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LETTERS OF SUPPORT

SERBIAN MASSACRES

 Updated at 1:50 AM on April 6, 1999

URGENT APPEAL - A Human Catastrophe Caused by Serbian Barbaric Troops
Thousands of Civilians Surrounded by Serb Forces, With No Way Out

Drenica, April 5th (Kosovapress) - Thousands of people, are left in recesses and in roads, with nowhere to go. According to our sources, leaving from the houses of Kozhica, a peasant column has fallen in field-mines and there might be victims there, but we don`t have confirmations until now. The catastrophe, not humanitarian but human one, has already happened. Except having caused victims in civil people and in damage and it is causing yet, the Serbian occupator has brought to a situation where people are starving from hunger. Thousands of people are left without food; hundreds of them are sick and left in the cold weather moving from one place to another looking for a shelter. Even today, except in the Eastern Drenica, there have been heavy fights during all day in the Central and Western Drenica, like in Shtuticë, Verboc, Abri, Likoc and in other villages. During these 20 days of Serbian offensive, we could identified 270 people who are killed and massacred and they are mainly children, women and old age people. The massacre in Izbica, is fourth time bigger than the Reçaku massacre. In this place, the mutilation bodies were found, people executed, massacred, tortured and burnt. All these facts are filmed in one camera and we also have reached to take the testimonies of three witnesses who were present there but they were lucky one. If international forces, particularly NATO forces are not going to increase their attack power urgently, exactly in the regions where heavy fights and massacres are taking place, then all it remains is to count the hours and probably in these regions there will be no Albanian civil population left any more. This will happen because of the Serbian terrorist assassination forces in one side and in the other side because of starvation and the diseases that have already started. This is an appeal of the remained population in the limit of death, left in the places where Serbian forces are attacking day and night. Their appeal is please act now and save what can be saved, otherwise it will be to late for everything.

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Albania - Situation of Kosovars in Pogradec under full control

TIRANE, April 5 (ata) - By Urim Bajrami: The Minister of Public Order Petro Koci and the Secretary of State for Euro-Atlatic Integration Maqo Lakrori held on Monday a number of meetings in the city of Pogradec to see closely the living conditions of the people from Kosove settled there. According to the spokesman of the Public Order Ministry, at first Koci and Lakrori stopped in the military compounds that the Public Order Ministry has put at the disposal of the Kosovars evicted from their territories, then they visited the refugees camps set up by some German foundations. After these visits, Minister Koci and State Secretary Lakrori had an extended meeting with representatives of the local government and police structures. They gave instructions for a more harmonious coordination between all links to cope with the situation. /lh/xh/

Albanians should be sheltered as close as possible to Kosove; Albanian Foreign Minister

TIRANE, April 5 (ATA) - By I.Luto: Albanian Foreign Minister, Paskal Milo, asked the ambassadors of NATO countries accredited to Albania, to speed up the humanitarian aids for the Albanian government which has accepted to evacuate the Kosovar refugees waiting for days in the border line between Macedonia and Kosove. The Foreign Minister, said that the setting up of camps for hosting the refugees waiting for days in the border with Macedonia, within the Albanian territory, is an immediate necessity. The very grave situation of Kosova refugees in the border between Macedonia and Kosove was on the focus of the regular government meeting hold on late Monday. The meeting stressed the readiness of the Albanian government to evacuate them within the Albanian territory. The meeting hold today between the Albanian Foreign Minister and the ambassadors of NATO countries, which were urged to give immediate aid to help Albanian to face this very grave situation was hold in the contex of the decision taken by the Albanian government. Minister Milo said that the Albanian government was ready to undergo these challenges although it shares the constant stand that "the Albanians should help Kosova as much as possible". The latest official announcement showed that the total figure of displaced Kosovars amounted to 221.400. /dast/A.A/

Witnesses : At least two massive graves exist in Suareke

KUKES, April 5 (ATA) - By Riza Hoxha: At least two massive graves of Kosove Albanias killed by the Serb soldiers, exist in Suareke. Hasim Berisha, aged 47, who arrived in Morine border point on Monday told ATA that the Serb military forces killed about 40 men of Suareke on Sunday, while he and the other citizens of this city were trying to flee in a massive way. "All the killed persons were entombed in two massive holes", added Berisha. /dast/A.A/

Albania - Influx of displaced Kosovars increases in Kukes

KUKES, April 5 (ATA) - By Riza Hoxha: The influx of Kosovars, forcibly expelled from their ethnic soil by Miloshevic's regime, and arriving in the district of Kukes, has continued to be increased on Monday. Kukes Prefecture statistics show that some 20 000 Kosovars have entered Albania by 18.00, by amounting the total number of Kosovars to 223 000. A part of the persons coming from Kosove, do not want to be evacuated from Kukes, hoping that they will soon be back to their homes. /dast/A.A/

UN War Crimes Tribunal Urged To Indict Milosevic (FoxNews)
8.34 p.m. ET (035 GMT) April 5, 1999

WASHINGTON — The International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was urged Monday to indict Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for atrocities in Kosovo, but the court said its ability to investigate crimes and bring the accused to trial was limited.

Richard Goldstone, who served as chief prosecutor for the tribunal from 1994-1996, and other experts said U.N. war crimes prosecutors had enough evidence in hand to indict Milosevic and bring him to trial for alleged mass crimes against ethnic Albanians in the war-torn Yugoslav province.

"There is a direct chain of command between Milosevic, his security forces, and what has happened, and there can be no question that war crimes have been committed,'' Goldstone said after a meeting of war crimes experts in Washington. "The sooner an indictment comes out the better.''

In separate newspaper columns, former U.S. Senator Bob Dole called on President Clinton to identify Milosevic publicly as a war criminal, while former Secretary of State Warren Christopher said, "It is now clear Milosevic must be tried for war crimes.''

The president of the tribunal, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, would not say whether prosecutors were considering an indictment against the Yugoslav leader. She told the Washington panel that decision was up to the prosecutors.

But McDonald warned that investigators were having serious trouble gathering evidence in Kosovo.

Yugoslavia has refused to allow tribunal prosecutor Louise Arbour and a team of investigators into the province. As a result, McDonald said prosecutors might be forced to conduct their entire inquiry without direct access to sites in Kosovo.

She also warned that divisions within the 15-nation U.N. Security Council could hamper the tribunal's work. Russia, China and Namibia voted for a resolution on March 26 demanding an immediate halt to the NATO attacks.

McDonald said she has repeatedly urged the Security Council to take a tougher line on Yugoslavia's noncooperation with the war crimes court, but to no avail. "The Security Council is starting to become polarized. It's starting to get back to where it was in the Cold War,'' she said.

Set up in 1993 by the Security Council, the tribunal relies on the international community for support. It has no police force of its own to bring the indicted to trial or compel Belgrade to cooperate.

But McDonald said these problems could be resolved with the help of major Western powers, clearing the way for trials of Milosevic and others if indictments were handed down for alleged crimes in Kosovo.

"I've got to believe that the international community would not allow a world leader to continue to hold power and continue to engage in (allegedly criminal) acts.... So I believe that the world community would act.''

State Department spokesman James Rubin said earlier Monday that Washington held Milosevic "politically responsible'' for the atrocities in Kosovo, but stopped short of declaring him a war criminal.

That determination should be made by the Hague-based tribunal, Rubin said, adding that the United States would give the panel "all the help they need in order to draw their independent conclusions.''

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U.S. will not allow Milosevic "phony peace"
By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON, April 5 - The United States, hammering Serbia harder in clear skies with B-2 stealth bombers and other jets, warned on Monday that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will not get an easy peace in Kosovo.

The State Department said Milosevic was politically responsible for atrocities in the Yugoslav province, and President Bill Clinton said ethnic cleansing "cannot stand."

State Department spokesman James Rubin told reporters that Washington would not allow Milosevic to preempt NATO objectives of eventually getting hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians back into Kosovo with a "phony peace deal" and that NATO air strikes would continue until Milosevic agreed.

If Milosevic "thinks that in the coming days, he can stand up and declare this thing over through some action short of the objectives that we have set forth, he's sadly mistaken," Rubin said.

Clinton, speaking at the White House, attacked Milosevic and said the U.S. military would send 600,000 food ration packs to help feed refugees in Macedonia in addition to 500,000 which have already begun to flow to refugees in Albania.

Bad weather finally cleared over Yugoslavia after nearly two weeks of NATO attacks on Monday and U.S. and allied missiles and bombs pounded Serb targets as the administration re-emphasized its intent to stay on its current course.

The Pentagon said the weather was allowing expanded air strikes against Serb military targets, including troops and police driving ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.

"Last night was a substantially larger level of effort," Navy Capt. Steve Pietropaoli, a U.S. military spokesman, told reporters. The U.S. contribution included radar-avoiding B-2 stealth bombers, heavy B-1 bombers, F-117A stealth fighters and a range of other warplanes, he said.

Several B-2s flew 30-hour round trips from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to each drop up to 16 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs on Serb targets, defense officials said. The revolutionary, batwing B-2s have been used several times previously against Serb targets.

Defense Secretary William Cohen said air strikes were intensifying with clear weather in Yugoslavia and repeated that Milosevic would pay a growing price for driving ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.

"We are going to find more bridges taken down, lines of communication, ammunition depots and those things that allow him to maintain his military power," Cohen told Reuters Television in an interview.

The U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt entered the Adriatic on Monday and the Pentagon said that its 47 attack jets would be ready to join the NATO strikes on Tuesday.

Clinton said at the White House that "the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo cannot stand as a permanent event" and vowed that ethnic Albanians would return to the Yugoslav province.

"This bombing campaign is going to continue. We have made clear what our four objectives are and we're not going to allow him to try to preempt those objectives with some phony peace deal in the coming days," Rubin added at the State Department.

NATO's objectives are self-government for ethnic Albanians in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, Serb forces out of Kosovo, Belgrade's acceptance of a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo and a return of ethnic Albanian refugees to Kosovo.

As tens of thousands more refugees reach the borders of Kosovo and evidence grows of Serb "ethnic cleansing" of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, there is growing pressure for the United States and its allies to act to bring Milosevic to justice.

"We have no doubt that President Milosevic is politically responsible for what is going on in Kosovo (but) the legal responsibility pursuant to the rules of the international tribunal is what they (tribunal court members) have to determine. We don't want to prejudge that (declaring him a war criminal) for them," Rubin said.

He said the United States would give the Hague-based U.N. tribunal -- which is responsible for investigating war crimes -- "all the help they need in order to draw their independent conclusions in the hopes that whatever conclusions they do reach are as widely accepted as possible."

Despite criticism from Congress, Cohen said U.S. plans to send 24 tank-killing AH-64 Apache attack helicopters to Albania in about 10 days for use in Kosovo were not a prelude to deploying ground troops in Kosovo. "The deployment of Apaches is really a continuation of the air campaign," he said.

"This will now take the battle to the tanks, artillery and forces which are waging this horrific campaign. These helicopters go close to the ground to take out those things which have been responsible for conducting this massacre that Milosevic has been conducting."

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Serb Conscripts Assert Patriotism While Avoiding Army in Safe Houses (NYT)

"I'm doing everything I can not to go into the army," Zarko said at one of Belgrade's many cafes. "Everyone is trying not to fight. No one I know wants to die for Slobodan Milosevic, or for this wretched Kosovo."

By STEVEN ERLANGER
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Vladimir, like an unknown number of other young Serbs, is on the run.

A 29-year-old computer whiz, he received a mobilization order last Friday to report to the Yugoslav Army. Instead, he has left home, spending nights in different apartments and wrestling with an excruciating choice.

"This is the biggest dilemma I have," he said today in a quiet conversation in Belgrade's city center. "On the one hand, I think I should defend my country, which is being attacked. On the other, I'm frightened that I will die for this regime."

He is not proud of himself, he said. Nor is he making himself available to the army.

"I can always tell them I was away in the country for the weekend," he said, kicking at a pebble with extraordinary viciousness. "I really don't know what to do."

A 33-year-old artist has sent his family abroad. "It's too late for me," he said, noting that under Serbia's state of war, all men between the ages of 18 and 60 are forbidden to travel outside the country. They cannot be granted exit visas, receive new passports or renew their old ones.

A friend said that Zarko, a 30-year-old lawyer, had received a mobilization notice. When asked directly by a foreigner, Zarko denied that, but he has left his own apartment for the house of his wife's uncle.

"I'm doing everything I can not to go into the army," he said at one of Belgrade's many cafes. "Everyone is trying not to fight. No one I know wants to die for Slobodan Milosevic, or for this wretched Kosovo."

No general mobilization has been declared, but reserve units are being called up as specialities are required. Men who served in radio and communications units, for instance, are being ordered to report for duty, some Serbs say.

Wartime military courts have been established to court-martial those who do not report to their units immediately, with prison terms for draft-dodging that can range from 1 to 20 years.

Official Serbian state television has shown glowing reports of young men responding to mobilization or draft orders, and it is likely that a large majority does so.

In general, patriotism is high in what appear to be the early days of a long struggle of stamina and nerve with NATO, and there is a lot of outrage about the extension of NATO's bombing this weekend to downtown Belgrade and at least ostensibly civilian targets like bridges, power plants and factories.

Sunday, for example, near the American and French Cultural Centers ransacked earlier this week by angry Serbs, passers-by knelt at an immense strip of unrolled canvas, perhaps a yard wide and 100 yards long. Every few yards on this central pedestrian shopping street, there was a pot of white paint and a brush, and many people stopped to daub patriotic and anti-NATO slogans on the canvas, a haunting and apparently appealing form of participatory art.

The artist on the run from the army, who asked not to be identified, is meanwhile more concerned about exchanging information with 20 friends about safe houses. Each of those 20 people is in contact with another 20 friends, he said.

These people move around from place to place, he said, mostly in Belgrade, because, "It's the only terrain they know, and it's always best to hide in a big city."

With Belgrade's population estimated now at two million people, swollen by Serb refugees from the earlier wars in Croatia and Bosnia, there are many people not registered, as they should be by law, with the police.

Similarly, there are a number of apartments that are either empty or still registered to distant relatives or family members who are dead.

"People are afraid to go to small villages outside of Belgrade, even where they have vacation houses or apartments," he said. "There is small-town patriotism and small-town curiosity, and it is easier to be caught."

But all those choices are difficult, the fugitive artist said. He described two friends with dual Yugoslav-French citizenship, who are dodging mobilization and yet refusing to leave the country, even with their French passports.

Last night, he said, after "a long, drunken and stoned conversation," he sent them to an empty apartment in Zemun, a small municipality of greater Belgrade along the Danube that was the last outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The apartment is new and unregistered. "It doesn't exist in official papers," he said. On the other hand, it is uncomfortably close to an important Air Force building. "So either they can be a target of the military police or of the Tomahawks," he said, referring to the American cruise missile. "You have to balance one target against another."

And why don't they go to France? He laughed. "It might strike you as strange," he said. "But they're very patriotic. They don't want to leave their friends and their country now, while it is under attack. That would be a betrayal."

The same is true of him, he said. His wife pushed him to leave with her, but he refused. "I don't want to abandon my friends or this city, which I love," he said.

The artist did his 15-month army service in the 1980's, before President Milosevic began "the wars of secession" that have engulfed the former Yugoslavia in blood and flame. "I did it and I hated it," he said. "I hated the look of the uniform, and I hated the feel of the gun."

He never reported his address to the local Defense Office, as Yugoslav males are obligated to do, and believes -- since he once lived abroad -- that the bureaucrats will think he's still there.

In fact, he said, he had returned to Belgrade to take part in the huge pro-democracy demonstrations of 1996 and 1997. "I came home to watch Milosevic fall," he said. "Unfortunately, I'm still waiting."

Like many of the people he knows, he said, "we'd like to see him hanging."

But he continued, "If the guys from NATO come here, we will shoot them."

"We were all raised on this paradigm of resisting external aggression, whether it came from the United States or Russia," he said, referring to Tito's doctrine of Yugoslav self-sufficiency and nonalignment with either East or West. "And now this is the paradigm we prepared for."

The generation of young men 28 and under have a different experience. In general, they had to fight in Milosevic's wars in Croatia and Bosnia and many of them hated the fratricidal horrors of the experience. Given the international sanctions on Yugoslavia and the country's constant state of crisis, they have also been unable to travel abroad.

One draft-dodger, Dejan, a medical student who had served in Bosnia, said the war against NATO was crazy. "They sent me an invitation to join the army reserve, but I'm not at home and my parents are not there, either," he said. Instead, he continued, "I live like a refugee, changing places every other night."

NATO's bombing of Belgrade has given him a new place to go. "Now I spend nights in different shelters," he said. "Who can challenge me for being in a shelter?"

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