 |  |  |
| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
| | |
| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
CALL TO KOSOVO-METOHIJA ALBANIANS
Chairman of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Norwegian Foreign Minister Knut Vollebaek, asked Thursday in Pristina from Kosovo-Metohija Albanians to stop threatening Serbs and to demonstrate more ethnic tolerance, without what, as he said, there can be no "new democratic Kosovo."
Vollebaek, at a press conference, appealed especially to "ethnic Albanian leaders" to "make clear steps" that would mean an end to violence, stressing the exceptional importance of ethnic reconciliation in that southern Serbian province.
The OSCE chairman was apparently forced to launch the appeal to Kosovo-Metohija Albanians, who terrorise almost every day Serbs and other non-Albanian populations in Kosovo-Metohija before the eyes of close to 50,000 KFOR troops.
Terrorist attacks have even increased in frequency after the alleged transformation of terrorist "KLA" into a "Kosovo Protection Force." A real transformation would involve a complete disbanding of the "KLA and its full demilitarisation.
USA, UN, ITALY SUPPORT MULTIETHNIC KOSOVO AND METOHIJA WITHIN YUGOSLAVIA
The United States, United Nations and Italy support a multiethnic Kosovo and Metohija with an autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, NATO commander Europe General Wesley Clark, Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema and UN Civilian Mission head in Kosovo and Metohija Bernard Kouchner have said during the presentation of D'Alema's book of interviews.
Asked by Tanjug to explain the U.S. position on the status of Kosovo and Metohija, Gen. Clark said he viewed Washington's policy as very explicit.
We support solely the creation of an autonomous multiethnic Kosovo and Metohija within Yugoslav borders, he said denying that the United States is increasingly openly backing the separatist aspirations of the militant extremists in Serbia's southern province.
Bernard Kouchner said that the international community is facing the very difficult task of protecting the non-Albanian population in Kosovo and Metohija, which is often exposed to violence.
Different cultures, religions and years of intolerance have left deep traces which cannot be removed speedily, Kouchner said.
Massimo D'Alema set out that this government believes it is necessary to send relief aid to Serbia as soon as possible, and that this will be discussed at the conference for the reconstruction of the Balkans, to be held on Oct. 9 in Bari.
KFOR SPOKESMAN SAYS THACI SELF-PROCLAIMED POLITICIAN
Has the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, an ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation, disappeared into the halls of history, or has it merely changed its uniform - many media ask these days, even the most powerful ones of the west, following the alleged transformation of this organisation into a "Kosovo Protection Corps."
The vast majority answer that the question is one and the same - neither has the demilitarisation of the so-called KLA been completed nor has any transformation taken place. Instead, a farce was played with the chief actors being representatives of the UN mission in Pristina and the international force KFOR.
Faced with such reactions by the world public - the most powerful media, UNMIK and KFOR representatives are practically conspiring with each other to provide as many arguments as possible to prove that the so-called KLA no longer exists and that the terrorists have indeed been demilitarised.
However, these arguments are denied almost daily in the field by concrete actions by the key actors of the alleged demilitarisation and transformation - ethnic Albanian terrorists.
KFOR spokesman in Pristina Roland Lavoie recently said that the "Kosovo Protection Corps" is not and will never be an army.
The spokesman was in fact forced to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for KLA leader Hashim Thaqi.
Lavoie said that Thaqi had made several statements on the corps, which are not only factually incorrect, but could even be interpreted as a provocation.
This was a reaction to Thaqi's speech at a recent rally in Gnjilane, in the east of Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province, when he said that Belgrade would never again decide about Kosovo.
Thaqi also promised his followers that the same structure which had commanded the so-called KLA would lead the corps, which will comprise more than 5,000 former members of the terrorist organisation.
The terrorist leader informed the UN mission and KFOR about the plans of the allegedly transformed KLA. Ethnic Albanian terrorists plan soon to open a military training academy to school professionals who will guarantee the future of Kosovo, Thaqi said in Gnjilane.
Consequently, Lavoi said that Thaqi, as a self-proclaimed politician, has nothing to do with the corps, or any influence over it. Such statements are hardly helpful to maintaining law and order, Lavoi said.
The spokesman reiterated that the corps would be a purely civilian force whose task would be to contribute to renewal, and provide help in the case of natural disasters.
Lavoie made it very clear that the corps would have no military training academy of any kind.
VIOLENCE IN PRISTINA
Serbs and other non-Albanians are still at a risk in Pristina and on all roads in Kosovo and Metohija.
The Pristina Centre for Peace and Tolerance said that unknown ethnic Albanians beat up Tomislav Djuric, a Serb employee of the Temporary Executive Council of Kosovo and Metohija, at 3 p.m. on Tuesday in front of a Pristina restaurant.
Five ethnic Albanians stabbed Zlatibor Nedeljkovic in his apartment, escaping before the arrival of KFOR.
Ethnic Albanians trashed Ceda Sakic's car and moved by force into the apartment of Vera Zecevic.
On the Kosovska Mitrovica - Pristina road on Tuesday wounded were Nebojsa Rakic and Zivorad Nicic, who were immediately transferred to the Kosovska Mitrovica hospital.
During a search of a building close to the University campus in Pristina on Tuesday, KFOR and UNMIK uncovered large quantities of weapons in the possession of ethnic Albanians.
BOMB ATTACK ON STORE - TWO PERSONS SUSTAIN SERIOUS INJURIES
A bomb was thrown into the store of a Serb in Vitina at 5.45 p.m. Wednesday, and the owner and his neighbour, another Serb, received serious injuries.
Three more persons were in the stir during the incident, and they received minor injuries, radio amateurs reported.
A younger person threw the bomb and quickly fled form the scene of the crime. There are reporters that it was an ethnic Albanian, the sources said.
Members of the international force in Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province have opened an investigation.
SERB DJORDJE CVIJANOVIC KIDNAPPED
The Pristina Center for Peace and Tolerance said late Wednesday that Serb Djordje Cvijanovic was kidnapped in Pristina, Serbia's southern Kosovo and Metohija province.
This morning, Cvijanovic went outside the building of the Automobile Association in Pristina to meet a truck driver who was to transport his things to Serbia proper. Cvijanovic had on Tuesday signed a contract on exchanging apartments with an ethnic Albanian of Belgrade.
Cvijanovic has not been seen since.
KFOR U.S. TROOPS TO WITHDRAW FROM VITINA OVER SCHOOL ISSUE
The command of the KFOR U.S. contingent has ordered the withdrawal of its troops from the area of Serb villages in the municipality of Vitina, radio amateurs reported late Wednesday from Serbia's southern Kosovo and Metohija province.
The decision was made after a Serb delegation refused to agree that a multiethnic school be opened in the purely Serb-populated village of Vrbovac in this municipality. Serbs were adamant that only Serb students attend the two remaining schools in the area, in Vrbovac and Klokot Banja, radio amateurs said, quoting a statement by the Church People's Committee.
Serbs of the region of Vitina said they would lift their blockade and let ethnic Albanian children attend the Vrbovac school if Serb children are allowed to attend classes in the other 11 schools in the territory of Vitina.
The committee said it suspected this was a joint action by U.S. troops and members of the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation that calls itself the Kosovo Liberation Army, aimed at banishing even the remaining most persistent Serbs from the municipality of Vitina.
The source said U.S. troops had independently decided to withdraw, since the UN civilian mission in Kosovo UNMIK had decided on Tuesday to give up the idea on opening a multiethnic school in Priluzje near Pristina.
Following the U.S. command decision, about 1,500 Serbs of Vrbovac organised themselves and set up control checkpoints and posted guards at all roads leading into their village.
MEDICINES AND FOOD URGENTLY NEEDED IN ORAHOVAC
It is a four-hour trip from Pristina to Orahovac, located about 40 km from the capital of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, where about 3,000 Serbs live surrounded by ethnic Albanians.
The town's northern part is the only place where Serbs enjoy freedom of movement. They moved here after the deployment of German troops of the international force KFOR. After torching of 120 houses and 200 apartments, 1,200 Serbs moved into northern Orahovac.
Serbs are isolated here, surrounded by ethnic Albanians who erected barricades on all roads leading to the town on Aug 23. Ethnic Albanians are preventing the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in this town. The deployment was agreed and approved at the highest military levels.
Schools do not work, so that children join adults in their walk along the central street, which is about 500 m long, eagerly awaiting any news from Serbia proper or other parts of Kosovo and Metohija.
Vendors of cigarettes, coffee, plum brandy, and, rarely, some vegetable stalls, can be seen in the street.
Stores have been closed for a long time.
Serb farms have been taken over by ethnic Albanians, who picked the vineyards, walnuts, and all the crops.
The water supply is cut for a week at a time. There are occasional shortages of electricity.
The only available radio frequencies are for Deutsche Welle and Radio Montenegro, for which citizens of Orahovac had no words of praise.
"That alleged truth of theirs is more difficult for us than our reality," said several men standing in the street by a vendor. They had rallied around the reporter to hear news from Serbia proper and to send greetings to relatives, to "let them know we are still alive."
There are no doctors, and the town ran out of medicines long ago.
Many would like to send their children to stay with relatives in Serbia proper, to keep them safe, but none of those who come to visit dare take on such a responsibility.
Dutch troops man a checkpoint, making lists of all those who enter Orahovac. Only these people can leave. Anyone else has to address the UNHCR, and they can leave only pending UNHCR verification and approval.
Three kilometers from this checkpoint is a camp of the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation that calls itself the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Albeit without any arms or uniforms, they carefully control all those who pass. It is impossible to make this trip without KFOR escort. Those who had not entered Orahovac with the group pleaded in vain to be allowed to leave. They had to go back.
DOUBLE STANDARDS IN ACTIONS FOR REMOVING BARRICADES
The president of the Yugoslav committee for cooperation with the UN mission, Stanimir Vukicevic, has demanded from UNMIK head Barnard Kouchner that the international forces stop implementing double standards in actions for removing barricades in Kosovo and Metohija.
Vukicevic said that he had told Kouchner, after the removal of the Serb barricades in Kosovo Polje, that if it is necessary to use force, it should not be limited only to one side, but should also be used against ethnic Albanian barricades.
It is the mission of UNMIK and KFOR in Kosovo and Metohija to guarantee full safely to all inhabitants of the province, Vukicevic said.
RETURN OF YUGOSLAV ARMY AND POLICE TO KOSOVO AND METOHIJA AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
The president of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) branch for Kosovo and Metohija, Zivorad Igic, has said in Kosovska Mitrovica that Tuesday's attack on a convoy of cars driven by Serbs, and immediately after on Russian KFOR troops on the Kosovska Mitrovica - Pristina road, is yet another in a series of facts proving that the international forces cannot stop the violence and terror racking Serbia's southern province for almost four months.
The continuing attacks during the past two months along this road, coupled with the attacks on the Kosovo Polje - Lesak railway, aim to render these two routes totally unsafe for Serbs and Montenegrins and cut off the central from the northern part of Kosovo and Metohija which are mainly populated by Serbs, Montenegrins and other non-Albanians, Igic said.
Igic described last night's shelling of the hospital in Kosovska Mitrovica, only days after the ethnic Albanians left this institution, as a barbaric act which shows that everything goes in the persecution of Serbs and Montenegrins.
All this shows that it is high time for the Yugoslav Army and Serbian police return to Kosovo and Metohija, in keeping with UN documents, and that the KFOR commander should call for additional troops to end the violence and terror, as the UN Security Council Resolution 1244 demands, Igic said.
WORLD TURNING DEAF EAR TO NEEDS OF REFUGEES IN YUGOSLAVIA
Yugoslav Minister and Serbian Commissioner for Refugees Bratislava Morina said in the eastern Serbian town of Pozarevac on Wednesday that the international community is providing only a tenth of the actual needs of the large numbers of refugees in Serbia.
"It will be the eighth winter in increasingly worse conditions and with large numbers of refugees and expelled persons," she said in talks with company directors in Pozarevac.
She said over 250,000 people had left Kosovo and Metohija province since the arrival of the international force KFOR. Since the very beginning of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, the international community never managed to settle the needs of so many refugees, Morina said.
"Even though Sadako Ogata herself repeated on several occasions that Yugoslavia has the biggest number of refugees in Europe, the aid which should have logically followed never came," Morina said.
YUGOSLAV ARMY GENERAL STAFF DENIES PERISIC
The Yugoslav Army general staff said on Thursday that the statement of former chief of general staff General Momcilo Perisic that the authorities are ready to employ the army against the street demonstrators in Serbia is a notorious lie aimed at conducting a psychological operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and extending the NATO aggression through other means.
The Yugoslav Army is a united armed force of the people and citizens, which carries out all tasks in keeping with its constitutional role, as confirmed by its heroic resistance to the NATO aggressors, the statement said.
Before the NATO attack on Yugoslavia on March 24, Gen. Perisic was fired and has recently founded his own political party following a number of strong criticisms of the state policy.
NATO AGGRESSION ON YUGOSLAVIA ONE OF THE REASONS OF LAFONTAINE'S RESIGNATION
NATO bombs that destroyed last spring the economy and infrastructure in Serbia were of course directed against the Serbian people, former leader of the German Social Democratic party (SPD) Oskar Lafontaine said in his book The Heart Beats on the Left Side, stressing that by its aggression on Serbia NATO had trampled the UN Charter and drastically violated international law.
Lafontaine for the first makes public in his book, whose excerpts continued to be published Thursday by the Bonn daily Die Welt that the NATO aggression on FR Yugoslavia was also one of the reasons he decided on March 11 to tender his resignation on all political functions. Lafontaine was at the time also finance minister in the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
"For a certain period I reproached myself for not raising on time the issue of NATO threats at party debates. For too long I hoped that NATO would not carry out its threats... Later I realised that a party decision against war would have been sufficient. Most probably I could have prevented the war only if I had been German chancellor," Lafontaine said in the book.
Condemning cynical, pretentiously moral lamenting of German Foreign Minister Jozef Fischer and Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping during NATO's aggression. Lafontaine called it the typical zeal of turncoats - of people who once were fervent pacifists, and now are even more fervent advocates of war.
"Those who, like Fischer and Scharping, justify in that way their decision to wage war, that person is not capable of explaining why against murders and persecutions military means are not used also in other parts of the world. Sober politicians know how to explain when and where an intervention is justified, and those who as an argument use morals and ethics remain speechless when such a question is posed to them," Lafontaine said.
The former SPD head, an authentic leftist, criticised more specifically Fischer because he, as foreign minister, had ample possibility to make the case for preserving UN monopoly on the use of force, instead of blindly following the plan drawn up by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
A true fighter for peace must at the same time fight for enhancing international law, and not for weakening that law. And that is precisely what happened in The Kosovo war, Oskar Lafontaine said.
AUSTRIAN REPORTER PUBLISHES BOOK ON NATO AGGRESSION ON YUGOSLAVIA
A book by Austrian reporter, historian and publisher Hannes Hofbauer, 44, came out of the press in Vienna this week, in which the author clearly and unequivocally condemns the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia last spring.
The book, entitled "A Balkans War, the Destruction of Yugoslavia" is an attempt to lift the mist of propaganda which caused uncertainty among the western public. This is the only way to review the interests of U.S. and German politicians of war, and unmask the ideological fibber of the naive excuse for the decision to use bombs in the name of human rights and solidarity, Hofbauer told Tanjug in Bonn.
Hofbauer's book gives a historical survey of the Balkans as a territory of interest to different powers. The center of these interests was once in Constantinople, then in Vienna, in Berlin, and, finally, it is today in Washington. It is impossible to comprehend the meaning behind last spring's tragedy without this analytical, historical survey, the author said in his book.
The book also contains supplements by five historians, philosophers and philologists from Austria, Germany, the United States, and Canada.
The book covers the period from the direct interference of western powers in the Balkans at the Berlin Congress in 1878, through 1941 when troops of the Wehrmacht marched into the Balkans, to the NATO aggression of last spring, whose idea was to "set up a new world order under the direction of NATO, and following the elimination of the authority of the United Nations."
"The NATO action was criminal in a dangerous way. This act not only violated the UN Charter, but even practically eliminated this specific constitution of the world, to replace it with NATO and its leading force, the United States of America," said an author of one of the supplements, German American historian and university professor Andre Gunder Frank.
40TH OCTOBER SALON OPENS IN BELGRADE
The most important event of Serbian artistic and applied art - the 40th October Salon, opened in Belgrade on Wednesday under the slogan "Reconstruction."
The exhibition features 118 works by 97 authors, and the best received awards. The event was opened by Belgrade Council Vice-President Milutin Randjelovic, who stressed the international spirit of artists and their art.
The Belgrade Assembly is the founder and patron of the event, and it was sponsored by the Serbian Culture Ministry, the Fund for an Open Society - Center for Modern Art, the Novi Sad Assembly, and many companies.