Questions mount on accuracy of Kosovo atrocity reports
WASHINGTON, March 31 (AFP) - Questions multiplied Wednesday over the accuracy of official accounts of alleged Serb atrocities in Kosovo as NATO and its member states continued publicly to repeat unconfirmed stories, some later debunked, of horrific war crimes.
No one disputes that tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians have fled Kosovo in the past week and have reported with striking consistency that Serb forces are engaged in a widespread ethnic cleansing campaign in the province.
But information being relayed to journalists by alliance officials on details of the nature and scope of Belgrade's policy there has been confused, contradictory and sometimes plain wrong.
With few western reporters and no diplomats or aid workers on the ground in Kosovo to verify their validity, reports coming from NATO and US officials appear often as little more than regurgitation of unconfirmed information from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Those officials have upped their rhetoric against the Serbs almost daily, comparing Kosovo on Tuesday to Cambodia during the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and on Wednesday terming the situation there "Orwellian."
But the United Nations, responding to a word that gained currency this week in Washington to describe the situation in Kosovo, said Wednesday it did not have enough firm evidence to term the events in the province a "genocide."
NATO officials seem to be trying to fuel the evidentiary fires and twice this week reported that prominent ethnic Albanians leaders had been killed or wounded and gone into hiding.
However on Wednesday, one of the two, moderate Ibrahim Rugova, who had supposedly gone into hiding after Serbs burned down his house, spoke to reporters at his undamaged home in Pristina, dismissing those concerns and calling for an end to the NATO bombing campaign.
Shortly thereafter, a US diplomat in Brussels rejected NATO commander Wesley Clark's assertion earlier this week that Fehmi Agani, Rugova's top adviser, had been killed.
US State Department spokesman James Rubin admitted that "reports" of Serb atrocities relayed to the department from KLA commander Hashim Thaci and then passed on to the press here were not necessarily "facts."
"Mr Thaci has been quite clear with us that he is hearing reports," Rubin told reporters. "He's not saying that these things are facts."
Rubin's comments followed his announcement that Thaci had told him earlier in the day that Serb forces were launching artillery at 50,000 to 75,000 Kosovar civilians in the district of Malisevo.
"They are being shelled -- these are civilians -- by artillery and tanks, entire villages are empty and they are being burned," Rubin said, repeating Thaci's account but insisting Washington believed the "basic information about the situation in Malisevo is accurate."
Thaci, a brash, young guerrilla commander, has not always proven a reliable source. On Tuesday, he told German television that about 100,000 Kosovars had been rounded up in the municipal stadium in Pristina.
On Wednesday, an AFP reporter in Pristina found the stadium to be deserted and showing no signs of recent occupation.
While Rubin tersely noted that he had not repeated Thaci's stadium report, he said later that Washington was relying on aid agency reports that said "people have been herded into sports stadiums in Pristina for detention."
"I think that there should be no doubt in anybody's mind that there are terrible, terrible things going on in Kosovo, with men being executed, women being raped, and hundreds of thousands of people being forcibly removed from their homes," he added.
He listed a lengthy series of incidents Washington believed to be credible but nearly all the information was prefaced with the word "reportedly" and it appeared as though independent US confirmation about rapes and executions did not exist.
"US government information is that prior to forced expulsions, Serbs have looted the homes and businesses of ethnic Albanians in at least 20 towns and villages," he said when asked what Washington could confirm independently. |
