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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (12510)	6/20/1999 10:49:00 AM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Warm and friendly meeting' President Yeltsin and President Clinton held a one-hour meeting which American officials said was warm and friendly. >>>> news.bbc.co.uk I think the instant analysis of this meeting is very troublesome...Tearful and nostalgic alcoholic (Yeltsin) in advanced stages of liver cirrosis and Clinton trying to convince even himself about "great legacy" that He the savier of unapreciative rednecks back home..Little do they know or understand (one blinded by illness, the other by preoccupation with his own role in history)..what this history holds...

To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (12510)	6/22/1999 6:54:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 17770

Gipsies flee in fear of Albanian revenge attacks By Patrick Bishop in Pristina Two Gurkhas killed by unexploded Nato bombs THE gipsy quarter of Pristina lay empty yesterday after its inhabitants fled fearing reprisals from the KLA and their Albanian neighbours. The shuttered windows and bolted doors were a sad testimony to the plight of the gipsies, who are bracing themselves for a backlash against their community for the real or imagined crimes of some of their number during the Serb operation. Many Albanians accuse the Roms - as gipsies are called in central and southern Europe - of wholescale collaboration with Belgrade and of joining in the 11-week orgy of looting, destruction and murder. The fact that their houses - which they daubed with signs proclaiming them to be the property of Roms - were left alone has been enough to earn them the suspicion and dislike of the Kosovars. Yesterday, the Permi Pruge (literally "across the tracks") district of Pristina, the main Rom quarter of the town, was deserted. "The KLA came in yesterday to do a routine check and found lots of looted stuff," said Bekim Shabani, 29, an Albanian neighbour. "They told them they had 24 hours to get out." Yesterday KFOR said it had no information on the incident but that the Roms would be protected if they appealed for help. There are about 30,000 Roms in Kosovo. Over the years they have suffered from the hostility of both the Serb and Albanian communities. When they tried to organise themselves politically they backed the wrong side. They formed a party that was allied with Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party. In recent years the Serbs have made efforts to recruit them, with some success, into the security forces repressing the Albanians. There are a number of well-attested cases of enthusiastic collaboration by Roms, with men joining the Jugoslav Army and Special Police (MUP) and taking part in killing and looting. But many found themselves caught in the middle, forced to do the Serbs' dirty work or face the consequences. In the town of Djakovica, local Roms are reviled for having collected the bodies of the Serbs' victims for burial. The town cemetery is scarred with the recently-turned earth of what look like two huge graves, one measuring about 400 square yards, the other 300. There are also 238 individual graves marked by wooden stakes bearing mis-spelt Albanian names and, in some cases, numbers. Bekim Selimi, 20, a Rom working in the graveyard, said some of the graves contained the bodies of victims of Nato bombings. What looks like a mass grave, he said, is in fact empty. It had been the site of 87 individual graves of the Serbs' victims, many dead from short range gunshot wounds, who he had helped to bury. Later, though, the Serbs turned up with mechanical diggers and dug up the graves, taking the bodies elsewhere for disposal. Far from being an enthusiastic grave digger for the Serbs, he said, he had no choice. "They forced us to do it," he said. "They came to our houses, knocked on our doors and ordered us to collect the dead. They told us where to go to find them. Sometimes I would know the identity of the dead man and put his name on the stake. Other times I didn't know. If they say we are collaborators it's not fair, it's not just." He said there was only one serious collaborator in town, a man called Hysni Buzani, who was friendly with MUP policemen before the Nato campaign began and then joined the force. "He beat and raped, but he beat and raped Roms too," Mr Selimi said. He was confident that the people of Djakovica would not turn on the Roms but many of them do not share his optimism and there has been an exodus from western Kosovo to Montenegro. telegraph.co.uk