KFORMYASS!!!
Especially for KFOR's actions in Kosovo...

The KLA wants all of Kosovo, most of Macedonia, some of Montenegro,
 even part of Greece and Bulgaria. Then they 'll march on Tirana, Albania
 to complete the 'reunification.' And if we know that, no one can tell us
 that NATO doesn't.

---

UNBELIEVABLE?

The Kosovo Liberation Army, which the Clinton
administration has embraced and some members of
Congress want to arm as part of the NATO bombing
campaign, is a terrorist organization that has
financed much of its war effort with profits from the
sale of heroin.
Recently obtained intelligence documents show that
drug agents in five countries, including the United
States, believe the KLA has aligned itself with an
extensive organized crime network centered in Albania
that smuggles heroin and some cocaine to buyers
throughout Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, the
United States.
The documents tie members of the Albanian Mafia to a
drug smuggling cartel based in Kosovo's provincial
capital, Pristina. The cartel is manned by ethic
Albanians who are members of the Kosovo National
Front, whose armed wing is the KLA. The documents show
it is one of the most powerful heroin smuggling
organizations in the world, with much of its profits
being diverted to the KLA to buy weapons.
The clandestine movement of drugs over a collection of
land and sea routes from Turkey through Bulgaria,
Greece and Yugoslavia to Western Europe and elsewhere
is so frequent and massive that intelligence officials
have dubbed the circuit the "Balkan Route."
Mr. Clinton has committed air power and is considering
the use of ground troops to support the Kosovo rebels
against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Last
week, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, and
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, called
on the United States to arm the KLA so ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo could defend themselves against
the Serbs.
Mr. McConnell and Mr. Lieberman introduced a bill that
would provide $25 million to equip 10,000 men or 10
battalions with small arms and anti-tank weapons for
up to 18 months.
In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA --
formally known as the Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves, or
UCK -- as an international terrorist organization,
saying it had bankrolled its operations with proceeds
from the international heroin trade and from loans
from known terrorists like Osama bin Laden. "They were
terrorists in 1998 and now, because of politics,
they're freedom fighters," said one top drug official
who asked not to be identified.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, in a recent
report, said the heroin is smuggled along the Balkan
Route in cars, trucks and boats initially to Austria,
Germany and Italy, where it is routed to eager buyers
in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal,
Spain, Switzerland and Great Britain. Some of the
white powder, the DEA report said, finds its way to
the United States.
The DEA report, prepared for the National Narcotics
Intelligence Consumer's Committee (NNICC), said a
majority of the heroin seized in Europe is transported
over the Balkan Route. It said drug smuggling
organizations composed of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians
were considered "second only to Turkish gangs as the
predominant heroin smugglers along the Balkan Route."
The NNICC is a coalition of federal agencies involved
in the war on drugs.
"Kosovo traffickers were noted for their use of
violence and for their involvement in international
weapons trafficking," the DEA report said.
A separate DEA document, written last month by U.S.
drug agents in Austria, said that while the war in the
former Yugoslavia had reduced the drug flow to Western
Europe along the Balkan Route, new land routes have
opened across Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
The report said, however, the diversion appeared to be
only temporary.
The DEA estimated that between four and six metric
tons of heroin leaves each month from Turkey bound for
Western Europe, the bulk of it traveling over the
Balkan Route.
A second high-ranking U.S. drug official, who also
requested anonymity, said government and police
corruption in Kosovo, along with widespread poverty
throughout the region, had contributed to an increase
in heroin trafficking by the KLA and other ethnic
Albanians. The official said drug smuggling is "out of
control" and little is being done by neighboring
states to get a handle on it.
"This is the definition of the wild, wild West," said
the official. "The bombing has slowed it down, but has
not brought it to a halt. And, eventually, it will
pick up where it left off."
The heroin trade along the Balkan Route has been of
concern to several countries:

The Greek representative of Interpol reported in 1998
that Kosovo's ethnic Albanians were "the primary
sources of supply for cocaine and heroin in that
country."
Intelligence officials in France said in a recent
report the KLA was among several organizations in
southern Europe that had built a vast drug-smuggling
network. France's Geopolitical Observatory of Drugs
said in the report that the KLA was a key player in
the rapidly expanding drugs-for-arms business and
helped transport $2 billion worth of drugs annually
into Western Europe.
German drug agents have estimated that $1.5 billion in
drug profits is laundered annually by Kosovo
smugglers, through as many as 200 private banks or
currency-exchange offices. They noted in a recent
report that ethnic Albanians had established one of
the most prominent drug smuggling organizations in
Europe.
Jane's Intelligence Review estimated in March that
drug sales could have netted the KLA profits in the
"high tens of millions of dollars." The highly
regarded British-based journal noted at the time that
the KLA had rearmed itself for a spring offensive with
the aid of drug money, along with donations from
Albanians in Western Europe and the United States.

Several leading intelligence officials said the KLA
has, in part, financed its purchase of AK-47s,
semiautomatic rifles, shotguns, handguns, grenade
launchers, ammunition, artillery shells, explosives,
detonators and anti-personnel mines through drug
profits -- cash laundered through banks in Italy,
Germany and Switzerland. They also said KLA rebels
have paid for weapons using the heroin itself as
currency.
The profits, according to the officials, also have
been used to purchase anti-aircraft and anti-armor
rockets, along with electronic surveillance equipment.

  PRIZREN, Yugoslavia (AP) - German soldiers detained 25 ethnic
 Albanian rebels today after finding one elderly man
dead and more than 15 others hurt in a police station that had been
under control of the Kosovo Liberation Army since early this week.

  Most of the victims seemed to be ethnic Albanians
or Gypsies between  the ages of 50 and 60, said Lt. Col. Dietmar
Jeserich, a spokesman for
the German army serving in the Kosovo peace force in the region.

During the Kosovo conflict that started February 1998 and ended in a
peace deal last week, the
KLA had assassinated not only Serbs but also ethnic Albanians and
Gyspies believed loyal to the
Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milosevic.

One man in his 70s was found dead, chained to a chair. He appeared to
have died shortly before
the German soldiers arrived, Jeserich said.

Most of the injured had bloody wounds and bruises, many on their faces.
One man had huge purple
welts across his back. Two or three others had what appeared to be stab
wounds in their legs.

Many were found chained to radiators, Jeserich said.

The wounded received first aid at the scene, then were transferred to a
nearby military hospital.

About 25 KLA members were detained and marched away from the police
station under German
guard. It was unclear where they were taken.

One man, who gave his name as Gani Berisha, said the KLA had beaten him,
although he insisted
he had done nothing wrong. Other victims said they had been accused of
stealing and of burning houses.

German troops found a stash of weapons, including grenades, machine
guns, mortars and shells.
They also found heavy wooden sticks and spikes with nails that they said
appeared to be ``instruments of torture.''

     The senior commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has signed an agreement
with NATO to disarm, carried out assassinations, arrests and purges within their ranks to thwart
potential rivals, say current anf former commanders in the rebel army and some Western
diplomats.
     The campaign, in which as many as a half-dozen top rebel commanders were shot dead,
was directed by Hashim Thaci and two of his lieutenants, Azam Syla and Xhavit Haliti, these
officials said.Thaci denied through a spokesman that he was responsible for any killings.
Although the United States has long been wary of the KLA, the rebel group has become the
main ethnic Albanian power in Kosovo.
Rebel commanders supplied NATO with target information during the bombing campaign. Now,
after the war, the United States and other NATO powers have effectively made partners of Thaci
and the KLA in the rebuilding [?!] of Kosovo. The agreement NATO signed with Thaci, for
example, envisions turning the KLA into a civilian police force and leaves open the possibility
that the KLA could become a provisional army modeled on the National Guard in the United
States. [Remember Kent State? South Central Los Angeles after the first Rodney King
verdict?]
     While none of the KLA officials interviewed witnessed Thaci or his aides execute anyone,
they recounted episodes in which Thaci's rivals were killed shortly after Thaci or one of his
aides had threatened them with death.
     "When the war started, everyone wanted to be chief," said Rifat Haxhijaj, 30, a former
lieutenant in the Yugoslav army who left the rebel movement last September and now lives in
Switzerland. "For the leadership, this was never just a war against Serbs [note, all Serbs] - it
was also a struggle for power."
     Thaci's representative in Switzerland, Jashae Salihu, denied accounts of assassinations.
"These kind [sic] of reports are untrue," he said. "Neither Thaci nor anyone else from the KLA
is involved in this kind of activity. [Oh, no, never] Our goal has been to establish a free Kosovo
[Free of Serbs, Roma, Turks, Goranis and Albanian "collaborators," that is] and nothing more."
    The accusations of assassinations and purges were made in interviews with about a dozen
former and current Kosovo Liberation Army officials, two of whom said they had witnessed
executions of Thaci's rivals. [Didn't the writer say just the opposite a few paragraphs ago? Well,
it is from the New York Times, after all.] Similar charges also were leveled by a former senior
diplomat for the Albanian government, a former police official who worked with the rebel
[read:terrorist] group and several Western diplomats. [Wonder who they would be....]
    But the State Department yesterday challenged some [!] aspects of these accounts. "We
simply don't have information to substantiate allegations that there was a
KLA-leadership-directed program of assassinations or executions," said State Department
spokesman James Rubin. [Of course. Is he one of the Western "diplomats"? Translated from
the all but unintelligible bureaucratese: Rubin, who "confirmed" the same Thaci's claim of
100,000 Albanian men rounded up in the Pristina sports stadium in early April - when no one
was there - can't "substantiate" his hired killer's hits. Odd....]
    Rubin said he could not exclude the possibility that the rebel leaders were somehow tied to
the killings. ["Somehow"? As in ordering and implementing them?] But he said Wednesday that
the department officials had checked a wide range of sources in the previous 24 hours and
could not confirm the accusations. [How about checking with Thaci himself? Or with his CIA
and MI6 handlers? Rubin wouldn't even have to made a long-distance call.]
   A senior State Department official and a Western diplomat in the Balkans, citing intelligence
reports and extensive contacts with the KLA officials inside and outside Kosovo [Read: long
experience arming, financing, training and commanding them], said they were aware of
executions of midlevel officers suspected of collaborating with the Serbs [Let's get this straight:
Rubin "checked" and "could not confirm" the killings, but an official from his own Department
confirmed just that to a Times reporter?], but said they had no evidence to link those killings
with Thaci. [Maybe Rubin did call Thaci, on a private hotline, and Thaci obligingly denied the
accusations - so as not to embarrass the State Department, of course. Plausible deniablity and
all that.]
     Former and current KLA officials also charge that a campaign of assassinations was carried
out in close cooperation with the Albanian government, which often placed agents from the
Albanian secret police at the disposal of the rebel commanders. [Recall, the KLA is, if you
believe the U.S. State Department, an "autonomous" Kosovar organization whose "goal is to
establish a free Kosovo and nothing more." Not, for example, a Greater Albania, ethnically
cleansed of all other national and religious groups. And of course the U.S. State Department
has no "contacts" within the Albanian government and secret police they could "check" this
story out with, right?]
    Rubin said the State Department did not have any information to suggest that the KLA
leadership directed an execution program in conjunction with the Albanian security services.
[Pinnochio, your nose is getting longer. Try calling the Times  reporter; he seems to have the
information you somehow can't find, James.]
    Two former rebel leaders and a former Albanian police official, interviewed in Tirana, said
that Haliti, who is officially Thaci's ambassador to Albania, was working in Kosovo with 10
secret police agents from Albania to form an internal security network that would be used to
silence dissenters in Kosovo. ["Free and independent" Kosovo?]
    Thaci, 30, has named a government, with himself as prime minister ["Free, democratic"
government, no doubt - just ask James Rubin], and denounced Ibrahim Rugova, who for nearly
a decade was the self-styled president [Self-appointment is evidently a "democratic" tradition
among the "freedom fighters"] of Kosovo and ran a successful campaign of non-violent protest
after the Serbs stripped Kosovo of its autonomy in 1980. [Aha! That explains the U.S./NATO
assertions immediately after the bombing began that Rugova had been killed by the
Yugoslavs: One of Thaci's assassins failed in his mission. I wonder where he's buried.]

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Sept 8 (AFP) - The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) has
reached agreement in principle with the NATO-led force KFOR to turn itself into a
civilian force after its forthcoming disarmament deadline, a senior KFOR officer
said Wednesday.

The text of an agreement with the KLA is to be submitted to the United Nations by
the UN's mission chief in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, who is currently in New York,
KFOR's French second-in-command General Jean-Claude Thomann said.

"There should be a force of 3,000 active personnel, with 2,000 reservists. Its
emphasis will be humanitarian, with the mission of taking on the task of the
reconstruction of Kosovo," he said.

According to the general, the model for the new force will be France's Civil
Protection Service, a 1,200-strong body responsible for urgent intervention in
large-scale accidents or natural disasters -- most recently during last month's
earthquake in Turkey.

The text of the agreement says that the KLA can keep 200 revolvers for the
self-protection of its senior officers, the general said.

This falls far short of the demands of many KLA commanders, who want the
organisation to remain a significant armed force, despite its undertaking to KFOR
to hand over all its weapons by September 19.

"In the short to medium term, there's no question of a (Kosovo Albanian) army,"
said General Thomann. After September 19, those who had not handed over their
weapons would be considered "armed rebel gangs."

The general said the cost of implementing the agreement would be between 72
and 82 million euros (75 to 85 million dollars), spread over three to five years. He
asked for the help of the international community in paying for it.

"If we don't find the money to put the deal into effect on September 19, we'll have
our backs up against the wall," he said.

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Sept 20 (AFP) - The Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA), signed an agreement late Monday with the NATO-led
peacekeeping force KFOR transforming the ex-rebel group into a
purely civilian security force, KFOR and UN officials here said.
   The new force, known as the "Kosovo Protection Corps", will be
headed by the KLA's former military chief, Agim Ceku, the UN
administrator for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, said after the signing.
   The KLA's political leader, Hashim Thaci, announced during the
extended talks leading up to the agreement that he is now the head
of a new, but as-yet-unnamed party which will campaign for Kosovo's
independence.
   The signing of the agreement marks the end of a three-month
phased process of disarming and demilitarising the KLA, which was
formed in 1992 to combat Belgrade's repression of ethnic Albanians
in the Serbian province.
   The document was signed by Ceku, Thaci, the KFOR commander,
British Lieutenant General Mike Jackson, the NATO supreme commander
in Europe, US General Wesley Clark, and Kouchner.
   "We have signed an historic document," Clark said as the four
men formed a circle to shake hands to applause.
   Jackson said the negociations were "difficult" but added "We
have now to congratulate general Ceku" -- something Kouchner did
immediately.
   Thaci, for his part, seemed distant. Observers said the youthful
leader had been entertaining hopes of heading up the civilian force
to add muscle to his ambitions of being president of an independent
Kosovo.
   The genial finish to the day was in marked contrast to the
tensions felt before the signing.
   An undertaking signed on June 21 by Thaci and Jackson which set
out the timetable for the process stipulated a deadline of September
20 for the KLA's demise.
   But KFOR and UN officials were forced to extend that time limit
by 48 hours when the KLA opposed restrictions imposed on the
creation of the civilian security force which will succeed it.
   In particular, the KLA wanted the force -- which is to count
3,000 regulars and 2,000 reservists -- to be the nucleus of a
"national" army for an independent Kosovo.
   The former rebels demanded that the force have an arsenal of up
to 2,000 handguns, brandish Albania's two-headed eagle appropriated
by the KLA as its insignia and have the word "army" in its name in
Albanian.
   But KFOR and the UN negotiators, insisting on the UN resolution
recognising that Kosovo remains a sovereign part of Serbia, knocked
down those demands, saying that the new force would only be a sort
of national guard to be used for operations such as disaster relief
efforts.
   Under its UN mandate, KFOR is the sole armed force permitted in
Kosovo, and the peacekeeping force said that the civilian force
would be permitted only 200 pistols and that it could not use the
Albanian emblem nor present itself as an army.
   That disagreement -- and friction between Ceku and Thaci, UN
sources said -- bogged down the negotiations and forced General
Clark to fly in to Pristina Monday to add his weight to the talks.
   It was not immediately clear what the details of the
transformation agreement entailed, but observers said KFOR was
likely to keep a careful watch out for renegade elements of the KLA
who might not accept the deal.
   There is also concern that one of the key phases of the KLA's
demilitarisation -- its disarming -- might not have been completely
fulfilled, despite assurances from Ceku.
   The ex-rebel military chief said 10,000 weapons had been handed
over to KFOR since the June 21 undertaking, but the fact that many
of the arms appeared to be old or unusable and that the KLA claimed
it still had 10,700 fighters under its command raised fears of
hidden weapons caches.

        PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- After 26 hours of marathon
negotiations led by NATO commander Gen. Wesley Clark, the Kosovo
Liberation Army agreed to disband and transform itself into a lightly
armed, 5,000-member civil guard called the Kosovo Protection Force.
        Leaders of the KFOR international peacekeeping force and the KLA
signed the agreement late Monday to demilitarize the ethnic Albanian
separatist force and transforming it into a 5,000-member civilian corps.
        Bernard Kouchner, the top United Nations administrator in Kosovo,
presented the KLA's Gen. Agim Ceku with a letter appointing him
commander of the provisional force.
        A KFOR statement issued in Pristina on Monday night said members of
the corps ``responsible for guarding and protection duties'' would be
allowed to retain 200 weapons. A limited number of small arms will also
be available for personal protection, the statement said.
        The agreement was to be signed Sunday at midnight, but after the
deadline passed, British Lt. Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, the military leader
of KFOR, extended it until midnight Tuesday.
        Talks snagged on issues including the size of the corps, the number
of weapons it would be allowed to carry, and whether it would form the
nucleus of a regular defense force -- as the KLA wanted -- or be charged
only with carrying out humanitarian and relief work, as NATO insisted.
        The accord was signed by Kouchner, Jackson, Ceku and the KLA's
political leader, Hashim Thaci.
        Clark, who arrived in Pristina early in the day to press the Albanian
side to accept the deal, also attended the ceremony.
        Earlier Monday, KFOR officials expressed satisfaction with the scope
of KLA disarmament, saying it had met the requirements spelled out in
the demilitarization agreement.
        The weapons handed in to KFOR so far include 9,000 infantry weapons,
800 machineguns, 300 anti-tank weapons and 178 mortars. Also surrendered
were 27,000 hand grenades, 1,200 mines and a ton of explosives, KFOR
said.
        Last June, KLA leaders agreed to a 90-day process in which the group
was to remove its uniforms and hand in weapons. Under the plan, most of
the personnel would then return to civilian life, while a few would be
retained for a civil corps.
        Immediately after the war, NATO leaders made clear they didn't intend
to completely disarm members of the KLA, which is composed primarily of
rural men. KFOR demanded the return of only heavy military arms.
        Going into Sunday's talks, the KLA had wanted the name of the corps
to be translatable as the Kosovo Army Corps, said a Pentagon source
close to the debate. The name Kosovo Protection Corps appears to be a
compromise between that and NATO's proposed name, the Kosovo Corps.
        Thaci had wanted 400 members of the corps to be armed, but in the end
agreed to 200.
        The corp's access to stored weapons was also an issue, with the KLA
wanting the authority to issue weapons and establish ``rules of
engagement'' -- that is, when and how corps members can employ the
weapons.
        No details were immediately available on how the weapons control
issue was resolved.
        During a break in his talks with Clark on Monday, Thaci announced he
would form a new political party of Kosovo Albanians to promote
democracy and an independent Kosovo.
        Thaci said he was holding discussions with other political leaders so
as to create the broadest possible base for the party.

   PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Oct 16 (AFP) - Kosovo's new protection
force is another next step leading to the province's independence
from Yugoslavia, the former political chief of Kosovar Albanian
rebels said Saturday.
   "You represent the future, the security, peace, democratization
and the total liberation of Kosovo," Hashim Thaci said in an
impromptu speech at the first "graduation" ceremony for the force.
   Thaci, who was not expected at the ceremony, was invited to the
podium by Nuredine Ibishi, an ex-guerrilla who heads this first
class.
   The crowd of predominantly ethnic Albanian recruits, who stood
up when he entered the room, roundly applauded Thaci's comments.
   Thaci greeted each new recruit after they picked up their
diplomas.
   UN Kosovo administrator Bernard Kouchner had urged the new
police, who will formally begin their duties in two weeks, to give
"a democratic Kosovo a chance" earlier in the ceremony.
   "You are the symbol of the break with intolerance that has
dominated Kosovo for too long," he said.
   The force, which is supposed to consist of all of the province's
ethnic groups but is predominantly ethnic Albanian, "is a
fundamental step towards a multi-ethnic Kosovo," Kouchner said.
   The first graduating class comprises 173 new police officers --
including eight Serbs, three Bosnians, three Roms and three Turks.
There are 39 women.
   The corps is to number about 6,500 police officers at its
strongest.
   Thaci, who presides the provisional government formed in
February 1998, has campaigned hard for the Serbian province's
independence from Belgrade.
   He has made comments in the past suggesting he sees this force,
whose existence was part of a plan to demilitarize ethnic Albanian
rebels, as an embryo for a future army.

When the bombs stopped falling over Yugoslavia last June, a flood of
humanity swept through the Balkans as thousands of Kosovar Albanians
returned home from refugee camps. But over the craggy mountains
separating Yugoslavia and Albania, a far less innocent traffic returned.
A fleet of Mercedes sedans without license plates lined the streets of
Kosovo's capital, Pristina, and young men with hooded eyes and bulky
suits checked into the top floors of showcase hotels such as the Rogner
in Tirana, the Albanian capital. It was time for criminal elements with
close ties to America's newest ally to reopen the traditional Balkan
Road -- one of the biggest conduits for global heroin trafficking. Law
enforcement officials in Europe have suspected for years that ties
existed between Kosovar rebels and Balkan drug smugglers. But in the six
months since Washington enthroned the Kosovo Liberation Army in that
Yugoslav province, KLA-associated drug traffickers have cemented their
influence and used their new status to increase heroin trafficking and
forge links with other nationalist rebel groups and drug cartels. The
benefits of the drug trade are evident around Pristina -- more so than
Western aid. "The new buildings, the better roads, and the sophisticated
weapons -- many of these have been bought by drugs," says Michel
Koutouzis, the Balkans region expert for the Global Drugs Monitor (OGD),
a Paris-based think tank. The repercussions of this drug connection are
only now emerging, and many Kosovo observers fear that the province
could be evolving into a virtual narco-state under the noses of 49,000
peacekeeping troops.
For hundreds of years, Kosovar Albanian smugglers have been among the
world's most accomplished dealers in contraband, aided by a propitious
geography of isolated ports and mountainous villages. Virtually every
stage of the Balkan heroin business, from refining to end-point
distribution, is directed by a loosely knit hierarchy known as "The 15
Families," who answer to the regional clans that run every aspect of
Albanian life.
The Kosovar Albanian traffickers are so successful, says a senior U.S.
State Department official, "because Albanians are organized in very
close-knit groups, linked by their ethnicity and extended family
connections."
The clans, in addition to their drug operations, maintained an armed
brigade that gradually evolved into the KLA. In the early 1990s, as the
Kosovar uprising in Yugoslavia grew, ethnic Albanian rebels there faced
increased financial needs. The 15 Families responded by boosting drug
trafficking and channeling money and weapons to the rebels in their
clans. As traffickers started taking bigger risks, drug seizures by
police across Europe skyrocketed from a kilo or two in the early 1980s
to multimillion-dollar hauls, culminating in the spectacular 1996 arrest
at Gradina, Yugoslavia, of two truckers running a load of more than half
a ton of heroin worth $50 million.
German Federal Police now say that Kosovar Albanians import 80 percent
of Europe's heroin. So dominant is the Kosovar presence in trafficking
that many European users refer to illicit drugs in general as "Albanka,"
or Albanian lady.
The Kosovar traffickers ship heroin exclusively from Asia's Golden
Crescent. It's an apparently inexhaustible source. At one end of the
crescent lies Afghanistan, which in 1999 surpassed Burma as the world's
largest producer of opium poppies. From there, the heroin base passes
through Iran to Turkey, where it is refined, and then into the hands of
the 15 Families, which operate out of the lawless border towns linking
Macedonia, Albania, and Serbia. Not surprisingly, the KLA has also
flourished there. According to the State Department, four to six tons of
heroin move through Turkey every month. "Not very much is stopped," says
one official. "We get just a fraction of the total." Initially, the
Kosovar traffickers used the direct Balkan route, carrying goods
overland by truck from Turkey and Yugoslavia into Europe. With the
Bosnian war, the direct route was shut down and two splinter routes
developed to bypass Yugoslavia.
The ascent of the Kosovar families to the top of the trafficking
hierarchy coincided with the sudden appearance of the KLA as a fighting
force in 1997. As Serbia unleashed its campaign of persecution against
ethnic Albanians, the diaspora mobilized. Hundreds of thousands of
expatriate Kosovars around the world funneled money to the insurrection.
Nobody sent more than the Kosovar traffickers -- some of the wealthiest
people of Kosovar extraction in Europe. According to news reports,
Kosovar Albanian traffickers launder $1.5 billion in profits from drug
and arms smuggling each year through a shadowy network of some 200
private banks and currency exchange offices. A congressional briefing
paper obtained by Mother Jones indicates: "We would be remiss to dismiss
allegations that between 30 and 50 percent of the KLA's money comes from
drugs."
As the war in Kosovo heated up, the drug traffickers began supplying the
KLA with weapons procured from Eastern European and Italian crime groups
in exchange for heroin. The 15 Families also lent their private armies
to fight alongside the KLA. Clad in new Swiss uniforms and equipped with
modern weaponry, these troops stood out among the ragtag irregulars of
the KLA. In all, this was a formidable aid package. It's therefore not
surprising, say European law enforcement officials, that the faction
that ultimately seized power in Kosovo -- the KLA under Hashim Thaci --
was the group that maintained the closest links to traffickers. "As the
biggest contributors, the drug traffickers may have gotten the most
influence in running the country," says Koutouzis. The congressional
brief explains how groups like the KLA become involved with drug barons.
"Such groups had it easier during the Cold War when they could seek out
patron states," it notes. "But today, with the decline in state
sponsorship of insurgent groups, private funding is critical to keep the
revolution alive."
The KLA's dependence on the drug lords is difficult to prove, but the
evidence is impossible to overlook:
In 1998, German Federal Police froze two bank accounts of the "United
Kosovo" organization in a DŸsseldorf bank after they discovered
deposits totaling several hundred thousand dollars from a convicted
Kosovar drug trafficker. According to at least one published report, the
accounts were controlled by Bujar Bukoshi, prime minister of the Kosovo
government in exile.
In early 1999, an Italian court in Brindisi convicted an Albanian heroin
trafficker named Amarildo Vrioni, who admitted obtaining weapons for the
KLA from the Mafia in exchange for drugs.
Last February 23, Czech police arrested Princ Dobroshi, the head of a
Kosovar drug gang. While searching his apartment, they discovered
evidence that he had placed orders for light infantry weapons and rocket
systems. No one questioned what a small-time dealer would be doing with
rockets. Only later did Czech police reveal he was shipping them to the
KLA. The Czechs extradited Dobroshi to Norway, where he had escaped from
prison in 1997 while serving a 14-year sentence for heroin trafficking.
In Kosovo, it's hard to separate a legal organizational structure from
an illegal one. "A trafficker can sell blue jeans one day and heroin the
next," says Koutouzis. "The same supply network is used. There are no
ethical distinctions. Heroin is just another way of making money." It
was the disparate structure of the KLA, Koutouzis says, that facilitated
the drug-smuggling explosion. "It permitted a democratization of drug
trafficking, where small-time people get involved, and everyone
contributes a part of his profit to his clan leader in the KLA," he
explains. "The more illegal the activity, the more money the clan gets
from the traffickers. So it's in the interest of the clan to promote
drug trafficking."
According to Marko Nicovic, the former chief of police in Belgrade, now
an investigator who works closely with Interpol, the international
police agency, 400 to 500 Kosovars move shipments in the 20-kilo range,
while about 5,000 Kosovar Albanians are small-timers, handling shipments
of less than two kilos. At one point in 1996, he says, more than 800
ethnic Albanians were in jail in Germany on narcotics charges. In many
places, Kosovar traffickers gained a foothold through raw violence.
According to a 1999 German Federal Police report, "The ethnic Albanian
gangsÉhave been involved in drugs, weapons traffickingÉblackmail,
and murder.ÉThey are increasingly prone to violence."
Tony White of the United Nations Drug Control Program agrees with this
assessment. "They are more willing to use violence than any other
group," he says. "They have confronted the established order throughout
Europe and pushed out the Lebanese, Pakistani, and Italian cartels." Few
gangs are willing to tangle with the Kosovars. Those that do often pay
the ultimate price. In January 1999, Kosovar Albanians killed nine
people in Milan, Italy, during a two-week bloodbath between rival heroin
groups.
Daut Kadriovski, the reputed boss of one of the 15 Families, embodies
the tenacity of the top Kosovar drug traffickers. A Yugoslav Interior
Ministry report identifies him as one of Europe's biggest heroin
dealers, and Nicovic calls him a "major financial resource for the KLA."
Through his family links, Nicovic says, Kadriovski smuggled more than
100 kilos of heroin into New York and Philadelphia. He lived comfortably
in Istanbul and specialized in creative trafficking solutions, once
dispatching a shipment of heroin in the hollowed-out accordion cases of
a popular traveling Albanian folk music group. German authorities
eventually arrested him in 1985 with four kilos of heroin. They
confiscated his yachts, cars, and villas, and sent him to prison.
Kadriovski's reign appeared to be over.
But Kadriovski greased his way with narco-dollars. He escaped from
prison by bribing guards, and in 1993 he headed for the United States,
where it's believed he continues to operate. According to Nicovic,
Kadriovski reportedly funneled money to the KLA from New York through a
leading Kosovar businessman and declared KLA contributor. "Kadriovski
feels more secure with his KLA friends in power," Nicovic says.
The U.S. representatives of four other heroin families are suspected by
Interpol of having sent money for the uprising, according to Nicovic.
These men typically maintain links with local distributors, he says, and
move heroin through a network of small import-export companies in New
York and Philadelphia.
Now free of the war and the repressive Yugoslav police machine, drug
traffickers have reopened the old Balkan Road. With the KLA in power --
and in the spotlight -- the top trafficking families have begun to seek
relative respectability without decreasing their heroin shipments. "The
Kosovars are trying to position themselves in higher levels of
trafficking," says the U.N.'s Tony White. "They want to get away from
the violence of the streets and attract less attention. Criminals like
to move up like any other business, and the Kosovars are becoming
business leaders. They have become equal partners with the Turks."
Italian national police discovered this new Kosovar outreach last year
when they undertook "Operation Pristina." The carabinieri uncovered a
chain of connections that originated in Kosovo and stretched through
nine European countries, extending into Central Asia, South America, and
the United States.
"People from Pristina worked all over Europe and the world," says
JŸrgen Storbeck, director of Europol, the cooperative police force of
the European Union. "They used sophisticated methods, taking advantage
of places where police work was not so successful, like Eastern Europe."
Eventually, 40 people were arrested and 170 kilos of heroin were seized
in an operation that involved seven European police departments. As
their business reaches a saturation point in Europe, Kosovar traffickers
are looking more to the West. It's a smart business move. The United
States has seen a marked shift from cocaine to heroin use. According to
recent DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of
the smack seized in this country -- nearly double the percentage taken
four years earlier. Much of it is distributed by Kosovar Albanians.
The Clinton administration has launched a vigorous crackdown on
Colombian heroin. As the campaign intensifies, some White House
officials fear Kosovar heroin could replace the Colombian supply. "Even
if we were to eliminate all the heroin production in Colombia, by no
means do we think there would be no more heroin coming into the United
States," says Bob Agresti of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy. "Look at the numbers. Colombia accounts for only six
percent of the world's heroin. Southwest Asia produces 75 percent."
Perhaps most alarmingly, Kosovar drug dealers associated with the KLA
have begun to form partnerships with Colombian traffickers -- the
world's most notorious drug lords. "We have an all-new situation now,"
says Europol's Storbeck. "Colombians like to use Kosovar groups for
distribution of cocaine. The Albanians are getting stronger and
stronger, and there is a certain job sharing now. They are used by Turks
for smuggling into the European Union and by Colombians for distribution
of cocaine."
Washington clearly hopes the KLA will disentangle itself from its
drug-running friends now that it's in power, but this may not be easy.
"The KLA owes a lot of debts to the traffickers and holy warriors," says
Koutouzis. "They are being pressured to assist other insurrections."
Already, the OGD has reports of KLA weapons being routed to the newest
Muslim holy war in Chechnya.
The congressional brief addresses the KLA's future: "One of the problems
you have with organizations that engage in drug trafficking is that they
become addicted to the trade and the income it brings," the report
notes. "Later on in life, even if they want to stop trafficking in
drugs, it's not always possible."
Marko Nicovic, the former Belgrade police chief, puts it a bit more
succinctly: "If Kosovo gets full autonomy, they may well double the
production of heroin," he says. "Kosovo will become a smuggler's
paradise, its doors open to every global criminal." The U.S. Foreign
Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits aid to any entity that has colluded
with narcotics traffickers. Similarly, the Balkan peace agreement
brokered in June prohibits the KLA from engaging in criminal activity.
And so the Clinton administration tries to steer clear of questions
suggesting the KLA has joined a rogues' gallery of narco-leaders. KLA
drug-running is the last thing the administration wants to tackle with
the success of its "moral war" already open to question.
Late last spring, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to
President Clinton requesting an assessment of KLA drug trafficking. The
president responded quickly, telling Grassley in a June 15 letter that
he had demanded an intelligence assessment from the CIA and the DEA on
Kosovar drug trafficking. "Neither agency," the president wrote, "has
any intelligence that indicates the KLA has either been engaged in other
criminal activity or has direct links to any organized crime groups."
Clinton did acknowledge that crime groups "have contributed at least
limited funds and possibly small arms to the KLA." He promised to
"monitor" narcotics distribution there in the future. "There was no
action," said a congressional source close to Grassley. "It was a
nonanswer."
White House officials deny a whitewashing of KLA activities. "We do care
about [KLA drug trafficking]," says Agresti. "It's just that we've got
our hands full trying to bring peace there." The DEA is equally reticent
to address the issue. According to Michel Koutouzis, the DEA's website
once contained a section detailing Kosovar trafficking, but a week
before the U.S.-led bombings began, the section disappeared. "The DEA
doesn't want to talk publicly [about the KLA]," says OGD director Alain
Labrousse. "It's embarrassing to them." High-ranking U.S. officials are
dismayed that the KLA was installed in power without public discussion
or a thorough check of its background. "I don't think we're doing
anything there to stem the drugs," says a senior State Department
official. "It's out of control. It should be a high priority. We've
warned about it."
Even if it tried to stop Kosovar heroin, the U.S. would be hard-pressed
to do so. "Nobody's in control in Kosovo," adds the State Department
official. "They don't even have a police force." Regardless of what it
says, there's little indication that the administration wants to do
anything with the intelligence available about its newest ally. "There
is no doubt that the KLA is a major trafficking organization," said a
congressional expert who monitors the drug trade and requested
anonymity. "But we have a relationship with the KLA, and the
administration doesn't want to damage [its] reputation. We are partners.
The attitude is: The drugs are not coming here, so let others deal with
it."
That phrase is troublingly familiar. It raises the question: Is our
embrace of the KLA the latest in an ignoble tradition of aiding drug
traffickers for political reasons? Similar recipients of U.S. largesse
have included the Nicaraguan Contras, former Panamanian strongman Manuel
Noriega, the Afghan Taliban, and Burma's Khun Sa. Early in 1999, as the
war against Serbia raged, Congress voted to fund the KLA's drive for
independence. In the days ahead, our embrace of the KLA may come to
haunt us. Elections scheduled for this spring in Kosovo have been
delayed; but no matter when they occur, observers say, their outcome is
already certain. The time-honored clans will win. And the men in
oversized suits -- the kind who sing allegiance to democracy and global
capitalism while conducting business in the back of an unlicensed
Mercedes -- will be running the show.

                   Pristina, March 2nd -
                   KFOR spokesman, Philip Hening, stated in Pristina
                   that the Intelligence Service of the
                   international peacekeeping force in Kosovo had
                   obtained information that  Albanian extremists from
                   Kosovo were involved in the terrorist actions in
                   Presevo,Medvedja and Bujanovac.

                   At the press conference, Hening said that this
                   service is persistently working on the
                   identification of Albanian
                   extremists in Kosovo who are involved in terrorism in
                   these districts, which are located in the vicinity of
                   the administrative border to Kosovo. After he
                   was asked whether any grouping of the Yugoslav Army
                   in Medvedja, Presevo and Bujanovac were noticed,
                   Hening stated that, until now, the international
                   force and certain services of this force did not
                   notice any actions or activities of the YA.

  ARMED ethnic Albanians are occupying border regions
in the south of Serbia and terrorising their
inhabitants, raising fears that Nato will be dragged
into another Balkan conflict.
The men are believed to be members of a radical
offshoot of the Kosovo Liberation Army which fought
Serbs in the province last year. At least one
"liberated" area of southern Yugoslavia is just yards
away from Nato outposts in Kosovo. Although the Serbs
have so far refrained from major operations against
armed Albanians, there is a rising tide of killings,
bombings and terror.

Diplomats in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, said the
situation was extremely dangerous. Nato has accused
the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic of building
up troop levels on the border with Kosovo, in breach
of the peace deal signed last June to end the Kosovo
war, although there is little sign of this on the
ground.

All the same, there remains a risk that troops or
heavily armed police may launch hot-pursuit raids into
the Nato-imposed three-mile demilitarised zone in
southern Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia's southern border
districts are 80 per cent Albanian. Local men have
armed themselves in Kosovo and slipped back over the
border to create what some call eastern Kosovo.

In the "liberated" village of Dobrosin, there is a
strange silence. The village is empty of children and
almost empty of women. Sitting on the Serbian side of
the border between Kosovo and Serbia proper, Dobrosin
used to have a population of 1,200. Now more than 80
per cent have fled. Most Albanians from the village
claim they were driven out by Serbs, but it is a month
since any Serb policemen dared to enter Dobrosin.

The truth, although Albanians dare not say it, is that
the villagers are not fleeing Serbs, they are leaving
their homes because of fellow Albanians. Dobrosin is
now controlled by a radical offshoot of the Kosovo
Liberation Army - the so-called Liberation Army of
Presevo, Medvedje and Bujanovac, the three
predominantly Albanian municipalities of southern
Serbia that border Kosovo.

The guerrillas drive through the muddy tracks in
expensive cars at breakneck speed brandishing
Kalashnikov assault rifles. The agenda of the fighters
is, they boast, to "liberate" the territory that
belongs to Serbia, even though it is peopled by
Albanians who have lived peacefully alongside Serbs
for years.

The mayor of Dobrosin has fled, like most of his
people. Six miles away, the Serb town of Bujanovac
houses the local government and hospitals for the
municipality covering Dobrosin. The direct route from
Bujanovac to Dobrosin is no longer safe, even for
Albanians. Foreigners are even less welcome. Earlier
this week a United Nations official was shot in both
legs while driving towards Dobrosin.

Virtually all communication between the village and
the nearest town has now ceased. Meanwhile, the
violence in the Bujanovac municipality is fuelling
suspicion and enmity. A Serb policeman and a guerrilla
were killed in a gun battle at another border village
at the weekend when the heating plant in Bujanovac was
blown up.

The Serbian mayor of the town, Stojanca Arsic, blames
Nato for the situation, saying that KFOR has failed to
disarm the rebels and stop their border violations.
Dobrosin poses a serious dilemma for the Serb
authorities. Although the Serbian deputy Information
Minister, Mijodrag Popovic, says Serbia will stick to
the terms of its agreement with KFOR and not send
troops into the the buffer zone, the fact is that, in
the words of Serbia's Blic newspaper "terrorists are
operating on Serbian soil".

Nato's response shows it, too, is worried. American
peacekeeping troops are rapidly building a base on the
other side of the border near Dobrosin and gun turrets
now face towards the village.

Nato knows that Dobrosin has the potential to drag it
into further war.

 KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - At least seven  French
KFOR soldiers, 20 Serbs and three Albanians were injured  Tuesday in
the predominantly Serb part of the divided Kosovo  town of Mitrovica.

A Reuters reporter at the scene said he saw at least six  French
soldiers and one captain injured when Albanians threw two  explosive
devices at soldiers who had surrounded an Albanian  house from which
there had been shooting.
Some of the soldiers were evacuated to a nearby French  military
hospital.
Philippe Paco, a spokesman for the United Nations Mission in  Kosovo,
said he had heard that the incident started with a  quarrel between
Albanian and Serb youths.
"One Albanian fired a hunting rifle on a young man and  wounded him
and immediately after that Albanians from a  courtyard fired two hand
grenades," Paco said.
A doctor at the hospital in northern Mitrovica, Marko  Jaksic, said 20
Serbs had been injured.
"Twenty injured Serbs have been received in the hospital  for
treatment and two of them are seriously wounded," said  Jaksic, head
of the surgical ward of the Mitrovica hospital.
KFOR spokesman Lieutenant Christian Lindmeier said by  telephone from
the Kosovo capital Pristina that he could confirm  that 10 Serbs and
three Albanians had been wounded and  "several" French soldiers had
received grenade injuries.
He said the French were not badly hurt.
The northern Mitrovica district where the firing broke out  was
heavily fortified by KFOR last week when it managed to  return some
Albanians to their homes there after a two-day  standoff with angry
Serbs.
KFOR and the United Nations, anxious to demonstrate their  backing for
a multi-ethnic Kosovo, put on a huge show of force  to get the
Albanians back home through a gauntlet of Serbs, who  said having
Albanians in their part of town was a threat to  their safety.
The Albanians had fled to the purely Albanian southern part  of the
town, which is divided by the River Ibar, last month  after ethnic
violence drove them from their homes.
The shooting later died down. French KFOR spokesman Colonel  Patrick
Chanliau said French soldiers were still surrounding the  house where
the shooting had started. He also said two cars were  burning and that
a child was among the injured.
Troops and U.N. police had reinforced the bridges dividing  the town
where Serbs and Albanians had gathered on their  respective sides of
the river. The atmosphere remained extremely  tense but was quiet
after the shooting finished.

BELGRADE, Mar 9, 2000 -- (Reuters) Yugoslavia's army
chief said on Wednesday that Kosovo Albanian
"terrorists" were massing weapons on the Kosovo-Serbia
border to spread conflict to Serbia and provoke
international intervention.

General Nebojsa Pavkovic said that together with their
supporters in the towns of Bujanovac, Presevo and
Medvedja, just inside government-controlled Serbia,
the "terrorists" wanted to provoke a reaction by the
Serbian security forces.

"Their plan is for this to create conditions for
international intervention, allegedly to protect
Albanian rights and freedoms," Pavkovic was quoted by
Tanjug news agency as saying in an interview with
Thursday's edition of the weekly Vojska.

"With this aim, and under KFOR protection, they are
massing large quantities of weapons near Kosovo's
administrative border with Serbia, and building
facilities for attacks and protection," Pavkovic said.

Pavkovic said the Albanians were organising military
training on surprise attacks, ambushes and diversions.

Leaders of the now-disbanded ethnic Albanian Kosovo
Liberation Army have denied links with a shadowy armed
group that has emerged in Albanian villages inside
government-controlled Serbia.

Local Albanians and Serbs both fear a re-run of the
Kosovo conflict in the area after a series of clashes
between Serb police and the rebels, who say they are
only protecting their villages from alleged police
brutality.

Pavkovic added there were a number of illegal
organisations working to expel Serbs from Kosovo
through murders, abductions and other crimes and that
they also planned to conduct terrorist actions outside
Kosovo.

Deputy Serbian Prime Minister Dragan Todorovic, a
member of the ultra-nationalist Radical Party, said
armed Albanians in Kosovo and nearby villages in
government-controlled Serbia were spreading panic and
also accused the West of backing them.

"The Serbian government expects ethnic Albanian
terrorists to intensify their terrorist activities at
the break of Spring, with the help of KFOR and UNMIK,
especially in Bujanovac, Presevo and Medvedja,"
Todorovic said.

"They are doing this to destabilise us in their
attempts to create a so-called Greater Albania,"
Todorovic added.

Belgrade accuses Kosovo's separatist leaders of
seeking to unite the province with neighbouring
Albania.

The NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force and the United
Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) have expressed
concern over the clashes inside Serbia and stepped up
controls on the border.

On February 24th my analysis was subtitled: "The
Battle of Mitrovica is Not About Visiting Cousins -
its About the Trepca Mine." (See:
http://www.originalsources.com/OS2-00MQC/2-24-2000.1.html)
Somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 ethnic Albanians
had marched for miles through the snow to attempt to
get across the bridge in to Mitrovica, which was being
guarded by French peacekeepers. The marchers told
gullible Western journalists that "all they wanted"
was to "be able to visit their cousins on the other
side of the river."

Over the weekend the real issue of Kosovo finally
emerged in a press release from KFOR headquarters in
Pristina, Kosovo which was entitled: Mining Industry -
A Great Asset For Kosovo, written by Maj. Kristian
Kahrs.

The e-mail to me and other members of the media said:
 

"Dear friends of KFOR Online We can now offer an
article from the Stari Trg Mine just east of
Mitrovica. KFOR Polish soldiers gave 500 uniforms and
safety equipment to the mine, and the mine has a great
potential. According to mine director Mr. Burhan
Kavaja, they can exploit 16 million metric tons of
zinc, lead and silver, and there are enough metals to
have work for 20 years. Read more on KFOR Online,
http://kforonline.com."
Only one month ago I asked in my analysis of the
conflict at the Mitrovica bridge "How come none of
these reports are mentioning another minor little fact
concerning Mitrovica - the Trepca Mine? The mine is
owned by the Serbs and a Greek mining firm,
Mytilinaios SA who signed a contract with Serbian
agency of foreign trade in 1998 to invest $519 Billion
in the mine."

Now, all the sudden, KFOR is claiming some kind of
"humanitarian" giveaway program to "help" the mine?
What's going on? In February I quoted from an article
written by Chris Hedges in the New York Times in July
1998 entitled: "Kosovo War's Glittering Prize Rests
Underground" in which he pointed out that the real
issue in Kosovo was control of the mine. In that
article Hedges quotes "Burhan Kavaja, an Albanian, who
was the former director of the Stari Tng mine, who was
dismissed and imprisoned after the first strike.
...This conflict will only end now with our
independence."

And just who is it that KFOR is giving the free
miner's helmets to? Is it the director put in place by
the owner of both the mine, the Belgrade government,
Novak Bjelic, who Hedges interviewed? It wasn't. It
was no other than the Albanian, Burhan Kavaja, the
former director of the Stari Tng Mine who led the
illegal efforts to seize control of the mine by force.
 

Hedges wrote, "The ethnic Albanian miners, who made up
75 percent of the 23,000 employees, shut down the
mines and organized a 30-mile-long protest march to
Pristina. They carried photos of the late communist
leader, Josip Broz Tito, and Yugoslav flags adorned
with the communist red star." What the miners wanted
was not only independence, but control of the most
valuable piece of real estate in Kosovo - the Trepca
Mines - the only thing in the area that Adolf Hitler
wanted.

"When the Nazis seized this corner of the Balkans in
1941, they handed over the hovels in Pristina, the
provincial capital, to the Italian fascists," Hedges
observed. "But they kept the British-built Trepca
mines for the Reich, shipping out wagonloads of
minerals for weapons and producing the batteries that
powered the U-boats. Submarine batteries, along with
ammunition, are still produced in the Trepca mines.
The mining history reaches back to the Romans, who
hacked out silver from the quarries."

Before their destruction under KFOR "protection"
Kosovo was covered with ancient Serbia Orthodox Church
monasteries and religious sites. Some of those now
destroyed Churches were built in the 13th and 14th
centuries. Kosovo is the cradle of the Serb culture.
Even throughout 500 years of Ottoman Turk occupation,
the Serbs were a majority in Kosovo.

The "real worth of Kosovo", Hedges said, are the mines
- especially the which contains the minerals needed to
wage war - even back in the time of the Romans. "The
fighting between the rebels of the Kosovo Liberation
Army, with their intoxicating visions of an
independent state, and the 50,000 Serbian soldiers and
special policemen. ...There is over 30 percent lead
and zinc in the ore," said Novak Bjelic, the mine's
beefy director. "The war in Kosovo is about the mines,
nothing else. This is Serbia's Kuwait -- the heart of
Kosovo. We export to France, Switzerland, Greece,
Sweden, the Czech Republic, Russia and Belgium. "We
export to a firm in New York, but I would prefer not
to name it. And in addition to all this Kosovo has 17
billion tons of coal reserves. Naturally, the
Albanians want all this for themselves."

The Trepca mining complex "the most valuable piece of
real estate in the Balkans," is worth billions of
dollars. "The Stari Tng mine, with its warehouses, is
ringed with smelting plants, 17 metal treatment sites,
freight yards, railroad lines, a power plant and the
country's largest battery plant.
"In the last three years we have mined 2,538,124 tons
of lead and zinc crude ore," Novak Bjelic, 58, the
Serb director of the mine in July 1998 told Hedges,
"and produced 286,502 tons of concentrated lead and
zinc and 139,789 tons of pure lead, zinc, cadmium,
silver and gold."

The battle for control of that silver and gold, lead,
zinc, and cadminum, began in the late 1980s with a
series of hunger strikes in which the Albanian miners
occupied the mines. The mine protests led to general
strikes throughout Kosovo, making Trepca the nerve
center of the resistance movement. Serbian special
policemen eventually seized the mine, carrying
weakened miners out on stretchers. The Albanians'
drive to seize the mines, declare independence to
create a "greater Albania" of course would switch the
proceeds of the mines from the government of
Yugoslavia to the Albanians under the KLA, which
controls much of the heroin trade in Europe. Milosevic
declared a state of emergency and the ethnic Albanian
miners were replaced with Poles, Czechs and Serbs. In
1998 there were 15,000 mine workers, about 15% of whom
were of Albanian origin.

Less than a year after Hedges wrote that, US Bombers
began to wreak havoc on both Kosovo and Belgrade,
supposedly to "stop" a "genocide" of Albanians. The
bombing raids, under the direction of Bill Clinton,
drove out half the Albanian population and sixty
percent of the Serb population of Kosovo.

After the bombing stopped, thousands of forensic
experts from several countries searched for the "mass
graves" the KLA kept telling the world contained "up
to 100,000" Albanians slaughtered by the Serbs. Only
about 2108 bodies were found, some of them Serbs,
others prisoners in a prison bombed by NATO and NO
proof of ANY genocide.

Throughout the world the word is getting out. We were
lied to. The KLA, which was listed as a terrorist
group by the U.S. State Department in 1998 and known
to Interpol as the major supplier of illegal drugs and
prostitutes in Europe, is now in control of Kosovo,
anarchy reigns, just as it does in Northern Albanian
under the clan warlords, and KFOR has reinstalled the
Albanian manager of the Stari Tng mine who tried to
deliver the mine to the KLA in 1998.

Contacts in Yugoslavia told me, via e-mail, when
Clinton ordered the bombing, that the bombing was
really all about control of Kosovo mineral assets. I
didn't print that in 1999. I couldn't believe at that
time that America would be a party to such a thing.
The KFOR e-mail and their report on the Stari Tng mine
on the Internet is irrefutable proof that the Serbs
were right.

Will Belgrade stand by and do nothing as the Serbs of
Mitrovica are driven out so the Albanians can have
total control over mineral resources the Serbs need to
survive? Thirty-four percent of the coal used to heat
Belgrade comes from the same region of Kosovo. Will
they stand by, with their intact army, and do nothing
as a seizure of assets comparable, in the words of the
Serb director of the mine, to Iraq's seizure of
Kuwait's life blood - their oil wells, takes place?
Will the Russians and the Chinese, who are friends of
the Serbs, allow those assets to be controlled by the
KLA drug dealers as the region deteriorates into
anarchy?

And, will the candidates for the U.S. Presidency
continue to pretend that nothing is happening as
America implements such a glaring piece of
imperialism? Will the next U.S. leader and the
American people really continue to be content with
spending billions of American dollars to shore up the
KLA and its drive to create a Greater Albania and
secure its near monopoly of heroin sales in Europe?

Time will tell.

To comment: [email protected]

        BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, April 17 (UPI) -- Ibrahim Rugova, leader
of the Democratic League of Kosovo, warned the international community
in
an interview that a new war will break out if it tries to join the
province to Yugoslavia again.
        Rugova, who was elected Kosovo president at an election in the
early 1990s that was not recognized by the international community, said

that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244 did not rule out independence

for Kosovo. The resolution was passed at the end of Yugoslavia's war
with
NATO last June to establish control over Serbia's southern province by
the United Nations and by a NATO-led international peacekeeping force.
        "All of us, the entire population of Kosovo, will stand at the
barricades" and the Kosovo population is "at the moment interested only
in independence," he said.
        Albanians now account for 35 percent of Macedonia's
population, and their number in Montenegro is on the rise, Rugova said,
adding: "We are a divided nation. There are political circles which
demand that all Albanians live in a single state. A confederation with
Albania is a matter of time."
        He said that Kosovo should have its own army so it could be
"protected in case of a Serbian attack" and that it wanted to be a
member
of NATO.
        Rugova said efforts were being made to discourage militants of
the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army now operating in the southern
Serbian regions of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja where Albanians also
live from provocations in order to avoid "offering Belgrade an excuse
for
armed actions."
        Belgrade radio B2-92 quoted Serbian sources on Monday as
saying that "armed terrorists of the so-called OCPBM had fired five
projectiles at a police post on the road between Lucane and Dobrosin.
        The projectiles were fired on Saturday evening from the
direction of Dobrosin in the 5-km-wide buffer zone between Kosovo and
Serbia, where the OCPBM is believed to have its headquarters. The
sources
added that firing was subsequently heard in the area but could not say
whether there were casualties on either side in the incident.
        The radio later said KFOR had confirmed that the attack took
place.
        Two Belgrade-based U.N. officials who were touring the area
were shot at near the same police post, 4 km from Lucane, early last
February.

BELGRADE, May 25, 2000 -- (Reuters) Belgrade accused
what it called ethnic Albanian terrorists of mounting
a mortar attack on a Serb police checkpoint on
Wednesday in the volatile southern part of Serbia,
along the administrative border with Kosovo.

"Albanian terrorists of the so-called Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) attacked at 12:15 p.m. (1015
GMT) today members of the Serbian Interior Ministry
while performing their regular duties close to the
village of Konculj, near Bujanovac," Serbian state
television said.

The report said 60 millimeter mortars and automatic
weapons were used in the attack, which came from the
direction of the ethnic Albanian village of Dobrosin.

It said one mortar bomb fell in the yard of Nimani
Rusdi, causing minor damage, but that there were no
casualties.

The television said that just before the attack, U.S.
Apache helicopters and drones flew over the region of
Konculj on Yugoslav territory.

The report said Serb police in the Konculj area were
attacked three times on Tuesday by ethnic Albanian
"terrorists".

An armed group called the Presevo, Medvedja and
Bujanovac Liberation Army, named after the three
municipalities in the area, is said to be based in
Dobrosin and believed to have been involved in several
clashes with local Serb security forces.

The predominantly ethnic Albanian area east of Kosovo
has seen an upsurge in violence since Yugoslav forces
pulled out of Kosovo following last year's 11-week
NATO bombing over Yugoslavia's repression of the
province's ethnic Albanians.

Other Belgrade media have reported incidents in the
area over the past few days.

The independent news agency Beta said two mortar
grenades were fired by unidentified assailants late on
Tuesday near a police checkpoint in Konculj in the
five km (three mile) demilitarized zone along the
Kosovo boundary.

The independent daily Blic said nine mortars were
fired at the Serb police checkpoint in the same area
on Saturday, also from the direction of Dobrosin.

(Webmaster's note: Some authentic propaganda: "An estimated 20,000 Kosovar women were raped
by Serbs."
"War criminals have not been arrested." Yeah, sure, they still hang
around in KosovO killing non-Albanians.
AND the most important: "Kosova is still not free. To deny the
aspirations of Kosovars is to ensure new wars and further
atrocities." I am sure no one doubts about that! There are already
enough atrocities made by these poor "freedom fighters". But I'm sure if
you ask their politicians they will say they meant they are afraid that
these "evil Serbs" will continue their ...genocide against Albanians.
Scroll down to see who participate in this Goebbels-like propaganda
"force").

--------------------------------------------------------------------
   Kosova Crisis Center (KCC) News Network: http://www.alb-net.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Kosova Task Force, USA
News Update
June 15, 2000

As the first anniversary of Serb withdrawal approaches
(June 20), journalists  in leading newspapers are suffering
from a serious bout of collective amnesia.  Critics in
alliance with the Serb lobby are questioning whether NATO
intervention on humanitarian grounds was justified.  Instead
of acknowledging NATO¹s role in the heroic resistance waged
by the people of Kosova against genocide,  the focus is on
whether the number of Serb tanks hit were worth the costs of
intervention.

The following facts need to be remembered and brought forward
to the media's attention.

1   Kosova is still not free.  Serbia continues to have
political sovereignty over Kosova despite the overwhelming
vote for independence by Kosovars in 1991.  To deny the
aspirations of Kosovars is to ensure new wars and further
atrocities.

2   The UN Security Council assigned UNMIK the impossible
task of creating a multi-ethnic Kosova subject to Belgrade.
Any talk of reconciliation and creation of a multiethnic society
is futile so long as there is no acknowledgment of the wrongs done,
and if not amends then at least a sense that some measure of
justice is being done.

3   NATO went to war against Belgrade not to create some
multiethnic and democratic nirvana but to prevent an escalation
of Serb attacks against Kosovo's civilian population.

4   Albanian relief from Serb tyranny cannot depend simply on
the presence of international forces providing border security.
A political settlement with ethnic Albanians as full partners
is needed.

5   The upcoming municipal elections are no more than a UN
plan to assuage Kosovars and a bid for time in the hope that
some sort of compromise short of Koosovar independence will emerge.

6   French peacekeepers in Kosova have been repeatedly accused of
cooperating with Serb paramilitaries controlling access to northern
Mitrovica. French forces sympathetic to Belgrade have allowed a
defacto partition of the mineral-rich region of Mitrovica by the Serbs.

7   War criminals have not been arrested. KFOR and UNMIK civilian
police force have deliberately failed to pursue indicted war
criminals. Kosova still has no court that can deliver impartial
judgments regarding war crimes.

8    About 1200 Albanians are still being illegally held in
Serbian prisons, subjected to mock trials that make a parody of
justice.   Last month, 143 of these prisoners were sentenced to a
total of 1632 years in prison. Another 5000 Kosovars are reported
missing. The weak international response has fostered a profound
cynicism among Kosovars regarding the prospects for realizing
other Western promises such as self-governance or real peace.

9   An estimated 20,000 Kosovar women were raped by Serbs. None of
these criminals have been arrested. Few services are available for
these women to deal with their personal traumas.  Local humanitarian
groups, including the Red Cross, have estimated that 100 rape-babies
were born in January  alone.
--
==========================================
Justice For All
730 W. Lake St., Suite 156
Chicago, IL 60661, USA
Phone: 312-829-0087 Fax: 312-829-0089
Email: [email protected]
Internet: http://www.justiceforall.org
Visit our website for news and information
==========================================

The following organizations constitute the Kosova Task Force, USA:
Albanian Islamic Cultural Center, American Muslim Council,
Balkan Muslim Association, Council of Islamic Organizations of Chicago,
Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan, Council on American
Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America ( ),
Islamic Council of New England, Islamic Medical Association, Islamic
Shura Council of Southern California, Islamic Society of Greater
Houston, Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Majlis Shura New York,

The Ministry of Imam W.D. Muhammad, Muslim Students Association of US
and Canada, The National Community.

      (Webmaster's note: That's how the "new wars and further atrocities" would be perpetrated)

KLECKA, Yugoslavia, June 17 (AFP) - Peacekeeping forces have
uncovered a massive arms cache near a secret training camp in
Kosovo, their biggest haul since they were deployed in the province
a year ago, officials said Saturday.
   British Brigadier Richard Shirreff said the cache, some six
kilometres (four miles) from the central Drenica Valley, had been
opened within the last two weeks and arms may have been removed.
   "They wouldn't have been digging it up if they weren't going to
use it," said Shirreff, who commands the British-led forces of KFOR
in the Yugoslav province's central sector.
   He said it was possible the weapons had been destined for the
Presevo Valley in southeast Serbia, where ethnic Albanian rebels
have been fighting Serb security forces in the predominantly
Albanian-inhabited area.
   "This represents a major weapons haul. It almost certainly
entirely ethnic Albanian, mostly former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
materials," said Shirreff.
   "It could be used by any extremist organisation who wanted to do
some serious damage and certainly put back any degree of peace and
stability here in Kosovo," he added.
   Another British officer said the four bunkers and military
assault course near the village of Klecka had contained paperwork
indicating it was a former KLA hide.
   "Anyone saying this was the Yugoslav army and the locals never
noticed is talking rubbish," he said in response to assertions by
ethnic Albanian journalists that it could have been built by Serb
forces.
   The bunkers, dug into a hillside and sealed with steel doors,
were discovered late Friday by some of the 400 KFOR troops taking
part in a huge sweep of the Drenica Valley, the main fiefdom of the
now disbanded KLA.
   British Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon said: "This has already
been a particularly successful and significant operation.
   "These types of weapons pose a threat to security in Kosovo, and
taking them out of circulation should be in everyone's interest."
   The discovery came after a recent upsurge in anti-Serb violence
that on Thursday saw two Serbs killed by an anti-tank mine near
Pristina, bringing the Serbian death toll to 10 in three weeks.
   "It is the biggest weapons haul by a long way," said Lieutenant
Tom Rees of the British Royal Engineers, adding that there could be
more bunkers hidden in the area.
   KFOR troops had emptied less than half of the first bunker by
midday Saturday but had already brought out four heavy machine guns,
eight 105 mm anti-tank guns, 15 heavy mortars, 150 anti-tank
rockets, several thousand grenades, as well as anti-tank mines and
plastic explosives.
   The arms were all of Russian, Chinese, East European and US
origin.
   KFOR reinforcements were being deployed to provide extra
security after locals had disabled at least one vehicle by throwing
spikes into the road to stop them moving in, one officer said.
   The find was less than a kilometre from the wartime command
centre of General Agim Ceku, who led the KLA in its fight against
Belgrade. One KFOR spokesman said Ceku still uses the place as a
summer residence.
   Shirreff said he would be asking the former KLA leadership about
the presence of such a huge stash nine months after the KLA was
officially disbanded and transformed into a civil disaster relief
group, with Ceku still as its head.
   He said if they had known about it and said nothing it would
show a "degree of non-compliance."
   Another high-ranking KFOR officer said: "I think former KLA
leaders will be pretty upset by this."

      The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrilla group is being investigated
      over alleged war crimes committed during last year's conflict in the
      province.
      The United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
      Yugoslavia is examining five cases where members of the KLA are believed
      to have been involved in murders of the province's minority Serb
      population.
      The tribunal has been working on numerous cases of atrocities committed by
      Serb security forces during last year's conflict. Over 2000 bodies have
      been recovered from mass graves.
      This, however, is the first time the court has revealed investigations
      into murders believed to have been committed by the KLA. Search BBC

      The chief prosecutor of the international war crimes tribunal for former
      Yugoslavia, Carla del Ponte says the court is investigating members of the
      Kosovo Liberation Army.
      Speaking in the Kosovo capital, Pristina she said the investigation
      involved the alleged murders of ethnic Serbs during last year's conflict
      in the province.
      The tribunal has been working on numerous cases of atrocities committed by
      Serb security forces but this is the first time the court has revealed
      investigations into murders believed to have been committed by the KLA.
      A BBC correspondent in Kosovo says many former KLA members now hold
      official positions and the indictments could have serious repercussions
      for the UN's administration in Kosovo. Exact details of the crimes are not
      expected to be released until the court issues indictments.
      The tribunal says the investigation has been hampered by an inability to
      gain access to Serb victims and witnesses, many of whom are living in
      Serbia.
      From the newsroom of the BBC World Service Search BBC News Online

Blic, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
June 24, 2000
 

PRISTINA (Beta) -KFOR has confirmed that the weapons which members of the
international forces discovered last week in the Drenica region village of Klecka
belonged to the officially disbanded KLA.

KFOR spokesperson major Scott Slaten advised yesterday that KFOR intelligence
experts have significant evidence with the help of which the discovered arms can be
tied to the members of the KLA who were active in these parts during the war in
Kosovo.

According to Slaten, the evidence dispproves the inaccurate rumors which are
circulating that the discovered weapons and ammunition was left by members of the
Yugoslav security forces upon withdrawal. He added that an investigation was still
in progress to determine who was responsible for the warehousing of this war
material.

Yesterday morning three hand grenades were thrown at and gunfire opened on a Romany
house not far from Pec. No one was injured in that attack, advised the KFOR
spokesperson. The unknown assailants stepped out of their car, threw three hand
grenades and fired several shots at the Romany house. The case was reported to UN
police by an Albanian.

A hand grenade expoded two nights ago not far from a Serb house near Stimlje. There
was no one injured during this attack and this house was the target of previous
attacks as well, said Slaten.

He said that KFOR explosives experts found five craters made by mortar grenades not
far from the monastery of High Decani which had been launched on Wednesday night not
far from the monastery. He said that KFOR was continuing its investigation but that
it was slowed because of the possibility that there were more grenades in that
region.

Two men of Albanian nationality were arrested two days ago in Djakovica for
attempted child kidnapping.

Two nights ago not far from the border between FR Yugoslavia and Albania in south
Kosovo and near Tekija two large fires broke out which were localized during the
night and in the morning.

The KFOR spokesperson advised that yesterday morning approximately 150 Serbs
gathered near the village of Preoce on the spot where two Serbs were killed in a
landmine explosion last week. The gathering was peaceful.

Translated by S. Lazovic (June 24, 2000)

     PRISTINA, Jun 28, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse)

Kosovo Albanians  staged their first demonstration against the
KFOR international  peacekeeping force to protest the destruction of
a huge arms stash  belonging to former rebels, KFOR officials
said Wednesday.

     The crowd of up to 1,000 ethnic Albanians used
trucks to block the   road into the village of Lapusnik, near the central
town of Glogovac,  late Tuesday and waved banners saying "These
weapons belong to the  Albanian people" and "KFOR out of Kosovo," said
KFOR spokesman Rune  Haarstad.

   They also called for the release of farmer Shaban
Shala, 25, on whose  land the massive stash of arms and munitions was
found two weeks ago.

   Haarstad said it was the first time ethnic Albanians, who welcomed the  NATO-led force with open arms when they replaced
Yugoslav troops last  June, have demonstrated against KFOR.

   Brigadier Richard Shirreff, commander of Kosovo's
British-led central sector, said some protest was to be expected
after his troops confiscated the weapons near the central Drenica
Valley, heartland of the former separatist Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA).

   He said gun ownership was a part of the local
culture, but added that  the demonstration was almost certainly
organized.

    "You don't block a road with four heavy goods
vehicles and get 1,000  people out just like that," said
Shirreff.

    KFOR troops found two bunkers filled with some 70
tonnes of weapons  and explosives -- including anti-tank rockets,
mortars, machine guns  and tens of thousands of grenades -- earlier
this month near the village of Klecka, some six kilometers (four
miles) from the Drenica  Valley.

     They also found documents such as issue and
receipt vouchers which identified the stash as KLA property,
Shirreff said.

    He said it was possible that ex-KLA leader General
Agim Ceku, whose  wartime headquarters were less than a kilometer
from the bunkers, had not known about the stash.

    He said Ceku had taken over KLA command very late
in the war and had only led the rebels for the last few months of
their conflict with  federal Yugoslavia.

   Ceku, now head of the KLA's civilian successor, the
Kosovo Protection
    Corps, has strenuously denied any link between the
KLA and the arms  find. ((c) 2000 Agence France
Presse)

 June 29, 2000

  Toronto, June 29th (Tanjug) - Canadian prison official who was engaged  by UN to help building the prison system in the province, escaped from
Kosovo after former members of "KLA" threatened him,

Canadian journal "Globe and Mail" writes citing the sources in the United Nations.
 According to the UN sources which the journal cites, former "KLA" members started threatening him after he had refused to employ dozens of
their members as prison guards.

BELGRADE - The draft of the temporary law on municipalities which was discussed two
days ago at the session of the Temporary Administrative Council of Kosovo (PAVK) has
run into the disapproval among Shiptar representatives. They oppose the opening of
local Serb office and in this they see a kind of cantonization of Kosovo which is,
based on the current situation, impossible and impracticable. On the other hand, the
Serbs see a step toward the improvement of the conditions in which they live in the
opening of local offices for national communities.

The expert group of the Serbian National Council (SNV) of Kosovo and Metohija is
already considering this draft which is in fact a copy of the agreement from
Rambouillet. If the text is adopted as is, its implementation will be qualified by
participation in elections which the Serbs oppose. Namely, the Serbs have decided to
boycott the upcoming local elections in October because they believe that necessary
conditions for their organization do not exist in view of the fact that
approximately 350,000 have been expelled from Kosovo and Metohija while at the same
time there is a large number of Albanians from Albania and Macedonia in the south
Serbian province.

The Serbian side wants the agreement on coexistence to be incorporated into this
text and a decision added regarding the establishment of a national committee in
which every community will have the right of veto, said Father Sava Janjic following
the session of the PAVK in whose work he participated. If the incorporation of the
agreement on coexistence is incorporated, the Serbs will be able to more actively
participate in the administration of territories in which they live which is
assessed as a positive move in the establishment of a better quality of life.

* * * * *

Whatever Kouchner says

The proposed draft law does not show anything new which was not already presented at
Rambouillet. According to this document, among other things, the national
communities have the right to appeal a decision. However, they do not have the right
of veto nor can they influence the law's implementation. In other words, whatever
Koucher says, goes.

Translated by S. Lazovic (July 2, 2000)

Democratic Party of Kosovo president Hashim Thaci said on July 1 that he
opposed an agreement signed last week by UNMIK chief Bernard Kouchner
and Serb National Council of Kosovo and Metohija president Bishop
Artemije.
During a meeting with local party chapter leaders, Thaci said the
agreement had been signed because of "pressure and a boycott by
destructive elements in the Serb ethnic community in Kosovo."

The United Democratic Movement of Kosovo headed by Rehxep Qosja warned
that the "establishment of a Serb bureau is a legalization of the
division of Kosovo."

The agreement envisages the forming of special military and police units
to guard Serbs in Kosovo, the appointment of international and Serb
judges in municipal councils and a future court for war crimes in
Kosovo, the establishment of a minimum of 20 local offices in which
Serbs will work side-by-side with UNMIK officials in the district.

The Kosovo Albanian press criticized the agreement which was signed by
Kouchner and Bishop Artemije on June 29.

The Zeri daily said that one of the principle reasons for Thaci's
refusal to attend a Kosovo Transitional Administration Council session
on June 30, which was attended by Serb representatives, was his
discontent with Kouchner's stance on what he called "political factors."

The Koha Ditore daily published a statement by the Alliance for Kosovo's
Future, a coalition which gathers six parties, which said that the
agreement would endanger the peace process in Kosovo.

The Dita daily said that the agreement almost granted a special status
to Serb enclaves in Kosovo, despite statements by leading international
officials that they opposed the division of Kosovo and the establishment
of cantons.

[I'll bet Thaci has his 'own plan' for Kosovo: Expulsion and genocide.
And his current lover's spat with Bernard Kouchner is no doubt a
stage-managed charade.)

PRISTINA, Jul 6, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Hashim Thaci, former
political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, issued a list of demands
Wednesday which he said must be met before his party could return to the
province's UN-led joint administration.
Talking at a news conference at the headquarters of the Democratic Party
of Kosovo (PDK), Thaci said Kosovo's UN administrator Bernard Kouchner
had gone behind his back in striking a deal with Serbian representatives
but this was not the only reason for his party's decision to boycott the
administration.
"The signing of this accord is only the latest in a series of problems
we have had with the United Nations," he said. "We have other issues to
address."
The PDK and other ethnic Albanian politicians have warned that the
letter of understanding signed by Kouchner and the leader of the Serbian
National Council (SNV) Bishop Artemije Radosavljevic was the first step
towards the "cantonisation" of Kosovo.
The letter provides for local administrative centres and unarmed
neighbourhood watch patrols to improve living conditions and security in
Serbian areas of Kosovo. It was a precondition of the SNV ending its own
boycott of the administration.
Thaci attacked the document and demanded that the United Nations mission
(UNMIK) and Kosovo's multinational peacekeeping force (KFOR) do more to
prevent the "violation" of Kosovar territory.
"Kosovo has its own territory, and this territory has been violated and
continues to be violated. KFOR and UNMIK have been slow to resolve these
problems," he said, giving as an example the northern Kosovo town of
Kosovska Mitrovica.
KFOR and UNMIK should end the division of Mitrovica into Serbian and
ethnic Albanian sectors as a sign of their determination to maintain the
territorial integrity of Kosovo, Thaci said.
The PDK had come up with its own plan for the reunification of
Mitrovica, Thaci said, but it had been ignored by UNMIK and it had
become a forbidden topic at meetings of the administration.
In addition to the territorial question Thaci demanded a settlement be
reached to pay pensions to injured KLA veterans, the families of
guerrillas killed in action and to the elderly.
He also called for more local Kosovars to be recruited into the Kosovo
Police Service (KPS), which polices the province alongside UNMIK's
multinational police force.
Under the deal signed with the UN to disarm and abolish the KLA half of
the KPS's officers were to be former guerrillas, he said, but this had
not been the case.
Aside from the list of seven demands to be presented to UNMIK, Thaci
also called for increased security on Kosovo's borders with Montenegro
and Serbia to prevent contraband and "political instability" and for
action against Serbian spies and paramilitaries who he claimed were
destabilizing the province.
The PDK would continue to refuse to take part in meetings of the Interim
Administrative Council, the executive body of Kosovo's administration,
until progress had been made on these issues, Thaci said.
Nadia Younes, UNMIK's chief spokeswoman, earlier told reporters that
Kouchner would meet Thaci on Friday to discuss the boycott but that the
letter of understanding signed with the SNV would not be renegotiated.
((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)

[Comments by  A Serb: "Disgusting - Yes!  But what more are we to expect. Although the article
provides no more details, Thaci left b/c Kouchner wasn't doing enough to
cleanse the Serbs or provide for "poor" KLA fascists and their families.  We
don't know what's in the pact but you can rest assured that it doesn't
include anything positive for the Serbs.  Nice that two non-Yugoslav citizens
like Thaci and Kouchner have so much power, yes, the good ol' days of
colonialism are back..."]

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, July 17 (Reuters) - One of Kosovo's main ethnic
Albanian political parties said on Monday it would resume normal relations
with the province's United Nations administration, broken off more than two
weeks ago.

  PRISTINA, Jul 20, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) KFOR peacekeeping troops
  uncovered a haul of drugs along with assault rifles and hundreds of
  rounds of ammunition after searching a Kosovo Albanian village, a British army
  spokeswoman said Wednesday.

  In searches Monday and Tuesday of the village of Gornje Dobrevo, seven
  kilometers (four miles) southwest of Pristina, a team of around 400 troops from the
  KFOR multinational force found four harvests of cannabis and four boxes of
  "narcotics," Captain Kath Hurley said.

  In houses across the village, the troops found several assault rifles, a
  machine gun, ammunition, gas masks, batons and handcuffs, Hurley said.

  Three uniforms were found alongside the weapons, she said, but could not
  specify the unit to which the uniforms belonged.

  A possible minefield was also identified near the village which Hurley
  said would be investigated further by explosives experts.

  The Serbian media regularly portrays Kosovo Albanian separatist rebels
  as belonging to a "narco-mafia," supporting their struggle against the Yugoslav
  regime in Belgrade through criminal activities.  (As if this is not true!)

  The search in Gornje Dobrevo, which was carried out by Finnish, British
  and Swedish troops, was part of an ongoing program to disarm Kosovo's
  population. Serbian villages have also been targeted for searches, Hurley said.

  US troops serving in southeast Kosovo also found weapons Tuesday,
  Sergeant Pat  McGuire said. A foot patrol of US peacekeepers discovered a grenade, a machine
  gun and a large quantity of ammunition in a building in Gnjilane, he
  said. No one was arrested.

 PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Gunmen shot and wounded three Serb men during a
late-night attack in the sector of Kosovo under control of American
peacekeepers, the U.S. military reported Saturday.

 The three Serbs were shot about 10:30 p.m. Friday near a cemetery in
Kosovska Kamenica, an ethnically mixed town jointly patrolled by Russian and
American troops, a U.S. statement said.

 The three were evacuated to the U.S. military hospital at Camp Bondsteel
where they were reported in serious but stable condition with multiple
gunshot wounds.

 Several ethnic Albanians were questioned as witnesses but were released,
according to NATO spokesman Maj. Scott Slaten. No further details were
released.

 Attacks by ethnic Albanians against Serbs have continued despite the
presence of NATO-led troops and U.N. police, who took control of the Serb
province in June 1999 from Yugoslav forces withdrawing after the 78-day NATO
bombing of Yugoslavia.

 On Saturday, about 150 Serbs held a memorial service to mark the deaths of
14 villagers slain in a wheat field a year ago, among the bloodiest ethnic
attacks since NATO moved into Kosovo.

 The victims of the massacre were found by a British patrol July 23, 1999
after automatic weapons fire was heard near the town of Gracko, some 10 miles
south of the capital, Pristina. Thirteen people were found lying in a circle
next to their harvester while another man was slumped over his tractor 150
yards away.

 Serbs blamed ethnic Albanian militants for the attack and accused
peacekeepers of failing to heed their pleas for protection during the harvest
season. The massacre also dashed early hopes that the peacekeeping mission
would be able to impose ethnic tolerance in the strife-torn province.

 Saturday's service was closely watched by Finnish and Norwegian
peacekeepers, the private Beta news agency said. Serbs attending expressed
bitterness that NATO and U.N. authorities in the province had failed to find
those responsible for the attack, the report said.

 Meanwhile, the publisher of an Albanian-language newspaper said he would
refuse to pay a fine for violating regulations on publishing personal
information on alleged war criminals.

 Belul Beqaj declared that his newspaper, Dita, would ignore an order to pay
a fine of $11,900 by Tuesday and suggested the paper would not change its
policy of publishing names of those they believe were involved in war crimes.

 As long as those people are free, Beqaj said, ``the freedom and stability of
Kosovo will be endangered.''

 The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe fined Dita for
repeatedly violating a U.N. regulation against accusing individuals who have
not been charged with a crime of being war criminals or publishing other
information that could make them targets of retribution.

 AP-NY-07-22-00 1726EDT

  Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.

The Times(London)     Monday July 24 2000    WORLD NEWS: EUROPE

                      BY MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR

     A PROJECT aimed at preventing former Kosovo Liberation Army members
     from returning to violence faces collapse.

     The United Nations Mission in Kosovo has found that after this
     month it has no money for the Kosovo Protection Corps, the body set
     up last year to give the disarmed KLA a role. There are fears in
     Nato that disillusioned ethnic Albanians will return to guerrilla
     activities against the Serbs. Many weapons that should have been
     handed over are believed to have been buried.

     While KLA leaders hoped the corps would develop into a recognised
     defence force, its purpose was to involve the former fighters in
     public works such as firefighting and engineering projects.
     Although the US and Germany provided most of the funds for wages,
     it lacked equipment: many former guerrillas ended up clearing
     rubbish. They were becoming angry about this role, but the pay
     helped to deter them from taking up arms again. Now, according to
     sources in Pristina, the money has run out.

     From January the UN is to pay the wages. Until then the survival of
     the corps - and potentially the peace agreement- lies with foreign
     governments.

PRISTINA, Jul 30, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Peacekeepers are
searching for an elderly Serbian farmer who disappeared while working in
fields in southwestern Kosovo, a spokesman for the KFOR multinational
force said Saturday.
The man went missing Friday between 9:30 p.m. (1930 GMT) and 10:00 p.m.
near the ethnically mixed Kosovo town of Orahovac, said German
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Wosniak.
A search was immediately launched, and KFOR helicopters were used to
scan the area, but KFOR peacekeepers found no trace of the missing man.
According to the Yugoslav state news agency Tanjug, the man is
75-year-old Trifun Velikic, whose family reported to KFOR he had been
kidnapped by ethnic Albanian extremists.
In June when a 60-year-old shepherd was kidnapped from near the
Serbian-majority town of Strpce, locals protesting the failure of KFOR
to quickly find him rioted and ransacked a UN administrative building.
The shepherd was later found brutally murdered.
Serbs have often found themselves the targets of extremists since the
end of Kosovo's 1998-1999 civil war in June last year and the arrival of
KFOR peacekeepers.
On Saturday, KFOR commander General Juan Ortuno called on all the
peoples of Kosovo to live together in peace.
"We, NATO, did not enter Kosovo to endorse ethnic violence and the
continued intimidation of ethnic minorities," he said.
"KFOR will do everything necessary to protect ethnic minorities in
Kosovo. But we can only do so much. The future is in the hands of the
people of Kosovo. They must show they are willing and able to live
together."
No incidents had been reported late Saturday in Orahovac following the
alleged kidnapping, Wosniak said. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)

UROSEVAC, August 1, 2000 (http://www.kforonline.com )

      Multi-National Brigade East forces, spearheaded by the Greek
501st Mechanized Infantry Battalion, and assisted by KFOR U.S. and
KFOR Italian units, seized a significant cache of weapons early
Saturday morning.significant cache of weapons early Saturday morning.
     The weapons were seized in an area west of Ferizaj / Urosevac as
part of KFOR's ongoing mission of seizing unregistered weapons and
preventing violence. The cache included over 80 mines, 100 pounds of
TNT, sniper rifles, machine guns, and paraphernalia to
remote-detonate bombs -clear indications of a terrorist capability.
The cache had been discovered previously through ground and aerial
reconnaissance. The area was put under surveillance while the seizure
mission was planned.

PRISTINA, Aug 3, 2000 -- (Reuters) An ethnic Albanian
politician was shot and wounded in northeastern Kosovo
on Tuesday, the province's UN administration said on
Wednesday.

UN spokeswoman Susan Manuel said Agim Veliu, a local
leader of the moderate Democratic League of Kosovo
(LDK) party in Podujevo, was taken to hospital in
Pristina after being shot in the back and arm.

His condition was not life-threatening and he was
later released from hospital.

The NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force said the
assailants were reported to have been driving in a
grey or black BMW car when they shot at Veliu, who is
also deputy director of the municipal assembly.

Opinion polls point to victory for the LDK in October
municipal elections which have been billed by the West
as the first free and fair vote in the province's
history.

Many international officials see the LDK as more
moderate and closer to Western values than parties
which have emerged from the Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA) that fought Serb rule in Kosovo, prompting NATO
intervention last year.

But if the LDK does well, Western officials fear a
backlash from former guerrillas who now wield power in
many areas.

[At this rate Hashim Thaci will be guaranteed an election victory - he'll soon be the only ethnic
Albanian of voting age left alive in Kosovo. Doesn't seem as though his Western sponsors - Albright,
Kouchner, Schroeder, Blair, et. al. - are terribly upset by this 'majority of one' scenario,
though....Speaking of the leader of the soon to bemdefunct - or deceased - opposition party, Ibrahim
Rugova, he appears to be doing comparatively well for someone who, as State Department shill Jamie Rubin
assured the world some sixteen months ago, was 'murdered' by Yugoslav government officials. But when Jamie's dinner companion Hashim The Snake gets done with him, Rugova will be dead for good.]

PRISTINA, Aug 8, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) A
member of the ethnic-Albanian moderate Kosovo
Democratic League (LDK) narrowly escaped injury when
he was attacked by gunmen, a UN police spokesman said
Monday.

In the latest in a wave of attacks in the
UN-administered province, Mehmet Gerkinaj, an LDK
chief near the northwestern town of Srbica, was
attacked outside his home late Sunday by unidentified
gunmen, spokesman Andriej Stepien told AFP.

The supporter of moderate leader Ibrahim Rugova
escaped the attack with no injuries, police said and
an enquiry has begun.

A wave of political violence appears to be sweeping
Kosovo in the run-up to October municipal elections,
and LDK members have been its most frequent victims.

On Saturday another senior member of the LDK --
Kosovo's leading ethnic Albanian political party --
was found dead 10 days after his family reported him
kidnapped.

On Wednesday last week, unidentified gunmen shot and
injured Sejdi Koci, the leader of the LDK in Srbica,
also in northwest Kosovo.

This attack followed a similar shooting the day before
which left Agim Veliu, LDK leader in Podujevo,
northeast Kosovo, slightly injured.

In reaction to the wave of violence, Kosovo's UN
administration announced Thursday it was creating a
cell of UN officials, police investigators,
peacekeeping troops and OSCE election monitors to
examine the problem of political violence.

The KFOR multinational peacekeeping force also
announced last week that it hoped to send an
additional 2,000 troops to Kosovo to oversee security
in the run-up to the poll.

October's elections will be the first fully democratic
poll ever held in Kosovo. Voters will choose local
administrations in the province's 30 municipality.

Polls conducted by the OSCE in the province earlier
this year suggested that the LDK will come out well
ahead in voting, with their nearest rivals likely to
be the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) of Hashim
Thaci, the former political leader of the guerrilla
Kosovo Liberation Army. ((c) 2000 Agence France
Presse)

PRISTINA, Aug 11, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) The
wife of a prominent member of the moderate Kosovo
Democratic League was killed in an explosion at her
home in southern Kosovo, the UN mission in Kosovo
(UNMIK) said Thursday.

An UNMIK spokesman said the cause of the blast was not
immediately known, and the UN police had launched an
investigation.

Avni Salihu, head of the LDK in the southern Kosovo
town of Dragas, and his son were hurt in the blast,
which occurred at 7:40 p.m. (1740 GMT) Wednesday, the
spokesman said, without providing details about their
injuries.

Attacks against politicians in Kosovo, mostly members
of the LDK, led by ethnic Albanian Ibrahim Rugova,
have been on the rise since last month, ahead of
municipal elections set for October.

Last week, the LDK leader in the northwestern town of
Istok, Shaban Manaj, was found dead after being
kidnapped by unknown assailants, two other party
officials were shot and wounded, and another escaped a
shooting attempt.

In response to the upswing in violence, UNMIK has set
up a body to monitor ethnic violence in the Yugoslav
province. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)

The UN authorities in Kosovo are investigating a
series of sometimes fatal attacks on members of the
province's biggest political party, the Democratic
League of Kosovo (LDK), in the run-up to local
elections in October.

They have set up an investigative committee with the
power to impose fines and ban politicians from
standing for election for six years.

The latest victim is Ganimete Salihu, 54, who died in
an explosion in her home in town of Dragash on
Wednesday. Her husband Avni Salihu, head of the town's
department of sport and culture, was injured.

A week ago the charred remains of an LDK politician
and prominent lawyer, Shaban Manaj, were found in a
northern village where he had been reported kidnapped
a fortnight earlier. Two other party members were shot
and injured in separate incidents at the beginning of
the month. Opinion polls show that the LDK is likely
to win the elections, organised by the UN. Its main
rival is the Democratic Party of Kosovo, led by Hashim
Thaci, formerly the political leader of the Kosovo
Liberation Army.

Senior LDK members say they are not being adequately
protected by the UN. According to a report by the
peacekeeping force, K-For, party members want to be
allowed to carry weapons. Permission has been denied.

The UN has not decided whether the attacks are
political. A spokeswoman said: "Clearly it is a very
delicate situation, and that is why we have set up
this new committee to establish whether there is a
pattern to these attacks, or whether the same people
are behind them."