Kosova Crisis Center
link to alb-net
- Two Serb mayors urge Belgrade to end Kosovo crisis
- KLA urges NATO to provide it with weapons
- Hillary Clinton likens Kosovars' plight to Holocaust
- Refugees see fresh NATO bombing in southern Kosovo
- White House Won't Impede Yugoslavia's Net Access
- One serb officer killed and another one injured
- 62 Albanian civillians rescued by KLA forces in Llapi Operating Zone
Two Serb mayors urge Belgrade to end Kosovo crisis
BELGRADE, May 14 (AFP) - Two Serbian town mayors, members
of the opposition, urged Belgrade authorities Friday to do everything possible to halt the
punishing NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Zoran Zivkovic, mayor of the southern town of Nis,
heavily hit by the NATO raids, urged Belgrade to support the G8 nations' plan for Kosovo,
as a "basis for political solution" for the conflict.
"No idea is worth the eath of whole population. Patriotism is not to push the whole
nation towards death, but to ensure the future for them," Zivkovic, a top official in
the Democratic party (DS) of Zoran Djindjic, told reporters here.
Velimir Ilic, mayor of Cacak, 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Belgrade, where four
people were killed and 13 injured in NATO air raids Monday, called on the authorities to
do "everything to stop the bombing."
"Destruction in the country is great, and there are more and more dead every
day," Ilic, leader of the opposition Serbia-Together party, told the independent Beta
news agency, calling on the Serbian and Yugoslav parliaments to hold daily sessions.
"We want to hear our deputies, they should take responsibility, because they have
been elected by the people," Ilic told Beta.
He added that more than 40,000 workers in Cacak had lost their jobs since five major
factories were destroyed in the bombing.
Zivkovic said Belgrade authorities should "back the G8 plan," which calls for
the return to Ksovo of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees under
international protection, or "to offer their own proposal."
"Now we have only rethoric, but nothing concrete. We are not informed about what the
Serbian authorities are doing to turn back the situation to the political track,"
Zivkovic said.
He called on the authorites to "announce their programme for the future as soon as
possible, to tell us what is going to happen in the next five or 50 days."
Urging an end to the 52-day long NATO bombing campaign, Zivkovic said that "after the
war and everything we have suffered," elections on "all levels" should be
held.
He rejected accusations by Serbian state media that party leader Djindjic, former Belgrade
mayor, was "collaborating with the aggressor."
Serbian official television RTS on Thursday accused the reformist Montenegro president
Milo Djukanovic and Djindjic of "treason".
Zivkovic said that Djindjic had "contacts with domestic and foreign politicians to
push for the end of bombing and ensure aid for reconstruction of the country."
KLA urges NATO to provide it with
weapons
TIRANA, - The seperatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) on Friday urged NATO and western
governments to provide it with weapons and organise air drops of food and medicine inside
the embattled province. "I call on NATO and the west to support the KLA politically,
morally and militarily," said Jakup Krasniqi, a spokesman for the Interim Government
of Kosovo (IGK), the KLA's political wing.
The international community must "lift the arms embargo on the KLA" and provide
it "with sophisticated equipment with the aim of stopping (Yugoslav President
Slobodan) Milosevic's barbarism," Krasniqi added.
Meeting in Bonn earlier this month, Russia, the United States and their Group of Eight
partners agreed on a set of principles to resolve the Kosovo crisis. One of the principles
was that the KLA would have to be disarmed.
On the humanitarian front, the IGK spokesman said "urgent" action was needed
inside Kosovo, where the remaining population is "threatened by starvation and lack
of medical supplies."
He called for "humanitarian airdrops of food and medicine," inside Kosovo, in
the zones controlled by the KLA.
He named four areas where the seperatist group had retained control -- Llape, Drenica,
Dukajgen and Pashtrik, all in southern Kosovo.
Krasniqi said the KLA were mainly fighting defensive positions, but had managed to
"inflict serious casualties on men and hardware of the enemy force."
British journal Jane's Defence Weekly this week said the KLA has been reduced to 4,000 men
in Kosovo, sheltering in three isolated hilltop enclaves.
The majority of troops in the KLA, which claimed to have 24,000 men under arms, have
retreated into Albania or have dropped their arms and mixed with the refugees, the journal
said.
Krasniqi also "demanded" that the international community recognise "the
independence of Kosovo and its government," and called on moderate Kosovo leader
Ibrahim Rugova to join the IGK.
Rugova has never formally recognised the IGK, which is run by KLA leader Hashim Thaci.
Meanwhile, another KLA spokesman on Friday confirmed to AFP that former Croatian
Brigadier-General Agim Ceku had been appointed as the new chief of staff of the KLA from
the start of May.
In his new post, Ceku is expected to change the organisation of the KLA, now divided into
seven "operational zones" and 17 "brigades", as well as improve
discipline and training, Jane's said.
Hillary Clinton likens Kosovars'
plight to Holocaust
SKOPJE, - US First Lady Hillary Clinton toured a refugee camp here Friday, where she
likened the plight of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians to the agony of the Jews under the Third
Reich. Clinton said the suffering of the Kosovars reminded her of "Schindler's
List" and "Sophie's Choice" -- movies portraying the fate of Jews
systematically murdered or persecuted by the Nazis.
"I keep putting myself in their faces and stories. I hope all of us do... I'm hoping
that we will never forget," she said.
The wife of US President Bill Clinton spent an hour walking under a hot sun amid the dusty
green tents and talking with some of the camp's 18,000 inhabitants.
"These people all want to go home, to their own homes and their land, in peace and
security," Clinton told reporters, her arms wrapped around the shoulders of bashful
Kosovar children.
Clinton took a tougher line in a meeting with representatives of the alphabet soup of
humanitarian organizations that have set up shop at Brazda and eight other refugee camps
in Macedonia.
"I want to send a message to the refugees that we do not intend to allow the evil
that Milosevic has perpetrated against these people," she said.
"That is a very fundamental committment that is shared not only by those in the
United States, but by our allies as well."
Clinton, who was earlier this week in Ireland and Britain, was the latest in a steady
stream of VIPs to make high-profile visits to Macedonia, where camps are more easily
reached than those in Albania.
Others this week included Vanessa Redgrave, Bianca Jagger and Roger Moore, the latter not
as James Bond but as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador.
But Clinton's day-long visit was politically more significant, given the United States'
driving role in the NATO air strikes against the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic that began 52 days ago.
Before her arrival, reporters heard three distinct explosions coming from the direction of
Kosovo, the border of which is only 10 kilometers (six miles) away.
Clinton's visit was limited to the northwest corner of Brazda, where an Israeli-run day
care center ensured that plenty of children were around for the television cameras.
But despite yellow cordon tape and pushy Kosovar volunteer security guards, about 500
refugees were able to watch her pass by, greeting her with rounds of "Clinton,
Clinton" and "USA, USA."
Adelina Mejzinolli, 16, from the Drenica region, was the boldest among them: she held up a
framed picture of Hamza and Adem Jashari, bearded martyrs of the Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA) who died in a firefight with Serbian police in February last year.
"Our people love these guys," said Mejzinolli, a student who has no news about
two brothers and one sister who are KLA guerrillas. "We want this picture to be
seen."
In a salute to Macedonia's ethnic diversity, Clinton went on to visit an Orthodox church
in Skopje before meeting President Kiro Gligorov and Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski.
"We used this opportunity to inform Mrs. Clinton directly about the situation in our
country, our problems especially with the refugee crisis, and the financial support which
we need," said Georgievski afterwards.
He said his meeting with Clinton, at the residence of US ambassador Christopher Hill, an
architect of the Rambouillet peace accord for Kosovo, left him feeling
"reassured" about US pledges of support.
Macedonia's economy, which depends heavily on trade with Yugoslavia, has been devestated
by the Kosovo conflict, and many fear that the country's delicate ethnic balance is also
endangered.
Gligorov and others in the government have repeatedly faulted NATO and EU members of not
doing more to help Macedonia deal with its burden of more than 200,000 refugees.
US officials said Clinton told her hosts that Washington was planning to redirect 21
million dollars to Macedonia this year, with two million dollars already at Hill's
disposition for "civil society and micro-economic assistance."
Refugees see fresh NATO bombing
in southern Kosovo
MORINA, Albania, - NATO planes bombed Serb forces in southern Kosovo on Friday, refugees
arriving at this Albanian border post said. They said they had seen NATO planes bombing
around the towns of Zur, six kilometres (four miles) from the border, and Prizren, but
military activity seemed to have slowed later Friday when the sky was cloudy.
>From the border, trails of smoke could be seen rising above the hills.
The stream of refugees from Kosovo stopped around midday, and by 4:30 p.m. (1430 GMT) not
a single additional refugee had arrived at the border.
On Thursday only one Kosovar, from Prizren, arrived at the Morina border post.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the man had seen a group of
about 15 refugees who had been ordered to return to Zur by Serb forces.
The border region remains volatile. NATO has in recent days bombed positions in southern
Kosovo near Prizren and around the border post of Morina around which the separatist
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is operating.
Earlier Friday, international monitors said a fourth civilian had been found dead
following a Serb military incursion into Albanian territory earlier in the week.
"They have found a fourth elderly man dead near the village of Perroi I Thanes,"
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) spokesman, Andrea Angeli, told
AFP.
A woman in her 70s, a 65-year-old man and a 75-year-old woman were found dead after
Tuesday's 12-hour gunbattle around Perroi I Thanes, some 700 metres (yards) inside
Albanian territory.
The village was occupied Tuesday by at least 50 Serb soldiers, although they withdrew back
into Kosovo later that night.
White House Won't Impede
Yugoslavia's Net Access
Even though it was used and abused by Serbian
"hackers", the United States will allow the Serbs to challenge the
misinformation they are receiving from the Milosevic press within the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia.
14 May 1999, 4:24 PM CST By Bob Woods, Newsbytes. WASHINGTON, DC, U.S.A.,
After several days of worry, Yugoslavian Internet service providers can breathe easily.
Their satellite-delivered Internet service from a US-based company won't be cut, despite a
US embargo of their war-torn country, a State Department spokesperson said.
During a news briefing this afternoon, State Department spokesperson James P. Rubin said
full and open Internet access "can only help the Serbian people know the ugly truth
about the atrocities and crimes against humanity being perpetrated in Kosovo by the
Milosevic regime."
Loral Space & Communications Inc.'s [NYSE:LOR] Loral Orion subsidiary acknowledged
late Thursday it had been discussing with the US Treasury Department the possibility that
it could be prevented from beaming Internet access via satellite into Yugoslavia.
President Clinton two weeks ago signed an embargo that forbids US exports of oil and other
items - even software - as a result of ongoing aggression against ethnic Albanians in
Kosovo.
But Rubin today said the Clinton administration would not cut off the flow of information
to Yugoslavia. "The Serbian people deserve to access independent and objective
information, whether by the Internet or other media," Rubin said.
The US is also encouraging Serbians to use the Net and other media sources to
"challenge the misinformation they are receiving from the Milosevic press within the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," Rubin said.
Earlier today, the Center for Democracy and Technology had urged the White House not to
cut Loral Orion's service to Yugoslav ISPs, saying the impeding of Internet access to
Yugoslavia would have "(harmed) the goal of promoting democracy and ethnic tolerance
in Serbia."
CDT Policy Analyst Ari Schwartz said, "The Internet remains one of the major sources
of independent news reporting and information in Serbia, and is one of the main means for
democratic opponents of Milosevic to communicate with the outside world."
A news release from BeoNET earlier this week claimed, "We have reliable information
that the US Government ordered Loral Orion company to shut down its satellite feeds for
Internet customers in Yugoslavia... This action might be taken as soon as later tonight or
tomorrow (May 12 or 13, 1999)... This is a flagrant violation of commercial contracts with
Yugoslav ISPs, as well as an attack on freedom of the Internet."
Most ISPs in Yugoslavia do not have their own satellite links, the AFX news service
reported Thursday. Instead, Yugoslav ISPs rent satellite access from foreign companies. A
European company also provides satellite service to Yugoslavia, and Internet access can
also be obtained through landline connections. But a US government-forced interruption by
Loral Orion could have greatly impeded Yugoslavians' access to the Internet.
One serb officer killed and
another one injured
Gjakovë, May 15th (Kosovapress)
Last night,about 19.30,in the village of Madame, a KLA unit attacked a serb military
convoy. A Serb officer has been killed and one wounded. The KLA forces suffered no losses.
62 Albanian civillians rescued by
KLA forces in Llapi Operating Zone
Keqekollë, May 15th (Kosovapress)
Last night in Keqekollë, in ward Kurtaj, the KLA units undertook one succesful action
against serb forces who have been positioned in the mosque
of the village. During this action, 10 serb militiamen were killed.
Another succesful attack has been organised against some serb forces in Ballaban by a unit
of OZ of Llapi. 62 albanian civillians who have been retaining and maltreted by those serb
forces have been rescued. In the zone which is under the control of 153 brigade in the
region of Gallapi, many actions have been undertaken, and the KLA has not suffered a
single casualty so far.