[ALBSA-Info] Albania Concludes WTO Entry Talks/Negotiator Implicated in Massacre/Kosovo U.N. Chief Ready to Sign Controversial Law/Yugoslav Court Jails Six Ethnic Albanians

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

1. Albania Concludes WTO Entry Talks, Oman Next in Line
2. Negotiator Implicated in Massacre
3. Kosovo U.N. Chief Ready to Sign Controversial Law 
4. Yugoslav Court Jails Six Ethnic Albanians

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#1
Albania Concludes WTO Entry Talks, Oman Next in Line

GENEVA, July 4 – Albania has concluded eight years of negotiations on World 
Trade Organisation entry terms and Oman is likely to follow suit. 

The accession protocols of Albania and possibly Oman are due to be formally 
approved at a meeting of the WTO's ruling General Council on July 17, WTO 
officials said. 

Croatia, which concluded its own talks on entry terms two weeks ago, will 
also be given the green light to join at the same meeting. 

The applicant countries must then ratify the accession protocols. They become 
members 30 days after notifying the Geneva-based 137-member WTO that their 
ratification is complete. 

Disagreement between the United States and the European Union over the rules 
Albania should implement on imports of films and television programmes had 
blocked agreement on Albania's entry into the WTO for months. 

Washington has repeatedly pressed WTO applicants to open up their markets to 
its audiovisual products, but the EU wants potential EU members to comply 
with its rules limiting foreign imports. 

A deal was reached when the United States last month accepted a formula 
already applied to WTO members Latvia and Estonia, allowing both Albania and 
Croatia to impose import restrictions. 

#2
Negotiator Implicated in Massacre

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Bosnia's U.N. ambassador implicated top international 
negotiator Carl Bildt on Tuesday in the failure to defend the U.N. ``safe 
haven'' of Srebrenica. 

Bildt countered that Ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey's recollection of their 
meeting on July 11, 1995, as Srebrenica was falling was wrong. And he 
reiterated that the U.N. Security Council was primarily to blame for not 
providing enough troops to defend the enclave in eastern Bosnia. 

Starting on that fateful July 11, just a few months before the end of the 3  
1/2-year Bosnian war, Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica, which was 
designated a U.N.-protected zone. When the slaughter was finished, as many as 
8,000 men and boys older than 14 were missing. 

At a symposium Tuesday to mark the anniversary and discuss Secretary-General 
Kofi Annan's 155-page report on the massacre issued in November, Sacirbey for 
the first time described what he called ``a reprehensible meeting'' with 
Bildt as the Bosnian Serbs were overrunning Srebrenica. 

Sacirbey, who at the time was Bosnia's foreign minister, recalled that Bildt 
told him on July 11 there were no plans to defend or liberate Srebrenica or 
defend Zepa. The smaller, less-protected U.N. ``safe haven'' fell to the 
Serbs days later. 

Bildt, who wrote about a meeting with Sacirbey in his book about Bosnia, said 
in a telephone interview from Sweden that Sacirbey's ``rather sensational 
information'' is ``somewhat strange.'' 

``And I can say it's wrong because I was there ... If any of this were 
remotely true, it would have been well-known and documented by now,'' he 
said. 

Sacirbey told the symposium that a few days before the Bosnian Serbs attacked 
Srebrenica, Bildt met Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb 
military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic in Belgrade. At the time, Bildt was 
representing the ``Contact Group'' that oversees the Balkans: the United 
States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy. 

``I don't know what happened at that meeting,'' Sacirbey said, but he 
speculated that the prospect of imminent attacks on Srebrenica and Zepa were 
mentioned and Bildt didn't object, which was viewed as a green light.'' 

Bildt, who is now Annan's Balkans envoy, said his meeting in Belgrade dealt 
almost entirely with a possible cease-fire. Srebrenica was mentioned only in 
a discussion about trying to get supplies to the beleaguered enclaves, he 
said. 

``The key problem with Srebrenica was that the members of the Security 
Council never gave enough troops to even have the possibility of defending 
Srebrenica,'' he said. ``If the U.N. had been given an army on the ground by 
its member states, everything would have been different. But the U.N. was 
given words, and they didn't count for much in the brutality of the Bosnian 
war.'' 

Srebrenica's inhabitants believed that the presence of 150 Dutch U.N. 
peacekeepers and the might of NATO airpower would ensure their safety. But 
NATO never responded to repeated Dutch requests for airstrikes, and the 
peacekeepers failed to prevent the Serb massacres.

#3
Kosovo U.N. Chief Ready to Sign Controversial Law

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, July 11 – Kosovo's international administrator said on 
Tuesday he was ready to sign a controversial regulation on local government 
fiercely opposed by leaders of the province's ethnic Albanian majority. 

Bernard Kouchner said he considered discussions on the regulation, which sets 
out a structure for municipal government, at an end. He would sign it into 
law after receiving final approval from United Nations headquarters in New 
York. 

Several major ethnic Albanian political parties have angrily rejected the 
regulation because it sets up special local government offices in the 
enclaves of minority Serbs. 

Kouchner's U.N.-led administration says it has decided to set up the offices 
purely to give Serbs, the targets of numerous attacks by ethnic Albanians 
since the U.N. and NATO moved into Kosovo last year, better access to local 
council services. 

But Albanian leaders say the measure lets Serbs bypass multi-ethnic 
institutions and is a step towards breaking up the province into 
self-governing cantons. One of the main Albanian parties has frozen 
cooperation with the U.N. in protest. 

After a meeting with political leaders, Kouchner insisted that he was not 
ignoring the views of ethnic Albanians ``I'm not ignoring anybody. I've 
discussed for hours and hours and weeks and weeks,'' he told reporters. 

``We came here because we did not ignore the Albanian people,'' he said, 
referring to NATO's bombing campaign to end Serb repression of ethnic 
Albanians in Kosovo and establish an international adnministration and 
peacekeeping force. 

``But afterwards, we also have not to ignore the other communities,'' the 
former French health minister added. ``For the moment, the Serbs are the more 
threatened and targeted.'' 

MOST SERIOUS DISPUTE 

Since it moved into Kosovo in June last year, the U.N. has been rebuilding 
the Yugoslav province's administration practically from scratch. The law 
setting up the municipal structure paves the way for local elections in 
October. 

The row over the regulation is significant as it is probably the most serious 
dispute so far between ethnic Albanians and the international community, 
which has generally come in for more criticism from Serbs. 

U.N. officials are, however, fairly relaxed about the disagreement and 
believe the decision of the Democratic Party of Kosovo to freeze cooperation 
has more to do with domestic political considerations than the new 
regulation. 

``Honestly, I think this discussion of community offices was a pretext,'' 
Kouchner said. 

Officials suggest the move by DPK leader Hashim Thaci was designed to win 
back support among former fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army who fought 
against Serb rule and believe he has given in too much to Serbs and the U.N. 
over the past year. 

Kouchner noted that none of the parties was talking of boycotting the 
election despite their opposition to the regulation. 

#4.
Yugoslav Court Jails Six Ethnic Albanians

BELGRADE, July 10 – A Belgrade court sentenced six ethnic Albanians on Monday 
to a total of over 46 years in prison in a terrorism trial the defence said 
was ``staged.'' 

Judge Dragisa Slijepcevic said the court had found the group guilty and 
sentenced them to from six to 12 years in jail. The maximum sentence for 
terrorism under the Yugoslav Penal Code is 20 years. 

Zef Paluca, brothers Petrit and Driton Berisha, Driton Meqa, Skodran Derguti 
and Abdulahu Isam denied all charges, saying their confessions had been given 
under duress following torture in police custody. 

The six, aged between 27 and 39, were accused of belonging to a terrorist 
group which planned various actions in Belgrade during last year's NATO 
bombing campaign against Yugoslavia over its repression in Kosovo. 

Defence lawyers accused police and state security officials of stage-managing 
the entire case for political ends. 

``This is a rigged trial,'' lawyer Ivan Jankovic told Reuters. ``The court 
has only finalised what the police had begun.'' 

Another defence lawyer, Rajko Danilovic, agreed. ``This is a politically 
motivated trial with the only goal to expel and frighten those few ethnic 
Albanians left in Belgrade or other parts of Serbia,'' he said. 

The charge sheet said the six men had also collected contributions for the 
secessionist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) from ethnic Albanians in Belgrade, 
and purchased and sent weapons to Kosovo. They were also accused of 
possessing weapons. 

CONVICTION WITHOUT EVIDENCE - DEFENCE 

The defence said the prosecution had failed to provide a single shred of 
evidence to prove the accused had committed the crime for which they were 
sentenced. It added that confessions given during police custody should not 
be used in the trial. 

``This is one of the typical verdicts which, through a draconian penalty, 
seeks to justify improper conduct by police, prosecution, investigation and 
misconduct during the entire main hearing,'' Danilovic said. 

Petrit Berisha, who received the longest sentence of 12 years, was 
additionally charged with involvement in the murder of two policemen in 
Kosovo. 

Paluca, a jeweller who was tried in absentia, was sentenced to eight years in 
prison, Mega and Derguti to seven years each, and Isam to six and a half 
years. 

Driton Berisha was sentenced to six years. According to Slijepcevic, his 
penalty was the lowest due to his cooperation with the court. 

Last week, a military tribunal in the southern Serbian city of Nis sentenced 
two Kosovo Albanians to long prison terms of 15 years each on terrorism 
charges. 

According to the latest International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 
report issued in June, over 1,000 ethnic Albanians are still held in 
Yugoslavia's prisons.