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LETTERS OF SUPPORT

SERBIAN MASSACRES

 Updated at 12:00 PM on June 30, 1999

The Mitrovica Alarm: The Partitioning of Kosova is happening (Koha Ditore)

By Arben Popoci, Nexhmedin Spahiu, Skender Sadiku and Vesat Ademi

Mitrovica, June 28, 1999

What has been the real danger for the fate of Kosova is happening now -- its partitioning is being legitimized. Almost no one expected Kosova to disappear from the face of the earth. Indeed, even the biggest Serb nationalists and ideologues had neither planned nor forseen this. What they had planned was the partitioning and the legitimization of the partitioning of Kosova. And this is precisely what is happening. While the West and NATO made a lot of noise that, by not letting the Russians have a special zone, there would be no partitioning of Kosova, the French troops are doing this with the greatest finesse. They are not letting the Albanian inhabitants return to the northern part of the city of Mitrovica. The ultimate irony is that almost all of the world media is using the term "the Serb part of the city" in its reports. For those who do not know the city of Mitrovica, the use of this term infers that this part of the city has long been inhabited by a Serb majority. This is far from the truth.

Three months ago, the Albanian population constituted over 80% of the population of the northern part of Mitrovica. This can also be confirmed from the elementary school statistics for the northern part of Mitrovica where the ratio of the number of Albanian to Serb classes until 3 months ago was 8 to 1 in the Albanians' favor. We stress that this ratio was in this part of the city and not in all of Mitrovica where the ratio is even more heavily in the Albanians' favor. The families and the authors of these lines also lived in this part of the city. The reason why the Serbs keep this part of the city under their control is not because there are more Serbs there, but because all of Mitrovica's industry lies in this part of the city. Mitrovica is the biggest industrial city in Kosova and the second in number of inhabitants.

If this situation continues further, Kosova will remain without its most important part, it will be economically dependent on this part because all of Kosova's economy depends on the "Trepca" [mine] and, consequently, Kosova would depend on the Serbs. The problem now is not why the Serbs want to keep this part of Mitrovica, but why the French KFOR is helping this process which is against all the declarations of NATO and the international organizations for the return of the deportees and the punishment of the war criminels who are now concentrated precisely in this part of Mitrovica. Therefore, it is right for Albanians to react urgently and strike while the iron is hot and consequently even the political situation can change as long as it has not yet stabilized.

First and foremost we call on Ismail Kadare, as the man with the most influence on French opinion, to fulfill his patriotic duty as he has done on numerous other occasions and also most recently when he sought the help of President Chirac for the release of the Albanian prisoners in Serbian jails, to sensitize this issue which is the principal one in the battle for Kosova. We also make the same call to the Albanian politicians, who perhaps do not know the above-mentioned break down of the population of the northern part of Mitrovica, wherever principled statements are called for, to emphasize the northern part of Mitrovica because here is decided the fate of all Kosova. Whereas we invite the party organizations, clubs and Albanian societies in the West, Skopje and Tirana to protest in every country where there is a French embassy or consulate with the slogan: "Don't divide Mitrovica!", "Don't partition Kosova!", "Let us return to our homes!".

You can direct your protest to:

Embassy of France in the U.S.:

telephone (202) 944-6000
e-mail via Internet http://www.info-france-usa.org/fcontact.htm

- Translated From Albanian by Thomas Coonan

The body of a Russian fighting on the side of Serb paramilitary troops in Kosova, sent to Russia (Radio21)

Russian newspaper "Novaja Izvestija" reported that the body of a Russian man, who fought in Kosova on the side of the Serb paramilitary troops, had been sent today in Russia.

The paper reported that he is Fjodor Shulga, 34 years old, who entered rump Yugoslavia with a tourist visas.

British KFOR kills an armed Serb in Lipjan (Radio21)

British KFOR killed yesterday an armed Serb in the town of Lipjan.

According to a KFOR spokesperson, it happened during the patrolling of the British soldiers in Lipjan, in an attempt to stop an incident between Albanians and Serbs. KFOR said that it happened in a self defence act of the Brits who asked the armed Serbs to hand over their guns.

Kosova Albanians reclaim jobs at radio, television (KP)

PRISHTINA,June 29, (Kosovapress) More than 100 ethnic Albanians sacked from Kosova radio and television in a Serb-led purge in 1990 entered the broadcasting centre in Prishtina on Monday to reclaim their jobs.

"This was a big day for us, I couldn't sleep all night long," said Vezire Dida, who worked in the music library of the station.

The ethnic Albanians entered the first floor of the Radio-Television Prishtina building in the city centre at 10 a.m., encountering no Serbs, witnesses said.

Their return was partly engineered by KFOR peacekeeping troops who were present in the building as the ethnic Albanians entered, according to former employees. A KFOR spokesman said he had no information on the peacekeeping force's reported involvement.

They made an experimental radio news transmission in Albanian in the afternoon.

Residents said Radio Prishtina has been heard only sporadically since NATO bombing ended earlier this month. They said the television was off the air. The return of the ethnic Albanians to their jobs was part of an overall movement by the province's majority population to reclaim jobs they lost in the late 1980s and early 1990s during a wave of Serb nationalism whipped up by then Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

Dida said that on July 5, 1990 Serbs abruptly invaded the state-run radio station, beat several people and told the ethnic Albanians they should leave the building for five minutes.

"That was nine years ago," she said, adding that her husband was sacked in similar fashion from his job at the state electricity company and they had lived on pensions ever since.

With the end of NATO bombing, ethnic Albanians have already returned to their jobs at Prishtina's only state hospital, Polyclinic, and have been holding demonstrations demanding their old jobs back at the state power company and at the University of Prishtina.

The radio and television employees said that KFOR had worked behind the scenes to secure an agreement for the Serbs to turn back the jobs to ethnic Albanians but that details of a power sharing arrangement had yet to be worked out.

"It may be that ethnic Albanians take Radio Prishtina One and the Serbs take Radio Prishtina Two," one ethnic Albanian source said.

Asked if she thought Serb and ethnic Albanians could work alongside each other in shared facilities, Dida said: "No. We Albanians cannot kill and massacre kids -- it's not in our genes."

New Battle In Kosova Is Over Jobs

PRISHTINA, June 29, (Kosovapress) Hundreds of Kosova Albanians, fired a decade ago in a Belgrade government purge, demanded their state jobs back today in spirited demonstrations that dramatized efforts by Kosova's majority population to reassert its control over the Serbian province.

The demonstrations, which included a brief takeover of a radio station here in the provincial capital, indicate that even though the war in Kosova may be over, a new battle -- for jobs and power -- is just beginning.

On one side of the dispute are thousands of Serbs still employed by state-run companies in Kosova, including those that provide power, water, entertainment and other municipal services. Without those jobs, the Serbs say, there is little incentive for them to remain here.

On the other side are tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians who were fired from these jobs when the Serbian government stripped Kosova of its local autonomy in 1989. They experienced a decade of forced idleness, surviving largely on remittances from relatives living overseas. With the war over and Serb-led Yugoslav security forces gone, the ethnic Albanians want their jobs back immediately and in recent days have attempted takeovers of a downtown hotel, the headquarters of the power company, a city hospital, a university and assorted restaurants and cafes.

The struggle has led NATO officials to try to cobble together temporary agreements between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in hopes of averting further violence. The United Nations, which is responsible for establishing a civilian Kosova government, has barely opened its small office here, forcing NATO to step into the breach.

Already, most of the Serbs on the staff of the University of Prishtina and the local hospital have fled the province, part of a migration of Serbian professionals that NATO and U.N. officials worry will permanently alter the ethnic makeup of Kosova, whose population of 1.8 million before the war was 90 percent ethnic Albanian. A prominent Serbian surgeon is missing and feared kidnapped; a Serbian professor was killed last week amid warnings to other Serbs on the university faculty that they should resign.

At the city hall and the office building housing Kosova's only radio and television stations, ethnic Albanians today signed statements demanding immediate reinstatement in their former jobs, then quietly pushed en masse toward their former offices. NATO troops barred their way at the city hall, but a group of former radio workers briefly took control of the radio studio.

Albanian folk music was broadcast on the station for the first time in years until NATO soldiers ordered the ethnic Albanians out. Talks between the station's Serbian manager and representatives of the ethnic Albanians are stalemated, as each side wants virtually all the estimated 1,000 jobs there.

Several blocks away, NATO officers made little headway in brokering a temporary arrangement for staffing Kosova's electrical utility -- a huge enterprise at which 13,000 people once worked. Negotiations were recessed until Wednesday after five hours of talks.

Given the composition of the negotiating teams, there seems little doubt that compromise will be difficult. On the Serbian side, most of the participants are utility officials who were handpicked for their posts by the ruling Socialist Party in Belgrade, capital of both Yugoslavia and its dominant republic, Serbia. Ethnic Albanians charge that some of the Serbian negotiators have participated in or supported war crimes, and one man is said to have helped orchestrate the mass firings at city hall in 1989. On the ethnic Albanian side, almost all the negotiators were selected or approved by leaders of a provisional government created by the Kosova Liberation Army, the rebel group that fought for the past 16 months for Kosova's independence. NATO officials here say they have little choice but to accept the KLA intervention because it has become virtually the sole ethnic Albanian political force in Kosova.

Ibrahim Rugova, a moderate separatist politician and KLA rival who has twice been elected president of a Kosova shadow government, is in Italy and has not visited Prishtina since the war ended on June 10. His political organization is a shambles and has played no role in the effort to forge a new civilian structure here.

KLA political leader Hashim Thaqi, who serves as prime minister of the provisional government, has tried to calm those demanding immediate job reinstatement. In the town of Kosovska Mitrovica on Saturday, Thaqi stood on a U.N. vehicle and told a throng of several hundred angry hospital workers barred by Serbs from reaching their former workplace: "Please be patient. We are dealing with this situation. You will soon be able to move freely, and Kosova will be one."

The crowd cheered Thaqi's remarks and dispersed after he described a deal worked out by NATO and U.N. officials with Serbian hospital administrators the previous night that would allow two ethnic Albanian doctors and a nurse to return to work. Further negotiations are to be held Tuesday on dozens of other jobs.

But NATO officials in Prishtina say they suspect that Thaqi and Rustem "Remi" Mustafa, the KLA commander of the zone that includes Prishtina, have been trying to influence the negotiations by helping organize some protests by ethnic Albanians in front of their former workplaces.

British Lt. Col. Jeff Neald, who is trying to mediate a jobs accord between the rival factions, said that Thaqi and other KLA officials "all have a role to play" in resolving the issue. But, Neald said, "we're not in the business of sacking Serb workers" and that for the moment his solution is to promise that all Serbian employees can stay and former ethnic Albanian employees can be rehired. The U.S. and British governments can pay the additional salaries until a more permanent solution can be reached, he said. "I've been firefighting," Neald said. "You find me the U.N. administrators, and I'd be delighted to step aside."

For Martin Cuni and 18 other men seated on a hill near the radio station, the negotiations are just one more deferral of a decade-old quest to regain their jobs. Once head of the KLA's clandestine radio station, Cuni has been appointed by Thaqi's government to lead the efforts to reclaim radio and television jobs for ethnic Albanians by gaining ownership of the stations. He said that Serbs can be employed according to their percentage of the total population, now estimated at about 5 percent.

"Given the length of time these people have waited already, one can understand their impatience," said U.N. spokesman Kevin Kennedy. But he warned that those who take over public institutions through means not acceptable to the United Nations would not receive Western technical or financial assistance.

Gjakova: Trying to Rise Above the Wreckage (NY Times)

By IAN FISHER

Gjakova, Kosova -- A horse named Zekan waited outside, harnessed to a cart. Shan Salihu, 64, was upstairs -- if that word applies to a building so demolished that no stairs are left -- tossing down the pieces of wood that will make his new house.

"Aaach!" he yelled down to his relatives, who were stacking the wood in the horse cart. "You should put something down there so these things don't get destroyed."

The wood once served as the closet doors for the Serbian police housed in the military barracks here. NATO planes smashed the building, along with everything else on the base here, in its 78-day bombing campaign.

Now Salihu, a Kosova Albanian whose house in the nearby town of Koronice was burned by Serbian forces, is rebuilding his life from the Serbs' wreckage. It is not at all surprising, given how much raw material sits in twisted heaps here, but he smiled and acknowledged an irresistible symbolism.

"It's going to be a bit like a souvenir," he said.

There is not much money in Kosova, and aid groups are just beginning their work. But the refugees who have returned here in the last two weeks are shooing cows from their living rooms, sweeping out tons of rubble and already working hard to rebuild, the best they can.

Some Albanians are restocking their homes with goods -- silverware, blankets, jewelry -- looted from the burning houses of Serbs and Gypsies who have fled Kosova in fear.

But it does not seem accurate to say that all, or even most, returning Albanians are stealing from the Serbs. For instance, the family of Armend Gashi, 15, spent their last $300 on new roof tiles and timber to fix up their store and home in the village of Nagavc, which they say was attacked by Serbian bombers on April 2. After two days of work, he and his father covered the roof, except for a six-foot patch in a corner.

Armend said they have no idea how they will restock the store itself, which his father had run for 20 years.

"I don't know when we'll open," he said as his mother scrubbed the carpets. "We don't have the money. We're just covering the roof to protect us from the rain."

It will take years, maybe decades, for Kosova to return to normal. But the newly swept floors and repaired roofs are one sign, just over two weeks since NATO troops arrived here, that life is inching back to the way it was, though with far fewer Serbs.

In the southern city of Prizren, school has reopened, as have many restaurants. Buses are running, The price of fuel, food and beer are dropping. Backhoes have begun shoveling piles of garbage from the streets. (Fires rise from the countryside, and it is hard to tell at first whether it is trash burning or houses that once belonged to Serbs.)

Some of the work is cosmetic, though essential. Ibrahim Berisha, 48, was scrubbing graffiti, in black and silver spray paint, from the wooden doors that lead into his home in the village of Rogove. It was left by Serbian soldiers, who scrawled obscenities aimed at NATO and phrases like "Death to Albanians."

"Even the footprints they left, I will wipe them clean." Berisha said.

In Nagavc, one family of nearly all women and children has been working from six in the morning until late at night since they returned from Albania a week ago to make their house livable again.

Outside sat the third tractor wagon of rubble they had shoveled from the house's two floors. They found their television and VCR, wrapped in plastic, in the hole where they had buried them. They dug needlepoint pictures of fashionable women out from piles of roof tiles and hung them on the wall again.

"It feels very good," said one of the women, Xhemile Krasniqi, 28, who was hurt in the bombing. "It's our village. We are back on our land."

But they are not sure they will stay. The house, damaged by a Serbian bomb, is all askew and may be beyond repair. Worse, Servete Kryeziu, 34, had hurriedly buried her mother, Azize Krasniqi, 58, who died in the bombing, in the garden out back, now sprouting with tomatoes and corn.

"It's only to pass the winter," Ms. Kryeziu said. "There are bad memories here, and it's destroyed. How can we live there with the grave of our mother?"

Here in Gjakova, people have been picking through the abandoned Yugoslav military base for anything that might be useful again. In the surrounding neighborhood, there is more than a little anger toward the base.

For decades it had been a remote border outpost with only 50 or so soldiers. Then after 1981, when Albanians staged protests for independence, the central government confiscated the villagers' farmland to build a complex for no fewer than 1,500 soldiers.

"They built this with the people's money," complained Rasim Thaqi, 40. "They didn't have their own money."

Thaqi was getting back at them by standing atop the destroyed mess hall, methodically removing the thick timbers that braced the roof. He said he would use some of it for firewood. But he has other timbers inside the courtyard of the house that he and his brother share, which was also heavily damaged by NATO.

If he gets some help -- money or engineering advice -- he said he would use those timbers to rebuild the roof.

"It would always be on my mind -- a reminder," he said. "To remember that I took a part of the Yugoslav army's barracks to rebuild."

Outside the police barracks, where Salihu was throwing down the doors, more timbers stood stacked waiting to be carted off. An old man wrenched out an iron sink, so heavy he had to rest several times as he dragged it out.

The next building over, at the side of the motor pool, Shaban Morina, 40, lifted a window frame out of a heap of rubble, then tossed it back. Everyone did their jobs too well: the Serbs who burned down his house and the NATO planes that bombed the compound to almost nothing.

"I can't find anything," he said. "I wanted windows, but they are all destroyed."

NATO and Kosova Rebels in an Orderly Confrontation (NY Times)

By CARLOTTA GALL

PRISHTINA, Kosova -- NATO troops here thought they had a big catch Tuesday when they came across eight armed men in a cafe, all wearing the uniform and insignia of the Kosova Liberation Army.

Since midnight Monday, members of the rebel group were supposed to be confined to barracks, and if they ventured out, must not carry weapons or wear uniforms or insignia.

This case seemed a clear breach. The men, all with camouflage fatigues, short cropped hair and revolvers in holsters, wore the bright yellow and red badge of the KLA, with its black double-headed eagle, on their sleeves.

But it was the NATO soldiers who were violating the demilitarization agreement, and there were a few embarrassed faces after they got the men down to the police station.

They had detained two of the KLA's top commanders and local heroes; Suleyman Selimi, the commander of the National Guard, who is more popularly known by his nom de guerre "Sultan," and Sali Lushtaku, the commander of the Drenica zone in central Kosova, the heartland of the Kosova resistance. The men had just been meeting with the commander of the NATO forces in Kosova , Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson, to discuss the demilitarization process. After the meeting they had stopped at a cafe to eat before returning to their headquarters on the edge of the city.

That was where a NATO patrol of Canadian and British paratroops spotted them. They brought in two armored personnel carriers, and some 20 soldiers with automatic weapons and surrounded the restaurant and its little outdoor terrace.

According to the agreement with NATO signed last week, KLA commanders are still allowed to wear their uniforms and carry pistols when on official business. They can also be accompanied by three bodyguards each.

The issue at stake in the confrontation was more one of pride than anything else. "Tell the commanders that as of last night they are not allowed to wear uniforms. They should come with us. We do not want any problems," the NATO officer in charge said through an interpreter.

Selimi replied: "We have permission to carry weapons, but we will come with you in our own car if you think it is incorrect."

Selimi insisted on driving his own car, but allowed NATO soldiers to ride with him. Cheered by a crowd of onlookers, they were led off to the police station by a NATO jeep and followed by an armored troop carrier.

The men were detained for some 30 minutes in the police station, and then allowed to depart, with their weapons.

"We called them in to find out who they were. We wanted to interview them and they satisfied us completely," said Sgt. Maj. David Moore, who was in charge of the police station. "They were the model of etiquette and so were we."

Once he had established who they were, he said he offered the men a cup of strong British tea, which the Albanians declined.

A British spokesman, Col. Robin Hodges, said some 2,000 KLA members were now inside designated assembly points. That number is one-fourth of the estimated total of 8,000 who constituted the armed force during the war, he said.

Some others probably have taken off their uniforms and gone home, he said. "We are going to shepherd these people back, not bully them. We are here to implement an agreement, not to dominate them," he said.

Tuesday's incident underlined the sensitivities of the KLA commanders, who may not be ready to give up the security and the prestige their uniforms and guns bring them.

It also showed how wary NATO troops remain of anyone with a weapon. British troops opened fire and killed a gunman in Lipljan, just south of Prishtina Tuesday. Out on normal patrol, they heard gunshots, apparently the result of an argument between two men. A man emerged from the building, aiming a pistol at the soldiers and after shouting a warning, they shot and killed him.

It is looting, however, that remains the main criminal activity that NATO troops are battling with full time. British troops have resorted to flying helicopters equipped with searchlights low over sections of the city to deter nighttime arsonists and looters.

FBI probe finds evidence of executions in Kosova (CNN)

From Producer Terry Frieden

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An FBI investigation of suspected war crimes sites in Kosova has revealed evidence that several Kosovar Albanians were executed at two locations in the Serbian province, officials said Tuesday.

More than 50 FBI agents and support personnel traveled to Kosova to help investigate allegations that Yugoslav forces massacred hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ethnic Albanians.

The FBI said four doctors and a forensic anthropologist from the Armed Forces Institute for Pathology conducted autopsies of victims in two sites in Gjakova, in southwestern Kosova, revealing that many victims were killed execution-style.

"Preliminary autopsy reports indicate that many of them died from shot wounds to the head," on-scene FBI commander Roger Nisley said. "The victims included men, women and children."

Shell casings and other evidence collected at crime scenes are being brought back to the FBI laboratory for analysis.

The results of the lab tests will be forwarded to the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague, which has indicted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four other senior Yugoslav officials.

In addition to the two sites in Gjakova, FBI sources said the investigators examined six other locations in the Italian-patrolled sector of southwestern Kosova.

U.S. officials declined to comment on the evidence collected at the other sites.

"All I can say is the FBI was sent to these other locations because the international tribunal believed they were important and urgent," said one government official.

Despite security threats and tampering of the alleged crime scenes by withdrawing Yugoslav forces, the FBI expressed satisfaction on the outcome of the probe.

"We believe this team effort will lead to successful prosecutions of those responsible for atrocities committed by Serbian forces," Nisley said.

The FBI contingent is due to leave Kosova on Thursday and will likely arrive back in the United States over the weekend.