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FIRST MEETINGS OF MINISTER JOVANOVIC IN NEW YORK
On Monday, the first day of his stay in New York to attend the 54th session of the UN general Assembly, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic met with presidents Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, San Nuyoma of Namibia, and Abdelaziz Buteflika of Algeria.
Jovanovic conveyed to the presidents of these friendly countries greetings from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Presidents Mugabe and Buyoma were especially interested in the processes of renewal and reconstruction in Yugoslavia following the NATO aggression. They expressed sympathies for the efforts of the Yugoslav people and leaders as soon as possible to resolve the most important humanitarian problems and renew the destroyed infrastructure, and to strengthen Yugoslavia's independence, sovereignty and integrity.
Joint readiness was expressed for the further promotion of economic and other forms of cooperation, based on mutual confidence and common interests.
Jovanovic also met with the president of the current session, Namibian Foreign Minister Tio-Ben Guriraba, and General-Secretary Kofi Annan.
During the meeting, Annan reiterated his stand that Yugoslavia should be given wider humanitarian support for renewing its infrastructure destroyed in the NATO air strikes. He said humanitarian aid should not be conditioned, and pledged to continue providing such support.
Minister Jovanovic also had brief but comprehensive meetings with foreign ministers Boris Tarasjuk of Ukraine, Jadranko Prlic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Joao Miranda of Angola, Leonardo Santas Simao of Mozambique, and Jean Ping of Gabon.
Talks covered the renewal of Yugoslavia's membership rights in the United Nations and other international organizations, as well as activities aimed at promoting bilateral cooperation.
SOLANA HAILS ACCORD ON KLA DISARMING, TRANSFORMATION
NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana has welcomed an accord reached in Pristina on the end of disarming of the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation calling itself Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and its transformation, stressing that all weapons belonging to KLA will be seized after the expiry of the set deadline.
Addressing a meeting of defence ministers of alliance member states in Toronto, Canada, Solana said that the UN peacekeeping force KFOR in Serbia's southern province of Kosovo and Metohija would take much stricter measures against all that failed to act in line with and honour the accord on demilitarisation.
He said that all weapons carried without permits would be confiscated.
A statement issued at NATO's headquarters in Brussels after the reaching of the Pristina accord, said that the end of the demilitarisation process marked the beginning of the international community's broader efforts for restoring confidence to Kosovo and Metohija.
Commenting on the agreement on the disarming of KLA, Brussels media carried reports that a civilian service called 'Corps for the Protection of Kosovo' would be set up through the transformation of KLA rather than a 'Kosovo Corps' as initially proposed.
It is yet uncertain what tasks such one corps will have, although there are indications that it might be about 3,000 strong and might have some 2,000-strong reserve.
This civilian organisation, as it is being referred to, would have the right to keep a limited number of personal arms. According to KFOR officials, it will be allowed to keep 200 pieces of weapons for personal security and security of 'corps' officials.
RUSSIA'S STANCE ON KLA DEMILITARISATION IGNORED - FOREIGN MINISTRY
Russia opposes the transformation of the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation calling itself Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) into some kind of forces for the 'protection of Kosovo,' a Russian foreign ministry official said Tuesday adding that his country's stand on the issue was evidently being ignored.
Commenting on the signing of an agreement on the transformation of KLA that is active in Serbia's southern province of Kosovo and Metohija, the official told Itar-Tass news agency that KLA must be demilitarised in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1244 and that its members must return to the life of civilians.
The Russian foreign ministry has repeatedly demanded that the resolution be strictly and consistently implemented, but its demand has been ignored, the diplomat said.
He said that the forming of military or semi-military units from KLA would only make more difficult further resolution of the situation in Kosovo and Metohija.
Only the disbanding and full disarming of KLA and elimination of its entire command structure can be discussed, he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov reiterated in New York late on Monday, after meeting E.U. foreign ministers, his country's stand on the matter failing to comment on the accord on the KLA transformation.
RUSSIAN COMMAND DOUBTS THAT KLA HAS GIVEN UP WEAPONS
The command of the Russian military contingent in Kosovo-Metohija expressed on Monday doubts in the full demilitarization of the KLA because new arms depots are constantly being uncovered in Serbia's southern province.
In an interview to Itar-Tass given after the deadline for the demilitarization of KLA expired, the political advisor at the headquarters of the Russian peacekeeping contingent within KFOR, Vladimir Ulasyevich, strongly criticized plans for the transformation of KLA into some kind of Kosovo Corps which would, allegedly, act only in emergency situations.
Ulasyevich set out that the Russian leadership is especially dissatisfied that the weapons handed over by the ethnic Albanian separatists are not being destroyed but, quite irrationally, kept in storage.
KOSOVO CORPS CANNOT PROTECT THE SERBS
A member of the Serbian National Council in Kosovska Mitrovica, Oliver Ivanovic, expressed on Monday doubts in KFOR's claims that the ethnic Albanian terrorists have surrendered their arms and that the Kosovo Corps, which KFOR and the UN Civilian Mission want to form out of the KLA members, could protect the Serb population.
"I do not believe that the ethnic Albanian terrorist organization KLA has demilitarized at all," Ivanovic said.
"The Serb army and police must come to Kosovo-Metohija because the Kosovo Corps, made up of those who until recently killed, persecuted, raped and looted the Serb population, cannot be expected to protect these same Serbs," Ivanovic set out.
SERB POPULATION OF VELIKA HOCA DECIDE TO SIT TIGHT
Velika Hoca near Orahovac in Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province with a population of about 1,500 Serbs is one of the few places in the province where classes began on time, on Sept 1, and are proceeding without difficulties.
Although surrounded by ethnic Albanian nationalists and exposed to daily provocation, the elementary school regularly holds classes for its 120 students, school Principal Vidosav Cukaric said in a statement to Tanjug.
The population, however, do not enjoy freedom of movement so that they cannot get the necessary textbooks and other school supplies, he said.
He described the situation in Velika Hoca as satisfactory, thanks to help from Serbian and Yugoslav humanitarian organizations.
Cukaric said the population of Velika Hoca had decided not to move out as they believe the situation could become stable by the spring.
MORE THAN 150 SERBS RETURN TO KOSOVO AND METOHIJA VILLAGE
Over 150 Serbs, who have fled their homes before the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation calling itself Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), have returned to the village of Grace at Vucitrn near Pristina, chief city of the Yugoslav republic of Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province.
Following the pullout of Yugoslav army troops and Serbian police, KLA attacked Grace where 87 Serb families lived at the time.
Britain's troops participating in the UN peacekeeping force KFOR that arrived in the village around June 20 have done nothing to put an end to the expulsion of Serbs and the plunder and torching of their property by ethnic Albanian terrorists.
ANOTHER BATCH OF RUSSIAN POLICE DUE IN KOSOVO-METOHIJA
Another batch of Russian police is due in U.N.-secured Kosovo-Metohija on Sept. 22, according to the Russian interior ministry on Monday.
The ministry's external relations chief Ivan Shushkevich told Itar-TASS news agency that the group would number 13 officers, to serve on the UN civilian police force in that province of the Yugoslav republic of Serbia.
According to the ministry, the Russian police contingent in Kosovo-Metohija should number 210 officers - 100 to work as civilian police observers and 110 as special police.
AS MANY PEOPLE LEAVE KOSOVO AND METOHIJA IN THREE MONTHS AS IN 54 YEARS
Ethnic Albanian extremists have managed to expel some 250,000 people, mainly Serbs and Montenegrins, from Kosovo and Metohija in the past three months, through brutal murders, rape, plunder and other forms of terrorising as well as the international community's and the UN peacekeeping force KFOR's tacit support - the figure is nearly as high as that indicating the number of people who have left Serbia's southern province under ethnic Albanian pressure in the past 54 years.
The remaining number of Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo and Metohija, the cradle of the Serbian people's being and spirituality, is almost symbolical.
The decades-old dream about the creation of a Greater Albania, fanned during World War II, has evidently been transformed into a long-term well-conceived plan. The harassment and expulsion of Serbs from their ancestral land, first cases of which were registered in the province at the end of the 19th century, have never stopped.
The first record of the Serbs' plight was made as far back as 1889 by Stojan Novakovic, Serbian consul in Constantinople. In a report to the Serbian government, Novakovic said that, "The Serb population in Kosovo is being killed like game and deprived of all freedoms by ethnic Albanians."
Following the opening of the Serbian consulate in Pristina that same year, reports on the Serbs' plight, which teemed with atrocities, became increasingly lengthy. Luka Marinkovic, Serbia's first consul in Pristina, sent to Belgrade four such reports in one month alone.
The persecution of Kosovo and Metohija's Serbs continued at the beginning of the century, escalating in World War II and immediately after it.
Statistics are irrefutable evidence about a continual drop in the number of Serbs and Montenegrins in the province.
Under the 1931 census, Serbs accounted for 151,000 of the province's 552,000-strong population, while ethnic Albanians accounted for 332,000.
The number of ethnic Albanians was nearly twice higher than the number of Serbs at that point, but under the 1981 census, the number of ethnic Albanians was five times higher than the number of Serbs and Montenegrins. The number of ethnic Albanians registered that year amounted to more than 1.2 million people. Ethnic Albanians boycotted the last census, carried out in 1991.
The exodus of Serbs and Montenegrins from the province has practically been going on since 1941. The most massive exodus was registered in 1968, 1981 and 1988 following large-scale ethnic Albanian demonstrations, with the one in 1988 being characterised by their request for a 'Kosovo republic.'
Between 1961 and 1981 alone, 112,000 Serbs and Montenegrins left the province. No specific data exists about the number of Serbs and Montenegrins who have left the province since 1945, with estimates putting that number at between 250,000 and 300,000.
Ethnic Albanians requested in the former Yugoslavia's assembly as far back as 1967 that the federal constitution be amended to ensure their greater affirmation, citing as an excuse for it inadequacy of the existing level of the province's autonomy.
On Flag Day, a synonym for Albania's national holiday, 1968, ethnic Albanians staged massive demonstrations demanding that Kosovo and Metohija be granted the status of republic.
In 1981, ethnic Albanian students staged demonstrations under a slogan 'Kosovo - Republic.'
All the time while they were assessing their political gain in attaining their major goal of creating their own state, they were enjoying generous support by the state in which they lived. An incredible sum of 360 million dollars flowed into the province every year.
Two thirds of the sum were used to deal with effects of a demographic explosion - ethnic Albanians have the highest birth rate in Europe. When Bank of Kosovo stopped operating in 1990, its deficit amounted to 1 billion dollars.
During that time, Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija were stripped of all rights. A modest Serb protest was registered as late as January 1986 in the form of a petition by 2,000 Serbs in Kosovo Polje, carried by the Knjizevne Novine literary magazine.
The following month, about 100 Serbs and Montenegrins from the province came to Belgrade to protest. In the years to come, Serbs and Montenegrins repeatedly did so, calling on state bodies to protect them.
The participation in a protest rally staged by Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo Polje in April 1987 by Slobodan Milosevic, who was then leader of Serbia's Communist Party, marked a turning point in the Serbian leadership's attitude towards the issue of Kosovo.
The turning point, which signalled also changes in the Serbian constitution, triggered large-scale ethnic Albanian demonstrations throughout Kosovo and Metohija that have been practically going on since the autumn of 1988. Ethnic Albanians responded by declaring a Kosovo Republic in an illegal assembly and by illegally adopting a constitution.
In September 1990, when Serbia adopted a new constitution starting to execute its state power throughout its territory, the remaining Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo and Metohija could for the first time breathe a sigh of relief.
The disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and circumstances in the world, made it possible for ethnic Albanians to organise and arm themselves and to coordinate their future actions with Tirana, which was something that they had been doing since the end of World War II.
In February 1998, ethnic Albanian terrorism, targeting equally Serbs, Montenegrins, state authorities as well as ethnic Albanians who refused to back ethnic Albanian terrorists and separatists, escalated. They cleansed ethnically as many as 87 villages last year alone, in which way the number of ethnically pure villages rose from 787 to 1,400.
The so-called international community, i.e. the United States and its west European vassals that had for decades been indifferent to developments in Kosovo and Metohija and the Serbs' plight, started immediately to show concern for ethnic Albanian terrorists killed in clashes with police.
Under the pretext that it wanted to prevent the alleged humanitarian disaster in Kosovo and Metohija, the United States, generously backed by its European satellites, took a series of actions whose aim was to violate Yugoslavia's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
This policy reached its climax in a farcical conference on the resolution of the Kosovo and Metohija crisis, held in Rambouillet, France, last February. The conference ended in a total fiasco as well as another conference on the issue held in Paris.
Following the two conferences, all masks were taken off. Under the pretext that it wanted to prevent the escalation of the alleged humanitarian disaster in Kosovo and Metohija, the U.S. administration launched brutal aggression on Serbia and Yugoslavia on March 24 using NATO's war machinery.
The outcome of the aggression was not at all in keeping with its proclaimed goals. Even leading international analysts of the Kosovo and Metohija issue, those from the United States included, admit this now.
KFOR's deployment to Kosovo and Metohija and the return of gangs of the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation calling itself Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), mainly from Albania, marked a new phase in the exodus of non-Albanians, primarily Serbs and Montenegrins, from the province.
This time their exodus is taking place with the blessing of the UN peacekeeping mission which has failed to take serious steps, although it has assumed an obligation under UN Security Council Resolution 1244 to disarm KLA terrorists and put an end to the expulsion of non-Albanians from the province.
NATO DEFENCE MINISTERS TO CONSIDER KOSOVO-METOHIJA LESSON
For the first time since the end of the aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia NATO defence ministers met in Toronto, Canada, on Tuesday for two-day informal talks on lessons learned from the political and military failure and to consider the next tasks following the Kosovo-Metohija experience, news agencies have said.
Numerous western commentators and analysts claim that one of the key "Kosovo lessons" is the fact that all major effects of the aggression on Yugoslavia were unplanned, unpredictable and unwelcome.
Traditionally, informal NATO ministerial meetings end without any decisions. U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen indicated, however, that despite the informal character, the meeting would discuss very important issues concerning the future of the alliance and its role in the so-called new world order.
Concerning the aggression on Yugoslavia, Cohen said that in Toronto discussed would be the huge disparity between the military power of the United States and the other NATO members. U.S. troops made up 80 percent of the overall capacities engaged in the bombing of Yugoslavia.
The United States will demand from its colleagues that their countries reduce the difference in the organization and military technology and use their influence to prevent military budget cuts planned by many west European countries.
KOUCHNER'S CENSUS WILL BE A STATISTICAL FORGERY
The census in Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province announced by UN civilian mission head Bernard Kouchner would be, in the present conditions, a brutal violation of the state sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia and Yugoslavia because it would include foreign citizens, Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) senior official Zivorad Igic said late Monday.
Speaking in a broadcast by Palma Plus TV of the central Serbian town of Jagodina, Igic, who is an SPS Main Board Executive Committee member and the president of the SPS Provincial Board for Kosovo and Metohija, also said a census at this time would present a rehabilitation of the violence and terror and the conditions which had forced hundreds of thousands of citizens to flee their ancestral lands.
"Several hundred thousand Albanians, citizens of Albania or Macedonia have crossed into Kosovo and Metohija over the Yugoslav-Albanian and Yugoslav-Macedonian borders since the arrival of the international forces which are allegedly guarding these borders," Igic said.
He said Kouchner was also choosing to ignore the fact that over 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins and as many members of non-Albanian national minorities have been expelled from Kosovo and Metohija since the arrival of the KFOR.
This is why such a census would be "statistical genocide against part of our people and in the territory of their legitimate and only state, something as yet unrecorded in history," Igic said.
If the census does take place, for Serbia and Yugoslavia it will be a common forgery without any meaning, Igic said.
YUGOSLAV AMBASSADOR OPENS EXHIBITION ON NATO AGGRESSION
Yugoslav Ambassador Djoko Stojicic opened an exhibition of documentary photographs on the NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia in the Czech Republic's second-biggest town Ostrava and the biggest industrial center last weekend.
The exhibition was set up in a castle owned by prominent Greek composer Statis Prousalis.
Stojicic presented much data on the tragic consequences of the aggression of 19 NATO member-states on Yugoslavia last spring.
The many visitors applauded the ambassador's statement that after the totally unjustified criminal bombardment of Yugoslavia, western civilization has lost the moral credibility and can no longer serve as any model to other peoples.
There was keen interest by the public of the Czech Republic in this exhibition, which had previously been presented at the Yugoslav Embassy in Prague. The photographs and figures clearly depict the brutality of the NATO onslaughts, which were primarily aimed against civilians, and also the heroic resistance of Yugoslavs to the aggressors.
KLA DOES NOT WANT TO BE DEMILITARIZED, SAYS VIENNA DAILY
The Vienna daily Der Standard on Tuesday criticized the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) for procrastinating with the implementation of the agreement on its full demilitarization and concluded this was because it wanted to keep as much of its arms as possible.
The fact that the KLA remains the decisive military and political factor for Kosovo Albanians was proved by the parade held last Saturday, the daily said, adding that it feared this would not be changed even after the latest negotiations on demilitarization between the international force KFOR in Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province and this ethnic Albanian separatist organization.
The objective of KLA terrorists is still Kosovo's independence and they believe they will be even closer to their goal if they sweep the territory of Serbs. In spite of the presence of the KFOR, death squads of the KLA continue to hunt Serbs, Der Standard said.
Orthodox churches and monasteries are blown up in order to erase any trace of Serbian culture in Kosovo and Metohija, because the allegedly liberated Kosovo should be "ethnically pure," der Standard said.
KLA AGREES TO SIGN ACCORD ON ITS DISARMING UNDER PRESSURE
Italian media carried on Tuesday brief reports on agreement reached late Monday between officials of the UN peacekeeping force KFOR and the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation calling itself Kosovo Liberation Army on KLA's disarming and the date when it will officially cease to exist.
ANSA news agency said that the ethnic Albanian separatists had agreed to sign the accord providing for their demilitarisation only after closed-door talks with NATO's supreme commander for Europe Gen. Wesley Clark and head of the UN civilian mission to Kosovo and Metohija (UNMIK) Bernard Kouchner.
ANSA said that KLA had agreed to sign the accord under Clark's considerable pressure, saying that no details concerning the accord had been disclosed.
Italian media said that this appeared to be a compromise because, instead of the full demilitarisation and disbanding of KLA, KFOR had agreed to participate in KLA's transformation into something that had been first referred to as 'Kosovo Corps' but that was turned into 'Corps for the Protection of Kosovo' late Monday after Clark had made his concessions.
TAQI BITES THE HAND THAT FEEDS HIM
The appearance of Hashim Taqi at the United Nations headquarters, with justified protests from the Yugoslav authorities, is just one in a series of provocation by the self-proclaimed prime minister of the non-existent terrorist authorities of Kosovo and Metohija.
In a report headlined "Taqi bites the hand that feeds him" the editor of the Sofia paper Sega said the ethnic Albanian separatist leader has grown so big for his boots that he is not only criticizing certain UN officials, but even setting conditions.
Thus the "prime minister of the transitional government in Kosovo and Metohija" as Taqi was presented at the UN headquarters, demanded that "Moscow disassociate itself from the crimes committed by members of the Russian contingent on the UN peace force, and that the perpetrators be extradited to the international tribunal in The Hague," Sega said.
It is an insult to the international force in the Serbian southern province KFOR and the UN civilian mission to listen to this and similar demands from a man who was wanted by Interpol until a few months ago, the Bulgarian political daily concluded.
Taqi started building up this "courage" in the period just before the end of the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia, when the United States and Europe played their dangerous hand in favour of the terrorist ethnic Albanian organization, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), of which Taqi is the leader.
In spite of very clear and unequivocal statements by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that Kosovo and Metohija is inseparable from Serbia and Yugoslavia, Taqi and his followers of the KLA do not want the autonomy of this Serbian province, but are continuing to demand independence for the region, Sega said.
"As long as the question of Kosovo and Metohija's independence is open, they will not agree to be disarmed," the daily said, adding, however, that there is growing hostility between two wings of Kosovo Albanians in the struggle for power.
Taqi's "interim government" has assumed authorities which no-one has given them, while the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo of Ibrahim Rugova are boycotting the "executive authorities."
"Taqi does not have the right to present himself as an alleged prime minister of Kosovo and Metohija, nor is there any ground for him to be received as a prime minister in London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, or at the UN headquarters," Sega said.