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Police break up massive Yugoslav protest

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (March 2, 1998 09:36 a.m. EST http://www.nando.net) -- Clubbing demonstrators as they fled into side streets, Serb police used water cannon and tear gas Monday to break up a march by tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians protesting the killings of their compatriots.

The melee -- following a weekend of ethnic violence that killed at least 20 people -- heightened fears of an all-out war over the province of Kosovo, where the ethnic Albanian majority is pushing increasingly hard for autonomy from Serbia.

"If this problem expands into a military conflict, it will not remain within the boundaries of Kosovo," warned Tito Petkovski, head of parliament in neighboring Macedonia.

Today's protesters -- estimated to number 30,000 -- waved their fists at a police helicopter hovering overhead and chanted: "We'll give our lives, but we won't give up Kosovo."

Firing water cannons and tear gas, hundreds of helmeted riot police charged the demonstrators. The protesters hurled back stones and bottles, then fled with police on their heels.

Some of the demonstrators were left bleeding on the ground. Local Serbs waved to the police from house windows, congratulating them on the swift action.

Ethnic Albanian political parties had called for the protests after a weekend in which Serb police killed at least 16 Albanians in retaliation for an ambush Saturday that killed four policemen. Police said the slain Albanians had been "terrorists."

But a statement from the ethnic Albanians's self-styled government said Serbian police and paramilitary forces had attacked unarmed Albanian civilians, including women and children, in several villages.

It was the worst violence since the emergence of a clandestine militant organization -- The Kosovo Liberation Army -- in 1996. The group has since claimed responsibility for attacks in which over 30 people were killed.

The Yugoslav Parliament in Belgrade opened Monday's session with a minute of silence for the slain policemen. Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic said the situation in Kosovo was "under control."

A police statement carried by Yugoslavia's Tanjug news agency said two demonstrations -- in Pristina and Podujevo, 20 miles to the north -- were "efficiently cleared up."

"No demonstrations or similar acts supporting terrorism will be allowed," the statement warned.

The United States expressed concern Sunday and appealed for restraint but did not strongly criticize the Serbian authorities. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who clamped down on Kosovo in 1989 while Serbian president, warned against outside interference, saying Kosovo's problems could be solved "only in Serbia."

"Terrorism, aimed at internationalization of the problem, will mostly damage those who undertook it," he said.

Ninety percent of Kosovo's 2 million residents are ethnic Albanians. Tension has been high in Kosovo since Serbia -- the most powerful of two republics remaining in Yugoslavia -- revoked the province's autonomy and introduced virtual martial law in 1989, deploying massive police and army reinforcements.

By SRDJAN ILIC, The Associated Press

SERBIAN INTERIOR MINISTRY * STATEMENT

Tanjug, 1998-03-01 At about 12.30 p.m. -1130 GMT - on Saturday ethnic Albanian separatists launched a number of synchronised terrorist attacks at Serbian Interior Ministry members on the road in the village of Likosane near Glogovac in Kosovo and Metohija.

The attacks were launched at police patrols carrying out their regular activities and driving in official vehicles, the Serbian Interior Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

Policemen Miroslav Vujkovic (26), Goran Radojcic (29), Radojica Ivanovic (28) and Milan Jovanovic (26) were killed in the attacks, which were launched from automatic weapons, from an ambush. Policemen Pavle Damjanovic (37) and Slavisa Matejic (27) were seriously injured. A number of official vehicles were damaged in the attacks.

Reacting to the terrorist attacks, Interior Ministry members killed 16 terrorists and captured nine people. Five of them, who were in possession of a large quantity of weapons, explosive devices and other equipment for terrorist attacks, were detained.

In the territory and houses from which the terrorist attacks were launched, police found two machine-guns, four rifles, 130 grenades, 24 bazooka grenades, 13 kg of explosive, 40 detonators, 16 boxes of fuse, three clockwork mechanisms, about 3,000 bullets and 80 hand grenade fuses.

Police are searching for the other terrorists and working on the identification of the killed terrorists, the statement said.

GENERAL PAVKOVIC: THE ARMY AS A FACTOR OF STABILITY, PEACE IN KOSMET

Tanjug, 1998-02-27

Apart from Yugoslav Army and Interior Ministry units in the territory of Kosovo and Metohija do not exist any other armed forces, Pristina corps commander General Nebojsa Pavkovic said in an interview to the Friday issue of the Pristina daily Jedinstvo. It is another matter that a part of the press, seeking sensationalism, tries to portray the so-called "Liberation Army of Kosovo" as an impressive force operating in Kosmet. The truth of the matter is that the allegedly mighty army is nothing but a group of terrorists harassing the people in the Drenice region, General Pavkovic said pointing out that the grouping will soon be brought to justice. At the end of last year the political-security situation in Kosmet, especially in the Drenice region, was aggravated by the activities of ethnic Albanian separatists which as highway robbers spread fear in the region, primarily among Serbs and Montenegrins, but also among ethnic Albanians who are loyal to the state they live in and which they consider their own, General Pavkovic said.

"The Drenice region which includes the municipalities of Glogovac, Srbica and Klin, is almost ethnically clean. There are no garrisons or Yugoslav Army units there and it is practically left at the mercy of highway bandits and terrorist groups, which have declared it their "liberated territory". However, we in the army know what a military organization means and how it differs from other organizations. Because a military organization is considerd to be one of the most complex ones, we cannot speak about the existence of another army in Kosovo and Metohija apart from the Yugoslav Army," General Pavkovic said. If, he added, someone places banditry, assaults, robberies and ambush killings in the sphere of operation of an army, that is their affair. By insisting on the name Liberation Army of Kosovo, the separatist movement simply wishes to "mask" terrorist activities and terrorism, as they know very well the position of the international community on terror and terrorism. Whether the international community wants to accept that or not, we will see, but it is clear that even for terrorisim exist different standards, he said.

Pristina corps units and facilities have not so far been targeted by extremist terrorists, which does not mean that we are not attaching due importance to the possibility and that we are not ready to respond decisively in such situations, Pavkovic said and added: "Their appraisal of our response is the reason why army corps facilities have not been targeted so far." With a high level of combat readiness, the Pristina Corps Command and units will not allow the endangering of their members, institutions and military facilities, contributing thus in the best possible way to peace and security in the territory of Kosmet, the Corps Commander said. We must not forget from where we come from, whose descendents we are, what is ours and what we should and must defend, General Pavkovic said, adding that when we speak about our people's past in these territories, we do not do so for its own sake, but not to forget what we ought to do. "The Yugoslav Army in these territories is not a threat to anyone, but a deterring and a defensive force from possible aggression, from whatever side it may come. Therefore, we are only defending our homes, our boundaries and the graves of our anscestors. We want to turn this region into an oasis of peace, and not into a battlefield. We are on our native soil," the Commander of the Pristina Corps said.

TERRORISTS ATTACK MONTENEGRIN FAMILY'S HOUSE, REFUGEE SETTLEMENT

Tanjug, 1998-03-01

Ethnic Albanian terrorists late on Saturday attacked a Montenegrin family's house in the village of Donji Ratis and the Babaloc refugee settlement near Decani, populated by Serbs and Montenegrins who had fled Albania. The house of the elderly Malisa and Jela Culafic, the only Montenegrins in the village of Donji Ratis, was attacked from a hand grenade launcher and automatic weapons. The house was seriously damaged and the Culafics can no longer live in it. Malisa Culafic said that he and his wife had no enemies in the village and that the attack was aimed at forcing the family to leave Donji Ratis, where Montenegrins had been the majority population until 20 years ago. No one in the Babaloc refugee settlement was hurt in the attack, the second in the past three days and the fifth in the past year.

SERBIAN PRESIDENT OFFERS CONDOLENCES TO FAMILIES OF KILLED POLICEMEN

Tanjug, 1998-03-01

On the occasion of an ethnic Albanian terrorist attack at police patrols near the village on Likosane in which policemen Miroslav Vukovic, Goran Radojcic, Radojica Ivanovic and Milan Jovanovic were killed, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic offered his deepest condolences to the families of the killed policemen and the Serbian Interior Ministry. Milutinovic also wished the two injured policemen a speedy recovery.

Milutinovic said that he and the Serbian citizens were embittered with the abominable attack of ethnic Albanian terrorists against police who were carrying out their regular duties and protecting the safety and peaceful life of all citizens of Kosovo and Metohija. Milutinovic also praised Serbian Interior Ministry officials's bravery, determination and patriotic conduct in defending the constitutional order, territorial integrity, peace and safety of all citizens of the Republic of Serbia and stressed that the Serbian citizens would always remember the policemen who gave their lives in order to protect everyone from the assault of terrorism and raging separatism.

Albanian survivors report horror of weekend attack by Serbs

PRISTINA, Serbia (March 2, 1998 4:36 p.m. EST http://www.nando.net) - Ethnic Albanian survivors of weekend clashes in Kosovo in which 16 Albanians and four Serbian policemen died alleged on Monday that helicopters and armored vehicles viciously attacked them in their homes.

Sefer Nabihi, a resident of the village of Quirez in the center of Serbia's volatile southern province, told reporters:

"They surrounded the village first. Then came two helicopter gunships spraying roofs with heavy machine-guns. Then came the armored personnel carriers which fired too. Then came the police (on foot)."

Nabihi's pregnant daughter-in-law and a son died in the attack, which the Serbian Interior Ministry described as an operation against "terrorists" in Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs by nine to one.

"After the helicopters and APCs did their job, policemen came into our courtyard and fired into the house. We were all hiding in one room, all of us, men, women and children.

"They came to the window, looked in and sprayed the room with bullets indiscriminately," Nabihi said.

He was hit by two bullets in the legs. Nabihi said his daughter-in-law, who had been holding her baby in her arms, had her head blown off.

Reporters were shown her body, lying on the floor of the room amid splinters and shards of broken glass, covered with a blanket.

Outside Nabihi's home in the mountain village some 25 miles southwest of the provincial capital Pristina, hundreds of people lined up mutely to pay their last respects. The house and roof were riddled with bullets.

"We were all huddling in this room when the police came and fired point-blank. They killed my son and daughter-in-law and dragged my wounded husband into the courtyard where they beat him up," Nabihi's wife, Hata, said in a separate interview.

"They could see there were women and children. They could see we were crying," she said.

Four brothers were killed in another house next to the Nabihi home. Reporters could see that two of them were shot in the back and survivors said the four were killed while running up the hill at the back of their home.

Village doctor Bajram Gasi told reporters that he believed some people were killed at close range. He said one of the corpses he had treated had powder burns, a sure sign of having been shot at point-blank range.

One of the policemen killed, Radojica Ivanovic, 29, was buried in Pristina on Monday with full military honors.

Ethnic Albanian sources put the death toll at close to 30 but denied there was a single armed man among them.

They contended that the police operation was a retaliatory expedition against unarmed civilians after two policemen were killed in an ambush on Friday in the village of Likosane near Glogovac.

The police brought in reinforcements, helicopters and APCs and sealed off 10 Albanian villages in the area.

Some Serbian sources admitted the operation got out hand in Quirez but insisted that the Albanians had fired first.

"All hell broke loose when the police were fired at, practically from all the neighboring houses. That's what started it all. The Albanians were prepared and waiting," said one Serbian source.

This was the worst violence in the last decade in the province which many diplomats and other international observers fear could become the next Balkan flashpoint.

Before last weekend more than a dozen people had been killed in the mounting violence this year in Kosovo.

The clandestine Liberation Army of Kosovo has admitted responsibility for some of the killings, prompting Robert Gelbard, the U.S. special envoy for the Balkans, to label it a terrorist organization.

All villagers in Quirez denied the existence of terrorists.

"Say hello to Gelbard. You can tell him we are not terrorists," one villager, Aziz Salaj, told reporters.

By JOVAN KOVACIC

WHY THE KOSOVO CRISIS NOW?

by Patrick Moore

The Kosovo imbroglio appears to have entered a new stage following a weekend of violence that left at least 20 dead. There are at least three reasons for the change in the Kosovo political scene, the most important of which is the emergence of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) as a key player over the past year.

Over the weekend of 28 February-1 March, Serbian police sealed off at least 10 ethnic Albanian villages in the Srbica-Glogovac-Drenica region west of Pristina. Serbian police spokesmen said that the action was aimed at capturing "terrorists" (i.e. the UCK) who had ambushed and killed four Serbian policemen on 28 February.

Kosovar spokesmen, however, charged that the Serbs were themselves carrying out indiscriminate terror with automatic weapons, armored vehicles, and helicopters against civilians, including women and children. Veton Surroi, Kosovo's most prominent journalist, said on 2 March that the special Serbian police involved in the crackdown are veterans of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and hence are "almost paramilitaries."

But how is it that matters have come to such a point? After all, for many years Kosovo was known as "the time bomb that does not explode."

There were two main reasons why Kosovo remained relatively quiet for most of the time since then-Serbian (now Yugoslav) President Slobodan Milosevic destroyed the mainly ethnic Albanian province's autonomy in 1989. First, the Kosovar leadership under Ibrahim Rugova and his Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) held the unquestioned loyalty of the province's ethnic Albanians. Rugova and his party are committed to policies of non-violence and of "internationalization," or of achieving a solution by bringing foreign pressure to bear on Milosevic.

Second, the Serbian authorities had no need to "crack down" on Kosovo or stage military actions as they did in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia for the simple reason that the Serbs already held all the levers of power in Kosovo. The only "threat" to Serbian authority was Rugova's shadow state, which, in any event, busied itself with matters such as education, health care, and political feuds among its leaders.

All that has changed since at least the end of 1996. At approximately that point, the shadowy UCK changed its tactics from carrying out occasional, random and hit-and-run raids to conducting more frequent, well-planned, and well-executed moves against individual Serbs, Serbian institutions, or Albanians whom the UCK regards as collaborators. The UCK has meanwhile successfully established a geographical power base in much of the area between Pristina and the Albanian frontier, and some communities there have become no-go areas for Serbs, at least at night. Armed incidents have increased in this region, moreover, in recent weeks.

There are three basic reasons for the UCK's emergence as a force to be reckoned with. First, the consensus has grown, particularly among young Kosovars, that Rugova's policies have reached a dead end. A spokesman for the LDK admitted in London on 1 March that the peaceful policy "has brought no results."

Second is what might be called the lesson of the Dayton agreement, which ended the Bosnian war at the end of 1995. Some Kosovars argue that the international community intervened to impose a peace in Bosnia only because the foreigners had come to regard the continuing violence there as unacceptable. According to this argument, the major powers will intervene in Kosovo only in response to an armed conflict there. Ergo, this train of thought concludes, the Kosovars must provoke a war with the Serbs if the Kosovo question is ever to attract the attention of the international community.

The third development involves the changes in Albania over the past year. Before the collapse of law and order there exactly one year ago, President Sali Berisha conducted a policy that was supportive of the Kosovars, who knew that they had friends in official Tirana. Berisha openly backed Rugova's goals and peaceful policies, and Rugova was a frequent visitor to Albania. In the past year, however, a Socialist government has come to power that has not always been clear regarding its policy towards Kosovo. Many Kosovars fear that Prime Minister Fatos Nano wants to cut a deal with Belgrade at Pristina's expense. Furthermore --and perhaps most importantly -- the collapse of law and order in Albania provided a ready source of abundant and cheap weapons for Kosovar guerrilla fighters.

There are, moreover, at least two additional reasons for the timing of the Serbian crackdown besides the increased violence by the UCK. First, the shadow state's presidential and parliamentary elections are slated for 22 March, and Milosevic may want to provoke confusion in order to ensure that the vote is postponed indefinitely. A successful election, by contrast, would mean a Kosovar leadership with unquestioned legitimacy to challenge Serbia in international forums.

A second reason has been pinpointed by Surroi and by independent Serbian journalists alike, namely that the major powers may have led Milosevic to think that he has a green light in Kosovo. Those who support this view note that U.S. special envoy Robert Gelbard on his recent trip to the region stressed that Kosovo is Serbia's internal affair and criticized the UCK as well as the Serbian police. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker delivered a similarly ambiguous message to Belgrade in June 1991. The Yugoslav army attacked Slovenia shortly thereafter.

Serbia protest quelled after killings

PRISTINA, Serbia (March 2, 1998 7:18 p.m. EST http://www.nando.net) - Serbian police armed with tear gas, water cannon and clubs waded into thousands of demonstrators protesting in Pristina on Monday against the killing of 16 Kosovo Albanians by police in weekend bloodshed.

Scores of demonstrators were clubbed when they tried to flee as the police moved in to prevent them reaching the city centre. Western eyewitnesses described the intervention as brutal.

At least 10 police charged into the offices of the local newspaper Koha Ditore in pursuit of protesters and one of its journalist broke his leg when he leapt from a window to escape them.

Vetan Suroi, the paper's chief editor and a leading ethnic Albanian political activist in Kosovo, was beaten in a separate incident near Pristina's city radio station and representatives of Western news organizations were also attacked.

Unconfirmed reports said security forces sealed off the Vranjavac area of Pristina and moved in anti-terrorist units after shots were fired.

Organizers claimed that up to 50,000 Albanians obeyed calls from their political leaders to join the protest, one of the biggest since Serbia's southernmost province was stripped of its autonomous status by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 1989.

While Western governments condemned the violence and Kosovo police banned further demonstrations, Yugoslav Defence Minister Pavle Bulatovic said Belgrade did not think the army or a state of emergency would be needed to restore order.

But he told the federal parliament that "there could be no talks with terrorists in Kosovo."

The mainly-Moslem Albanians outnumber Orthodox Serbs by nine to one among the two million population of Kosovo which has been a source of dispute between the two nationalities for centuries.

The weekend killings, in which four policemen also died according to the official toll, risked becoming a turning point in Kosovo's nationalist violence which has escalated gradually over the last two years during which several dozen people have died.

Albanian political leaders waging a campaign of civil disobedience to win restored autonomy have come under increasing pressure from the underground militants trying to force the pace by attacking Serb police and Albanians accused of collaborating with them.

In a rare show of unity between government and opposition in neighboring Albania, Socialist Prime Minister Fatos Nano and former president Sali Berisha both called on the West to intervene. Some 2,000 Albanians marched to the Yugoslav embassy in Tirana, chanting "Down with Serbia! Long Live Kosovo!"

In Washington, State Department spokesman James Rubin said Washington was "appalled" by the violence and had protested to the Serbian and Yugoslav governments. He said trade sanctions remaining on Yugoslavia after the Bosnian conflict would not be lifted until the authorities took "meaningful steps to address the legitimate grievances of the Kosovo Albanian community."

Rubin said the United States also asked Kosovo Albanian leaders to condemn violence by underground militants.

Russia, a traditional ally of Orthodox Slav kinfolk in Serbia, called for dialogue between the two sides but supported Serbia's account of the violence, describing the ethnic Albanian dead as "terrorists."

NATO sources in Brussels said alliance ambassadors were expected to discuss the situation on Monday and hinted that Milosevic risked the renewal of international sanctions if he intensified his action in Kosovo.

The latest violence began on Friday evening when security forces intercepted a car carrying members of the clandestine Kosovo Liberation Army in central Kosovo.

Official Serb sources said there were more incidents early on Monday, with grenades thrown at Serb houses in towns and villages in central Kosovo. No casualties were reported.

Police said five Albanians were arrested over the weekend and Serbian state television showed large quantities of captured weapons and ammunition.

In condolences to the families of the dead policemen, Milosevic urged Albanians to abstain from bloodshed and said that "terrorism aimed at the internationalisation (of the Kosovo) issue would be most harmful to those who had resorted to these means."

The flare-up occurred less than a week after U.S. Balkans envoy Robert Gelbard visited the province to try to reopen a dialogue between the two communities.

By JOVAN KOVACIC, Reuters.