Kosova Crisis Center

Kosova Crisis Center

Report Says Serbs Used Toxic Chemicals On Kosovar Albanians Since Early 1990s (AFP)
KLA Is Meeting Demilitarization Goals - KFOR Chief (Reuters)
Western Diplomats Reject Kosova Division (Reuters)
Albanians Won't End Russia Blockade (AP)
British forensic team to stay on in Kosova

Report Says Serbs Used Toxic Chemicals On Kosovar Albanians Since Early 1990s (AFP)

LONDON, Aug 24, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Serb forces used toxic chemical agents against the ethnic Albanian population in Kosova between the early 1990s and the end of NATO's air campaign in June, Jane's Defence Weekly reported Monday.

The report was based on conclusions by A. Heindrickx, professor of toxicology at the University of Ghent in Belgium and an expert for the United Nations.

Serb forces used toxic gases including sarin which left "toxicological patterns" resembling those seen in Iran after Iraqi bombings and in Angola, Heindrickx said.

Heindrickx, who visited Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania on the invitation of the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA), estimated that some 4,000 ethnic Albanians, mostly children had been affected by neuro-toxic gas use in the 1990s.

He said some 20 of the worst affected victims, members of the KLA, were currently receiving treatment in Western Europe.

The FBI has also been to Tirana to investigate reports by the KLA of chemical weapons use.

KLA Is Meeting Demilitarization Goals - KFOR Chief (Reuters)

Prishtina, Aug 24, 1999 -- (Reuters) The Kosova Liberation Army is demilitarizing according to schedule and now must concentrate on transforming itself into a non-military group, the commander of NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers said on Monday.

"Last Friday was the 60th day in the timetable of the undertaking of the demilitarization and transformation of the KLA," Lieutenant-General Sir Mike Jackson of Britain told reporters in Prishtina, the Kosova provincial capital.

"This requirement has been carefully checked by my own forces...and the relevant accounting completed. I can tell you that after these careful checks I judge that at the 60th day the KLA are indeed compliant with the undertaking."

Last Friday's deadline required KLA units to have committed to designated weapons storage sites all heavy weapons such as artillery, all long-barreled weapons such as Kalashnikov assault rifles and 60 per cent of all automatic small arms

The KLA, which fought against Yugoslav army, Serb police and paramilitary units until KFOR entered Kosova in the second week of June, is due to demobilize completely by September 19.

Jackson said that both he and the KLA guerrilla army were turning their attention to meeting that looming goal.

He added that the KFOR commander said the KLA now was satisfied that the United Nations, in forming a new Kosova police force, is giving adequate opportunities to KLA veterans.

The first police academy class is planned to be selected for training beginning next week.

Jackson also said that the U.N. Mission in Kosova was preparing to announce a plan for the establishment of a non-military organization to assist with the reconstruction of Kosova, and also to respond to emergencies.

The U.N. hopes that institutions such as the police and this new civilian corps will be able to absorb back into civilian society thousands of demobilizing ethnic Albanian guerrilla fighters whose employment prospects might otherwise be slight.

Asked if the large number of weapons being confiscated by KFOR soldiers in Kosova indicated that the KLA was trying to dodge their international obligation to demilitarize, Jackson gave an emphatic "no."

"I can assure you that my own judgment, which I use objectively in the matter, put against the number of weapons, the number of personnel, leaves me with no difficulty announcing what I announced," he added.

"It is very important to understand that in this part of the world...the carriage of weapons by ordinary citizens is a common occurrence."

"I regret this. I don't believe in this sort of society myself. But you should not draw a conclusion from the number of confiscated weapons that this is in some way a hidden number."

Western Diplomats Reject Kosova Division (Reuters)

Prishtina, Aug 24, 1999 -- (Reuters) Western diplomats rejected on Tuesday a Serb proposal to carve out ethnic enclaves in Kosova to protect their people from attacks by Albanians.

The Serb proposal for so-called canonization of Kosova ran counter to international efforts to create a unified, multi-ethnic Kosova, not a segregated society, the diplomats said.

"Canonization is an idea that the Serbs began floating last year. I think it originated with the Academy of Sciences in Belgrade," said a Western diplomat who asked not to be named.

"The idea surfaced from time to time during last year's negotiations but was never taken seriously. Nothing has changed. We are insisting on the unity and territorial integrity of a multi-ethnic Kosova."

Creating one or more Serb ethnic enclaves in Kosova, which is now 99 per cent ethnic Albanian, was suggested on Saturday by Momcilo Trajkovic, head of the Serbian Resistance Movement, who declared: "The multi-ethnic Kosova has failed."

Trajkovic advanced the idea at a U.N.-sponsored meeting of the Kosova Transition Council, an advisory body charged with helping to build post-war institutions in Kosova.

Bernard Kouchner, chief of the U.N. mission that administers Kosova, told reporters after Saturday's meeting that he would study Trajkovic's suggestion but was negatively disposed.

"The Serbs have asked for cantons, a sort of partition so Kosova would be divided up with at least one or two areas where Serbs would control their own municipal council," said Bryan Hopkinson, Director of the International Crisis Group (ICG) and a former British diplomat in the Balkans.

"One of the enclaves almost certainly would be in the north, above Mitrovica. That would give the Serbs control over much of Kosova's most valuable mines and mineral rights," he said.

"For that reason, and because the Serbs no longer hold many cards in Kosova, canonization is a non-starter. We don't want to end up with de facto partition here as we did in Bosnia. But if we rule out partition what's left?"

The pre-war population of Kosova was about two million, 90 per cent of whom were ethnic Albanian. The other 10 per cent was mainly Serb, with some Gypsies, Moslems and other minorities.

Control of this southern Serbian province had been vested with Belgrade for nearly a decade when ethnic Albanian guerrillas began attacking Serb police and Yugoslav army units in the spring of 1998.

A year of guerrilla war and nearly three months of NATO air strikes led to the total withdrawal of Serb security forces and the exodus of all but about 20,000 of Kosova's non-ethnic Albanian population.

So few Serbs and other minorities now remain in Kosova that the international community is hard-pressed to create institutions - such as a reconstituted judiciary and provincial police force - that would be broadly representative of Kosova's pre-war population.

U.N. sources said the U.N. could reject the canonization proposal as early as Wednesday. That would leave unresolved the issue of exactly how minority rights in Kosova can be ensured.

Albanians Won't End Russia Blockade (AP)

The Associated Press Tuesday, August 24 1999 10:29 AM EDT

Rahovec, Yugoslavia (AP) - Ethnic Albanians refused today to lift their blockade against Russian peacekeepers here, saying Moscow's troops are unwelcome in a town ``where so many crimes were committed'' by Serb-supporting Russian mercenaries.

Albanian community leaders made the statement after a meeting in which Russian and NATO officers tried to persuade them to remove tractors, trucks and other vehicles from roads into the town. The barricades were erected Monday when Russian troops were to have begun taking over the town's peacekeeping positions from the Dutch.

The meeting broke up with the ethnic Albanians refusing to budge.

``We told them the Russians will only destabilize the situation,'' protest leader Agim Hasku said. ``The Russians can be sent where there were no massacres committed by Russians. Why station them here where so many crimes were committed by Russians?''

At one roadblock, about 50 ethnic Albanians, who had spent the night behind barbed wire barricades, held banners in Albanian, English and German saying ``NATO yes, Russians no,'' ``We don't like Russians'' and ``Russians are criminals.''

A long line of vehicles and people were still clogging the road further down into town.

In the Serb quarter, meanwhile, several hundred Rahovec Serbs rallied in support of the Russians, shouting ``Serbia, Serbia, we want Russians, we won't give up the Russians, KLA out.'' Earlier, Dutch Capt. Mike Bos had said the Serbs were urging the Dutch to stay.

Kosova's dwindling Serb population trust their fellow Slav Russians more than NATO to protect them from ethnic Albanians seeking revenge for atrocities committed against them during Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown. For their part, the ethnic Albanians want NATO, not Russian, troops. They claim Russian mercenaries fighting with the Serbs killed at least two Albanian men in the town before international peacekeepers arrived.

The dispute here underscores the problems facing NATO and the United Nations in overcoming deep ethnic hatred between the Serb and Albanian communities, which speak different languages and follow different religious customs and culture.

The Albanians and the peacekeepers agreed to meet again Wednesday. Dutch Lt. Col. Ton van Loon said peacekeepers had decided against using force to remove the barricades and would continue trying to convince the ethnic Albanians to back down.

In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry denounced the Rahovec blockade as an ``open challenge'' to the international community and Moscow's participation in the Kosova peacekeeping force. Russia's deputy defense minister, Alexander Avdeyev, said it was up to the NATO-led peacekeeper command to sort out the problem so the Russians could take their positions.

Russians, who sided with Serbia during the NATO-led airstrikes earlier this year, have faced similar protests in other ethnic Albanian communities. U.S. and NATO officers say Russian forces have behaved professionally.

Also today, Dutch and German troops began house-to-house searches in the Serb quarter, looking for weapons which may have been handed over to local Serbs by Serb paramilitaries before they evacuated Kosova in June. German and Dutch commanders had given local Serbs until midnight Sunday to hand in weapons or face arrest.

Ethnic tensions in Rahovec are especially high because the town was the scene of fighting in July 1998. The Kosova Liberation Army seized positions in Albanian neighborhoods there before being driven off in a massive Serb counterattack. Ethnic Albanians claim Serb police killed many civilians in the town in retaliation for their support of the rebels.

British forensic team to stay on in Kosova

LONDON, Aug 23 - British forensic experts searching the mass graves of Kosova for evidence of Serb war crimes will extend their work until the end of October, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said on Monday.

Cook said the 17-member forensic team had been asked to stay on beyond their original two-month tour of duty by outgoing War Crimes Tribunal Prosecutor Judge Louise Arbour.

Investigators have exhumed over 260 bodies of Kosova Albanian civilians from mass graves including women and the remains of 21 children -- some under five executed with a bullet through the head, Cook said.

Some of the first sites they exhumed in late June were named in the indictment of Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic as a war criminal.

"It is a particularly gruelling task but in helping to establish the facts of these inhuman actions they will assuredly help to bring those responsible to justice," Cook said.

Cook, who visited one of the sites of mass killings in Kosova two months ago, has repeatedly said Milosevic must be brought to justice for the "ethnic cleansing" of Kosova Albanians.

Britain's Foreign Office said Arbour asked Cook to keep the forensic team in Kosova in a letter earlier this month. In the letter she praised the high standard of the team's work.

"The contribution which this work is making to my investigations is extremely valuable," Arbour wrote.

"And it is clear that the evidence being recorded in Kosova will form an important part of the evidence to be led in future trials before this tribunal," she said.

The British team includes specialist police officers, other forensic experts, photographers, a pathologist and a forensic anthropologist.