For the first time in nine years, Albanians return to their real schools, not to basements and abandoned buildings used as schools in Kosova (AP)

Prishtina, Kosova (AP) - Thousands of Kosova pupils were to return to school today, the first time students in the province have been to class since NATO launched its war against Yugoslavia five months ago.

Most schools in Prishtina, the provincial capital, have been cleaned up and are ready for students who will spend the next month in makeup classes because school was suspended after NATO's bombing campaign began March 23.

Some rural schools have been shut down since February 1998, when Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched a bloody crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. The crackdown ended in June when Milosevic accepted a peace plan, including 40,000 NATO-led troops.

U.N. officials are uncertain how many pupils - ethnic Albanians and Serbs - will show up for class. The United Nations estimates nearly half of Kosova's schools were damaged or destroyed in 18 months of ethnic warfare.

Most Albanian children have not officially attended school since 1989, when Milosevic revoked the province's autonomy.

Many ethnic Albanians responded by establishing their own, unofficial schools, financed by contributions from Albanians abroad. Most Serb pupils fled Kosova with their parents to escape reprisal attacks by ethnic Albanians after Yugoslav troops withdrew from the province under the peace agreement.

In areas where Serb children remain, they will share school buildings with the Albanians. To avoid trouble, one group will attend classes in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

U.N. officials hope the resumption of classes will represent an important step toward rebuilding the province after years of ethnic unrest and war.

The next major step will come Sept. 19, when the Kosova Liberation Army is to disarm and disband under a June agreement with NATO. On Tuesday, the NATO commander in Kosova, Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson, met with KLA leader Hashim Thaci to discuss the rebel commitment.

The meeting took place behind closed doors. But sources close to Thaci who spoke on condition of anonymity said the two also discussed terms to end an eight-day-long stalemate between local ethnic Albanians and Russian soldiers in the southern city of Rahovec.

Hundreds of ethnic Albanians have been blocking roads to the town for more than a week, refusing to allow Russian peacekeepers to enter.

Also Tuesday, the top U.N. official in Kosova, Bernard Kouchner, swore in seven new judges and two prosecutors in the divided northern town of Mitrovica.

The judges will be part of a new legal system being set up by the United Nations to replace the Serbian law that previously ruled the province.

International officials are eager to have a judiciary system up and running in the province. The peacekeepers, who started arriving on June 12, have not been able to prevent revenge attacks and criminal acts from taking place.

Serbian Pupils Have Unusual Start To School Year
9.53 a.m. ET (1356 GMT) September 1, 1999

BELGRADE — The school year began in Serbia Wednesday — in those locations not hit by a teachers' strike or occupied by refugees — with a lecture on NATO's "aggression'' during its spring bombing campaign.

Teachers read out letters from Education Minister Jovo Todorovic reminding pupils of varying age groups of the evils of the Western defense alliance.

Teenage students learned that NATO's air strikes from March to June this year pitted "the law of force and the force of law, hypocrisy and truth ... cold-blooded mass killing and worthy defense of the fatherland.''

Younger pupils were told that bombs had killed an unspecified number of their fellow pupils, all of them top students. The letters did not mention Kosova, the mainly ethnic Albanian province over which NATO launched its bombing campaign.

Tuesday Todorovic warned teachers threatening to strike that "we do not want politics in school.''

The government closed schools at the start of the bombing, saying it was too dangerous for children to attend. Many of the buildings were subsequently occupied by troops and police, who moved from their barracks to avoid being targeted.

Wednesday, some schools remained closed in Belgrade and several other towns due to the strike. Ministry officials could not immediately detail the total number of schools involved.

Pupils were kept away from other schools in Serbia because their classrooms were full of refugees from Kosova, housed there after fleeing the southern province when Yugoslav security forces were replaced by NATO-led troops in June.

Independent radio B292 said some refugees were still in several village schools around Krajevo, one of the central Serbian towns where most refugees were sent, while others were protesting in a local park against plans to move them elsewhere.

In other towns, the refugees have been moved out but the schools remain closed for repairs. Other schools await repairs for damage inflicted by NATO missiles.

A teacher at one of Belgrade's elite gymnasiums, which have joined the strike, said they wanted three months' overdue wages and a pay increase to bring teachers' wages level with those of doctors. Teachers now get around $70 a month.

"If the two demands are not met, we will go on with the strike and will ask the Serbian government to resign,'' said Alexander Nedeljkovic from gymnasium number 10.

"It is sad and sickening that children are still not in school after a five-month break, but we just can't make a living any more. We have no choice. My telephone has been disconnected because of unpaid bills,'' he told Reuters television.

He said more teachers would have joined but were prevented by their pro-government trade unions.

Todorovic told a news conference on the eve of the new term that there would be no negotiation with the strikers.

Albanians flee Serbia for Kosova (BBC)

Some 4,500 ethnic Albanians have fled to Kosova from what they have called a campaign of intimidation in southern Serbia, according to the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR.

The refugees say the campaign against them is being conducted by Yugoslav forces and paramilitary groups which moved there after retreating from Kosova.

A UNHCR team sent to investigate the situation said it was clear the presence and behaviour of Yugoslav troops in the border area had led to serious problems.

Agency spokesman Ron Redmond said the refugees had told the UNHCR that the intimidation included "harassment, beatings, expulsions, looting and threatened murder".

The refugees said Albanian women have also been threatened with abuse and some said one woman was violated in their presence, according to Mr Redmond.

"We can't confirm these allegations, but we give them some credence because we've heard them from enough people," he said.

News of the Albanians' flight from Serbia came one day after the entire Serb population of a Kosova village left en masse, fearing intimidation from their Kosova Albanian neighbours.

Serbs from the village of Zitinje joined a convoy of refugees leaving the province on Sunday, and were escorted north to Serbia by K-For peacekeepers.

Divided city

The UN has convened the first meeting of representatives of ethnic Albanians and Serbs in the divided Kosova city of Mitrovica.

The city, in the north-east of the province, is effectively partitioned between the two ethnic groups and has the largest remaining Serb community in Kosova.

The meeting was disrupted when the British UN administrator in the town, Sir Martin Garrod, had to be taken to hospital with a suspected heart attack.

He has previously served as the EU administrator of another divided city, that of Mostar in Bosnia.

Earlier Sir Martin opened a new multi-ethnic nursery school, but the ceremony was boycotted by Serbs unwilling to cross the bridge which divides the two communities.

Back to school

In the provincial capital Prishtina, ethnic Albanian students and professors have returned to Kosova University for the first time in eight years.

The Albanians left when Serb authorities banned teaching in Albanian at the university in 1991.

Addressing a crowd of several thousand students, University Rector Zenel Kelmendi said the university would not exclude anyone in the future.

But for the moment, the university says, all classes will be held in Albanian.

Monday also saw the re-opening of Prishtina's post office, whose first job is to rebuild the province's damaged and outdated telecommunications system.

Anti-Milosevic protest

In Serbia itself, several thousand people attended an opposition demonstration in the western town of Valjevo.

It was the latest in a series of anti-government protests calling for the resignation of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, organised by the Alliance for Change.

Earlier Serbian police broke up a roadblock, at Dunavac some 30km north of Belgrade, set up by farmers calling for the resignation of the Agriculture Minister, Nedeljko Sipovac.

The farmers were demanding higher grain prices. Several protestors were reported to have been arrested.

Kosova assembly has postwar session   (Reuters)

By Andrew Gray, Reuters, 09/01/99

The composition of the assembly does not reflect postwar reality in the province, where the Kosova Liberation Army has emerged as a formidable political force thanks to its guerrilla campaign against Serb rule.

PRISHTINA - Kosova's unofficially elected parliament met yesterday for the first time since NATO bombing drove Serb forces from the province.

''We are starting this session in new circumstances - in a free Kosova,'' said Idriz Ajeti, the parliament's president.

Critics wasted no time, however, in attacking the assembly and said it should not even begin working. The absence of key local politicians and senior officials from the United Nations Mission in Kosova and the KFOR international peacekeeping force gave weight to critics' arguments.

But Ibrahim Rugova, the moderate ethnic Albanian leader who was elected president of Kosova in the same unoffical vote that chose the parliament, said the deputies have an important task: working on legislation with the UN and peacekeepers.

''Kosova today has a historic chance which we must work together to realize,'' Rugova told the parliamentary session, held in the hall of a cultural center in central Prishtina.

The 130-member assembly was elected in an unofficial poll held in March last year by members of Kosova's ethnic Albanian majority. The vote was conducted in defiance of Serbian authorities who stripped the province of its autonomy in 1989.

Rugova's Democratic League of Kosova party dominates the parliament.

His opponents say the composition of the assembly does not reflect postwar reality in the province, where the Kosova Liberation Army has emerged as a formidable political force thanks to its guerrilla campaign against Serb rule.

''Reactivating the parliament of Kosova is directly contrary to the actions of the international community and to the new legal and political reality in Kosova,'' prominent law professor Arsim Bajrami wrote in the Rilindja newspaper.

Bernard Kouchner, the head of the UN administration in Kosova, was notable by his absence from yesterday's session. Kosova Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaqi was another. UN officials could not be reached for comment on the parliament, but since only neighboring Albania recognized the elections as legitimate, the world body is seen as unlikely to give it official recognition.

EU to move on easing Kosova, Montenegro sanctions (Reuters)
Tuesday, August 31 1999 06:05 AM EDT

BRUSSELS, Aug 31 (Reuters) - European Union diplomats are expected on Tuesday to propose easing sanctions against Kosova and Montenegro, formalising a decision taken by EU foreign ministers in July, an EU official said.

But Kosova and Montenegro will not be freed from the current oil embargo and flight ban until the European Commission has come up with a separate proposal to put EU governments' wishes into effect, a process fraught with difficulties, the official added.

The sanctions were imposed on Yugoslavia last year by the 15-nation EU as well as several other countries in a bid to punish Belgrade for alleged Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosova, the province now patrolled by NATO-led peacekeepers.

Serb forces withdrew from Kosova in June after a three-month NATO bombing campaign.

EU foreign ministers agreed in principle last month to ease the curbs against Kosova and Montenegro, both part of Yugoslavia, to distinguish them from Serbia, which is blamed by the international community for the Kosova conflict.

``The formal decision has been delayed so far. Experts are meeting today in the hope of putting onto paper what ministers decided,'' an EU spokesman told Reuters.

``This should be rubber-stamped in a matter of days, although the changes can't go into effect until the commission has brought forward legislation to implement them.''

The commission, the EU's executive, has said throughout that it will be extremely difficult to exempt Kosova and Montenegro from the sanctions without oil getting through to Serbia.

``Governments think the matter is very urgent, but they're very much dependent on the commission, which has said this is going to be difficult to do,'' the official said.

Commission officials were not immediately available for comment.

Montenegro, a key oil supply route for Belgrade, remained staunchly pro-Western during the international community's efforts to resolve the Kosova conflict.

Other sanctions, including an investment ban and a freeze on funds held by Serb officials and state-run companies, will be reviewed by foreign ministers at a meeting in Saariselka, Finland, on September 4-5.

Fewer murders in Kosova than Washington, Pretoria (Reuters)
Monday, August 30 1999 06:44 AM EDT

Prishtina, Aug 30 (Reuters) - U.N. police and NATO-led peacekeepers have improved security in Kosova to the point where the murder rate is lower than that in Washington and the South African capital Pretoria, the U.N. reported on Monday.

Bernard Kouchner, head of the U.N. Mission in Kosova, showed reporters charts which plotted Kosova's rapidly declining murder rate and showed that Moscow and Kosova now had roughly the same murder count.

The figures for the capitals of the United States and South Africa were worked out on an annualised per capita basis and compared two densely-settled cities to Kosova's sizeable rural population.

``The rate of criminality is down -- look at where we are and where we were just two months ago,'' Kouchner said as he showed the charts to Richard Holbrooke, the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

The two men were on a tour of the Kosova capital Prishtina to highlight security issues that the U.N., which is administering the Serbian province under a Security Council mandate, has been struggling with since it arrived with KFOR peacekeepers in June.

Sven Fredericksen, the Danish Commissioner who heads the U.N. police force in Kosova, took the two diplomats to community policing centres that have been established to deter attacks on Serbs and other minorities, tens of thousands of whom have fled Kosova.

``We have tried to identify the hotspots where minorities are being threatened and where we have placed some (cargo) containers that we use as police sub-stations,'' the Commissioner explained.

``We are working there 24-hours a day. Security in police terms comes from presence and visibility. The population must see that we are going to take care of them the best way we can.''

Only 20,000-30,000 of what once were 200,000 Serbs, Gypsies and other minorities remain in Kosova, jeopardising the international commmunity's stated goal of establishing a multi-ethnic democracy here.

Most of the minority exodus occurred during NATO's three month bombing campaign or in the 10 days immediately after, when KFOR and U.N. personnel were not fully deployed.

The flood has since slowed to a trickle, but Fredericksen said his goal is to create security conditions in Kosova sufficient to induce those who left to return.

A Serb woman in one of the hotspot neighbourhoods that Holbrooke and Kouchner visited told the diplomats her life had been hell since the end of the bombing campaign and the return of ethnic Albanian families who themselves had been forced to flee Kosova during the war.

``We are living under house arrest. It's not safe to move around,'' the woman, who asked not to be named, told the dignitaries.

``Blame it on politics. We were all living together and now we're suffering. We offered protection to our (ethnic Albanian) neighbours during the bombing but now they cannot protect us.''

Holbrooke said he was encouraged by the progress of the U.N. police over such a short period, and by its leadership.

``One of the mistakes we made (at the 1995 Bosnia peace talks) at Dayton which you then saw the consequences of in Bosnia, was that the International Police Task Force did not have enforcement capability and was not properly structured from the beginning,'' Holbrooke said.

He said Fredericksen's mandate provided the opportunity to avoid those problems in Kosova.

Holbrooke Visits Site of Mass Grave in Kosova, Beta Reports

Bloomberg News
Monday, August 30 1999 01:22 AM EDT

Prishtina, Kosova, Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Richard Holbrooke, chief U.S. diplomat to the United Nations, on Saturday visited the site of a mass grave in the village of Stara Cikatova, west of the Kosovan capital Prishtina, that is believed to contain the bodies of Albanians killed earlier this year, Yugoslavia's independent Beta news agency reported. Holbrooke was scheduled to spend three days in Kosova at the request of U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. ``The UN is being tested in Kosova as it has never been before, with responsibilities greater than ever before,'' Holbrooke said, the agency reported.