Are you loosing faith in KLA? Ashamed to admit? <gg>
NATO Disarms, Seizes Kosovo Rebels
Friday, 18 June 1999
P R I S T I N A , Y U G O S L A V I A (AP)
WITH KLA rebels trying to expand their presence in Kosovo, NATO
peacekeepers seized a weapons cache and took 25 rebel members
into custody Friday after finding mistreated prisoners at a police
station. One elderly man was found dead, chained to a chair.
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.
Serbs, however, reported Kosovo Liberation Army attacks across the
province. German peacekeepers detained the 25 guerrilla members
and rescued 15 battered Gypsies and ethnic Albanians in Prizren in
what they said may be a KLA torture chamber for alleged
collaborators.
Russian and U.S. negotiators, meanwhile, reached agreement on
Russia's role in the peacekeeping mission after three days of
meetings in Helsinki, Finland.
The United States, France, Britain, Germany and Italy have divided
Kosovo into five sectors for peacekeeping that Russia wants to be
part of. The Helsinki negotiations had been stuck on the question of
giving Russia a "zone of responsibility" in Kosovo until Friday's
agreement.
Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin played a substantial role in
persuading Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept the
peace agreement and Russia's participation in peacekeeping is seen
as important.
KLA rebels killed three Serbs in central Novo Selo and southern
Kosovska Kamenica, and kidnapped 18 Serbs in villages near Pristina,
the Serb Media Center reported. The report could not be
independently confirmed.
German peacekeepers taking over a police station from the rebels in
Kosovo's second-largest city found 15 Gypsies and ethnic Albanians,
many of them chained to radiators, most of them bruised and bloody.
They also found an elderly man chained to a chair who appeared to
have died just before the Germans arrived, said German army
spokesman Lt. Col. Dietmar Jeserich.
The Prizren police station, which had been in the hands of the KLA
since early this week, also contained grenades, machine guns,
mortars and shells - and spike-studded truncheons.
Reports of abuse and violence multiplied: a Serb couple found dead
on their home's doorstep, a 16-year-old Serb killed in a country road
ambush.
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.
The leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church came to the city of Pec,
the church's birthplace, pleading with his flock to follow his example
and remain in what Serbs consider the cradle of their culture.
But the German forces responsible for southwestern Kosovo said that
in Orahovac, 30 miles southwest of Pristina, a delegation led by Lt.
Col. Gen. Obrad Stevanovic of the Serbian special police was urging
the last 3,000 Serbs in town to leave.
Across the province, Serb civilians seemed increasingly eager to
listen to such talk.
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.
NATO began to respond to those demands, setting up roadblocks in
Pristina and seizing dozens of weapons. At one checkpoint, soldiers
reached into civilian cars and fished out rifles, grenades and
ammunition clips.
While German troops had let rebels bring guns in across the
Albanian border only a day earlier, commanders said they were
cracking down, and banned rebels from carrying weapons in Prizren
as of midnight Friday.
South of Pristina, a Royal Irish regiment took 50 weapons from a
group of Kosovo rebels on Thursday, British Maj. Gen Richard
Dannatt said.
He said NATO forces have called in more military police to help
restore order and to fill a "vacuum" left by the departure of the Serb
police.
The Yugoslav foreign ministry's liaison with the peacekeepers,
Nebojsa Vujovic, met with the force's commander, British Gen. Mike
Jackson, and said he recognized that the peacekeepers were trying
to crack down on the rebels.
"Gen. Jackson publicly promised the international troops would
absolutely protect the safety of every Serb, Montenegrin and other
non-Albanian national threatened by the terrorists," he said,
according to the government Tanjug news agency.
The allied nations and the international war crimes tribunal for
Yugoslavia also agreed Friday that the peacekeepers will take an
active role in bringing suspected war criminals to justice. Milosevic
and four top aides were indicted last month on war crime charges.
Chief prosecutor Louise Arbour of Canada said the allies' role in
dealing with suspected war criminals will be "considerably different"
from that of the NATO-led force in Bosnia that has been criticized
for not detaining indicted Serb leaders.
Meanwhile, ethnic Albanian refugees continued to pour back into
Kosovo on cars, trucks and tractors. About 50,000 had returned by
Thursday night and thousands more streamed across the borders on
Friday, the U.N. refugee agency said.
British Rear Adm. Simon Moore said peacekeepers were helping to
restore water and electricity, cut off to much of Kosovo by NATO's
78-day bombing campaign and Serb's destruction.
"Over the next few days priorities will include water, power supplies
and other key elements for the infrastructure," he said.
The evidence of Serb atrocities during NATO's bombing campaign
continued to mount as well. 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.
When Serb troops approached, young men fled into the woods and
the Serbs ordered the women and children to leave. The old men
have never been found. The Germans found one body and sealed off
the area. |
