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

To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (11063)	6/2/1999 7:26:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Rebels say Serbs are outwitting Nato pilots By Philip Smucker in Kosare Peace envoy off to Belgrade FROM his bunker on a hill above the Kosovan village of Junik, the ageing KLA commander can see how his Serbian enemies are making fools of Nato's best pilots. Yugoslav troops, defying the alliance's daily pronouncements of successful air strikes, are moving in a camouflaged merry-go-round. Serb Army and special forces units are scurrying with their guns in tow from one dug-out to the next, dodging air strikes. The KLA's war is a study in futility which casts doubt on Nato's claims that it is moving as quickly as possible to end Serbian war crimes and force Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, to accept a peace deal. It is a war of terrifying silences broken by the twitters of frightened birds, the high-pitched whirr of incoming artillery fire and the screams of mutilated soldiers. Terrain is littered with bloody bandages, used syringes and unmarked graves. Wielding a Kalashnikov which he claims to have taken from a dead Russian commander, Pren Marashi, chief of the KLA's 138 Brigade 4th Battalion, says Nato is effective only sometimes and that it could do much better. "The Serbs can move their equipment and men within five minutes, the time it takes to hear the Nato bomber coming," he says as the drone of another plane grows louder. "I can hear them [the Serbs] on their radios ordering one another to change positions." If Cdr Marashi had a direct line to Nato pilots as they left their air bases, he says, he could help the alliance to "blast the Serbs all to smithereens". But Nato's war is not his war and his war has not yet become that of an alliance wary of being seen to be fighting on the side of a rebel army with dubious credentials and few victories to its credit. Yet Nato and the KLA are de facto allies. The rebels, by firing their Kalashnikovs and grenades across front lines as close as 200ft, are in theory drawing the Serbs in for Nato to strike and kill. With Serbian forces struggling to hem the rebels in these highlands, Nato can hammer away from the sky. The KLA hopes to reap the benefits. Interrupting the dead silence of a hot summer day, three Nato F18s fired delayed-fuse bombs at the base of a hill that has blocked the KLA's advance for more than two months. A machine-gun whirrs off the front of a Nato plane, firing ahead to stave off incoming Serbian anti-aircraft fire. "That's a hit," shouts a Canadian military observer with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe as a white puff swells to a mushroom above a Serb bunker. After having fought proxy wars in Croatia and Bosnia, the Serbs are finally having a taste of their own medicine. But the Serbs are still hitting back, a fact that flies in the face of Nato's claims of decaying morale and mass desertions, say senior KLA commanders. "We are facing the best forces the Serbs can field here along the western border," says Anton Cuni, the leader of the rebels' "Delta Forces". Nato said yesterday there was no evidence of Serbian troop withdrawals from Kosovo after 10 weeks of Allied bombardment. Gen Walter Jertz, Nato's military spokesman, said Yugoslav troop numbers were still estimated at 40,000. telegraph.co.uk