DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON
SECTION: PEACEKEEPING
SUBSECTION: PART 4

Revised 8/16/99

 

New York Post 6/13/99 Uri Dan and Brian Blomquist "....The surprise early arrival of Russian troops inside war-town Kosovo - ahead of NATO peacekeepers - was no mistake, a high-ranking Russian military officer on the scene told The Post. "We got an order to arrive in Pristina before NATO and the Americans," said the captain of an elite Russian paratrooper unit. "We really arrived first because the Russians are always first."..."

6/13/99 Itar-Tass "....Russia proceeds from a principle of no direct subordination to NATO in the deployment of its contingent in Kosovo, First Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Avdeyev said in the RTR Zerkalo television program on Sunday. "The most complicated diplomatic work is behind a possible agreement to deploy the Russian contingent," he noted. It is necessary to achieve at the diplomatic level worthy conditions for the Russian contingent in Kosovo. "The worthy conditions are not only the maintenance but also the political significance that must be attached to the introduction of our troops," he said....."

Xinhua News Agency 6/13/99 "....Russia on Sunday accused NATO of not observing the provisions of the UN Security Council resolution on Kosovo or the military technical agreements with the Yugoslav military leadership. A high-ranking Defense Ministry official said NATO does not observe the provision "on the impermissibility of security vacuum and the disarmament of the Kosovo Liberation Army," the Interfax news agency reported. The ministry believes that such a violation of obligations "is creating an explosive situation and threatening the lives of Russian troops that entered Pristina." ..."

6/13/99 AFP "...Three Serb soldiers were killed Sunday in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren by German members of the Kosovo peacekeeping force in an exchange of gunfire, witnesses told AFP...."

Associated Press 6/13/99 "....German troops came under heavy sniper fire Sunday in this southern Kosovo city and killed at least one armed man and wounded another in the firefight. A German soldier suffered an arm wound. Other German peacekeepers had been greeted earlier by cheering ethnic Albanians when they entered Prizren, Kosovo's second-largest city, in Germany's first major military deployment on foreign soil since World War II. In the shooting incident, a German convoy was moving down a road along the Bistrica River near the main square when sniper fire crackled from a hill and houses. German soldiers took cover and began shooting back. The Germans' heavy fire blasted a yellow Lada car with two occupants. One was slumped dead over the steering wheel and the other was badly wounded and screaming for help before he was evacuated by German medics...."

6/13/99 UPI "...At least three people have died in connection with the NATO peacekeeping operation in Kosovo as the alliance continued to bolster its forces. A Serb policeman, a German journalist and a Yugoslav civilian were all shot to death in separate incidents in the province, where ethnic Albanians are welcoming the arrival of the KFOR military operation...."

6/13/99 AFP "...German forces on Sunday entered Kosovo from Albania, at times literally pushing the Yugoslav army before them as Serb civilians in packed cars squeezed in between light and armored vehicles from both sides..."

UPI 6/13/99 "...Two senior British ministers have voiced strong opposition to a partition of Kosovo amid the standoff over Russia's peacekeeping role in the Yugoslav province. "We are having discussions with the Russians on their aspirations but there is not going to be any partition," Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told GMTV today. "We are not going to tolerate an East German solution,"..."

ITAR-TASS 6/12/99 Freeper jimbo123 "....Russian general Viktor Zavarzin and KFOR operation commander general Mike Jackson met late on Saturday to discuss interaction in the peacekeeping opeartion in Kosovo. They discussed variants of joint use of Slatina airport which is under control of Russian troops now, but in prospect can be used for common purposes of stabilisation, he noted...."

stratfor.com 6/12/99 "...2225 GMT, 990612 - A meeting between NATO commander Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson and Russian Col. Gen. Viktor Zavarzin has resulted in the partitioning of the Pristina airport. After emerging from the meeting, officials announced they had reached a compromise. The agreement leaves control of the southern portion of the airport to British troops, while Russian forces will occupy the rest...."

Reuters 612/99 Freeper jimbo123 "...NATO troops massed outside the Kosovo capital Saturday night as their commanders haggled with the Russians over control of Pristina airport where the alliance plans to set up its headquarters. The main NATO column made up of British troops stretched for miles as it trundled through tunnels and over bridges on the main southern highway cutting through the mountainous Kosovo countryside to Pristina. The column drew to a halt for the night just six miles (10 km) outside of Pristina to await further orders...."

Electronic Telegraph (U.K.) 6/13/99 Andrew Gilligan "...THE horrors awaiting Nato troops in the next few days are "far greater than anyone thinks", according to Britain's most senior official in charge of war crimes. David Gowan, who has access to some of the latest surveillance and intelligence information, said: "The scale of the criminality is enormous. The number of people who have been murdered is greater than we think by far. It is going to be chilling." Mr Gowan, Kosovo war crimes co-ordinator at the Foreign Office, will reach Pristina as early as tomorrow to lead Britain's war crimes effort. The Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, has said catching war criminals will have the highest priority....The worst criminality is believed to have taken place in south-west Kosovo, near the Albanian border, with the northern region the least affected. Mr Blewitt said that there was "no evidence" so far of organised concentration camps inside Kosovo, with most murder victims apparently killed in or near their home villages...."

Reuters 6/12/99 via NewsEdge Corporation "...The FBI is sending teams of forensic experts to Kosovo to examine sites of suspected massacres for evidence of war crimes, Federal Bureau of Investigation director Louis J. Freeh said Saturday. ``The FBI will use its entire range of resources to gather any evidence of atrocities in Kosovo and present any such findings to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICT)'' Freeh said in statement. The first contingent of 25 FBI personnel was scheduled to fly to Europe Saturday and will begin to identify possible massacre sites in Kosovo once those sites can be secured by NATO forces, Freeh said....."

AP via Newsday 6/1/2/99 Candice Hughes "...Streaming into Kosovo's capital, almost unopposed by retreating Serbs, NATO peacekeepers came face-to-face Saturday with the Russian troops who beat them to the city. A U.S. official said the meeting heralded ``a coordinated occupation,'' but some reports described tense moments between the NATO and Russian forces...."

Strator.com 6/14/99 "...0045 GMT, 990614 - Yugoslavia's Prime Minister announced that the state of war in Yugoslavia would not be lifted until after the situation in Kosovo has been stabilized. Momir Bulatovic said that "Security structures as provided for by the UN Security Council resolution must be in place and security must be guaranteed for all citizens." He also said that Yugoslavia had accepted a compromise and had not surrendered: "The aggressors, too, accepted compromises and the UN Security Council resolution protects the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and rules out any possible independence of Kosovo." ...."

STRATFOR.COM 6/13/99 "...0410 GMT, 990614 - British Defense Secretary George Robertson has threatened Russia with financial retaliation if it did not back down on Kosovo. Robertson said on the BBC that ``A continued disunity...on display in Moscow...would hardly encourage the financial community next week when they are looking to financially help Russia'' at the G8 meeting...."

Stratfor.com 6/13/99 "...2225 GMT, 990613 - According to a source outside of the NATO air base at Aviano, NATO aircraft sortied on Sunday, June 13, between 6:45 pm and 8:30 pm local time. This included 2 E-6 Prowlers, 6 F-16s, 2 F-18s, loaded with full ordinance packs. Three A-10s also took off. The planes returned without ordinance. One F-15 appeared to have been damaged and was approached by fire and ambulance immediately upon landing. The observer reported extremely heavy security, in excess of any seen during the war itself. We cannot confirm or deny this report but are passing it on as it is sufficiently detailed to be credible and will provide NATO spokesmen an opportunity to confirm or deny the report. It seems to indicate that combat sorties have resumed or that intense training is going on during a period one would expect to be devoted to R&R...."

Drudge 6/2/99 XINHUA "...The supreme commander of NATO, Wesley Clark, said Wednesday in the Macedonian capital of Skopje that NATO troops will enter Kosovo in just a few days. He made the remark after meeting with Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov. Clark said that he discussed with Gligorov the issue of increasing NATO troops in the country and the situation in Kosovo...."

REUTERS FoxNews 6/2/99 "...Kosovo rebels engaged in a major offensive have received their first known NATO air support in an unsuccessful bid to seize Serbian territory along the Albanian border, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Quoting unidentified U.S. intelligence and military officials, the newspaper said Operation Arrow, involving up to 4,000 Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas, was launched last week. ..... A senior U.S. intelligence official told the newspaper the offensive - the rebels' first major assault in a year - also was meant to show NATO and Yugoslavia that the rebels were ''still in the fight.'' The assault was foiled, however, by heavy Yugoslav artillery and agile counterattacks by Yugoslav troops, the officials reported...."

WorldNetDaily 6/2/99 Linda Bowles "...The realization is beginning to seep into the consciousness of a majority of Americans that the United States is engaged in something senseless and tragic. A new USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll finds that 57 percent of those surveyed oppose the use of U.S. ground troops in Kosovo as part of a NATO invasion force. A resounding 82 percent support a bombing pause to help bring about negotiations for peace. However, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking for the president, says we will not negotiate. In effect, Yugoslavia must agree to our demands or be bombed out of existence, period...."

WorldNetDaily 6/2/99 Linda Bowles "...The realization is beginning to seep into the consciousness of a majority of Americans that the United States is engaged in something senseless and tragic. A new USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll finds that 57 percent of those surveyed oppose the use of U.S. ground troops in Kosovo as part of a NATO invasion force. A resounding 82 percent support a bombing pause to help bring about negotiations for peace. However, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking for the president, says we will not negotiate. In effect, Yugoslavia must agree to our demands or be bombed out of existence, period...."

6/2/99 UPI Freeper Thanatos "...Macedonia appears to have thrown a monkey wrench into NATO's contingency plans for imposing a settlement in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. The prime minister of the tiny Balkan nation to the south of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Ljubco Georgievski, informed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright today that NATO could double its presence in Macedonia to 30,000 troops. The alliance agreed Tuesday that 50,000 soldiers would be needed for a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo if Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic accepted NATO demands for a settlement. American military planners say the remainder of the force would be deployed in Albania and possibly Hungary. But NATO officials said the Macedonian prime minister flatly rebuffed efforts to win permission to launch a ground invasion from its territory, telling Albright such action would require a political decision by the government backed by an act of Parliament...."

Itar-Tass 6/12/99 "...U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott "played for time by dodging the concrete question of Russian participation in the KFOR operation," a source said on Saturday, commenting on the overnight talks between the American envoy and generals and their Russian colleagues. The U.S. generals "insistently tried to convince" their Russian partners that NATO was not going to enter Kosovo earlier than Saturday evening. However, Russian military officials said it was nothing but misinformation. The Russian Defence Ministry had received creditable information by 2.00 a.m. Saturday (2200 GMT Friday) that the Alliance had begun the KFOR operation. NATO troops had begun moving towards Kosovo, while special units were already there. "In this situation, we could no longer trust our partners and decided to send a forward unit of Russian paratroopers into Kosovo," the source said...."

Sky News 6/15/99 "...Tension over the Russian presence in Kosovo is growing, with reports that more paratroops are on the way. One news agency reported that as many as 7,000 more Russian soldiers could join the token force of 200 or so Russian special forces already there. The RIA news agency quoted "Serb sources in Pristina" as saying between 5,000 and 7,000 Russian paratroops would be flown to Pristina in the next four days. Officials in Moscow could not confirm the RIA report....."

Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "..... Russia has a priority right to discuss the location of its peacemakers in Kosovo, Chairman of the Duma Committee on Nationalities Vladimir Zorin told Itar-Tass on Tuesday. "Being an active participant in the peacemaking process, Russia has the priority right to negotiations with all parties to the conflict, both NATO and Yugoslavia, on the location of its peacemaking contingent in Kosovo," the Duma deputy said...."

The Washington Times/Drudge Report 6/15/99 Bill Gertz "... "Either this is a covert operation by the Russians, or the civilian leadership can't control the military. Neither one of those is good for the West." Pentagon officials said the pro-Serbian Russians have complicated the peace deal in a major way. For example, they said if the Serbs were to refuse to pull out their troops from Kosovo on schedule, resuming the NATO bombing with even a small Russian presence in the province would not be possible. entagon officials explain privately that, adding to concern about tension within Russia's military and control over the nuclear arsenal, is confusion over who is calling the shots in Kosovo, the military in Russia or Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his advisers. A U.S. intelligence official familiar with the standoff over the Russians in Kosovo said yesterday there are no signs Russian nuclear forces went on a high-alert status -- a move that would have signaled heightened tensions with the West....Reports from Russia indicate military units have been forced to sell off weapons and equipment to earn cash. Even food is in short supply.....Military preparedness is also declining sharply because of a lack of money for operations and maintenance and the failure to replace old equipment. And as a further result of funding shortfalls, the military has combined some elements and discharged several hundred thousand people. A 1996 CIA report that looked at the unauthorized use of nuclear weapons by the Russian strategic forces stated that the military is "demoralized and corrupted." It raised the prospect that civilian leaders could lose control of the nuclear arsenal to the military, which continues to view the United States as its "main enemy." .....Clinton administration officials have sought to play down the dangers with the Russian nuclear arsenal. They insist Moscow retains control over the thousands of strategic nuclear missiles, bombers and submarines. But there have been other signs reported in intelligence channels over the past two months, showing that Russia's military is adopting a new hard line against the West because of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia...... As analysts see it, a worst-case scenario is that Moscow planned all along to upset NATO's peacekeeping operation by sending the troops and intentionally to mislead U.S. leaders and the world as part of the plan...."

Associated Press 6/15/99 Judith Ingram "...A second column of Russian troops arrived in Kosovo on Tuesday, increasing pressure on NATO to resolve the impasse over Moscow's role in peacekeeping. The deployment came as Russia's top military commander and chief diplomat prepared for tough talks with their U.S. counterparts, who are negotiating on behalf of the alliance. Russia wants its own sector of authority and for its troops not to be placed under NATO command. Though the second column was small - just 29 soldiers, according to NATO - it was large enough to dramatize those demands...."

Stratfor 6/15/99 "...1554 GMT, 990615...Russian President Boris Yeltsin has reportedly approved agreements reached at the meeting of the Russian Security Council, which state that the Foreign Ministry will coordinate all of Russia's future Kosovo activities with other government offices. According to Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, "Synchronization of the performance of the Foreign Ministry, the military, and the government is the rigid algorithm whose performance started today." First, this is a very public, clear, and appalling admission on the part of Stepashin and Yeltsin that a massive rift opened inside the Kremlin over Russian foreign policy. Despite the personal assurances of Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov that Russian troops would not enter Kosovo without first coordinating with NATO, Russian troops did just that, sweeping in ahead of NATO forces and seizing Slatina airbase near Pristina...."

Itar-Tass 6/14/99 "...Mass exodus of the Serb population has been reported to begin in the Kosovo city of Prizren. The refugees are leaving their homes in the presence of the German KFOR contingent in the city, British sources said on Monday. The German KFOR troops who entered Prizren were followed by militants of the Liberation Army of Kosovo (OAK). The OAK militants have surrounded the residence of the Orthodox Archbishop of Prizren, but the German troops are not taking any measures, the Sunday Times said. Not attempting to disarm the OAK, NATO paves the way for another round of ethnic cleansing, the newspaper said...."

Itar-Tass 6/14/99 "...The Russian Defence Ministry has expressed concern over "inactivity of the NATO KFOR contingent towards armed units of Kosovo Albanians." A spokesman for the Russian Defence Ministry told Tass on Monday that "both the military and diplomats are concerned over the situation in Kosovo where Kosovo militants of Albanian descent have been entering Kosovo practically on the shoulders of the NATO KFOR contingent." "If the situation does not change in the near future, Russia will be compelled to put forward an initiative to discuss this problem at the UN Security Council," the Russian spokesman said. "Ensuring disarmament of the so-called Liberation Army of Kosovo (OAK) is of the main task of the KFOR determined by the UN Security Council resolution," he stressed...."

CNN 6/14/99 "...NATO troops on Monday were guarding what they believed were mass graves in Kosovo, as more alliance military units poured into the Serb province on the heels of retreating Yugoslav forces. Not all has gone smoothly for the 14,000 NATO peacekeepers, who have been hindered since Saturday by sporadic deadly violence and a tense impasse with Russian troops occupying the airport in Pristina. British Maj. Gen. Richard Dannatt, the commander of British forces in Kosovo, said British soldiers had discovered what they believed were mass graves in the southern Kosovo town of Kacanik. About 100 mounds were counted in the grassy field between Pristina and Skopje, Macedonia...."

Reuters 6/14/99 "...Serbia's ultra-nationalist Radical Party (SRS) voted on Monday to pull out of the Serbian government and all the ministers will resign....."

6/15/99 Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "...British troops deployed in Kosovo have begun to arrest gunmen from the "Kosovo liberation army" (KLA) for provoking armed clashes between Albanians and Serbs. Five KLA extremists, who fired at Serbs in Pristina, were arrested on Monday night, British TV reported on Tuesday. As a result of the KLA operation, a Serb was taken hostage and then killed...."

Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "...Unknown attackers after Tuesday midday shelled Pristina airport, where Russian paratroopers are staying deployed for the peacekeeping operation...Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas earlier had said the KLA would pledge no guarantees of security of Russian peacekeepers in Kosovo...."

Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "...The British troops, integrated in the Kosovo peacekeeping force (KFOR), have been attacked by militants of the "Kosovo liberation army", a spokesman for the British command said in Pristina...."

Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "...Militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) will begin executions of Serb soldiers if they do not leave Kosovo capital Pristina before midnight, Sali Mustafa, the KLA commander in Pristina, told the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday. According to the newspaper, Mustafa was "a self-confessed terrorist hitman who personally murdered the Serb chief of police and whose authority was growing by the hour."...."

Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "...The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry is "actively looking for a possibility for the Ukrainian peacekeeping force to join an international peacekeeping contingent on the territory of Yugoslavia," Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Belashov told Tass on Tuesday. According to his information, "consultations are being held both with the U.N. and with the countries, which have already announced their readiness to take part in peacekeeping operations in Yugoslavia." He said there are about ten such countries....."

Stratfor 6/14/99 "...0019 GMT, 990615 - NATO has adopted an interesting strategy for dealing with the unwelcome presence of Russian troops at Slatina airbase in Kosovo. It is ignoring them. Certainly, high level talks are continuing, but without any apparent urgency on NATO's part. Rather, NATO has successfully closed off the routes for Russian resupply and reinforcement and has declared that it didn't really want the airport, anyway....."

Stratfor 6/14/99 "...2202 GMT, 990614 - The KLA, understanding Russia's presence in Kosovo for what it is, has grown increasingly bellicose about the issue, declaring the Russians unwelcome and refusing to guarantee their safety. Russian forces in Kosovo are there to guarantee ultimate Serbian sovereignty over the province. The KLA has fought, and continues to fight, for nothing less than an independent Kosova...."

Electronic Telegraph (UK) 6/15/99 Boris Johnson "...THE red flag with the black eagle yesterday flew openly from the roof of the school. There were guards at the gate, Albanians with arm bands reading UCK (KLA) and the same initials were spelt out in petals on the playground. Processions of children presented posies of roses and kissed the cheeks of the swarthy goons, and inside was a self-confessed terrorist hitman, who personally murdered the Serb chief of police, and whose authority was growing by the hour. Whatever Nato thinks it has agreed with the KLA, it may shortly have to revise. Sali Mustafa has ideas of his own. For one thing, said the KLA's commander in Pristina, the Serb troops would not only have to be out by midnight tonight, they would face execution if they hung around.....Looking at this young man, it was hard to believe that he had cold-bloodedly killed Pristina's top policemen; but, so he confessed. "I was in charge of a unit and, well, they were our enemy, and I was shooting at them. Me and two other guys, we shot Misha Lahocevic. Zoran Iovanovic found his death. I shot him dead." And having created this job vacancy, he was now thinking of applying because, as he understands the Nato agreement, he and his lads are going to be the police. With every hour that passes, the arbitrary power of the KLA is growing in Kosovo, and Nato seems momentarily clueless how to deal with it....Three more fleeing Serbs were reportedly shot dead, and Albanian gunmen had taken the lives of at least one Albanian who worked for the Yugoslav militia, as well as three other Serb policemen. "Dead right," said Sali Mustafa, smiling seraphically. "Three Serb paramilitaries were killed yesterday because they were going round and stealing from the houses, and we have an agreement with Nato which says we can defend ourselves." Of course, the Nato agreement does not condone the shooting of looters, but then what is the Nato policy towards the KLA? ...."

AFP 6/14/99 "....Outmaneuvered by Russia whose small contingent of troops in Kosovo defiantly kept NATO forces at bay outside the Pristina airport Monday, the United States pressed efforts to break the deadlock without undermining the alliance's command of the operation. US President Bill Clinton spoke to his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, for the second time in less than 24 hours in what the White House described as a "constructive" conversation....."We have made real progress today," Albright told reporters at a White House briefing though neither she nor national security adviser Sandy Berger was able to describe any progress achieved beyond the agreement to meet in Helsinki......"

AP 6/14/99 Edith M. Lederer "....Secretary-General Kofi Annan unveiled the U.N. peace-building plan for Kosovo on Monday, giving European organizations primary responsibility for reconstructing the shattered Yugoslav province..... Each component was assigned to a lead agency: -The European Union was given responsibility for rebuilding Kosovo's "physical, economic and social infrastructure ... and supporting the reactivation of public services and utilities.'' -The 54-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will train judges and local administrators, set up a police academy, develop political parties and local media, organize elections and monitor human rights. -The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees will help the 860,000 ethnic Albanian refugees return and will also be responsible for protecting and assisting "minority groups'' - presumably Serbs remaining in Kosovo. -The U.N. civilian administration will include three offices to oversee police, judicial and civil affairs. The civil affairs branch will take charge of the civil service, economic and budgetary affairs, and restore basic services such as health, education, utilities, transport and telecommunications. An international civilian police unit, probably numbering 1,000 or 2,000, will oversee the civilian police operation and establish a Kosovo police force, Frechette said....."

Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "...Commander of the KFOR international peacekeeping mission in Kosovo General Michael Jackson actually admitted the inability of NATO troops to guarantee at present security of the Serb civil population in Kosovo. The general stated that his troops had been doing all in their power to ensure security of all residents of Kosovo, however under the present conditions there was a limit to everything as the deployment of troops had not been completed yet...... The Serb population does not trust NATO troops which bombarded civil objects and killed civilians...."

Stratfor 6/15/99 "...1546 GMT, 990615 - The United States has announced it will contribute 750 officers to an international police force designed to bring stability to Kosovo after peacekeepers leave. The commitment comes after yesterday's presentation of a United Nations plan allowing for the replacement of the peacekeepers by a force of 3000 police officers...."

Reuters 6/15/99 "...A leading member of the Serbian opposition said on Tuesday there would be trouble in Kosovo unless NATO peacekeepers began disarming ethnic Albanian guerrillas as well as Serb forces. Milan Bozic of the Serbian Renewal Movement said ethnic Serbs were afraid of the peacekeeping force and felt that it was backing the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas. ``(There will be a) problem if NATO doesn't make some visible moves to disarm the KLA,'' he told BBC radio. ``On the one hand, you see the pictures of NATO disarming the Serbian troops or policemen, at the same time, you see the KLA people or soldiers with weapons,'' he said. ``Such pictures, and I do believe in Kosovo they can be seen numerous times, are somehow convincing the people that NATO is part of the support for the KLA.'' ..."

CNN 6/15/99 "...NATO peacekeepers reported Tuesday finding at least 20 burned bodies in the ruins of a house near the Albanian border. Meanwhile Yugoslavian forces seemed on schedule to meet a midnight deadline (2200 GMT/6 p.m. EST) to withdraw from Pristina and the southern third of Kosovo, according to the alliance. German soldiers with the NATO-led KFOR mission cordoned off the gruesome scene in Mala Krusa, called Krushe Emadi by Albanians...."

UPI 6/15/99 "...The clock has struck midnight in Kosovo, marking the deadline for Serb troops to be out of the southernmost part of the province that includes the capital, Pristina. However, NATO has recently softened its initially hard stance on the retreat, citing traffic jams and Yugoslav equipment troubles...."

STRATFOR.COM 6/15/99 "...2200 GMT, 990615 - British paratroopers from the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment were ordered to back down from a confrontation with Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rebels who refused to disarm. No reason was given why the British troops were ordered to allow the KLA rebels to keep their weapons...."

UPI 6/15/99 Paul Basken "...With U.S. and NATO officials still seeking a solution to Russia's surprise military foray into Kosovo, Russian leaders demanded NATO make a greater effort to demilitarize ethnic Albanian rebel forces. Amid scattered reports of armed Kosovo Liberation Army troops taking up positions in the republic, Russian national security adviser Vladimir Putin complained by telephone to his U.S. counterpart, Sandy Berger, that the KLA was posing a threat to Kosovar civilians. Putin, the head of the Federal Security Service and secretary of Russia's Security Council, also argued that NATO's disagreement with Russia over the makeup of the peacekeeping operation could be resolved by "including Russian representatives in the command structures" of the KFOR peacekeeping force...."

Times of London 6/16/99 Stephen Farrell "...THE Kosovo Liberation Army will not hand over its weapons to Nato forces and intends to turn itself into a national army with the eventual goal of an independent Kosovo, a senior KLA commander said yesterday. Directly contradicting the KLA's public support for the agreement reached at Rambouillet, Rustem Mustafa, one of seven regional commanders, said he expected Nato to train its 50,000 soldiers, to provide weapons to replace their old ones and to share security for Kosovo with the KLA...."I believe that we will not give up our weapons. We will collect them all in one place and they will be in our barracks," Mr Mustafa said. He claimed that the decision not to give up guns was official KLA policy. Asked what would happen if Nato demanded their surrender, he replied: "Nato has not done this and I hope they won't ask this thing from us. We are co-operating with them and I believe they will help us in the construction of the army." ..."

Electronic Telegraph 6/16/99 Philip Smucker "...THE Kosovar rebel army that never won an important battle said yesterday that it had taken control of southern Kosovo after a 600-year-old struggle to gain self-rule. The city of Prizren would be a "model of the KLA's role in a new Kosovo", it said. "From today, Prizren is 100 per cent in our hands," said Rexha Ekrem, who is also known as 'Commander Drini", from the porch of a hotel in the city. "We are taking on policing duties and those things related to the internal life of the city," he said. "We handed over six fire trucks to Nato today." Most Albanian residents say that the fighting men of the Kosovo Liberation Army are heroes who deserve their new authority. However, the few hundred Serbian residents remaining after an exodus of more than 10,000 in the last two days disagree...."

Stratfor 6/16/99 "...0300 GMT, 990616 - The United States announced it would allow the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) a few days grace period before it is required to demilitarize. A U.S. spokesman said that not all KLA units would necessarily be disarmed. Army Brigadier-General John Craddock, commander of Task Force Falcon, the U.S. contingent, said that only KLA units that provoke withdrawing Serb units and refuse instructions to back off will be disarmed...."

The Indian Express 6/15/99 "...Beta, quoting eyewitnesses, said six KLA gunmen intercepted a column of Serbs leaving the village of Kojlovica, some five km north of Pristina. It said two brothers from the Krstic family and a man identified as Dragan Jovanovic were extracted by the KLA from the column and shot dead on the spot with automatic weapons. Beta quoted the mother of the Krstic brothers as saying they were slain in the presence of their children and wives. In Pristina, a Serb employee of radio Pristina was shot dead in front of his home and three other Serbs were abducted, Beta said. It had no further details...."

New York Post 6/15/1999 Uri Dan "....THE Serb villagers fleeing Kosovo want it known that the Albanians aren't the only refugees of the troubled province with horror stories to tell. Lubomir Lakic's story goes this way: His father went to the Serbian Orthodox church in their village Sunday morning to pray, and was horrified to find the young priest inside with his throat slit. "He also saw 10 Kosovo Liberation Army people coming out of the church," Lakic said. "The KLA knifed and slaughtered the priest of our village." Like many accounts of atrocities being told now by Serbs, this remains unverified in the chaotic aftermath of the retreat by Slobodan Milosevic's forces from Kosovo. But, true or not, it contributes to the panic sweeping Kosovo. Lakic said after he heard how ethnic Albanians "stabbed to death two farmers in their homes," his family decided to run for their lives. The Lakic family proudly traces its roots in Mousoutiste back to the 14th century - when the sacred Church of Saint Bogoroditza was built. "We wanted to stay in the village, but we were terrified by the assassination of Father Atza," Lakic said yesterday as he drove a tractor on the clogged road that was taking him, his father, wife, son and daughter out of Kosovo....."

New York Post 6/15/1999 Uri Dan "...."All of us, about 350 families, decided to leave" their homes in Mousoutiste, 50 miles from Pristina, he said. Just as they reached the outskirts of their village, they encountered NATO forces - who were clearly on the side of the KLA, Lakic charged. "I don't know if they were British or French. I was too shocked to identify them because they stopped us. "They told all the men to lie on the road and they took our guns and our pistols, while the KLA were standing on the other side of the road armed and stoning us," said Lakic, 33. "For me, it was the worst sign that these NATO forces came here to push the Serbs out of Kosovo because [NATO] sided, on that terrible part of our road, with the KLA." ...."

Times 6/14/99 Richard Boudreaux "...-On Day One of NATO's peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, Dragan Radakovic stood at the edge of Serbia's largest coal mine and watched it pass from one army's control to another's with clockwork precision. Serbian infantrymen who had guarded the Belacevic open pit mine during 16 months of guerrilla war pulled out at 8 a.m. Saturday. Their army's withdrawal from Kosovo was supposed to be tightly synchronized with the arrival of NATO-led troops to pacify the province. Instead, the advancing foot soldiers the mine director saw in his binoculars were from the Kosovo Liberation Army. Much to his alarm, the ethnic Albanian separatists who looked all but defeated several weeks ago had returned in force to seize one of the mine's two giant pits, its administration building and four employees. The swift takeover of a strategic economic target shows the KLA's determination to move into the vacuum between the departing Serbs and a lumbering, 48,000-strong NATO-led force already slowed by scattered Serbian resistance and feuds with Russian peacekeepers. About 350 guerrillas are believed to have participated in the mine takeover six miles northwest of the provincial capital, Pristina...."

Original Sources (www.originalsources.com) 6/16/99 Mary Mostert "…"The KLA has set its check points and controls the town. KLA groups have besieged the Bishop's Court with bishop Artemije, monks and priests inside. In the church yard, monuments of emperor Dushan and Russian consul Yastrebov are destroyed. The German contingent cannot guarantee safety and security neither for the Serbs, nor for the priests and the monks, and officers advised the Bishop, the priest and monks to leave Prizren tomorrow with the remaining Serbs." And thus the destruction begins - a destruction reminiscent of the Barbarian Assault on Rome, in the 5th Century, A.D.: "THE HOLY ARCHANGEL MONASTERY (XIV century - 2 km from Prizren) This morning KLA has kidnapped one monk and some Serbs from Prizren. Their fate is uncertain. "THE HOLY TRINITY MONASTERY- MUSUTISTE ( XV century) Today the monastery church has been burnt down, few days ago the monastery residence was burnt down. The nuns have escaped to the Gracanica monastery. "THE SAINTS KUZMA AND DAMIAN MONASTERY -ZOCISTE (XIV century) The monks have been evacuated to Prizren. The fate of the monastery is unknown. VELIKA HOCA and surrounding villages are deserted. Line of 400 people are on the way to Pristina, although no safe evacuation has been guaranteed. "THE VISOKI DECANI MONASTERY (XIV century) During Yugoslav Army pullout, 150 Albanians from Decani had found safety in the monastery and spent 2 days there, together with a group of 17 Serbs that had escaped earlier. The Italian troops are stationed near the monastery, and their officers are cooperative, and guarantee safety and security Serbs and Albanians alike. "PEC - THE PATRIARCHATE OF PEC (XIII century) The Italian forces are in the town, relations are good. There are no more than 50 Serbs left in the town. The nuns at the Partriarchate are well. "THE DEVIC MONASTERY (XV century) There is no information. The arrival of the French contingent is expected tomorrow. "THE GORIOC MONASTERY (XIV century) No presence of KLA is registd. The arrival of the French contingent is expected." And so we watch as NATO helps IMPLEMENT the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo, just as we watched the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia in 1995 with the help of US bombers, while the media, who MUST know it is lying, talks about "Serbian War Crimes."…"


Washington Post Foreign Service 6/16/99 Peter Finn, David Finkel, R. Jeffrey Smith, Michael Dobbs "…The war's survivors climbed from their cellars and homemade bunkers today to discover their 500-year-old city, once the jewel of southwestern Kosovo, turned into a graveyard. Homes and shops are blackened skeletons along streets clotted with rubble and glass. The dead, and there are hundreds, lie in makeshift graves in family courtyards and under fresh earth in the local cemetery. The living, and there are few, are sunk in despair as they wander through the harvest of the whirlwind, their bellies empty as they scratch for food. They point to houses where two, three, 30 people were executed, their bodies sometimes carbonized by fire. …. Seven Washington Post reporters, traveling across Kosovo today to assess the breadth of the destruction, found new evidence of massacres by Belgrade government security forces and a pattern of killings that suggested executions of ethnic Albanian civilians were carried out in community after community across a wide swath of the province. The evidence and accounts of returning Kosovo residents spoke of a grim period of reckoning: In the identification of a mass grave that appears to hold scores of bodies from a slaughter at a strip mine; of abandoned human remains in deserted towns; in the execution today of a man in front of his daughter; and in a son's discovery of the fate of his father…."

UPI 6/16/99 "…Although the Yugoslav army has assured NATO it has marked all its minefields, "there is no indication that has been done," said a NATO peacekeeping force official (Wednesday). The borders with Albania and Macedonia, the most heavily traveled routes of returning refugees, are heavily mined, the official said. Four have died from encounters with mines so far…."

AP 6/16/99 "…Killings, beatings, sexual assaults and torture by Serb forces of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo were widespread and far more than just isolated attacks, according to a survey by a physicians' group. Physicians for Human Rights interviewed 1,180 refugees and found that one in every three households endured some kind of physical abuse. ``What our study clearly speaks to was this was part of a wide-scale, methodical, brutal pattern of abuse,'' said Dr. Allen Keller, one of the study's authors and director of the Center for Health and Human Rights at the New York University School of Medicine….Combined, the refugees detailed 598 separate incidents of torture, killing and physical abuse…."

Agence France-Presse 6/16/99 "… Kosovo separatist guerrillas are expected to agree in the next few days to demilitarise, NATO said Wednesday, but warned this does not mean a total disarming of the rebels. British Lieutenant General Michael Jackson, head of the international peace-keeping force in Kosovo, KFOR, said: "The UN Security Council resolution makes it absolutely clear that this organisation (KLA) is to be demilitarised." "I expect that in the next two to three days the leadership of this organisation will sign an agreement which is being worked out between them and the representatives of our (KFOR) force," he added. In Brussels, NATO said the aim of the June 10 Security Council resolution was to demilitarise and not disarm the Kosovo Liberation Army. That would mean confiscating its heavy weapons but leaving fighters with their lighter arms to allow them to eventually carry out police functions…."

Reuters/RUSSIA TODAY 6/16/99 "…Russia's Duma urged President Boris Yeltsin on Thursday to sack his special Balkans envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin, whom it accused of betraying Moscow's national interests in Yugoslavia. In a non-binding resolution, the opposition-dominated Duma said an agreement between Russia and the Western powers paving the way for an end to the Yugoslav war amounted to capitulation by Belgrade and the occupation of Kosovo by NATO troops. "The defeat of a strategic ally of Russia in the Balkans has sharply worsened Russia's geopolitical position and created a serious threat to its national security," the resolution said…."

Itar-Tass 6/16/99 "…Threats issued by the so- called Kosovo Liberation Army to Russian peacekeepers confirm the terrorist nature of this organisation, a high-ranking Russian Defence Ministry official said on Wednesday. Under the U.N. Security Council resolution, KLA should be demilitarised simultaneously with the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army and police units from the province in order not to create a security vacuum, the official said. Having assumed an essential role in the operation, NATO has been flouting its obligations, the official said, adding that there is open NATO connivance for Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo. If KLA is not disarmed, this will inevitably lead to the creation of other armed groupings in Kosovo in order to protect other ethnic groups in the province, the official said…."

6/16/99 AFP "…The designation of Russian peacekeepers by the Kosovo Liberation Army as an "enemy force" was a "declaration of war" on Moscow's Kosovo contingent, a foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday. "It is an unprecedented declaration, it can only be taken as a declaration of war on Russian peacekeeping forces," said the official, who asked not to be named…."

UPI 6/16/99 Beth Potter "…A KFOR officer says ethnic Albanians coming out of hiding from the hills near the town of Stimlje, in Kosovo, are breaking into Serb homes. Cpl. Harry Tyman, a spokesman for the British Fourth Armored Brigade, said today the ethnic Albanians were stealing televisions to sell them for food. KFOR met with Kosovo Liberation Army forces in the town to put a stop to the looting, however, the incident was enough to convince several Serb families to leave town by midday…All stores remained closed today except for one controlled by the Kosovo Liberation Army. Most have been completely looted and destroyed. Heaps of twisted metal fill the broken windows of some stores. Others have empty shelves and are filled with rubble…."

Associated Press 6/16/99 Robert Burns "…Defense Secretary William Cohen ruled out any compromise with Russia that would permit Moscow's troops to patrol in Kosovo under their own command, but he promised on Wednesday to be "as creative as we can'' in resolving the dispute over Russia's role. His Russian counterpart, Marshall Igor Sergeyev, struck an optimistic tone as he and Cohen met to begin an expected two days of negotiations. Sergeyev predicted the problem would be resolved by the weekend, and comments by officials in Moscow seemed to hint at a compromise…."

Macedonian Press Agency 6/16/99 "…The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) yesterday expressed its deep concern over the exodus of thousands of Serbs from Kosovo. The UN agency said it was witnessing the same pattern of displacements of Serbs seen in Western Slavonia in December 1991, in the Krajina and August 1995 and in Sarajevo after the 1995 Dayton peace agreement. According to a UN press report, The High Commissioner's Special Envoy, Dennis McNamara, discussed the outflow of Serb civilians with Lieutenant General Michael Jackson, the commander of the Kosovo Force (KFOR), who confirmed that his troops would do their best to provide security for all of Kosovo's citizens, but stressed that under the circumstances, there was unfortunately a limit to what could be done. …. UNHCR estimates 13,000 Serbs have crossed into Montenegro since Thursday but it is not known how many Serbs are crossing directly into Serbia. The Serb population of Kosovo is estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000 people……. "

Fox News (Reuters) 6/16/99 "…The Kosovo Liberation Army will not disarm in northern Kosovo until Russia agrees to place its troops under a unified command with NATO forces, a KLA representative said Wednesday. The ethnic Albanian guerrillas would "react militarily'' if Russian forces tried to enforce a partition of the Serbian province, the KLA's political representative in London, Pleurat Sejdiu, told Reuters. "They could find themselves in an Afghanistan situation again,'' he added…."

American Spectator Online 6/14/99 Wlady Pleszczynski "…The short of it was that the administration had been caught completely unprepared by the Russian incursion. If not for CNN it still might not know what happened. Meanwhile, the British press was filled with reports that U.K. leaders were furious at the U.S. for not allowing its genuinely prepositioned troops from moving right in, forcing them instead to allow U.S. troops to be first. These troops, of course, weren't ready to move, which is how it came about that the Russians moved in first. Evidently Kosovo, like nature, abhors a vacuum. In foreign policy power squandered is power lost…. The Independent's man in Kosovo, Robert Fisk, in the concluding paragraph of his Sunday story offered this: "As I drove back into Pristina, it occurred to me how much the Russians would like to control the air base, with its massive underground taxiways and nuclear-blast-proof conference rooms. And how easy it would be to open the base to Russian aircraft to bring in thousands more troops, with not just the blessing but the positive encouragement of Belgrade. I remembered what it said on the back of the Russian armoured vehicle leading [the Russian] convoy. The word on the back was: 'Airborne.' …"

Itar-Tass 6/16/99 "…The Russian paratroopers stationed at the Pristina airport have begun to build defensive positions, the British newspapers report. The construction jobs are proceeding chiefly in the southern part of this strategic objective. Judging by everything, the Russian peacekeepers are expecting provocations from men of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, who refuse to disarm and are not duly treated by NATO contingents in the province. …."

Itar-Tass 6/16/99 "…NATO has not begun to disarm the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, whose men are in the meantime perpetrating alarming terroristic acts in Kosovo. The stepped up terroristic actions of the KLA are a "powder keg", which is apt to blow up the entire settlement process in Kosovo, Russian Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev told Russian journalists in Helsinki on Wednesday after his meeting with Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari. A spokesman for the Russian delegation noted that, for his part, Ahtisaari stressed that the NATO nations should honour the reached agreement to disarm the KLA…Obviously encouraged by such veiled connivance, KLA commanders are openly declaring now that they will not disarm. Moreover, they will not do it until the Russian troops in the province remain outside the single command of the international force, which NATO wants to control. This was confirmed to the Japanese newspaper Mainichi on Wednesday by KLA official representative in London Plerat Sezdiu. He unequivocally stated that the Kosovo separatists want to exploit the presence of NATO troops in the province to split it away from Yugoslavia in spite of the intentionally declared need to preserve the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia…."

Itar-Tass 6/16/99 "…Large units of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) have begun to enter Pristina on Wednesday. The Albanian separatists are capturing the administrative centre of Kosovo in violation of the preliminary agreement, under which armed gunmen should not enter the city. According to reports of the London mass media, the command of the British contingent of the Kosovo peacekeeping force (KFOR) prohibited the gunmen from entering the city, but the KLA ignored its orders. The impression is that the KFOR units of the NATO countries are unprepared for the peacekeeping operation, or for the fulfilment of the U.N. Security Council resolution, which demands the disarmament of Albanian separatists. This was confirmed in an indirect way by General Michael Jackson, commander-in-chief of the NATO troops integrated in KFOR, who said that NATO units could not be in all parts of Kosovo at the same time…."

Itar-Tass 6/16/99 "…The so-called Kosovo Liberation Army has already established control over all the towns and villages in the southern part of the province and has set up its own checkpoints there, Albanian refugees told the Japanese Kyodo Tsushin News Agency in Macedonia. After the Nato troops were moved into Kosovo, the refugees tried to go home, but were turned back and are now languishing again in their refugee camps in Macedonia. According to eyewitness accounts, NATO troops are tightly controlling only the main roads to Pristina. The police functions in the minor localities are discharged only by KLA men. They are controlling everybody who enters and leaves the province, are checking their identity papers. The Kosovo Liberation Army, eyewitnesses say, is promising to shortly issue special identity cards to the local Albanian population…."

The Washington Times 6/16/99 Philip Smucker "…Leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, basking in triumph without having ever won a battle, proclaimed themselves in control of all of southern Kosovo yesterday and pledged to make the region a "model of the KLA's role in a new Kosovo." Reports from across the region verified that members of the ragtag guerrilla force had taken control of towns, villages and border crossings as Yugoslav army forces withdrew with their tanks and trucks northward ahead of a midnight deadline imposed by NATO last week. "From today, Prizren is 100 percent in our hands," said Rexha Ekrem, also known as "Commander Drini." The claim appeared to contradict the terms of the agreement under which NATO ended its bombing campaign in Yugoslavia. That agreement called for the "demilitarization" of the rebel army…."

Associated Press 6/16/99 Tom Raum "…U.S. forces in Kosovo detained two suspected war criminals today, a Pentagon spokesman said. Navy Capt. Mike Doubleday had no details about the arrests or the men's alleged crimes, but said the two remain in U.S. custody…."

The Guardian 6/17/99 Richard Norton-Taylor "…Civilians and K-For troops face a serious threat from unmarked mines laid by the Kosovo Liberation Army, whose leaders may have no idea where they are, it emerged yesterday. Major Andy Philips, a bomb disposal expert from 33 Regiment Royal Engineers, said both sides had been cooperative, but there were no reliable records of KLA minefields. "The main KLA elements are cooperating, but we don't know what fringe elements have been out there, and we don't know what they have put out. ..."

Reuters 6/16/99 Brian Williams "...Serb civilians, fearful of ethnic Albanian reprisals, flooded out of Kosovo Wednesday and NATO troops disarmed Kosovo guerrillas and arrested some of their chiefs after they refused to hand over their weapons. As Serb soldiers and paramilitaries pulled back, separatist Kosovo Liberation army (KLA) rebels roamed some vacated areas, set up checkpoints and conducted house-by-house searches like a new occupation power..."

stratfor.com 6/16/99 "...NATO's decision to exploit the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during Operation Allied Force to maintain pressure on Serbian forces on the ground is coming back to haunt it. While Albania helped create the KLA, NATO nurtured it, and now that the KLA is running amok, NATO must tame or destroy it. Much to NATO's chagrin, the KLA did not simply accept NATO control over the province, lay down its arms, and join the UN sponsored political process. Rather, seizing the opportunity and the initiative, the KLA has poured into the province ahead of NATO and on the heels of withdrawing Serbs - filling the power vacuum and establishing de facto control. KLA forces have seized control of two border crossing points into Albania, as well as most of the towns and villages of southern Kosovo including nearly all of Prizren. The KLA has presented its own "interim government," and has as yet refused to disarm. Worse, multiple sources report the KLA are carrying out reprisal attacks against Serbs, burning Serbian homes and setting in motion a mass exodus of Serbs from the province......In the meantime, NATO continues to explain its inability to control the KLA and defend ethnic Serbs by arguing that it does not have sufficient forces in place to control the province. In fact, refugees report that NATO controls little more than the main roads to Pristina. And to be more precise, it is not simply that NATO does not have enough troops to establish a presence throughout Kosovo. NATO does not have enough troops to confront and forcibly disarm the KLA throughout Kosovo...."

Washington Post Foreign Service 6/17/99 Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson "...With ethnic Albanian guerrillas establishing offices, erecting checkpoints and occupying police stations in Kosovo as Yugoslav forces have withdrawn, NATO commanders moved for the first time today to rein in the newly empowered rebels and allay concerns among Serbian civilians here about possible reprisal attacks. In the first major confrontation between Kosovo Liberation Army rebels and allied forces, U.S. Marines today stripped weapons from about 200 guerrillas in the Kosovo village of Zegra. The action followed a tense standoff in which the KLA members refused at first to surrender their weapons, then complied when the Marines used armored personnel carriers and Cobra helicopter gunships to intimidate them. The Marines then led away six rebel leaders in handcuffs...."

Sydney Morning Herald 6/16/99 Geoff Kitney "…Watching Russian preparations to send more troops into Kosovo where 200 paratroopers continue to hold the main airport, Western leaders are still worried about the strength of Moscow's new commitments not to make further deployments without NATO's agreement. President Boris Yeltsin and other senior Kremlin figures told United States President Bill Clinton and other Western leaders that Russia would defer plans to send a larger force to Kosovo…."

USA Today/AP 11/29/98 "…The man accused of orchestrating the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa operates a terrorist network out of Albania that has infiltrated other parts of Europe, The Sunday Times reported. The newspaper quoted Fatos Klosi, the head of the Albanian intelligence service, as saying a network run by Saudi exile Osama Bin Laden sent units to fight in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Bin Laden is believed to have established an Albanian operation in 1994 after telling the government he headed a wealthy Saudi humanitarian agency wanting to help Albania, the newspaper reported. Klosi said he believed terrorists had already infiltrated other parts of Europe from bases in Albania. Interpol believes more than 100,000 blank Albanian passports were stolen in riots last year, providing ample opportunity for terrorists to acquire false papers, the newspaper said…."

Venic 6/17/99 Reuters AFP UN ITAR-TASS "…In 1998 the KLA carried out 2,018 armed attacks against residents of Kosovo, during which 199 civilians and 128 police officers were killed. The KLA was also responsible for 292 kidnappings in the province during the same year. Out of 199 civilians killed by the KLA 46 were Serbs, 77 ethnic Albanians and 76 residents of other nationalities…."

Venic 6/17/99 Reuters AFP UN ITAR-TASS "…During the civil war in Yugoslavia from 1987 to 1991 over 300,000 Serbs became refugees. More than 14,000 Serbs were exterminated by Croatian and Kosovar extremists. In 1995 over 250,000 Serbs were expelled from Krajina by unified military forces of Croatia, NATO, the United States, and Muslim extremists. Thousands of Serbian civilians died during the exodus…"

Venic 6/17/99 Reuters AFP UN ITAR-TASS "…In 1995 NATO conducted a bombing campaign against Serbian villages in Bosnia, killing 500 residents. In 1999 NATO bombed Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which became a home to over 700,000 Serbian refuges, who escaped systematic ethnic cleansing campaign by Croatian military, Muslim terrorists, and NATO only a few years earlier. The exact number of civilian casualties resulting from NATO's latest bombing campaign against Serbian civilians is not yet known, but is believed to exceed 2,000…."

Meanwhile, evidence of Serb atrocities during NATO's bombing campaign continued to mount. The discoveries were all too familiar: a well filled with decomposing bodies; a prison filled with apparent instruments of torture. Villagers in Dragacin, north of Prizren, told German troops that the well was filled with the bodies of 11 elderly men killed in late April. There have also been reports of atrocities against Serbs, with a couple found dead on their home's doorstep and a 16-year-old killed in an ambush on a country road. In a report that could not be independently confirmed, the Serb Media Center said KLA rebels killed three Serbs in central Novo Selo and southern Kosovska Kamenica and kidnapped 18 Serbs in villages near Pristina. NATO peacekeepers arrested 25 Kosovo Liberation Army rebels Friday after German peacekeepers rescued 15 battered Gypsies and ethnic Albanians in what they said might be a KLA torture chamber for alleged collaborators in Prizren. They also found the corpse of an elderly man chained to a chair. He appeared to have died shortly before the Germans arrived, said German army spokesman Lt. Col. Dietmar Jeserich…."

The New York Times 6/19/99 John Kifner "…The tenuous and volatile nature of NATO's balancing act was illustrated here this afternoon when German troops swooped down on a former Serbian police headquarters taken over by the K.L.A., briefly held 25 of the guerrillas and seized a pile of weapons. Inside the station, the German troops found 15 people who had been taken prisoner, including an elderly man who was found dead, handcuffed to a chair and badly beaten, according to a German spokesman, Lieut. Col. Dietmar Jeserich. The prisoners included Serbs, Albanians and Gypsies. It was not clear why they had been arrested, but some onlookers said the prisoners included informers and thieves. One man had red welts across his back, an old man had a bandage on his head and cuts on his face and another man said he had been stabbed in the leg. "Not even your worst enemy could do such a thing," said Jankovic Janko, an elderly Serb with head injuries. He said he had been seized outside his house on Wednesday…."

http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/06/18/timkoskos02010.html?1124027 6/18/99 Nick Parker "…TWO former British soldiers discovered by peacekeeping troops in Kosovo yesterday said they had joined the Kosovo Liberation Army two months ago and killed several Serbs. They were among 60 KLA troops disarmed by Nato forces three miles from Stimlje, on the road to Pristina. Alan Kelly, 47, and Andrew Freeney, 29, said they had been fighting running battles with the Serb army in the mountains of Kosovo along with dozens of Americans and an Italian. Mr Freeney, a former Royal Fusilier from Birmingham, flew to Kosovo after telling his mother he was going to Greece for a holiday. He said he had lost count of the number of Serbs he had killed. "I didn't see them as people - they were just targets - and I felt nothing when they fell.,,,, Mr Kelly, a father of one from Hastings, said: "I know for a fact that I have killed at least two Serbs in the past two months. I fixed them in my sights and watched them drop. I have no qualms whatsoever about doing it because these were the very men responsible for the deaths of innocent men and women."…"

AP 6/18/99 "….Accounts of brutality in Kosovo emerged Thursday in different tones - the stunned, flat voice of a teen-age girl and the measured sentences of a British official - but they both told of irrational savagery mixed with careful planning. Just six days into the international military presence in Kosovo, officials have discovered so many mass graves and killing sites and heard so many wrenching accounts of atrocities that they now estimate at least 10,000 people were killed in the Serb crackdown against Kosovo Albanians which began shortly before NATO began its 78-day air bombardment March 24. The mounting evidence is likely to add to calls for the arrest of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who has been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. But President Clinton said Thursday that peacekeepers will take a ``wait and see'' approach toward Milosevic's arrest….. One of the most grisly reports of slaughter so far came Thursday from the village of Poklek, 20 miles west of the provincial capital Pristina. The killings were, by residents' accounts, methodical. Elhame Muqolli, 14, told of how she and scores of friends and neighbors were herded into a room by Serb police, who threw in a hand grenade, raked the room with machine guns and then set it on fire to kill anyone who might have survived. Muqolli (pronounced Moo-CHO-lee) and five others had managed to jump out a window, but 62 others died in the April 17 incident. Their blood dripped through the floor to stain the ceiling of the room below….."

The Associated Press 6/19/99 Donna Bryso "…Concerned about reports of revenge attacks by ethnic Albanian rebels, NATO has pledged to put more military police on the streets of Kosovo to make the shattered province safe for Serbs fleeing by the thousands. In a further effort to keep order in Kosovo, NATO intended to sign an agreement today with the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army specifying terms of its demilitarization, alliance spokesman Maj. Jam Yoosten said…..The United States, France, Britain, Germany and Italy have divided Kosovo into five sectors for peacekeeping. Russia had wanted its own sector. Under the agreement, 3,000 Russian troops will serve under Russian command and control, but Russians will work with NATO commanders in the sectors controlled by the United States, France and Germany. The Pristina airport will be opened to all nations…."

Reuters 6/19/99 Deborah Charles "…A senior Serbian official on Saturday urged Serbs who have fled Kosovo to return to their homes within the next 48 hours, saying the government would accompany them, provide fuel and organise their return. Milovan Bojic, deputy prime minister of Serbia, said institutions in Kosovo were still working and the KFOR international peacekeeping force had guaranteed the safety of all citizens in Kosovo, regardless of their nationality. ``We should make the most of this moment to go back to Kosovo in numbers in the next 48 hours,'' Bojic said in an address shown on Serbian state television (RTS) and reported by the official news agency Tanjug…."

The New York Times 6/19/99 John Kifner "…The Kosovo Liberation Army is setting up interim governments in a number of cities, moving rapidly to fill the civic vacuum. In at least one case of exerting their self-appointed authority, the rebels arrested and apparently beat several prisoners, one so severely that he died. The troops are moving into city halls and makeshift municipal buildings, with their own black-uniformed police at the doors, trying to get electricity, water and other basic services working. Their major problem is that there is virtually no food and tens of thousands more refugees are on the way. The United Nations, under the terms of the agreement with the Serbs, is to set up a civil authority but has not done so yet. The rebel forces are acting without any legal mandate, but NATO commanders appear to have found it convenient to allow the rebels to deal with some local matters. The agreement with the Serbs calls for the K.L.A. to be demilitarized by the allied troops but that has yet to be enforced…."

The New York Times 6/19/99 Ian Fisher "…A few days ago, the Serbs here made a brave and unusual decision: They would stay in this Kosovo hillside town, nearly 4,000 of them, and try to live again beside Albanians, even as their fellow Serbs fled the province in the tens of thousands. That all broke down Friday, and with it one small pocket of hope for re-creating a multi-ethnic Kosovo. Friday afternoon, heavily armed young German soldiers were reduced to escorting scared Serbian women to their homes so they could pick up a few things and leave town, probably forever. One woman walked down the street grasping a soldier's hand ….The Serbs' reasons for leaving town are particularly disturbing to NATO, because they seem closely linked to the peacekeeping mission. Serbs here allege that guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army kidnapped seven men Wednesday and Thursday as they went house to house confiscating weapons. And as the guerrilla force only came out of hiding since the arrival of the peacekeepers Sunday, the Serbs here say they believe that the peacekeepers are cooperating with the former rebels….. From the start, the Serbs have eyed the peacekeepers, under NATO command, with distrust for a reason that is hard to overcome: It was NATO, after all, that bombed the Serbs for more than two months, with some degree of cooperation with KLA forces on the ground. But since the peacekeepers arrived, that distrust has only deepened as the KLA has tried to step in to become the new civil and administrative force in Kosovo. NATO insists that it is the only real power in Kosovo and that it is completely even-handed with Serbs and Albanians alike….."

New York Post 6/19/99 Uri Dan "…Three days after NATO troops refused a mother superior's pleas for protection, Kosovar rebels looted her monastery and raped a young nun, officials said yesterday.

French commandos and members of the French Foreign Legion arrived as the Kosovar Liberation Army guerrillas were leaving the isolated mountain religious community in Devic, about 30 miles northwest of the Kosovo capital of Pristina. The Post reported Monday how Mother Macaria drove to Pristina on Sunday to plead with arriving British troops for protection for herself, a priest and nine nuns at Devic. "Please come and save us. You have the guns, all I have is a cross," she told an Irish Guard lieutenant. But she was told that no protection was possible until NATO reinforcements arrived. Three days later the unguarded medieval monastery was raided by KLA members, French officers confirmed yesterday. The French gave few details but a spokesman for Serb Orthodox Patriarch Pavle said the guerrillas showed no mercy. "They desecrated the church, including the altar and icons, and humiliated the nuns," Deacon Luka Novakovic told The Post. He said a 24-year-old nun was taken to a back room and raped. The rebels looted the building of anything valuable and fired guns into the air as they left, just as the French arrived Thursday…"The monastery had been stripped bare," a French officer told CNN. He added that the priest had been beaten. Novakovic said: "They even desecrated the tomb of St. Joanikije…."

Creators Syndicate Toronto Sun Author: Matthew Fisher 6/19/99 "…As a seething mob of several hundred Albanians looked on, nine guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army in battle dress were ordered out of their cars at gunpoint yesterday and spread-eagled against a wall by U.S. Marines in the middle of town. This was one of many "in-your-face" weapons searches carried out this week by the Marines' 26th Expeditionary Force in the American sector in southeastern Kosovo. Many of the confrontations produced results. undreds of assault rifles, belt-fed machineguns and grenades, as well as a few rocket-propelled grenade launchers were confiscated…… The U.S. Marines' uptight behaviour can partly be explained by American paranoia caused by the deaths of U.S. Army troops in Somalia, by terrorist bombings of U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia and, going back a while, in Lebanon….Unlike the other NATO forces here, which have no air cover, the Marines always have Super Cobra and Apache helicopters flying low over their positions. Unlike other NATO commanders, Marine officers have also been very reluctant to send their soldiers out on foot patrols.

Groups of 15 or 20 leathernecks have been moved around together on top of mammoth amphibious armoured vehicles, in the back of dump trucks or have been stationed at checkpoints bristling with concertina wire. Albanians were incredulous that the Marines, whom they hailed as liberators, would so publicly humiliate their home-grown heroes by lining them up against a wall like criminals. But they are slowly awakening to the reality that, while NATO saved them from further atrocities from the Milosevic regime, it is an army of occupation that is as determined to protect Serbians as well as Albanian civilians….That the KLA's ragtag army can be just as vile as the Serbian forces has been known for a long time, but what they have tried to get up to over the past week suggests that NATO's problems are far more likely to come from them than from Serbian malcontents…. Already frustrated by the sudden departure of virtually the entire Serbian minority in their sector because of fears of KLA reprisals, the Germans announced late yesterday that the KLA had until midnight last night to surrender their weapons and until Sunday to get rid of their uniforms…."

European Stars & Stripes 6/18/99 Jon Anderson "…Top Marine Corps leaders in the U.S.-protected sector of Kosovo say tensions are rising in their area after six ethnic Albanians were wounded by gunfire Wednesday night. The shootings occurred after an incident earlier that day in which Marines forcibly detained six Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas after a daylong standoff with more than 100 of the rebel fighters….. In the latest incident, the wounded Kosovars showed up at a Marine base camp asking for help. They said they were shot by Serbs from atop a building. The Albanians were treated and are expected to recover. The actual events are disputed. Serbs told Marines the Albanians picked the fight. "It was just one long string of accusation and counteraccusation," said one Marine major…."

STRATFOR 6/18/99 "…1715 GMT, 990618 - The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that as of June 18, two-thirds of the ethnic Albanian refugees sheltered at the Kukes, Albania camp have left for the return trip home. UNHCR spokesman Rupert Colville said between 11,000 and 12,000 refugees still remain….1640 GMT, 990618 - Several ethnic Albanian doctors and nurses, accompanied by KLA members at Pristina's main hospital, demanded that the all-Serbian medical staff leave so that they might be replaced. One of the ethnic Albanian doctors said, "The Serb doctors don't look after Albanian patients. Now, there are no Albanian doctors. Before the war, we worked here. But now the Albanians don't have a right. We're not considered to be human." KFOR troops blocked the doors to the facility and tried to resolve the confrontation, but there are conflicting reports on whether the KLA members were armed or not….. 1611 GMT, 990618 - AFP reports that the KLA held nine nuns and one priest hostage and inflicted "psychological violence" at a Serbian Orthodox church near Mitrovica. An advance contingent of French troops arrived at the site June 16 at the request of church authorities, and has been guarding the area since then…..

Stratfor.com 6/18/99 "…Sure, Russia holds the strategic Slatina airbase, but the token Russian force can not both hold the base and establish a broader presence in Kosovo. NATO, not Russian, forces are overseeing the return of Kosovar Albanians and the spreading presence of the KLA. NATO, not Russian, forces are securing the sites of alleged atrocities. NATO, not Russian, forces are simultaneously urging Serbs to remain in Kosovo while regretting that they are as yet unable to defend the Serbs from the KLA. Every day that passes means that the Russians, when they finally are given a formal role in Kosovo, will find their role that much more marginal and strategically weak…."

FOX News 6/18/99 Donna Bryson, AP "…NATO pledged to put more military police on the streets to reinforce its authority and make the troubled province safe for Serbs who are fleeing by the thousands. Adding reinforcements to protect Serbs represents an ironic reversal of the role NATO has played up to now: fighting on behalf of ethnic Albanians facing repression by Serbs. Now the Serbs are clamoring for protection, reporting attacks across the province by the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army…..Up to 50,000 Serb civilians have already left Kosovo and the rest are increasingly fearful as Serb troops pull out to comply with last week's peace deal. Already, three-quarters of the 40,000 troops once in the province have left and the remainder are due out by midnight Sunday….In the eastern town of Pasjane, after KLA members pulled two Serbs from their car and beat them savagely, a group of Serbs surrounded a U.S. Marine checkpoint where the men were taken, demanding that the peacekeepers protect them. "You made the security leave -- now you have to replace it!'' one Serb shouted…."

CHICAGO TRIBUNE 6/18/99 Paul Salopek "…Yet another group of miserable civilians may soon be streaming out of the wretched killing fields of Kosovo. This time it is the Roma, or Gypsies, who are being blamed by the province's surviving ethnic Albanians for siding with their Serbian oppressors. The beginnings of a backlash against the Roma have been taking shape here over the past two days, ever since ethnic Albanian guerrillas began pouring into town in the wake of occupying NATO troops. The guerrillas, members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, have been conducting weapons searches in the two tiny Roma neighborhoods of the city. More ominously, ethnic Albanian men - both in and out of uniform - have been taking away individual Roma for ''interrogations,'' presumably about collaboration with the Yugoslav forces who have turned much of Djakovica into a pile of scorched rubble. ''A KLA guy put a gun to my daughter's neck and said, 'Where is your ID?''' said Samile Avduli, 34, who was still trembling from the tense encounter two hours earlier. ''He told us to get the hell out, to go to Serbia.'"…The Roma's biggest worry, though, remains the KLA, whose fighters were swarming through the city armed with automatic rifles. ''We want to live in peace here as we always have,'' said Lulzim Xerxa, 36, a Roma mechanic. ''I don't think the KLA will let us. We are afraid.'' …."

Reuters 6/17/99 "…NATO supreme commander General Wesley Clarke said on Thursday it was unclear if all Serb paramilitaries were pulling out of Kosovo. Clark told the BBC that disarmament in the Balkans of both the Serbs and the Kosovo Albanians would never be complete and was fraught with difficulties.

``It is not clear whether all the paramilitaries have pulled back or not and we will be watching this very closely,'' Clark told the BBC. ``We are never going to disarm everyone in the Balkans, There are weapons buried all over the Balkans,'' he added….."

Yahoo! News 6/18/99 AFP "…Separatist Kosovo guerrillas inflicted "psychological violence" on nine nuns and a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church they held captive in a convent here for two days, the convent's Mother Superior told AFP Friday. Mother Anastasia, the head of the 15th-century Devic convent 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica, said 30 fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) seized the convent on Sunday, before French troops moved into the area. Church authorities alerted the French military controlling the northern zone, who sent advance troops to the site on Wednesday and have been protecting the establishment since then. French troops moved into Mitrovica on Thursday. Anastasia denied an unconfirmed French military report that the youngest of the nine women being held had been raped, but said the guerrillas had inflicted "psychological violence" during their stay.

Pictures and glass protecting icons in the convent's chapel were smashed, and the KLA insignia was scratched on one of them. The tombstone of a Serbian Orthodox saint, St. Yonikos, was broken while graffitti was daubed on ancient murals and chandeliers were smashed, although most of the artwork was left intact. The one priest who was held hostage said nobody had been beaten but "they fired their machine guns behind our heads." The rebels also made off with the convent's four tractors, two cars, electric generators and money, the priest said….Two medieval Serbian Orthodox monasteries were also burnt down this week by KLA rebels and a priest was kidnapped, the archbishop of Kosovo said Thursday…."

www.stratfor.com/crisis/kosovo 6/17/99 Stratfor "…1816 GMT, 990617 German peacekeepers in Kosovo declared on June 17 they will not disarm the KLA in their sector until the introduction of a solid plan for doing so, including a timetable and protocol. Citing the lack of a general order to disarm the KLA and that it would not be in the interest of stability, Gen. Ruediger Drews said, "We don't feel it wise to create another front." …"

AP 6/18/99 "….Accounts of brutality in Kosovo emerged Thursday in different tones - the stunned, flat voice of a teen-age girl and the measured sentences of a British official - but they both told of irrational savagery mixed with careful planning. Just six days into the international military presence in Kosovo, officials have discovered so many mass graves and killing sites and heard so many wrenching accounts of atrocities that they now estimate at least 10,000 people were killed in the Serb crackdown against Kosovo Albanians which began shortly before NATO began its 78-day air bombardment March 24. The mounting evidence is likely to add to calls for the arrest of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who has been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. But President Clinton said Thursday that peacekeepers will take a ``wait and see'' approach toward Milosevic's arrest….. One of the most grisly reports of slaughter so far came Thursday from the village of Poklek, 20 miles west of the provincial capital Pristina. The killings were, by residents' accounts, methodical. Elhame Muqolli, 14, told of how she and scores of friends and neighbors were herded into a room by Serb police, who threw in a hand grenade, raked the room with machine guns and then set it on fire to kill anyone who might have survived. Muqolli (pronounced Moo-CHO-lee) and five others had managed to jump out a window, but 62 others died in the April 17 incident. Their blood dripped through the floor to stain the ceiling of the room below….."

The Associated Press. Tom Walker 6/17/99 "…SENSING growing Nato disquiet about its future role in the province, the Kosovo Liberation Army yesterday scaled down its patrols in the second city of Prizren. Most of its soldiers were carrying only side-arms and truncheons. The main commander in Prizren, Ekrem Rexha, said that discussions on his guerrillas' disarmament could gather pace once it was verified that all Serb forces were out of Kosovo….. At the Rambouillet peace conference he was assured by American negotiators that Nato would find a way of allowing the KLA to keep its arms, probably by taking the guerrillas into Kosovo's new police force….."

ORIGINAL SOURCES 6/17/99 Mary Mostert "…The New York Times Reported yesterday that the "Kosovo Liberation Army will not hand over its weapons to Nato forces and intends to turn itself into a national army with the eventual goal of an independent Kosovo, a senior KLA commander said yesterday. "Directly contradicting the KLA's public support for the agreement reached at Rambouillet, Rustem Mustafa, one of seven regional commanders, said he expected Nato to train its 50,000 soldiers, to provide weapons to replace their old ones and to share security for Kosovo with the KLA." In a helpful description of the KLA the Times notes: "The KLA is a shadowy organization whose structure and leadership is unclear. Its headquarters during the war was near Malisevo, southwest of Pristina, and Mr. Mustafa's officials claim the military structure is divided into seven operational zones, each with its own commander and brigade. These in turn are divided into battalions of 500 men, companies of 100 and platoons. Political links are at brigade level."…. The United Nations resolution recognizes and promises to protect the Sovereign rights of Yugoslavia over Kosovo, which has been Serb for more than 1000 years….. He said Serbs with "clean hands" could continue to live in Kosovo, but gave a clear hint that reprisals could follow against those deemed to have helped Serb forces. "We were here all the time so we know who has done what. We have information," he said. Clearly, the report shows, a group tagged as a "terrorist" group, financed via crime and extortion, expects to become the accuser, judge and executioner of any and all Serbs remaining in Kosovo - and they expect that NATO will assist them by giving them new weapons….. "

The New York Times 6/20/99 "…With the last Yugoslav forces streaming out of Kosovo ahead of schedule, NATO commanders here have reached a tentative agreement with leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army to disband the rebel force gradually, NATO officials said Saturday. Under the agreement, which must still be signed by both parties, the rebels will withdraw from fortified positions held during their civil war against Yugoslav forces, turn over their heavy weapons, shed their uniforms and cease any organized military activities within 30 days…."

The Washington Post 6/20/99 Molly Moore "....With the last Yugoslav troops scheduled to depart Kosovo on Sunday, NATO forces are preparing to escalate the disarming of ethnic Albanian guerrillas who are taking over increasing police and governmental roles, often including violence and intimidation of rival Serbian communities. Even though NATO and Kosovo Liberation Army officials still have not signed an agreement setting the timetable for demilitarization of the separatist rebels, allied forces already have confiscated hundreds of weapons from KLA members and intervened in numerous conflicts involving Serbian citizens, whom the guerrillas consider sympathetic to the Yugoslav forces that brutalized ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. U.S. forces, which include the Marines and the 82nd Airborne Division, have been the most aggressive of the NATO troops in stripping KLA members of their weapons, arresting recalcitrant rebels and interceding in incidents of violence and threats against Serbs...."

Washington Post 6/20/99 Daniel Williams "...At bottom, the Kosovo conflict was a civil war. It was originally between forces of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav government and ethnic Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) who wanted independence for Kosovo, a province of Serbia, which is the dominant republic of the Yugoslav federation. As is often the case in civil conflicts, the foundations were well laid for a dirty war full of brutality and atrocities. Serbs are taught that the ethnic Albanians are interlopers, people who infiltrated Kosovo by stealth and have no legal right to be here. Moreover, 50-year-old grudges are alive. During World War II, some Albanians sided with the Italian and German occupation armies in Yugoslavia as a way of freeing themselves from the Serbs. The Germans slaughtered tens of thousands of Serbs, so this war became a kind of revenge...... The sad history of Yugoslavia in the past decade also played a role. Serbs see themselves as a main victim in the breakup of Yugoslavia. They resent that tens or hundreds of thousands of Serbs were expelled from Croatia in 1995 in the Croatians' own "ethnic cleansing" campaign of forced deportations, yet no one indicted the Croatian leadership for war crimes. Serbs are endlessly mystified by attention paid by the West to Albanian refugees. "No one cared anything about the Serbs when we were driven out," said Vesna Markovic, a refugee from the Krajina region of Croatia. "We were suffering and no one cared."...."

Reuters 6/20/99 "....British Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested on Sunday that the people of Serbia should bear some share of responsibility for war crimes committed in their name in Kosovo. ``They cannot walk away from these crimes,'' Blair said in an interview with the BBC recorded at the Group of Eight summit, where Kosovo has been top of the agenda. He accused Serbian paramilitaries of killing thousands of innocent people in Kosovo. Blair said it was a fact that no country would give reconstruction aid to Serbia while President Slobodan Milosevic remained in power. He countered the argument that the Serbs should not be punished for the actions of their leaders. ``The more that we see what has happened in Kosovo, the more we see that the Serbian people have got a responsibility to make Milosevic be culpable for these crimes. They cannot walk away from these crimes.'' ..."

Reuters 6/20/99 "...NATO troops have found 60,000 ethnic Albanian refugees held by Serb forces in five ransacked northern Kosovo villages that were turned into concentration camps, The Sunday Telegraph reported. The refugees told Telegraph journalists they had been taken prisoner by Yugoslav forces, to be used as a human shield in the event of a ground war with NATO...... It said all refugees older than six months were given identity cards bearing their name, a registration number and the name of their prison village...."

http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/171/nation/Serbs_in_Kosovo_suffer_reprisalsP.shtml 6/20/99 Charles Sennott "...Just off the main road that runs through Mitrovica, Yugoslav Nasic, 64, and his wife were shaking in fear as a NATO armored personnel carrier dropped them in front of their home. The Serb couple pleaded with NATO French peacekeeping forces, which are responsible for the area, to protect them from KLA soldiers, who they said had threatened to kill them if they remained. Nasic said KLA soldiers burst into their home yesterday and ''seemed polite at first.'' Then he said one of the soldiers wrenched his wife's left forefinger, apparently breaking it. ''I am too afraid now. I have to go. NATO cannot sit and wait here in front of our house all night. We are going to have to go,'' said Nasic, his hands trembling, his wife wincing in pain. ''They will kill us,'' he said..... The French troops grew impatient and moved on. The Nasics then left their home and walked away toward the Serbian forces on the edge of town that were preparing to pull out. They took nothing with them. Minutes later, two KLA soldiers emerged from the elderly couple's backyard. Sola Zahiti, a commander of KLA special forces in the town, was dressed in full camouflage, armed with a pistol and a grenade. When asked if he had forced the couple to leave their home, Zahiti replied, ''Why not? Look what they did to their neighbors' houses.'' He pointed to the charred remains of ethnic Albanian homes that dotted the neighborhood. Only those homes marked with a Serbian Orthodox cross and symbol of Serb solidarity drawn in chalk were left untouched....."

Reuters 6/20/99 Matt Spetalnick "...Yugoslav forces completed their withdrawal from Kosovo 11 hours ahead of schedule Sunday as Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton agreed to put disagreements over NATO's air war behind them. NATO promptly declared an official end to the air strikes launched on March 24 and suspended since June 10, when Belgrade agreed to withdraw from the southern Serbian province and let NATO troops protect returning ethnic Albanian refugees..."

Associated Press 6/20/99 DUSAN STOJANOVIC "...With Slobodan Milosevic's rule shaken by Serbia's withdrawal from Kosovo, an even more extremist and anti-Western politician is bidding to take his place. After quitting Milosevic's government when NATO-led troops marched into the southern Serbian province, Vojislav Seselj is now poised to mount the greatest political challenge to the Yugoslav president since he came to power 10 years ago. If Seselj succeeds, it will put into place a nationalist leadership even more strident and anti-Western than the regime NATO just tried to bomb into submission...... Seselj once declared his men would ''take out the eyes of Croatians with rusty spoons.'' NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia deemed his outbursts threatening enough to expel him from the country late last year. When Western officials recently accused Serb troops of raping Kosovo women, Seselj denied it by saying they were too ugly for Serb men. On the eve of NATO strikes against Yugoslavia, he threatened that when ''the first allied bomb'' fell on the Serbian soil, ''there will be no Albanians left in Kosovo.'' His prophecy nearly materialized, when hundreds of thousands Kosovo Albanians were forced to flee Kosovo and thousands were killed by Serb troops......"

The Associated Press Donna Bryson 6/20/99 "...The United Nations raised its light blue flag over Kosovo Sunday, and with it hopes for order and democracy in the bitterly divided region. But the red-and-black flag of Albania, which flies over their headquarters on the hilly outskirts of Pristina and elsewhere in Kosovo, represents a serious challenge to U.N. authority. The separatist Kosovo Liberation Army is occupying town halls the United Nations says it should administer and intervening in disputes the world body says it should mediate, raising concerns that plans for a multiethnic Kosovo will be hijacked...."

Stratfor.com 6/20/99 "...While, at least as far as the Russians are concerned, there are no "zones of control in Kosovo, the province is to be divided into five "sectors," which will be controlled and patrolled by NATO members Germany, France, Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom. Under the deal struck between Russia and NATO, 3,000 to 7,000 Russian troops will patrol alongside NATO forces in the German, French, and U.S. sectors. The politics behind teaming Russians with these particular countries is clear. More than others in NATO, France and Germany have attempted to cooperate with Russia throughout the Kosovo conflict, and are attempting to establish the foundation for further post-conflict cooperation. The U.S. has a symbolic obligation to compromise....In short, Russia is absent in what are perhaps the two most significant sectors - those of Italy and the UK. The presence in the German sector and at the airport is significant, but the troops deployed with French and U.S. forces are basically exiles. The U.S. and Russia, so key to Kosovo developments to date, are effectively marginalized in the province. Italy and the UK have been handed the greatest control over developments on the ground in Kosovo. Italy has a vested interest in limiting the influence of Tirana and the KLA in Kosovo, and its troops are geographically placed to do so, but Italy may not have committed the forces necessary to take on the KLA. So the UK is the key player, and its interests are far less clear...."

Stratfor.com 6/20/99 "...0140 GMT, 990621 - Participants at the G-8 summit in Cologne, Germany announced that relations strained by the crisis in Kosovo have been largely restored. The meeting "was a bridge of understanding between Russia and the West," according to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Russian President Boris Yeltsin declared that he was "among friends," and said, "After this quarrel we should all have a reconciliation - that is the main thing."..... 2200 GMT, 990620 - British forensics experts have begun the investigation of Velika Krusa, a town that is the location of an alleged Serbian atrocity and a location mentioned specifically in the war-crimes indictment of Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic...."

The Associated Press 6/21/99 ALEKSANDAR VASOVIC "...Several hundred Serb refugees from Kosovo protested Monday in downtown Belgrade, demanding better protection before they heed the government's appeals to return to Kosovo. The police ordered the protesters to disperse. Angry both with a government they feel has abandoned them and with peacekeepers who they say cannot ensure their safety in Kosovo, the Serbs demanded that the U.N. Security Council address their plight. ``We demand that the U.N. Security Council stop the rampage of the terrorist gangs ... who destroy Serb property and historic monuments in Kosovo,'' a leaflet handed out by the protesters read...."

Reuters 6/21/99 Mark Heinrich "...``Life in Kosovo is an elemental struggle for existence...carried out in relentless obedience to nature's law, which says, 'There is no place for you both. You must kill or be killed,''' wrote Balkans scholar Edith Durham. That was in 1908....."

Stratfor 6/21/99 "...1557 GMT, 990621 - A group of 30 Russian architects and builders flew from Moscow to Belgrade on June 21 to aid in the restoration of buildings and bridges destroyed by NATO airstrikes. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and Belgrade Mayor Voislav Mihailovic talked last week about the restoration of several facilities in and around Belgrade...... 1509 GMT, 990621 - The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said June 21 that around 135,000 ethnic Albanian refugees have returned to Kosovo since NATO's airstrikes were suspended 11 days ago. On June 20 alone, over 34,000 refugees crossed into Kosovo from Albania and Macedonia..... "

The New York Times 6/21/99 Steven Lee Myers "...The agreement reached early Monday to disband the Kosovo Liberation Army included, at the insistence of its commanders, a pledge by the NATO allies to consider letting the rebels form a provisional army for Kosovo modeled on the National Guard in United States. The agreement, signed in the dead of night after a frenetic weekend of military and political wrangling from a mountainous rebel redoubt in central Kosovo to the capitals of Europe, gave no timetable for creating an army and no details of its size or mission. But the inclusion of the pledge insures that even after laying down its arms, the Kosovo Liberation Army can pursue its ambition to remain an organized political and military force in the Yugoslav province. For their part, the rebels agreed to a phased demilitarization, an immediate cease-fire and a cessation of hostilities. ..."

The New York Times 6/22/99 David Rohde "...For the third consecutive day, several dozen Serbs in civilian dress who call themselves "warrior citizens" prevented ethnic Albanians from entering the predominantly Serbian sector of this northern Kosovo industrial town on Monday, jeering and threatening any Albanian who dared to enter. In a direct challenge to NATO authority, the Serbs are declaring their neighborhood, about a third of the city, and the predominantly Serbian towns to the north a "Serbian zone." The area stretches the width of a valley 30 or so miles from here ..."..."

Stratfor.com 6/21/99 "... 2330 GMT, 990621 Russia/U.S./NATO - Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov said the ratification of the START III treaty will depend on the state of relations between Russia and NATO. Seleznyov added that ratification will hinge on what the U.S. does in regard to the ABM treaty. Seleznyov went on to say, "Whether the Americans withdraw from this treaty or not will be clear already this autumn." ...."

AFP 6/20/99 "... British Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested Sunday that Kosovar Albanian desires to see their province move beyond autonomy to actual independence from Yugoslavia might be discussed in the future. It was a rare expression of willingness to consider moving beyond the terms listed in the G8 peace plan agreed to by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and later ratified by a UN Security Council Resolution....Speaking on the ABC television program This Week, Blair, in Cologne for the G8 summit, said the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) knew "all the way through that what we decided at the Rambouillet peace accords was that there would be a substantial measure of autonomy for them." ...."

The Associated Press 6/21/99 Laura King "...An explosion in a school outside Pristina killed four people today, including two Gurkha soldiers in the British peacekeeping force, NATO said. A fifth person was injured, the first casualties since the allied peacekeepers entered Kosovo on June 12. The blast that killed two civilians as well as the two soldiers from the 69th Gurkha Field Squadron was caused by a mine or booby-trapped device on school grounds west of Kosovo's capital, the allies said...."

UK Independent 6/21/99 Robert Fisk "..." NATO killed far more Serb civilians than soldiers during its 11-week bombardment of the country and most of the Yugoslav Third Army emerged unscathed from the massive air attacks on its forces in Kosovo, according to evidence emerging in Yugoslavia. Nato officers have been astonished that thousands of Yugoslav tanks, missile launchers, artillery batteries, personnel carriers and trucks have been withdrawn from the province with barely a scratch on them. At least 60,000 Yugoslav troops - rather than the 40,000 estimated - were waiting to fight the Western armies in Kosovo. Yugoslav military sources said that more than half ..."

Reuters 6/23/99 "...The United States has no credible evidence the Kosovo Liberation Army engaged in drug trafficking to support its armed struggle against Serbia, State Department spokesman James Rubin said Wednesday. "The U.S. government has never identified credible evidence of these drugrunning charges,'' he told reporters. "We've seen reports in newspapers and elsewhere,'' Rubin said. But although American intelligence agencies have looked into the issue, "we have not never developed credible evidence of our own,'' he said...."

AP 6/21/99 "...President Clinton on Monday defined what type of U.S. financial aid should go to rebuild NATO-bombed Yugoslavia while President Slobodan Milosevic is still in power. World leaders have agreed that only humanitarian help should be allowed in order to provide comfort to the Serbian people, but not the government. In Clinton's view, it's okay to rebuild hospitals and power plants, but not roads and bridges, he said in Bonn, Germany, where he attended a U.S.-European Union conference. ``In terms of rebuilding the bridges so people can go to work, I don't buy that,'' the president said. ``That's part of their economic reconstruction, and I don't think we should help, not a bit, not a penny...."

The Associated Press 6/22/99 "...In an apparent change of tone, China said Tuesday that ``a serious investigation'' is needed to prove whether ethnic cleansing occurred in Kosovo. China previously played down evidence of atrocities in the Serb province, instead blaming NATO's bombing campaign for creating a humanitarian crisis. Since entering Kosovo on June 12, international peacekeepers and reporters have found mass graves and other apparent signs of atrocities. Asked about the discoveries and whether they strengthened the case for war crimes charges against Yugoslav leaders, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said more research was needed. She did not rule out putting Yugoslav leaders on trial. ``Whether this ethnic cleansing has happened or what is the concept of ethnic cleansing, a conclusion can only be drawn after a serious investigation,'' Zhang said at a briefing. The United Nations should discuss how the investigation should proceed, she said....."

New York Times 6/22/99 Elisabeth Bumiller "... The 22-year-old woman, married four months ago, said she was taken from this small southern village by Serbian forces, held for a day in the local police station, beaten, then threatened with death. But she was not, she said, raped. Her husband, Behan Thaqi, thinks differently. "I am 100 percent certain that they raped her," said Thaqi, 34, a farmer imprisoned by the Serbs for supplying weapons to the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Albanian guerrillas who fought Serbian forces. "I know that when women get in their hands, there is no chance to escape." ...."

Stratfor.com 6/22/99 "...1531 GMT 990622 - Russian presidential envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin said that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) should be both disarmed and disbanded, and that he was concerned over the vague wording of the UN-brokered peace resolution. Chernomyrdin said that the resolution called for the demilitarization of the KLA, but not its disarmament. According to the resolution signed by NATO Commander General Sir Michael Jackson and KLA leader Hashim Thaci, KLA members must surrender all but their smallest weapons.....1255 GMT, 990622 - Malaysia will send troops to Kosovo at UN expense and command, said Defense Minister Abang Abu Bakar. The country will provide 10 military liaison officers and 50 police for a one-year mission, most likely at the UN command headquarters, Bakar said. Bakar called the invitation to serve "a big honor for Malaysia," as it recognized the professionalism of its troops.

AP breaking 6/23/99 "...NATO troops have pledged to do their best to keep revenge-minded ethnic Albanians from looting and burning Serb homes, but they were too late for this village. Crackling fire ate into wooden beams Wednesday morning. A roof collapsed. Tiles were strewn about. Stucco fell from walls. ``They burn our houses, we burn theirs,'' said Shpetim Shijaku, a skinny ethnic Albanian 10-year-old who came from a nearby village to grab whatever fleeing Serbs had left behind. The looting of this Serb settlement of 50 houses in southwestern Kosovo began Tuesday, locals said, after villagers fled, fearing reprisals from Kosovo Liberation Army rebels...."

Stratfor.com Global Intelligence Center 6/23/99 "... 2031 GMT, 990623 Yugoslavia/United States - In fulfillment of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Support for East European Democracy Act of 1989, a comprehensive security package moving through the U.S. Senate proposes $150 million in aid for Kosovo, "of which $20,000,000 shall be available for training and equipping a Kosova security force." There is no indication whether this is refers to a new security force or aid for the Kosovo Liberation Army...... "

Stratfor.com Kosovo Crisis Center 6/23/99 "...1922 GMT, 990623 - Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon announced the U.S. believes that Russian mercenaries participated in the Kosovo conflict on the Serbian side, and that they may have been involved in committing atrocities. Bacon insisted that any Russians would have been acting on their own accord, although Newsday had reported that dozens of Russian volunteers had participated in a massacre near Prizren. Bacon said that his information was based on reports from the Kosovo Liberation Army and that he was not aware of any groups of the size described by Newsday. He emphasized that the individuals were acting alone and that there was no evidence they were linked to the Russian government. 1647 GMT, 990623 - In a statement released June 23, the UN said it plans to bring the ethnic Albanian signatories to the Rambouillet Agreement and a local Serbian political leader together to negotiate a compromise on political administration for Kosovo. The UN says it plans to form an advisory council to discuss the interim arrangements, headed by UN acting special representative Sergio Viera de Mello. Viera de Mello has met for the past two days with Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci in regards to the political situation in the providence...."

Associated Press - via canoe.com 6/23/99 Donna Bryson "...Ethnic tensions are straining the U.N. peace plan for Kosovo, with Serb houses burning in one Kosovo city and Serbs barring ethnic Albanians from crossing a bridge in another. The foreign ministers of Italy, Britain, Germany and France are visiting Kosovo today to meet with U.N. special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and NATO's Kosovo commander, Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson. Smoke from burning houses in the divided city of Pec rose up into the mountains Tuesday. Ethnic Albanians watched one Serb house burn and claimed the Serbs had set the fire themselves. The residents couldn't be found. Italian peacekeepers sent in soldiers to remove a Serb family that said a KLA fighter had come into their home and robbed them. While soldiers on the street and in the courtyard provided cover, other troops stormed the house and escorted the men and women out. In the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica, French peacekeepers looked on as Serbs menaced those wanting to cross a bridge to the other side of town -- an area containing the main hospital, many ethnic Albanian homes and almost the only open food shops. "I just want to go home," said 69-year-old Hasan Jashari, crying....."

The Associated Press Laura King 6/24/99 "...If there was a defining moment in Hashim Thaci's transformation from a mystery-shrouded rebel chieftain - code named ``The Snake'' - to a politician with all the right moves, this might have been it. As the 30-year-old ethnic Albanian leader emerged Wednesday from a meeting in Pristina with visiting European foreign ministers, the crowd at first chanted, ``NA-TO! NA-TO!'' ...But that was swiftly drowned out by louder, far more impassioned shouts: his name (pronounced THAH-chee) repeated over and over, and rhythmic yells of ``U-C-K!'' (pronounced OOH-CHAY-KAH), the Albanian-language initials for the soon-to-be-disbanded rebel army. Women held babies up for him to kiss. Teen-age boys clustered around him, speaking earnestly. Younger boys pushed close and beamed when they were rewarded with a long arm draped for a moment around their skinny shoulders....."

Reuters 6/24/99 "..." The United States on Thursday offered a reward of up to $5 million to encourage the arrest of alleged Yugoslav war criminals, including President Slobodan Milosevic. State Department spokesman James Rubin said the money would go to ``those who provide information that leads to the transfer of indicted war criminals'' to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague. Washington has provided evidence and support for the Hague court to pursue cases against those responsible for atrocities in Kosovo in recent months, when Serb forces forced hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians to flee ..."

Stratfor 6/24/99 "...Now that NATO forces are on the ground in Kosovo, they finally have an opportunity to observe the effects of the 79 day bombing campaign. Readily apparent is that NATO was successful in targeting buildings, fuel depots, and other fixed infrastructure. This comes as no surprise, since there was ample video footage of the damage available throughout the conflict. What has also become apparent is that NATO's bombing campaign did strikingly little damage to Yugoslav military equipment, troops, and capacity to wage war. Despite NATO claims that it had damaged or destroyed some 40 percent of Yugoslavia's main battle tanks and 60 percent of Yugoslav artillery and mortars, KFOR troops have thus far found only three damaged, and outdated, T-55 tanks left behind in Kosovo. The Yugoslav military admits to an additional 10 damaged tanks, though they were considered sufficiently repairable to be removed from the province on trailers. What NATO did find was a massive amount of decoys - fake tanks, trucks, artillery pieces, missile launchers, roads, and even bridges - on which NATO had expended its weaponry. NATO troops entering Kosovo also described the Yugoslav Army's defensive fortifications as "formidable." NATO's attacks on fixed infrastructure, while successful, were of questionable value. Yugoslav forces quickly abandoned their known headquarters, and both Serbian and KLA sources reported through the campaign that NATO was attacking empty buildings - repeatedly. And while NATO repeatedly struck Yugoslavia's limited number of petroleum infrastructure targets, reports late in the conflict indicated that the Yugoslav Army still retained ample stockpiles of fuel to facilitate armor and aircraft combat maneuver. Strikes against the hardened airbase at Pristina were also evidently less successful than NATO had hoped. On June 11, six MiG-21s flew out of Pristina airport, and on June 12, what NATO initially reported as eleven MiG-29s but later called MiG-21s departed Pristina. And despite NATO assertions that its bombing campaign had crushed the spirit of the Yugoslav Army, the 47,000 troops that withdrew from the province appeared to observers to be in good shape and high spirits...."

stratfor.com 6/24/99 "...1655 GMT, 990624 Yugoslavia - U.S. Marines based around Fort Monteith in southeastern Kosovo were placed on high alert after a column of Serbian tanks and armored vehicles penetrated a three-mile buffer zone around the province June 23. The column was spotted by a British helicopter, and a Cobra attack helicopter was scrambled to intercept. Additionally, combat engineers on the ground prepared tank traps to stop the incoming Serbian armor, but the Serbian column disappeared....."

New York Times 6/25/99 Chris Hedges "...The senior commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which signed a disarmament agreement with NATO, carried out assassinations, arrests and purges within their ranks to thwart potential rivals, say current and former commanders in the rebel army and some Western diplomats. The campaign, in which as many as half a dozen top rebel commanders were shot dead, was directed by Hashim Thaci and two of his lieutenants, Azem Syla and Xhavit Haliti, these officials said. Thaci denied through a spokesman that he had been responsible for any such killings. Although the United States has long been wary of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the rebel group has become the main ethnic Albanian power in Kosovo. Rebel commanders supplied NATO with target information during the bombing campaign. Now, after the war, the United States and other NATO powers have effectively made Thaci and the rebel force partners in rebuilding Kosovo. The agreement NATO signed with Thaci, for example, envisions turning the rebel group into a civilian police force and leaves open the possibility that the Kosovo Liberation Army could become a provisional army modeled on the United States National Guard. While none of the rebel officials interviewed saw Thaci or his aides execute anyone, they recounted -- and in some cases said they had witnessed -- incidents in which Thaci's rivals had been killed shortly after he or one of his aides had threatened them with death...."

UPI 6/22/99 "...Unexploded NATO ordnance was blamed for the deaths of two Gurkha British soldiers of the international peace implementation force KFOR and two civilians in a village near Pristina Monday, Belgrade media reported. The incident occurred at the village of Nekovce, 30 km southwest of Pristina, when the Gurkhas were reported clearing the village school. More than 50 pieces of unexploded ordnance had been placed in a ditch and one device went off, the reports said....."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_375000/375660.stm 6/23/99 Caroline Wyatt "..." Two elderly Serb civilians have been attacked and killed in their homes in the Kosovo town of Prizren, in what appear to have been revenge attacks by Kosovo Albanians. The pair - a man and a woman - were attacked in their homes near the town centre, apparently by ethnic Albanian civilians armed with an axe. Both bodies had been badly mutilated by the time German K-For troops arrived on the scene. One eyewitness said the woman had been virtually decapitated. The motive appears to be revenge for what happened to ethnic Albanians at the hands of the Serbs ..."

Human Rights Watch 6/18/99 "...Accompanied by a local villager, a Human Rights Watch researcher yesterday inspected the site of a mass killing in Meja, northwest of Djakovica, and found the decayed remains of several men. The men were apparently killed by Serb security forces on April 27, 1999, victims of a massacre in which Human Rights Watch believes at least 100 men were killed. The site appears to confirm testimony that Human Rights Watch collected earlier, in interviews with Kosovar refugees in northern Albania.....There were four recently dug graves located in a small Catholic cemetery further up the hill. According to the villager, the remains of four local men who were killed in the massacre are buried there. After nineteen separate interviews with eyewitnesses who had passed through Meja on April 27 (See Flash # 34), Human Rights Watch concluded that at least one hundred, and perhaps many more, men between the ages of sixteen and sixty were taken out of a convoy of refugees by Serbian forces and systematically executed in Meja on that day. The refugees who were interviewed had been systematically "cleansed" from neighboring villages by Serbian special police, paramilitary units, and soldiers of the Yugoslav Army (VJ). The refugees were then forced to follow the road to Meja, which many of them passed through around midday. They reported seeing security forces holding "hundreds" of men at gunpoint. Those who passed through Meja later in the afternoon reported having seen a "large pile of bodies." ..."

Stratfor.com 6/22/99 "...1247 GMT, 990622 - The two British soldiers killed in Kosovo yesterday died while transporting NATO cluster bombs away from a school were they had been collected by locals, said a British military spokesperson. Both men were from the 6th Gurkha Field Squadron of the 36th Engineering Regiment. They had been asked by local residents to move the piles of bomblets away from the school so that they could be detonated without damaging the building. After moving the bomblets away from the building and placing them into three piles for detonation, two of the piles exploded, killing the two soldiers and two civilian bystanders...."

Associated Press 6/23/99 Robert Burns "...U.S. Marines manning a checkpoint in Kosovo were shot at today by unidentified assailants and then returned fire, killing one person and wounding two, U.S. officials said. The commander of U.S. forces in Kosovo, Army Brig. Gen. John Craddock, said no Marines were injured..... Craddock said he had not yet learned whether the assailants were Serbs or ethnic Albanians. After the interview, Pentagon officials said they learned that the assailants had surrendered. They apparently numbered about a half dozen, were dressed in civilian clothes and were armed with AK-47 weapons...."

Reuters 6/24/99 "...Three Kosovo Serbs were found killed in the provincial capital Pristina on Thursday, witnesses and KFOR peacekeepers said. The bodies of a professor, a night guard and a canteen manager were found inside the building of the economics faculty of Pristina University...."

AFP 6/24/99 "...- The murder of three Serbs at Pristina's economics faculty on Wednesday night did little to reassure the thousands of Serbs already packing and leaving their homes in Kosovo's capital, many of them saying they had been expelled from their appartments by armed ethnic Albanian groups. .... "The talk about security for all in Kosovo is just rhetoric," Zoran Pavlovic, 36, a Serb, said. "The reality is that Serbs in Pristina do not have any protection and they are being terrorised by armed or unarmed Albanian groups.". ...Father Sava, a Serb Orthodox priest, told a press conference on Thursday that an estimated 20,000 Serbs had left Pristina since the withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo began on June 10. He also said that at least 50 Serbs had been killed and 140 kidnapped in the same period throughout Kosovo. .....Already, hundreds of Serbs said they have had their appartments confiscated by armed Albanian groups who give them deadlines of up to 48 hours to vacate the premises...."

Los Angeles Times 6/23/99 CHRISTOPHER LAYNE "....Although it was NATO's ostensible ally against Yugoslavia, it is hard to grasp why U.S. and NATO policymakers have concluded that the KLA forces are the "good guys." * First, the KLA is a nasty and thuggish lot. This is a coalition of the despicable: a radical right wing (descendants from the numerous ethnic Albanians who fought for the Nazis in World War II), a radical left wing (communist hard-liners), liberally mixed with Islamic fundamentalists and drug traffickers and other criminals. * Second, the KLA's ideology is inconsistent with America's postwar vision for the province, which, as President Clinton reiterated this week, calls for creation of a multiethnic democracy. The KLA is hostile toward democracy.... * Third, the KLA's long-term political ambitions are antithetical to those of the United States and NATO. Washington and the alliance seek a postwar Kosovo that enjoys substantial self-rule as an autonomous province within Serbia. The KLA, however, is committed to attaining independence for Kosovo and ultimately to uniting Kosovo, by force if necessary, with Albania and with the ethnic Albanian portion of Macedonia, which could trigger a wider Balkan conflict.... * Fourth, the KLA craftily orchestrated events in Kosovo in order to draw the U.S. and NATO into the conflict against Serbia. Early this year, the U.S. intelligence community warned the Clinton administration that the KLA would attempt to force NATO's intervention by staging provocations designed to elicit brutal Serb reprisals and thereby gain the West's sympathy and support. The KLA's strategy worked: The U.S. intervened in Kosovo's civil war, absolving the KLA insurgents and naively concluding that the Serbs alone were responsible...."

Washington Post 6/27/99 Anna Husarska "...The Kosovo Albanian spotted the New Republic logo on my cap and broke into a broad smile. "Hey, we are now from a new republic, too," he announced triumphantly. Everywhere I went in Kosovo this month, the name of my home magazine made me popular. I gradually gave away all the paraphernalia I owned with the logo on it: first the cap, then the polo shirt, then the sweat shirt. Even my business cards were a hit among ethnic Albanians who believe that theirs is the only new republic that matters. The U.S. government and, indeed, the entire international community begs to differ, of course: An independent republic of Kosovo is not being contemplated as a possible outcome of the U.N./NATO operation. But amid the general chaos here as local factions vie for power, this lack of agreement over the final status of the province does not seem to matter, at least not for now. It doesn't matter to Kosovo Albanians, who act as though this were indeed their new republic; their representatives are taking power in municipalities abandoned by the Serb-dominated administration, which has withdrawn with the Yugoslav army....."

Stratfor.Com Kosovo Crisis Center 6/26/99 "...1455 GMT, 990626 Yugoslavia - A Russian Ilyushin 76 and a French C130 landed at the Slatina airport June 26, the first aircraft to arrive there since the Allied air war ended. The Russian jet was carrying paratroopers and technicians for the Russian field force, while the French plane carried parts and personnel to bring the airport back to full operational status. Colonel General Viktor Zavarzin, the Russian commander who led his troops into Kosovo to the airport, commented that this was "the start of the air bridge which will serve in the future as a delivery point for all the things we need." 0142 GMT, 990626 Yugoslavia - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports that the Serbian government has released over 166 ethnic Albanians who have been kept in Serbian prisons. The organization will see to the safe return of the men back into Kosovo in the coming days and made it clear they intend to continue efforts to locate other ethnic Albanians being held in Yugoslavia. Questions remain though, according to the ICRC, over how many are being detained and where they are located...."

BBC 6/27/99 "...The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has warned against the creation of "another humanitarian disaster" in Yugoslavia. In an interview with the BBC, Mr Annan said aid should be offered to Yugoslavia, irrespective of whether President Slobodan Milosevic stays in power. Nato countries like the US and the UK have ruled out any money to rebuild Yugoslavia without a change of government. But Mr Annan said: "We have to make sure that the Serbs, who in some ways are victims of their own leadership, should not be twice punished." ..."

New York Times 6/27/99 John Broder "...President Clinton acknowledged Friday for the first time that he had underestimated Serbia's ability to withstand the NATO bombing campaign. In a lengthy news conference, Clinton said he had believed that President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia would submit to allied demands after "a couple of days" of bombing and halt the Serbian assault on Kosovo. NATO and the administration were initially criticized for that miscalculation of Serbian stamina, and then for failing to have a strategy for a prolonged air war, a campaign that ultimately lasted 78 days...."

Stratfor 6/25/99 "...It is becoming harder by the day to justify NATO's continued collaboration with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). A front page article in the June 25 New York Times cites KLA commanders, former Albanian government officials, and Western diplomats who claim KLA leader Hashim Thaci and two of his lieutenants led purges of the KLA ranks, to root out and kill potential challengers to Thaci's leadership. No one has come forward to say they witnessed Thaci or his associates, Azem Syla and Xhavit Haliti, personally carrying out the killings, though reports to this effect have circulated for years. Moreover, there have been numerous documented accounts of people killed shortly after criticizing or being threatened by Thaci and his associates, whose reputations for ruthlessness and intimidation are legendary....What Thaci and Rubin have not been able to deny is the wave of reprisals against Serbs carried out by Kosovar Albanians, including members of the KLA. Serbs have been kidnapped, beaten, and killed, their houses and businesses looted and burned, and NATO has been unable to stop the campaign....The problem is, NATO simply has no options. It has so elevated the KLA throughout Operation Allied Force, so marginalized Rugova and the moderates, and so demonized the Serbs, that it can not now tear down Thaci's organization..... NATO is now learning that it is impossible not to take sides in a conflict. Unless it is now willing to combat the KLA and take complete and sole military and political control of the province, it has just handed control of Kosovo to a group no more nor less ethical and humane than Arkan's Tigers. NATO attempted to wage an even-handed humanitarian war to impose a peaceful tie between hostile camps engaged in a very messy, centuries-old blood feud. Now, too late, it learns what it stepped into...."

Stratfor 6/24/99 "...Now that NATO forces are on the ground in Kosovo, they finally have an opportunity to observe the effects of the 79 day bombing campaign. Readily apparent is that NATO was successful in targeting buildings, fuel depots, and other fixed infrastructure. This comes as no surprise, since there was ample video footage of the damage available throughout the conflict. What has also become apparent is that NATO's bombing campaign did strikingly little damage to Yugoslav military equipment, troops, and capacity to wage war. Despite NATO claims that it had damaged or destroyed some 40 percent of Yugoslavia's main battle tanks and 60 percent of Yugoslav artillery and mortars, KFOR troops have thus far found only three damaged, and outdated, T-55 tanks left behind in Kosovo. The Yugoslav military admits to an additional 10 damaged tanks, though they were considered sufficiently repairable to be removed from the province on trailers. What NATO did find was a massive amount of decoys - fake tanks, trucks, artillery pieces, missile launchers, roads, and even bridges - on which NATO had expended its weaponry. NATO troops entering Kosovo also described the Yugoslav Army's defensive fortifications as "formidable." ...""

Reuters 6/23/99 "...The United States has no credible evidence the Kosovo Liberation Army engaged in drug trafficking to support its armed struggle against Serbia, State Department spokesman James Rubin said Wednesday. ''The U.S. government has never identified credible evidence of these drug-running charges,'' he told reporters. ``We've seen reports in newspapers and elsewhere,'' Rubin said. But although American intelligence agencies have looked into the issue, ``we have never developed credible evidence of our own,'' he said. Charges that the KLA -- outgunned and outmanned in its fight against Belgrade until NATO waged a 78-day war over Kosovo that ended last week -- trafficked in narcotics to buy weapons appeared periodically in the media over the past year and were often used by critics to undermine the rebel group. The United States has increasingly looked to the KLA for the political leadership to help rebuild Kosovo, the Serbian province now a de facto international protectorate....Rubin said that in recent discussions with Hashim Thaqi, the KLA political leader, he raised U.S. concerns about incidents in which KLA members reportedly defaced a church or retaliated against Serbs. But drug trafficking was not brought up because the United States has no credible evidence of KLA involvement, he said...."

Reuters 6/25/99 Matt Spetalnick "... Thousands of Gypsies are fleeing their homes in Kosovo because of revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians who accuse them of collaborating with their Serb oppressors. Across the embattled Yugoslav province, Gypsies -- who call themselves Roma -- have begun streaming out of towns and villages in the third wave of refugees spawned by Kosovo's bitter ethnic conflict. NATO sources say renegade members of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army have joined in the violent reprisals. Dozens of Gypsy homes have been looted and burned, and there have been increasing reports of abductions, beatings and killings. About 3,000 frightened Gypsy refugees from across Kosovo have sought sanctuary in the past few days at a dilapidated schoolhouse in the town of Kosovo Polje, on the outskirts of the provincial capital Pristina....."

Stratfor 6/25/99 "...1442 GMT, 990625 Yugoslavia - The New York Times reports that top leadership in the KLA have ordered the execution, arrest and purge of internal rivals as a means for strengthening their hold on power. According to KLA commanders and western diplomats, six senior KLA leaders were shot on the commands of Hashim Thaci and two lieutenants, Azem Syla and Xhavit Haliti. Rifat Haxhijaj, a former KLA member, told the Times, "When the war started, everyone wanted to be the chief. For the leadership, this was never just a war against the Serbs. It was also a struggle for power." The U.S. State Department has not yet confirmed the assassinations, and Thaci is denying the accounts through a spokesman...."

AP 6/25/99 Ron Fournier "...President Clinton said today he's not surprised that ethnic Albanian are engaging in revenge attacks on Serbs ``after what they've been through,'' but he said NATO is doing its best to stop the violence as refugees return home....."

Reuters 6/25/99 Anatoly Verbin "...At least 14 Kosovo civilians were killed in the provincial capital Pristina during the most violent 24 hour-hour period since NATO troops moved in to the region two weeks ago. ``Yesterday was a very busy day with a lot of overnight activity,'' Lieutenant Colonel Paul Watton of the British force which controls Pristina told a news conference on Friday. ``There are tremendous challenges here,'' he said. Another NATO spokesman, Major Jan Joosten, said an Italian soldier was wounded a weapon was accidentally discharged. He was taken to hospital in Pristina and died on Thursday night. The civilians included three Serbs whose bodies were found at Pristina University on Thursday morning. Two people died in a hospital, one of them of wounds and one who was killed there. A nurse was wounded in the hospital. The bodies of the other civilians were found in the city, the spokesman said, but he declined to give their nationalities -- a typical NATO practice to avoid stoking ethnic tension in Kosovo. ``They were all Kosovans,'' he said. ...."

Truth In Media 6/24/99 Bob Djurdjevic "...Albanian terrorists have abducted at gun point at least 140 Serbs in Kosovo during last 12 days, our sources say. Most of the kidnapped Serbs are men (36 to 40 in age) from the territory of the Glogovac municipality. All the citizens of the village of Slivovo escaped to the Gracanica monastery on June 22 after the Kosovo Albanians attacked them. In addition, about 300 Serbian refugees "ethnically cleansed" from Bosnia in 1995, who had been put up in the Velika Reka camp near Pristina, fled after a large group of the KLA terrorists broke into the settlement. Bodies of six massacred Serbs were found also on June 22 in the village Mazgit. These Serbs were kidnapped June 16 in front of their houses in Obilic. Also the ANSA reported Albanian retaliations in Kosovo continue. Four Serbian shepherds were killed yesterday in Novo Brdo and bodies of six Albanians killed by KLA have been found. ..."

Reuters AFP 6/28/99 "..."Two people were shot dead over Saturday night in the Kosovo capital Pristina and at least one of them had links to an international organisation operating in the province, officials said yesterday. The latest killings highlighted the vacuum created when Serb forces withdrew from Kosovo earlier this month, leaving the region without a civilian force to maintain law and order...."

Truth In Media - bulletins@truthinmedia.org (TiM GW Bulletins) 6/27/99 Bob Djurdjebic "...When the NATO troops entered Kosovo on June 11, we were told by the likes of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair that they were their to ensure security of all civilians - Serb and Albanian alike. It must have been a delayed reaction April Fools Day joke. In the last 24 hours alone, 14 Serb civilians and one Italian soldier were killed, allegedly by the KLA terrorists, the Macedonian News Agency has reported...."

AFP 6/28/99 "...US troops fought an intense firefight with two suspected ethnic Albanian guerrillas after they spotted four Serb homes set on fire, troops said Monday. The firefight late Sunday lasted around one minute but involved hundreds of rounds of automatic weapons fire, grenades and heavy machine gun fire, US troops said early Monday after returning from a patrol. At one point four helicopters -- Apaches and Blackhawks -- hovered at the scene outside the town of Vitina in southern Kosovo. The event followed a wave of arson attacks in the US sector on Saturday night that destroyed at least 14 houses, including one in the same neighborhood outside Vitina. ..."

Associated Press 6/29/99 Ellen Knickmeyer "...Incense covering the acrid smell of smoke from the city below, Serb Orthodox Metropolitan Amfilohije Radovic sought to fortify the remaining Serb flock in this city: a few dozen old men and women. Outside the 13th-century stone church, other white-haired Serbs bundled their belongings in blankets Monday or sat by their suitcases, waiting for the next NATO-guarded convoy that would take them out of Kosovo, and into exile. Women shrouded in black wept beside two fresh graves, dug within the safety of church grounds for two Serb women found the day before with their throats slashed. In the two weeks since Kosovo's latest war, revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians have driven almost all Serbs from the western city of Pec, the center of Serbia's church-state during the medieval zenith of its kingdom. Today, as few as 50 Serbs remain of the 20,000 to 30,000 here before the war; another 150 are holed up in an isolated village outside town, guarded by 200 Italian NATO troops..... Monday's service commemorated the 610th anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo Polje, a touchstone of the Serb culture. To Serbs, the anniversary marks the day the Serbian kingdom sacrificed its fighting force to hold back the invading Muslim army of the Ottoman Empire, thereby safeguarding Western Europe and Christianity itself. In 1999, the most fervent nationalists see the Kosovo war as having been fought to save this birthplace of Serb culture from a growing majority of predominantly Muslim ethnic Albanians. As it stands now, they lost their war - Pec Serbs lost their homeland, and they lost their homes..... "

AP 6/28/99 "...Although ethnic cleansing won't be tolerated, NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia shouldn't be considered a precedent for future intervention by the alliance elsewhere, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Monday. "Every circumstance is unique,'' Albright told the Council on Foreign Relations. "NATO is a European and Atlantic - not a global - institution.'' Her comments reflected a subtle shift in the White House's thinking about the role of NATO in the aftermath of its 11-week bombing of Yugoslavia. Before the Kosovo crisis, the administration had been pressing NATO members to consider expanding the defensive alliance's reach beyond Europe as a way of maintaining an important post-Cold War role in the world....."

AP 6/29/99 "...The United States and NATO not only fell short of their goals in Kosovo but made the situation worse, Senators Craig Thomas and Mike Enzi said. The senators, both R-Wyo., were in Sheridan on Friday. Enzi became the second Wyoming native to receive a Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts, while Thomas attended a Wyoming Mining Association Convention luncheon. "Our kids and grandkids will probably spend the next 25 years (in Kosovo) trying to keep the peace," Enzi said...."

New York Times 6/29/99 Blaine Harden "...Fearing vengeance from returning Kosovo Albanians, about a quarter of the Serbs in Kosovo -- more than 75,000 -- have fled the province in the 18 days since Serbian forces began pulling out of the province, according to officials from the Yugoslav Red Cross. Those officials said they were running short of food and other supplies to care for a flood of refugees that they did not expect and are not prepared to handle. The senior official in Belgrade for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said the plight of the Serbs who have become refugees inside Serbia is urgent, although not yet desperate. He said, too, that the world has an obligation to act quickly to help the homeless Serbs this summer, just as it acted in the spring to help Albanians chased out of Kosovo. "There is a risk the international community will not maintain its objectivity and sensitivity," said Eduardo Arbleda, the representative here for the refugee agency....."

AFP 6/29/99 "...The situation in Kosovo is catastrophic, Serb opposition leader Vuk Draskovic said Tuesday, and blamed the leading world powers for the problems. "It is false to say that KFOR does not have the strength to prevent the expulsion of Serbs. If that were the case, it would be its duty to call on our security forces to help it stop these expulsions," the head of the Serb Renewal Movement (SPO) said, according to the Beta agency. Draskovic said that "the situation in Kosovo is catastrophic and could serve as the basis of charges brought against the most powerful countries of the world." "We have had occasion to see KFOR soldiers calmly observe the looting and murder of Serbs in Kosovo," he said, referring to television news footage. "Thousands of bandits entered Kosovo after the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army and are burning and looting Serb houses," he fulminated...."

AP 6/29/99 "...NATO must quickly get its full 55,000-strong peacekeeping force into Kosovo to flush out Serb paramilitaries who remained behind in defiance of the peace agreement, Defense Secretary William Cohen said Tuesday. Cohen told reporters that NATO had expected some remnant Serb forces to try to disrupt the peacekeeping operation, but that so far they have not presented a major obstacle to stabilizing the Serb province.....``In a number of locations, it is clear that Serb paramilitaries, some with connections with intelligence organizations, and others have remained behind,'' Clark said. He said they might form ``the seeds for future conflict, to contest control of the province,'' although their intentions remained unclear.....The movement of U.S. forces into Kosovo has gone more smoothly than anticipated, in part because there was less damage to roads and bridges from NATO bombing than had been expected, he said. ``We were able to move fairly freely,'' McDuffie said. There now are about 8,700 Albanian refugees in the United States, and none has returned since the end of the war, he said....."

Itar-Tass 6/29/99 "...The bringing of Russian peacemakers to Kosovo "was the smart and only possible decision," Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky said in a live program of the Echo of Moscow radio station on Tuesday. That move showed the might of the Russian army, and "its potential of making fine actions on the European theatre of operations," Zhirinovsky said...."

Stratfor 6/29/99 "...1425 GMT, 990629 Yugoslavia - KFOR reported June 29 that the Kosovo Liberation Army has successfully met its first key deadline for disarmament and demilitarization. Spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Louis Garneau said, "We're very pleased with the KLA's compliance." The combatants are also now forbidden from wearing uniforms or insignia in public..... 1144 GMT, 990629 UN/Yugoslavia- UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will hold talks June 30 in an effort to speed the deployment of UN police officers to Kosovo. Annan has reportedly formed a "friends of Kosovo" group which includes interested industrialized nations. U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright and British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook are expected to attend. A spokesman said that Annan called the meeting due to slow international response to the UN request for a desperately needed 3,000-member police force in Kosovo...."

National Review 6/28/99 Andrew Bacevich "...As with Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Operation Allied Force has the appearance of a decisive victory won cheaply. And as with that earlier war, events will expose this as an illusion. With the American economy rocketing along and the federal budget in surplus, the war's immediate costs- estimated at $1.7 to 2.6 billion for the United States-might seem little more than pocket change. But add to that an estimated $2 to 3.5 billion in peacekeeping expenses annually (a sum that excludes the cost of reconstructing either Kosovo or Serbia as a whole) and within a few years you're talking about real money. For that investment, the United States can anticipate only modest returns. In part this stems from that most fundamental of blunders: misidentifying the objective. Because of that miscalculation, the victory just achieved is partial and incomplete. Its war aims held hostage by the imperatives of consensus, NATO never faced up to the fact that a politically meaningful outcome would require a change of regime in Belgrade. Calling off the war because Yugoslav authorities have agreed to withdraw from Kosovo is the equivalent of FDR and Churchill's declaring victory once the Wehrmacht had evacuated Paris....."

National Review 6/28/99 Elliot Abrams "...Steven Rosenfeld, writing in the Washington Post, offered this extraordinary analysis: "It turned out that the principal shortage . . . was of viable military and economic targets. Serbia being . . . a small, middle-level country, the number of these began to run short. The gap was made up by verging into targets that could be hit only by putting civilians at extra risk. Still, the end of the war came before the NATO publics revolted against the collateral civilian kill." This is strong language, but it points to the fundamental humanitarian problem of the Kosovo war: How was it that an intervention whose goal was to prevent ethnic cleansing and the creation of refugees from Kosovo failed so miserably at that, then became a campaign to inflict pain on Serbia's economy rather than on its army? In a total war such as World War II, these questions barely arise: Germany's and Japan's armies and economies were equally legitimate targets. But Kosovo was that new breed, the "humanitarian intervention." How did we get from stopping ethnic cleansing in Kosovo to bombing bridges and electric plants in Serbia?..."

Original Sources, (www.originalsources.com) 6/29/99 Mary Mostert "...One of the tragically ironic aspects of what has, and is, occuring in Kosovo, has been a wholesale ignoring of minority rights, which are supposed to be the hallmark of the Clinton-Gore administration. To hear them describe themselves, liberals believe that the rights of minorities ought to be defended. Apparently, however, there are glaring exceptions - such as the minorities who live in Kosovo - Serbs, Gypsies, Montenegrins....... "

Chicago Tribune 6/29/99 "...In recent days, sometimes in full view of NATO peacekeepers, ethnic Albanians have pillaged Serb neighborhoods, burned Serb houses and, occasionally, slaughtered Serb civilians. Since NATO forces took control two weeks ago, they have failed to put an end to a continuing backlash by ethnic Albanians. Granted, the peacekeeping forces, known as KFOR, do not yet number even half their target strength of 55,000 or more, and that's part of the problem. And the retaliation, while still on a small scale, may be understandable, even predictable, given the systematic massacre of an estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians by Serbs. But it is still utterly unacceptable, and NATO must halt it now...."

AP 6/28/99 Aleksandar Vasovic "...Serb discontent with President Slobodan Milosevic and his regime boiled over into a sprawling opposition rally Tuesday, as 10,000 chanting protesters demanded a new government for Yugoslavia. In Kosovo, meanwhile, ethnic Albanian rebels gathered at NATO-designated assembly points and began handing in weapons under a demilitarization deal with international peacekeepers...."

Beograd.com 6/99 "...Due to total destruction of industrial facilities throughout the country, more than 600,000 workers have become jobless. As a result almost 2.5 million citizens have no means to sustain minimal living conditions..... Several thousand civilians were killed and more than 6,000 sustained serious injuries, while a large number of them will remain crippled for life. Children make up 30% of all casualties as well as 40% of the total number of the injured, while 10% of all Yugoslav children (approximately 300,000) have suffered severe psychological traumas and will require continuous medical monitoring, care and treatment...."

Stratfor 6/30/99 "...0135 GMT, 990630 Yugoslavia/UK - ITAR-TASS reports that a British KFOR contingent shot a man dead near Pristina on June 29. The soldiers opened fire on the man in Liplian when he appeared with a pistol drawn and aimed in their direction. A KFOR spokesman later said the soldiers acted in strict accordance with instructions...."

Washington Times 6/29/99 Ben Barber "....The U.S. government and the United Nations said yesterday they have no plans to investigate the Kosovo Liberation Army for possible war crimes, arguing that a wave of revenge against Serbs in the province does not appear to be coordinated by the KLA leadership. "Clearly, there is no organized KLA effort to retaliate against the Serbs," said a Clinton administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. And while the killing of Serbs continues at the rate of a few dozen per week, a spokesman for the United Nation's International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia may not consider the new slayings as part of the tribunal's mandate. "Our mandate is to investigate crimes that occur during war, during armed conflict that involve members of armed entities," said Paul Risely, spokesman for the tribunal.....Serbs have not decided to leave Kosovo but they are being forced to -- and it is all happening under the protection of the United Nations," he said at ceremonies marking the Serbs' epic defeat by Ottoman forces 610 years ago. He said that, with Serbs being killed, churches ransacked and priests threatened, Serbs are now the ones being ethnically cleansed...."

New York Times 6/29/99 John Kifner "...When a French forensic team working for the international war crimes tribunal arrived here [alleged mass grave site] at 8 a.m. Monday, they expected to find the bodies of about 160 Kosovo Albanians who other villagers said were killed by Serbian forces on March 28. There were none. The Serbs seemed to have been here first, dug up the grave and carried the bodies off somewhere, apparently in an effort to destroy evidence before any war crimes trial could take place. "The bodies are gone now," said Yves Roy, an investigator on the scene for the tribunal, which is located in The Hague. But he said there was still plenty of evidence. This site was listed as a count in the war crimes indictment of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and three of his top aides. There was satellite reconnaissance imagery, photographs of which were displayed by the State Department, and a videotape, shown on CNN, made by a villager, of the bodies and the burials by Albanian relatives and neighbors. The satellite photos showed neat rows of graves, aligned to point to Mecca, in keeping with Islamic tradition. The ground was featureless, churned earth. Disappearing bodies, however, are only one problem for the war crimes investigators, who have six teams here now, an official said, with six more soon to be in place. In some areas the bodies are proliferating, with the killing here apparently far greater than anyone had thought, even given the very specific accounts of refugees...."

AP 7/299 "...Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic still has firm control of his army, is trying to rebuild a political base and is capable of moving against pro-Western Montenegro at any time, NATO's supreme commander said Thursday. NATO's supreme commander, Gen. Wesley Clark, gave the Senate Armed Services Committee an update on peacekeeping efforts in Kosovo in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. "Milosevic retains formidable power in Yugoslavia and he's an expert at dividing the opposition," Gen. Wesley Clark told the Senate Armed Services Committee. In his first appearance on Capitol Hill since the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia, Clark said that he sees little evidence that Milosevic's authority is ebbing or that he might be overthrown or forced to step aside. "He still has his hands on the sinews of power in Serbia," Clark testified. His political opposition is "fragmented and weak." ..."

UPI 7/2/99 "...A soldier with the U.S. KFOR peacekeeping force was shot and critically wounded when a machinegun manned by a fellow soldier preparing to go out on patrol accidentally discharged. A KFOR spokesman says the soldier was immediately treated for a shoulder wound and is in stable condition...."

The Associated Press 7/2/99 ".... When President Bush prevailed in Iraq, his popularity rating soared to 91 percent. By contrast, President Clinton got no such bounce in the polls from the Kosovo campaign, even though his goals were achieved without a single U.S. combat casualty. The American people paid much more attention to the Gulf War and seemed to give scant applause to the outcome of the Clinton-led campaign against Serbian forces clearing Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian population..... Clinton's approval numbers hover near the 50 percent mark. This situation has so puzzled the White House that it has given up trying to spin the success in Clinton's favor and decided to act as if the lack of recognition is no big deal. ..."

boston.com dailyglobe 7/2/99 Charles Sennot John Donnelly "...America's triumphant general in the Kosovo war received less than a hero's welcome yesterday from US senators, who criticized the lack of readiness for a ground invasion, poor intelligence estimates, and the now open-ended mission of American peacekeepers. In his first extensive public assessment of NATO's 11-week air war, General Wesley K. Clark, the alliance's supreme allied commander in Europe, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that his troops believed the war was a ''very just cause.'' He called the battle ''a testament to political unity and the will of NATO members to stand up to the humanitarian tragedy'' inflicted on ethnic Albanians by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. But the four-star general said the future of the Balkans depends on whether Milosevic remains, and his assessment was the Yugoslav leader retained ''formidable power.' In his review of the lessons of the war, Clark underscored what he described as potential difficulties when politicians interfere with generals. In perhaps the most dramatic example, Clark disclosed that political leaders prevented NATO forces from intercepting about 200 Russian troops who seized control of the Pristina airport on June 11, causing a diplomatic and military impasse...."

Stratfor.Com Kosovo Crisis Center 6/30/99 "...0242 GMT, 990701 Russia/NATO - Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin said June 30 that he believes relations with NATO will begin to normalize after being "frozen" by the recent bombing campaign in Kosovo. He said, "We have passed through the most difficult stage - a serious cooling [of relations] with NATO, especially at the time of the bombings. But we must draw our conclusions from that situation." Stepashin also allayed fears that Russia might develop new weapons in response to the Kosovo conflict by saying his country will steadfastly adhere to the principles of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. ....

New York Times 7/1/99 ALEKSA DJILAS "...Does Serbia without Kosovo inevitably mean Kosovo without the Serbs? President Clinton and other NATO leaders have repeatedly said no and promised that Kosovo would be a multi-ethnic democracy. While they fought Serbian nationalism with more than 1,000 combat aircraft, however, they use mostly words against Albanian extremists. As a result, many units of the Kosovo Liberation Army have not been disarmed, even though the K.L.A.'s leaders said they would comply with the peace deal. Since the armistice on June 10, several Serbian civilians have been killed every day, and more than 50,000 Kosovo Serbs, close to a third of the province's Serbian population, have already left. In the general climate of fear, other, smaller ethnic groups like Roma Gypsies are also fleeing. Serbia already has more refugees than any other country in Europe. There are more than 600,000 of them -- mostly Serbs expelled from Croatia and the Muslim part of Bosnia. Both President Slobodan Milosevic and NATO leaders pretend not to notice them. Mr. Milosevic knows that Serbian refugees are an irrefutable proof of his failure to "solve" the Serbian national question through war in Croatia and Bosnia. And NATO prefers not to be reminded how it failed to reverse the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs...."

Stratfor.Com Kosovo Crisis Center 7/1/99 "...0135 GMT, 990702 Yugoslavia - A spokesman for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist Party, Ivica Dacic, said July 1 that the government should be reorganized to include all parties represented in parliament, with the exception of Alliance for Change. This announcement is the first indication by the Milosevic regime that it may be willing to cooperate with opposition parties on at least some level. Similarly, the leader of the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Seselj, stated a coalition government is "necessary in order to prevent U.S. intentions to further break up Yugoslavia." 1611 GMT, 990701 Yugoslavia/Russia - In an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Russia's ambassador to Belgrade indicated that Moscow will likely try to circumvent a UN arms embargo on Yugoslavia. He said, "The UN resolution ... is still in effect, but I think a legal framework for supplying weapons (to Yugoslavia) will be created soon." He also pointed out that Russia had "insistently urged Belgrade to upgrade its air defenses and other systems" prior to the NATO bombing campaign, but that the "recommendation was not heeded." ....."

Itar-Tass 7/1/99 "...A launching party of the White Book, providing evidence of NATO's crimes committed during the first month of its aggression against Yugoslavia, was held at the Belgrade-based Institute of International Politics and Economics on Thursday. The book, compiled by the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry legal adviser Professor Rodoljub Etinski and Ambassador Djordje Logincic, contains numerous documents, photos and witnesses' reports proving that the NATO countries leaders and NATO command are responsible for human casualties and destructions in Yugoslavia during the air war from March 24 to April 24, 1999...."

http://www.serbia-info.com 7/1/99 Milka Milovanovic "...KFOR troops on Tuesday could not guarantee to inhabitants of Orahovac the safety for evacuation. Therefore the evacuation of 5 000 Serbs from Orahovac, who received aid in food and medicines three days ago, was postponed again. Ethnic-Albanian terrorists, who somewhat calmed down last night, starting from Tuesday apply a new tactics for driving Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija. Dressed in uniforms of peacekeepers they enter into apartments of Serbs and drive out their owners. In Pristina on Tuesday morning, as we acknowledged in the Center for peace and tolerance, 50 such cases were recorded. The real peacekeeping forces intervened for several times and took the false ones out....."

AP 7/1/99 "...In an unprecedented intervention, the U.N. secretary-general and 18 nations undertook Wednesday to revamp judicial and civil rule in Kosovo Province less than three weeks after the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia forced out all Serb troops and special police. With hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians returning to their homes, Secretary-General Kofi Annan organized key international figures to plan for a new civil administration and to elicit pledges of interim police to support a peacekeeping force in trying to keep order among ethnic communities divided by hate and atrocities. "What we must do today is make sure, having won the war, we are now in a position to build the peace, working with the local population and working with the international community," British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said. Britain volunteered $1 million for a U.N.-run trust fund. The United States, with $1.3 billion in assistance contained in pending legislation, made no additional commitment. A donors' conference is to be held July 27, probably in Brussels, Belgium....."

Russia Today 7/1/99 "...Insisting Kosovo remain an integral part of Yugoslavia, Russia said on Wednesday it feared Western nations were trying to take over the United Nations' role in rebuilding the war-devastated province. "Tendencies have appeared to ... dilute the United Nations' role in the restructuring of Kosovo and make the U.N. and its secretary-general a mere executor of someone else's initiatives and efforts," Moscow's deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Avdeyev told reporters...."

http://www.villagevoice.com/features/9926/vest.shtml 6/30-7/6/99 Jason Vest "...It was late in the day when the industrial contractor called. "We're ready to do business in Kosovo," he told the senior administration official on the other end of the line. "Who do we talk to?" The official paused. "I haven't the faintest idea," he said. "My advice: call Brussels." That was not the counsel the official had expected to give, but, he said, unlike the situation at the end of the Gulf War, it doesn't seem that the U.S. government has made ensuring U.S. companies a piece of the rebuilding action in Kosovo a high priority. Nor does it seem probable, say numerous European observers, that the European Union- the body largely responsible for underwriting and overseeing Kosovo's physical reconstruction- is going to look favorably upon American bidders, as most EU members are still quietly disdainful of the U.S. for essentially forcing them into military conflict with Yugoslavia. In fact, they say, the contracting process could be a crucial part of Europe's continued efforts to assert its independence from American authority...."

USA TODAY 7/1/99 Steven Komarow "...Many of the figures used by the Clinton administration and NATO to describe the wartime plight of Albanians in Kosovo now appear greatly exaggerated as allied forces take control of the province. "Yes, there were atrocities. But no, they don't measure up to the advance billing," says House intelligence chairman Porter Goss, R-Fla. Instead of 100,000 ethnic Albanian men feared murdered by rampaging Serbs, officials now estimate that about 10,000 were killed. 600,000 ethnic Albanians were not "trapped within Kosovo itself lacking shelter, short of food, afraid to go home or buried in mass graves dug by their executioners" as President Clinton told a veterans group in May. Though thousands hid in Kosovo, they are healthy. Kosovo's livestock, wheat and other crops are growing, not slaughtered wholesale or torched as widely reported. Kenneth Bacon, spokesman for Defense Secretary William Cohen, says the best estimates available were used..... Then why exaggerate? "In order to justify this thing, they needed to tap that memory of the Holocaust," says Andrew Bacevich, professor of International Relations at Boston University....The "missing men" -- young Albanians who were believed killed -- are home with no jobs. NATO forces are struggling to keep them from seeking retribution.....Mike Hammer, spokesman for the National Security Council, says there was no effort to mislead. The administration found that "as you go through a campaign like this, there is a great deal of uncertainty." Even lower numbers justify action, he says. "We needed to move because of the campaign of ethnic cleansing that could not be allowed to stand."...."

AP 7/4/99 "...For a place where many government offices have been bombed and most of the rest have been looted, Kosovo suffers from an odd affliction: too many governments. There's the government of Hashim Thaci, the Kosovo Liberation Army chief who says a coalition of political parties picked him as ``prime minister'' to lead the province to freedom. There's the government of Bujar Bukoshi, since 1991 the ``prime minister'' of the unrecognized ``Republic of Kosovo.'' And there's the government of Zoran Andjelkovic, the Yugoslav governor of Kosovo before the bombing started. And then there's the U.N. administration of Sergio Vieira de Mello, backed by an international peacekeeping force, which says none of the others has any claim to power at all. ``A number of politicians in Kosovo have self-styled titles such as prime minister,'' said Brig. Jonathan Bailey, the peacekeeping official in charge of making sure both Serbia and the rebels stick to their pledges...."

New York Times 7/4/99 Eric Schmitt "... Toward the end of the Balkans air war, rarely a day passed when NATO did not triumphantly declare that allied warplanes had destroyed several more Yugoslav tanks or artillery pieces with precision-guided bombs or missile Now it turns out that perhaps one-quarter of those weapons that looked fearsome from 15,000 feet up were nothing more than artfully designed decoys meant to fool allied pilots. Indeed, the Serb military, outgunned by a technologically superior foe, proved to a master of camouflage, concealment and deception. Yugoslav commanders built "tanks" of wood and plastic sheeting, sometimes draping them with camouflage netting. To trick thermal sensors, they put metal tape or plates on some decoys and even set trays of water inside them that heated up in the sun, just like a real tank would. Some suspected artillery revetments turned out to be disguised pits, empty but for a long tube protruding toward the sky. And to the dismay of the NATO air commanders, several Yugoslav MiG-21 fighter jets emerged from hidden caves once the war was over...."

AP 7/3/99 Mort Rosenblum "...But if Kosovo was destroyed, Kosova is arising in its place. Departing Serbs took with them not only their version of the province's name but also their historic domination of an ethnic Albanian majority. In every direction, former refugees are cleaning up the mess. And virtually anyone who pauses to talk echoes the same point: A reborn Kosova must be ethnically cleansed, but at the other extreme from that sought by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. ``Maybe before all this we might still have lived together in peace,'' said Gani Krasniqi, an ethnic Albanian standing in a pasture where he hopes wandering cows will eventually find any land mines. ``Not now. I no longer want to see any Serb, in any form.''...The next steps remain to be determined. Under accords that stopped the hostilities, Kosovo remains as an autonomous province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic. It has no government, and the only policing is done by NATO soldiers from a handful of countries. Some towns and villages are crumpled beyond recognition. Other parts escaped with only peripheral damage. Power and communications function only sporadically. Roads are pitted, with some crucial bridges in ruins...."

Macedonia Press Agency 7/2/99 "...Maps depicting the so-called Greater Albania are being distributed by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, to foreign journalists crossing the Yugoslav-FYROM borders...."

Philadelphia Daily News 7/2/99 George Cotner "...So Sandy Grady thinks it's a shame that no one will give Bill Clinton a parade for his victory in Kosovo (column, June 24). Let's take a closer look at Bill's triumph: By the admission of the Clinton administration, the number of Kosovar Albanians killed in 1997 and 1998 was under 2,000. Between January and the start of the bombing, German courts were unable to find evidence of atrocities against Albanians solely because of ethnicity; any violence was related to the low-grade civil war between federal Yugoslavian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army. It was falsely reported that Slobodan Milosevic was unwilling to accept an outside force in Kosovo....The NATO pressure to force Yugoslavia to accept Rambouilett violated international law, which prohibits threat of force to compel a country to sign a treaty. The Kosovo action violated the NATO charter, which allows for military action only if a member country is attacked. International monitors were withdrawn and the bombing started even though intelligence reports stated that both actions would lead to widespread atrocities against the Kosovo Albanians..... "

UPI 7/2/99 "...A soldier with the U.S. KFOR peacekeeping force was shot and critically wounded when a machinegun manned by a fellow soldier preparing to go out on patrol accidentally discharged. A KFOR spokesman says the soldier was immediately treated for a shoulder wound and is in stable condition. The incident occurred at midday today at Camp Bondsteel, a location of a task force headquarters for the U.S. military sector in Kosovo. This is the second such accident of the peacekeeping mission. ..."

Strategic Policy - Defense & Foreign Affairs 4/99 Gregory Copley "... The 20th Century, the most bloody in human history, was a century of human progress in many ways; a century of optimism, of stabilization of concepts of civilization and recognition of fundamental human needs. But, as noted, it was the most bloody. There is a belief that, even when the 200-million or so casualties caused by domestic and interstate wars in the 20th Century are acknowledged, mankind is becoming "more civilized", and that violence is now only applied by barbarians, or in response to barbarians. In the Balkans, there may have been poor judgment and even inhuman actions on the part of Yugoslav President Slobodan Miloševiæ, but we have also seen "civilized" NATO states retaliate by undertaking exactly the kind of inhumanity of which they accuse the Yugoslav leader: collective punishment of whole peoples (banned, supposedly, by international law); mass hate; and indiscriminate killings....3. The evaporation of NATO's military and moral high ground as a result of the US Clinton and UK Blair administrations in the late 1990s, means that the People's Republic of China will gain significantly as a strategic power, and this will affect the relative positions of Japan, the Koreas, South-East Asia, India, Australia, and so on. And within that context, US trade and economic wealth will decline. The only question is to what degree. 4. NATO states (North American and European) will face hostility from Russia and its rebuilt alliance of partners over the coming decade as a direct result of the refusal of NATO leaders to take advantage of their Cold War victory over the Soviets. This time, however, although Russia may be disadvantaged economically vis-à-vis the West, the actual economic gap will begin to close, provided Russia maintains a path toward a market economy..."

Yahoo AFP 7/3/99 "...British soldiers early Saturday shot and killed two men and wounded two others here following a demonstration by thousands of Kosovars to celebrate an unofficial declaration of independence in 1990. The shooting took place in front of the Executive Council building, the former seat of Serb government where 50 Serb Kosovars now live and which was protected by British soldiers serving with the Kosovo peacekeeping mission (KFOR)...."

Itar-Tass 7/7/99 "…Addressing journalists in the town of Kosovska-Mitrovica Clark said, commenting on the results of his visit to the French KFOR contingent, that servicemen of the international forces would arrest all those who carry unlicensed guns. " There is no room for militarized formations in Kosovo," Clark said. He did not specify whether the Serb or Albanian armed formations were at issue….."

AFP 7/8/99 "…The feared Albanian mafia has moved into Kosovo on the heels of the deployment of NATO troops and is already running lucrative operations smuggling drugs, cars, petrol and cigarettes, local people say...."

UPI Wire 7/8/99 "…The leader of the opposition New Democracy (ND) party says the choice facing Serbia and Yugoslavia is simple - either Slobodan Milosevic and his deputies resign and a transitional government is brought in or unrest and an attempted military-police coup will follow…."

UPI 7/12/99 "…As NATO tries to pacify Kosovo after a 79-day war, Hungary's prime minister hinted at a future battleground for NATO in the Balkans over Vojvodine, Yugoslavia's northernmost province. Prime Minister Viktor Orban today said the minority groups in Vojvodine deserve the same level of autonomy that will eventually be restored to Kosovo, and says NATO ought to guarantee it….."

Anchorage Daily News 7/2/99 George Wilson "…There are no military lessons to be learned from NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic because it was not a war at all, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said Thursday. The World War II bomber pilot told defense reporters over breakfast that "we never had an engagement" with the Yugoslav military. "They never came to war with us," Stevens said. "We just bombed the hell out of them until they signed an agreement. "We had 780 million people (in the NATO alliance) attacking 20 million people, and they finally came to their knees after (NAT0 forces) bombed for four months. What's the precedent out of that? There's no precedent out of that. I don't see it having any relationship to the ability of the Army on the ground in a war….."

7/12/99 Itar-Tass "…A journalist from the Japanese newspaper Asahi who watched mass expulsion of the Serbs from Kosovo, said in his report from Pristina that despite a UN resolution on preservation of territorial integrity of Yugoslavia the process of creating "a state for the Albanians only", which is actually independent of Belgrade, has been in full swing in Kosovo at NATO's connivance. Notes such as "A property of the Albanian. Don't touch" can been seen in almost all the cafes and restaurants in Pristina, which used to be one of the busiest cities in Kosovo. ..."

The New American 7/19/99 "…Addressing a May 18th Washington, DC conference entitled "NATO's Balkan War; Finding an Honorable Exit," James George Jatras, a foreign policy analyst at the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee (RPC), offered a compelling glimpse into the Clinton Administration's mindset just prior to the outbreak of the Kosovo War. Jatras pointed out that "Appendix B" of the so-called Rambouillet "peace" accord (which was rejected by Serbia) provided that "NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia], including associated airspace and territorial waters." This amounted to a blank check for the occupation not only of Kosovo, but all of Yugoslavia, by NATO. Not surprisingly, the Serbs rejected this ultimatum-just as they were expected to. Citing an account provided by a witness to the event, Jatras informed his audience that "one senior Administration official told the media at Rambouillet (under embargo), 'we intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply…."

VOICE OF RUSSIA 7/12/99 "…This country continues an operation to dispatch peace-keepers to Kosovo. One more planeload of personnel and equipment reached the provincial capital Pristina today a little over 20 hours after two similar planeloads arrived there on Sunday. Five Russian landing barges are in the Aegean Sea under sail to Salonika in northern Greece from where the troops and armour on board will proceed to Kosovo by road. There should be a total of 36 hundred Russian soldiers in Kosovo, They will serve in sectors controlled by American, British, French and German units of the Kosovo Force but fully retain their national chain of command. The Russian commanding officer in Kosovo says his men will treat members of the Serb and the Albanian communities quite equally in operations to prevent clashes between them….."

USA Today 7/12/99 Jack Kelley "…Officially, they don't exist. And every effort is made to conceal them and keep them quiet. Police checkpoints prevent them from leaving, and gas stations refuse to sell them fuel in case they try. Businesses are barred from hiring them. Schools won't enroll their kids. "They're hostages in their own country," said Kraljevo city council president and government opposition member Zvonko Obradovic, 32. "Their existence is being kept secret. (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic is afraid of them." They are the more than 33,000 Serb refugees from Kosovo who have arrived in this Serbian town and nearby areas since the end of NATO airstrikes in June. Some live in factories, others in parks in makeshift housing. But officials from Milosevic's Socialist Party are working overtime to make sure no one knows they're here. The reason for that is simple, refugees and opposition leaders say: If the rest of Serbia finds out that tens of thousands of Serbs have angrily left Kosovo, they won't believe Milosevic was "victorious" over NATO and preserved the sovereignty of the province, as state media asserts daily…."

WorldNetDaily 7/12/99 Jon Dougherty "…Charges of war crimes have been levied by a U.S.-based private criminal justice organization against President Clinton and Defense Secretary William Cohen for their part in initiating the NATO military action against Yugoslavia. The indictment is to be electronically filed Monday with the International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) in The Hague after the Connecticut-based International Ethical Alliance (IEA) determined that both men had violated many of the same justice standards used by the ICT to indict Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic. In a press release, the IEA said other NATO officials would probably be included in more charges to be filed later for their part in the conflict. IEA officials said it also advocates the prosecution of Milosevic, but said both U.S. and NATO officials must be held accountable….."

http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Jul/11/opinion/RUBIN11.htm 7/11/99 Trudy Rubin "…ask the leading ethnic Albanian politician in neighboring Macedonia, where hundreds of thousands of Kosovar refugees took shelter, and he sees things very differently. Arben Jaffari, ally of Kosovo leaders and spokesman for the large number of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, believes the war was about power, pure and simple. "It proves there is a new relationship between global forces and that NATO is on top," he tells me….Welcome to the real world. We think we bombed to save Albanians' lives, but they think we bombed to show who really runs the world. And they are not the only ones. Much of the world is busy trying to assess the meaning of NATO's bombing campaign to the 21th century world. They care little for the irony that NATO bumbled into the war, believing that Yugoslavia would give in within days. They see the war as a victory for raw American power. After all, three-quarters of the missions were flown by Americans. Only European leaders endorse the argument that NATO intervention was humanitarian. Other parts of the world are more likely to assume some deeper geopolitical motive. The Chinese think we bombed their embassy to show who was boss…."

http://www.stratfor.com/CIS/specialreports/special3.htm 7/7/99 "…An article in the July 7 edition of the Washington Post postulated that the Kosovo conflict and its aftermath have increased the chances of Balkan countries such as Romania, Bulgaria and Slovenia receiving admission into NATO – possibly at the expense of the three Baltic aspirants. The article argued that, with 30,000 troops in Bosnia, 10,000 in Macedonia, 7,500 in Albania and a planned 57,000 in Kosovo, the long-term commitment to keeping the peace in the Balkans may refocus NATO’s expansion plans to the south….. What this boils down to is a matter of mission. With the enemy it prepared for decades to combat in a shambles, NATO set about to find itself a new mission. The one it chose was to impose peace, stability or at least order on the chaotic corners of Europe through offensive action. "We all realize that the sources of instability are in the south, not in the north," said an anonymous senior NATO official, quoted by the Washington Post….. So, NATO transformed from guard dog to policeman and turned its attention south. There it sits, though apparently less a liberator than a prisoner of the Balkans. …."

Reuters 7/13/99 "…The former commander of United Nations troops in Bosnia has dismissed NATO's Kosovo bombing campaign as a tragic failure. Britain's General Sir Michael Rose said NATO and British politicians were running a propaganda campaign to persuade people that the air war met its objectives. The alliance had been forced to redefine the objectives of its air war against Yugoslavia after it "manifestly" failed to accomplish its initial aims…."

UPI 7/13/99 "…The leaders of the Serbian ethnic community in Kosovo have formally informed the Kosovo peacekeeping force KFOR and the U.N. civil mission that they are temporarily suspending mutual cooperation. … The Serbian leaders, Trajkovic and the orthodox bishop Artemije, had expressed their alarm at reports of Serbs in many Kosovo places being murdered and kidnapped and their homes burned by militant ethnic Albanian refugees coming home from neighboring Albania and Macedonia…."

UPI 7/13/99 "…The Clinton administration says (Tuesday) it will focus its humanitarian assistance on communities in Serbia that do not support President Slobodan Milosevic and that are attempting to pursue democratic policies. The State Department says the policy is intended to hasten the day when Milosevic and his regime are no longer in power…." Freeper dirtboy adds "…


Sick. Sick. Sick. Let kids starve, after you bombed them, to score political points…."

Startfor.Com CIS/Eastern European Intelligence Center 7/7/99 "…2036 GMT, 990707 Yugoslavia/NATO - According to Agence France-Presse, 5,000 Kosovar Albanians proudly crossed a re-opened bridge in Kosovoska Mitrovica as 200 Serbs taunted them. The Serbs became increasingly violent as the Albanians entered the Serb neighborhood, and police were forced to blockade the bridge two hours after it was re-opened. The bridge had previously divided the town in two, and was a symbol of ethnic separatism in the area. Claude Vicaire, head of the French police patrolling the area, said "The bridge is open, but people's minds are closed."…. "

TIME 7/5/99 "…President Clinton has authorized the CIA to help topple Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic, Time magazine reports today. CIA computer hackers will try to meddle with Milosevic's private financial transactions and electronically siphon funds from his overseas bank accounts, possibly in Switzerland, Cyprus, Greece, Russia and China, Time says in its July 5 issue, citing unnamed sources. The CIA also is trying to deposit cash with opposition organizations in Yugoslavia and recruit dissidents in the Belgrade government and the Yugoslav military…."

BBC 7/11/99 "…Russian K-for troops met British counterparts on Sunday near Pristina Nato peacekeeping troops in Kosovo are reported to have stepped up operations against armed ethnic Albanians with an operation against two suspected illegal jails for Serbs…."

Reuters 7/11/99 Andrew Gray "…A U.N. spokesman said its mission in Kosovo had received informal notification of the Serbs' decision, which had taken Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello by surprise. "He had a meeting with them on Friday which seemed to have gone quite well," mission spokesman Kevin Kennedy said. "The U.N. is not going to give up trying to put something together that will bring the communities together," he added….. "There has been ceaseless and systematic violence against Kosovo Serbs inflicted by Albanian terrorists and members of the so-called KLA geared at creating an ethnically-clean Kosovo and Metohija while KFOR and the U.N. mission are present," said the statement, quoted by Serbia's Beta news agency….An estimated 100,000 Serbs have fled Kosovo since Yugoslav forces withdrew and the ethnic Albanian refugees they pushed out began to return. Looting and arson attacks targeting the homes of Serbs and Gypsies -- who the Albanians accuse of siding with the Serbs -- have become commonplace…."

Itar-Tass 7/10/99 "…The scale of murderous terror against Serbs, Gypsies and representatives of other national minorities in the Kosovo province of Yugoslavia, unleashed by Albanian extremists is so large that the United Nations no longer rules out their possible evacuation from the province to save their lives. If these people will continue to remain in the situation threatening their lives, probably the U.N. representatives will resort to this measure, official representative of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refuges Kris Janovski said in reply to a question by Itar-Tass here on Friday…."

UPI 7/11/99 "…Two Kosovo Liberation Army rebels were killed and several others injured in an exchange of fire with American peacekeeping troops in the Kosovo town of Gnjilane, Yugoslav media reports. The KLA rebels had attacked a Serb-occupied house late Saturday, reports said today, and American troops got caught in the middle. No casualties among the American soldiers or Serbs were reported…."

AP 7/17/99 Daniel Wakin "…British forensic experts in Kosovo have uncovered the bodies of 11 children, some as young as 2 years old, shot at close range by Serb forces, Britain's foreign secretary said Tuesday. The revelation came as a top U.N. war crimes prosecutor said it was possible that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic could be charged with genocide for the Serbs' campaign of atrocities in Kosovo, on top of other war crimes charges he already faces. British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the bodies of the children - aged 2 to 16 years old - had been discovered among 20 corpses found in the southwestern village of Celine…"

The Daily Republican 7/16/99 Dr Jan Oberg "… Perhaps the biggest lie in all this was the statement that 'we are not at war with the Yugoslav people.' But NATO destroyed 300 factories and refineries, 190 educational establishments, 20 hospitals, 30 clinics, 60 bridges, 5 airports; it killed at least 2,000 civilians and wounded 6,000 and many will die and suffer because of the health infrastructure destruction. To this you may add the sanctions since 1991 and the burden of more than 700.000 refugees from other republics and now from Kosovo. Only 12-15 tanks of 300 main battle tanks and some planes were destroyed, the rest seem to have been dummies! ….. In terms of human rights violations, war-caused deaths and degree of "dictatorship," Kosovo is a minor conflict. Between November 1998 and March 1999 no evidence of systematic ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, OSCE monitors have confirmed this. Germany sent back 11,000 Kosovar refugees. No humanitarian organization present in Kosovo reported a grand plan, or signs of it, to cleanse Kosovo of its 1,5 million Albanians…."

Original Sources (www.originalsources.com) 7/16/99 "…I called the office of a Republican senator who shall be temporarily nameless, and inquired if the Senator knew of a provision recently voted on which, according to an e-mail I received, "names Yugoslvia a 'terrorist state'. The aide, who had a Croatian name, said without hesitation that I was referring to S 1234, Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2000, section 525 of the bill which did indeed list Yugoslavia as a terrorist state, along with Cuba, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Iran, Sudan, or Syria….. These draconian sanctions, which are guaranteed to kill hundreds of thousands of people in a nation which is now about 90% unemployed because American bombers destroyed most of its means of production, will remain in place, according to the bill, until the President "certifies" that: 1. The representatives of the successor states to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have successfully negotiated the division of assets and liabilities and all other succession issues following the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; ….In effect these provisions destroy totally the G-8 agreement that Milosevic and the NATO nations signed in early June…. We eagerly dismembered a socialist system to transform Yugoslavia into a cluster of weak extremist principalities incapable of charting an independent course of self-development. The International Monetary Fund will help to complete the process by making all of the natural and mineral wealth of Yugoslavia accessible to multinational corporate exploitation. Impoverished, Yugoslavia still has a proud record of a 90% literacy rate and a very skilled Serbian population - who will now be forced to work at subsistence wages…."

http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/197/oped/No_no_NATOP.shtml 7/16/99 Mikhail Gorbachev "…The war that NATO unleashed against Yugoslavia in March means, first of all, that the alliance, established in Washington in 1949 as a defensive organization for the protection of its members, has crossed over to offensive operations. Second, the war provided evidence that the United States, which plays a commanding role in NATO, is willing not only to disregard the norms of international law but also to impose on the world its own agenda in international relations and, in fact, to be guided in these relations solely by its own ''national interests,'' taking the United Nations into account only if UN decisions and actions serve US interests. Third, NATO policy, as in the Cold War years, continues to place primary emphasis on military power - the threat and actual use of military force…."

New York Times 7/14/99 Chris Hedges "…Farm workers, plunging their fingers into the earth, say they come away with rashes that burn and blister. Those who eat the river fish and vegetables or drink the tap water, which trickles out of faucets because of the damage to the purification plant, come down with diarrhea, vomiting and stomach cramps. Children, many of whom were sent away to Slovakia by local Red Cross officials for several weeks to escape the clouds of noxious gasses that hovered for days over Pancevo, still suffer headaches and dizziness. The war's lingering, ghoulish touch could be affecting even the unborn. There are twice as many miscarriages as during this period last year, doctors here said….This official said that the environmental damage caused by the attack was taken into consideration. "When targeting is done we take into account all possible collateral damage," she said, "be it environmental, human or to the civilian infrastructure. Pancevo was considered to me a very, very important refinery and strategic target, as important as tactical targets inside Kosovo." …"

Don Feder 7/14/99 Boston Herald quoted in Newsmax.com "…When is ethnic cleansing not ethnic cleansing? When the victims are Serbs. As many as 60,000 of Kosovo's 200,000 Serbs have already fled. Each day brings news of calculated atrocities. Human Rights Watch reports "investigations in Orahovac, Prizen and Pec revealed KLA soldiers' involvement in five murders, four abductions, one rape and 12 ... beatings." Since the war in Bosnia, Serbs have been so effectively demonized that not only will Western opinion believe almost anything of them, no one seems to care about the fate of the most vulnerable among them….."

BBC World Service 7/8/99 "…The president of the International Federation of the Red Cross, Astrid Heiberg, has warned that many people in Serbia are on the verge of starvation because of the effects of the recent NATO air raids and international sanctions. Dr Heiberg told the BBC that it was not only Serb refugees from Kosovo who were suffering, but also many elderly people on fixed incomes…"

Yahoo News 7/14/99 Shaban Buza Reuters "…Ethnic Albanians in western Kosovo told NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark Wednesday that 60,000 of them would flee their villages if Russians were deployed there as peacekeepers. ``If the Russians come, all 60,000 people who live in the Orahovac area will leave for Albania and we will not return until they leave,'' Ismet Tara, a commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), told Clark in this Kosovo village…."

BBC 7/16/99 "…Kosovo Albanians are waging a systematic campaign to kill, kidnap and expel Serbs from the province as they wreak revenge for past atrocities, the UN refugee agency has said. UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said protection of the Serb minority in the province was now the "most critical issue"….. The BBC's Claire Doole: Aid workers are shocked at the scale of anti-Serb violence…"

AFP 7/16/99 "…In a rare display of post-cold war cooperation, US and Russian troops of the Kosovo peacekeeping forceconducted joint patrols here Friday, hoping to convince Serbs and Albanians to consider them as comrades-in-arms…."

Itar-Tass 7/16/99 "…A commission of the State Duma which collects and summarizes information about NATO crimes against Yugoslavia is intent on continuation of its activities. One of the goals of the commission is to "help bring criminal charges against NATO leadership and leaders of a number of NATO member-states who bear a personal responsibility for military crimes against Yugoslavia," the commission said in its statement signed by its Chairman and leader of the "People's Power" bloc, Nikolai Ryzhkov…."

The Daily Republican 7/15/99 Stephen Abbott "…Britain's General Sir Michael Rose said NATO and British politicians were running a propaganda campaign to persuade people that the air war met its objectives. NATO had been forced to redefine the objectives of its air war against Yugoslavia after it "manifestly" failed to accomplish its initial aims…. NATO had therefore been forced to redefine the purpose of the war as being that of allowing Kosovo's ethnic Albanian refugees to return to their homes. "Its success in achieving this lesser task should not be allowed to obscure the fundamental message that it is not possible to safeguard a people by bombing from 15,000 feet," Rose said…."

AP 7/17/99 "…Italian minesweepers trolling the Gulf of Venice found 34 bombs during the past eight weeks, nearly all of them dropped by NATO jets on bombing runs on Yugoslavia, the Italian navy said Saturday. All the bombs were destroyed, the navy said, reporting that the mine-hunting operation was winding down…."

Stratfor.com 7/18/99 "...0012 GMT, 990718 Yugoslavia/KFOR - The Yugoslav state news agency Tanjug reported July 17 that the commander of the Italian KFOR sector, Brigadier General Mauro del Vecchio, said July 16 that a mass grave in the village of Ljubenic reported to contain over 350 bodies, contained only seven. Del Vecchio said that a full exhumation had been completed at the request of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, and that as a result the grave was not considered a mass grave...."

USA Today 7/19/99 AP "...At the edge of a cemetery overgrown with flowering weeds, local authorities exhumed 19 bodies Monday from a mass grave - including an 80-year-old man who went missing months ago. Survivors say they were massacred by Serbs...."

The New York Times 7/17/99 John Kifner "...At least 10,000 people were slaughtered by Serbian forces during their three-month campaign to drive the Albanians from Kosovo, according to war crimes investigators, NATO peacekeeping troops and aid agencies struggling to keep up with fresh reports each day of newly discovered bodies and graves....Saturday afternoon, for example, tribunal investigators and British troops rushed off to a grassy roadside near the village of Lukare, a few miles northeast of here, where three grave sites were reported by local Albanians to contain possibly 100 or more bodies....By late Saturday afternoon, four bodies, all extensively decomposed, had been exhumed and Lieut. Col. Robin Hodges, a British spokesman, said the work was likely to continue all day. On Friday, villagers returning to Goden, a settlement near the western town of Djakovica, discovered 20 bodies, along with Yugoslav Army log books describing how soldiers had emptied the village and killed people...." By Thursday afternoon, Williamson, the tribunal official, said the numbers had grown to 280 grave sites with more than 6,100 reported bodies. Colonel Clifford, among others, warned that even those numbers underreported the actual number of deaths....Of 44 villages in the district around Decani, for example, 39 had dead bodies in their wells, one of this week's daily internal situation reports from the field to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said..... "It was very emotional," said Chief Superintendent John T. Bunn of Scotland Yard, who said he identified at least 60 victims in the village of Bela Crkva...."

The Daily Telegraph, UK 7/18/99 Julia Strauss ".... Last week she sat on a wooden bench gently stroking her nine- month-old daughter and told how she was gang-raped by five soldiers of the Kosovo Liberation Army because her brothers-in-law served as Serbian policemen. ..."

 

BBC 7/18/99 "...The BBC's Claire Doole says reprisals were expected, but aid workers have been shocked by their scale. She says the Nato-led peacekeeping force, K-For, is having to guard Serbs around the clock, but is increasingly unable to protect them and other minorities. In one incident, two Serbs were abducted from a UNHCR-run centre in Pristina by five men dressed in black and carrying radio handsets. The remaining Serbs were so frightened the UN agency had to evacuate them. In some places, churches have become sanctuaries and parts of several towns have been turned into Serb ghettos...."

Orlando Sentinel 7/18/99 Charley Reese "...First, NATO violated its own charter. It was a defensive alliance and made an offensive war against a sovereign nation. Second, it violated the United Nations Charter, which forbids making war on a sovereign nation at peace with its neighbors. Third, it destroyed the credibility of NATO. This happened not only because of the above-mentioned violations but also because NATO got caught in so many fibs during its propaganda briefings....So the facts are that, contrary to NATO propaganda, the air campaign caused minimal damage to the armed forces and maximum damage to Yugoslav civilians and civilian infrastructure. Of course, the root cause of the conflict -- the feud between Albanians who want an independent Kosovo and Serbs who want Kosovo to remain Serbian territory -- was aggravated, not resolved.... Finally, there is an even more morally heinous aspect of this -- it wasn't necessary. The so-called negotiations at Rambouillet in France appear to have been nothing more than a setup. The Serbs were willing to grant Kosovo some form of autonomy. They were willing to have it monitored by a force of international observers. But the United States insisted that they agree (this wasn't announced but was contained in a now-infamous Appendix B) to the military occupation by NATO soldiers of all of Yugoslavia -- Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro. Furthermore, there were, in fact, no negotiations. The United States presented it as an ultimatum -- sign or we bomb you. That, too, by the way, is a violation of international law...."

London Telegraph 7/17/99 Ben Fenton "....The United States defence secretary had to cancel a trip to Albania earlier this week because of fears that supporters of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire terrorist, would try to kill him. William Cohen was due to stop in Albania for only five hours to visit American troops still stationed there and meet local politicians as he inspected the remaining refugee camps close to the border with Kosovo.... Albania is known to have attracted a number of extremist Islamic fighters to the cause of Kosovo's liberation and therefore could already be unwittingly playing host to bin Laden sympathisers...."

Toronto Sun 7/18/99 Lorri Goldstein "...One of the problems with selective outrage against immorality is that it is immoral in and of itself. Ever since NATO's victory in Yugoslavia, we have been witnessing one of the most sustained examples of selective moral outrage and demonization of a people ever recorded in the modern era. Day after day after day after day the media are filled with stories of Serbian atrocities that left an estimated 10,000 innocent Kosovar Albanians dead - down from allegations during the war by NATO officials and U.S. President Bill Clinton that more than 100,000 had in fact been killed..... - Refugees? World-wide there are, conservatively, an estimated 13.5 million people who fit the definition of someone in genuine need of protection and/or assistance, excluding those who have been permanently resettled elsewhere. Meanwhile, the hundreds of civilians killed by NATO bombs during the 78-day air war and an estimated 100,000 Serbian (and Gypsy) refugees fleeing Kosovo in fear of retaliation by returning ethnic Albanians, are treated as a footnote to this ongoing human disaster, barely worthy of mention. But given our record of indifference to human suffering, often on a far greater scale than what occurred in Kosovo, the true motives behind our "humanitarian" bombing of Yugoslavia require scrutiny.... Whatever the motives, could we at least tone down the self-righteous chest-pounding over Yugoslavia, given that the atrocities we said we wanted to stop only began in earnest after NATO began bombing in what up to then had been a civil war, where there were atrocities on both sides. As it is, our selective moral outrage is exposing our own hypocrisy...."

Associated Press Writer 7/19/99 Anne Pandolfi "...Television news was less critical of President Clinton during the Kosovo campaign than of predecessor George Bush during the Gulf War, according to a study. Six in 10 on-air comments on the Kosovo air campaign contained praise for Clinton's efforts, said the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a nonpartisan research organization that has analyzed television, print, and radio coverage for more than 10 years...."

The National Post 7/21/99 Anthony Daniels "...But by far the most powerful sense of deja vu I experienced in Serbia was in the southern town of Kraljevo. The population of this town has swelled by 13,000 recently, with 500 more arriving each day according to the local Red Cross: Serb and Gypsy refugees fleeing the ethnic cleansing that is now taking place under NATO's benevolent gaze in Kosovo. What I saw and heard was a mirror image of what I had seen and heard in the Albanian Kosovar refugee camps in Macedonia in May. The stories were the same, told with the same emotion. The main differences between the two cleansings are the greater ease with which minority populations are cleansed, and the tacit approval of our governments for the removal of the wicked Serbs. Thus a war whose justification was to prevent forced population movements has resulted in two ethnic cleansings in four months; something of a record for Western policy....."

Jane's Defence Weekly 7/21/99 Lawrence Freedman "...The Kosovo War ended on NATO's terms ­ terms which were more stringent than those established by the contact group at Rambouillet and offered to Yugoslav officials in February. Opponents of this opinion say that somehow the June agreement leaves Kosovo more firmly a part of Serbia. Assertions such as these are founded on a flawed history of the Rambouillet Accords. It is striking how many commentators now stand history on its head and say Rambouillet contained a promise of a referendum and this is why it was rejected by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. It was, in fact, the Kosovo delegation to Rambouillet who objected to the lack of a clear commitment to independence and the absence of a promise to hold a referendum as part of the agreement. Milosevic was not overly concerned about the provisions in Ramouillet for greater autonomy and the eventual consideration of the future status of the province. His primary objection to the contact group's plan was the prospective role of foreign, and particularly NATO, troops in Kosovo. This is presumably because without foreign troops the provisions could not be enforced.... Great human dramas are being played out within the former Soviet Union and in North Africa but few of them are likely to present themselves in a form that calls for military rather than diplomatic or economic action by the West..... "

Washington Post 7/21/99 William Booth "...Just as the scorched and looted landscape of Kosovo is a legacy of the late war, so too are the oil refinery, fertilizer plant and petrochemical complex of Pancevo, which were heavily and repeatedly bombed by NATO warplanes. From their ruptured storage tanks, they bleed a toxic witch's brew of ammonia, crude oil, liquid chlorine, hydrochloric acid, mercury and vinyl chloride monomers--a component of industrial plastics. .... The environmental damage at the site will take months, and perhaps years, to assess--along with its potential threat to human health. Moreover, it will be difficult to determine specific effects of the bombings here, since Pancevo has had problems with lower-level pollution for years.....Simon Bancov, Belgrade's inspector for the protection of the human environment, has warned against eating vegetables produced in the immediate area of Pancevo. He also has issued a temporary ban on fishing in the nearby Danube because of the potentially large quantities of toxic chemicals that continue to seep into the river--already one of the most polluted in Europe...."

Wall Street Journal Europe 6/22/99 "...This weekend, Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci left Pristina and went on a whistle-stop tour of the war-ravaged province. Kosovo's traumatized ethnic Albanians understandably treated the KLA leader as a hero and liberator, their jubilation palpable in the cheers and warm welcome he received. However satisfying this victory lap might have been one month after NATO forced the withdrawal of Serbian forces, it should also have brought some discomfort. NATO has all along insisted that Kosovo belongs to Serbia, and NATO's political and military leaders have genuinely pleaded with local Serbs not to abandon their province, and with those who have done so to come back home. But Mr. Thaci called for independence, to thunderous applause, and declared that "we guarantee that those who destroyed Kosovo will never return."..."

UPI 7/22/99 "...The Serbian Orthodox Church and other groups are consulting on the formation of a transitional government to replace the ruling coalition of Serbia's Socialist and Radical parties and the Yugoslav Left Party (JUL), independent Belgrade media reports. The proposed government would launch reforms of the economic and legal systems, bring Yugoslavia into the Pact for the Stability of Southeast Europe, negotiate mutual relations between Serbia and Montenegro and pave the way for free elections at all levels...."

National Review 7/26/99 Mark Almond "...Slobodan Milosevic's forces have retreated from the smoldering ruins of Kosovo. But the replacement for Belgrade's brutal misrule has not been a NATO- led force imposing Western standards of democracy and human rights-the ideals proclaimed by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair during the war. Deployment of the full contingent of NATO peacekeepers has been painfully slow. And the U.N.-sponsored police force for the province is even more notional. Instead, the force on the ground is the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA is the big winner in NATO's war against Milosevic; its leaders are now determined not to lose the peace. Even as NATO troops moved into Kosovo, the KLA was rushing its forces ahead of them to seize the political initiative. KLA representatives have occupied the administrative posts vacated by Serb officials, and also filled the positions that might have been taken by the forces of local Albanian rivals like the pacifist Ibrahim Rugova, sidelined by the war....."

Electronic Telegraph 7/22/99 Tim Butcher and Patrick Bishop "....NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia had almost no military effect on the regime of President Milosevic, which gave in only after Russia withdrew its diplomatic backing. This is the gloomy assessment of a private, preliminary review by Nato experts of the alliance's 78-day Operation Allied Force bombing campaign against Yugoslavia over Kosovo..... The main finding of the Nato inquiry is that despite the thousands of bombing sorties, they failed to damage the Yugoslav field army tactically in Kosovo while the strategic bombing of targets such as bridges and factories was poorly planned and executed. Changes are being considered within Nato, including the radical overhaul of how strategic targets are identified and considered for attack Any future operation by Nato is likely to involve heavier, more ruthless attacks on civilian targets such as power stations and water treatment plants at an earlier stage of the campaign...."

Itar-Tass 7/23/99 "...- Russian ambassador in Yugoslavia Yuri Kotov returned from Kosovo on Thursday dissatisfied with UN mission chief Bernard Kouchner explanations about Albanian repressions against the Serbs in the province. "I received an unconvincing answer. The French representative tried to calm me down with strange statistics which showed that if earlier three-four Serbs were killed each day, now only four-five Serbs are killed each week. I responded that, according to such a logic, there will be nobody to kill soon", the ambassador told Tass. "The situation in the province is extremely difficult. All reports about the murders, burglaries and repressions of the Serb and other non-Albanian population are true", the ambassador said...."

New York Times 7/22/99 Judith Miller "...Stung by U.S. charges that the United Nations is moving too slowly in creating a police force and civil administration in Kosovo, a senior U.N. official suggested Wednesday that it was NATO members who were at fault for not fully deploying all their soldiers. Assistant Secretary General John Ruggie, the senior ranking American adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the United Nations was moving "according to plan" in Kosovo. Indeed, he added, people and resources were being sent to the region at an "unprecedented" pace...."

Stratfor.com 7/22/99 "...Serbian opposition leaders have postponed a major march on Belgrade due to admitted lack of interest, suggesting NATO's claims of the impending collapse of the Milosevic regime are a bit optimistic. The Yugoslav opposition is plagued by disunity, and by resentment of their Western sponsors. They also lack the vital support of the military and police apparatus. As long as Milosevic remains in power, Western Europe cannot hope to achieve its already fantastic goal of bringing peace, stability and prosperity to the Balkans. Milosevic is banking on this, and with little current threat to his regime, may just last long enough to cut a deal for his resignation. ..."

Washington Post 7/23/99 By R. Jeffrey Smith and Peter Finn "...The Kosovo Liberation Army missed a deadline today for certifying that a third of its weapons had been turned over to NATO-controlled stockades, as top NATO officials concluded that the ethnic Albanian rebel force had underreported its total arms holdings and needed to make a new accounting. NATO played down the missed deadline and gave the rebels a 48-hour extension. But some NATO and KLA officials acknowledged that fighters and local commanders were resisting giving up so many weapons...."

London Times 7/23/99 Eve-Ann Prentice "...The Nato bombing campaign caused $29.6 billion (£18.8 billion) damage to the Yugoslav economy, according to an independent Serb study. The vast majority of the costs, $23.2 billion, is the estimated loss to Yugoslavia's GDP over the next ten years. In a bleak forecast of future economic woes, the group of Serbian economists says: "Because of the war and its consequences, industrial production in Yugoslavia will fall by 44.4 per cent in 1999..."

Itar-Tass 7/23/99 "...Yugoslavia can send its troops to Kosovo any moment to protect the population if the United Nations fails to keep its obligations, Commander of Yugoslavia's Third Army Colonel-General Neboisa Pavkovic said on Friday...."

New York Times 7/25/99 Chris Hedges "…The mutilated bodies of 14 Serbian farmers who had been fatally shot were discovered on Friday night grouped around their harvesting machine in the worst single assault against the dwindling pockets of Serbian civilians left in Kosovo since NATO troops arrived last month. The killings, in which several of the men's bodies appeared to have been disfigured with blunt instruments, seemed likely to undermine still further the effort by the international community to keep the Serbian minority from fleeing Kosovo. More than 80,000 of the estimated 200,000 Serbs living in Kosovo when NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia ended have left since alliance troops arrived in mid-June. The soldiers have proved so far powerless to stop what Kosovo Serbs say is daily harassment, with repeated rumors of kidnappings and killings. The discovery of the bodies seems certain to accelerate the exodus. …"

AP Tom Cohen 7/25/99 "…NATO and the United Nations tried Sunday to bolster confidence in their Kosovo mission, shaken by the massacre of 14 Serb farmers in what officials called a deliberate attempt to wreck peacekeeping efforts. Belgrade demanded an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council on ways to stop ethnic violence in Kosovo and insisted Yugoslav forces be allowed back into the Serbian province, the state-run Tanjug news agency reported Saturday….The daily Glas, published in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, cited a Serb human rights group in Kosovo as saying that the body of a Serb farmer was found Saturday in the Gnjilane area. Tanjug reported that Kosovo peacekeeping troops had detained five ethnic Albanians suspected of trying to blow up the apartment of a Kosovo Serb publisher. There was no immediate confirmation from NATO…."

Reuters 7/25/99 "…Full-scale anarchy threatens to engulf Kosovo and could trigger off new international conflict, Yugoslav state-run news agency Tanjug said on Sunday. Its comments followed Friday's massacre of 14 Serb farmers, the single most serious incident in Kosovo since NATO troops occupied the province last month and Serb forces left. ..."

Stratfor.Com - CIS/Eastern Europe Intelligence Center 7/25/99 "…2235 GMT, 990725 Yugoslavia/UN - UN officials made a statement July 25 hinting that a massacre of 14 Serb villagers in Gracko on July 23 might have been an attempt to upset the maintenance of peace in the area. British Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson said, "A number of possibilities are being considered concerning the motive for the attack ... from something like local revenge to something more sinister in terms of an organized way." The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has sent forensic experts to help with the investigation. 1543 GMT, 990725 Russia/Yugoslavia - Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told reporters July 25 that over 140,000 Serbs, Gypsies and people of other nationalities were forced to flee their homes as a result of violence against non-Albanians in Kosovo. Ivanov said the violence was becoming "increasingly audacious" and "large scale" and called for the international community to act "resolutely and without bias" to correct the situation…1522 GMT, 990725 Yugoslavia/UN -Yugoslavia has demanded that an urgent session of the UN Security Council be held, following the massacre of 14 Serbs in the village of Gracko in Kosovo, according to Yugoslav state news agency Tanjung. The Yugoslav mission head to the UN, Vladislav Jovanovic, sent a letter to Security Council President Hasmy Agam of Malaysia calling for the body to take "urgent and concrete measures" to protect non-Albanians in Kosovo. Jovanovic's letter said the UN was "fully and exclusively responsible" for the incident and demanded Yugoslav troops and police be allowed to return to Kosovo as stipulated in the June 9 military technical agreement…."

Chicago Sun-Times 7/26/99 Julius Strauss, London Daily Telegraph "…NATO forces stepped up patrols in Serb villages and erected dozens of fresh checkpoints in Kosovo Sunday in an attempt to prevent further violence following the killings of 14 Serb farmers Friday. The moves were designed to calm Serb fears amid growing ethnic tension and stop retaliation…..The attack on the farmers was the worst incident of violence since NATO deployed forces in Kosovo six weeks ago and it has threatened to derail a fragile peace…."

The Washington Post 7/27/99 Colum Lynch "...The chief of the U.N.'s refugee agency today chided the world's richest countries for neglecting Africa while pumping billions of dollars into the refugee crisis in Kosovo. Japanese diplomat Sadako Ogata, speaking before the U.N. Security Council, said there are 6 million refugees and internally displaced people in Africa, several times more than in Kosovo. Failure to deal with Africa's humanitarian problems, she warned, would give the appearance that the council has a double standard, one for Europeans and another for Africans...."

AP 7/27/99 "...Police in Albania arrested a top Italian mob boss Tuesday with the help of investigators from southern Italy, Italian police officials said in Rome. Authorities allege that Giuseppe Muolo leads a clan of the United Sacred Crown, a crime syndicate based in Puglia, the region that makes up the ``heel'' of the Italian mainland. For years, investigators have said mobsters from southern Italy have enjoyed a cozy relationship with criminals across the Adriatic in Albania...."

Washington Times 7/25/99 Andrew Gillagan (London Sunday Telegraph) "...Serious failings in intelligence, training, weapons and other hardware lay behind NATO's disappointing performance in Kosovo, according to extracts from a British Royal Air Force study seen by the London Sunday Telegraph. Intelligence reports about Serbian troop and equipment locations took up to three days to reach front-line attack squadrons, by which time the Serbs had changed position. Many pilots found themselves "bombing old tank tracks" or civilians as a result, the document says. U.S. intelligence "bureaucracy" is blamed...."

The Independent 7/27/99 Laura Rozen "...Fehmi Mucolli stood amid the charred ruins of his home yesterday and mourned the 44 members of his family massacred there by Serbian police. The toll is agonising, starting with his wife Hasime, son Avdulla, sister Nexhmije, sister-in-law, niece, and two nephews. ..."

Long Island Newsday 7/29/99 Mark Simon "...MORALITY? As I have read over the last few weeks of NATO's "moral victory" over Serbian dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, I've reflected on the almost simultaneous, allegedly CIA-aided capture, subsequent conviction and death sentence in Turkey of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan and the moral imperative in U.S. foreign policy. The United States and NATO took nine long years to confront Milosevic over Kosovo, nine years in which the Kosovo Albanians mounted a truly remarkable, nonviolent campaign against Serbian apartheid, aggression and the beginnings of ethnic cleansing-that is, routine harassment, beatings, torture and murder. The Kurds in Turkey, by contrast, don't even have the dubious benefit of a NATO military intervention. Striving for a measure of autonomy, they are up against the Turkish military, with the second largest army in NATO-and the worst human rights record. Why does the West turn a proverbial blind eye? The answer has little to do with morality..... "

Washington Post 7/30/99 Peter Finn "...-Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright received a rapturous reception from Kosovo Albanians here today, but a U.S. official said she cautioned their leadership that the Kosovo Liberation Army is moving too quickly to assert control over the battered Serbian province...."

newsmax.com 7/29/99 Chris Hedges, NY Times News Service "...The Kosovo Liberation Army has taken sweeping political control in Kosovo, establishing a network of self-appointed ministries and local councils, seizing businesses and apartments, and collecting taxes and customs payments in the absence of a strong international police presence. Despite a peace agreement that calls for an administration appointed by the United Nations and the fact that the ethnic Albanian militants have no legal standing, they have created a fait accompli. These days they talk not of ceding power to the United Nations but of cooperating as if they were equals.... What is happening in Kosovo is more than just liberation from Serbian rule, and the ramifications for Kosovo and the international powers that have set up a NATO protectorate are immense. The raw, often unschooled fighters have as their political patrons the government of Albania and seem to care little for the civilities of Western-style democracies. Violence has been rising steadily, especially against the remaining pockets of Serbian civilians. The looting and burning of Serb homes, as well as dozens of assassinations and kidnappings of Serbs and a few Albanians, including the massacre of 14 Serbian farmers Friday, speak of a province spinning into the kind of gunslinging and anarchy that has characterized Albania in the past few years...."

AP 7/29/99 "..."I hope that today we may pledge that here in Kosovo never again will people with guns come in the night, never again will houses and villages be burned, and never again will there be massacres and mass graves."

USIA 7/16/99 Wendy Lubetkin "....The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says it is increasingly alarmed by the number of attacks against Serbs and Roma [gypsies] in Kosovo, including killings, kidnappings and forced expulsions, and by what appears to be a "systematic campaign" to destroy Serb homes. "There have been a string of incidents this week involving minorities," said UNHCR spokesperson Kris Janowski. "Two refugees -- a Bosnian Serb and a Krajina Serb -- were abducted Monday from a refugee collective center in downtown Pristina. We had to move the entire collective center to another safer location." In Pristina earlier in the week, about a dozen homes and an Orthodox church were set on fire, and three Serbs were reported to have been shot, Janowski told a July 16 press briefing. In the Mitrovica region, a group of 29 mostly elderly Serbs and Roma turned up after being expelled from their homes and walking 80 kilometers through the mountains. In Prizren, in the space of less than one week, nearly 50 houses were set on fire in what UNHCR said appears to be "a systematic campaign" to destroy Serb homes...."

Reuters 7/28/99 Mark Heinrich "...A Kosovo Albanian family said NATO troops raided their home at dawn on Wednesday and ``acted like the Serbian police'' in detaining the head of the household and a son in a hunt for the killers of 14 Serbs. Relatives said the arrested son had been a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and had an automatic rifle and grenade which were seized by British military police. But they denied that anyone in the family or the ethnic Albanian inhabitants of their village, Veliki Alas, were implicated in Friday's ambush massacre of Serb farmers outside the neighbouring hamlet of Gracko...."

The Washington Post 7/29/99 William Booth "...The NATO bombs that crumpled the bridges of this Danube River city did more than disrupt road traffic; they severed the river. Now the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is vowing that it will not clear the waterway, or allow other European countries to do so, until the West rebuilds every one of the bridges destroyed during the Kosovo war. The Danube is not just a river; it is a continental artery through which 100 million tons of goods flow by barge. It is a crucial economic passageway that, with the help of canals, connects the ports of Northern Europe through Germany all the way to Sulina, Romania, on the Black Sea. But with three bridges destroyed here and another five disabled elsewhere, the Danube is blocked by debris and possibly unexploded ordnance. Thus, Milosevic has yet another trump card to play...."

Stratfor.com 7/29/99 "...The UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) reported July 27 that more than 173,000 ethnic Serbs, Gypsies and Montenegrins have fled Kosovo since the arrival of KFOR troops last month. The UNHCR estimated that almost 100,000 of those had moved into southern Serbia, with 41,000 more in the Belgrade area. The report said that while the situation in the area was not critical at the moment, it needed to be addressed before winter. UNHCR said it would need $20 million to secure food and shelter this winter for Serbs and Gypsies who have fled Kosovo. Eduardo Arboleda, acting UNHCR representative in Kosovo, said the major problem now facing the organization was the uncertainty involved in the amount and dispersal of the refugees in Serbia. The U.S. and its NATO allies have refused to send reconstruction aid to Serbia, and while they have not ruled out humanitarian aid, they have not dispatched much either...."

New York Times 7/31/99 Carlotta Gall "...The NATO police are holding three Kosovar Albanians as suspects in the murders of 14 Serbian farmers on July 23 in the village of Gracko, and NATO has sent weapons, ammunition and clothing to Britain for forensic analysis, officials said Friday. House-to-house canvassing and raids resulted in the arrests on Wednesday, said Col. Ian Waters, Provost Marshall and chief of the military police in Kosovo..."

Reuters 7/31/99 "... The Kosovo Liberation Army said Saturday Russian troops had attempted to arrest its chief of staff, General Agim Ceku, and branded the incident a premeditated political act. Hashim Thaqi, the KLA's political leader and head of a self- proclaimed Kosovo provisional government, said Ceku had been stopped by Russian soldiers in the town of Kijevo Saturday afternoon. ``It was an attempted arrest...I am very upset at what was done to him by the Russians,'' Thaqi told a news conference. ''As the interim government of Kosovo, we condemn this act as premeditated, with a political aim...."

UPI 7/31/99 Lisa Burgess "...Three separate units of U.S. soldiers came under heavy fire near the Kosovo village of Zitinje, U.S. Army officials said. No one was hurt in the attacks Friday night, or in the U.S. response, said, Maj. Carl Mahnken, a spokesman for Task Force Falcon, the U.S. military's 7,200-troop contribution to NATO's KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo. ..."

The Associated Press 7/31/99 "...More than 1,000 illegal immigrants in an old tugboat landed in southern Italy on Saturday under Italian military escort, the biggest single arrival in a weeks-long influx of Gypsies from Yugoslavia. Authorities said 489 of the 1,010 aboard were children. The would-be refugees burst into applause when they docked at the southern port of Bari...."

AP 7/31/99 "...A large explosion damaged a Serbian Orthodox church in the central of Kosovo's capital early Sunday, a NATO spokesman said. The blast at 1:20 a.m. local time (23:20 GMT) was heard throughout Pristina, setting off car alarms and sending a large cloud of smoke and dust into the air. ..."

Electronic Telegraph (UK) 8/1/99 Andrew Gilligan and Christina Lamb "...ALBANIANS in Kosovo are behaving as violently as the Serbs before them and taking advantage of Nato's presence to settle scores, Lt Gen Sir Mike Jackson, alliance commander, has told The Telegraph. In an exclusive interview, Gen Jackson said: "Too many Albanians haven't realised we're trying to do something new and different here. Some Albanians have behaved in a very similar way to those who have just left."..."

Electronic Telegraph (UK) 8/1/99 Philip Smucker "...THE Kosovo Liberation Army is fast establishing itself as the de facto government of Kosovo while the United Nations fails to set up a civilian administration and police force in the province. Despite being forced by Nato to surrender weapons, the KLA has formed an "interim government" which has seized control of government buildings and businesses. Ethnic Albanians are being helped to take over cafes, bars and small businesses previously owned by Serbs and gypsies...."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_408000/408122.stm 7/30/99 Alex Kirby "...A British scientist says the Americans' use of depleted uranium weapons in the war with Serbia is likely to cause 10,000 extra deaths from cancer. A British biologist, Roger Coghill, says he expects the depleted uranium (DU) weapons used by US aircraft over Kosovo will cause more than 10,000 fatal cancer cases. Mr Coghill, who runs his own research laboratory in south Wales, was speaking at a London conference called to discuss the use by American and British forces of DU in Iraq in the 1991 Gulf war....."

Agence France-Presse 8/1/99 "...Despite a series of visits by senior western officials urging them to stay, Kosovo's Serb population has steadily lost faith in the ability -- and the will -- of NATO-led peacekeepers to protect them. Since the entry of KFOR soldiers on June 12, the number of Serbs in Kosovo has plummeted from 150,000 to an estimated 30,000. And every day more leave, running away from intimidation and violence at the hands of ethnic Albanians seeking vengeance for the deaths and repression they themselves suffered from Serb soldiers, police and paramilitaries ..."

Reuters/FOX 8/1/99 "...The U.N. chief in Kosovo condemned the bombing of a new Serbian Orthodox cathedral Sunday and a church leader alleged it was part of a systematic campaign by ethnic Albanian extremists... Kouchner said it appeared four of six explosive charges placed at the site had gone off. Father Sava, a senior member of the Orthodox Church in Kosovo, said more than 30 Orthodox churches or monasteries had been damaged or destroyed since Serb forces withdrew from Kosovo in June....."

Reuters · UPI 8/2/99 Mark Heinrich "...Thousands of ethnic Albanians have fled into Kosovo from other parts of Serbia, complaining of persecution by security forces, U.N. staff said Monday. It said Serbian troops forced by NATO bombing to withdraw from Kosovo in June were reliably reported to be harassing Albanians living just outside the province in other areas of southern Serbia. Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, said its workers had investigated the situation on both sides of the boundary on July 22-23. "There are some 4,500 ethnic Albanians who have crossed into Kosovo from the municipalities of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja since the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo," he told a news conference...."

Electronic Telegraph 8/2/99 Andrew Gilligan Christina Lamb "...ALBANIANS in Kosovo are behaving as violently as the Serbs before them and taking advantage of Nato's presence to settle scores, Lt Gen Sir Mike Jackson, alliance commander, has told The Telegraph. In an exclusive interview, Gen Jackson said: "Too many Albanians haven't realised we're trying to do something new and different here. Some Albanians have behaved in a very similar way to those who have just left." ..."

Reuters 7/31/99 "...A Serb farmer was shot dead while picking plums in southeast Kosovo on Saturday, a U.S. peacekeeping force spokesman said. Captain Pat Sweeney said U.S. troops rushed to the scene of the 11 a.m. (0900 GMT) shooting in Stanisor, a village outside the regional hub of Gnjilane, but apprehended no one. U.S. military police launched an inquiry...."

ZNet - British Independent 6/99 Robert Fisk "...NATO killed far more Serb civilians than soldiers during its 11-week bombardment of the country and most of the Yugoslav Third Army emerged unscathed from the massive air attacks on its forces in Kosovo, according to evidence emerging in Yugoslavia. ....Yugoslav military sources said that more than half the 600 or so soldiers who died in Serbia were killed in guerrilla fighting with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rather than by Nato bombing. ....Wartime statistics are notoriously unreliable, but investigations by Western correspondents and humanitarian agencies of Nato bombing incidents appear to confirm the official civilian casualty toll of around 1,500. At least 450 of these died in Nato's repeated "mistakes", when alliance aircraft bombed a train at Grdelica, a bridge at Varvarin, housing estates at Surdulica, Aleksinac and Cuprija, a bus at Luzane, an Albanian refugee convoy in Kosovo and made other attacks on civilians. Many others died in what Nato referred to as "collateral damage" in attacks around Belgrade, Kraljevo, Kragujevac, Nis and Novi Sad...."

Reuters 8/2/99 "...A U.S. soldier was electrocuted in southeast Kosovo when the radio antenna on his armored patrol vehicle touched an overhead power line, a spokesman for the NATO-led peace force said Monday... "

Boston Herald 8/2/99 Don Feder "... The families of 14 Serb farmers murdered in Kosovo must take comfort in National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's response to the massacre, ``It is profoundly wrong and unacceptable'' - harsh words, indeed. The bodies were found grouped around farm equipment in the village of Gracko. Victims' faces had been mutilated beyond recognition. ....Are Berger and his boss Bill Clinton shocked by this turn of events? Opponents of NATO's crusade predicted that if the West won the war, returning Albanians would purge the province of Serbs and Gypsies....Each day brings new reports of atrocities against Serbs - the murder of a professor at the University of Pristina, the killing of a married couple near the town of Gnijlane, Orthodox monasteries destroyed, 15 houses a day torched in Prizren, kidnappings, torture, beatings and evictions...."

Jane's Defence Weekly 8/4/99 Zoran Kusovac "...According to unsubstantiated reports Russia or elements in Russia are believed to have supplied air defence units of the Yugoslav Air Force with elements of between six and 10 S-300PM (NATO Codename: SA-10b 'Grumble') long-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems just weeks before NATO launched its bombing campaign on 24 March. Several unrelated sources claim the systems were delivered incomplete, without the 36D6 ('Clam Shell') target designation and tracking radar. Sources within Serbia claim the S-300 deliveries were interrupted by the bombing, and the radars never reached Serbia...."

Air Force Magazine 8/4/99 John Tirpak "...Two months after the bombs stopped dropping in Yugoslavia, the Lessons Learned industry in Washington is cranked up and in full swing. The debate over the victory in Operation Allied Force--how big it was, what the decisive factors were, who gets the credit, and what could have been done better--will probably rage on for some time. Indisputable are these facts: For the first time in history, the application of airpower alone forced the wholesale withdrawal of a military force from a disputed piece of real estate. The US Air Force was the chief engine of the campaign, carrying out more strike and support missions than any other service or any Allied partner. Precision guided weapons and stealth met or exceeded expectations. The 78-day operation was successfully conducted with the loss of only two Allied aircraft and no Allied combat casualties. A greater percentage of the active and reserve components of the Air Force was committed to the air campaign than was called on for either Vietnam or Desert Storm. DoD's own lessons learned apparatus is already in place....."

Stratfor.Com CIS/Eastern Europe Intelligence Center 8/2/99 "...2037 GMT, 990802 Yugoslavia - An influential group of Serb economists, politicians, clergy and intellectuals have proposed an anti-government rally for later this month in Belgrade..... This will be the first anti-government rally to be held in the capital city, another sign of the increasing pressure on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to step down from office...."

Reuters 8/3/99 "...Jane's Defence Weekly said in a report to be published on Tuesday that Russia was believed to have supplied Serbia with air defense missiles before NATO started its bombing campaign against Kosovo in March.

"According to unsubstantiated reports, Russia or elements in Russia are believed to have supplied air defense units of the Yugoslav Air force," the report said. The weapons would have been received while a United Nations arms embargo on Yugoslavia was in force. A preview of the report was released on Monday. Russia has denied the claims, it said...."

USA Today 8/3/99 Jack Kelley "...Despite the presence of NATO troops and U.S. appeals for tolerance, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have stepped up what appears to be an increasingly organized and violent campaign to force out the 30,000 Serbs still living in the province. Ethnic Albanian men, armed with guns and carrying expulsion orders stamped by Kosovo Liberation Army officials - the de facto government leaders - are going door-to-door, assaulting Serbs and giving them only hours to leave. Monday, they began distributing leaflets with the same message. "Serb dogs: You are in Albanian land and should leave if you want to live," read the leaflet written in Cyrillic and distributed in Serb areas of Mitrovica, northwest of Pristina. Muje Gjonbalaj, installed by the KLA as Kosovo's deputy minister for reconstruction and development, said, "The Serbs need to understand that they are in our country now." His office is distributing the expulsion orders. "They should go back to where they belong," he said....Many ethnic Albanians, including members of the KLA, say they are no longer bent on revenge, but they concede they will not be satisfied until all Serbs have left Kosovo and it can be established as an "independent and pure" ethnic Albanian homeland. "The Serbs have a choice: leave or be killed," says Ali Kelmedni, a 21-year-old KLA fighter. "We have every right to do what we want to them. No one is going to stop us. No one is going to tell us we can't." ..."

Original Sources (www.originalsources.com) 8/2/99 Mary Mostert "..." 'The only political group that has any structure is the K.L.A.,' said Baton Haxhiu, the editor of Koha Ditore, an Albanian-language daily. "It is using it to take power, backed eventually by a police and a national guard force it alone will control. It will be very hard to turn Albania into Kosovo, but I expect very easy to turn Kosovo into Albania. Each day it is becoming more dangerous to think and speak independently.... Hedges reports, "In Prizren, German soldiers on Friday stumbled onto a cache of 10 tons of ammunition squirreled away by the rebels. There is an average of one murder a day, most often of a Serb, and three or four lootings and house burnings in Prizren, which is in many ways a typical city in postwar Kosovo. In Prizren the city hall and municipal buildings have been commandeered by the Kosovo Liberation Army. Former fighters sit in the offices and run the city. "In Pristina several large buildings have been taken over by the group and turned into ministries. Small cafes, shops, apartments and the huge shopping center in Pristina are in the hands of a rebel cadre. Most of these new entrepreneurs come from rural areas and have nothing but disdain for the Kosovo Albanian urban elite, who, they say, failed under Ibrahim Rugova to drive away the Serbs. Rugova, the nonviolent political leader of a faction of Kosovo Albanians, remains in exile in Italy after a brief visit to Kosovo, saying he has delayed his return because of concerns about his security in rebel territory..... Hashim Thaci, the KLA commander who was wined and dined by an adoring Madeleine Albright following the Rambouillet meetings in February, has "appointed himself Prime Minister and his friends and relatives to head various departments, including his uncle Azem Syla to the post of Defense Minister." Hedges reports. "Thaci's orders are usually delivered by bands of sunburned young men, many carrying concealed pistols. The orders are handed over with warnings that failure to comply will lead to beatings or death. "Thaci says he will govern Kosovo until parliamentary elections, which are expected to be scheduled sometime during the next nine months. But he does not speak of disbanding the structures that have been set up to allow the United Nations to assume responsibility. ...."

New York Times 8/3/99 Carlotta Gall "...The murders, abductions, threats and beatings of Serbs and Gypsies in Kosovo have largely been the work of members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, says Human Rights Watch in a report, asserting that neither the guerrilla army's leaders nor the international force are doing enough to stop the violence..."

NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE 7/29/99 Chris Hedges "...The Kosovo Liberation Army has taken sweeping political control in Kosovo, establishing a network of self-appointed ministries and local councils, seizing businesses and apartments, and collecting taxes and customs payments in the absence of a strong international police presence. Despite a peace agreement that calls for an administration appointed by the United Nations and the fact that the ethnic Albanian militants have no legal standing, they have created a fait accompli..."

Washington Post 8/4/99 Peter Finn "...Zoran Vujovic found his mother's body in her stylish two-bedroom apartment in the Sunny Hill section of Pristina. Her fully dressed corpse lay over the edge of the bathtub, her feet on the ground, her head in the water, where someone had held her until she drowned. Ljubica Vujovic, 78, was a lifelong resident of Kosovo. She was also a Serb, and in the new Kosovo that is enough to get you killed..."

American Spectator 8/99 Jeremy Rabkin "...As the air war continued without success, NATO became more aggressive in its targeting. It dropped cluster bombs from high altitudes, which guaranteed civilian casualties. Dozens of hospitals, schools, and churches were hit, so many as to raise reasonable questions about NATO strategy. Oil refineries and chemical plants were also bombed, allowing toxic wastes to spill into rivers and farm fields, again raising questions about the degree of caution in NATO targeting. In deliberately destroying electric power plants and water pumping stations, NATO seemed to be pursuing a strategy designed to impose suffering on civilians--knowing that such hardships could have particularly devastating consequences for children, the ill, and the elderly. The Geneva Convention on protection of civilians in wartime (signed by all NATO states) clearly condemns such actions..... The case against NATO's bombing campaign doesn't rest merely on a hostile interpretation of small details in the relevant Geneva Convention. By the end of the air campaign, Serb authorities reported at least 2,000 civilian deaths, with many thousands more injured. That is greater than the number of Albanians killed in Kosovo in the months preceding the air war. Serb forces committed many more murders under cover of the air campaign, perhaps over 9,000. But deaths attributable to NATO bombing are at least as many as the initial killing NATO intervened to stop. It is hard to dismiss demands for international scrutiny of NATO tactics as a mere propaganda ploy...."

http://asia.yahoo.com/headlines/030899/world/933671460-90803091157.newsworld.html 8/3/99 AFP "...The head of the UN interim administration in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, on Tuesday backpedalled over comments he made the day before that "11,000 people died" in the province in the Serb military operation against ethnic Albanians. His spokeswoman, Nadia Younes, said Kouchner's "statement reflected what many people believe to be the potential number of victims, based on reports of mass graves in Kosovo received to date from all sources." She added: "Most of these reports are, as yet, unconfirmed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). ..."

Itar-Tass 8/4/99 "...Head of the U.N. mission to Kosovo Bernard Kouchner said he had made a big mistake by overestimating casualties in the Kosovo war. Two days ago Kouchner said that 11,000 people died in the Kosovo war by quoting the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia. "I had had so many meetings with peoples and it seems to me that this number corresponds to reality, but I was wrong," he recognised. On Monday, the U.N. mission head visited one of the mass burials in the north of Kosovo. An official of the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, Paul Risley, said that it is too early to name the total number of killed Kosovars, adding that according to certain international organisations, a total of 7,000 people died in the Kosovo war...."

Stratfor.com 8/4/99 "...1834 GMT, 990804 Yugoslavia - Bernard Kouchner, head of the UN mission to Kosovo, has retracted statements made on August 2 that as many as 11,000 ethnic Albanians had been killed in Kosovo, saying the figure was an overestimation. He stated, "I had had so many meetings with people and it seems to me that this number corresponds to reality, but I was wrong." An official of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Paul Risley, said it was premature to give a solid figure, but that some international organizations had put the number at a total of 7,000. ...."

http://originalsources.com/OS8-99MQC/8-5-1999.1.shtml 8/5/99 Mary Mostert "...In a recent commentary, we discussed a report of NBC's Andrea Mitchell in which she said that the number of Albanians killed in Kosovo during the war appeared to be in the three to six thousand range, not 100,000 as Secretary of Defense William Cohen and others were predicting." Even before the bombing started, I warned that the public was not being told the truth by the Clinton Administration. (See: http://originalsources.com/OS3-99MQC/3-11-1999.1.shtml-Peacekeeping: Albanians Terrorize Kosovo, Clinton Threatens to Bomb Milosevic)The Serbs had been demonized by the Clinton Administration and by CNN especially, once again taking the Muslim, Nazi, Nationalism side of an argument, while CLAIMING to be supporting "humanitarianism." Coming just as the Cox report was about the be released, the bombing of Yugoslavia seemed an easy way to get Clinton's reprehensible behavior in a variety of situations off the front pages. Obviously, Clinton and Albright thought a couple of days of bombing would make the Serbs give up. It didn't. .....In fact, I was threatened a few times that all kinds of things would happen to me if I didn't stop my skepticism of those numbers. My favorite number, which not even NATO is now defending, was Jamie Shea's statement that "100,000 babies" had been "born in refugee camps to Albanian women." (See: http://originalsources.com/OS5-99MQC/5-26-1999.1.shtml- NATO Says 200,000 Albanian Women Gave Birth to 100,000 Babies in Two Months?) ....The FBI sent a team over to investigate two of the seven sites listed in the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes, one where the indictment said six persons were murdered and the other 20. The team included 65 persons and including graphic artists and demolition experts. They took 107,000 pounds of equipment, but we have seen no reports that they discovered any new mass graves in the few weeks that they spent there. "Although there have been reports that a hundred or more other sites have been reported, the FBI team came home on July 1. This suggests that there was not as much demand for their services as the news stories suggest. An AP story on June 18 said that at least 10,000 Albanians were killed in more than 100 massacres, but as yet very few mass graves in addition to those listed in the Milosevic indictment have been have been identified in news stories...."

Stratfor.com 8/6/99 "...Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported August 5 that a power plant in Bulgaria was unexpectedly shutdown August 4, leaving Kosovo without electricity. AFP cited officials with the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) stating that the power outage began on August 4 and could last until August 6. ...Stratfor has worked diligently to confirm this story independently, although no other media outlets have reported it thus far....

First, the story is entirely genuine, and a Bulgarian power station has been shut down. This is possible, although it fails to explain why the power is not off in Serbia as well... The second possibility is that the power from Bulgaria is being terminated in Nis, effectively blacking out Kosovo. The Serb government may have been in control of this switch for quite some time, and has now decided to flicker the lights in Pristina. Again, the motivation behind this move is unclear, because it is only a temporary tactic and could have been used more effectively during the NATO bombing campaign or earlier in the NATO occupation. Still, the idea that the Serbs shut off the lights would explain the extent of the blackout in Kosovo, in that Serbia could shut off more than just the Bulgarian feed. Finally, the power cutoff could have occurred in Pristina itself, although whose aims this would serve is unclear.... 2310 GMT, 990806 Kosovo [http://www.stratfor.com/CIS/commentary/c9908052340.htm], BBC and Macedonian radio have both reported that most of Kosovo is without power due to a shutdown at a Bulgarian power plant. Officials at the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. State Department said they had no knowledge of the outage. Further attempts to contact the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the KFOR headquarters in Pristina have been unsuccessful. The lack of power in Kosovo is deemed by Stratfor to be a serious matter, especially considering that Agence France-Presse reported KFOR troops were being kept "busy" by irregular forces exploiting the darkness, although the story has been strangely absent from media reports coming from the region...."

UPI 8/5/99 "...Pekka Haavisto, the former Finnish environment minister, said today after a nine-day inspection trip to damaged industrial sites the panel found "lots of mercury, several hazardous or toxic substances" and added that groundwater might be contaminated at several sites. "There are certain environmental impacts and risks for health if immediate action is not taken," said Haavisto, chairman of the joint U. N. Environment program/U.N. Center for Human Settlements (Habitat) Balkans Task Force. But, he said, "Everybody is waiting for reports and scientific results before taking any action," adding, "It's safe to wait a couple of months." ..."

AP 8/6/99 "...Violent flare-ups involving NATO troops injured a Russian soldier and an ethnic Albanian and prompted a peacekeeping spokesman to express concern today about attacks on Kosovo peacekeepers. The violence overnight included three attacks on Russian soldiers at checkpoints in eastern Kosovo, an exchange of gunfire with people trying to attack a Serb home in the southern city of Urosevac, and three cases in which shots were fired at other NATO checkpoints or patrols. One Russian soldier was wounded in the thigh, and an ethnic Albanian was seriously injured in the incidents. NATO forces detained a total of 15 suspects, said Maj. Jan Joosten, spokesman for the peacekeeping force in Pristina known as KFOR. ``KFOR is very concerned about the current attacks against its soldiers,'' Joosten said, adding that the rules of engagement allow the foreign troops a robust response to any attack The violence came amid a series of attacks on minority Serbs by ethnic Albanians. More than 160,000 Serbs have fled the province as a result, and Belgrade has protested that the NATO forces are failing to protect both sides equally. ..."

Stratfor.Com 8/6/99 "...Montenegro's Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader Zarko Rakcevic said on August 6 that the country would not pursue independence in the blood-letting manner of Croatia, Bosnia or Kosovo. At the same time, Rakcevic also pointed out that the United States and other countries had "no right to eliminate the right of self-determination to Montenegro." Both of these statements follow yesterday's adoption by a six-party coalition in Podgorica of the Platform on the New Relationship Between Serbia and Montenegro, a 15-page proposal defining the terms for a union of the states of Serbia and Montenegro. Montenegrin Prime Minister Vujanovic said the document would be forwarded to Slobodan Milosevic for consideration within six weeks, after which time Montenegro will begin a referendum on independence if declined. ..."

Reuters 8/3/99 "...Jane's Defence Weekly said in a report to be published on Tuesday that Russia was believed to have supplied Serbia with air defense missiles before NATO started its bombing campaign against Kosovo in March. "According to unsubstantiated reports, Russia or elements in Russia are believed to have supplied air defense units of the Yugoslav Air force," the report said. The weapons would have been received while a United Nations arms embargo on Yugoslavia was in force. A preview of the report was released on Monday. Russia has denied the claims, it said. The author told Reuters the information came from military and political sources in Russia and four countries in the region...."

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED NPR NETWORK 8/4/99 "... SIEGEL: Now, your story in "Jane's Defense Weekly" acknowledges that the Russian government denies this altogether. As you understand it, was it the Russian government that was making such a shipment or was it elements of, perhaps, the former Russian military who were selling them independently? BEAVER: Well, the real problem you have with these sort of sales, particularly of what appears to be second-hand equipment, is you just have no idea where they may have come from. Personally, I do not believe that President Yeltsin is foolish enough to break a U.N. arms embargo. I believe it when the Russian embassy tells us, and when the Russian government tells us that they did not violate international law. However, that doesn't stop groups within Russia from supplying equipment. We know that already in the last five years that dissident groups in Russia have supplied the Bosnian Serbs with surface-to-air missiles, including one called the SA-16, the "Strela", which was used to shoot down a British C-Harrier jet and possibly a French Mirage jet, as well. So we know that weapons got through to Bosnia, there's no reason why they shouldn't have got through to Yugoslavia...."

Los Angeles Times 8/5/99 Scott Glover "...Offering chilling new evidence of widespread, calculated revenge slayings by ethnic Albanians, a top NATO investigator said Wednesday that the majority of killings under investigation in and around Kosovo's capital are apparent executions in which the Serbian victims had their hands bound and were made to kneel before being shot in the head. These characteristics were common in "dozens" of slayings committed since NATO-led peacekeepers occupied Kosovo on June 12, said British Maj. John Wooldridge, a senior investigator with the Royal Military Police. Wooldridge deemed the killings "executions" by Albanians in which ethnic hatred is the presumed motive...."

Associated Press 8/8/99 Anne Gearan "...The Clinton administration, dismayed by the success of anti-American propaganda worldwide, is striking back with an information offensive of its own: a State Department unit that will control the flow of government news overseas, especially during crises. The new International Public Information group, or IPI, will coordinate the dissemination of news from the State Department, Pentagon and other U.S. agencies.....In the recent Kosovo war, the Pentagon, State Department and White House poured out information each day but no single agency tried to assemble it so that the United States spoke with a coordinated message overseas. The group came about partly in response to the spread of unflattering or erroneous information about the United States received abroad via electronic mail, the Internet, cellular telephones and other communications advances. ...President Clinton signed a directive April 30, in the thick of the Kosovo war, that set out plans for IPI, although the White House did not formally announce the group's existence or role. An unclassified mission statement obtained by The Associated Press described IPI's role: ``Effective use of our nation's highly developed communications and information capabilities to address misinformation and incitement, mitigate inter-ethnic conflict, promote independent media organizations and the free flow of information, and support democratic participation will advance our interests and is a critical foreign policy objective,'' the document said...."

Reuters 8/7/99 "...NATO troops raided a house being used by Kosovo's self-styled public order minister and several aides, seizing weapons in a crackdown on criminal intimidation in the capital Pristina, the KFOR peace force said on Saturday. Friday night's action came two days after ``Minister of Public Order'' Rexhep Selimi was briefly detained for threatening a peacekeeping patrol with a pistol and driving around in a vehicle with a flashing blue light... But the Kosovo Liberation Army has formed a provisional government that has apparently been used as a cover by shadowy factions with paramilitary muscle to persecute opponents, both ethnic Albanians and Serbs, critics say. ..."

New York Times 8/8/99 Chris Hedges "...Kosovar Albanians, along with their ethnic kin in Albania, Macedonia and Serbia, have long dreamed of a "Greater Albania." The departure of the Serbian border police, opening up the frontier, has given most a taste of what such a state might be like. Not many seem to like it. "Girls are kidnapped, taken we expect to work as prostitutes in Italy, cars are stolen or hijacked, houses are looted and there are shootings at night," said Masar Shala, the Mayor appointed by the Kosovo Liberation Army, known as the K.L.A. "The refugees who are coming home, many of whom have driven from Germany with their families, are systematically stopped just before they enter Kosovo and robbed of all their money," he continued. "Apartments in the city have been seized by Albanian gangs and rented out. The only thing we lack is drug dealing, but that will probably arrive shortly." ...."

AP Tom Cohen 8/8/99 "...On a sun-drenched afternoon surrounded by thousands of supporters, former guerrilla commander Hashim Thaci promised Kosovo's ethnic Albanians that one day their will would decide the future of their homeland. For now, though, Thaci's Kosovo Liberation Army is trying to impose its will on the Serbian province and grab as much power as it can in the postwar disorder. As the United Nations struggles to set up a civil administration to run Kosovo and more than 35,000 NATO troops provide security, the KLA has appointed its people to fill local leadership positions throughout the province, taken over former state-run property and requisitioned apartments and vehicles....U.N. spokesman Kevin Kennedy acknowledged that a KLA attempt to assume authority could be a problem, but expressed optimism that the province's international administrators would offer a better alternative. ``You're going to have in here a civil administration that draws on experience from many countries in areas that the KLA cannot match,'' he said...."

Stratfor.com 8/8/99 "...1536 GMT, 990808 Yugoslavia - A forceful explosion shook Pristina the night of August 7. Afterward, gunfire was heard, and KFOR patrols began to police the streets in heavy numbers. 1515 GMT, 990808 Yugoslavia - Armed ethnic Albanians attacked a Serb residential area in the city of Kosovska Mitrovica on August 7. The French peacekeepers called to the scene reported a grenade attack in addition to the use of light arms. The event occurred after ethnic Albanian protestors attempted to cross a bridge that divides the city's ethnic Albanian and Serb populations. ..."

FoxNews 8/8/99 Reuters "...The head of the international KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo said Monday that attacks on his soldiers at the weekend could mean the KLA guerrilla group had lost control over hard-liners. Lieutenant-General Sir Mike Jackson told the Scotsman newspaper in an interview that the KLA leadership needed to convince its ethnic Albanian supporters not to carry out revenge attacks against Serb civilians and peacekeepers trying to protect them......"

Boston Globe - anitwar.com 8/6/99 Joe Lauria "... ''We have found that on many of these targeted sites there are serious environmental consequences and probably also serious health consequences,'' said Pekka Haavisto, a former Finnish environmental minister, who heads the UN Environmental Program/Habitat Balkans Task Force...."

Washington Post 8/8/99 Peter Finn "...For months now, the small republic of Montenegro has been the next explosion waiting to happen in the Balkans. As the Kosovo war came to a close in early June, many thought the pro-Western Montenegrin government was sure to clash with Serbia, its dominant partner in the uneasy Yugoslav federation headed by President Slobodan Milosevic. But it has not happened yet. And last week--in a strangely significant way--people here began to think it might never happen. The government of President Milo Djukanovic, which had already infuriated Serbia by declaring neutrality during NATO's war against Yugoslavia, on Thursday presented Belgrade with a plan to redefine the relationship between the sister republics, abolishing the federal entity called Yugoslavia and creating, instead, a union of two equal states with separate defense, foreign policy and monetary structures...."

Reuters 8/9/99 "…NATO peacekeepers arrested 59 people in 24 hours and seized several arms caches in a mounting struggle against violence in Kosovo in which a girl was seriously injured by a grenade, officials said on Monday. Peacekeeping soldiers have also been assaulted and shot at in recent days in what analysts say appears to be a creeping challenge to Kosovo's transitional international authorities by armed nationalists operating in various guises…."

 

The Associated Press 8/9/99 Tom Cohen "... Surrounded by the charred hulks of other homes deserted by Serbs, flames and smoke poured from a house Monday in the Kosovo village of Zitinje. The burning of every Serb remnant in the village except for a small church - along with a third day of scuffling between French soldiers and ethnic Albanians trying to march to the Serb part of the town of Kosovska Mitrovica - showed the hatred that persists in Kosovo eight weeks after the end of NATO's bombing campaign. Most of the province's estimated 200,000 Serbs have fled since the war ended. The 250 Serbian residents of Zitinje, 25 miles southeast of Pristina, left last week, and U.S. troops moved in to protect their belongings and houses from revenge-minded ethnic Albanians. But when NATO forces decreased their presence on Friday, ethnic Albanians struck quickly. By Monday, every house with a Serbian Orthodox cross painted on it was destroyed...."

WorldnetDaily 8/10/99 Stephan Archer "...The lawsuit filed against President Clinton, the Department of Defense and Congress for their part in the bombing of Yugoslavia was thrown out of northern New York State's U.S. District Court after Judge Frederick Scullin decided the plaintiffs lacked standing. Robert Schulz, a former New York talk show host, and three other co-plaintiffs -- Gary Loughrey, Stephen Oughton, and Milan Pavlovic -- initially had filed the lawsuit calling on President Bill Clinton to stop the war in Yugoslavia. After the war ended, Schulz and the other plaintiffs continued to pursue the lawsuit demanding the court to order the troops -- many of who are still in active duty in Yugoslavia -- home. Now the plaintiffs will have to appeal to a higher court -- the Federal Court of Appeals -- after finding out yesterday that Judge Scullin has ordered the case be dismissed. According to the judge's decision, in order to establish standing, "Plaintiffs must show personal injury fairly traceable to Defendants' conduct, which would likely be redressed by the requested relief." The decision further explains that "review of the standing requirement becomes especially rigorous where a federal court is asked to decide whether an action taken by either the Legislative or Executive branches of the federal government was unconstitutional." Although all the plaintiffs have standing as U.S. citizens and taxpayers, the court early on decided these two claims on their own weren't enough to assert standing...."

Fox News Channel Web site 8/10/99 Tom Cohen "...More than 80 policemen sent from Nepal and Bangladesh to work in Kosovo don't have the basic equipment or training for the province's hostile environment, the commander of the U.N.'s international police force said Tuesday. The 50 officers from Nepal and 36 from Bangladesh are "on hold" for now, said Col. Michael Jorsback of Sweden. Jorsback is chief of staff of the U.N. International Police Force in Kosovo, which was created to help fight ethnic violence and rampant crime...."

Stratfor.com 8/10/99 "....On August 8, French troops clashed with ethnic Albanians on the bridge in Mitrovica, that divides the ethnically Albanian and Serbian parts of the city. In the third day of clashes in Mitrovica, about 150 Albanian protesters, yelling anti-French slogans, were pushed back by French soldiers armed with rifles. The past weekend saw numerous incidents of anti-Serb violence conducted by ethnic Albanians, some of whom were directly involved in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In addition, according to KFOR spokesman Major Roland Lavoile, KFOR continued to discover illegal arms caches along with uniforms and supplies linking the finds to the KLA. Most recently, on August 8, British troops found a number of weapons in a house in Lipljan searched in connection with a wave of grenade attacks. Along with weapons, "KLA Interior Ministry Police" identification cards and uniforms were found in the house. The evidence linking the KLA to violent activities and the series of clashes between the KLA and KFOR in Mitrovica illustrate both the continued threat posed by the KLA and, significantly, the rising tensions between the KLA and NATO peacekeepers....."

UPI 8/10/99 "...House and Senate have challenged President Clinton to say whether NATO's new "strategic concept" - security enforcement even beyond the alliance's traditional European borders - is binding on the United States, says Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan. If it is, Roberts says, it should be submitted to the Senate as a treaty to be ratified. If it's not, "What the heck are we doing in Bosnia and Kosovo and all those other places? He's stuck between a rock and a hard place," ..."

The Times of London 8/10/99 John Laughlin "...'Since law enforcement is probably the single most important sovereign power, it is threatened if it is transferred to unaccountable bureaucrats' At least Louise Arbour never minces her words. The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia believes that she and her court have usherd in a new era in international relations. "We have passed," she intoned last week, "from a regime of co-operation between states to a regime of constraining states." Miscreants can now be punished, was her triumphant cry. This followed the decision, announced, on July 28, to refer Croatia to the Security Council of the UN for "failing to comply with its international obligations". This serious charge is the culmination of a long dispute over Operation Storm, the police and military action in August 1995 which resulted in the "ethnic cleansing" of hundreds of thousands of Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia....."

UPI 8/11/99 "...Yugoslavia has accused NATO countries, including Canada, of committing war crimes during their bombing campaign over its territory this spring. The accusation is contained in a report released by the Yugoslav Embassy in Ottawa today. The report carries pictures of mutilated bodies and damaged buildings, which the embassy says is evidence of attacks on Yugoslav civilians during NATO's 78-day bombing campaign. An embassy official says the damaged buildings included schools, hospitals and residential houses. She says damage to military targets was "minimal."..."

International Action Center Ramsey Clark 8/11/99 The Indictment 8/5/99 "...Charging William J. Clinton, The Government Of The United States, NATO And Others With International Crimes And Violations Of International And Domestic Laws Causing Deaths, Destruction, Injury And Suffering. The Charges (1)Planning and Executing the Dismemberment, Segregation and Impoverishment of Yugoslavia. (2)Inflicting, Inciting and Enhancing Violence Between and Among Muslims and Slavs. (3)Disrupting Efforts to Maintain Unity, Peace and Stability in Yugoslavia.

(4)Destroying the Peace Making Role of the United Nations. (5)Using NATO for Military Aggression Against, and Occupation of, Non Compliant Poor Countries. (6)Killing and Injuring a Defenseless Population Throughout Yugoslavia. (7)Planning, Announcing and Executing Attacks Intended to Assassinate The Head of Government, Other Government Leaders and Selected Civilians. (8)Destroying and Damaging Economic, Social, Cultural. Medical, Diplomatic and Religious Resources, Properties and Facilities Throughout Yugoslavia. (9)Attacking Objects Indispensable to the Survival of the Population of Yugoslavia. (10)Attacking Facilities Containing Dangerous Substances and Forces. (11)Using Depleted Uranium, Cluster Bombs and Other Prohibited Weapons. (12)Waging War on the Environment. (13)Imposing Sanctions Through The UN That Are A Genocidal Crime Against Humanity. (14)Creating An Illegal Ad-Hoc Criminal Tribunal To Destroy And Demonize Serb Leadership. (15)Using Controlled International Media To Create and Maintain Support For the U.S. Assault And To Demonize Yugoslavia, Slavs, Serbs and Muslims As Genocidal Murderers. (16)Establishing The Long term Military Occupation Of Strategic parts of Yugoslavia By NATO Forces. (17)Attempting to Destroy the Sovereignty, Right to Self Determination, Democracy and Culture of the Slavic and Other Peoples of Yugoslavia. (18)The Purpose Of The U.S. Being To Dominate, Control and Exploit Yugoslavia, Its People and Its Resources. (19)The Means Of The U.S. Being Military Force and Economic Coercion...."

International Herald Tribune 8/12/99 Cornelio Sommaruga "...GENEVA - The writer is president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Fifty years ago this Thursday, representatives of some 58 countries gathered in Geneva, with the ghastly memories of World War II still vivid, to place their nations' names at the bottom of a new treaty. Like the world around, this treaty, composed of four different ''conventions,'' was born of the flames of war. ...... This principle - the separation between causes of war and rules of war - became increasingly validated. In 1977, two additional protocols were added to the conventions to reaffirm the sanctity of civilian populations in both international and internal armed conflict. The means at the disposal of the warrior are not to be unlimited. Indiscriminate destruction is not permissible. Targeting civilians is prohibited. The environment must not suffer lasting damage. Of late, though, this fundamental principle has come under attack. Wars, or at least some of them, are now said to be fought for ''humanitarian reasons,'' meaning that one side is humanitarian and the other diabolical. This caricature of war could lead to discrimination against the victims, since there will be the ''good'' victims of the ''humanitarian'' side and the ''bad'' victims among those who oppose the ''humanitarian'' intervention. In strange and unforeseen ways, the conventions are suffering from an overdose of popularity, since it is because the world at large is so disgusted by acts of barbarity that governments and supranational bodies see it as their duty to intervene more and more to try to curb some of the more lurid atrocities that emerge here and there. The intention of the International Committee of the Red Cross is not to say that the international community should refrain from embarking on missions, including military missions, to try to counter acts of terror. The intention is to say that such endeavors must not be wolves in sheep's clothing. War remains war, and humanitarian operations must remain humanitarian missions. A victim of war is a victim of war...."

Agence France-Presse 8/11/99 "..."Thugs" have rid the Kosovo capital of Pristina of virtually all its Serbian minority, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said Wednesday in its strongest condemnation yet of the reverse ethnic cleansing that has hit the province. "UNHCR views with increasing alarm the situation of the remaining Serb minority in the city," agency spokesman Ron Redmond told journalists here. He added that there were now only an estimated 1,000-2,000 Serbs left in Pristina. That compares with an estimated population of around 40,000 before the NATO-Yugoslavia conflict, according to Serbian media, he said, and 27,000 according to a 1991 census...."

Reuters 8/11/99 "...(Reuters) - The top U.S. officer in Kosovo's peacekeeping force said Wednesday that ethnic Albanian intimidation of minority Serbs appeared organized and systematic in his operating sector. But Brigadier General John Craddock, commander in the southeast military zone, stopped short of blaming the erstwhile guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the only domestic group with broad coercive means, for a spate of murders and arson. ``Rogue elements'' whose links with the KLA were unclear as well as ``disaffected former KLA members'' had been factors in armed violence, he told a news conference in Pristina.....

Chicago Sun-Times 8/12/99 Bob Novak "...It was pitch-black in much of NATO-occupied Kosovo the night of Aug. 4 as irregular Albanian forces took advantage of an unexplained, unannounced power outage to cause trouble. Such trouble is nothing new for Kosovo Force soldiers. Also customary is lack of information and even interest in official Washington about how and why the lights went out. Assaults by Albanians on Kosovo Force troops are increasing. Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Jackson, the British officer commanding the NATO troops, said this week that "I can't say I am fully confident" that the Kosovo Liberation Army commanders "are in full control" of Albanian hard-liners. With nearly all Serbs driven out of the province, NATO has broken its promise to follow a blood-and-iron policy in Kosovo that empowers the Albanians with peacemaking that protects the Serbs The fruits of "victory" for the Western alliance are bitter. Chaos in Kosovo belies NATO's unkept pledge to ensure ethnic peace and threatens serious trouble with Russia. In Washington, attention--much less criticism--is minimal. Those Republicans who had opposed intervention in the Balkans are not willing to challenge a victorious President Clinton. An exception is Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, a longtime critic who told me: "I think the situation in Kosovo today is worse now than it was a year ago."...."

Stratfor.com 8/12/99 "....0125 GMT, 990812 Yugoslavia - A border confrontation between Macedonian border guards and a group of Kosovar Albanians erupted on August 11, leaving one Kosovar Albanian wounded. The incident occurred near Skopje, an area plagued by border conflict, when Kosovar Albanians opened fire on the Macedonian patrol after it was discovered two of the Kosovar Albanians were without documents..."

Pacific Stars And Stripes 8/13/99 "...A NATO ally apparently leaked secret targeting information to Yugoslav officials during the U.S.-led air war, said Gen. Wesley Clark, the American four-star Army general who heads NATO. Clark, who declined to speculate about who had tipped the Yugoslavs to NATO's targets, said the security breach was "as clear as the nose on your" face. He declined to say what evidence led him to this conclusion or to describe the steps taken to stop the leaks. "I can't go into it," Clark, the supreme allied commander for Europe, said in an interview this week. "I have to just say it apparently happened and we are concerned about this."...."

Inside The Pentagon 8/12/99 "...Now that the Kosovo Implementation Force, known as KFOR, has largely secured the breakaway Serbian province following the June withdrawal of Yugoslavian army and paramilitary troops, U.S. military forces are beginning to turn their attention more to humanitarian assistance, according to Pentagon officials. Although destruction was not heavy in villages located in the southeast area of the province, which is now the U.S.-run sector, there is likely still work to be done repairing roads, bridges, and electricity and water supplies there, sources said. More damage may have been done in Kosovo by NATO bombs than the Yugoslavian military, which experts say appeared to have wanted to preserve the Serbian province rather than destroy it...."

The Guardian 8/12/99 Andrew Gray "...The United Nations refugee agency said yesterday it believed the Serb population of Kosovo's capital, Pristina, had shrunk to under 2,000 from an estimated 40,000 a few months ago. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees office said it was alarmed by the situation of Serbs in Kosovo, forced to flee by ethnic Albanian gangs using tactics similar to those used by Serbs earlier this year. ..."

Itar-Tass 8/13/99 "...The task of ensuring equal safety to all ethnic groups in Kosovo calls for an accelerated disarmament of the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army /KLA/ and the deployment of Serb police forces in the province, according to Russian deputy ambassador to the United Nations Gennady Gatilov. "It is extremely actual to ensure equal safety to all the ethnic groups in Kosovo in order to stop the continuing mass exodus of the non-Albanian population", he told Tass on Thursday and regretted that KFOR cannot fully cope with the task... "

Reuters 8/13/99 "...Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) political leader Hashim Thaqi said in an interview on Friday that the organisation would establish a defence force in the Yugoslav province, now ruled by an interim U.N. administration. He told Austria's Die Presse newspaper that the KLA, an ethnic Albanian group which fought a 16-month guerrilla campaign against Serb rule in Kosovo, would be split into three parts. The group signed a formal agreement with NATO in June under which its fighters were supposed to give up most of their main weapons within 90 days. ``We will form a political party, KLA members will take part in a new police force and we will have a military formation, a defence force, in Kosovo,'' the newspaper quoted him as saying...."

Wall Street Journal 8/13/99 Matthew Kaminski "...A hundred Serbs pile into a dusty schoolhouse for their first American-style town meeting. Capt. Tyrone Clifton of the U.S. 82nd Airborne stands ramrod straight at the head of the room, clutching his helmet tight against his chest. In the stern voice of a schoolmarm, he says he knows departing Yugoslav soldiers handed out machine guns and grenades to some of those assembled here. "Give them up," he barks...."

Cleveland Plain Dealer 8/7/99 Alex Dragnich "..."A propagandist cannibalizes an already existing stream; in a land where there is no water he digs in vain." - Aldous Huxley - I was reminded of Huxley's remark when it was recently disclosed that President Bill Clinton had set up a new group designed to influence "foreign audiences" in support of U.S. foreign policy and to counteract propaganda by enemies of the United States. It is of more than passing interest that Clinton issued the secret directive ordering the creation of the International Public Information group in the midst of his bombing of Yugoslavia. By that time it was clear to him that nearly all countries around the globe were critical of what we were doing. Not only the world's largest countries - China, India, Russia - but also medium and small nations were condemning the unprovoked attack on the Serbs. Even in the NATO countries much of the public disapproved. And in the United States, while it did not get on the evening newscasts, columnists across the political spectrum called the bombing an aggression against a sovereign state. It is in the Kosovo blunder where the Huxley quote is particularly apt. Enemy propagandists were able to "cannibalize an already existing stream." Our policies provided them with the ammunition that IPI, if it had existed, could have done little or nothing to counter. On the other hand, if U.S. actions had been seen as just and fair, enemy propagandists would "dig in vain." ..."

From AFIO [Association of Former Intelligence Officers] 8/11/99 "...In London, General Sir Michael Rose, former Commander of UN troops in Bosnia, dismissed the NATO bombing campaign as a tragic failure. Rose said that British politicians and NATO were running a propaganda campaign to persuade people that the air war met its objective. In the UK as well as in continental Europe and the US there are deep differences of opinion on many levels concerning the unilateral war on Yugoslavia, including the efficacy of airpower alone versus the need for ground forces or combined arms. The NATO air war strategy is said to have made the Yugoslav anti-guerilla campaign worse and expanded the humanitarian tragedy in Kosovo while doing next to nothing to interfere with it. The bombings were said to have been the trigger for much of the ethnic cleansing as well as many of the refugees. In Washington, the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Hon. Porter Goss, recently stated that, although there was no doubt that brutal actions and massacres took place, many of the figures used by the Administration and NATO in describing the wartime plight of Albanians in Kosovo now appear to be greatly exaggerated. "Yes, there were atrocities. But no, they don't measure up to the advance billing." For example, "600,000 Albanians were not trapped within Kosovo lacking shelter, short of food, afraid to go home or buried in mass graves" (President Clinton). Though thousands hid in Kosovo during the Yugoslav anti-KLA insurgent operations, they are found to be healthy. Kosovo's livestock, wheat and other crops are growing, not slaughtered wholesale or torched as reported earlier. Also, most of the "missing men," the 100,000 young Albanians who were reported to have all been killed, can be found at home - - but without jobs, sometimes engaged, along with KLA elements, in terrorism against Serb and Gypsy minorities as well as moderate Muslims in the province...."

Itar-Tass 8/13/99 "... Prosecutors of Belgrade, Nis and Novi Sad and of Kosovo's cities of Pristina and Prizren on Friday filed war crime charges against leaders of five Western states and NATO commanders. They sent the charges to district courts that are entitled by Serbian legislation for criminal investigations. Prosecutor-General Dragisa Krsmanovic told reporters that charges had been brought against US President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, their foreign and defense ministers, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana and NATO's Supreme Commander Europe Wesley Clark...."

Washington Times 8/11/99 Nikolaos Stavrou "... With the apparent toleration of KFOR a "state within a state" is fast becoming a reality in Kosovo, while porous borders with Albania assure an uninterrupted flow of weapons. Secure under the NATO umbrella, some enterprising KLA elements have reverted to lucrative smuggling activities, while others are busy setting up parallel administration in Western Macedonia -a prelude to a liberation movement there. Leaving little to chance, KLA's Washington supporters hold fast to the victim image to assure "understanding" of its murderous activities. When it comes to blond Balkan Muslims, Western journalists have shown a great deal of understanding. Rapes of Serbian nuns are reported as "assaults," and daily murders, abductions and disappearances are packaged as "understandable" acts of revenge...."

Miami Herald 8/9/99 "...NATO must stop the carnage against Serbs or lose its credibility. NATO's dubious victory in Kosovo would be hollow indeed if, in the end, it succeeds in saving ethnic Albanians but at the cost of driving all Serbs from the region. No, there's no evil twin of Slobodan Milosevic exhorting Kosovar Albanians to ``ethnically cleanse'' Serbians the way that the Yugoslavian dictator did against the Albanians. Milosevic was barbaric and efficient in his goal of ridding Kosovo of ethnic Albanians during NATO's 78-day bombing campaign. He drove 1.5 million people out of the province, killed 11,000, and sanctioned the rape and torture of others. Now the tables have been turned. Many returning Kosovar Albanians, though not all, have been on a vicious rampage of revenge and retribution. The violence is sickening: Fourteen farmers massacred as they returned from the field; villages emptied of every able-bodied Serbian; businessmen robbed of their cars, apartments and stripped of their businesses; families terrorized by rapes, kidnappings and tortures...."

New York Times 8/14/99 Carlotta Gall "...The U.N. administration gave its troops and police extra powers Friday to detain and even expel troublemakers from town or from Kosovo altogether, in a new attempt to control the violence and ethnic tension in the province. The regulation, which was signed by the U.N. special representative, Bernard Kouchner, is a direct reaction to the tussles French troops have had with noisy demonstrators in this divided city over the last week, according to a spokesman for KFOR, the NATO force in Kosovo...."

The Independent (UK) 8/15/99 "....FORMER Serbian police and paramilitaries, several of whom are under investigation for war crimes, have taken control of a slice of northern Kosovo and are using it as a base for illegal arms dealing, drug running and gang warfare, according to Nato military intelligence officials. While tens of thousands of Serbs have fled the rest of Kosovo in fear of their lives, elements of the former administration have clung on in the northernmost tip of the province, part of the French sector. They have divided the town of Mitrovica into Serbian and Albanian zones, and have blockaded the only road leading north out of Mitrovica towards Serbia, in effect sealing off a mineral-rich northern enclave in Kosovo. ..."

The Times 8/15/99 "..."PRO-SERBIAN hackers attacked more than 170 organisations worldwide, including some in Britain, in a cyber war directed at shutting down key computer systems in Nato countries during the Kosovan conflict, writes Maeve Sheehan. The Black Hand, a notorious Serbian paramilitary group, and its sympathisers in Russia, Latvia, Lithuania and eastern Europe, targeted banks, internet service providers and media organisations in revenge for Nato bombing campaigns. More than 30 British companies, including the BBC, ITN, Sky News and internet service providers, suffered partial shutdowns or were denied access to their computer systems after being bombarded with virus-infected e-mails., ..."

Itar-Tass 8/15/99 "...Four young Serbs were wounded on Saturday night by Albanian militants in the town of Kosovska-Mitrovica. Several Kosovo Albanians, driving a car, managed to cross an old bridge over the river Ibar, which divides the town into two parts, and opened fire on the Serb youths. French peacekeepers, whose zone of responsibility includes Mitrovica, although they reached the scene belatedly, nevertheless managed to detain five Albanians suspected of attacking the Serbs...."

Reuters 8/15/99 "...More than 40 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries in Kosovo have been destroyed by ethnic Albanians since the NATO-led KFOR mission took control there, a. spokesman for the Church was quoted on Sunday as saying. Bishop Atanasije Rakita also told the daily newspaper Glas that more than 200 Serbian villages had been systematically destroyed in the southern Serbian province. ``It is especially worrying that these things are taking place in front of KFOR,'' the bishop, who runs the Church's information service, was quoted as saying. ..."

Reuters 8/13/99 "...General Wesley Clark, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, said Friday he had no evidence the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was behind attacks on Serbs that have occurred since a peace plan was signed in June. Clark, on a visit to the province, said KLA leaders had consistently backed calls for Serbs to remain in Kosovo. ``I'm not going to point fingers at the KLA. The KLA leadership has been very co-operative with us at the top level,'' the U.S. Army general told reporters at the headquarters of KFOR, the NATO-led international peacekeeping force. Several international officials have recently said they suspected the KLA, or rogue elements, must be behind some of the ethnic Albanian revenge attacks which have driven up to 170,000 Serbs from Kosovo in the past few months. But Clark said much of the violence seemed spontaneous or, particularly in southeastern Kosovo, was linked to organized crime...."

Washington Post 8/14/99 Peter Finn "...It hasn't taken long -- eight weeks -- for the bloom to come off liberation. With Kosovo purged of nearly 80 percent of its Serbian population and with many of the remaining Serbs, particularly those in urban areas, now viewing international peacekeepers as their last and only protection, the NATO-led peacekeeping operation is confronting an unexpected phenomenon: ethnic Albanian hostility. The peacekeepers' determination to maintain a multi-ethnic society here has led to violent confrontations with ethnic Albanians bent on revenge against the Serbs or the looting of their property. And the United Nations' insistence on the primacy of its authority has increased tension with the Kosovo Liberation Army, an ethnic Albanian militia that is attempting to establish its own parallel system of control in Kosovo, which formally remains a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic. ....The KLA's so-called Minister of the Interior, Rexhep Selimi, was detained by British troops after he waved a gun at them while driving a car with a flashing police light. A later raid on the offices of Selimi -- an uncle of the KLA's former military commander -- produced several weapons and identity cards giving the bearer the right to "to conduct illegal activities, including carrying and using weapons, entering and confiscating property without warning," British troops said....."

New York Times 8/15/99 Carlotta Gall "...The international peacekeeping force in Kosovo is clamping down hard on the Kosovo Liberation Army, seizing arms caches almost daily and confiscating documents and even cash from premises, in what some officials say is a determined effort to break the movement. NATO and United Nations officials maintain that the tougher action is routine, and part of an agreement signed almost seven weeks ago that aimed to dismantle the rebel operation completely within three months. Yet until now, the NATO-led peacekeeping force here has given the guerrillas a fairly wide berth. With the recent crackdown, the NATO force is demonstrating that it will no longer tolerate violations of the agreement and that it expects the rebels to turn over their weapons and come to heel behind NATO and United Nations authorities Members of the Kosovar army and the provisional government of Hashim Thaci, who is the political leader of the movement, are growing increasingly unhappy as many of their aspirations are brushed aside. Those include forming a kind of national guard and being incorporated within any police force for Kosovo, as well as gaining social respect that they feel they have earned...."

Agence France-Presse 8/16/99 "...- KFOR's peacekeepers have got their hands full with a major crime wave in Kosovo, in addition to their main duties keeping civil order in the Yugoslav province. They are having to deal with pillaged houses, old persons turned out of their homes, stolen cars, racketeering, murders, kidnappings, rapes, black marketeering: all carried out either by the Kosovars themselves or the Albanian mafia...."

The Independent (UK) 8/15/99 "...WEAPONS FROM the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) that were supposed to have been surrendered to Nato troops are on sale in Britain. The Independent has learnt that arms dealers in the United Kingdom have been offered up to 140 tons of high explosive as well as rocket-propelled grenades, automatic weapons and illegal anti-personnel mines. Inquiries in London and Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, have confirmed that the trade in arms is thriving, in spite of a commitment made by KLA leaders at the end of the Nato campaign to hand in their forces' weapons...."

The New Australian No 130 16-22 8/99 James Henry "...Sometime ago I wrote that if NATO succeeded in driving the Serbs out of Kosovo it would only plant the seeds of a future Balkan conflict. What would NATO do to protect an Albanian controlled Kosovo against a revanchist Serbia? Clinton, Blair and Schroeder being what they are have not given this dismal prospect any serious thought. But the war against Serbia raised other important questions that need to be answered. A very important one being: Who invaded whom? Put another way, how does a country deal with people from a different cultural and religious background who having settled into the host country now decide to annex part of it on the curious grounds that they are now a majority in that region. Like it or not, this is what Kosovo Albanians have done. They have sliced away a huge portion of Serbia. This could not have been done without the aid of Clinton and Blair, who certainly won't be around to pick up the pieces from the next Serbian-Kosovo conflict, not that they are picking up any pieces now. Does anyone think for one moment that if Britain's 1 million plus Moslem population decided to annex a portion of the UK on the novel grounds they are the majority in that area that Blair would stand for it...."

Itar-Tass 8/16/99 "...The position of ethnic minorities and, above all, the Serbs and gypsies in Kosovo, is getting worse day by day. According to reports provided by representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugee Affairs, the Serb population is on the verge of extinction from starvation. Acts of repression continued by the "Liberation Army of Kosovo" and different bandit formations arouse fear among the Serbs who cannot go out of their homes and have practically turned into hostages held captive by the separatists...."

UPI 8/16/99 "...Albanian miners and students from the southern part of Mitrovica say they plan to march on the northern Serbian sector. The attempts by the Mitrovica Albanians to enter the northern sector, where many of them claim to have homes and jobs, have been thwarted by French KFOR troops. Because of the attempts, the Serbian national council for the Mitrovica district have suspended negotiations with local Albanians and representatives of the international community. Council president, Vuk Antonijevic, commenting on the planned march, told Belgrade radio B2-92 that the northern enclave was less than 20 percent of the Mitrovica area...."

Los Angeles Times 8/15/99 Scott Glover "... Initially, the widespread slayings of Serbs, and the torching of their homes and churches, were seen as individual acts of revenge for atrocities carried out by Serbian troops during the war--crimes that claimed the lives of an estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians. But as the days pass since NATO-led troops began occupying Kosovo on June 12, and the crimes against Serbs continue, patterns in the violence are beginning to emerge: * Here in the provincial capital, "a disturbing pattern has arisen in the method of intimidation used against Serbs still in the city," the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has found. "First, a warning letter is received ordering them to leave their homes, then the threat is delivered in person, followed a few days later by physical assault, in some cases even murder." * Dozens of Serbs have been slain execution-style in Pristina, military police have said. Evidence shows that the victims were commonly bound at the wrists and made to kneel on the ground before being shot in the head. Many were blindfolded. * In dozens of Serbian villages throughout Kosovo, Serbs have fled after repeated threats and acts of violence, only to have their villages burned behind them. In at least one case, authorities suspect that a Serbian village was raided at night and that all its residents were slain before it was destroyed. * At least 40 Serbian churches in the province have been vandalized and burned, Serbian Orthodox Church officials say. Many were then bombed to complete the destruction. "It's not that we think, we simply know it's organized activity and systematically performed," Bishop Artemije, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo, said...."

Jerusalem Post 8/15/99 "…It may be that misconception on the part of the KLA that NATO came into Kosovo in support of its rebellion that is fueling the growing tensions between the international guardians and the movement. The KLA is accusing the peacekeepers of betrayal by their efforts to protect the Serbs, and by ignoring the self-styled provisional government it set up. NATO is accusing radical elements in the KLA of responsibility for organizing attacks on Serbs, and even on the peacekeeping troops. They also are ignoring orders to disarm, they are hiding weapons, and allocating themselves official powers. Despite the 35,000 NATO-led troops and a 3,100-strong UN police force, violence between ethnic Albanians and the few remaining Serbs has remained remarkably persistent. A Russian soldier has also been shot and wounded and rebels opened fire on German peacekeepers.This is intolerable and will require swift international coordination to bring home to the KLA that Western troops will not be used to support, or even tolerate, any reverse ethnic cleansing in Kosovo…."

UPI 8/16/99 "…Kosovo's ethnic conflicts are not always clear-cut divides between ethnic Albanians and Belgrade- backed Serbians. There are true outsiders, including a Gypsy group camped in squalid conditions in a former bus junkyard in the Kosovo town of Djakovica. The community of about 550 says it is prepared to leave, but not without fear. They claim that every day, Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers harass them…"

Agence France-Presse 8/16/99 "…Yugoslavia formally asked the United Nations to expel "foreigners who are staying illegally" in the southern province of Kosovo, in a letter to Secretary General Kofi Annan, Tanjug news agency reported Monday. Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic called for the expulsion of "foreigners who are staying illegally in Kosovo, gangs of brutes and looters, drug and arms dealers, and other criminals who entered Yugoslav territory from Albania with the permission of KFOR," the agency said. It quoted a communique issued Monday by the Yugoslav foreign ministry which detailed Jovanovic's letter to the UN secretary general. Belgrade also demanded "the disarmament without delay of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and other criminal gangs," and asked that "the security of citizens and their property be guaranteed." …."

London Daily Telegraph 8/16/99 Philip Smucker "…THE head of the United Nations mission in Kosovo has warned leaders of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army of imminent confrontation with them over the forced expulsion of Serbs from the province. Bernard Kouchner told an Athens newspaper, Eleftherotypia: "In the future, I will not allow the homes of 10 or 15 Serbs to be burnt down every night, even if that means confrontation with the KLA. I have told Thaci [the KLA's leader] that my patience has run out." Mr Kouchner said the exodus - if allowed to stand - would be a clear defeat for the international community. He did not, however, outline the UN mission's plan to force the KLA to co-operate….. The UN refugee agency says that at least 170,000 Serbs - out of a pre-war population of up to 200,000 - have fled Kosovo since Nato-led peacekeepers arrived in mid-June. More people left at the weekend, including 110 tractors, lorries and cars containing Serbs from the Gnjilane area. Nato's KFOR mission also reported that an 80-year-old Serb man had been found shot dead in Pozaranje. More than 200 villages and 41 Serb churches have been destroyed since KFOR peacekeepers entered the province, a Belgrade newspaper, Glas Javnosti reported yesterday. It quoted the Serbian Orthodox Bishop Atanasije Rakita as saying that ethnic Albanians in Kosovo were "systematically destroying" Serb villages and places of worship. …."

US Government 8/18/99 "…Text of Presidential Determination on War Crimes Tribunal U.S. Newswire
17 Aug 17:46 "…Presidential Determination No. 99-35 MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE SUBJECT: Determination to Authorize the Furnishing of Commodities and Services for the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal Established with Regard to the Former Yugoslavia Pursuant to the authority vested in me as President of the United States, including section 554 of the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1999, as enacted in Public Law 105-277, I hereby: (a) determine that a drawdown of up to $5 million of commodities and services from the inventory and resources of the Department of Defense will contribute to a just resolution of charges regarding genocide and other violations of international humanitarian law; and (b) direct the drawdown, pursuant to section 552(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, 22 U.S.C. 2348a (the "Act"), of up to $5 million in commodities and services from the inventory and resources of the Department of Defense for the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal established with regard to the former Yugoslavia by the United Nations Security Council, without regard to the ceiling limitation contained in section 552(c)(2) of the Act. The Secretary of State is authorized and directed to report this determination to the Congress and to arrange for its publication in the Federal Register. WILLIAM J. CLINTON…"

Los Angeles Times 8/14/99 Paul Watson "…By the end of the Nato bombing campaign, more than 800,000 ethnic Albanians had fled into neighboring Albania and Macedonia, and most said the Serbs had ordered them to leave. As many as 11,000 ethnic Albanians died after the bombing began -- more than five times the estimated 2,000 ethnic Albanians and Serbs who were killed in the single year of civil war that preceded Nato's airstrikes. Although the veterans might have been lying to cover up, maybe even lying to themselves to rationalize mass murder, they claimed that they were under orders not to harm civilians as they drove them from their homes. None of the veterans said they saw Serbs kill civilians, but a few spoke of Serbian "volunteers," possibly paramilitary groups, who didn't answer to regular commanders and even threatened soldiers who got in their way……"

Reuters 8/17/99 Kurt Schork "…Armed ethnic Albanian thugs locked an elderly Serb woman in her Pristina kitchen early on Monday evening while they beat, robbed and tried to rape her daughter-in-law in the next room. The victims told reporters that the incident, which occurred before dusk and within metres (feet) of a busy street in the Kosovo capital, had frightened them so much that they both wanted to get out of the war-ravaged southern Serbian province. Such brutal tactics, employed widely against Serb targets of opportunity by ethnic Albanian men in the two months since NATO-led peacekeeping troops replaced departing Serb security forces, has led to an exodus among the province's remaining minority Serb population…."

8/18/99 Electronic Telegraph Philip Smucker "…SERBS blamed American Nato soldiers for failing to protect them yesterday as they buried a man and woman killed by mortar fire from a nearby Albanian village. Tihomir Radic, 24, was strolling alongside Silvana Svilanovic, 23, on Monday evening when at least nine artillery shells were fired from Radivoc. Nato officers said the attack was the third on Banja Klokot in seven days. Several homes in the village of some 1,300 Serbs took direct hits and six villagers were injured. Nato forces are trying to track down suspected Albanian extremists responsible for such attacks but have been hampered by a state of fear that keeps Albanians from naming suspects. Senior United Nations officials fear that a complete exodus of Serbs, whose population has dwindled by 80 per cent to no more than 30,000 civilians, will spell defeat for the international peacekeeping efforts in Kosovo…."

The Hindustan Times (My Title) 8/16/99 Vijay Dutt "…The western countries and Britain are alarmed at the scale of arms sales by certain elements in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The authorities fear that the sales from Kosovo, which is awash with all sorts of deadly arms and ammunitions, will boost gang wars and other crimes in west European cities. More alarming is the fact that terrorist organisations and Islamic fanatics have enough money to buy these KLA weapons, being sold quite cheaply. In the Midlands, money has been regularly raised in mosques and some militant mullahs had been, during the Kargil conflict, exhorting the young to take to arms and volunteer for jehad in Kashmir. India has to be wary. According to a report in The Independent, Kalashnikovs are being offered for £52 and M2HB Browning semi-automatic pistols are available in London for around £28. These arms can easily be sent to Northern Ireland where street-violence has erupted again. In London, there has also been an increase in gang wars, of the West Indian style. The well organised arms dealers have networks through Middle East and Afghanistan which can be used for supplying arms for flaring up terrorist activities in Kashmir. A source points out that Osama bin Laden, with his huge financial resources, can be the biggest buyer and he is a danger to India as well. …."

Washington Times 8/19/99 Philip Smucker "…Gypsies in Kosovo have retreated into squalid camps, encircled by stone-throwing ethnic Albanians who cry out for summary justice to avenge both real and imagined crimes committed during this year's war. They have little hope of returning to mainstream society or even escaping to a third country. Yet, they say, the Albanian-led Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is trying to expel them forever from Kosovo. Ahmet Greku, 47, a father of seven, showed off the scars on the back of his head that he said were inflicted during five days of detention in a secret "KLA prison" set up alongside British bases in central Kosovo. "First, five men came to my house and said I was a thief," said Mr. Greku. "I said, 'Come in and have a look,' and they said that everything I had was theirs. Then, they said I had carried away Albanian corpses during the war."

Mr. Greku, tired and traumatized, lives now with his children and wife as one of 1,400 Gypsies in a refugee camp guarded by British troops just a few miles from the capital, Pristina…."

BBC 8/20/99 Imogen Foulkes "…The Swiss Government says it may have to cut back its aid programme to Bosnia-Herzegovina if $1m of Swiss aid to the country does not turn up soon. The move comes following reports that officials from all three ethnic groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina have been fraudulently misusing international aid money. Switzerland is the first country to react to the publication of reports that aid money to Bosnia-Herzegovina is being misused, but it appears the Swiss Government has been concerned for months at the apparent disappearance of Swiss aid to the country…."

AP - via canoe.com 8/20/99 "…Kosovo Liberation Army leaders said they have met NATO's deadline for turning over 60 per cent of their weapons by today and are not responsible for continued violence in Kosovo. Under a disarmament accord the KLA signed in June, the group must turn over its heavy weaponry, most of its arms and uniforms in stages to NATO troops. Disarmament must be complete by Sept. 19. "We've fulfilled all our obligations," KLA military commander Gen. Agim Ceku said Thursday. NATO did not confirm the claim…."

Los Angeles Times 8/19/99 Christopher Layne "… The first shots in Kosovo's next war--pitting the KLA against its erstwhile liberators--already have been fired. The unraveling of the post-conflict settlement in Kosovo was easily foreseeable--except, of course, by the Clinton administration. The Clinton foreign policy team bears a heavy responsibility, because the looming disaster in Kosovo is the cumulative result of the serial miscalculations that have been the hallmark of its Balkan policy the past 18 months. The fundamental problem confronting the U.S., NATO and the United Nations is simple: Their postwar objectives in Kosovo and those of the KLA are wholly antithetical…. as U.S. and NATO military officers on the ground now admit, the brutal expulsion of Kosovo's Serb population is not the result of random acts of revenge, but rather "systematic and organized."…. The president and his advisors never realized their policy was based on a fatal contradiction: It was impossible for the U.S. to align itself with the KLA without furthering the KLA's objectives of an independent, Serb-less Kosovo. ."

AFP 8/20/99 Yahoo "… The Kosovo Liberation Army defended its commitment to disarm, ahead of a key deadline of midnight (2200 GMT) Friday, after KFOR peacekeepers voiced scepticism of the effectiveness of progress so far. The deadline marks the start of the third phase of the KLA's handing over of weapons, the 60th day of a 90-day process mapped out in an undertaking signed June 21 by KLA leader Hashim Thaci and KFOR commander Lieutenant General Mike Jackson. …"

The Guardian (UK) 8/18/99 Chris Bird "…The violence against Kosovo's dwindling Serb population increased on Monday night when nine mortar rounds were fired at a village in the US sector, killing two young Serbs and injuring five. Sylvana Spasic, 24, and Tihomir Radic, 26, who were buried yesterday, died when shrapnel from one of the mortar rounds hit them in Klokot, in the south-east of the province. "The people behind this are Albanians, they harass the population to get them to leave," said Lieutenant Ryan Leigh of the US 1st infantry division, which has a command post in Klokot. "As to who's actually doing it, I couldn't really say." The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates that only a tenth of Kosovo's Serb and Gypsy population now remain in the province, two months after K-For's arrived. The agency has begun to evacuate Serbs from the province despite opposition from Nato, arguing that it is now the only way to avoid reprisals against them…."

Long Island Newsday 8/18/99 Philip Smucker "…Angry Serbs scolded U.S. NATO soldiers for not protecting them yesterday as they buried a young couple killed by mortar fire blamed on militants in a nearby ethnic Albanian village. "Are the Americans here to keep the peace?" shouted Danica Stankovic, 70, who watched several hundred of her fellow villagers wind up a hill toward a graveyard beside a small U.S. military base. "We have nowhere to go and no one to help us. They'll kill us all right in front of NATO and no one is going to shed a tear." Tihomir Radic, 24, was strolling with Silvana Svilanovic, 23, shortly after nightfall Monday when a barrage of at least nine mortar rounds struck. "The male was dead immediately, and we did what we could for 10 minutes to save the woman but it wasn't enough," said U.S. Army Cpl. Mike Sibert…."

Original Sources 8/17/99 Mary Mostert "…Clearly the unspoken concern here is that the International Criminal Court, which is designed to do on a international basis what the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has been doing - targeting military and elected leaders of the former Yugoslavia for war crimes - could end up a indicting and trying Bill Clinton. Moves to indict him, Madeleine Albright and Tony Blair for their bombing of Yugoslavia and for allowing the KLA to implement its long held desire to seize control of Kosovo and evict or kill all non-Albanians, are gathering steam. On 22 February 1993 the Security Council, on the insistence of and with the promised financial support of the Clinton Administration, decided to establish the 'International Tribunal for Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia Since 1991' (short: International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia). Its task is to try people "suspected of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991." Based at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the Netherlands, the tribunal "passes judgment, on behalf of the world community, on crimes which by their nature and scope are a concern to the entire world. The Tribunal will investigate a matter, if necessary in the absence of the accused, in a manner which is both independent and authoritative." Now why, do you suppose, the United States is against a concept on an international basis that it was demanding implementation of a mere six years ago where Yugoslavia and Slobadan Milosevic were concerned? US Senate Foreign Relations Committee spokesperson Marc Thiessen explained. He warned that the Clinton administration wants an exception from investigation or prosecution by the court for personnel involved in official military actions. The United States wants "a clear recognition that states sometimes engage in very legitimate uses of military force to advance international peace and security," he explained…."

Original Sources 8/17/99 Mary Mostert "…'Articles 18.1 and 18.4 of the International Tribunal for Serious Violations of Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia created in 1991. Article 2 of the statute gives the Tribunal the power "to prosecute persons committing or ordering to be committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, namely the following acts against persons or property protected under the provisions of the relevant Geneva Convention including the following:(a) willful killing;(c) willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health;(d) extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly." Article 3 .gives the Tribunal "the power to prosecute persons violating the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to:(a) employment of poisonous weapons or other weapons to cause unnecessary suffering;(b) wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;(c) attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings;(d) seizure of, destruction or wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art and science." Article 7 provides for individual criminal responsibility of "A person who planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of a crime referred to in articles 2 to 5 of the present Statute, shall be individually responsible for the crime. "2. The official position of any accused person, whether as Head of State or Government or as a responsible Government official, shall not relieve such person of criminal responsibility or mitigate punishment. …"

San Jose Mecury News 8/16/99 Lori Montgomery "…- To Americans, the order seemed simple: Report to work by July 15 and you can keep your jobs. But to Serbs, terrified victims of a new rash of Kosovo violence, the order might as well have called them to the moon. The American-led committee that runs the Klokat spa and mineral-water plant recently welcomed to work scores of ethnic Albanians who met the deadline. And it officially fired 186 Serbs -- many of whom had begged for a military escort so they could reclaim their jobs. ``We kept giving these Serb workers another chance and another chance to come to work,'' said U.S. Army Lt. Jason Green, one of two Americans on the Klokat committee. ``They just never did show up.'' ….Since late June, when U.S. peacekeeping troops took over the Klokat plant, Brig. Gen. John Craddock, the top U.S. military commander in Kosovo, has fired the Serb general manager and filled top posts with ethnic Albanians. In short order, the workforce shifted dramatically -- from 198 Serbs and 52 ethnic Albanians before the war, to about 140 ethnic Albanians and fewer than 30 Serbs today. The Americans defend the changes as representative of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians have long made up more than 90 percent of the population. They point out that the Klokat plant is operating with a mixed workforce -- a minor coup at a time when more than a quarter of Kosovo's 200,000 Serbs have fled the province. But bitter Serb employees say the Americans cost them their jobs. …"

Times of London 8/17/99 James Pringle "…BRITISH troops scoured the Kosovo capital yesterday for two killers who battered an old Serb woman to death and left her flat laughing and congratulating one another. The two kicked down the door of Zorka Zizic's flat as two Danish workers for the United Nations refugee agency watched anxiously through the keyhole of their own flat. Mrs Zizic, 75, was one of the dozens of elderly Serbs whose names are on a "vulnerable persons register" and who are visited daily by men of the Royal Irish Regiment in what are called "reassurance patrols"…"