenience come under severe strain now that the last bastion of their common adversary has fallen.<br><br>With the rout of Slobodan Milosevic's authoritarian leftists by democratic reformers in parliamentary elections, a battle to be boss in Belgrade looms between a phlegmatic legalist with tremendous popularity and a dashing deal maker with momentum.<br><br>There is no love lost between Vojislav Kostunica and Zoran Djindjic.<br><br>Kostunica is the folk hero who trounced Milosevic in Yugoslav presidential elections three months ago and took office after Milosevic's refusal to recognize defeat triggered a popular revolt.<br><br>Djindjic devised the DOS reform alliance campaign behind Kostunica's victory and his negotiating skill helped dissuade secret police and army commanders from a bloody crackdown on opposition protesters before Milosevic conceded, insiders say.<br><br>As federal president, Kostunica can convene or dismiss parliament and is commander-in-chief of the army. He has few other constitutional powers but his 75 percent popularity rating gives him unparalleled authority -- based in part on his record of integrity in a political scene sodden with corruption.<br><br>Djindjic, prime minister-designate of the 18-party coalition elected on Saturday to take over the Serbian government, will oversee the police, public media, treasury and market reforms in Yugoslavia's dominant republic.<br><br>POPULARITY COUNTS<br><br>"Because of the mutual dislike between the two men, relations between a Serbian government headed by Djindjic and a federal government under Kostunica will be difficult," the International Institute for Strategic Studies said in a report.<br><br>"Djindjic would like to make sure that real power accrues to him, but thanks to Kostunica's enormous popularity he will find this difficult," the London-based IISS remarked.<br><br>Despite leadership squabbles within the broad spectrum of the DOS, Djindjic maintains the alliance can survive for a year or two if it switches its focus from toppling Milosevic to introducing reforms to improve Serbs' ruined quality of life.<br><br>How the Kostunica-Djindjic rivalry will affect the pace and nature of Serbian reform may ultimately hinge on the attitude of Montenegro, Serbia's estranged small partner in the federation.<br><br>If Kostunica fails to dissuade Montenegro from holding a referendum on independence next year, he might be out of a job.<br><br>In that case, however, Kostunica could become president of Serbia. The incumbent is a discredited Milosevic protege and U.N.-indicted war criminal who is likely to be dumped before his term expires in 2002.<br><br>Kostunica and Djindjic have been skirmishing virtually since the morning after Milosevic threw in the towel.<br><br>Their disputes pit Kostunica's attachment to legal procedure and aversion to violence against Djindjic's inclination for no-nonsense pragmatism where speed is of the essence.<br><br>In the chaotic aftermath of Milosevic's downfall, Djindjic formed "crisis committees" that wrested the national bank, customs service and state enterprises from Milosevic allies.<br><br>Djindjic argued for swift action to "consolidate the revolution" but was accused by other reformers including Kostunica of a lunge for power aping Milosevic's methods.<br><br>Kostunica's intervention forced the committees to take in members from outside Djindjic's circle and retain expert managers in the public bodies to keep them running pending reforms to be decided by a future, duly elected government.<br><br>Another row was sparked by Djindjic's demand for the immediate sacking of Serbian security police czar Rade Markovic.<br><br>Kostunica, saying he feared a breakdown in law and order in the fluid interim before December's vote, opposed the move but Djindjic will get his way once installed as prime minister.<br><br>THEY AGREE ON ONE THING -- TRY MILOSEVIC AT HOME<br><br>Analysts say the only thing Kostunica and Djindjic agree on unequivocally is that Milosevic should not be handed over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal for trial. Both think Milosevic should be judged at home.<br><br>Every public tiff between Serbia's two democratic reform leaders is fuelled by their incompatible temperaments.<br><br>Kostunica, 56, is an introspective constitutional law scholar who likes to appear above the political fray. He is a religiously devout, conservative Serb patriot who spends holidays at a cottage in rural Serbia.<br><br>Both Kostunica and Djindjic come from a 1970s circle of anti-communist academia suppressed by then-dictator Josip Broz Tito. But Djindjic always coveted a starring role in revolution that, after a few false starts, finally came in October.<br><br>"Sleek, poised, strutting, he'd prepared for this moment his whole life. One got the sense (as Milosevic fell) that Djindjic had to protect the revolution from Kostunica's existential doubt," Balkans scholar Misha Glenny wrote in the New Yorker.<br><br>But while Djindjic is telegenic, eloquent, energetic and flexible, a professed liberal and at ease with Western leaders on whom Serbia will rely for reconstruction aid, he is not popular among average, impoverished Serbs, analysts say.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xOdd Couple Leading Serb Democracy Clash over Style``x977913939,40209,``x``x
``xBy AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE<br><br>BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 27 — Officials coping with a power crisis called on the nation today to save electricity — a day after downtown holiday illuminations were finally turned off in response to residents' complaints.<br><br>Consumers in the dominant Yugoslav republic, divided into four categories, will be without electricity in six-hour shifts, said Slobodan Petrovic, of the state utility company E.P.S. <br><br>Prime Minister-elect Zoran Djindjic called on the people to accept the "critical situation," Beta news agency reported. "Residents will be informed hour-by-hour what the situation is," Mr. Djindjic was reported as saying, "and they will see there are no privileges, that we are all in the same troubles."<br><br>But some residents who had their doubts complained about the brilliantly lit main thoroughfare earlier this week. Decorative lights there were switched off late Tuesday. The president's home, too, is now doing without festive lights. <br><br>Power shortages have become a crucial challenge for democratic reformists, who this weekend followed up President Vojislav Kostunica's federal victory in September with a landslide success in Serbia's parliamentary polls. They have pledged to rebuild the country after a decade under the autocratic regime of Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Beta quoted an energy company official as saying he was preparing further austerity measures in conjunction with the city authorities. <br><br>The energy company said it would disconnect about 150 city enterprises and shorten the list of priority consumers like hospitals and schools, which have been exempt from cuts.<br><br>Mr. Djindjic said on Tuesday that there would be no power cuts during New Year celebrations.<br><br>The European Union and the United States have pledged to help Serbia's ruined energy system, with the union already donating more than $70 million to help meet energy needs.<br><br>Thanks to relatively high December temperatures — an average of 43 degrees predicted for midweek in Serbia — the E.P.S. expected that consumption would be lower. But temperatures as low as 14 degrees are predicted for coming days.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times:A Dimmed Belgrade Gets a Plan to Ration Energy``x977997545,12701,``x``x
``xBy Ciaran Giles <br><br>Associated Press <br>December 27, 2000 <br>MADRID -- European NATO allies have begun checking whether their soldiers may have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation from depleted uranium ammunition used by U.S. warplanes in Kosovo last year. Spain said Tuesday that initial tests were proving negative.<br><br>Spain's Defense Ministry confirmed it would examine all 32,000 soldiers who have served in the Balkan region since 1992. A spokesman said none of the first 5,000 soldiers screened in recent months has tested positive.<br><br>Portugal said Tuesday that it would send a team of experts to Kosovo to check radiation levels on spent rounds, but did not foresee screening its 330 troops there.<br><br>Spain has just over 2,000 troops stationed in the Balkans, half of them in Kosovo.<br><br>Fears arose after NATO acknowledged this year that U.S. warplanes operating in Kosovo fired armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium during the alliance's 78-day bombing campaign in 1999.<br><br>Italian Defense Minister Sergio Mattarella said last week that Italy was investigating cancer cases among its soldiers from Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina to see if there is a link with the ammunition.<br><br>A UN team that went to Kosovo in November is conducting a similar study and is expected to report its findings in February.<br><br>Twelve Italian soldiers who served in the Balkans have developed cancer. In addition, three peacekeepers who served in Bosnia died of leukemia last year. Four soldiers involved in aircraft maintenance have also died of cancer.<br><br>Pentagon spokesman Jim Turner said Tuesday that there have been no such problems among U.S. troops who served in the Balkans.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Chicago Tribune:Nato Troops in Kosovo tested for uranium exposure ``x977997590,83623,``x``x
``xBERLIN, Dec 27, 2000 -- (Reuters) Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica said on Wednesday sorting out difficult ties with Montenegro was a far more pressing task than prosecuting his predecessor Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Kostunica, a reformist who beat Milosevic in a presidential election in September, told German Radio that the legal and institutional framework was not yet in place for the former leader and his coterie to be tried on corruption charges.<br><br>Kostunica was propelled to power in early October after a mass uprising forced Milosevic to concede defeat.<br><br>His comments come just as other leaders in Serbia's disparate pro-democracy movement, who triumphed in a parliamentary election at the weekend, have been talking increasingly of Milosevic going on trial soon.<br><br>Kostunica said judges and prosecutors would have to be replaced before any criminal proceedings could be opened, and laws dating back to the Tito era would have to be overhauled.<br><br>"We need to create the institutional conditions to put questions of responsibility on a legal basis, rather than using revolutionary justice," Kostunica told German Radio in Belgrade in remarks which were dubbed into German. Kostunica added that the state, justice system and media were not ready to deal with a possible prosecution of Milosevic, who is still believed to be living in a heavily guarded residence in a Belgrade suburb.<br><br>"The people are hungrier for food than they are hungry for revenge or justice," Kostunica added.<br><br>Reformers have been talking of trying Milosevic for corruption. Western governments want him prosecuted in a UN tribunal for war crimes committed in Kosovo and see him as the leader most responsible for a decade of Balkan bloodshed.<br><br>Kostunica said one of Belgrade's more pressing tasks was to stabilize relations with Montenegro, Serbia's estranged far smaller partner in what remains of the Yugoslav federation.<br><br>Relations between Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic's government and Serbia were strained to breaking point under Milosevic and the coastal republic moved increasingly towards independence.<br><br>Despite Milosevic's departure, the republic's government has kept up its drive to distance itself from Belgrade.<br><br>Kostunica said this reflected an obsession with power on the part of the Montenegrin regime.<br><br>"We have to resolve this problem in a democratic way," he said, calling for orderly changes to the constitution which reflected the will of citizens.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xKostunica Rules out Milosevic Prosecution Soon``x977997617,31057,``x``x
``xBy Alex Todorovic in Belgrade, Friday 29 December 2000<br> <br> SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC'S henchmen are beginning to disappear from Belgrade as time runs out for them to flee the country.<br>The democratic reformers who won an overwhelming victory in elections for the Serbian parliament last Saturday take power early next month, and are already trying to outdo one another with promises of investigations, arrests and trials.<br><br>Once the new government is formed, it will take control of Belgrade's airport and the last escape route for corrupt officials will be blocked. Federal police, under the authority of President Vojislav Kostunica, already control the country's land borders.<br><br>Hadzi Dragan Antic, the former director of Politika, Belgrade's oldest daily newspaper, and a one-time companion of Milosevic's daughter Marija, has bought tickets for Cuba and fled. A senior member of Politika's staff said he had resurfaced in Moscow, where he has connections.<br><br>Mr Antic's defenders in the Socialist Party said he had gone for "therapy". One editor at his former paper laughed: "It's more like permanent therapy." Miodrag Zecevic, the former director of Jubmes, a bank with close ties to Milosevic, has also vanished and is being sought by police, while Mihail Kertes, the former head of Yugoslav customs, has been arrested and charged with abuse of office. Such scenes are likely to be repeated in coming weeks.<br><br>An aide to Zoran Djindjic, the Serbian prime minister-elect, said: "Those with dirty laundry in their political past may prefer to face the future in Tajikistan than jail sentences at home."<br><br>Nebojsa Covic, a key leader in Mr Kostunica's reformist coalition, said: "You can arrest any of Milosevic's inner circle, give him 10 years in prison, and you simply can't go wrong. Forget The Hague [war crimes tribunal]. They have to answer to their own people, and that satisfaction shouldn't be given to anyone else."<br><br>Vladan Batic, Serbia's next justice minister, promised that Milosevic would soon lose his police protection. In a newspaper interview, Mr Covic said he wished the government could arrest Milosevic before the new year, but added: "Realistically, we can expect his arrest in January."<br><br>With Serbia in the grip of power cuts and state bank accounts looted, a bitter public seems eager for justice and retribution. Dusana, a housewife at an open-air market in the capital, said: "They've lived high and mighty for the past decade while the average person struggled to make ends meet. I want to see them all behind bars." <br><br>Those who won seats in parliament will not be excluded from investigation. One likely target is Vojislav Seselj, the radical nationalist leader in the Milosevic regime who filed countless lawsuits against the independent media and threatened reporters.<br><br>In view of the enthusiasm for arrests and trials in the incoming government, more and more of Milosevic's supporters are likely to follow the trail to Belgrade airport blazed by the dictator's son at the time of his father's overthrow in September.<br><br>Marko Milosevic bid farewell to his past in the VIP lounge before boarding a Moscow-bound plane, disappearing into an anonymous future with his wife and son. "Our airport will soon look like that last scene in Casablanca," said an aide in the Kostunica coalition. "Those who have something to hide have a short time left to board a plane, then it's over."<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xElectronic Telegraph: Milosevic's men flee chorus of arrest threats``x978088890,47103,``x``x
``xBy REUTERS<br>Filed at 1:10 p.m. ET, December 28, 2000<br><br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - The Yugoslav parliament passed a declaration Thursday calling on the United Nations to take urgent steps to clear ethnic Albanian guerrillas from a violence-plagued buffer zone bordering Kosovo.<br><br>It said that if the United Nations, which runs Kosovo together with a NATO-led peacekeeping force, did not get the guerrillas out, Yugoslavia would have to get rid of them by itself.<br><br>The parliament passed the resolution after a debate on the situation in the buffer zone, where four policemen were killed last month in clashes with guerrillas who have staged attacks on Serb security forces in the area throughout the past year.<br><br>Only lightly armed local Serb police are allowed into the so-called Ground Safety Zone, set up in June 1999 as part of a deal between Belgrade and NATO which governed the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo after 11 weeks of NATO bombing.<br><br>The zone is a (three-mile-wide strip of land inside Serbia proper running alongside the boundary with Kosovo, Serbia's southern province.<br><br>The U.N. and NATO have stepped up security along the boundary and say their efforts have hindered the guerrillas. But the Yugoslav parliament insisted they should take more concrete action to secure the area.<br><br>``The Federal Assembly demands of the U.N. Security Council to set the shortest possible deadline and take measures for an urgent withdrawal of Albanian terrorists from the Ground Security Zone,'' the declaration said.<br><br>``Otherwise, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia will invoke its legal and legitimate right to solve the problem on its own by applying all internationally permitted measures in fighting terrorism,'' it said.<br><br>It did not specify what actions Yugoslavia might take. Western governments have praised Belgrade's new reformist rulers for respecting the zone so far and declaring a desire to solve the crisis through dialogue and diplomacy.<br><br>The U.N. Security Council earlier this month condemned ethnic Albanian extremist violence in the area and called for an immediate and complete cessation of fighting, but has so far stopped short of making changes to documents defining the zone.<br><br>Yugoslav officials have expressed some frustration with international authorities in Kosovo.<br><br>President Vojislav Kostunica earlier this month called for the zone to be narrowed to allow Yugoslav security forces to ''cleanse'' the area of ethnic Albanian rebels because NATO and the U.N. had failed to do the job.<br><br>The guerrillas say they are fighting to protect local Albanians from harassment by Serbian police. Belgrade insists they are separatists intent on joining the Pressevo Valley area of Serbia to ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo.<br><br>The parliament declaration also called for the international authorities running Kosovo to ensure the safe return of all expelled Serbs to the province and condemned the destruction of a Yugoslav government office in a bomb attack there last month.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Yugoslavia Tells U.N. to Crack Down on Guerrillas``x978088956,85854,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic <br>29 December 2000 <br><br>The people of Belgrade are preparing to spend New Year's Eve in darkness. The new governments of Yugoslavia and Serbia are grappling with the latest legacy of the Milosevic era – the country's worst energy crisis. <br><br>In some areas, power cuts last 10 hours or more. Belgrade, a city of 2.5 million, is divided into four sections and the cuts are rotated,with electricity turned off in each sector for nine hours, twice a day. <br><br>"I drive the kids from one friend to another," says Mirjana Savovic, 35, who has two children. "We take turns among ourselves during the day. I don't go to the office. There is no electricity during working hours." <br><br>In the evening, parts of Belgrade are a ghostly black because the street lights are not working. Some people walk with torches, stumbling along the pavements. <br><br>Sales of candles are booming but people sit in their homes shivering. Without electricity, heating pumps are dead. Taps in high-rise blocks are dry, because water pumps have ceased. Getting into an elevator is a game of roulette. Only hospitals and other essentials such as bakeries have electricity 24 hours a day. <br><br>Srboljub Antic, Serbia's Energy Minister, says: "We are facing a catastrophe caused by nature. After nine months of drought and the lowest water level in the rivers, this is the result." <br><br>The drought has reduced hydro-electric output to record lows. Serbia relies heavily on hydro power, although there are several big thermal plants. But they are unable to meet the needs of some 7.5 million people in Serbia. The average age of the hydro-electric plants is 26 years and the thermal ones are at least 20 years old. <br><br>Serbia's power monopoly, Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS), warned this week of increased blackouts and inevitable price rises. During years of sanctions, wars and rising impoverishment, the Milosevic regime kept energy prices low to buy social peace. Serbs turned to cheap electricity for heat. But in the past decade, overall investment in the power system has equalled the investment of one year in the Eighties. <br><br>To make matters worse, power stations were targeted during last year's Nato bombing. Then Mr Milosevic temporarily solved the energy crisis by importing electricity from neighbouring countries. <br><br>Experts blame the scale of this crisis on the officials who run the monopoly. Loyal to the former regime, they kept silent on the emergency they must have known would hit in mid-winter. The West has promised humanitarian aid for energy purchases, but that takes time to materialise. <br><br>The mood in the capital is deteriorating rapidly. Late on Wednesday 100 protesters, saying they had been without electricity for 40 hours, set up roadblocks, claiming "unfair" distribution of power cuts. <br><br>"This is a humanitarian catastrophe," one told me. "I don't care who caused this, Milosevic or others. We just want some electricity." <br><br>The highway that leads from Hungary through central Belgrade was a nightmare. In the thick darkness, there were no familiar signs. The traffic lights were out, huge buildings were just a sketch in the black sky. <br><br>As I drove up to the toll booth it plunged into darkness. "The machine is off, just go," said the man in the cubicle, waving his hand in exasperation. <br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xIndependent: The cold, dark legacy of the Milosevic years ``x978089012,44799,``x``x
``xBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br>Filed at 9:20 p.m. ET, December 28, 2000 <br><br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Montenegro's pro-Western government on Thursday endorsed a plan that would give it greater autonomy from Serbia, the larger of the two republics that make up Yugoslavia.<br><br>The proposal envisages Yugoslavia as a loose union of Serbia and Montenegro, each with their own seat in the United Nations, but with a common army, monetary and financial policies.<br><br>Yugoslavia's new President Vojislav Kostunica is seeking to preserve the federation as Montenegro pushes for more autonomy, and international officials have urged Montenegro to go slowly in any independence bid.<br><br>Four ministers from the People's Party, a key ally of Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic's three-party ruling coalition, walked out in opposition to the move, triggering the collapse of the coalition.<br><br>Montenegro's deputy prime minister, Dragisa Burzan, said, that the People's Party walkout would not prevent the proposal from passing the 78-seat Montenegrin parliament.<br><br>Support is expected to come from the Liberal Party, which is considered strongly pro-independence and has five seats in the legislature -- enough to get the vote through.<br><br>Liberal spokeswoman Vesna Perovic told reporters late Thursday that her party was ready to back Djukanovic's minority government.<br><br>Ties between Serbia and Montenegro were almost severed during former strongman Slobodan Milosevic's autocratic rule. Montenegro's leaders boycotted federal elections in protest.<br><br>After years of drifting away from Milosevic's Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, the Montenegrin government is now impatient for more independence.<br><br>Earlier this month, Djukanovic and Kostunica agreed to open talks on future ties.<br><br>Montenegro plans to propose the deal to Serbian representatives by mid-January, Burzan said.<br><br>If the talks with Serbia fail, Djukanovic has said that Montenegro would hold an independence referendum by mid 2001.<br><br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe New York Times: Montenegro OKs Automony from Serbia``x978089070,97411,``x``x
``xPODGORICA, Dec 29, 2000 -- (Reuters) Tiny Montenegro said on Thursday it wanted to divorce Serbia and become independent -- but then remarry immediately under a looser Yugoslav nuptial contract.<br><br>"Independence and the (new) alliance will be determined in a referendum of citizens of Montenegro and Serbia," a Montenegrin government statement said.<br><br>President Milo Djukanovic's government approved the blueprint for the future of the Yugoslav federation and said it would send it straight away to Serbian leaders in Belgrade.<br><br>A junior partner walked out of his three-party coalition in protest, saying Djukanovic was sparking a political crisis. But the defection will not harm his hold on power.<br><br>"The People's Party will leave the ruling coalition tonight. We are still in favor of...a democratic Montenegro in a European Yugoslavia," party deputy leader Predrag Popovic said.<br><br>Djukanovic, who has warmed to independence since taking power in 1997, suggests sovereignty for both republics under the umbrella of an alliance far looser than the current federation.<br><br>The proposal envisages one army -- but with the leader of each republic in complete charge of forces on his territory.<br><br>The new alliance would pool embassies and have one convertible currency, a single market and a customs area -- as do those European Union members who adopted the euro currency.<br><br>Djukanovic has said both republics should have a separate seat at the United Nations.<br><br>TOO LOOSE?<br><br>Critics say such loose ties are practically meaningless. Serbian opponents accuse Djukanovic of wanting his own state but with help from Serbia's nine million people to pay for it.<br><br>The two republics are very close and many Montenegrins also consider themselves to be Serbs.<br><br>Their republic of 600,000 people has little industry but a stunning coastline that could draw in tourists if peace lasts.<br><br>It has stayed with Serbia whilst Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia all seceded from the old Yugoslav federation.<br><br>Kosovo, a province that was controlled by Serbia until last year, is still officially part of Yugoslavia but its majority ethnic Albanians want full independence too.<br><br>Its status would be even less clear if Yugoslavia dies.<br><br>If that happens, new Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica -- who beat Slobodan Milosevic in September elections -- would lose his job and might set his sights on the Serbian presidency.<br><br>Djukanovic wants to discuss his proposal with the new Serbian government which premier-designate Zoran Djindjic is forming after reformists won Saturday's general election.<br><br>The Montenegrin leader once favored autonomy and blamed Milosevic's autocratic policies for alienating Montenegro, which has operated almost as a separate state for two years.<br><br>He opposed Milosevic over repressing Kosovo and has since made the German mark the main currency in use.<br><br>He is now pursuing independence although the strongman was forced out of office in street protests in October.<br><br>The most recent opinion survey by DAMAR pollsters found that 43 percent of Montenegrins favored independence, 16 percent a loose confederation, 23 percent the status quo and nine percent a total fusion with Serbia.<br><br>It is less clear what Serbs now think of keeping Yugoslavia.<br><br>NO GOVERNMENT CRISIS<br><br>The walkout of Montenegro's mainly pro-Serb People's Party, which has four ministers and just six seats in parliament, will not change the balance of power.<br><br>The pro-independence opposition Liberal Alliance said it would support a minority government of Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists and the smaller Social Democratic Party.<br><br>The main opposition, the Socialist People's Party (SNP), accused Djukanovic on Thursday of trying to sacrifice the Yugoslav federation because of his personal ambitions.<br><br>"He poses a threat to stability in Montenegro. Because of his interests, he is prepared to destabilize the entire region," deputy leader Predrag Bulatovic told Reuters.<br><br>The SNP, long-time Milosevic allies, are now part of the reformist-led Yugoslav government. <br><br>(C)2000 Copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters Limited.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMontenegro wants independence, looser Yugoslavia ``x978089610,32140,``x``x
``xBELGRADE, Jan 4, 2001 -- (Reuters) Serbia's Supreme Court has ordered a partial re-run of December's parliamentary election for next week, postponing the formation of a new government until at least the end of January, an official said on Wednesday.<br><br>Although the re-run at just 19 polling stations will make no difference to the landslide victory of reformers over Slobodan Milosevic's Socialists, it will delay parliament's first meeting and therefore the assembly's approval of a new cabinet.<br><br>The court upheld an appeal by the ultra-nationalist Radical Party against a decision not to re-run the poll in areas where irregularities were found, the representative of the DOS reform alliance on the central electoral commission told Reuters.<br><br>Nenad Milic said the re-run on January 10 "will delay the constitution of the new government by between 10 and 20 days". He added the exact length of the delay would depend on any further appeals lodged after the re-run.<br><br>Another leading DOS official accused the Radicals, former allies of toppled Yugoslav President Milosevic's Socialists, of trying to slow down Serbia's transition to democracy.<br><br>"We will respect the court decision although the Radicals just want to obstruct democratic changes in the country. The delay is damaging in many ways for society as a whole," Cedomir Jovanovic told Reuters.<br><br>RADICALS MAY WIN ONE MORE SEAT<br><br>Milic said the only other consequence of the re-run, apart from the delay, was that the Radicals might win one more seat.<br><br>"If 9,700 out of 14,000 eligible voters vote for the Radicals in the re-run at the 19 polling stations -- and for no one else -- they might get one additional seat," he said.<br><br>The election on December 23 gave DOS, the grouping supporting new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, a huge majority of 176 of the 250 seats in the parliament of Serbia, the dominant republic in the Yugoslav federation.<br><br>Milosevic's Socialists won 37 seats, the Radicals 23 and the nationalist Party of Serbian Unity, founded by slain warlord Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, 14 seats.<br><br>Serbia is currently governed by a shared cabinet consisting of ministers from DOS, the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement and the Socialists.<br><br>That government was set up as a compromise solution after Kostunica and DOS won September's presidential and federal polls and a mass uprising forced Milosevic to accept defeat.<br><br>The new parliament should have been formed by January 10 and Serbia's prime minister-designate Zoran Djindjic, the leader of the Democratic Party, a DOS member, said last month he expected his cabinet to be approved by mid-January.<br><br>Djindjic, who has not yet named his cabinet, has said its priorities are to crack down on corruption rampant under Milosevic and make Serbia the most developed part of the region.<br><br>(C)2001 Copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters Limited.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xPartial Re-Run of Serb Vote Will Delay Cabinet``x978604971,24136,``x``x
``xWednesday January 3 <br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Ethnic Albanian militants fired a mortar barrage at police in a volatile region of southern Serbia near the boundary with Kosovo, a key government official said Wednesday.<br><br>The attack occurred late Tuesday on police positions on Mount Sveti Ilija, which is just on the edge of the boundary area separating Kosovo from the rest of Serbia, the larger of Yugoslavia's two republics. The strategic mountain is about three miles from the southern town of Vranje.<br><br>No one was injured in the barrage, said Nebojsa Covic, Serbia's deputy prime minister.<br><br>The buffer zone was set up in June 1999 to prevent Yugoslav forces from threatening the NATO (news - web sites)-led peacekeeping mission in the province of Kosovo. But it has been the scene of assaults by militants seeking to join the ethnic Albanian-majority region to Kosovo.<br><br>The United Nations (news - web sites) and NATO took control of the province in June 1999 after the alliance's 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia. The attacks were launched to stop a crackdown by former President Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) against ethnic Albanians seeking independence.<br><br>The incident was one of a series of attacks on police positions since Yugoslav authorities and ethnic Albanian militants agreed to reopen a major road in the area. The deal was brokered last week by NATO peacekeepers.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbanians Fire On Yugoslav Police ``x978605055,86742,``x``x
``xWASHINGTON, Jan 4, 2001 -- (Reuters) Yugoslavia will mark the end of an era of conflict with NATO on Thursday by sending a minister to the United States for the first time since the alliance's 78-day bombing onslaught on the Balkan country in 1999.<br><br>Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic is due to meet Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, still a hate figure for some in Yugoslavia, as President Bill Clinton's administration prepares to hand over to President-elect George W. Bush on Jan. 20.<br><br>"The reason this visit matters a lot is...the fact that it signals the end of an era, and an opportunity to try to build the European architecture that Secretary Albright has worked hard at over the last few years," a senior State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.<br><br>Albright argued fiercely for the bombing, aimed at stopping what supporters called "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians by forces of then President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>Isolated by sweeping international sanctions, Milosevic was eventually toppled by a popular revolt last October which forced him to accept the results of a September election.<br><br>President Vojislav Kostunica has since catapulted his country back on to the international stage. But he avoided meeting Albright at a security conference in Austria, sensitive to domestic opponents ahead of a parliamentary election which swept Milosevic's leftist coalition from power in Serbia.<br><br>In a sign Belgrade wants to ensure a smooth transition in relations, Svilanovic will also meet lawmakers and officials in the new administration, though probably at a low level, diplomatic sources said.<br><br>He is not expected to meet Bush's nominee to succeed Albright, retired Gen. Colin Powell, who is yet to be confirmed in the post. Officials of the incoming administration could not be contacted to confirm who would meet Svilanovic.<br><br>Powell has said the United States, which has a contingent in NATO's KFOR force keeping the peace in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, should review its military commitments globally.<br><br>"He's not going to rush to discuss the American commitment there and he's not putting withdrawing on the table right away," the official said, adding, "They do see the U.S. role in Europe as an unquestioned pillar of their policy."<br><br>MILOSEVIC TRIAL, AT HOME OR ABROAD<br><br>Apart from tensions between ethnic Albanians and Serbs along Kosovo's border with the rest of Serbia, Albright and Svilanovic will discuss what Belgrade must do to stop Washington shutting the gates on $100 million in aid set aside in 2001 for Serbia, the dominant partner in the Yugoslav federation.<br><br>Lawmakers have set March 31 as a date after which Bush will rule whether Belgrade still qualifies for the aid, and for crucial, U.S. support for resumed international lending.<br><br>The gist of the law is that Belgrade must show it is consolidating democracy, following "good neighbor" policies and observing the rule of law -- including transferring alleged war criminals for trial by a U.N. court in The Hague.<br><br>They must also free hundreds of political prisoners who were seized by forces of Milosevic as they retreated from Kosovo before NATO started bombing.<br><br>Svilanovic, a human rights activist who heads a party in an umbrella alliance backing Kostunica, is bound to hear pleas for the speedy transfer of Milosevic in Washington.<br><br>But the State Department official said the United States would acquiesce to Belgrade prosecuting Milosevic domestically, provided it agreed an agenda with the tribunal at The Hague, whose chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte is growing increasingly impatient with the delay in his extradition.<br><br>"I think if they've got a domestic prosecution they should get it under way and then talk to the prosecutor," he said.<br><br>He said they would also discuss relations with Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic, whose President Milo Djukanovic wants to hold a referendum on independence in the next six months.<br><br>The United States would not support any unilateral move towards independence, including a rush to hold the plebiscite, and wants good faith discussions between the two, he added.<br><br>"If they truncate the discussions unnecessarily by rushing to a referendum then I think we would regard that as a unilateral step...Assistance is the first place we'd look," he said when asked what the consequences would be of such a move.<br>``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xAlbright, Yugoslav Minister to Mark End of an Era``x978605107,4913,``x``x
``xBUJANOVAC, Jan 5, 2001 -- (Reuters) A Yugoslav minister said on Thursday ethnic Albanians had violated an agreement reached last week to try to ease tensions along the border of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo.<br><br>Rasim Ljajic, minister for national and ethnic communities, said he had passed on the allegation to Shawn Sullivan, political adviser to the NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers now in charge of Kosovo and who had brokered the agreement last Friday.<br><br>The agreement had stated that "neither of the sides will use violence" and was aimed at easing tension in the Presevo Valley along the Kosovo boundary where four policemen died in a clash with armed ethnic Albanians in November.<br><br>Ljajic said ethnic Albanian gunmen had since established new positions in the village of Lucani.<br><br>After almost a week since the agreement, he said, Serb security forces were still unable to enter villages in the area.<br><br>Ljajic said a convoy of 50 vehicles carrying mainly Serbs returning from visiting their homes in Kosovo had arrived in Bujanovac on Thursday, escorted by European Union observers.<br><br>Ten armed Albanians had stopped the convoy at Konculj, on the border between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, and demanded the passengers' identity papers.<br><br>The 1999 accords which ended NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia and put Kosovo under international control also set up a five-km (three-mile) buffer zone where Yugoslavia may not station security forces except for local police with light arms.<br><br>Belgrade insists that the international community should undertake tougher measures to prevent further violence.<br><br>Beta news agency reported armed Albanians attacked police checkpoints in Medvedja municipality inside the buffer zone on Wednesday night.<br><br>"The Albanians attacked with light and heavy weapons, and the police responded and forced the terrorists to withdraw," Beta quoted Medvedja mayor Slobodan Draskovic as saying.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xYugoslav Minister Says Albanian Gunmen Violate Pact``x978689276,32348,``x``x
``xCall for ban on radioactive shells as EU investigates link with soldiers' cancer deaths<br><br>Special report: Kosovo <br><br>Peter Capella in Geneva and Owen Bowcott <br>Friday January 5, 2001 <br><br>Nato should dispose of large fragments of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition remaining in Kosovo 18 months after the conflict ended, because they represent an unnecessary risk to health, a UN study says. <br>Further details of the preliminary results of the UN Environment Programme investigation emerged yesterday as the EU began an inquiry into whether there is a link between radioactive military debris and the death from cancer of soldiers who served in the Balkans. <br><br>Meanwhile, the European commission president, Romano Prodi, called for DU-coated shells to be banned, after the French defence ministry said that four French soldiers who served in the Balkans during Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 were being treated for leukaemia in a military hospital. <br><br>"It is clear that if there is even a minimal risk, these arms must be abolished," he said. "And even if this risk was not there, I don't like the idea of using these particular weapons". <br><br>Britain remains one of the few countries to resist compulsory screening of troops returning from Kosovo for traces of contamination. The ministry of defence insisted that in its solid form was not a health hazard. "The UN's initial findings were that there were a lot of other things which were of far greater concern," a spokesman said. <br><br>Italy opened an inquiry last week into a possible link between DU and 30 cases of serious illness in troops who served in the area, 12 of whom developed cancer. Five have already died of leukaemia. <br><br>The Campaign Against Depleted Uranium in Manchester says that most of the areas where DU shells were dropped during the Kosovo war are in the south, in the Italian sector. <br><br>Spain said it would examine all the 32,000 soldiers who have served in the Balkans since 1992. Portugal, Finland, Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece also plan to screen their peacekeepers and check radiation levels to discover if there is such a condition as "Balkans syndrome". <br><br>The biologist leading the Royal Society's inquiry into the long-term effects of DU weapons, Professor Brian Spratt of Oxford University, called on the government to test British troops. <br><br>"The leukaemia cases are probably not related, but the health of soldiers who go out to fight for their country should be taken seriously," he said. <br><br>In its preliminary statement, the UN said it had found "slightly higher" radioactivity in Kosovo at eight of the 11 sites examined last November. Nato had given details of 112 sites where an estimated 31,000 rounds of armour-piercing DU ammunition were used during attacks on Serb targets. <br><br>A US army officer on the team, who helped develop DU ammunition, was apparently surprised to find that it had not vapourised or dispersed. <br><br>The UN statement said that its scientists had found "either slightly higher amounts of Beta-radiation, specifically at or around the holes left by DU ammunition, or remnants of ammunitions, such as sabots and penetrators". <br><br>The team collected seven DU outer casings and seven penetrators. <br><br>"It is an extra risk for the population, and that is something that military experts were surprised to find," Pekka Haavisto, the Finnish head of the mission, said yesterday. <br><br>There is also concern about mine clearance, because most DU was found in heavily mined areas or sites with unexploded ordinance - some of which is cleared by controlled explosions. The UN believes this can turn DU back into its most dangerous form - a dust that can be inhaled. <br><br>What is depleted uranium?<br>Tim Radford, science editor<br><br>Natural uranium is a mix of different isotopes, including a small proportion of very radioactive U-235. The proportion of U-235 is concentrated for atomic fuel rods, and what is left over is depleted U-238. This has a radioactive half life of 4.5bn years, that is, it would take roughly the lifetime of the solar system for half of a lump of U-238 to break down into something else. It remains, however, radioactive. <br><br>"In contact, you could get quite a sizeable dose [of radiation], but a few inches away, it's gone," Michael Clark of Britain's National Radiological Protection Board said. <br><br>The rays from depleted uranium, or DU, may not be particularly penetrating but the substance itself is one of the densest metals available. It is therefore desirable as a military shell casing. <br><br>Its density enhances military firepower. Tungsten splinters when it hits the hard steel of a tank; DU penetrates and catches fire, which makes it a perfect weapon for armour-piercing shells. These were first used in the Gulf war, when US forces fired almost 1m rounds into Kuwait and Iraq. Nato forces fired more than 30,000 rounds in Kosovo and 10,000 in Bosnia, inevitably leaving fragments and particles behind. <br><br>Leukaemia is linked to radiation exposure. The connection was observed among the survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki more than 50 years ago. <br><br>Because DU ignites on impact, it leaves behind clouds of potentially toxic uranium oxide dust. The fear is this dust could lodge in the lungs and be hazardous. <br><br>But scientists aren't so sure. <br><br>"The calculations show that you would have to inhale almost choking amounts to get appreciable lung dust," said Dr Clark. "You would see kidney problems due to its chemical action before you saw any radiation problems."``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Guardian:Nato urged to clean up its uranium debris in Kosovo ``x978689319,85619,``x``x
``xBy Philippa Fletcher<br><br>BELGRADE ,Friday January 5 (Reuters) - Some of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic allies have hung on to weapons handed out when he was in power, Yugoslavia's interior minister said on Friday.<br><br>Zoran Zivkovic, who took over the ministry in November after Milosevic lost a presidential election and was ousted in mass protests, said he had found documents showing 150 items were still registered with 39 ex-officials.<br><br>They included automatic and sniper rifles, gas pistols and 15,000 bullets. None of those concerned had the right to hold weapons any more, Zivkovic said, questioning whether such large private armories were needed in the first place.<br><br>``Regardless of whether it's a minister or head of customs or I don't know who, a pile of weapons presents a danger to all citizens around him, those who maybe aren't happy with his work or those he's not satisfied with,'' he told a news conference.<br><br>Former customs chief Mihail Kertes, former Yugoslav Prime Minister Radoje Kontic, former information minister Goran Matic and Margit Savovic, minister for the family, were among those with weapons still registered in their names, he said.<br><br>``Mr. Mihail Kertes has a Cobra revolver, a very serious weapon, a Zastava pistol...50 bullets, 10 Heckler and Koch pistols and, as it says here, four automatic Heckler and Kochs,'' he said, reading from a list supplied by his ministry.<br><br>Strange Equipment For A Minister<br><br>Referring to another official's private armory, he said:<br><br>``These are very interesting weapons, especially for a minister,'' he said. ``It's very strange that someone believes a minister needs such equipment to carry out his work.''<br><br>Zivkovic said those concerned had until Wednesday next week to hand back their arms, which were handed out by the interior ministry during the Milosevic era. If they did not return the weapons, they would face prosecution.<br><br>``This is just the beginning...I started with weaponry because it's the most dangerous thing,'' he said, adding that next he would go after those who had got hold of homes or vehicles illegally.<br><br>Three months after the bloodless ``revolution'' that ousted Milosevic, large parts of the security forces, including the army and secret police, are still led by the veteran leader's allies, although most now pledge loyalty to the new leadership.<br><br>Zivkovic said his ministry was in charge of guarding state officials, but that Milosevic himself was being guarded by Serbian Interior Ministry personnel who were not controlled by the now-ruling Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) bloc.<br><br>``They are in the republican Ministry of Interior. No-one from DOS controls them,'' he said.<br><br>He said Milosevic-era secret services boss Rade Markovic was still in his post and looked as if he would remain so until the formation of a new Serbian government, expected early next month.<br><br>The continued role of Markovic and army chief of staff Nebojisa Pavkovic is a source of tension between some DOS members and Yugoslavia's new president Vojislav Kostunica .<br><br>Kostunica retired 13 top army generals last weekend, but Pavkovic kept his job.<br><br>International pressure for Milosevic and four of his top aides to be handed over to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague has increased since Serbian parliamentary elections late last month reinforced the reformists in power.<br><br>But many of the new leaders argue that Milosevic, currently living in a presidential residence in a Belgrade suburb, should be tried in Serbia. ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xMilosevic Allies Hold Illegal Arms, Minister Says ``x978776775,36083,``x``x
``xMarlise Simons New York Times Service <br><br>PARIS A furor continued to spread across Europe on Friday about the noxious and even fatal effects that depleted uranium fallout may have had on NATO peacekeepers on the ground in Bosnia and Kosovo.<br>Environmentalists and scientists called on NATO to clean up the low level uranium, which was dispersed by U.S. weapons over large areas of Bosnia and Kosovo, because they say the radioactive and toxic material poses health risks to nature and human health.<br>"We found some radiation in the middle of villages where children were playing and there were cows grazing in contaminated areas," said Pekka Haavisto, chairman of a United Nations team that concluded a two-week mission to the area to assess the impact of uranium tipped weapons.<br>The scientists found low-level radiation at 8 of the 11 sites sampled, Mr. Haavisto said.<br>"We were surprised to find this a year and a half later," Mr. Haavisto said, noting how easily the material apparently spread around. "People had collected radioactive shards as souvenirs, and there were cows grazing in contaminated areas, which means the contaminated stuff can get into the milk."<br>Mr. Haavisto, who is also the former environment minister of Finland, said that while the radiation was low-level, as expected, the debris should be removed.<br>"We are recommending that until the cleanup starts, contaminated areas should be clearly marked and fenced off."<br>The study by the international team is due in two months.<br>But the European Union has now ordered a formal inquiry into whether there is a link between toxic fallout from the weapons and the recent cancer deaths of soldiers who have returned from the Balkans.<br>Nearly a dozen soldiers, most of them young men, have died recently of leukemia. A number of others have contracted the disease.<br>Other former peacekeepers have complained about a range of symptoms - such as chronic fatigue and hair loss - that in the United Stated have been associated with so-called Gulf War syndrome and which in European are now widely described as "Balkan syndrome."<br>Tens of thousands of European soldiers who participated in Balkan peacekeeping operations have already undergone medical screening in France, Belgium and Canada.<br>But as the debate over the possible contamination of soldiers has become more furious, governments across Europe have had little choice but to commit themselves to investigations.<br>This week, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Finland, Greece and Bulgaria announced that they too would screen all their Balkan veterans.<br>At issue is the uranium that is left over after its most active components have been removed, mostly to use as nuclear fuel. Because of its hard and dense properties, so-called depleted uranium is found useful in making powerful shells that can penetrate tanks and concrete.<br>Depleted-uranium ammunition was first used in the Gulf War, when U.S. forces fired large quantities into Iran and Kuwait. U.S. bombers also dropped depleted-uranium ordnance in Kosovo and Bosnia.<br><br>Final Test Results Awaited<br><br>The discovery of radioactivity at the sites was a preliminary finding of testing still under way at laboratories in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Britain and Austria by the UN Environmental Program, news agencies reported Friday, quoting a UN spokesman.<br>"The final results will only be known when the UNEP report is published in 2001, but there is enough preliminary evidence to call for precautions when dealing with used depleted uranium or with sites where such ammunition might be present," said the spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.<br>The UN field mission in November visited 11 of the 112 sites identified by NATO as having been targeted by ordnance containing depleted uranium during the bombardment of Kosovo. The UN team collected soil, water and vegetation samples and also conducted tests on buildings and destroyed vehicles.<br>"For this reason, we paid special attention to the risks that uranium toxicity might pose to the ground waters around the sites," Mr. Dujarric added.<br>Klaus Toepfer, the environmental program's executive director, said, "UNEP's aim is to determine whether the use of depleted uranium during the conflict may pose health or environmental risks - either now or in the future."<br>The UN said it also was planning a field mission to Serbia and Montenegro.<br>Italy launched an investigation last week into a possible link between depleted uranium munitions and about 30 cases of serious illness involving soldiers who served in missions Kosovo and earlier in Bosnia, 12 of whom developed cancer. Five of the soldiers have died of leukemia.<br>And France said that four French soldiers who served in the Balkans during the bombing campaign were being treated for leukemia.<br>The UN said five of the sites it analyzed were in the sector patrolled by Italian soldiers, while the other six were in the German zone.<br>News reports said Friday that the first German soldier possibly stricken because of time served in the Balkans had been identified.<br>The Bild newspaper, in an article to be published Saturday, said that a 25-year old soldier who had served in Mostar in Bosnia between August and November 1997 had fallen ill with leukemia the following January.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Herald Tribune:Furor Grows in Europe on Depleted Uranium ``x978776844,88732,``x``x
``xBy Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>6 January 2001 <br><br>Yugoslavia has made a significant promise to the West on co-operation with the United Nations war crimes tribunal, in a first step towards ensuring the prosecution of the former president Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Goran Svilanovic, the Foreign Minister, met the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, during a visit to Washington. "We will fulfil all our obligations towards the Hague tribunal," Mr Svilanovic said after Thursday's meeting. He is the first Yugoslav official to stress Yugoslavia's obligation to co-operate with the tribunal. <br><br>The promise could lead to the trial of Mr Milosevic, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes and crimes against humanity for atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. <br><br>But Mr Svilanovic fell short of promising to hand Mr Milosevic to the Hague tribunal. "There are possibilities to fully co-operate with the tribunal, and to prosecute all indicted personalities in co-operation with the tribunal, on the territory of Yugoslavia. This is the idea we have now, but I look forward to meeting [ICTY prosecutor Carla] Del Ponte in Belgrade where we can go into a more detailed discussion." <br><br>A spokeswoman for Ms Del Ponte said the prosecutor was "not opposed to the idea [of a trial in Yugoslavia], because she is aware of the impact on local public opinion". <br><br>Until now, the war crimes tribunal has insisted Mr Milosevic be brought to The Hague. But it now appears some sort of compromise may be possible. <br><br>Co-operation with the UN court is an obligation under the Dayton peace accord on Bosnia. Mr Milosevic, a signatory to the 1995 accord, was indicted in 1999, with four aides. <br><br>Belgrade's new authorities insist Mr Milosevic be tried at home because the constitution prevents Yugoslavia handing its citizens to foreign countries. However, this stand may be partly the result of a simple calculation among reformists ahead of the December elections in Serbia that cemented their victory over Mr Milosevic. <br><br>The view is now more common that handing Mr Milosevic and others to The Hague may not be a problem as the ICTY is not a foreign country but a UN international institution.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent:Milosevic closer to trial after Yugoslavia promises co-operation ``x978776886,87087,``x``x
``xBy Fisnik Abrashi <br><br>8 January 2001 <br><br>Nine men suspected of membership of a radical ethnic Albanian guerrilla group were detained by British peacekeepers when they tried to enter Kosovo from a tense region beyond its borders, the alliance said yesterday. <br><br>Major Tim Pierce, a Nato spokesman, said the soldiers gave chase on Saturday after observing the men entering Kosovo from a region in southern Serbia that is home to a predominantly ethnic Albanian population. A tenth man remained at large. The 10, armed and in uniform, dropped their weapons and fled after being challenged by a British patrol. A Nato statement said 22 rifles were confiscated. <br><br>Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen Kilpatrick, the commander of the British unit, said another four men – also suspects but unarmed and in civilian clothing – were detained separately. He did not offer details. <br><br>The nine uniformed suspects were being questioned at Camp Bondsteel, the main American base in eastern Kosovo. The arrests were made in the US sector. <br><br>The group was spotted after entering eastern Kosovo from the Presevo Valley area, the site of months-long tensions between ethnic Albanian radicals and lightly armed Serb police. The radicals call themselves the "Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac," or UCPMB, named after three predominantly ethnic Albanian towns that the insurgents want united with Kosovo as part of ethnic Albanian hopes of independence for the province. <br><br>Although controlled by the UN and Nato under terms of the 1999 peace agreement that ended the alliance's bombing of Yugoslavia, Kosovo formally remains part of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic. <br><br>UCPMB fighters operate in the five kilometre (three-mile) wide buffer, the Ground Safety Zone, between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia. The zone was established in June 1999 to protect Nato-led peace-keepers who entered the province after Yugoslav troops and police were forced to leave. <br><br>Yugoslav forces are not allowed to enter the zone, except for lightly armed police. Kosovo peace-keepers cannot enter the zone either because it is on the Yugoslav-controlled part of the boundary. That has enabled the UCPMB to operate in the zone with virtual impunity. <br><br>Commander Lleshi, the leader of the rebels, has demanded a multi-national peace-keeping force to keep apart Serb troops and Albanians. <br><br>The government in Belgrade considers the area strategic because it controls the land routes south to Macedonia and Greece. <br><br>The ethnic Albanian insurgents killed four Serb police officers in November and overran an extensive trench network constructed by the Serb police in the zone. <br><br>Four Serbs were abducted last month but were released after intercession by Nato-led peace-keepers. Six more Serbs were taken hostage more recently but released after Nato intervention. <br><br>There have been concerns in the West that the clashes in southern Serbia could explode into violence similar to the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, which began when the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic cracked down on ethnic Albanians seeking independence. <br><br>That drive triggered the 78-day Nato bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the deployment of the alliance's peace-keepers in Kosovo. (AP) ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Independent:British peace-keepers catch nine ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo ``x979036767,87364,``x``x
``xEU and NATO officials meet Tuesday, as concern mounts over use of DU bullets. <br><br>By Scott Peterson <br>Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor <br><br>MOSCOW ,TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 2001 <br><br>All military commanders know "collateral damage" to unintended targets, like civilians, is an unavoidable part of modern warfare. <br><br>But now the Pentagon's most potent armor-piercing weapon is itself taking a major hit. It's being accused of contributing to deaths of allied troops deployed in the Balkans, causing a major upheaval within the NATO alliance, and raising questions anew about whether it should be banned outright. <br><br>A string of suspicious deaths and illnesses among European troops that served in Bosnia and Kosovo has been attributed by some to the US use of radioactive "depleted uranium" bullets, or DU. <br><br>For years, US and allied officials denied that DU battlefield exposures could result in severe health problems. But across most of Europe in recent weeks, reported cases of cancer have emerged, causing the number of official inquiries to spiral. On Saturday, an Italian military watchdog group - set up to monitor health and safety in the armed forces - drew a link between the deaths from cancer of six peacekeepers who served in the Balkans, to DU. <br><br>In one instance shortly after the conflict in the town of Djakovica, the Monitor observed Italian troops manning a checkpoint set 100 yards downwind of a bombed Serbian position that was contaminated by radioactive DU dust. Despite strict military rules in the West regarding the handling of DU - which normally require US forces to use respirators, protective suits, and have 14 licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - Kosovo residents have never been warned by NATO of any DU danger. <br><br>A toxic heavy metal, DU doesn't disappear: It loses half its radioactivity every 4.5 billion years. <br><br>"The question is: Now that the genie is out of the bottle, how do you get it back in? The answer is: you can't," says Malcolm Hooper, a medicinal chemist at the University of Sunderland in northeast England and a member of the British Legion's Gulf War Illnesses Inter-Parliamentary group. <br><br>"It will intensify the call for a ban, because these are indiscriminate weapons," he adds. "Of course, the consequence is that the military will lose a very powerful weapon." <br><br>The Pentagon and Britain's defense ministry - which both rely on DU as the most effective armor-piercing bullet in their arsenals - rule out a link between DU and any health problems, and say they see no evidence of what's been labeled "Balkan Syndrome." <br><br>When the issue is taken up Tuesday in separate meetings of the European Union and NATO security committees, European officials may call for further investigations into DU health effects - and whether it should be banned. NATO Secretary-General George Robertson will afterward visit Sweden, which presently holds the rotating EU presidency. <br><br>"It is clear that if there is even a minimal risk, these arms must be abolished," European Commission President Romano Prodi said last week. "It is important that we act," added Swedish Defense Minister Bjorn von Sydow, echoing a growing body of opinion in Europe. <br><br>The concern sweeping the continent was sparked in December, when Italy announced that 30 of its Balkans veterans had been diagnosed with serious illnesses. It has been further fanned by preliminary findings of a UN investigation, released Friday, showing that eight of 11 inspected DU impact sites in Kosovo - out of 112 identified by NATO - showed traces of radiation. DU bullet fragments were found lying exposed on the ground. Full study results are due in early March. <br><br>A host of NATO and EU members are rushing to test deployed troops and Balkan veterans. Britain and Germany have so far refused, stating that they see no need. Besides Italy, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal in the past week have reported similar illnesses or deaths. <br><br>US forces have experienced no Balkans-related cases or health-problem patterns, officials say. <br><br>The debate over DU and its adverse effects stretches back to the 1991 Gulf War, when American forces used it in combat for the first time. One in 7 American Gulf War veterans claim a variety of ailments known as "Gulf War Syndrome," many of which are similar to recently reported European health problems. <br><br>The Pentagon says it will cooperate fully with all requests for DU data, though UN and NATO investigators in the past said they came up against a "brick wall" from Washington on the issue. <br><br>"We have not found any link between illnesses and exposure to DU," Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said last week, adding that it's "premature" to link DU and leukemia. <br><br>Despite alarmist headlines in the Balkans - "NATO was worse than Chernobyl," read Serbia's popular Vecernje Novosti newspaper - Kosovo's ethnic Albanians point to another concern. Moderate leader Ibrahim Rugova has warned that the bigger risk might be an exodus of NATO peacekeepers who police Kosovo. <br><br>Bernard Kouchner, Kosovo's chief UN administrator, has asked the World Health Organization to help assess DU risks in the province. The view among civilians is a "mixture of wishful thinking" that DU is not a threat, and a "feeling of being helpless to change anything, even if it is true," says Ardian Arifaj, news editor of the largest Kosovo daily newspaper, Koha Ditore, in the provincial capital Pristina. <br><br>Though there is little systematic data, "no pattern" of health problems has emerged, and so far there is "no panic," he says. "We will have to stay and face any consequences. But on the other hand, no one is ready to blame NATO for hitting the Serbs." <br><br>DU is a by-product of the nuclear industry that is an effective bullet because of its high-density, not its low-level radioactivity. A DU bullet bores through armor, burning at such intensity that gas fumes and ammunition in the targeted tank ignite. As the bullet burns, it releases clouds of tiny radioactive particles that can be eaten, inhaled, or carried long distances by the wind. Such dust emits alpha radiation 20 times more powerful than other forms of radiation and especially damaging to body tissue. "It's not rocket science," says Professor Hooper. "It's a question of internal radiation, and when alpha particles are internalized, you have a big problem." <br><br>"It was extremely irresponsible not to issue some type of warning, if [the Pentagon] knew where they shot the DU 1-1/2 years ago," says Dan Fahey, a DU expert and US veteran activist. "Hopefully they will learn a lesson from this, that if you're going to use DU in combat, you have to take basic safety measures. You have to keep people away from these areas, and mark them." <br><br>He points to a 1990 US military report that predicted public awareness of any DU use would make the weapon "politically unacceptable" and result in pressure to ban it. <br><br>"We've put a lot of evidence to [authorities] in the past, and now people are beginning to ... listen," says Terry Gooding, with the UK Gulf Veterans Association. "They say it's not a problem," he adds. "But how many people have to die before they put their hands up and say: 'We made a boo-boo?' " ``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Christian Science Monitor:Aftershocks from anti-tank shells ``x979036821,40282,``x``x
``xBY ROGER BOYES, RICHARD OWEN AND MICHAEL EVANS ,TUESDAY JANUARY 09 2001<br> <br>THE Berlin Government ignored warnings of potential health risks associated with American depleted uranium shells during the Balkans offensive. <br>Rudolf Scharping, the Defence Minister, was urged in a letter from Admiral Elmar Schmähling to prevent German troops coming into contact with the shells or vehicles hit by them. The letter was sent on June 14, 1999, after the 78-day Nato air campaign in Kosovo and Serbia. No protective measures were taken as a result. <br><br>Internal German Defence Ministry correspondence shows that the issue did not disappear. Peter Wichert, a junior Defence Minister, passed on Nato guidance that there was “a possible toxic danger” in the war zone. But the same memo concluded: “Nato currently has no plans for decontamination.” <br><br>In Italy, there are indications that fears of a link between leukaemia affecting troops who served in Bosnia and Kosovo and the use of depleted uranium shells in both operations is having a serious impact on recruiting. General Franco Angioni, a retired commander, said that the scare over depleted uranium was giving potential recruits “pause for thought”. <br><br>Italy is in the process of changing from a conscripted army to a professional force. “We should have 50,000 professional recruits being processed at this stage, but in fact we only have 20,000,” he told Il Messaggero. <br><br>Eight Italian soldiers have died from leukaemia or cancerous tumours after serving in the Balkans. A German Red Cross nurse has also died. <br><br>In Greece, Akis Tsochatzopoulos, the Defence Minister, said he would not rule out withdrawing the 1,600 Greek soldiers from Kosovo if a link was found between leukaemia and the use of depleted uranium weapons, although he pledged his Government would not act unilaterally. <br><br>Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, called on Nato yesterday to release all available information on the use of depleted uranium. He made clear that he opposed using such weapons. <br><br>The World Health Organisation said yesterday that it doubted that depleted uranium shells used by the Americans in the Balkans over the past decade had caused blood cancer among Nato troops. <br><br>“Based on our studies it is unlikely that soldiers in Kosovo ran a high risk of contracting leukaemia from exposure to radiation from depleted uranium,” Michael Repacholi, an expert from the organisation, said. However, he said that children playing in former conflict areas where the weapons had exploded could be at risk. <br><br>A Serbian health official said yesterday that tests carried out on 500 civilians in southern Serbia, where American depleted uranium shells had exploded, had uncovered no linked illnesses. <br><br>In Britain, the Ministry of Defence said that the Army and the Royal Navy held stocks of depleted uranium weapons. The Army had a stock of depleted uranium shells for use by Challenger tanks, and the Navy’s Type 42 destroyers and one aircraft carrier were equipped with the Phalanx Gatling gun, which fired depleted uranium shells. <br><br>The Royal Society is studying the possible health risks posed by depleted uranium weapons. In a statement yesterday, Professor Brian Heap, vice-president of the society, said the study had not been commissioned by the Ministry of Defence. He added: “We wish to emphasise that the study was initiated independently. It will be carrying out its estimates of exposure, doses and health effects during and after the use of depleted uranium munitions.” <br><br>Professor Brian Spratt, who is carrying out the study, said that it was right to take the issue seriously. He told Channel 4: “We do have to be careful because depleted uranium is mildy radioactive and it’s chemically poisonous.” <br><br>Igor Ivanov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said an independent inquiry into Nato’s use of depleted uranium shells should be conducted by the UN, WHO and International Atomic Energy Agency.``xmnnews``xjasa@mnnews.net``xThe Times:Germany ignored uranium warning ``x979036869,73232,``x``x
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