[ALBSA-Info] Bomb Kills Seven Serbs, NATO Warns Kosovo

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Bomb kills seven Serbs, NATO warns Kosovo

By Shaban Buza

GATE THREE, Yugoslavia, Feb 16 (Reuters) - A bomb attack on a bus in northern 
Kosovo on Friday killed seven Serbs and injured dozens more, risking 
international sympathy for the majority-Albanian province. 

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica blamed "Albanian extremists" who he 
said threatened the stability of the entire Balkan region. His foreign 
minister called for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council. 

NATO did not specify who was to blame, but Secretary General George Robertson 
bitterly condemned the attack and said it was clearly a deliberate attack on 
civilians. Britain, France and Germany also condemned it. 

"NATO did not conduct its air campaign in order to see ethnic cleansing by 
one group replaced by the ethnic attacks and intimidation of another," 
Robertson said, referring to the 1999 air strikes against Yugoslavia to stop 
Serbian violence against Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. 

The bomb was planted on the road to Podujevo and targeted a bus known to 
carry only Serbs to visits and shopping in the city of Nis in eastern Serbia. 
Escorted by Swedish peacekeepers, the bus was 1 km (less than a mile) south 
of Gate Three on Kosovo's northern boundary late Friday morning when the bomb 
exploded. 

SECOND CONVOY ATTACK IN A WEEK 

The blast, the second attack on a Serb convoy this week, took place in a 
region that has seen increasing violence against Serbs by ethnic Albanian 
guerrillas in recent months. 

It appeared likely to stoke regional tensions and complicate efforts toward a 
peaceful solution to the violence. 

Seven of the 60-odd passengers died, 10 were seriously injured, others had 
lighter injuries and some were missing, said Tim Pearce, spokesman for KFOR, 
the NATO-led peacekeeping force. 

Brigadier Robert Fry, a senior member of KFOR, said two people had been 
detained but it was not clear if they were involved. He said there had been 
up to 200 pounds (90 kg) of explosive targeting the first bus of the convoy. 

"We must be quite clear about what this was. it was a ruthless, premeditated 
act of mass murder," he said. 

"There were men, women and children travelling on that bus and whoever 
perpetrated this did so with complete disregard for human life and also for 
the reputation of the people of Kosovo in the wider world," Fry told Reuters 
at the scene as helicopters buzzed overhead and peacekeepers swarmed the 
area. 

Relatives of the dead and injured passengers staged furious protests in and 
around their home village of Gracanica, where the buses were headed, blocking 
roads and burning property. 

KFOR spokesman Steven Shappell said the Gracanica U.N. administrator's car 
was among those set alight. The situation later calmed but Serbs called new 
protests for Saturday, including in the flashpoint Kosovo city of Mitrovica. 

KOSTUNICA URGES RESTRAINT 

In Belgrade, Kostunica urged restraint, saying it was up to KFOR and the U.N. 
civilian administration that has run Kosovo since the air strikes to respond 
to force with force. 

"These innocent victims have once again confirmed how evil and threatening to 
the entire region's stability the intentions and plans of the Albanian 
extremists are," he said. 

"The international community must finally understand who is the true enemy of 
peace in Kosovo and the Balkans and start acting accordingly," he said. 

The Yugoslav parliament cut short a session in protest. The attack came just 
two days after a Serb man was killed and two children were injured by a 
gunman attacking a bus near Strpce. 

The Civic Alliance party led by Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic, 
one of most widely-respected members of the reformist government that took 
over after Slobodan Milosevic's ouster in October, condemned KFOR. 

"At a moment when the Serbian government is taking moderate and tolerant 
steps in a very tense situation to resolve the problems it inherited in 
Kosovo and southern Serbia, such passivity by KFOR forces is additionally 
complicating the situation in these areas and questioning the point of having 
such 'observation' forces'," the party said. 

In Vienna, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic told the Permanent 
Council of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 
that Serbia could hold official talks with ethnic Albanian leaders within 10 
days to try to find a peaceful solution to the violence near the Kosovo 
border. 

Several hundred well-armed Albanian rebels have moved into the Kosovo buffer 
zone, from which NATO barred Serbian forces after taking control in Kosovo in 
June 1999. Ethnic Albanians are in the vast majority in two of the area's 
three main towns.