How about that? So NATO getting ready for lack of evidence?
Serbs accused of clearing
mass graves
UNHCR said it needed more help from western governments to aid
refugees
Nato has accused the Serbs of trying to cover up
suspected atrocities in Kosovo by exhuming what the
alliance says are mass graves.
Nato spokesman Jamie Shea said
that bodies had been removed from
two such graves and reburied
individually.
Mr Shea said the Serbs' alleged
actions were a sign that "the
Belgrade authorities are taking the
International War Crimes Tribunal
seriously", referring to the special
court located in The Hague.
He said Nato has reports that the Serbs have dug up
mass graves near Glogovac and Lipljan in central
Kosovo.
"The villagers of the locality were obliged to rebury the
bodies in individual graves.
"We also have reports of efforts to rebury bodies from
mass graves at sites where Nato bombing has occurred,
and also to rebury bodies in areas formerly controlled by
the Kosovo Liberation Army."
"If the Serbs really want to destroy
the evidence, all of the evidence, then
they are going to have to accumulate
a lot of overtime," Mr Shea added.
At the same time, the UK has
announced that it is to send a team of
police forensic scientists to Kosovo to
investigate sites of suspected massacres. Foreign
Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that
the UK would play a key role in the investigations.
Kosovar men 'missing'
Nato's allegations came as a senior US official said the
number of Kosovar men unaccounted for in the province
had now reached 225,000 - more than twice the number
previously estimated.
David Scheffer, a US ambassador-at-large for war
crimes, stressed however that he was not claiming all
these men had necessarily been killed by Serb forces or
paramilitaries.
"Large numbers of them could be alive but the point is
we do not know what their exact fate is."
(Click here to see a map of the most recent refugee
movements)
BBC Correspondent Jacky Rowland, who has been
travelling inside Kosovo, says the situation of displaced
people is more complex than is usually reported.
There are a number of places where displaced Kosovo
Albanians have been able to settle, apparently without
harassment from Serbian security forces. This is in
sharp contrast to reports of massacres heard from many
refugees fleeing to Albania and Macedonia, our
correspondent says.
Refugee agency 'needs support'
The plight of refugees is once more under the
microscope, with the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR,
defending its handling of the relief effort for those who
have fled Kosovo.
Responding to criticism from Oxfam
that the agency had failed to
coordinate the international aid effort,
UNHCR spokeswoman Lyndall Sachs
said the agency had now deployed
more staff in the refugee camps and
strengthened coordination, with the
result that the situation was now
improving.
But she said western governments should give the
agency more moral and financial support.
"The UNHCR must be given support, and if we are not
given support by our member governments - who are in
fact what we are - the UNHCR cannot carry out its
important work."
Ms Sachs said governments were often acting
unilaterally, occasionally giving inappropriate aid and
dealing with Macedonia and Albania independently.
She urged western governments to speak with one voice
through the UNHCR to get the Albanian authorities to try
to stop lawlessness and mafia involvement in camps
there, and to put pressure on the Macedonian authorities
to more readily accept refugees.
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