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

To: cody andre who wrote (12799)	6/24/1999 1:06:00 PM
From: hui zhou	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Serb house burning NOVAKE, Yugoslavia - NATO troops have pledged to do their best to keep revenge-minded ethnic Albanians from looting and burning Serb homes, but they were too late for this village. Crackling fire ate into wooden beams this morning. A roof collapsed. Tiles were strewn about. Stucco fell from walls. ''They burn our houses, we burn theirs,'' said Shpetim Shijaku, a skinny ethnic Albanian 10-year-old who came from a nearby village to grab whatever fleeing Serbs had left behind. The looting of this Serb settlement of 50 houses in southwestern Kosovo began Tuesday, locals said, after villagers fled, fearing reprisals from Kosovo Liberation Army rebels. The burning began Wednesday, sending up smoke and flames that finally caught the attention of German NATO peacekeepers in the area. By the time they arrived, there was nothing left to save. ''It's not good to come here and not be able to do something. It's frustrating,'' said a German soldier who declined to give his name. Pressed by the Germans to explain the rampage, the ethnic Albanians offered only shrugs and lame denials. They were more talkative to foreign journalists. ''When I returned from Albania, I found my house torn to the ground,'' said Avdyl Zeqiri, 60 - one of countless Kosovo Albanians who suffered similar fates as they were driven from the province by Serb troops and special police. ''I came here to get some blankets and quilts to cover the children during the night.'' Mark Oroshi, the only ethnic Albanian who had been living in the village before the NATO bombing campaign, said he was forced by Serb troops to abandon his home when the airstrikes began March 24 to force the Yugoslav government to accept a Kosovo peace plan. Now the tables are turned. Serbs are fleeing Kosovo, ethnic Albanian refugees are streaming home by the tens of thousands daily, and the NATO force can't keep an eye on everyone. Communities often were segregated between Serbs, who made up 10 percent of Kosovo's prewar population of 2.1 million, and ethnic Albanians who made up almost all of the rest. Novake was a Serb enclave surrounded by Albanian villages. It appeared the Serbs had left in a rush: Clothes were left hanging to dry in a courtyard and a half-empty cognac was on a pool table in the only cafe. Documents and school diplomas were scattered about, a lipstick lay on a staircase. Oroshi said nearly all the Serb men in the village were drafted by the army when NATO bombing began. One of them was Dragan Nikolic, 36. A photo of him wearing a Yugoslav army uniform lay in the grass in the front yard of his house. The passport of a Serb woman, Stanislava Gigic, lay before her burning home. To the German peacekeepers, it was clear what was happening, but they couldn't do much beyond asking the routine questions about the fires. ''I don't know who did this,'' said Rahman Neziraj, an ethnic Albanian who continued to load cattle feed left by Serb farmers. A few yards away, Kosovo Albanian children were running to catch abandoned pigs and chickens. Agim Kadria, 17, caught a chicken. Another youngster told him to leave it because it was too small. ''I'll not eat it,'' Kadria said. ''I will feed it so it will give me eggs.'' [AP]