[ALBSA-Info] Today's Articles on Albanian Issues, August 27, 2001

[National Albanian American Council - NAAC]

National Albanian American Council
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Email: naac at naac.org
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For Your Information
August 27, 2001

Exposed: man accused of Kosovo massacre 
Serbia agrees to act after Guardian tracks down wanted businessman 
By Rory Carroll in Kraguljevac
A Serbian entrepreneur accused of one of the worst atrocities of the Kosovo war has been tracked down by the Guardian to the central Serbian town of Kraguljevac. 
Misko Nisavic is running a driving school, called Boss, from the ground floor of a seven-storey block at 19 Karadordeva street, in the town's commercial heart. 
He is wanted by the Serbian authorities and war crimes prosecutors from the Hague tribunal for his role in the slaughter of a family of 49 ethnic Albanians in the town of Suva Reka in March 1999. 
Nisavic, who owned a string of businesses, vanished into Serbia after enlisting three friends to help him wipe out a family called Berisha in a massacre that sickened the west. 
Until now his new life in Kraguljevac has been undisturbed. That could change today because police in Belgrade promised to act as soon as the suspects' whereabouts were known. 
Last week Dragan Karleusa, chief investigator for the Serbian interior ministry, said there would be no hiding place for the killers of Suva Reka. 
"If we find these men we will arrest and question them. They should pay for these crimes. If we get them it would take away the black spot of the Serbian nation." 
Nisavic visits his office several times a week, overseeing a fleet of Yugo cars in which local teenagers learn to drive during #60 courses. His brother-in-law, Zivko Slavkovic, gives driving lessons and his sister takes care of administration. 
A small, heavily built man in his late 30s, he is identified on business cards as Milovan Nisavic, though in Kosovo Misko was assumed to be the diminutive of Milorad. 
He refused to speak to the Guardian but through his sister denounced the accusations as lies. "He told me to tell you he never did anything," she said. 
Her voice trembling, she added: "This is the first time I have heard about Misko being involved in something like that. I do not believe it." 
Suva Reka, in southern Kosovo, had a mixed population of Serbs and Albanians when forces loyal to the former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, rampaged through the province to quell an Albanian insurgency. When Nato responded with air attacks, Serbs were mobilised into a militia. Nisavic seized the opportunity to punish the Berisha family, which rented houses, for supposedly poaching clients from his hotel, also called Boss, from among staff of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. 
According to depositions from witnesses given to the Hague, he enlisted three friends, Zoran Petkovic, Boban Vuksanovic and Slobodan Krtic, and on March 26 surrounded the Berishas' houses. 
They shot the men first and cornered the women and children, who fled into the Calabria coffee shop on Reshtan road. Gunfire and grenades turned it into an abattoir. 
Bodies were loaded into a truck but three Berishas were still alive: Vjollca, her son Gramos, and her sister Shyrete. They rolled off the truck and escaped and have briefed Hague investigators, who entered Kosovo with Nato two months after the massacre. 
Vjollca, 38, said she would not be satisfied until Nisavic and his friends followed Milosevic to the Hague, where she intends to testify. "It was not just him, there were many Milosevices." 
The devastated village is rebuilding but the coffee shop has been left untouched; scorched, covered in debris and dried blood, it gapes open like a cavity. A concrete pyramid to remember the dead is being erected outside. 
Nisavic joined Serb refugees in fleeing the Albanian vengeance that accompanied Nato into the province in June 1999. He packed possessions into a fleet of cars and fled across the border to his sister in Kraguljevac, a provincial town south of Belgrade. 
People in Kraguljevac recalled that Nisavic had no trouble affording a prime location for the driving school, one of what is thought to be several interests. 
Nisavic has done better than his accomplices. Zoran Petkovic is said to be struggling to make ends meet somewhere near Belgrade, Boban Vuksanovic has disappeared, and according to Newsweek magazine, Slobodan Krtic was killed by Albanian guerrillas weeks after the massacre. 
In Belgrade, Capt Karleusa promised to follow up all leads. "There is no hiding place in Serbia for war criminals." 
Capt Karleusa has helped investigators from the FBI and the Hague to sift through the mass graves of an estimated 1,000 Albanians dotted around Serbia. 
Those killed in Suva Reka were buried at a nearby rifle range but were later shuttled to Serbia in refrigerator trucks after Milosevic allegedly ordered evidence of war crimes to be concealed. 
The Berishas are thought to be among the bodies burned and buried in Batajnica, an army base north of Belgrade, which is now being exhumed. 
Documents and jewellery belonging to seven family members have been found but it could be a year before DNA tests confirm the identities. 
In the refugee centre in the Avala mountains outside Belgrade, where Suva Reka's Serbs have lived for two years, they shrugged, shook their heads and said they knew of no atrocities. However, asked about Misko Nisavic, they scattered. 

British Soldier Killed in Macedonia
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) -- NATO helicopters swooped into a clearing in northern Macedonia on Monday as the alliance began the risky mission of collecting weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels, just hours after suffering its first casualty -- a British soldier.
Marauding youths threw a block of concrete that hit and killed Ian Collins, 20, of the 9 Parachute Squadron Royal Engineers. He was driving an armored vehicle under an overpass on a main road outside Skopje, the capital, when the attack occurred, British military officials said. They said he suffered head injuries.
Collins was taken first to the U.S. Army's Base in Macedonia, Camp Able Sentry, and then on to the U.S. hospital at Camp Bondsteel in neighboring Kosovo. He was later transported back to Skopje University Hospital, where he died. Another person in the vehicle was uninjured.
The killing caused unease as NATO began the British-led mission to collect weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels. Though ethnic Albanians generally welcome the deployment, the country's majority Macedonians have been suspicious and sometimes hostile to the presence of foreign troops.
But NATO said it would press ahead with Operation Essential Harvest.
``This regrettable incident will not affect the resolve of Task Force Harvest to complete the mission,'' Brig. Barney White-Spunner, the top-ranking British commander, said in a statement.
French Puma and American Chinook helicopters ferried NATO troops near the village of Otlja, 6 miles west of the northern city of Kumanovo, to carry out the first collection of weapons. The area was secured before NATO moved in.
A leader of ethnic Albanian rebel forces in the area who goes by the name Commander Shpati said his men had started handing in their weapons and that everything was going smoothly.
About 1,400 British soldiers will take part in the overall mission, which will involve roughly 3,500 troops. Many of them have already arrived in Macedonia.
Further underscoring the tensions in the troubled Balkan country, a large crowd of angry Macedonians gathered in Tetovo, the second-largest city, in an attempt to block the army from withdrawing heavy weaponry along front lines.
A pair of bomb blasts rocked Skopje late Sunday and early Monday, but no injuries were reported.
Macedonians largely blame NATO for the country's six-month ethnic Albanian insurgency, accusing the alliance of failing to choke off weapons and supplies coming from Kosovo -- support that is widely believed to be helping the rebels.
The British soldier was killed just as Macedonian forces began pulling back from positions around sites where NATO will begin collecting weapons from the militants. The collection is part of a peace plan meant to avert a full-fledged civil war.
NATO is planning to collect 3,300 weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels in a mission scheduled to last for no more than 30 days.
Despite NATO's optimism about the mission, Macedonian government officials later said they did not agree with the alliance's figures on the number of weapons.
Premier Ljubco Georgievski called the figure ``ridiculous and humiliating,'' claiming the rebels have closer to 60,000 weapons. His statement underscored the problems the NATO mission will face.
The peace deal envisions a step-by-step process in which rebels hand over weapons to NATO in exchange for political reforms meant to improve the status of Macedonia's large ethnic Albanian minority.
Parliament is to begin debating the reforms once a third of the weapons are handed over, scheduled for the end of the week. The legislation is to be voted on only after all the arms have been collected.
But with the government insisting on higher weapons figures, it was unclear how or when parliament would begin its debate.
NATO officials acknowledge the mission is delicate but insist it is the only way to prevent further conflict.
``There are no guarantees and the path will not be easy and the alternative is clear,'' said Maj. Gen. Gunnar Lange, the military commander of Operation Essential Harvest. ``The alternative is war.''

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
PUTIN BACKS MACEDONIAN HARD-LINERS 
Continuing Russia's policy of supporting hard-liners among the Orthodox Slavs of the Balkans in order to gain influence there (see "RFE/RL Balkan Report," 23 March and 31 July 2001), Russian President Vladimir Putin told Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski in Kyiv on 24 August that the UCK are "terrorists, not rebels," dpa reported. He criticized NATO's mission as ill-conceived, said that the UCK will not surrender most of their weapons, and blamed the region's problems on poverty and crime. He added that "We should understand that we are confronted in Europe by fundamentalism, we are confronted by people with aggressive aspirations," RFE/RL reported. Trajkovski told newsmen that he agrees with Putin and wants NATO to take tougher measures to disarm the UCK. He added that both men agree that Kosova is the source of the problem. Western media have reported recently that Moscow and Kyiv are sending massive arms shipments to Skopje (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 22 August 2001). Russia and Ukraine deny this. Russia has little to offer the region except weapons and natural gas, for which it drives a hard bargain. PM 

SHEKULLI (Albanian Daily)
What small parties will demand from PS
Today ends concern of small parties about posts in new Government
By Darina Tanushi
The PS senior officials, Ruci and Rama are receiving the small allies in the PS headquarters. Following the invitation from PS the previous week, the small allies are presenting today their requests, demands and suggestions for the new Government, the program and the governing structure. It is not sure whether the PM Meta will attend the meeting or contact the small parties on his own. 
The socialists have planned to discus the priorities for the four coming years, the way tat the ruling coalition is going to function, the governing structure and the improvements to the co-operation convention. 
The Social-Democrats have been the clearest in their demands and have even defined the main issues to be discussed. They have stated that other meetings are to follow the first one, not necessarily at the PS headquarters. They have suggested to new ministries to the actual structure, the Ministry of Environment, which presents an actual need for the country's future, and the Ministry of Tourism, which is actual at the level of a Committee of Tourism. Sources from the PS headquarters say that the Ministry of Health might be the one determined by the Socialists for their PSD ally. PS has considered to offer the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Agriculture and as well as the Ministry of Health to the rest of their allies. 
The Democratic Alliance convened its Steering Council two days ago but no conclusion was reached at the end. The Secretary for Relations with Public, Gjergj Zefi said that things will be known after the meeting with the Socialists today. 
The PBDNJ is surely the only  party to offer new names for the Government. It is said to have the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. As for the PS. It is said to retain the Ministry of Agriculture. 
With regard to the Convention of CO-operation, signed in November 1999, the allies find it to be convenient, but they remark it should be applied into practice, with punishment included in case of non-compliance, on the part of PS mainly. 


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