[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=AB?=ALBEUROPA=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BB?=} PRESS: U.S. Seeks Release of Ethnic Albanians, Peaceful Return of Serbs to Kosovo (Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2000)

[Wolfgang Plarre]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/20001015/t000098337.html

Sunday, October 15, 2000

U.S. Seeks Release of Ethnic Albanians, Peaceful Return of Serbs to
Kosovo 

By DAVID HOLLEY, Times Staff Writer

    PRISTINA, Yugoslavia--U.S. envoy James C. O'Brien on Saturday called
for Yugoslavia's new government to quickly release ethnic Albanian
political prisoners held in Serbian jails and for the people of Kosovo
to tolerate the return of former Serbian residents. 
    "Serbs who want to return home should now have the chance," O'Brien,
envoy to the Balkans, said at a news conference here. "It's incumbent
upon everyone in Kosovo to help create the conditions that will allow
anyone who wants to live in Kosovo to live here safely and normally." 
     O'Brien said he stressed the importance of a quick release of
ethnic Albanian prisoners in talks Thursday with new Yugoslav President
Vojislav Kostunica in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital. 
     Kostunica responded that "he would consider it," but he stressed
his own interest in enabling former Serbian residents to return to
Kosovo, O'Brien said. 
     Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the larger of Yugoslavia's two
republics. Yugoslav troops were forced to withdraw from the province
last year after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization carried out a
78-day air campaign to aid ethnic Albanians being oppressed by Serbs. 
     About 1,100 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, many of them independence
fighters captured by Yugoslav forces before and during the air war,
remain imprisoned elsewhere in Serbia. 
     Ethnic Albanian leaders who met with O'Brien here Saturday stressed
that release of the prisoners would create a better atmosphere for Serbs
to live safely in Kosovo, the envoy said. 
     "It's a very constant message from the Albanian political leaders,
that if you release the detainees, you'll improve the climate," he said.
"They're not drawing a specific link. It's not an exchange program." 
     The United States is pressing hard for both sides to take these
steps, he said. 
     Tens of thousands of Serbian residents of Kosovo fled after
international peacekeeping forces entered the province in June 1999.
Most left either alongside withdrawing troops and police or in
subsequent weeks after a wave of revenge attacks on the remaining Serbs. 
     O'Brien implied that if ethnic Albanians--who make up about 95% of
Kosovo's roughly 1.6 million population--want the international
community to support their aspirations for more autonomy, they must live
peacefully with Serbs as neighbors. 
     "I think, as the world judges how Kosovo develops over the next
several years, it will look not only to elections or to the way the
government operates, it will look to the way that a real society is
re-created, in which people are able to live where they want, move
freely and have normal lives," he said. 
     In speaking to Kostunica about the prisoners, "I made clear that
it's very important to the United States, to the region, to the
families, and really to the foundation of the new democratic government
in Belgrade that these people be released immediately," O'Brien said. 
     Kostunica replied that, while he "respects this as an issue of
basic human rights," he also "believes that there needs to be a legal
process for him to be able to release these people," O'Brien said. 
     "He's at the moment just the president of the federal government,
without control over many of the ministries, without his own people in
them, and without control over the Serbian ministry which has direct
legal responsibility, and he's working his way through those issues as
part of the solution to this problem," O'Brien said. 
     O'Brien expressed confidence that Kostunica will be able to exert
his authority more forcefully in coming days, despite resistance from
the supporters of former President Slobodan Milosevic. 
     The ex-president's Socialist Party still controls the parliament
and government of Serbia. 
     Control by Kostunica and his allies of federal and municipal
revenue sources is one important means of "leverage," O'Brien said, as
is the "sunlight" of new information being made public about financial
and other abuses committed by Milosevic and his supporters.

Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times


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