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

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (15232)	11/9/1999 12:31:00 PM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 17770

Posted at 11:42 p.m. PDT; , July 18, 1999 Death toll up to 10,000 in Kosovo slaughter by John Kifner The New York Times PRISTINA, Yugoslavia - At least 10,000 people were slaughtered by Serbian forces during their three-month campaign to drive the Albanians from Kosovo, according to war-crimes investigators, NATO peacekeeping troops and humanitarian agencies struggling to keep up with fresh reports each day of newly discovered bodies and graves. That death toll would be more than twice the number of about 4,600 dead estimated by the State Department in late May, shortly before the international war-crimes tribunal in The Hague indicted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four of his top aides on charges of crimes against humanity. They were accused of ordering the Serbs' purge of Kosovo Albanians, who made up 90 percent of the province's prewar population of 2.2 million. "We're getting newly reported mass graves every day in all of Kosovo," said J. Clint Williamson, a legal officer and leading investigator for the tribunal. "The list keeps growing." Yesterday afternoon, for example, tribunal investigators and British troops rushed off to a grassy roadside near the village of Lukare, a few miles northeast of here, where three gravesites were reported by local Albanians to contain possibly 100 or more bodies. The Albanians said the valley had been along the route of a transit march when Serb forces drove them from the north. The villagers said their men were taken away from a column of about 500 refugees. By late afternoon, four bodies had been exhumed and Lt. Col. Robin Hodges, a British spokesman, said the work was likely to continue all day. On Friday, villagers returning to Goden, a settlement near the western town of Djakovica, discovered 20 bodies, along with Yugoslav army log books describing how soldiers had emptied the village and killed people. War-crimes investigators here say they have been overwhelmed by the constant flooding in of reports of new grave sites. They add that the true toll may never be known, because many villagers bury their relatives without telling Western officials. Other deaths went unrecorded in the chaotic press of events when peacekeepers and U.N. relief workers first arrived here a month ago. Still other bodies may never be found, having been burned or carried off by Serbs in an effort to destroy evidence, or are still undiscovered, and maybe forever lost, in Kosovo's forests and mountains. "Every time a villager comes back in, there are new body findings," said an international official familiar with the progress of the investigation. "You're dealing with a crime base that just keeps growing. It's just overwhelming." [snip] seattletimes.com I'm afraid this stealthy disappearance of Albanian fatalities fits Western Europe in that nobody will complain too loudly about KFOR's idleness in chasing the so-called war criminals..... Hey, if there is no "war crime" to investigate in the first place, then why hastily running after alleged war criminals? If the media were to drag on with Serbian atrocities during their ransacking of Kosovo then it would just add insult to injury since the West has already shown its powerlessness in bringing criminal fugitives --such as Karadzic and Mladic-- to justice. The very prospect of dealing with the capture of Serbian war criminals would consequently smear on newly Nobel-anointed Bernard Kouchner since he will share the shameful responsibility of supervising a multiethnic Kosovo wherein war criminals are quietly on the loose..... Bosnia is a good example of how the Geneva War Treaty is not enforced upon Serbian criminals. Besides, Charles, what's your take on Pr Michael Sells' views? I'm sure you were very excited about his bringing a Christoslavic conspiracy to light..... Reminder: Message 11704085 haverford.edu Gus.