Kosova Crisis Center
link to alb-net
FROM ADAM SAGE IN PARIS
A FRENCH officer accused of spying for Serbia yesterday explained for the first time how he came to hand details of Nato airstrike plans to a Yugoslav diplomat.
Commandant Pierre-Henri Bunel said he revealed a classified document in October in an attempt to show the Serbs "the scope of the destruction that was envisaged".
In a letter to the newspaper Libération, he said: "Nervously worn out by years of accumulated stress, I took an initiative for which I had no mandate. I was obsessed by the thought of a human disaster. I wanted to persuade the Serbs that the threat of airstrikes was real."
US intelligence told France last year that Commandant Bunel had disclosed details of Nato's targets to Jovan Milanovic, head of the Yugoslav diplomatic mission at the European Union. Commandant Bunel is under formal investigation for "giving intelligence to a foreign power".
In his letter to Libération, he said the Serbs explicitly warned of a mass deportation of Kosovans if the Nato airstrikes went ahead.
New massacres over albanian
population around villages of Bjeshkėt e Nemura
Istog, April 16th (Kosovapress) After fierce attacks of serbian terrorist forces in the
villages over highlands of Nemuna, commune of Istogut, particularly in Dubov tė Madhe,
Dubov tė Vogėl and Jabllanicė( of Radavcit) of Peja, serbian criminals have committed
terrible massacres over the civilian population. The streets are full of killed and
massacred people. Yesterday a group of 50 people who felt in the serbian ambush, are all
eleminated except 5 people who have reached to escape. There no reports over these
massacred people, who they are and from where they come, but it is known that it is civil
population. Alarmant situation also prevails in the villages of Lugit tė Drinit, where
the most part of the population of this side is concentrated. Therefore, we appeal to this
population not to go in the direction of Rozhajė, because it can be any terror exercised
over it.
'Kosova will soon be empty' (BBC)
Some 5,000 refugees entered Macedonia overnight
The UN refugee agency fears there will soon be no ethnic Albanians left in Kosova as Serb
forces look increasingly determined to expel the entire population.
Between Thursday and Friday, more than 12,000 people have streamed into Albania, Macedonia
and Montenegro.
UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said less than a quarter of the province's Albanians
remained in Kosova.
Refugees say entire towns are being emptied by Serb forces on the rampage. Tales of
execution, torture and arson are common.
"The expulsions which were put on hold or slowed down over the last two weeks have
now resumed with full force,'' said Mr Janowski.
"The effort by the Serb authorities to expel the entire ethnic population of Kosova
is again under way.''
Up to 5,000 refugees poured into Macedonia on Thursday night, according to the
International Committee of the Red Cross. Some said the Serbs had shelled and shot at them
as they left.
Aid workers are worried by reports that at least one train and two buses went back into
Kosova from the Blace border crossing on Thursday without anyone disembarking.
The UNHCR reported another 3,254 refugees had arrived in Albania.
Serbs could use nuke-laced arms
(Washington Times)
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
U.S. intelligence agencies warned NATO military commanders last week that Yugoslavia could
resort to nuclear-laced weapons in the Balkans conflict, The Washington Times has learned.
Nuclear material for a radiological weapon -- also known as a "dirty nuke" -- is
being stored at the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences, located about six miles southeast
of the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade, according to officials familiar with a Pentagon
intelligence report.
A "dirty nuke" does not result in a large explosion but could kill by spreading
radioactive material with conventional explosives in lethal doses, the officials said.
NATO bombing planners have taken steps to make sure the facility is not bombed, the
officials said. "This is not on anybody's target list," said one Pentagon
official, who noted that NATO war planners know about the facility and the nuclear
material there. The Pentagon report estimates about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of highly
enriched uranium --weapons-grade fuel for a nuclear bomb -- are stored at the Vinca
center. About seven kilograms would be required for fueling a nuclear bomb.
The research center also has 53 kilograms of freshly irradiated Uranium-235 and about 10
kilograms of spent fuel from a research reactor. That material is not regarded as
"weapons grade" fuel but is dangerous because of its radioactivity and its
potential use as a contaminating weapon. "If this were reprocessed, it could be used
in a radiological device," said the official. The warning was contained in a
classified report on nuclear material being stored at a poorly guarded Serbian research
center near Belgrade. President Clinton said Thursday after a speech in San Francisco that
the use of weapons of mass destruction is a danger known to U.S. intelligence agencies.
Asked how he would respond to the use of such arms, Mr. Clinton said: "My response
would be swift and overwhelming, and we have, obviously, intelligence about the Serbs in a
number of areas militarily. "But I think they are quite well aware of the dangers of
overly escalating this," Mr. Clinton said. "And I think that's all I should say
about it right now." The president appeared to be restating the Pentagon policy first
outlined several years ago by then-Defense Secretary William Perry that the U.S. military
response to the use of battlefield nuclear, chemical or biological weapons would be
devastating attacks with conventional arms.
The Pentagon intelligence warning said that the nuclear material is vulnerable to theft.
Satellite photographs taken recently of the Vinca center reveal the facility is protected
with a single guard booth and that it does not appear to be well secured. A U.S. official
said the Belgrade government has documents, equipment and precursor chemicals that could
be used in making chemical weapons, as well as production facilities. It is not known
whether the Serbs actually have munitions weapons for chemical arms or stockpiles of such
weapons, the official said. The precursor chemicals indicate that the Serbs could produce
the deadly nerve agent sarin, the official said. Sarin is extremely toxic; small amounts
can disrupt the central nervous system. Serbian forces also may have capabilities for
producing choking agents or blistering agents such as mustard gas, as well as riot-control
agents that have weapons potential, the official said. A 1996 report by the group Human
Rights Watch said there were witness testimonies indicating Serbian-backed forces in
Bosnia-Herzegovina used chemical weapons in carrying out the massacre of Bosnians in
Srebrenica in the summer of 1995.
The report stated that the Yugoslav army in 1991 had a chemical weapons program that
included stocks of sarin, mustard gas and a psychochemical incapacitant known as BZ.
"There are no indications that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has destroyed its
stockpiles of chemical agents or disassembled its chemical agent production equipment
since" the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992, the report states. Yugoslav army doctrine,
according to report, also called for troops to use chemical weapons "in surrounding
and destroying a group," or when army forces are blocked from moving. Belgrade's
biological weapons capabilities, if any, are not known.
Campaign of arrests and raids in
Presheva and its surrounding areas
Preshevė, April 16th (Kosovapress) Since 5°° o`clock on the yesterday morning, Presheva
and its environs are under unseen pressure till today, we can say that they are under full
military-police enclosure. According to witness, the raids begun at the quarter called
"Terlla", which lies about three kilometres in the north of Presheva.Raid
continued in the village of Rahovicė, where evry house is being raid and looted. Even the
city of Presheva is raid, pedestrians are being maltreated and arrested without any
reason. All this campaign is happening because of the NATO airstrikes over the serbian
military bases in these regions. We can mention that, NATO had undertaken actions over
serbian bases in the village of Leran, 7 kilometres east of Presheva and in the western
part over the hills of Presheva. A big concentration of the military means is placed in
the Church of the village of Rahovicė. Ther big concentrations of military forces in the
village of Cakanoc. It is suspected that many passages and other strategic positions are
mined. The population of Presheva and villages around cross-border are afraid of any
possible massacre from serbian terrorists, so now they have started to leave their house
and to move in Macedonia. The number of 5000 people in near the cross-border with
Macedonia and there are no reports about their fate.
'I forgive Nato for killing my
husband and daughter' (Sunday Times)
FROM SAM KILEY IN MORINE, NORTHERN ALBANIA
SURVIVORS of the accidental Nato attack on a column of Kosovan refugees yesterday
contradicted Nato spokesmen who said their convoy might have included military vehicles
and personnel.
They said they had already forgiven Nato for the killing of at least 20 people in two
attacks on the same convoy. But they were bemused by Nato suggestions that they had been
part of a mixed column of Serb military and their Kosova Albanian victims.
"There were no troops among us. We passed them on the road and they told us to get
going all the time. But there were no vehicles, none at all, from the army with us. We
were alone and walking for four days," said Faisa Cela, whose husband and 14-year-old
daughter were killed in the Nato blunder.
However, refugees from another column which had not been attacked gave the first absolute
confirmation that Serb forces were using civilians as cover against Nato airstrikes. They
said that they had been forced to walk for four days while Serb soldiers rode on their
lorries among them.
Mostly from the villages around Dakovica, many confirmed that they had walked either side
of a road while the Serbs rode in protected luxury on looted tractors. "Those who
could not keep up were killed. We just had to stay close to their tractors so that they
would not be hit," said Miusheka Xani, 18.
But Mrs Cela had been in a convoy without Serbs where she was sitting in a trailer dragged
by a tractor which was destroyed along with three others by what Nato said were two
aircraft.
Arold Isegg, a Nato spokesman, said that a pilot who had seen Serbs torching village after
village had spotted what he thought was a military convoy and attacked it with two bombs.
A fellow pilot struck the most devastating blow, hitting the tractors. That was confirmed
by many witnesses, all of whom had lost loved ones in the strikes and had themselves been
wounded.
Mrs Cela's hands were badly burnt, her knees and head had been cut with flying debris. Her
surviving son was hit in the arm."I don't believe it was Nato. But if it was, I
forgive them for taking my daughter and my husband. They are trying to save our people,
not kill them like the Serbs are," she said.
Mehmet Byrani, a farmer, who had a shoulder wound, said: "It was very fast, so I
could be wrong. There were two attacks, and then there were bodies and bits of people all
over the place."
Others who survived the attack stuck to their story that they had been bombed by Serb
aircraft. "I know what a MiG looks and sounds like, and that was a MiG,"
insisted one 53-year-old man. From Sam Kiley in morine, northern albania.
Ethnic Cleansing Brutally
Intensified-U.N.
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations accused Belgrade Friday of increasing the brutality
and scale of ethnic cleansing in Kosova which NATO has vowed to halt with its air war.
A train disgorged some 3,000 ethnic Albanians at the Yugoslav-Macedonian border Friday.
They walked past minefields through a no man's land where some 45,000 earlier refugees
were stuck for days in filth and squalor as Macedonia hesitated to let them in.
In Albania, officials said about 2,500 refugees forced from their homes by Serb soldiers
had streamed into the north of the country and many more were headed across the border.
International monitors said heavy shelling was heard in the remote Tropoje district of
northern Albania near the Yugoslav frontier as Albanian police reported fighting at a
nearby border post.
NATO kept up its air attacks on Yugoslavia, bombing targets around Belgrade overnight
despite admitting it might have mistakenly hit civilians in Kosova.
NATO officials were expected to face tough questioning at a regular news briefing in
Brussels to clear confusion still surrounding Wednesday's attack.
The alliance denied a Yugoslav news agency report that NATO missiles had struck a refugee
center overnight in the Serbian town of Paracin. The official Tanjug agency said the
refugees were in shelters during the raid and escaped injury.
At NATO military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, an official said alliance aircraft had
struck an ammunition dump in the vicinity of Paracin and a radio relay station 30 km (20
miles) away. In both cases NATO was confident it had hit only the military targets, the
official said.
The air raids underscored NATO's vow not to let what it called the mistaken bombing of a
civilian vehicle two days ago weaken its resolve to cripple President Slobodan Milosevic's
war machine, largely by targeting fuel supplies and communications.
The Geneva-based United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, accused Milosevic of wanting to
empty Kosova of those who remained of the original 1.8 million ethnic Albanians.
``The expulsions which were put on hold or slowed down over the last two weeks have now
resumed with full force,'' UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski told a news briefing. ``The
effort by the Serb authorities to expel the entire ethnic population of Kosova is again
under way.''
Citing testimony from the latest batch of refugees to leave the Serbian province, he said:
``We can tell that terrible things are happening in Kosova.''
He added: ``The brutality of the expulsions as well as the scale of the expulsions is
picking up.''
Janowski said UNHCR, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, did not see how ethnic
Albanians inside Kosova could be helped as long as Yugoslav forces remained in the
province.
NATO has ruled out suspending its unprecedented air campaign until Milosevic withdraws his
troops from Kosova.
The New York Times reported Friday that the Pentagon intended to ask President Clinton to
activate as many as 33,000 reservists and National Guard troops to strengthen the attack
on Yugoslavia.
The request, expected before Monday, follows a week in which NATO has intensified its air
raids and asked for an extra 300 aircraft from the United States, bringing its total air
armada to 1,100.
Belgrade's sky was lit up by anti-aircraft fire as NATO planes flew over the city
overnight.
Tanjug said the city's suburb of Rakovica was hit by two missiles and it also reported an
attack on Belgrade's Pancevo oil refinery.
``Installations on the Pancevo oil refinery and an oil depot in the nitrogen plant were
hit,'' Tanjug said.
For the first time, NATO hit targets near the Hungarian border. Four explosions were
reported in the northern Serbian town of Subotica, just 12 km (eight miles) from Hungary.
Attacks and confrontations in
Arllat and Llapushnik (KP)
Llapushnik, April 16th (Kosovapress) Today, since the hour 6.30, the serbian forces
positioned in Arllat and Llapushnik, have begun an attack against these two villages and
particularly against the positions of KLA. The serbian forces have stricken with heavy
arms. Their attacks have been faced by the soldiers of the 121st Brigade. The most fierce
confrontations have taken place in the quarter of Bytyqve tė Arllatit. In this case it is
confirmed that 7 members of the criminal serbian forces have been killed, while from the
fighters of KLA, a soldier fell heroically and another is slightly wounded. The serbian
terrorist forces entered in this quarter and set some houses to fire, which up to now had
been untouchable by the attacks of the barbarians.