Perhaps the worst decision of the Clinton Administration's self-righteous and self-serving foreign policy was the 1999 intervention in the Yugoslavian Civil War.  Acting in complete ignorance of Balkan history and the sinister motivations of the Albanian drug dealers of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)... the United States, NATO and United Nations has accomplished the following:

Recent events appear in articles below:

17 February 2008 (c) DOJgov.net newswire

Kosovo on Sunday, illegally declared its independence from Serbia in a move that provoked violent reactions from its ethnic Serb minority (its only indigenous population) and demonstrators in Serbia, fueling a growing dispute between the "progressive" west and Russia.

The move by the troubled new country’s parliamentary assembly was met with joy by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian squatter majority, which has sought independence since the territory came under United Nations administration in 1999.

Thus, the final betrayal of the Serbs - the West's only friends in the Balkans during World War II - is complete.  in 1999, America participated in a war against Serbians resulting in the slaughter of 5-10,000 pro American people. 

Kosovo will now be freely run by Jihadists who control the drug and prostitution rings of Europe.

The Clinton Administration proved that "liberals" don't mind war, just as long as it only killed European non-Moslems and George Bush seems to be of the same mindset when it comes to the Balkans.

Recognition of an independent Kosovo by the United States establishes a dangerous precedent.  It implies that if a state such as New Mexico, Arizona, California or Texas gains a majority population of Mexican illegals they can make a valid, internationally recognized declaration of independence from America.  It would certainly be consistent with our decision to recognize Kosovo as a nation independent from Serbia.

But the Serbs are a brave and honorable people with long memories.  They will eventually re-occupy the heart of Serbia, expel the Islamo-Nazi squatters and reclaim the heart of their native land.  Just as before World War I, the seeds of a global war may again have been sewn in that area.

Kosovo's Albanian Ex-Prime Minister Charged With 37 War Crimes Against Serbs

March 10, 2005

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - A U.N. war crimes court charged Kosovo's former prime minister Thursday with 37 counts of war crimes for alleged atrocities committed against Serbs and Gypsies by ethnic Albanian separatists during the province's 1998-1999 war.

Ramush Haradinaj, a former commander of the Western-backed Kosovo Liberation Army during its fight against Serb forces, surrendered to the court Wednesday, a day after resigning as prime minister of the semiautonomous Serbian province, which is overseen by the United Nations.

Haradinaj is the highest-ranking Kosovo Albanian to go on trial at the 10-year-old tribunal.

In the indictment unsealed by U.N. judges, Haradinaj faces 17 counts of crimes against humanity for alleged murder, rape, persecution, inhumane acts, unlawful detention, deportation or forcible transfer of civilians. He also faces 20 counts of violations of the laws or customs of war for cruel treatment, murder and rape.

As the commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, ``Haradinaj personally ordered, controlled and participated in beatings'' of civilians, according to the indictment.

Haradinaj, 36, could face life imprisonment if convicted of any charge stemming from the war. He is expected to appear in court in the coming days, when he will be asked to plea to the charges.

From April 1998 until September 1998, Haradinaj was the most senior commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army in the so-called Dukagjin zone of western Kosovo.

The 25-page indictment lists acts of violence allegedly carried out by Haradinaj and his three brothers against their neighbors in the village of Glodjane.

``A number of local KLA soldiers under his direct command attacked the elderly neighbor Binak Jollaj, the grandfather of the family, beat him with their rifles, and took property from him,'' it said. They ``broke the windows of the house and ordered the family to go.''

Haradinaj faces murder charges in the disappearance of other villagers.

Two other suspects named in the indictment, Lahi Brahimaj and Idriz Balaj, also surrendered to U.N. authorities Wednesday and face similar charges. Balaj had been serving a 15-year prison sentence in Kosovo for murder until his transfer.

Brahimaj was a former rebel and member of the Kosovo Protection Corps, a civilian emergency group made up of ethnic Albanian rebels. Balaj, serving under Haradinaj, ran a special unit known as the ``Black Eagles,'' which ``repeatedly abducted, beat, mutilated, tortured and murdered civilians and detained persons taking no active part in hostilities,'' the indictment said.

It charged that Balaj raped a Gypsy woman and tortured a prisoner at a detention center, and attempted to cover up civilian murders by having victims' bodies thrown into the Radonjic Lake.

In the second half of May 1998, ``a makeshift detention center was established at the KLA headquarters in Jablanica where at least 16 noncombatants were detained, beaten and tortured. One is known to have died while the others are still missing,'' it said.   

Kosovo's Prime Minister Resigns and Surrenders for War Crimes Against Serbs

March 9, 2005

dojgov.net newswire - Kosovo's Prime Minister surrendered to the U.N. war crimes tribunal Wednesday, a day after the ethnic Albanian resigned to face charges stemming from its Albanian majority wanting independence from Belgrade.

Ramush Haradinaj arrived at the U.N. detention unit under police escort following a special flight from Pristina. He is to face charges of atrocities committed during the 1998-99 war between ethnic Albanian KLA terrorists and Serb forces.

Tribunal spokesman Jim Landale confirmed Haradinaj, 36, was in U.N. custody, but declined to give details of his arrival.

Neither Haradinaj, a former commander of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, nor court officials gave any details of the specific charges against him.

Serbian officials accuse him of command responsibility in the alleged killing of Serb civilians by the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army forces in 1998 close to his home village of Glodjanje. They also spoke of the rape of several Roma women and the killing of some Roma men - all part of a wedding party - by his forces shortly after the war near the town of Djakovica.

Lahi Brahimaj, another suspect named in the indictment, traveled to the court with Haradinaj. Brahimaj was a member of the Kosovo Protection Corps, a civilian emergency group made up of ethnic Albanian terrorists. A third terrorist, Idriz Balaj, was also indicted by the court and surrendered later Wednesday, Landale said.

International officials praised Haradinaj - a seasoned battlefield commander with a fiery temper and a loyal following - for his decision to cooperate with the court and called on other countries in the region to follow his example.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed Haradinaj's ``good example of cooperation'' with the tribunal, U.N. associate spokeswoman Marie Okabe said in New York. Annan also praised the ``peaceful, democratic manner'' in which Kosovo responded to his departure, she said.

The secretary-general urged Kosovo to build on alleged but undisclosed achievements of Haradinaj's government and continue to make progress on U.N. standards that must be met before talks on resolving Kosovo's status can begin, Okabe said.

``It is essential that we all remain focused on the work at hand so that we can move forward in building a stable, multiethnic and democratic Kosovo,'' she said.

Many Serbs feel that the United Nations has always been pro Kosovo Liberation Army, in spite of their being responsible for running much of the prostitution and drug trade of Europe.

Some have wondered that with recent revelations of the oil for food scandal in Iraq and the selling of sex for food by UN troops in sub Sahara Africa, whether UN personnel were receiving kick backs in prostitution and drug money by the Albanian KLA mobsters.  This might be one reason why the UN sounded so conciliatory to Albanian murderers and rapists.

Kosovo still seethes with ethnic tensions nearly six years after the end of the war between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, as Albanians continue to burn Serb churches, murder Serb civilians and ethnically cleanse Serbs from the heart of their native homeland..

While the ethnic Albanian majority considers Haradinaj a hero in the struggle for independence from Serb rule, most of the Serb minority hate him and other former KLA leaders.  Albanians became a majority in the Kosovo region of Serbia through actions of the Ottoman Turks, the anti-Serb Nazi occupation, Marshal Tito's desire to denude Serb influence in Yugoslavia and illegal immigration from Albania.

Kosovo officially remains a province of Serbia-Montenegro. Its majority ethnic Albanian population wants independence as a precursor to a "Greater Albania" movement.

NATO, U.N. Accused of Failing in Kosovo

July 26, 2004

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) - A leading human rights organization blamed NATO and U.N. police Monday for failing ``catastrophically'' to protect minorities in Kosovo during ethnic violence earlier this year.

Among other charges, the New York-based Human Rights Watch accused NATO-led peacekeepers of locking their gates and standing by as ethnic Albanians burned Serb houses just outside their bases during the mid-March riots that left 19 people dead and 900 injured.

``The NATO-led Kosovo Force and U.N. international police failed catastrophically to protect minorities during the widespread rioting,'' the group said in a 66-page report entitled ``'Failure to Protect: Anti-Minority Violence in Kosovo, March 2004.''

The report also accused the international community in Kosovo of being in ``absolute denial about its own failures.''

``While international actors have been universally and accurately critical of Kosovo Albanian leadership during and after the crisis, the dismal performance of the international community has escaped similar critical scrutiny,'' the report said.

A NATO spokesman in Kosovo said the report does not do justice to peacekeepers' attempts to normalize the situation.

``These reports coming from (an) armchair position do not pay any respect to the efforts of the soldiers,'' said Col. Horst Pieper of the NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo. He said the peacekeepers ``quickly stabilized the situation within hours during the riots and prevented ... civil war.''

``The soldiers ... did their utmost to de-escalate the situation and to save many lives,'' he said.

NATO-led peacekeepers said after the riots that they chose to save people's lives instead of buildings. Over 1,200 of those fleeing the rampage found temporary refuge inside their military bases.

Mobs of ethnic Albanians targeted Serbs and other minorities in a two-day rampage in mid-March, triggered by the deaths of two children allegedly chased into a river by Serbs. Beyond the dead and injured, 4,000 people - most of them Serbs - were displaced, and at least 600 homes and Orthodox Christian churches were burned.

The March violence was the worst since the end of the 1998-99 war, which led to U.N. protectorate status for Kosovo after a NATO air war stopped Serbia's crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians. Some 18,000 NATO-led peacekeepers are in the province working alongside some 10,000 U.N. and local police officers.

The events raised questions about peacekeepers' ability to prevent or quell violence, and represented a dramatic setback for international officials intent on reconciling the bitterly divided ethnic Albanian and Serb communities.

``This was the biggest security test for NATO and the United Nations in Kosovo since 1999, when minorities were forced from their homes as the international community looked on,'' said Rachel Denber, acting executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia Division, in a statement.

``But they failed the test,'' she said. ``In too many cases, NATO peacekeepers locked the gates to their bases, and watched as Serb homes burned.''

According to the report, in at least four instances the peacekeepers were confined in their bases, without crowd-control equipment, as crowds of ethnic Albanians walked past them and set houses, churches and monasteries ablaze.

In the northern village of Svinjare, French NATO soldiers stayed inside their base as 137 Serb homes were burned and neighboring ethnic Albanian homes left untouched, said the report.

In another instance, German soldiers in the southern town of Prizren ``failed to deploy to protect the Serb population and its historic Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries,'' despite calls for assistance from their German compatriots at the U.N. police in the same town, the organization charged.

The village of Belo Polje in western Kosovo, adjacent to the main Italian military base, was burned to the ground, the report said.

22 People Killed in Kosovo Rioting

By GARENTINA KRAJA
Mar 18 2004 The Associated Press

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) - NATO sent reinforcements to Kosovo on Thursday after 22 people were killed and hundreds injured in fighting between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in the worst violence since the province's 1999 war.

Arsonists torched several Serb houses in Obilic, an ethnically mixed town west of the provincial capital of Pristina, on Thursday, forcing U.N. police and NATO troops to evacuate dozens of Serbs.

All the deaths came in gunbattles, riots and streetbattles on Wednesday. Evidence of the violence the day before was still visible a day later - smoke billowed from Serb houses set ablaze in the mixed town of Kosovo Polje and burned out cars littered the streets of the capital.

The clashes started Wednesday in the ethnically divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica after ethnic Albanians blamed Serbs for the drowning of two of their children and began rampaging in revenge.

Melees broke out elsewhere in the U.N.-run province, including several enclaves where Serbs have eked out a sheltered existence since the end of the war. NATO-led peacekeepers and Romanian police units moved in, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades to stop ethnic Albanians from surging across the bridge toward the Serb side of the city, where another crowd had gathered.

The breakdown in order illustrated the failure of U.N. and NATO efforts to snuff out ethnic hatreds and set the province on the path of reconciliation.

Bracing for more trouble, NATO mobilized extra units Thursday, sending about 350 troops to the province, mostly from Bosnia and Italy to beef up the 18,500 NATO-led peacekeepers now in Kosovo.

The new tally of casualties Thursday was given by Angela Joseph, a spokeswoman for the U.N. police. Sixty-one police officers, including 40 members of the U.N. special police unit, were injured during the clashes, she said.

Separately, Lt. Col. Jim Moran, spokesman for the NATO-led peacekeepers, said that 17 peacekeepers were injured.

Some hundred Serbs were evacuated from their buildings in the center of Pristina and other communities by police and NATO-led peacekeepers, officials said.

``We took them ... under a police umbrella,'' said Malcolm Ashby, another U.N. police spokesman, without disclosing their new location. Some of the apartments evacuated by the Serbs and the cars they left behind were torched by arsonists.

The overnight rioting appeared to have stopped in the early hours Thursday. NATO-led peacekeepers were blocking a key road with Macedonia leading through a Serb enclave of Caglavica, which had been the scene of street fighting.

Commercial flights to Kosovo's only civilian airport were suspended on NATO orders, airport officials and a spokesman for the peacekeepers said.

Senior international officials appealed for calm.

``I urge all ethnic communities in Kosovska Mitrovica and in the rest of Kosovo to avoid further escalation, to act with calm and to refrain from demonstrations and roadblocks,'' NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said.

The unrest spilled beyond Kosovo's borders.

In Belgrade, the capital of Serbia-Montenegro, demonstrators set the city's 17th century mosque on fire after clashing with police trying to guard the building - one of the oldest in the city. Demonstrators demanded that the government act to protect their Orthodox Christian kin in Kosovo from attacks by the province's predominantly Muslim ethnic Albanians.

Trouble began amid reports that Serbs in a village near this ethnically divided city set a dog on a group of ethnic Albanian boys, sending three - the oldest 12 - fleeing into an icy river.

After authorities recovered two bodies - and searched for a third - ethnic Albanians and Serbs gathered near a key bridge over the Ibar River that divides Kosovska Mitrovica, long the flashpoint of tensions in this U.N.-run province. The two sides traded insults, threw rocks and charged at each other before gunfire rang out.

Serbs see Kosovo as their ancient homeland. Ethnic Albanians want independence from Serbia-Montenegro. Hatreds between the two sides continue to boil over into violence.

The province itself is U.N.-administered but remains part of Serbia-Montenegro, the successor state to Yugoslavia, with its final status to be decided by the United Nations. But the lack of movement on the status question has left postwar tensions boiling.

The Kosovo war ended in mid-1999 after a NATO air campaign drove Serb-dominated troops loyal to former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic out of the province and stopped a crackdown on the independence-minded Kosovo Albanian majority.

Al-Qaida Plot Revealed in Sarajevo

By ALEXANDAR S. DRAGICEVIC
The Associated Press Mar 23 2002


SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) - Al-Qaida terrorists planned a devastating attack on Americans in Sarajevo after meeting in Bulgaria to identify European targets, a high-ranking Bosnian official said Saturday.

The official, who insisted on anonymity, told The Associated Press that intelligence reports on the meeting in Sofia prompted a special government session Thursday night in which threats against the U.S. Embassy and other European embassies were discussed. The countries of the other embassies were not disclosed.

At the Sofia meeting, members of al-Qaida decided that, ``in Sarajevo something will happen to Americans similar to New York last September,'' said the official. ``The report did not specify when the al-Qaida meeting was held or who attended.

The U.S. Embassy in Bosnia on Wednesday shut down to the public after receiving word of a possible terrorist threat. The embassy closed entirely on Friday.

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Karen Williams declined to comment on the situation Saturday. Bosnian special police forces were seen around the compound, along with normal U.S. security units.

In Sofia, Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry said it had received no information on such a meeting, either ``from Bosnian authorities or from any other official sources.'' It promised an investigation if ``this information proves to be serious.''

On Tuesday, just a day before the U.S. Embassy received the threats, Bosnian police raided an Islamic charity, Bosnian Ideal Future, also known as Benevolentia International Foundation, seizing weapons, plans for making bombs, booby-traps and bogus passports.

On Friday, police announced they had arrested Munib Zahiragic, a Bosnian citizen and the head of the Bosnian chapter of the charity. Zahiragic is also a former member of the Bosnian Muslim secret police, AID.

Zahiragic was arrested on charges of espionage, which carries a maximum 10 years in prison. No details on whom he was supposed to be spying for were released.

As a part of the war on terrorism, Bosnia's government in January ordered an investigation into the work of foreign humanitarian agencies. Two weeks ago, investigators reported funds were missing from three Islamic charities, among them Benevolentia.

The United States recently froze the assets of Benevolentia, with head offices in Illinois and New Jersey.

The U.S. and British embassies were closed for several days in October due to terrorist threats. They reopened after local police arrested six naturalized Bosnians, all of them Algerian natives, suspected of plotting post-Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. interests in Bosnia and elsewhere.

The suspects were handed over to U.S. authorities in January, and now are being held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Five of the six were employed as humanitarian aid workers; one was suspected of being Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant for Europe.

More than 1 million Muslims live in Bosnia, most of them native to the country but also including dozens of former Islamic fighters, or mujahedeen, who came mostly from the Middle East to fight on the Muslim side in the 1992-1995 war against the country's Serbs and Croats.

U.N. Kosovo police intercept Albanian arms convoy

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Jan 30, 2002 (Reuters) - United Nations police said on Wednesday they had arrested three ethnic Albanians leading mules laden with guns, explosives and ammunition to Kosovo from Albania.

The five mules were carrying 20 kg (44 lb) of explosives, 30 grenades, 20 Kalashnikovs and other rifles, two heavy machineguns and about 15,000 rounds of ammunition, U.N. Kosovo administration press officer Andrea Angeli said.

There was no immediate information on the intended recipients, possibly ethnic Albanian militants in Kosovo, neighbouring Macedonia or southern Serbia.

U.N. police and Italian peacekeepers made the arrests around 11 p.m. (2200 GMT) on Tuesday near the southwestern village of Ponosevac shortly after the convoy entered Kosovo, Angeli said.

One of those arrested is an Albanian citizen. The two others are ethnic Albanians of unknown nationality.

Kosovo has been under U.N. administration since June 1999, when NATO bombing ended Serb repression of the province's ethnic Albanian majority. But it has continued to be plagued by violence, including attacks on ethnic minorities.

Leaders in Macedonia and Serbia proper have complained that ethnic Albanian insurgents in their countries receive arms from Kosovo, despite efforts by peacekeepers and the United Nations to stop smuggling over its rugged mountain borders.

Serbia's southern Presevo Valley has been volatile since a 16-month ethnic Albanian insurgency ended in May, and diplomats have been concerned that violence may flare again this spring.

And a tense peace has returned to Macedonia since an eight-month ethnic Albanian uprising near its border with Kosovo ended in August.

But police have still not re-entered large swathes of territory, fearing attacks by rebel groups, even though they have been officially disbanded.

Kosovo Peacekeepers Increase Security

The Associated Press Jan 7, 2002


PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - NATO-led peacekeepers have stepped up security in Kosovo after a booby-trapped grenade killed a Serb in the eastern part of the province, an alliance official said Monday.

Additional forces have been deployed and patrols increased in the ethnically mixed town of Kosovska Kamenica, about 35 miles east of the province's capital, Pristina, said Squadron Leader Daz Slaven, spokesman for the NATO-led peace force in Kosovo. A limited overnight curfew also was expanded, Slaven said.

Sunday's explosion was the latest in a series of violent incidents in Kosovska Kamenica, although it was the first to claim a life.

In a statement, NATO's top commander in Kosovo, Lt. Gen. Marcel Valentin, condemned ``this and any acts of interethnic violence.''

Dozens of Serbs have been killed and tens of thousands have fled the province fearing attacks leveled in revenge by ethnic Albanians after the United Nations and NATO took control of Kosovo in 1999.

NATO Soldiers Stream Into Macedonia

By ELENA BECATOROS
The Associated Press Aug 19 2001


SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - NATO soldiers streamed into Macedonia on Sunday ahead of a key visit by a senior alliance general who will help determine whether the country is stable enough to start an effort to collect rebel weapons. 

Dozens of troops poured into the capital, Skopje, on Saturday - the first part of a British-led mission known as Operation Essential Harvest. 

So far, 226 soldiers from Britain, Canada, Greece and the Czech Republic had arrived in the capital, Skopje, NATO spokesman Barry Johnson said. By the end of the day, 400 soldiers in all are expected to arrive. 

The troops are the vanguard of a force that will evaluate whether a tenuous cease-fire is viable. If the advance team determines both sides are adhering to a cease-fire, NATO's ruling council could agree to deploy the full 3,500-strong force. 

Sporadic incidents occurred near the country's second-largest city, Tetovo, but there were no casualties, Macedonia state radio reported. 

The alliance's supreme allied commander in Europe, U.S. Gen. Joseph Ralston, travels to Macedonia on Monday to take part in the security assessment - a move seen as critical to determining whether the mission should proceed. 

Senior leaders on the ground, meanwhile, drew plans for the early phase of the mission. 

``From Monday, we will be deploying liaison teams to all the relevant parties,'' said British Brig. Barney White-Spunner, who will command the multinational brigade. 

He said he would advise that the mission move ahead, ``When, and only when, the conditions on the ground are acceptable.'' 

White-Spunner said he would speak to the Macedonian government and the leadership of the rebels, known as the National Liberation Army. 

NATO's mission is a key aspect of the peace accord signed by both ethnic Albanian and Macedonian political leaders. A key condition of the deployment is a lasting cease-fire. 

``If either side fails to cooperate, then there is no role for this task force here in Macedonia,'' White-Spunner said. ``To this end, the cease-fire must be genuine before the force will deploy.'' 

There have been other troubles: Macedonian authorities shut the main border crossing between Kosovo and Macedonia on Saturday, said Simon Haselock, a spokesman for the U.N. mission in Kosovo. No official reason was given for the closure, but Macedonian police sources said it was prompted by insurgents being spotted near the crossing. 

Civilians blockaded the main road to the border in the town of Stenkovac for a second day Sunday, preventing NATO-led peacekeepers from traveling back and forth to Kosovo. The support base for peacekeepers in Kosovo is located in Macedonia. 

NATO officials have been at pains to stress that they will only gather weapons voluntarily turned in by ethnic Albanian rebels, and will not forcibly disarm them nor provide security for the civilian population. 

Concerns have also arisen that dissatisfaction with the peace deal among ethnic Albanian rebels may be causing some to form splinter groups comprised of die-hard militants determined to keep fighting. 

Earlier this month, a group calling itself the Albanian National Army claimed responsibility for an ambush that killed 10 Macedonian army soldiers near Tetovo. In a statement faxed to ethnic Albanian media, the group rejected the peace deal and called for war. 

But no member of the ANA has ever been sighted and there is doubt the group exists. Officially, NATO denies that the group could cause problems for the weapons collection operation. 

Macedonian mission would bring high risks for peacekeepers

Janes Intelligence Digest Aug 14, 2001

The signing of a peace deal yesterday between the Macedonian government and the country's ethnic Albanian political leaders has paved the way for deployment of up to 3,500 NATO peacekeeping troops in a mission to disarm guerrillas belonging to the National Liberation Army (NLA). The risks, however, are very high, both for NATO and for the Macedonian government, which faces mounting domestic criticism of its peace efforts.

One of the accepted principles of all modern peacekeeping operations is that at least one main party to the conflict should support the aims of the mission. The worst, most bloody fiascos occur when the peacekeepers themselves get dragged into the very conflict they are aiming to prevent.

If a peace deal is agreed, then the Macedonian parliament will have 45 days in which to ratify it. Following this, NATO officials have indicated that they would be ready to deploy for what has already been named 'Operation Essential Harvest'. The main objective of this mission would be the disarming of the NLA guerrillas.

While it does appear that some progress has been made in recent talks between the politicians, there is no guarantee that the NLA - or at least major factions within it - will be prepared to co-operate with NATO. After all, the Macedonian security services will remain fully armed.

Another key issue is the attitude of the Macedonian population towards NATO. US troops in Macedonia in support of the KFOR mission in neighbouring Kosovo were widely accused of assisting NLA guerrillas during the evacuation of the village of Aracinovo in June. The Macedonian government almost fell as a result of the riots that followed.

Kosovo peacekeepers find Macedonia border arms dumps


PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, July 16 (Reuters) - NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo said on Monday they found three arms dumps near the province's border with Macedonia at the weekend. 

The peacekeepers and international police found three anti-tank mines, two detonators, 58 mortar rounds, 31 blocks of dynamite, three anti-personnel mines, numerous cases of ammunition, clothes, boots and coats. 

A U.S. peacekeepers' statement said that on Saturday night international police found weapons buried under plastic and covered with tree branches near Ribnik in southeastern Kosovo. 

Police called in U.S. peacekeepers to help with the search on Sunday. The police and troops found two more similar caches. 

The equipment was taken to a peacekeepers' camp and will soon be destroyed, the statement said. 

NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo have seized several weapons caches and arms shipments through Kosovo in recent months, apparently bound for ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia.  

Editor's Note: Desperate to cover up NATO war crimes against Serbians during their 1999 Yugoslavian butchery, the farcical UN Hague tribunal attempts to lynch its scapegoat.  Slobidan Milosevic, formerly viewed as a diplomatic "hero" at the Bosnian Dayton accords, is now reviled as a barbarian.  In an international and rigged judicial lynching, NATO will now bring Mr. Milosevic up on the very same charges they were flagrantly guilty of themselves.  This is the beginning of a judicial abomination.  This editor is not a lover of Mr. Milosevic.  He is typical of the post-communist era Eastern European leaders.  But it is to the dishonor of the great Serb nation that his political adversaries turned Mr. Milosevic over for trial in return for monetary gain and eliminating an opponent.  The nature of politicians never changes.

Milosevic Refuses to Enter Plea

By ROBERT H. REID
The Associated Press July 3, 2001


THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Facing his prosecutors alone, Slobodan Milosevic refused Tuesday to enter a plea to war crimes charges, telling the U.N. tribunal that his trial was aimed at covering up Western crimes in Yugoslavia. 

Chief Judge Richard May, who repeatedly admonished the former Yugoslav president that this was not the time for speeches, entered a plea of innocent to the four charges, which relate to offenses committed by his forces in Kosovo during the crackdown on ethnic Albanians two years ago. 

May adjourned the proceedings until a procedural hearing the last week of August. Milosevic was indicted in May 1999, the first head of state ever charged with war crimes by a U.N. court. 

Milosevic, who wore a slate blue suit, light blue shirt and a tie with colors of the Serbian flag, appeared calm and controlled during the 12-minute arraignment. 

He stood flanked by two security guards as the three judges entered the chamber and spoke firmly as May asked if he wanted to reconsider his decision to appear without counsel. 

``I consider this tribunal false tribunal and indictments false indictments,'' Milosevic replied. ``It is illegal, being not appointed by U.N. General Assembly. So I have no need to appoint counsel to illegal organ.'' 

Asked if he wanted the court to read the entire, 51-page indictment, Milosevic snapped: ``That's your problem.'' 

May then asked him to enter a plea. Instead, Milosevic said in Serbo-Croatian: ``This trial's aim is to produce false justification for the war crimes of NATO committed in Yugoslavia.'' 

The judge then repeated his request. 

``I have given you my answer,'' Milosevic replied. He began to speak about ``this so-called tribunal'' when the judge cut him off and entered an innocent plea on his behalf. 

``As I have said, the aim of this tribunal is to justify the crimes committed in Yugoslavia,'' Milosevic, 59, responded. ``That is why this a false tribunal, and illegitimate.'' 

Milosevic was specifically charged with: deportation, a crime against humanity; murder, a crime against humanity; murder, a crime against the laws or customs of war; and persecution on ethnic or religious grounds, a crime against humanity. 

The United States and its allies also have accused Milosevic of orchestrating the decade-long wars throughout the Balkans, and the tribunal hopes to indict him by October for offenses in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. 

The crackdown on Kosovo ended after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign, which forced Yugoslav troops and police to hand over the province to the United Nations and a NATO-led peacekeeping force. 

Milosevic has consistently maintained that his actions were to save his country from Western domination and that the world has ignored NATO's ``crimes,'' including the bombing of civilian targets in and out of Kosovo. 

Milosevic, who was ousted from power in October, was transferred to U.N. custody on Friday by the pro-democracy government of Yugoslavia's republic of Serbia, and is now being held in a Dutch prison. He was arrested in Yugoslavia on April 1, after a chaotic standoff with police. 

Pro-democracy forces had planned to charge him with offenses in Yugoslavia, but so far had been unable to bring formal charges. Yugoslav officials complained that evidence had disappeared and witnesses refused to cooperate. 

Milosevic, who graduated from law school but never practiced, decided to refuse counsel following a three-hour meeting Monday with two lawyers from Belgrade. Afterward, they told reporters that Milosevic has refused to accept the validity of the court, established in 1993 by the U.N. Security Council to prosecute those believed responsible for crimes committed during Balkan wars. 

``Mr. Milosevic does not recognize The Hague tribunal,'' Zdenko Tomanovic said. Milosevic believes the tribunal ``is part of a mechanism to commit genocide on the Serb people.'' 

Milosevic's claim that his only crime was to stand up against NATO is unlikely to win points with the court. He is gambling that it will bolster his reputation among his own people. 

Dutch lawyer Michail Wladimiroff, who represented Bosnian Serb defendant Dusan Tadic before the U.N. court, said defenses based on refusing to acknowledge the tribunal's authority did not work for his client. 

``That did not work and I see no reason why it would be different now'', Wladimiroff told Dutch television Tuesday. 

Milosevic acknowledged the authority of The Hague tribunal when, as president of Serbia, he signed the 1995 Dayton accords ending the war in Bosnia. The agreement committed his government to cooperate with the U.N. court. 

The United States has provided evidence concerning Milosevic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal and is prepared to provide additional information, according to the U.S. State Department. 

The proceedings against the number one suspect in the decade-long Balkan wars has been a stunning success for the tribunal, which now faces the long and difficult task of convicting a defendant branded the ``Butcher of the Balkans.'' 

Ahead of the arraignment, Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt spoke of the ``personal satisfaction'' in seeing that one of the court's ``major targets is being brought before the tribunal.'' 

``It's not going to be an easy prosecution,'' Blewitt said. ``His responsibility for crimes when he was president of Serbia is not going to be easy to prove.'' 

Chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte told Spain's El Pais newspaper that the trial would begin in six to eight months and last up to two years. 

Milosevic's extradition enraged his followers back home and led to a crisis in the pro-democracy federal government of Yugoslavia, which is made up of two republics - Serbia and the much smaller Montenegro. 

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica and politicians from Montenegro opposed the extradition, which was carried out unilaterally by the government of Serbia. Huge protests by Milosevic supporters followed in the capital city of Belgrade. 

But in Kosovo, Ethnic Albanians greeted his arraignment with satisfaction. 

``It is way too late, but better late then never,'' said Faton Aliu, 26, who watched Milosevic's defiant appearance from a Pristina tea house. ``It is over for him now.'' 

Editor's Note: The Greater Albania Movement has turned  Kosovo into a "safe haven" for alleged Albanian refuges and terrorists from Macedonia.  Will NATO now begin butchering Macedonian Slavs from 15,000 feet as they did Serbs?  Michael G. Leventhal

Macedonia just short of civil war

By Tim Ripley,Skopje, Jane's International Security June 27, 2001

Macedonia's government has weathered the rioting of Monday night and calm has returned to the capital, Skopje, but there is little sign of an end to the conflict in the southern Balkan state.

President Boris Trajkovski went on television on Tuesday evening to call for calm and pledge to continue to back international peace efforts. The president took full responsibility for Monday's US-escorted evacuation of the rebel-held village of Aracinovo by 300 ethnic Albanian fighters of the National Liberation Army (NLA). His appeals seemed to have some effect on opinion in Skopje and there was no repeat of the rioting that rocked the city on Monday evening, which led Macedonian protestors to storm the country's parliament building.

While the moderate president may have headed off the current crisis, Western diplomats in the city believe it will be very difficult for Macedonia's coalition government to make any concessions to Albanian political parties during talks that are due to restart this week. "It is clear that the president has little room to manoeuvre," said one diplomat.

European Union (EU) and NATO officials had hoped that Monday's evacuation of NLA rebels from Aracinovo, four miles outside Skopje, would 'build confidence' and allow a wider peace effort to gain momentum. In the wake of Monday's riots this seems unlikely, according to diplomats in Skopje.

During Tuesday and into Wednesday Aracinovo remained calm thanks to the presence of EU monitors in the village, but elsewhere in the country fighting continued unabated. Macedonian tank and artillery fire caused a huge smoke plume to rise from Nitustak, northeast of Skopje, and government Mi-24 'Hind' helicopter gunships were in action against rebel positions in the mountains above Tetovo and around Rudnik Radusa, 10 miles to the northwest of Skopje. The NLA has been stepping up its operations in the western region of the country over the past five days, further demonstrating the difficulty the Macedonian security forces have in containing the rebellion. The Macedonians augmented their firepower last week with the arrival of four Sukhoi Su-25 'Frogfoot' ground attack aircraft purchased from Ukraine, but these have yet to get into action.

Tension in the country remains high, and over the past five days more than 15,000 ethnic Albanians have fled to neighbouring Kosovo, bringing the total that have sought sanctuary there to some 50,000, according to Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch. He said ultra-nationalist groups have been threatening ethnic Albanians in the capital, identifying a group called the 'Macedonian Paramilitary 2000' as being in the forefront of this campaign of intimidation. In the run-up to Monday's rioting the group, also known as the 'Lions of Macedonia', fly-posted Albanian shops in suburbs of the city, threatening to burn them in the 'longest night' of 'cleaning' unless the owners closed down their businesses. A handful of Albanian shops in the old part of Skopje were shot at and looted.

Rebel escort sparks a descent into chaos for Macedonia

By Tim Ripley,Skopje - Jane's June 26, 2001

Monday's dramatic intervention by US troops to escort ethnic Albanian rebels from a suburb of the Macedonian capital, Skopje, sparked nationalist rioting in the city that threatens to bring down the country's moderate president, Boris Trajkovski.

More than 5,000 Macedonians stormed the parliament building while Special Police units looked on without intervening, leading to fears that Trajkovski is losing control of his security forces. The president was due to make a television address on Tuesday afternoon, but the time kept being put back, indicating confusion in the government over how to deal with the spiralling crisis.

Ultra-national groups have called for 'patriotic Macedonians' from all over the country to gather again outside the parliament building on Tuesday, as they ratcheted up the coalition government, which they say is 'soft on Albanian terrorists'.

Macedonian refugees from rebel-held Aracinovo, four miles north-east of Skopje, have been protesting for the past five days about the government's failure to dislodge the ethnic Albanian fighters of the National Liberation Army (NLA), who occupied the strategic location for more than two weeks. International diplomats and journalists were regularly stoned and beaten up by demonstrators in the Macedonian villages neighbouring Aracinovo, but Monday's rioting indicates the unrest felt by the Macedonian population at the new Western involvement in the crisis is widespread.

Last Friday the Macedonians launched an 'all-out offensive' to drive the rebels out of Aracinovo, culminating in a failed ground assault on Saturday that left five Macedonian policemen dead and more than a dozen injured.

With the situation spiralling out of control, European foreign policy chief Xavier Solana flew to Skopje on Saturday in an attempt to kick-start the stalled peace process. By the middle of Sunday afternoon he got an agreement on a ceasefire and opened the way for NATO 'Balkan troubleshooter' Peiter Feith to broker a local rebel withdrawal from Aracinovo to a village 10km to the north. The rebels were allowed to take their weapons with them and an 'international presence' was to remain in the village to protect Albanian civilians from revenge attacks by Macedonian police and civilians.

The intervention of what turned out to be a 40-vehicle-strong US convoy, however, enraged Macedonian nationalists when footage of KFOR vehicles escorting buses full of NLA fighters was shown on local television stations.

As the withdrawal operation was underway, rebels attacked government positions around the western city of Tetovo, killing one policemen and wounding five others. Summing up the situation, an international diplomat said neither side was yet ready to stick to any ceasefire. "It is clearly difficult to sell a ceasefire and negotiations with the rebels to the Macedonian public," he said. "What was achieved? Nothing except a little psychological relief to Skopje."

Scores Flee Macedonia's Capital

By MISHA SAVIC
The Associated Press June 10 2001


SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - Scores of people fled Macedonia's capital Saturday as police blocked roads around a suburb to stop ethnic Albanian militants from seizing control of territory dangerously close to Skopje. 

``We are closely watching every movement in Aracinovo,'' police spokesman Stevo Pendarovski said, adding that only civilians who want to leave the mostly ethnic Albanian suburb were being allowed through checkpoints. 

As fear spread that Macedonia's ethnic conflict has come to within striking distance of the capital, just four miles away, about 200 ethnic Albanians from Skopje crossed into neighboring Kosovo. They said they were leaving as a precaution. 

Local relief agencies who met them at the main border crossing at Djeneral Jankovic fed them and worked to reunite them with family members who had crossed into Kosovo earlier. 

The European Union's security affairs chief, Javier Solana, held talks Saturday in downtown Skopje with top leaders of Macedonia's majority Slavs and minority ethnic Albanians in an attempt to avert a new escalation of the crisis. 

Fighting erupted in February when militants from the country's sizable ethnic Albanian community took up arms, saying they were fighting for broader rights. The government, which contends they are separatists bent on dividing the country, launched an army offensive to drive them out of villages in the north of the country where the rebels are based. 

On Friday, Macedonia's President Boris Trajkovski pledged to defeat the militants ``both politically and militarily.'' He said the Slav-dominated government would place the army and police under a single command to increase efficiency and speed up ``the neutralizing of the terrorists.'' 

Government forces on Saturday resumed their shelling of a rebel stronghold about 20 miles northeast of Skopje, currently the worst battle zone spreading over several ethnic Albanian villages not far from the border with Kosovo. 

But the rebels have resisted the government offensives, and the appearance of uniformed members of the rebel National Liberation Army has triggered panic in Aracinovo, where most of the 1,000 Slavic residents also have fled, Pendarovski said. 

Western governments have condemned the insurgents and have urged both sides to avoid an all-out war. Macedonia, which is about the size of Vermont, was formed when the former Yugoslavia broke up in the early 1990s. Until this year, it was the only former Yugoslav republic to have avoided bloodshed. 

In his speech Friday in the 120-seat assembly, with the ambassadors of several EU and other countries in attendance, Trajkovski acknowledged that force alone would not end the insurgency. He pledged to jump-start dialogue with ethnic Albanian political leaders, who are part of the government but largely at odds with their Slavic coalition partners. 

The president also mentioned a blueprint for a peace plan that would give amnesty to fighters who have not committed serious crimes. Officials said it envisages the deployment of international monitors, a greater inclusion of ethnic Albanians in state institutions and the ``reintegration into society'' of rebels who disarm. 

``We must give them a chance to get out of the grip of the gang leaders'' who want to create a ``Greater Albania,'' Trajkovski said. ``The entire Republic of Macedonia is at stake.'' 

NATO to Cede Kosovo Buffer, Violence Worsens

Updated 4:06 PM ET May 14, 2001

By Ian Geoghegan

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO allies agreed on Monday to let Yugoslav forces back into the most sensitive part of a buffer zone around Kosovo despite growing violence between Serbs and ethnic Albanian rebels who have warned the move could spark a new war.

Alliance ambassadors said NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers would oversee a ``phased and controlled'' return of the tense Sector B of the Ground Safety Zone (GSZ) to Yugoslav forces on May 24.

The three mile wide zone was created in June 1999 as part of a deal to end NATO's 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, launched to halt Belgrade's repression in ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo.

Ethnic Albanian rebels, fighting what they say is Serb discrimination against local Albanians, moved into the area and use it as a guerrilla base for attacking Serb forces.

At least two ethnic Albanians were earlier reported killed and three Yugoslav soldiers wounded in recent fighting in southern Serbia's volatile Presevo Valley.

Rebel commander Ridvan Cazimi warned last week that if NATO ceded control to Yugoslav forces ``armed ethnic Albanians will defend themselves and it will be the beginning of a war.''

NATO Secretary General George Robertson said the buffer, initially set up to keep apart KFOR and Yugoslav forces, was now redundant, but the alliance had not taken the decision to hand it back lightly.

He warned that any attacks on KFOR troops would draw ``a robust military response.''

``The time has come for Albanian armed groups to lay down their weapons and take an active part in the peaceful political process within a democratic Serbia,'' he added.

REBEL SAFE HAVEN

Rebels from the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac have used Sector B -- a 22-mile-long strip of the buffer zone -- as a safe haven.

As part of a NATO-backed effort to subdue the rebels, Yugoslav forces have gradually been allowed to retake control of the zone, section by section.

They have yet to enter Sector B, which makes up the final one fifth of the zone.

Robertson said the Yugoslav and Serb governments had promised to resolve the crisis peacefully and had taken several measures to try and rebuild confidence.

These included demilitarizing certain villages, removing Yugoslav forces from schools and factories, compensating Albanian workers and reinstating at least 60 ethnic Albanians in a multi-ethnic police force.

In addition NATO urged the Serb authorities to offer an amnesty to armed rebels who give up their weapons.

It also sought a commitment that returning Yugoslav forces would respect human rights and avoid any excessive use of force.

CLASHES INTENSIFY

The government-run press office in southern Serbia said the three Yugoslav soldiers had been wounded in fighting on a mountain peak west of the town of Vranje.

Around 18 miles to the south, fighting raged in the village of Oraovica, captured by rebels at the weekend.

Reporters saw several houses ablaze and heard the sounds of mortars, rocket launchers and infantry weapons being used.

The press center said later that Yugoslav security forces had re-taken control of all checkpoints in Oraovica, with groups of rebels withdrawing to the outskirts of the village.

The conflict in southern Serbia is similar to fighting in nearby Macedonia, with a national government backed by the West condemning as terrorists a ``liberation army'' which says it is fighting repression of local ethnic Albanians.

Fighting Escalates in Macedonia

By DANICA KIRKA
The Associated Press March 25, 2001


TETOVO, Macedonia (AP) - Heavy mortar barrages echoed through the hills surrounding Tetovo early Sunday as fighting escalated between Macedonian forces and ethnic Albanian rebels besieging the country's second-largest city. 

The sustained attacks came as both sides were warning of a major offensive - the military acquired more firepower and the insurgents' popularity and ranks continued to swell. The early morning explosions were the heaviest in days. 

On Saturday, Macedonian helicopters fired rockets in a sweep just south of downtown Tetovo. 

Two MI-24 attack helicopters thundered over Mount Sar Planina, the focus of attacks southwest of the city's center, firing several rockets that sent up a large plume of dirt and smoke. It was not immediately clear what the choppers were targeting or whether anyone was wounded. 

Saturday's late afternoon bombardment came a few hours after the rebels fired two shells into a Slavic neighborhood of Koltuk near a police checkpoint, spraying shrapnel through a cobblestone alley and injuring four people. 

The rebel artillery blasts peppered the alley with twisted metal fragments and ripped through a red brick house. A trail of blood 100 feet long stained the main street. 

Local residents pointed to the craters, screaming: ``Terrorists! Terrorists!'' Using the same label for the rebels, police spokesman Stevo Pendarovski said ``terrorist groups'' in the hills above Tetovo were responsible for that attack. 

The escalation in the fighting followed the Macedonian prime minister's warning that his government's drive to repel the rebels was not over. As if to underline the point, the distant boom of heavy artillery on another front could be heard outside Skopje, 20 miles to the east. 

The rebels say they are fighting for more rights for ethnic Albanians within Macedonia, but the government accuses them of seeking independence and drawing on the neighboring Serb province of Kosovo for fighters and weapons. 

Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski suggested late Friday that the military had not yet carried out its threatened operation to ``neutralize and eliminate'' the insurgents. He said the former Yugoslav republic's poorly equipped military was rapidly arming itself and biding its time. 

``The (political) decision has been made. Now it is up to the military to judge when conditions are right for a successful operation,'' Georgievski said. ``It could be one hour, or one day, or one week - it is completely up to the military.'' 

It remained unanswered, however, why the Macedonian government has held the military in check from an all-out offensive to reclaim lost ground. The intensity of the attacks has remained relatively constant for nearly a week after an initial phase of heavy bombardment. 

The rebels seemed defiant in the face of government pledges of action. 

``The number of fighters in the mountains is growing enormously,'' Imer Imeri, head of the ethnic Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity, told the German weekly Der Spiegel. ``By now they are also finding broad support among the population.'' 

``I fear that if our demands continue to be ignored, a major offensive will develop this spring and the Albanian population will also take up arms,'' he was quoted as saying. 

In Gajre, 2 1/2 miles outside the center of Tetovo, it was clear the insurgents had neither retreated nor advanced. Rebels and Macedonian gunners exchanged fire on several occasions in the early afternoon. 

Brisk and focused, militiamen walked around the town as children played outdoors in yards, kicking around a soccer ball. The deafening blasts of heavy fire thundered from just 300 feet away. 

Although they feel reasonably secure in the village because it hasn't been an army target, people confined travel to muddy forest paths, and used rugged terrain away from major routes to give the fighting a wide berth. 

``Ninety percent of us are staying,'' said one villager, Geudet Dehari. ``Only a few of the women and small children are leaving.'' 

Despite a strong statement by President Bush backing the Macedonian government, Dehari and others ethnic Albanians in the village expressed an unswerving faith that the United States eventually will rally behind their crusade. 

``We will never be against America,'' he said. ``America will come to realize the worthiness of our cause.'' 

In Tetovo itself, people noted that Saturday was the anniversary of NATO's intervention in Kosovo two years ago, and speculated whether the alliance would again find it necessary to step in to keep the peace. 

``They should have done something earlier,'' said Divna Bozinovska, 61, as she examined the spinach in a half-empty local marketplace. ``We are hostages to these rebel groups.'' 

Serb troops deploy in more of Kosovo buffer zone

By Dragan Stankovic


MERDARE, Yugoslavia, March 25 (Reuters) - Yugoslav army and Serbian police troops moved into a large section of a buffer zone around Kosovo on Sunday in a NATO-approved operation meant to send a warning signal to ethnic Albanian guerrillas. 

Troops started entering the five-km (three-mile) wide belt outside Kosovo's borders with the rest of Yugoslavia between 0530 and 0600 GMT, Reuters reporters at the scene said. 

"Everything is going well," Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic told reporters at a checkpoint on the border with Kosovo, manned by peacekeepers from the NATO-led KFOR force. 

Teams of demining experts were the first to enter the zone on the road to the border village of Merdare, set in hilly and wooded landscape. Regular troops, some in armoured personnel carriers and armed with machine guns, followed them in. 

The latest deployment, into a section of the belt some 300 km (180 miles) long, is part of a phased reopening of the zone to Serb forces agreed by NATO as a sign of confidence in the reformers who ousted Slobodan Milosevic as Yugoslav president last year. 

It is intended to show the guerrillas who have been operating in one part of the zone, in the Presevo Valley of southern Serbia, their days of relative safety are numbered. 

A similar rebel group has recently emerged in nearby Macedonia, adding urgency to the clampdown for NATO officials anxious to stop ethnic Albanian insurgencies gathering strength. 

NATO insisted on the zone around Kosovo's border with the rest of Yugoslavia when its troops entered Kosovo in June 1999 to keep Yugoslav army soldiers and Serbian special police units a safe distance away while Milosevic was in power. 

Troops entered the zone on Sunday from both Yugoslav republics -- Montenegro in the west and Serbia in the north. 

LOCAL SERBS WELCOME TROOPS 

General Ninoslav Krstic, commander of the advancing forces, said the operation might be slowed down in some places by rugged terrain, bad roads and the possibility of landmines. 

Local Serb villagers at Merdare welcomed the troops with relief. "We feel much safer now. People were too scared to work the land near the border. Now they can work freely," said Ljubo Brckovic, 38, a shop assistant. 

Sunday's deployment does not involve areas where the rebels are thought to be active. 

Lieutenant Colonel John Crosby, liaising between Yugoslav and KFOR troops, told Reuters he was pleased with how the operation was proceding. 

Yugoslav army chief-of-staff General Nebojsa Pavkovic entered the zone from Montenegro in a white military jeep and was scheduled to visit various military posts in the area. 

Serb forces first moved into a small southernmost section of the zone, where it borders Macedonia, more than a week ago. 

That move was part of a drive to cut any links between the two ethnic Albanian guerrilla groups. 

Serb forces and the rebels in the Presevo Valley agreed to a NATO-brokered ceasefire earlier this month. There have been some reports of fighting since then but on a fairly small scale. 

Russia blasts NATO over Kosovo

MOSCOW, March 23 (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday Serbia's rebel province of Kosovo had become a source of regional terrorism and blamed a 1999 NATO military operation against Yugoslavia for the situation. 

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement marking two years since NATO launched air strikes against Yugoslavia to force then President Slobodan Milosevic to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo that the attacks had only aggravated regional problems. 

"In fact missile and air attacks in Yugoslavia had nothing to do with settling the Kosovo crisis," the statement said. 

"This lawless act of the use of force only aggravated acute regional problems...making their consequences even more destructive today," it added. 

Russia bitterly criticised NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, but later sent paratroopers to join the international peacekeeping force in predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo. 

But Moscow remained critical of the way the peacekeeping operation was conducted. 

Russia has said NATO's protection turned Kosovo into a safe haven for Albanian radicals, encouraging them to force Serbs out of the region and expand their activity beyond Kosovo's borders. 

Russia has strongly denounced attacks by Albanian guerrillas from Kosovo against neighbouring Serbia and Macedonia. 

"The latest actions of the Albanian fighters in southern Serbia and Macedonia prove that Kosovo has turned into a source of spreading extremism and terrorism across the region," the ministry said. 

"This is a direct result of NATO aggression against Yugoslavia and subsequent incorrect actions by Western states in Kosovo," it added. 

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov visited the Balkans earlier this week to promise full backing to Macedonia and Serbia in their resistance to Albanian guerrillas. 

The ministry statement urged the international community to take tough action against the Albanian militants. 

"In the current regional situation, which is enormously complicated and dangerous, urgent and decisive action by the international community is needed, including (using) the military if the need arises," the statement said. 

Macedonian forces renew firing at rebel positions

By Douglas Hamilton


TETOVO, Macedonia, March 20 (Reuters) - Macedonian troops on Tuesday blasted two houses close to the Tetovo city football stadium with heavy artillery and machinegun fire. 

Troops with armoured personnel carriers and firing from behind a wall of white sandbags directed long volleys of fire into the houses, which were blazing and belching heavy smoke. 

There was no immediate sign of a major assault by government forces on the suspected hillside positions of ethnic Albanian rebels above the city of Tetovo. 

On Monday the army brought up tanks and several hundred troops and a government spokesman said a "final operation" was being readied to oust the rebels. 

Interior ministry troops have pounded rebel targets on hills overlooking the city for the past six days. 

A government spokesman in the capital, Skopje, said on Monday that security forces had destroyed the main guerrilla stronghold on a hill overlooking the town of around 70,000 people. 

"The Macedonian security forces will soon start a final operation to destroy the terrorists," Antonio Milosovski said. 

"That will happen when our commanders in the field decide that there will be minimum risk of losing lives of security forces," he said. 

But Macedonian forces had not yet managed to destroy guerrilla "underground tunnels," he said, without elaborating. 

Macedonian forces have mortared and machine-gunned guerrilla positions since Wednesday in a bid to dislodge what Macedonia says is a force of several hundred guerrillas of the self-styled National Liberation Army (NLA). 

MACEDONIA SAYS REBEL ATTACKS DWINDLE 

There has been little return fire in the past two days and an Interior ministry spokesman said guerrilla attacks were subsiding. "The intensity of the attacks against our forces is slowing down," said spokesman Stevo Pendarovski. 

But a guerrilla commander earlier on Monday said the rebels had held onto their positions despite heavy shelling and said government forces were being pushed back towards Skopje. There was no evidence to suggest that. 

The commander, who gave his name as Kusha, said Macedonian forces had pounded the village of Poraj in the mountains close to Tetovo. "We haven't moved an inch although there has been heavy shelling this morning," he told Reuters by phone. 

On Monday afternoon, two big fires could be seen in the mountains five to 10 km west of Tetovo but it was not immediately clear what was burning. 

Ethnic Albanians make up one-third of Macedonia's two million population. Both Skopje and the West are worried about the risk of a slide towards ethnic conflict that could not only tear the republic apart but ultimately drag in neighbouring Bulgaria, Greece, Albania or Yugoslavia. 

The rebels say they are fighting for more rights for Macedonia's Albanians. 

In a statement obtained by Reuters on Monday, the National Liberation Army appealed for financial contributions from "Albanians wherever they are," adding they had decided to create a fund to support the fighting financially. 

Another guerrilla commander said Macedonian forces had shelled rebel positions north of Skopje, and well to the east of the fighting in Tetovo. 

"Shelling was going on all day yesterday," the commander, who gave his name as Sokoli, told Reuters by phone. 

He said his forces were defending positions in the area around the villages of Malino and Brest near the Kosovo boundary. 

Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski said on Sunday the army was using heavy artillery and tanks to battle rebels near the northern border with Kosovo, as well as fighting them near Tetovo. 

Macedonian Tanks Move Into City

By BRIAN MURPHY
The Associated Press 19 March 2001


TETOVO, Macedonia (AP) - The Macedonian army sent four tanks rolling into the country's second-largest city Monday, signalling the military was ready to engage ethnic Albanian rebels fighting for greater rights and recognition in Slav-dominated Macedonia. 

The tanks entered Tetovo shortly before noon, accompanied by an armored personnel carrier and two military trucks, one filled with government soldiers. They arrived as clashes decreased in intensity after a night of bombardments. 

Macedonian police and army units were bringing in infantry reinforcements, including armored vehicles, field artillery pieces and howitzers, the independent Yugoslav radio station B92 reported. 

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said Monday that the international force in Kosovo would be moving more troops up to the border with Macedonia to cut off the supply lines to ethnic Albanian rebels who have attacked government forces there. 

Fighting was especially fierce overnight in the village of Drenoec on the outskirts of Tetovo, where the rebels fired on police, state-run media reported. Insurgents also targeted the Tetovo soccer stadium with mortars. The neighborhoods of Teke, Mala Recica and Gajire were rocked by fighting. 

Some cars and city buses returned to the streets, but most stores remained shut after an overnight curfew ended Monday morning. 

Sunday night, only a handful of people, and even fewer cars crept through the streets. But the curfew ordered by Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, along with restrictions on movements in the region, did nothing to stop the booming volley of fire between government forces and the insurgents. 

``Macedonia will win this battle without giving up a single foot of our territory. And after the victory, Macedonians and Albanians will continue to live together - as they must,'' Georgievski declared in a Sunday address to a nation he said ``is rapidly arming itself.'' 

Georgievski accused the United States and Germany, whose troops patrol the neighboring Yugoslav province of Kosovo as part of NATO's contingent there, of not doing enough to stop the rebels. 

``You cannot convince us that the chieftains of these gangs are unknown to your governments, nor can you persuade us that they cannot be stopped,'' he said. 

Zekir Bekteshi, spokesman for the opposition ethnic Albanian Party of Democratic Prosperity, said party activists were in the field to try to stabilize the Tetovo region. 

``We are optimistic that this can still be resolved by political means and diplomacy,'' Bekteshi said. 

EU foreign ministers meeting Monday in Brussels, Belgium, promised to boost financial and other aid to Macedonia to help reduce tensions. The EU's security affairs chief, Javier Solana, also was heading to the Macedonian capital of Skopje later in the day. 

Russian Foreign Minister Igo Ivanov arriving in Belgrade on Sunday for talks with Macedonian and Yugoslav leaders on ways to avert all-out war. 

``We are deeply convinced that the international community now needs to unite efforts to establish stability and stop the terrorism,'' he said. 

Ethnic Albanians account for at least a quarter of Macedonia's 2 million people, and although ethnic relations in Macedonia have been relatively trouble free, substantial numbers of the minority feel they are being treated as second-class citizens. 

But although the National Liberation Army urged ordinary citizens to take up arms and join their struggle, some ethnic Albanians remained suspicious of the rebels and their motives. 

``I don't know what to say about them. I do not know even if we can trust them or not,'' said Shefik Azizi, 25, after guiding a group of fellow ethnic Albanians fleeing the threat of violence into neighboring Albania. 

The rebels insist their battle is not being instigated from neighboring Kosovo by the former Kosovo Liberation Army, but the latest uprising shares the aspirations of Kosovar Albanians for ethnic Albanian self-determination, if not outright independence. 

The rebels said they had killed 11 policemen and wounded 18 others, while suffering no casualties of their own, since the conflict began a month ago on the border with Kosovo. Government officials said only five of their forces were killed as a direct result of the hostilities. 

German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping told SWR radio that talk of a new Balkan war was unjustified. He added there were no plans to pull German troops out of Tetovo, despite their base being targeted Friday by gunfire. 

NATO Building Ties With Yugoslavs

By DANICA KIRKA 18 Mar 2001


PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Signaling a change in NATO's view of who's threatening Balkan stability, the alliance's Kosovo commander said Friday that he wants fewer troops equipped to battle the Yugoslavs and more specialized forces capable of containing civil unrest and monitoring the province's porous borders. 

Lt. Gen. Carlo Cabigiosu's decision to seek troops with different kinds of training comes as NATO-led peacekeepers are coming under increasing pressure to stop the export of guns and guerillas from Kosovo to insurgents fighting on the province's outside edges. 

``It's not the number of troops, it's the kind, the specialty, that we have to review,'' Cabigiosu told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. 

Cabigiosu's remarks reflect a change in the political winds in Kosovo, where former President Slobodan Milosevic's regime had long been blamed for causing trouble. 

Now, with Milosevic toppled and pro-democracy leaders offering to negotiate, NATO's new targets are troublemakers who want to cause unrest inside the province and ethnic Albanian rebels who are using Kosovo as a base for insurgencies in neighboring Macedonia and a strip of southern Serbia. 

``The threat is not coming any more from the (Yugoslav Army),'' Cabigiosu said. 

On Tuesday, Yugoslav forces returned to a buffer zone between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia that has been overrun by ethnic Albanian rebels. That move also reflected a warming of relations with Belgrade and indicated that the alliance was willing to take on the Yugoslavs as new allies. 

The Italian general described the return of Serb forces to the three-mile-wide buffer zone as the first in a series of efforts to resolve the region's problems peacefully. 

The zone was created after Yugoslavia's 1999 war with NATO to put space between alliance forces based in Kosovo and Yugoslav troops in the rest of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic. Yugoslav forces were barred from using heavy weapons in the zone, and lost control of much of it when ethnic Albanian insurgents attacked their positions last November. 

Last month, another group of ethnic Albanian insurgents who want more rights in Macedonia started to fight police in the sparsely populated border areas near Kosovo. The fighting spread this week to Macedonia's second-largest city. 

Both rebel movements have been linked to Kosovo, a province in southern Serbia that has been administered by the United Nations and NATO-led peacekeepers since Milosevic's forces pulled out. Defying the efforts of peacekeepers, rebels and arms have moved from one area to the other. 

Diplomats and international officials have been pressing ethnic Albanian leaders in Kosovo for more than a year to exert their influence on the two movements and force the guerrillas to stop fighting - with few tangible results. NATO then opted to bring in the Yugoslavs, giving them a stake in resolving the deepening crisis. 

Cabigiosu praised the efforts of Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic, describing his decision to meet with local ethnic Albanian village leaders as an example of his efforts to build consensus. 

Even so, the new relationship hasn't been completely smooth. Cabigiosu was caught off guard earlier this week when Lt. Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, the commander of Yugoslav forces in Kosovo during the war, marched in with the Yugoslav army when they returned to the buffer zone. Pavkovic is now the army's chief of staff. 

Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo responded with shock. One newspaper, Zeri, ran a headline that said ``the person who headed the genocide in Kosovo has returned to its border.'' 

By Friday, however, Cabigiosu had regained his composure, dismissing criticism that the general's presence sent the wrong message to Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, who see Pavkovic as a symbol of Milosevic's crackdown on separatists. That crackdown led to the NATO air war to push Yugoslav troops out. 

``It was his right to be in the area at the moment in which such an important operation is to be started,'' he said. 

Overall, he said, ``It's not possible to discuss the future of Kosovo without a normal relationship with Belgrade.'' 

Macedonia wants NATO troops to seal Kosovo border

BRUSSELS, March 9, 2001 (Reuters) - Macedonia wants NATO to deploy troops all along its border with Kosovo to prevent further infiltration by ethnic Albanian separatist gunmen, Foreign Minister Srgjan Kerim said on Friday. 

He told reporters at NATO headquarters he would put the request to the alliance "because we can't control the border from the other side and there is definitely a spillover effect from the Kosovo side." 

"It is a commitment of NATO and KFOR (the alliance's Kosovo peacekeeping mission) to protect and secure this border," Kerim added. 

Diplomatic sources doubted whether the 19-member alliance would grant Macedonia's wish. Its deployment in Kosovo is mandated by a United Nations Security Council resolution, but no such authorisation exists for deployment in Macedonia. 

The alliance is also not interested in seeing its already over-stretched Kosovo mission creeping over borders into Macedonia and southern Serbia, NATO sources say. 

Kerim said he did not know how many troops would be needed to guard the 220 km (130 miles) frontier. "The military experts will decide," he said. 

Past experience has showed that helicopters, of which the Macedonian Army has few, would also be needed to patrol the frontier which runs over remote mountainous territory. 

Kerim said he might ask the European Union for help if NATO refused. 

He was due to have talks later with the Political and Security Committee of the 15-member European Union. 

Asked if he would call for EU military help if NATO did not provide it, Kerim said: "Why not? I have a meeting with them later. But I still believe that KFOR will follow its commitments." 

OTHERS MAY HELP MACEDONIA 

European diplomatic sources said the EU was cooperating very closely with NATO on efforts to extinguish the threat of a new Albanian separatist conflict on Kosovo's southern fringes but it was concentrating on political assistance, not military. 

The planned European rapid reaction force, due to be operational only in 2003, was not ready for any mission although there might be "coalitions of the willing" able to help Macedonia, the sources said. 

While publicly praising Macedonia's restraint in a standoff with scores of Albanian gunmen in the past week, NATO was privately telling Macedonia its army could handle the "localised" problem on its own. 

In fact, many of the gunmen were squeezed out of their stronghold near the frontier when U.S. KFOR troops apparently advanced from Kosovo over the border into Macedonia for a few hundred metres and Macedonian troops blocked the opposite flank. 

The NATO force, anxious not to be found in violation of its UN mandate, denies it crossed the frontier. But villagers told journalists the soldiers were definitely on Macedonian soil. 

NATO said on Thursday it would let Yugoslav security forces enter a buffer zone on Serbian territory next to the Macedonian border to stop it being used as a corridor for armed movements. 

Yugoslav President Kostunica said the decision was proof that KFOR was too scared of casualties to uphold its commitments to border protection. 

Asked about the criticism on Friday, NATO Secretary General George Robertson said in a BBC radio interview that Kostunica's remarks were "unhelpful and rather poor politics."

KFOR says plane shot at near Macedonia border

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, March 2, 2001 (Reuters) - The pilot of a plane from the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force reported being shot at near the border between Kosovo and Macedonia on Wednesday and took evasive action, a spokesman said on Friday. 

The light observation aircraft was patrolling the mountainous area which has seen an increase in tension in recent weeks, including several exchanges of gunfire. 

"I believe he saw fire. Basically he thought he was being shot at, and he took evasive action," said British Squadron Leader Richard Heffer, a spokesman for the Kosovo peacekeepers. 

Macedonia's government has said it is prepared to launch a military operation against what it describes as ethnic Albanian guerrillas occupying the border village of Tanusevci some 40 km (25 miles) to the north of Skopje. 

A Reuters reporter in Debelde, a small village in Kosovo close to the border, heard shooting on the Macedonian side of the heavily wooded area around noon on Wednesday. 

Macedonia, with one third of its population ethnic Albanians, borders Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Serbia and its mainly Albanian Kosovo province. It is seen as vulnerable to any spillover of recent violence in and around Kosovo.  

NATO Moves Closer To Macedonia Clash

By KONSTANTIN TESTORIDES
The Associated Press Feb 28, 2001


SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - NATO is moving closer to the conflict in Macedonia, sending advisers to help the government contain a budding ethnic Albanian insurrection there. 

Announcing the adviser mission, NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said NATO was studying further assistance to the Macedonian government to protect its frontier with Kosovo and southern Serbia. 

``There will be a political and military mission immediately to Skopje, (Macedonia), to see what the situation is on the ground,'' Robertson said Tuesday in Brussels, Belgium, at a joint news conference with Secretary of State Colin Powell. 

In Kosovo, U.S. peacekeepers set up observation points within shouting distance of the Macedonian village of Tanusevci, near Macedonia's border with Kosovo. Fighting broke out there Monday between insurgents and Macedonian forces raised concerns of a new point of instability developing in the Kosovo region. 

Reacting to the recent violence, which sent hundreds of Tanusevci villagers fleeing into Kosovo, Macedonia's prime minister, Ljubco Georgievski, warned his government was prepared to take ``radical measures'' against the insurgents. 

A police statement said the violence Monday in Tanusevci began after armed Albanian groups opened fire on a police patrol. No casualties were reported. 

A new group of ethnic Albanian guerrillas, calling themselves a ``National Liberation Army,'' have been operating in the village. 

It is unknown how much support they enjoy within Macedonia, home to a large ethnic Albanian minority. But the violence has raised fears of a new front in the struggle by ethnic Albanian militants for independence. 

Such violence already has spilled beyond the borders of Kosovo, a Serbian province, with militants active in a southern Serbian buffer zone that is home to large numbers of ethnic Albanians just outside Kosovo. 

In a major concession to the new leadership in Yugoslavia and Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic, NATO on Tuesday announced that it was prepared to narrow that zone, The zone was set up in the wake of the pullout of troops loyal to former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo in 1999, and was meant to reduce any armed threat to NATO from Yugoslav forces. 

Only lightly armed Serbian police are allowed in the zone, according to the 1999 Kosovo peace agreement that allowed NATO peacekeepers into Kosovo. Rebels in the buffer area have exploited that to establish a presence. Narrowing the zone would allow heavily armed Yugoslav army troops to squeeze the insurgents. 

In the Kosovo village of Debelde on Tuesday, U.S. peacekeepers set up in the village about 35 miles southeast of Pristina. In Geneva, Kris Janowski, the spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said that over the past week 383 ethnic Albanians, primarily women and children, had fled to Kosovo from Debelde. 

He said those fleeing cited as a heavy presence of Macedonian security forces and general tension in the area. 

More Clashes in Yugoslavia

Feb 19, 2001


LUCANE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Clashes between ethnic Albanian rebels and Serbian security forces flared Monday in a tense southern region bordering Kosovo, a day after an explosion ripped through a police van killing three Serb officers. 

The exchanges of machine-gun and mortar fire early Monday centered around the village of Lucane, on the edge of a three-mile-wide buffer zone between Kosovo and Serbia, and over the strategic Saint Ilija hill in the north. No casualties were immediately reported. 

Yugoslavia blamed the latest attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanian militants, who denied responsibility. The Albanians said one of their commanders was killed by Serb police late Sunday in Lucane. 

The new fighting further fueled tensions in the region. A bus bombing killed at least seven Serb civilians Friday inside Kosovo. 

With violence mounting, top Yugoslav and Serb leaders met late Sunday, and President Vojislav Kostunica's office released a statement pledging a ``series of measures against terrorism'' in the area. 

Yugoslavia also criticized NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo and urged them to act immediately to keep the guerrillas out of the buffer zone, which they have used to stage attacks on Serbian police and Yugoslav army troops. Serbia is the larger of the two republics that make up Yugoslavia. 

The militants want the zone to be united with Kosovo as part of a push for independence for the southern Serbian province, which has been run by the United Nations and NATO-led peacekeepers since June 1999, when Yugoslavia halted its crackdown on the Albanian majority after a NATO bombing campaign. 

Friday's bombing of a bus carrying Serbs to visit the graves of relatives in Kosovo killed at least seven people and wounded 43, making it the deadliest attack in the province since 13 Serb farmers were machine-gunned to death while tilling their fields in July 1999. 

The three Serb policemen died Sunday when their van was demolished by what were believed to be anti-tank mines on a road near Lucane, a southern Serbian village just outside the buffer zone. 

The zone was created to prevent what officials feared would be clashes between Serbian forces and the NATO-led peacekeepers patrolling Kosovo under the 1999 peace deal for the province. 

Only lightly armed Serbian police are allowed to enter the zone, and ethnic Albanian militants have taken control of most of the strip in recent months. 

Yugoslav authorities say the peacekeepers have failed to fulfill a mandate to keep the ethnic Albanian militants and their weapons out of the buffer zone. 

Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic appealed Sunday to NATO Secretary General George Robertson to ensure that the peacekeeping force immediately seals Kosovo's boundary with Serbia. 

Since November, the militants have attacked Serbian police inside the zone and have sometimes launched attacks across the line into Serbia proper. The explosion Sunday took place about 200 yards outside the zone. 

Serbian police came under fire while trying to pull the victims of the explosion out of the wrecked police vehicle, a government statement said. No policemen were injured by the gunfire. 

Jonuz Musliu, the political officer of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, denied the group was behind the policemen's deaths and condemned the bus bombing. 

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic, who submitted a peace plan for the buffer zone to NATO last week, said the government's patience was wearing thin. 

``It is not permissible that such attacks continue,'' Covic said. ``We also demand from the international community specific decisions.'' 

Meanwhile, U.N. officials in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, said a German forensic team had begun identifying victims in the bus attack by examining bodies and body parts laid out in a large tent. There were fears that the death toll could rise. 

Hundreds of Serbs gathered Sunday in the Serb enclave of Gracanica, some six miles south of Pristina, to protest Friday's bombing. 

Tens of thousands of Serbs have fled their homes in Kosovo since the United Nations and NATO took over, fearing reprisals from ethnic Albanians. 

Mines kill 3 Serb police near Kosovo -officials

By Radoman Iric


LUCANE, Yugoslavia, Feb 18, 2001 (Reuters)

Three Serb police officers were killed on Sunday when their vehicle hit two anti-tank mines in a buffer zone next to the Kosovo boundary, Serbian officials said. 

The explosions were the latest episode in the sporadic violence which has gripped the Presevo Valley area of southern Serbia since an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group emerged more than a year ago to fight Serb security forces. 

The blasts also came just two days after seven Serbs were killed and dozens wounded in northern Kosovo when a bomb exploded underneath the bus in which they were travelling. 

Reporters taken to the scene of the landmine blasts saw charred bodies, a vehicle completely blown apart with fragments scattered up to 200 metres away, and two identical craters, about 1.5 metres (5 feet) deep and 2.5 metres wide. 

The police vehicle was delivering supplies to other officers in the buffer zone on Sunday morning when it ran over the anti-tank mines near the village of Lucane, officials said. 

"It all happened in a completely peaceful situation, without any shoooting going on," Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic told Reuters. 

The guerrillas say they are fighting Serb repression of the substantial ethnic Albanian population in the Presevo Valley. Serb officials have branded them terrorists whose only goal is to join the area to ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo. 

NATO, anxious to bolster Serbia's new democratic rulers who took power after the downfall of the alliance's bete noire Slobodan Milosevic, has called on the rebels to lay down their arms and given cautious backing to a Serb peace plan. 

NATO said on Thursday the alliance was prepared to discuss changes to the Ground Safety Zone, the five km (three mile) wide strip on the Serbian side of the boundary in which currently only lightly armed Serb police are allowed. 

The zone was set up after NATO bombing drove Serb forces out of Kosovo in 1999 to end repression of ethnic Albanians. It was created to keep a safe distance between NATO peackeepers in Kosovo and the Yugoslav army and Serb special police. 

However, the de facto security vacuum has been exploited by the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) which has gained control of more and more of the zone since it emerged in January last year. 

The latest killings bring the official number of Serb police killed since the fighting began to at least 11. The guerrillas say nine of their fighters have been killed. 

NATO estimates the strength of the guerrilla group at between 500 and 800 fighters. 

Kosovo Serbs to rally against bus bombing

By Beth Potter


KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia, Feb 17, 2001 (Reuters) 

Kosovo Serbs planned a protest rally on Saturday against a bus bombing which killed seven members of their community, while Western powers urged Serbs not to attack ethnic Albanians in revenge. 

As grisly eyewitness accounts of Friday's attack emerged, leaders of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority condemned the bombing as a serious blow to attempts to build peace and let them rule the volatile province. 

The Yugoslav government declared Sunday a day of national mourning. Serbs were due to hold a protest rally at 1200 GMT on Saturday in the Kosovo city of Mitrovica, scene of many violent clashes since the province came under international control. 

The bomb, which NATO peacekeepers believe contained up to 200 pounds (90 kg) of explosives, exploded after a convoy of buses carrying Serbs crossed from Serbia proper into the north of the province. 

"It was like in a dream. I suddenly saw people shouting, screaming and covered with blood. Some of them were lying outside, around the bus," survivor Zivorad Stojanovic told Reuters Television from his bed at a British military hospital. 

His seven-year-old daughter, a bandage on one arm, lay next to him in the hospital near the Kosovo capital Pristina. 

"Blood and dust were everywhere. The girl sitting next to me was ripped out of her seat through the window. Parts of her body were left on the bus," survivor Momirka Milovanovic was quoted as saying in the Belgrade-based Blic newspaper. 

"I saw a dead child when I was taken out. People were just lying there dead, blown apart." 

BODIES EVERYWHERE 

The convoy was being escorted by members of the KFOR peacekeeping force, charged with establishing a "safe and secure" environment in Kosovo after NATO bombing in 1999 drove out Serb forces repressing ethnic Albanians. 

"A leg was hanging from the top of the bus torn apart by the explosion. The bodies were everywhere," 27-year-old Gorica Scepanovic was quoted as saying by Blic. 

"I asked a Swedish KFOR soldier not to leave us alone. I thought the assailants would shoot at us after the blast. He just hugged me and took me away," she said. 

All major diplomatic powers condemned the bombing and the United States appealed to everyone in the province to keep a cool head. Spirals of violence triggered by an attack have frequently been the hallmark of post-war Kosovo. 

"We call on all parties in Kosovo to remain calm, avoid violent acts of reprisal and to seek political means of resolving their grievances," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said in a statement released in Washington. 

Police said they were questioning two suspects detained on Friday near the blast site. 

Kosovo legally remains part of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia but has been under de facto international rule since June 1999. 

The United Nations is charged with giving the province substantial autonomy until its final status is agreed. Ethnic Albanians want independence, a vision opposed by Kosovo Serbs and the Belgrade government. 

Countless acts of ethnic Albanian vengeance have plagued the province since the U.N. and NATO moved into Kosovo and around 180,000 Serbs are estimated to have fled the province.

News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty
International

16 February 2001
EUR 70/003/2001
29/01


Amnesty International today condemned this morning's unprovoked attack on a convoy of buses travelling north of Podujevo in northern Kosovo near the border with Serbia proper, thought to have been carried out by armed ethnic Albanians. The buses - under a heavy escort of Swedish Kosovo Force (KFOR) troops - were carrying Serb civilians from the town of Strpce in southern Kosovo to Serbia.

Latest reports suggest that seven people have been killed and at least 35 have been injured, at least ten of them seriously, when the lead bus was attacked. A spokesperson for KFOR reported that the explosion - probably a mine - was automatically triggered, and completely destroyed the first bus
in the convoy.

"From the reports we have received, it appears that this attack on unarmed Serb civilians was clearly well planned and was deliberately aimed to cause injury and death," a spokesperson for Amnesty International said today. "AI condemns such deliberate, arbitrary and unlawful killings."

The human rights organization calls on the United Nations interim Mission In Kosovo (UNMIK) to ensure that those responsible are apprehended and brought to justice.

The convoy of seven buses - known as the Ni? express - was carrying an estimated 200 Serb passengers. Buses carrying Serb civilians are regularly escorted through Kosovo by KFOR to
enable the Serb minority to go shopping and to visit relatives in Serbia.

Though no group has claimed responsibility for this morning's attack, a machine-gun attack on Tuesday on another bus carrying Serb civilians on the Urosevac-Strpce road which resulted in the death of one man and the injury of three people earlier this week has been attributed by UNMIK to armed ethnic
Albanians. Five suspects have been arrested in connection with that incident. Tensions have been high in Strpce since Tuesday.

Additional KFOR troops were brought in on Wednesday to calm the situation after a group of around 1000 local Serb residents attacked the UNMIK building and UN vehicles on Tuesday evening.

Background

Members of the Serb community have increasingly come under attack both in Kosovo and in southern Serbia since the escalation of tension in the region last November. This followed the seizure of the five kilometre-wide Ground Safety zone (established under the Kumanovo Military-Technical Agreement of June 1999) between Kosovo and Serbia proper by the armed ethnic-Albanian opposition group, the Liberation Army of Prevo, Medvedje and Bujanovac (UÇPMB). The area has since been intensively policed by KFOR troops. A peace plan proposed by the governments of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has recently been rejected by civilian representatives of the ethnic Albanian community in the region, and by the UÇPMB, who want the three municipalities to be part of Kosovo, rather than Serbia.
 

EU urges end to extreme Albanian violence in Serbia

STOCKHOLM, Feb 16, 2001 (Reuters)

The European Union on Friday urged an immediate end to violence in southern Serbia, addressing its call specifically to what it said were armed extremist Albanian groups. 

"The EU supports the initiative of the Belgrade authorities to find a peaceful and durable solution to the current situation in Southern Serbia which risks destabilising the region," Sweden, which holds the EU presidency, said in a statement. 

It called on the Albanian community in the region to appoint representatives who could engage in constructive dialogue with Serbian and Yugoslav authorities. 

"This implies an immediate cessation of violence by the armed extremist Albanian groups notably in the GSZ (Ground Safety Zone). 

The GSZ is a five-kilometre zone extending beyond the Kosovo province border into Serb territory. 

The commander of peacekeeping forces in Kosovo, General Carlo Cabigiosu, said on Wednesday extremists on both sides were bent on stirring up trouble to try to block a peaceful future for the province. 

Balkan leaders and EU officials are scheduled to meet on February 23 in Macedonia's capital Skopje to discuss security in the region. 

The Swedish presidency said the EU regarded a peace plan adopted by the governments of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on February 8 as "a good basis for further discussions." 

Economic and social development, full integration of the Albanian community into political life and civil society as well as respect for human rights were the only guarantee for longer-term stability, the EU said. 

Will Macedonia be next?

By Alex Standish, Jane's Intelligence Editor February 5, 2001

Current events in the Balkans indicate that JID's oft-repeated warnings of an escalating series of regional conflicts are proving accurate. In the space of a week ethnic Albanian terrorists have launched an attack on a Macedonian police station, 2,000 Kosovar Albanians have been fighting with KFOR troops in Mitrovica and there has been a serious upsurge in the conflict between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanians in southern Serbia.

All of these incidents have a common root: radical Albanian nationalism - and the failure of the United Nations' Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to come up with a workable strategy to contain the problem. Hitherto UNMIK and its multi-national peace-keeping force KFOR have opted for a low-key response to ethnic Albanian violence, particularly in the months following the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces in June 1999. Rather than deal with the conflict at a political level, the UN prefers to present the situation as primarily a policing and security issue.

In fact, UNMIK's freedom of action is strictly limited by the international determination to block any moves towards independence for Kosovo. UN Resolution 1244, under which UNMIK's activities are authorised, makes it plain that Kosovo remains an integral part of Federal Yugoslavia. Since this is unacceptable to the Kosovo Albanians, co-operation between UNMIK and Belgrade is increasing tension.

For the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the fall of their arch-enemy Slobodan Milosevic has been a political disaster. The leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) have admitted that they deliberately provoked the Yugoslav regime in order to win the media war and "internationalise" their struggle against Belgrade. While Milosevic bears much of the responsibility for the decade of Serbian oppression against the Kosovar Albanians, the KLA raised the stakes and encouraged armed conflict.

The notion that the KLA disarmed in September 1999 after signing an agreement with the UN is a blatant fiction. The political strategists behind the guerrillas were never going to be satisfied with a return to Kosovo's political autonomy within Yugoslavia. Their objectives include the destabilisation of neighbouring Macedonia and the detaching of the Presevo region of southern Serbia from Federal Yugoslavia. In both cases, unless the KLA (or the groups which it has spawned) are checked, there will be a repeat in Presevo and western Macedonia of the "ethnic cleansing" which has taken place in Kosovo since June 1999.

The low level attacks against the Macedonian police which began last year are supposedly the work of the so-called Liberation Army, four of whom have been arrested. Ethnic Albanians make up an estimated 25-35% of Macedonia's population of two million and are settled predominantly in the west of the country.

The Macedonian Albanians currently have a tense, but generally productive relationship with the government in Skopje. Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski's coalition government includes an ethnic Albanian party among its partners. Many observers suggest that the Macedonian Albanian leadership is willing to wait for a generation before pressing their demands for independence. This is because the Albanians' higher birthrate will provide them with an increasing demographic advantage as this century progresses.

However, there is also evidence that the KLA - which included a number of Macedonian Albanians in its ranks - has stockpiled its weapons across the border in Macedonia, rather than surrender them to KFOR. The 22 January attack on the police station at Tearce involved grenades, possibly from a KLA cache. As in Kosovo, the escalation of violence is more likely to come as a result of a radical guerrilla campaign, rather than from the established political leadership.

Likewise, renewed fighting in the Presevo Valley in southern Serbia can be attributed to KLA guerrillas taking advantage of the UN buffer zone to launch attacks on the region's Serbian authorities. A proposal this week by NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson that Belgrade should offer the Presevo Albanians "a greater degree of participation ... in their own administration" fails to address the critical issue: the KLA strategy of destabilisation. A peaceful political settlement of the Presevo crisis is precisely what the guerrillas are determined to avoid, because it would block their objective of creating a pan-Albanian federation in the Balkans. The real risk is not a "Greater Albania", but the emergence of an ultra-nationalist "Greater Kosovo" which threatens to destabilise the entire region.

At present, KLA terrorism in Macedonia is still a relatively minor issue - just as it was in Kosovo from 1995 to 1998. The KLA started its activities by attacking Serbian police patrols. However, the ultimate aim is to provoke the authorities into making a military response which will serve to unite the ethnic Albanian minority in western Macedonia. This is precisely the plan in southern Serbia.

As KFOR attempts to combat the rise in KLA activity, particularly along the border between Kosovo and Presevo, the risks of the KLA launching a guerrilla war against the UN will increase. The general disillusionment with UNMIK and KFOR, as well as the poor economic situation in Kosovo is likely to lead to a rise in radicalism, especially amongst young Albanians. This week's riots in Mitrovica demonstrate how the tension can easily escalate.

It can only be a matter of time before the Balkan powder-keg explodes once more - with more than 50,000 international troops and police liable to be caught in the crossfire. This UN mission has all the makings of a major disaster.