| There
Is Only One Terrorism Here, the Serb Regime Terrorism, Demaçi Says (KIC) PRISHTINA, Dec 29 (KIC) - The UÇK (Kosova Liberation Army) stands
firm in its position that it will act in self-defense, Adem Demaçi, the UÇK political
representative said at the outset of his press conference in Prishtina today (Tuesday). He
said he was reaffirming this because of the many "rumors" that the UÇK has
called off the cease-fire, in the wake of the Serb military and police offensive in the
Llapi region launched on Christmas Eve.
"The self-restraint, declared by the UÇK on 8 October,
continues to be in force, and we (the UÇK) will continue to be in the service of forces
that seek a political, democratic and civilizing solution" to the Kosova issue, Mr.
Demaçi said. "The UÇK will never give up defending itself", he emphasized.
"Whenever we are attacked (by Serbs), we will defend ourselves with all the means
that we have".
International mediators should put pressure and all the
leverage that the world has to force the Belgrade regime abide by its commitments arising
from the Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement, so as to end bloodshed in Kosova, the UÇK
political representative said.
The position of unarmed [OSCE] verifiers in Kosova should be
"reviewed" in view of the breach of the cease-fire by the Belgrade regime, and
seek "other means", including NATO contingency plans over Kosova, according to
Adem Demaçi.
"We have said repeatedly, there is only one brand of
terrorism - that of the Serb regime - targeting the Albanian people", the UÇK
representative said. It is unacceptable to attack Albanian villages with a hundred [Serb]
tanks, and when Albanians defend themselves to call this terrorism, Demaçi stressed.
Asked to comment on Ambassador Walker's [the OSCE Kosova
Verification Mission's head] comments about the situation in Kosova, Adem Demaçi said he
sometimes blames both the Albanian and the Serbian sides so as "to preserve his
position as a mediator".
The UÇK political representative said he cannot understand
Russian Foreign Minister Ivanov and others who act as "advocates of the Serbian
terrorist regime", at a time the Russian Federation parted ways "elegantly"
with Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, etc.
Asked by the BBC correspondent to say why the Serbian forces
and the UÇK were fighting in settlements with civilian population, Adem Demaçi said it
is not the UÇK that goes out of its land, that "goes somewhere to Serbia to
provoke", but rather the other way round.
Two Albanians Killed in Unsolved
Circumstances in Dushanovë, Prizren, After Midnight (KIC)
Hysen Bytyçi was formerly a member of the Kosova police
force, however, after Milosevic revoked Kosova's autonomy, like all the other Albanian
members of the security forces, he was fired from his job, and became a member of the
Kosova police trade unions, run by Albanians.
PRISHTINA, Dec 29 (KIC) - Just after midnight last night,
Hysen Bytyçi (50), a night watchman in the "Landovica Commerce" firm, was
killed in his workplace, together with Mehmet Krasniqi (30), resident of Dushanovë, who
was keeping him company at the time.
Hysen Bytyçi was formerly a member of the Kosova police
force, however, after Milosevic revoked Kosova's autonomy, like all the other Albanian
members of the security forces, he was fired from his job, and became a member of the
Kosova police trade unions, run by Albanians.
No other details related to last night's criminal act have
been made available. There were signs of automatic rifle and pistol bullets in the scene,
sources said.
At 10:00 a.m., Serb police took the bodies of the Albanian to
the town morgue in Prizren.
The late Hysen Bytyçi was held Saturday for three hours in
Serb police custody in Prizren, local LDK sources said.
Meanwhile, LDK sources said a column of Serb army vehicles,
armored cars and loads of soldiers, left Prizren for Gjakova today morning. A bus with
Leskovc (Serbia) license plates, full of police, was accompanying the army convoy.
Truce Holds, NATO Warns Sides In
Tense Kosova (Reuters)
Serb forces, which were supposed to
have been withdrawn from Kosova, have been returning to the province over the past two
weeks and are deploying around Podujeva.
By Adrian Dascalu Tuesday December 29 10:32 AM ET
PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - International monitors said a
cease-fire they restored between Serb security forces and ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosova
held firm Tuesday and NATO warned both sides not to start fighting again.
``There are no reports of shooting or anything. We cannot
really predict the future here, but I certainly hope the cease-fire will hold,'' Jorgen
Grunnet, the spokesman for the international monitors, told Reuters.
In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana reiterated
warnings that the alliance was ready to use force if the situation in Kosova deteriorated.
In a brief statement issued from NATO headquarters, Solana
urged all parties to maintain the cease-fire. ``NATO is ready to intervene if the
situation requires,'' the statement said.
The fighting, which started Thursday and went on almost
unabated for four days, ended when the commanders of both sides agreed to pleas to cease
fire from monitors deployed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE).
At least 18 people were killed and several wounded in the
violence, the worst since a fragile peace between Serbian security forces and the
separatist Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas was agreed in October under U.S.
mediation.
Grunnet said the latest violence consisted of local
skirmishes. ``There was no all-out war,'' he said.
Russia, an ally of fellow-Orthodox Serbia, Monday blamed the
KLA for the latest fighting, but its political representative rejected the accusation
Tuesday.
``The KLA has been and is acting in self-defense. The
self-restraint unilaterally declared in October will continue,'' Adem Demaci, the KLA's
political representative, told a news conference.
But he added: ``We shall defend ourselves with everything at
our disposal when attacked.''
Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek, current head of
the OSCE, said Sunday that if the violence worsened, the OSCE would have to reconsider the
nature of its mission.
But Wolfgang Petritsch, the European Union's Kosova envoy,
said Monday that the verifiers, who now number more than 500 out of 2,000 who will make up
the full mission, would continue to be deployed and that the mission was evolving all the
time.
Demaci Tuesday said he thought the OSCE's role should be
reconsidered because ``the Serb regime is not willing to comply,'' with the U.S.-mediated
plan.
The ethnic Albanians want the verifiers to be armed to
protect them from possible attacks by Serbian forces but the OSCE has ruled out that
possibility, noting objections from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Serbs from the region have also asked the verifiers for
protection from ethnic Albanian guerrillas, and requested for more security from the
state.
Serb forces, which were supposed to have been withdrawn from
Kosova, have been returning to the province over the past two weeks and are deploying
around Podjeva.
Five More Die In Kosova, Tensions
Test Truce (Reuters)
An accompanying Serb aide memoire said 318 people had
been killed by the ``terrorists'' this year. Ethnic Albanian human rights groups say the
total number of casualties in the province is close to 2,000, overwhelmingly Kosova
Albanian.
By Adrian Dascalu Tuesday December 29 3:12 PM ET
PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - Five people, all apparently
ethnic Albanians, were Tuesday reported killed in Kosova and international monitors said
tensions remained high in an area where fighting raged for four days last week.
Thousands of newly displaced people, mainly ethnic Albanians,
were too scared to return to their homes despite international attempts to shore up a
fragile cease-fire.
The Yugoslav government said permanent peace was impossible
without international condemnation of what it called ''terrorism,'' while ethnic Albanian
guerrillas in Kosova, a province of Serbia, reiterated calls for NATO intervention against
the Serbs.
NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana warned Serbian security
forces and rebels not to resume fighting which last week splintered a truce established in
October when Belgrade withdrew some troops to avert the threat of NATO air strikes.
Solana also repeated warnings that the alliance was still
prepared to use force if the situation in Kosova deteriorated.
``NATO is ready to intervene if the situation requires,'' he
said a statement from NATO headquarters in Brussels.
Houses in the villages of Velika Reka and Obranca near the
town of Podjeva, which saw four days of clashes last week between the ethnic Albanian
Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) and Serbian security forces, looked deserted Tuesday.
``We estimate that up to 5,500 people from villages near
Podjeva left their homes last week,'' an official with the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees said in Belgrade.
He did not identify the newly displaced. But the population
in that area is known to be mainly ethnic Albanian. A Reuters news team saw two Yugoslav
army armored personnel carriers (APCs) topped with twin-barreled anti-aircraft machineguns
trained toward the woods along the road between Kosova's regional capital Pristina and
Podjeva to the north.
There were also four army lorries, one ambulance and two more
police APCs armed with machineguns. Several soldiers lay in a drainage ditch along the
road, which is near the site of the fiercest clashes last week, but there was no shooting.
Three orange U.S. Humvees, utility vehicles belonging to the
Kosova Verification Mission (KVM), a team of international monitors set up under the
auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), patrolled the
road.
``The situation within the last 24 hours has been assessed as
relatively quiet. In the Podjeva area the situation is obviously tense,'' said Sandy Bly,
a spokesman for the monitors.
In Mitrovica, west of Podjeva, two people were found dead
just off the road to Pristina, Bly said.
The Serb-run Media Center identified them as Semsi Banujinca
and Rahman Nuhiu -- ethnic Albanians -- and said both were killed by Albanian separatist
rebels, but could not say when.
Bly said the two dead in Prizren were former police officers
in a local security force established earlier in the year by Serbian authorities and
composed of local ethnic Albanians.
The Media Center identified the two as Risen Bitiqi and
Mehmet Krasiqi, shot dead Monday. The fifth person found dead -- on the road between Pec
and Decani in western Kosova -- also was identified as ethnic Albanian.
Many ethnic Albanians and the guerrillas fighting to split
the province from Serbia consider any compatriots who are loyal to Belgrade as traitors.
The KLA has vowed to punish them.
Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic said the crisis
in Kosova could not be solved unless the United Nations put the rebels on the list of
terrorist organizations.
``Progress in the political process in Kosova essentially
depends on an explicit condemnation of terrorism,'' Jovanovic wrote in a letter to U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
An accompanying aide memoire said 318 people had been killed
by the ``terrorists'' this year. Ethnic Albanian human rights groups say the total number
of casualties in the province is close to 2,000, overwhelmingly Kosova Albanian.
The recent fighting, which started Thursday and went on
almost unabated for four days, ended when local commanders from both sides agreed to OSCE
pleas to stop shooting.
The guerrillas have said they will stick to a policy of
''self-restraint'' in the interest of the October cease-fire but not move from the area
and will fight if necessary.
At least 18 people were killed and several wounded in last
week's violence, the worst since the October truce which followed an eight-month Serbian
offensive against separatists that drove 250,000 people from their homes.
Canadians join Kosova monitors (AP)
PRISTINA (AP) - More international monitors, including some
Canadians, headed into Serbia's Kosova province Tuesday to shore up a fragile truce
following the worst outbreak of fighting between government forces and Albanian separatist
rebels in months.
NATO, meanwhile, repeated warnings it stands ready to
intervene if the two sides fail to respect the Oct. 12 agreement between Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic and U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke, which ended seven months of
fighting and averted NATO air strikes.
NATO Secretary General Javier Solana, speaking in Belgium,
cautioned both sides "not to endanger the fragile security situation."
The October agreement was severely strained by four days of
fighting that began Christmas Eve between government forces and the Albanian Kosova
Liberation Army. At least 15 people died.
Kosova was generally quiet Tuesday.
In Washington, a group of U.S. senators urged President Bill
Clinton to change his Balkan policy and actively seek Milosevic's removal from power as a
solution to the region's violence.
The seven members of the Senate foreign relations committee,
led by Indiana Republican Richard Lugar, said Clinton should try to provide incentives for
Milosevic to step down and accept exile to a third country.
They proposed a number of measures to weaken Milosevic's
power, including a ban on contacts by U.S. officials and a lifting of sanctions against
Montenegro, Serbia's partner in the Yugoslav Federation.
Milosevic, blamed by Washington for the 3½-year war in
Bosnia, launched a police crackdown in Kosova to suppress separatists this year and agreed
to a truce only under threat of NATO air strikes.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe,
which already has some 600 monitors in Kosova, said an unspecified number of U.S.,
Canadian and European observers arrived in Kosova late Tuesday.
More are expected in a day or two, bringing the total of new
arrivals to about 100. The OSCE expects to have a full complement of 2,000 verifiers by
mid-January, said spokesman Sandy Blyth.
Verifiers, however, do not carry weapons and critics among
Albanians and Serbs have questioned whether the mission could prevent a new round of
fighting, possibly in the spring.
Kosova rebels will
"maintain" the truce: Demaci (AFP)
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Dec 29 (AFP) - Tuesday December 29,
8:29 PM
Ethnic Albanian rebels will maintain a fragile US-brokered
truce but will again "respond if attacked" by Serb forces, their political
representative Adem Demaci said Tuesday. The Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) said last week
that it had suspended the October 8 cease-fire, in response to the "attack by Serb
police and the army," launched on the rebels' positions in northern Kosova.
"Nothing has changed. The KLA will respect its decision
(taken in October) to give a chance to a political solution, but it will always respond to
any attack by Serb forces," Demaci told reporters here.
NATO 'Ready To Intervene' in Kosova
(AP)
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Tuesday December 29 7:35 AM ET
NATO on Tuesday said it was ``ready to intervene'' in Kosova
if violence intensifies in the breakaway Serbian province and demanded Yugoslav
authorities and armed ethnic Albanians respect a ceasefire.
NATO Secretary General Javier Solana urged the two sides
fighting for control of the province ``not to endanger the fragile security situation''
and noted that the ``activation order'' authorizing NATO airstrikes remained in place.
``NATO is ready to intervene if the situation requires,''
said Solana.
The 16-nation alliance issued the airstrike threat in October
to persuade the Serbs to stop their crackdown against the ethnic Albanian rebels in
Kosova, a province of Yugoslavia's dominant republic of Serbia. The attacks were put on
hold after Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic agreed on a truce and pulled out some of
his forces.
Fighting flared again last week, leaving at least 15 people
dead and forcing thousands of civilians to flee into snow-covered hills.
Solana said he was in permanent contact with NATO's military
commanders and the unarmed international monitors in Kosova who negotiated a ceasefire
Sunday to halt the latest fighting.
Kosova May See Fiercer Battles (AP)
By VESELIN TOSHKOV Associated Press Writer
Podjeva, Yugoslavia (AP)--In the snowy hills of northern
Kosova, Serbs and ethnic Albanians alike fear the four days of fighting that raged last
week were a dress rehearsal for fiercer battles to come.
Clashes that erupted here Christmas Eve added at least 15
people to the more than 1,000 who have died in Kosova since February, when Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic launched a crackdown on independence-minded ethnic Albanians.
The battles were halted by international monitors sent to
Kosova under an agreement reached Oct. 12 between Milosevic and U.S. envoy Richard
Holbrooke to end seven months of fighting.
But the bitterness remains. Ethnic Albanian rebels appear to
be gearing up for a new round of fighting, possibly in the spring. And Serb civilians are
anxious for the government to finish off the rebels, regardless of threats of NATO
intervention.
``Soon, there will be no Serbs here unless the state takes
measures and finishes off with these bandits and savages,'' said local Serb official
Srboslav Bisercic, referring to the Kosova Liberation Army.
Although the area has been quiet for the past two days,
ethnic Albanian rebels show no sign of backing down. If the rebels capture Podjeva, they
would control the main highway between Kosova's capital, Pristina, and the heartland of
Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia.
KLA trenches lie only a few hundred yards away from the
20-mile road linking Podjeva with Pristina.
``The KLA will do everything to keep these positions,'' said
Fehim Rexhepi, an ethnic Albanian journalist who reports on the rebel movement.
Caught in the middle are the hundreds of unarmed monitors
sent by the 54-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to verify
compliance with the October truce.
On Tuesday, the OSCE said 100 additional verifiers were on
their way to Kosova, bringing to 700 the number deployed to help keep the peace. In a few
weeks, the organization expects to have the full complement of 2,000 verifiers in the
Serbian province.
But critics among both the Serb and ethnic Albanian
communities have questioned whether unarmed verifiers can contain the conflict for long,
given the bitterness on both sides.
On Tuesday, the chief Serb official in Kosova, Zoran
Andjelkovic, told local Serbs that the OSCE verifiers have no business telling the
government ``what to do and how to deal with the terrorists.''
``It is their job only to verify the facts on the ground and
inform their superiors of their findings,'' he said. ``And the facts clearly show that the
criminal gangs are terrorizing the civilian population.''
The Serb-led government fears that the October agreement has
given the rebels time to regroup, retrain and prepare for more battles when warmer weather
will enable them to smuggle more weapons and fighters across the snow-covered passes from
their sanctuaries in Albania.
Rexhepi said the guerrillas have already reorganized and
increased their presence in the Podjeva area. He estimates that the KLA has deployed
between 2,000 and 3,000 guerrillas around the town.
He said the KLA's total strength has grown to about 6,000
across the province since the cease-fire.
``They are more disciplined, better-equipped and prepared for
any battle than they were several months ago,'' Rexhepi said.
Many of the villages in the Podjeva area are deserted, except
for uniformed KLA fighters. The KLA is particularly strong in the nearby village of
Lapastica, where hundreds of ethnic Albanian refugees fled after the latest fighting.
In Podjeva, 1 1/2 miles northeast of Lapastica, Serbs are
anxious and fearful of what will happen to them in the coming months.
On Tuesday, a group of nervous Serb men smoked cigarettes as
they waited for news on a police effort to evacuate civilians from rebel territory.
``My mother and father are there,'' one said, refusing to
give his name. ``They wouldn't listen to me when I told them to evacuate in time.''
Another cursed the West for pressuring the government to halt
the crackdown in October. ``Our hands are tied,'' he said. ``The world is against us.''
U.S. Lawmakers Seek to Broker Deal
for Milosevic to Step Down (AP)
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- A group of U.S. senators is urging the Clinton
administration to arrange a deal that would let Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and
his wife take refuge in a third country in exchange for peacefully handing over power.
``U.S. policy should be to bring about and support a
democratic government committed to the rule of law in Serbia and Yugoslavia,'' Sen.
Richard Lugar said Tuesday. ``Absent fundamental change in Serbia and the leadership of
Yugoslavia, the Balkans seem destined for perpetual crisis and successive Western
interventions,'' Lugar said.
The Indiana Republican and six other members of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee proposed the measures designed to weaken Milosevic's
authoritarian rule and allow a transition to a democratic government.
The proposal, outlined in a letter last week to President
Clinton, includes: -- Instructions to U.S. officials to cut contacts with Milosevic. --
Lifting economic sanctions against Montenegro, Serbia's reform-minded partner in the
Yugoslav federation. -- Designating a special presidential envoy for promotion of
democratic change.
The letter also urged Clinton to explore the option ``whereby
Milosevic [with his wife Mirjana Markovic] might be given incentive to relinquish power
voluntarily and to leave Serbia rather than cling to power and inflict greater suffering
on the people of Yugoslavia and the region.
' ' Milosevic's wife, a leader of the neo-communist party
JUL, is considered a powerful influence on her husband and has been pushing for closer
ties with Russia. Markovic has called for an alliance among Russia, China and India
against U.S. domination. Meanwhile, more international monitors headed into Kosova on
Tuesday to shore up a fragile truce following the worst outbreak of fighting between Serb
forces and ethnic Albanian rebels in months. A number of American, Canadian and European
observers arrived in Kosova late Tuesday.
U.N. tries to get supplies to
civilians (AP)
Fighting in Kosova strains already fragile peace accord
Tuesday, December 29, 1998
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - U.N. officials Monday tried to
get food and supplies to civilians who fled four days of fighting between Serbs and ethnic
Albanians in northern Kosova.
No clashes were reported Monday in the Serbian province,
according to a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
Jorgen Grunnet.
The recent fighting put new strains on an already fragile
peace accord reached Oct. 12. The U.S.-brokered pact ended seven months of fighting in the
province, where ethnic Albanian rebels are battling for independence from Serbia, the main
republic of Yugoslavia.
The ethnic Albanians' Kosova Information Center claimed more
then 5,000 people were displaced by the fighting, which erupted Dec. 24 when government
forces attacked ethnic Albanian rebel strongholds.
But a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, Maki
Shinohara, estimated 5,000 were displaced and said humanitarian workers were trying to
locate them to provide food, blankets and other supplies.
Shinohara said teams from the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees had found three villages empty except for fighters from the Kosova Liberation
Army. "We're sending our convoys into other areas that we could reach ... We're not
being too optimistic, but we do hope the situation will stabilize," she said.
The ethnic Albanian media center said the death toll from the
four days of fighting rose Monday to 15 with the death of a wounded KLA fighter and the
discovery of a civilian's body west of Podjeva, 20 miles north of the provincial capital
Pristina.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Ignor Ivanov said the
ethnic Albanians provoked the violence to derail negotiations on the province's future.
"The blame lies with those who provoked these conflicts
- first of all the Kosova Albanians, or, to be more exact, extremists and
separatists," Ivanov said during a news briefing, according to the Interfax news
agency. Russia has long sided with the Serbs in the conflict in the predominantly Albanian
province.
More than 1,000 people have been killed and about 300,000
have been driven from their homes since Milosevic began an offensive against the rebels in
February.
Both Sides Resist U.S. Proposals in
Kosova (Washington Post)
By R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 30, 1998; Page A16
BELGRADE-When U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill traveled to
rebel-held territory in Kosova to present the latest draft U.S. proposal for resolving the
crisis in the Serbian province, the rebels flatly rejected it. When he gave it to a
negotiating team headed by more moderate ethnic Albanians in Kosova's capital, Pristina,
they too rejected it, and when its provisions were published in newspapers here, the
Yugoslav government spurned it.
In some negotiations, disgruntlement by each of the key
players can be taken as a sign that the talks are progressing toward a genuine compromise.
But not in the Balkans, according to senior U.S. officials. They say that key players in
the Kosova conflict are all still confident that they know best, that others are at a
larger disadvantage and that the international community in the end will force their
opponents to yield more ground.
This negotiating dynamic -- including a rigid attachment to
principle, a lack of urgency and optimism on each side that the conflict can be
manipulated to its benefit -- accounts for the persistent tensions that led to last week's
upswing in violence between rebels and government forces in Kosova, said the officials,
all familiar with the negotiations conducted so far at Washington's behest.
Although the fighting has quieted down in the past few days,
international monitors confirmed that two bodies were found Tuesday near Mitrovica, the
site of recent deaths in northern Kosova, and two more were found near the southern Kosova
city of Prizren, bringing the total number of deaths to at least 18. The latest violence
grew out of maneuvering by each side for superior military positions near a major highway
linking Kosova with the rest of Serbia, gambits that would hardly be important unless each
side expects more fighting in the spring.
The fundamental problem is that "neither side is ready
for a deal right now," said one senior U.S. official. "Think of the Mideast.
Think of Northern Ireland. Forget Bosnia [as a model]. Forget the Dayton accords"
ending the Bosnia conflict, which were forged in a matter of weeks.
Said another frustrated U.S. official, "The last two
drafts [of the U.S. proposal] were an effort to find a middle ground." But even after
months of fighting and hundreds of deaths, "neither side understands that the other
has a point of view. They each say that you [the United States] have to just tell the
other side what to do."
Washington's aim in organizing shuttle diplomacy between the
two sides during the past six months was to persuade the Yugoslav government and rebel
forces fighting for Kosova's independence to back away from the violence that held sway
for most of the year and accept a half-loaf, temporary solution that provides more
autonomy for the majority ethnic Albanian population in Kosova but defers any decision on
the province's final legal status.
But Washington's latest draft solution, a 28-page document
prepared by State Department lawyers working with the special U.S. envoy for Kosova
matters, Ambassador to Macedonia Christopher Hill, was spurned by ethnic Albanians, who
said it does not go far enough toward removing Serbian control of Kosova. Kosova is a
province of Serbia, the more important of the two republics in the Yugoslav federation,
but ethnic Albanians compose nine-tenths of the population and almost uniformly favor
independence.
"Hill and the others have a problem in not
understanding" the status conferred on Kosova by wording in the latest draft, said
Fehmi Agani, a member of the moderate wing of the ethnic Albanian leadership. He said the
latest U.S. draft offered less than "50 percent of the autonomy that we had
before" 1989, when Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic revoked Kosova's autonomous
authority at the outset of a nationalist bid for absolute political power.
Agani was particularly critical of provisions in the draft
that say a newly created political assembly in Kosova can enact "decisions"
instead of the "laws" described in an earlier draft; that allow the Serbian
government to maintain authority for education, health and social welfare in Kosova; and
that prescribe a joint presidency composed of representatives of multiple ethnic groups
instead of a more powerful president elected by the assembly. Noting that Serbian courts
would still have considerable jurisdiction over crimes committed in Kosova, Agani said,
"we would not only be within Serbia but within Serbia's little system."
The reaction of the Kosova Liberation Army, which has
spearheaded the conflict for ethnic Albanians, was even stronger. Several guerrilla
officials said they would not hesitate to order renewed fighting if necessary to obtain
more favorable terms.
But U.S. diplomats said they are hemmed in by the reluctance
of the government in Belgrade to give the province powers that may embolden its leaders to
expect independence later. Moreover, they have encountered strong opposition from the
democratically oriented leadership of Yugoslavia's other republic, Montenegro, to any
interim deal that allows Kosova to gain the status similar to a republic. Since Kosova has
a larger population than Montenegro, such a deal is seen by Montenegrins as diminishing
their status in the federation.
The key players "still think they have too much
time" before the spring thaw begins and a much wider conflict looms, making them
reluctant to take the U.S. proposals seriously now, said one official. "The problem
is, these are guys who do miscalculations for a living" and by the time spring comes,
their nerves might be worn even more raw by the sporadic winter violence. "We have
made progress -- very little -- but progress," another official said, only because
each side has not ruled out the possibility of reaching a deal later, even as they prepare
to fight again.
Commander Says Kosova Rebels Will
Honor Truce but Not Leave (LA Times)
From Times Wire Services
LAPASTICA, Yugoslavia--The commander of ethnic Albanian
guerrillas ranged against Serbian forces in northern Kosova said Monday that he would
observe a truce restored by international monitors, but he refused to move his troops.
"I want to make it clear that the accord was agreed with the observers of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe [OSCE], and not with the Serbs,"
the commander, using the nom de guerre Remi, said at his headquarters, a two-story house
in the village of Lapastica. "However, we will stick to it," he added. On
Sunday, OSCE verifiers talked with commanders of Serbian forces and the ethnic Albanian
Kosova Liberation Army, or KLA, to persuade them to stop fighting in the area, where more
than a dozen people had been killed in four days of clashes that began Thursday.
Criminal and Victim Cannot Be
Declared Equally to Blame, as Accomplices', the UÇK (KLA) Says
PRISHTINA, Dec 28 (KIC) - Albanian citizens and international
employees in Kosova face an increasing uncertainty and insecurity as Serbian military and
police troops launched their offensive in Llapi region, the General Staff of the UÇK
(Kosova Liberation Army) said in a statement. Having been defeated by the UÇK forces in
Llapi region on 24 December, the Serbian occupation forces acted in retribution against
the Albanian civilian population and threatened OSCE observers and international media
representatives, the UÇK General Staff said. "In these exacerbated circumstances,
the OSCE observers face huge difficulties and obstruction by the occupying [Serb]
forces", the UÇK said, adding that international institutions, governmental and
non-governmental, as well as media representatives, will in no way be facing obstructions
by the Albanian people and the UÇK. "They will in no way be harmed by us", but
rather welcomed.
The UÇK General Staff called on the international
representatives to inform in an "objective manner" about the situation in
Kosova. "We call on the international community to inform in an impartial way about
the situation in Kosova, because criminal and victim cannot be declared equally to blame,
as accomplices".
We are confident you have not sent your representatives to
approve of the Belgrade regime's crimes", the UÇK General Staff said in the
statement.
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