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

Freedomfighters - Page 2 (all the titles and many articles are in page 1)

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.

---

Missing Albanian politician found burnt to death

Associated Press

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia: The body of an ethnic Albanian
politician who had been missing for two weeks was
found badly burnt in northwestern Kosovo, a UN
spokeswoman said on Monday.

The death was being treated as a homicide, UN
spokeswoman Claire Trevena said.

Shaban Manaj, a lawyer and a politician from the
Democratic League of Kosovo, was believed kidnapped
two weeks ago, she said.

His body was found on Friday in a deserted section of
village of Ozrim, some 60 km northwest of Pristina.
Using dental records, his wife identified the body on
Sunday, she said.

Forensic tests were underway. Four suspects have been
arrested.

Manaj was from the western Kosovo town of Klina and
was to run in municipal elections scheduled for
October.

It was the third case of violence directed against
members of the Democratic League of Kosovo in less
than a week. Local party leaders were shot on Tuesday
and Wednesday, one in the northern Kosovo town of
Podujevo and another in the central Kosovo town of
Srbica.

Party leader Pacifist Ibrahim Rugova condemned the
attacks last week, accusing the attackers of trying to
derail democratic elections and stability in Kosovo. (AP)

The arrest of two Canadians and two Britons in
Montenegro last week has caused the ire of the West to
be directed, once again, against Serb leader Slobodan
Milosevic. But, as Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd
Axworthy decries his "thug" tactics, it is well to
remember that there is a dark side to NATO's ally in
Kosovo as well. And peacekeeping forces could soon be
faced with enemies on two fronts if they hope to
maintain order in the Balkans.

As early as March of 1999, The Times of London
reported links between the KLA and narcotics
trafficking. In the same month, the ITAR-Tass news
agency reported that the chief of the Russian Armed
Forces, General Anatoly Kvashnin, had sent a letter to
the Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe,
General Wesley Clark and to the chairman of the NATO
Military Committee, Klaus Naumann, detailing the
involvement of "Kosovo terrorists" in the narcotics
trade in Europe. The letter outlined the "where, what,
how, and why" of the KLA drug business. By ignoring
these warnings, NATO had created a formula for failure
in Kosovo.

NATO planners chose to ignore this information in
their haste to win their "just war." A year after NATO
intervention in Kosovo, the Alliance has failed to
meet its key objective of keeping the peace. Kosovo
has degraded to the point where crime, illegal weapons
and drug trafficking are rampant.

Ironically, KFOR (Kosovo Force) troops are now forced
to defend themselves against violent armed aggression
from ethnic Albanians. NATO troops were never intended
to police a hostile population and, least of all, deal
with international drug and arms smuggling. As Army
Brigadier-General John Craddock noted in late June of
1999, after U.S. troops had for the first time been
forced to fire on hostile ethnic Albanians, "We have
become the targets of violent acts." Not exactly the
role NATO envisioned.

In an effort to end the threat of KLA attacks against
NATO forces, in June of this year, U.S. troops led a
series of raids against ethnic-Albanian strongholds to
seize arms caches. A senior Pentagon official had
reported that the situation in Kosovo was
deteriorating rapidly, and that U.S. troops could be
forced into armed conflict with the Albanian
guerrillas. Clearly, if NATO cannot control the KLA
and its drug trade there will be no peace to keep in
Kosovo.

The KLA has bloomed in the NATO/UN sponsored power
vacuum due to an ineffective, or nonexistent, plan for
the development of a governmental structure in Kosovo.
This resurgence has allowed key KLA leaders to become
power brokers in the region. Hashim Thaci, the leader
of the KLA's political wing, has become the key
contact point for NATO, the UN and the Organization
for Security and Co-operation in Europe, making him
the most important ethnic-Albanian politician in
Kosovo. In turn, the former commander of the KLA's
military wing, Agim Ceku, commands the new Kosovo
Protection Corps, which is mainly comprised of former
KLA fighters. Financing for these activities comes
from heroin trafficking.

The KLA is heavily involved in the illicit Balkan drug
trade, better known as the Balkan Route. Balkan drug
organizations helped the KLA funnel arms and cash into
Kosovo for the continuing guerrilla war against
Belgrade. With the tacit support of the KLA and its
leadership, Kosovo has become the primary conduit for
heroin trafficking from Afghanistan via Turkey and the
Balkans into Western Europe. Clearly, those
organized-crime elements who helped the KLA now want
to cash in on their previous good will.

European police organizations estimate that, every
month, two to six tonnes of heroin, worth twelve times
its weight in gold, moves through Turkey toward
Eastern Europe. This route originates in the
Taliban-run opium fields of Afghanistan and is worth
an estimated $400-billion (U.S.) a year. Kosovars
(ethnic Albanians from Kosovo) now dominate the Balkan
Route which supplies 80 per cent of Europe's heroin.
Interpol figures indicate that Albanian speakers
represent approximately 1 per cent of Europe's
population, yet in 1997 they made up 14 per cent of
all Europeans arrested for heroin smuggling, and on
average they carried substantially larger quantities
of the drug.

Besides cash, the Balkan Route also acts as conduit
for illegal arms to the KLA. Arms are either smuggled
in directly or money earned from the illicit drug
trade is used to purchase weapons in Albania, Bosnia,
Croatia, Cyprus, Italy, Montenegro, Switzerland and
Turkey. NATO has reported that weapons smuggled into
Kosovo included: anti-aircraft missiles, assault
rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers,
mortars, ammunition, antipersonnel mines and infrared
night-vision gear.

In fact, regardless of their guilt or innocence on
terrorism charges, the detained Canadians likely ran
afoul of increased Serbian border surveillance aimed
at deterring these activities.

The greatest irony of this situation is that the U.S.
government has been well aware of the Balkan Route and
the KLA connection for some years. The U.S. Drug
Enforcement Agency reported in 1998 that
ethnic-Albanian organizations in Kosovo are "second
only to Turkish gangs as the predominant heroin
smugglers along the Balkan route." NATO and the United
States ignored this for the political expediency of
the war in Kosovo.

Kosovo never represented a traditional UN peacekeeping
scenario for NATO. The role was more peace
enforcement. Yet NATO personnel are simply not
equipped and trained to handle the policing of the
drug trade that is fuelling the violence in Kosovo.

The presence of NATO forces has created a clear social
divide between Serb and Kosovar, which has exacerbated
the ethnic violence. The ethnic violence is also
escalating as the KLA moves for independence, as
indicated by its rearmament. Rearmament has been made
possible due to the ethnic-Albanian control of the
Balkan Route. KFOR has become caught in a snare where
it is being forced to fight all sides in the conflict;
thus its role as peace enforcer has been lost and it
has merely become another combatant in Kosovo.

So NATO is left with only one realistic option -- it
must militarily face down the KLA to stop the
rearmament process and in turn shut down the drug
trafficking that is not just affecting Kosovo, but all
of Europe. NATO, the saviour, may be forced to become
the oppressor in Kosovo.
Sunil Ram is a professor of Balkan military history at
the American Military University in Virginia and an
associate of the Institute for UN and International
Affairs. He wrote a training program in peacekeeping
operations titled Peacekeeping in the Former
Yugoslavia: From The Dayton Accord to Kosovo.

In April, 1999, during the NATO War against
Yugoslavia, an attempt was made in Congress to
officially fund the arming of the Kosovo Liberation
(sic!) Army (sic! again) or KLA. Along with Sen. John
McCain, Sen. Joseph Lieberman sponsored the "Kosovo
Self-Defense Act." The text of the statement Lieberman
made at the time is posted below.

Here are a few observations to help put Lieberman's
actions in perspective.

There is virtually no doubt that at the time Lieberman
was calling on Congress to arm the KLA, the US was
already covertly providing arms and training to that
secessionist-terrorist group. As early as the fall of
1998 we know that the Kosovo Verification Mission was
setting up tactical liason with and providing training
for the KLA (1), all under the guidance of seasoned US
death squad liaison expert, William Walker. (2)

In February a Bosnian Islamist daily published the
following :

"TRAINING OF KLA MEMBERS IN US?

According to Tirana daily newspapers, the Albanian
Minister of Foreign Affairs Paskal Milo said that KLA
members will be trained in the US. During his meeting
with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Milo
was informed that Albanian guerrilla members from
Kosovo would be sent to the US for training. Milo
added that this was a promise, which Albright gave him
personally." ('NEVNI AVAZ' or 'Daily Voice,'
pro-Islamist Sarajevo daily, 26 Feb 99)

Does a promise, apparently made by US Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright in February, 1999, to openly
train the KLA contradict our assertion that the US was
already covertly training the KLA long before
February?

We don't think so. Rather, the promise of open
training represented an escalation in illegality by
the US government.

Consider, if you will, what it meant for the US to
train the KLA.

1) The US was not at war with Yugoslavia in February,
1999.

2) In February, Albright described Kosovo as "a region
of Yugoslavia about the size of Connecticut,"
[interesting state to pick as an example] i.e.
admitted it was part of a sovereign country.

3) In February, Albright called the KLA a "sometimes
brutal and indiscriminate" secessionist group devoted
to a "simple answer to the tragedy of Kosovo:
independence from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."
(Quotes are from "Madeleine Albright delivers remarks
on Kosovo at the Institute of Peace," Feb. 4, 1999)

For the US to train the KLA secretly was therefore to
secretly violate national sovereignty, the cornerstone
of international law. But to promise open support for
violent secessionists was to uphold the US
government's right to openly and flagrantly violate
national sovereignty, the cornerstone of international
law.

In another statement in February, Albright described
how the 'international community' (led by the US)
would respond if the KLA didn't cooperate with US
wishes:

"And if the Kosovars [i.e., the KLA] crater this, it
is obviously more complicated because there's not one
any center, but they will lose the support of the
international community and find themselves
increasingly isolated and they can't operate without
the community...('ABC this Week,' Feb. 7. 1999, our
emphasis)

Obviously the KLA couldn't "lose the support of the
international community," that is, of the U.S., unless
it had it to lose. As Albright noted, the KLA "cannot
operate without" this support. So US Secretary of
State Albright was admitting that the US government
made it possible for the KLA to conduct terrorist
attacks on Yugoslavia, a sovereign country. And mind
you, all this was weeks before the failure of the
so-called negotiations at Rambouillet.

Significance of Lieberman's 'Arm-the-KLA' Resolution

The point of the "Kosovo Self-Defense Act" was not
that it was needed in order for the KLA to get U.S.
weapons. Rather, it was intended to openly involve the
US Senate in a crime of war and to prepare public
opinion for viewing the vicious KLA fascists as
freedom fighters deserving popular support. Lieberman
refers to the KLA as "Kosovan military forces" at a
time (April 9, 1999) when the KLA was largely
isolated, even among secessionist-minded Albanians.
And note, that "Kosovan military forces" suggest there
is some legitimate nation of "Kosova" though no such
has ever existed, except as a Nazi creation. Indeed,
the very word "Kosova" is meaningless in the Albanian
language.

And so this Lieberman, who makes a public spectacle of
his religious beliefs, who pontificates from a
pinnacle of Higher Morality, this Lieberman fronts for
the self-proclaimed heirs to the "Balli Kombëtar," the
World War II Albanian fascists (3) who butchered
almost all the Jews in Kosovo. Note that since being
put in power by NATO and the UN, the KLA has driven
all the remaining Jews from Kosovo. (4)

Following is the statement Sen. Lieberman gave to The
Guardian (UK) on April 9, 1999.

"If, after extended air strikes, it becomes clear that
Mr. Milosevic intends to continue his war of
aggression, we must have an answer to the question of
what next? The bill we are proposing provides us with
such an answer, and an opportunity to send an
uncompromising message to Mr Milosevic: we will not
stand idly by and allow him to brutalise the people of
Kosovo any longer.

"This bill is premised on our belief that Nato ground
forces will not be put into Kosovo unless the Serbs
and Kosovans reach a peace agreement. If we adopt that
stance, though, and Serbian aggression continues, we
have an obligation to allow the Kosovans to defend
themselves. Our legislation, by providing aid to the
Kosovan military forces, would give them a fair chance
to fight for their families and their future.

"I am aware that this proposal will raise some
concerns. I recall that when I first raised the idea
of training and equipping the Bosnian army, many
critics told us that we would destabilise an entire
region or accelerate an arms race. In the end, I think
those concerns were shown to be misguided.

"Training and equipping the Bosnians enhanced the
stability of the area and helped end the Bosnian war.
The situation in Kosovo is different. But that does
not diminish the suffering of the Kosovan people
subjected to Serb aggression, nor negate their right
to defend their families from the threat of genocide."

***

Further reading...

1) See 'The Cat is Out of the Bag" at
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/ciaaided.htm

2) On William Walker's death squad credentials see
'Meet Mr. Massacre' at
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/analysis/meetmr.htm

3) On fascism in Kosovo see George Thompson's 'The
roots of Kosovo fascism' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/thompson/rootsof.htm
 

4) 'Driven from Kosovo: Jewish Leader Blames NATO -
Interview With Cedda Prlincevic' at
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/interviews/prlincevic.htm

     Foreign Affairs Breaking News News Keywords: KOSOVO KLA TERRORISM
     Source: Kosovo Ham-Radio
     Published: August 20, 2000 Author: Ichabod Walrus
     Posted on 08/20/2000 13:48:58 PDT by Ichabod Walrus

The wife of a kidnapped Serb in Kosovo has just disclosed to ham radio operators
(the only independent Serbian source of news now in Kosovo), that UNMIK police
have confirmed her husband was one of 160 Serb, or mostly Serb victims, found in
a mass grave outside Pristina. The Serbs were among more than 900 persons
similarly kidnapped in 14 months of lawlessness in the NATO occupied province.

The woman, Vesna Mulic, said she was taken to the HQ of UNMIK polic in Pristina,
to identify her husband's remains. There she was told that her husband, Rame,
was
one of 160 bodies found in a mass grave near the village of Dragodan outside
Pristina.

So careless were the Albanian killers, whom Clinton's administration is proud to
call the US Army's allies, that they left numerous personal document and other
forms
of identification with the dead. Vesna Mulic, said she saw numerous pieces of
identification belonging to other victims.

It would appear that UNMIK has known of the mass grave for a long time. Why it
has refused to reveal this shocking discovery is another unanswered question.

 A reader writes:

 Dear friends,
 I saw a rumor about this discovery earlier today. As it was based on a
 shortwave radio intercept, I didn't want to give it credence and I've been
 hoping against hope that it was inaccurate. Although I don't consider this
 more recent report to be definitive corroboration, I thought it worth passing
 along. I'm absolutely sickened but not surprised by this report. I doubt we'll
 see anything on it in the western press.

 George Thompson

 From 'Blic,' Belgrade, Yugoslavia

 August 22, 2000

 UNMIK sends invitations to families of disappeared Serbs
 160 bodies found in Pristina

 PRISTINA - In the Pristina suburb of Dragodan 160 bodies have been
 found which are suspected to be victims of Albanian terrorists during the
 past year, since the deployment of UNMIK and KFOR, Blic has learned from
 members of families of kidnapped and missing Serbs and Romanies who
 received invitations to identify the discovered bodies. Vesna Mulici
 identified the body of her husband, Ramo Mulici, whose body was among
 those exhumed at Dragodan.

 "I saw many identity cards with the names of Serbs and photographs while I
 was attempting to identify the belongings of my husband," she told Blic. At
 UNMIK headquarters no one wished to either confirm or deny this
 information but a invitation was repeated for relatives and friends of the
 missing and kidnapped to come to Pristina and help the Committee for
 Missing and Disappeared Persons to identify 159 more bodies found at
 Dragodan.Strong KFOR forces until recently secured this gravesite and
 prevented uncontrolled entry to the Dragodan cemetery.

 Translated by S. Lazovic (August 21, 2000)

                         www.tenc.net

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Aug 24 (AFP) - Two Emirati peacekeepers
were injured in a revenge attack on their Kosovo headquarters two
days after their unit shot dead an ethnic Albanian father and son,
KFOR said Thursday.
   "In what can only be seen as a retaliatory attack for the
shooting of two Kosovar Albanians, two KFOR United Arab Emirate
(UAE) soldiers were wounded last night by rifle grenades," said
Major Scott Slaten, chief spokesman of the KFOR multinational
peacekeeping force.
   "One soldier was wounded in the right leg and another in the
ear. Both soldiers received first aid at the scene and were
transported to the KFOR Moroccan hospital," he added.
   An officer of KFOR's French-led northern brigade, which includes
the Emirati unit, told AFP that the injuries were "very minor."
   The attack occurred late Wednesday when two grenades were fired
at the Emirati contingent's headquarters in Vucitrn, northern
Kosovo. Slaten said the Emiratis had returned fire.
   An Emirati liaison officer to KFOR, Seif Mouftah Niyadi, told
the Emirati news agency WAM that three suspects were arrested after
the violence and handed over to UN police.
   He added that he did not rule out the possibility that a group
of people was out to damage the reputation of the Emirati troops in
Kosovo.
   The attack follows the shooting Monday of two Kosovo Albanian
men by Emirati troops during a clash at a checkpoint in the village
of Svinjare, three miles (five kilometres) west of Vucitrn.
   Both men, a 54-year-old father and his 21-year-old son, later
died. Their funerals were to be held Thursday.
   KFOR said Thursday that an initial inquiry into the Monday
incident indicated that the Emiratis had opened fire after four
Albanians, including the two men, attacked the troops and tried to
take their weapons.
   "A preliminary report stated that the two Kosovar Albanians had
previously been arrested for stealing Kosovo Serb owned cattle in
the region," Slaten said.
   "Emirati soldiers assisted in the arrest of the two men. Later
in the week the two men had verbally assaulted the soldiers manning
the checkpoint and had been warned to stop."
   Slaten said that at around 7:00 p.m. (1700 GMT) Monday the two
men had returned with two others and had assaulted a UAE officer,
beating him. Two of the men also tried to wrestle away other
soldiers' guns.
   A corporal fired warning shots at first but then shot two
attackers after they continued to attack, Slaten said.
   "KFOR has zero tolerance against criminals who violently attack
our troops in the performance of their duties," said General Ken
Bowra, acting commander of KFOR.
   "We will take appropriate action to ensure KFOR soldiers are
protected and criminals who perpetuate violent attacks against our
troops are brought to justice."
   The Emirati soldiers form part of the French-led northern
brigade of KFOR, a NATO-led force charged with security in the
Yugoslav province since the end of Kosovo's 1998-1999 civil war.

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Aug 24 (AFP) - Peacekeepers investigating
a organised crime ring have arrested a Kosovo guerrilla commander
and nine associates suspected of involvement in extortion, smuggling
and homicide, officers told AFP Thursday.
   Police specialists attached to the KFOR multinational
peacekeeping force raided more than ten premises in and around the
town of Djeneral Jankovic on Kosovo's southern border with Macedonia
early Wednesday, arresting ten men and seizing cash and weapons,
Carabinieri Captain Paolo Nardelli said.
   Among those arrested was Refki Sumen, a former commander in the
disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and a senior figure in the
guerrilla force's civilian successor, the Kosovo Protection Corps
(KPC), he said.
   "The arrests were carried out as part of an ongoing
investigation into an organised crime gang operating in the border
area," Nardelli said.
   "We suspect the group to be involved in at least three
homicides, extortion and smuggling. The case has been passed to a
prosecutor who will decide how to assign charges."
   Officers passed the names of four other suspects to prosecutors
for further investigation, including that of a member of the Kosovo
Police Service (KPS), a Western-funded civilian police force which
is trained by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) and which patrols alongside Kosovo's international UN
police force.

http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/09/03/stifgneur02004.html

Tom Walker, Diplomatic Correspondent
INTERNATIONAL war crimes investigators are for the first time
focusing on atrocities against Serbian civilians that were committed
by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

Sources close to
prosecutors in the
Hague confirmed
last week that its
forensic experts
were checking five
sites where war
crimes were
allegedly carried out
by members of the
KLA. Their findings
could lead to a
request to Nato's
Kfor troops to arrest
several senior
figures in the new
Kosovo Albanian elite, including possibly Hashim Thaci, the KLA's
former political leader, or Ramush Haridinaj, one of his main
political rivals.

United Nations sources have already revealed that Agim Ceku, the
guerrillas' former commander, may be the subject of a secret
"sealed" indictment for his activities while fighting for the Croatian
army against the Serbs. Like Thaci and Haridinaj, Ceku, who now
heads the Kosovo Protection Corps, the local defence force, has
denied wrong-doing.

The investigation could radically alter the international perception of
the conflict, in which Albanians were seen as the largely innocent
victims of Serbian aggression. After a year of growing concern about
hundreds of revenge killings of Serbs by Albanians in the province,
there are signs that the public relations pendulum may begin to
swing the Serbs' way.

The investigations by the International War Crimes Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia are among its most secretive, with officials
fearing retaliation by the Albanians. "The operations of the KLA
clearly involved many activities we should scrutinise," said one
Hague official.

"There's a real problem in unravelling their cell structure, but we
may well end up pointing the finger at senior figures. The difficulty
then will be persuading any Nato nation to arrest them."

All five sites were discovered by the Serbian police as they regained
territory lost to the KLA in the summer of 1998. As Albanian villages
were being destroyed in the Serbian police offensives that grabbed
the international media spotlight, the plight of the rural Serbian
peasantry was often ignored and dozens of villagers and farmers
were abducted, tortured and left in mass graves.

Three of the areas under investigation are thought to be the villages
of Klecka and Glodjane and the town of Orahovac.

The killings in Klecka have been linked to Thaci, who now heads
the Democratic party of Kosovo. The Belgrade media made great
play of the discovery in August 1998 of what it claimed were 22
Serbian bodies in a lime kiln in Klecka.

Glodjane, further west in the Decane area bordering Albania, was
fiercely contested by the Serbs and Albanians. In September 1998
the Serbian media centre in Pristina claimed that the bodies of 34
people had been found in a canal there. They were a mixture of
Serbian farmers, some gypsies and Albanians suspected of being
collaborators. The local commander at the time was Haradinaj, now
head of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo.

In Orahovac, an ancient Balkan maze of cobbled streets and mixed
ethnicities, at least 50 Serbs were abducted by the KLA in July 1998,
never to be seen again. In the autumn hundreds of angry Serbs
marched six miles through the hills to Dragobilj, the local KLA
headquarters and one of the few places where Islamic mujaheddin
fighters were seen. The protest failed to persuade the KLA to give
any details of the missing Serbs.

Most inquiries made so far have been met with silence and few
witnesses are thought likely to be brave enough to reveal the
brutality of the KLA.

One former Albanian commander, who now lives in the West, told
The Sunday Times that he saw two Serbian policemen tied to the
backs of Jeeps and dragged to their deaths during the fighting
around Glodjane. He said he had no intention of talking to the war
crimes prosecutors and wished to forget Kosovo altogether.

The Serbs, too, are unlikely to co-operate with the Hague because
Belgrade refuses to recognise the tribunal. Milosevic and Milan
Milutinovic, the Serbian president, are both indicted by the tribunal,
and Milosevic is believed to have offered a bolthole to Radovan
Karadzic, the most wanted suspect of the Bosnian conflict.

"We're not permitted to make any interviews in Serbia proper and
that is a considerable hindrance," said Paul Risley, spokesman for
Carla Del Ponte, the tribunal's senior prosecutor.

It is also not clear whether investigations into the KLA's activities
can be extended into the period after Nato entered Kosovo in June
1999. Authorities in Belgrade claim there have been 1,041 murders
in the province since then - with 910 of the victims being Serbs or
Montenegrins. In the most recent attacks on Serbs, an
eight-year-old child was killed by a hit-and-run driver near the town
of Lipljan last month, and a hand grenade was lobbed into a
basketball court injuring 10 children north of Pristina. A farmer aged
80 was machine-gunned to death in the nearby village of Crkvna
Vodica while he was tending his cattle.

The claims of genocide being made by the Albanians at Belgrade
two years ago are now being thrown back at them, but the war
crimes tribunal remains dispassionate. "We're not seeing genocide
at the moment, but severe human rights violations. There is no
evidence that any group wants to annihilate the Serbs rather than
just force them out," said an official.

Sunday Times (UK)
September 3 2000
 

Photograph: Goran Tomasevic
KLA faces trials for war crimes on Serbs Inquiry turns on Albanians
Tom Walker, Diplomatic Correspondent
INTERNATIONAL war crimes investigators are for the first time focusing
on atrocities against Serbian civilians that were committed by the
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
 Sources close to prosecutors in the Hague confirmed last week that its
forensic experts were checking five sites where war crimes were
allegedly carried out by members of the KLA. Their findings could lead
to a request to Nato's Kfor troops to arrest several senior figures in
the new Kosovo Albanian elite, including possibly Hashim Thaci, the
KLA's former political leader, or Ramush Haridinaj, one of his main
political rivals.
United Nations sources have already revealed that Agim Ceku, the
guerrillas' former commander, may be the subject of a secret "sealed"
indictment for his activities while fighting for the Croatian army
against the Serbs. Like Thaci and Haridinaj, Ceku, who now heads the
Kosovo Protection Corps, the local defence force, has denied
wrong-doing.
The investigation could radically alter the international perception of
the conflict, in which Albanians were seen as the largely innocent
victims of Serbian aggression. After a year of growing concern about
hundreds of revenge killings of Serbs by Albanians in the province,
there are signs that the public relations pendulum may begin to swing
the Serbs' way.
The investigations by the International War Crimes Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia are among its most secretive, with officials fearing
retaliation by the Albanians. "The operations of the KLA clearly
involved many activities we should scrutinise," said one Hague official.
"There's a real problem in unravelling their cell structure, but we may
well end up pointing the finger at senior figures. The difficulty then
will be persuading any Nato nation to arrest them."
All five sites were discovered by the Serbian police as they regained
territory lost to the KLA in the summer of 1998. As Albanian villages
were being destroyed in the Serbian police offensives that grabbed the
international media spotlight, the plight of the rural Serbian peasantry
was often ignored and dozens of villagers and farmers were abducted,
tortured and left in mass graves.
Three of the areas under investigation are thought to be the villages of
Klecka and Glodjane and the town of Orahovac.
The killings in Klecka have been linked to Thaci, who now heads the
Democratic party of Kosovo. The Belgrade media made great play of the
discovery in August 1998 of what it claimed were 22 Serbian bodies in a
lime kiln in Klecka.
Glodjane, further west in the Decane area bordering Albania, was
fiercely contested by the Serbs and Albanians. In September 1998 the
Serbian media centre in Pristina claimed that the bodies of 34 people
had been found in a canal there. They were a mixture of Serbian farmers,
some gypsies and Albanians suspected of being collaborators. The local
commander at the time was Haradinaj, now head of the Alliance for the
Future of Kosovo.
In Orahovac, an ancient Balkan maze of cobbled streets and mixed
ethnicities, at least 50 Serbs were abducted by the KLA in July 1998,
never to be seen again. In the autumn hundreds of angry Serbs marched
six miles through the hills to Dragobilj, the local KLA headquarters and
one of the few places where Islamic mujaheddin fighters were seen. The
protest failed to persuade the KLA to give any details of the missing
Serbs.
Most inquiries made so far have been met with silence and few witnesses
are thought likely to be brave enough to reveal the brutality of the
KLA.
One former Albanian commander, who now lives in the West, told The
Sunday Times that he saw two Serbian policemen tied to the backs of
Jeeps and dragged to their deaths during the fighting around Glodjane.
He said he had no intention of talking to the war crimes prosecutors and
wished to forget Kosovo altogether.
The Serbs, too, are unlikely to co-operate with the Hague because
Belgrade refuses to recognise the tribunal. Milosevic and Milan
Milutinovic, the Serbian president, are both indicted by the tribunal,
and Milosevic is believed to have offered a bolthole to Radovan
Karadzic, the most wanted suspect of the Bosnian conflict.
"We're not permitted to make any interviews in Serbia proper and that is
a considerable hindrance," said Paul Risley, spokesman for Carla Del
Ponte, the tribunal's senior prosecutor.
It is also not clear whether investigations into the KLA's activities
can be extended into the period after Nato entered Kosovo in June 1999.
Authorities in Belgrade claim there have been 1,041 murders in the
province since then - with 910 of the victims being Serbs or
Montenegrins. In the most recent attacks on Serbs, an eight-year-old
child was killed by a hit-and-run driver near the town of Lipljan last
month, and a hand grenade was lobbed into a basketball court injuring 10
children north of Pristina. A farmer aged 80 was machine-gunned to death
in the nearby village of Crkvna Vodica while he was tending his cattle.
The claims of genocide being made by the Albanians at Belgrade two years
ago are now being thrown back at them, but the war crimes tribunal
remains dispassionate. "We're not seeing genocide at the moment, but
severe human rights violations. There is no evidence that any group
wants to annihilate the Serbs rather than just force them out," said an
official.
{Or force them into mass graves? A fine distinction for the ICTY - RR]

http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=199119&section=Kosovo
 

[It's clear that Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton, Al
Gore, at whose nominating convention Thaci was greeted
as a guest of honor, UNMIK's autocrat Bernard
Kouchner, and now OSCE's Daan Everts have already cast
their votes. Proposed campaign slogan: Vote For Me Or
Die!]

PRISTINA, Sep 14, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) The
former political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA) launched his party's campaign for Kosovo's first
post-war municipal elections Wednesday with a upbeat
rally.

Thousands of supporters of Hashim Thaci's Democratic
Party of Kosovo (PDK) packed Pristina's university
sports hall to mark the official start of the 45-day
buildup the poll, an AFP correspondent at the scene
said.

"I greet you, dear friends, on this very important day
in the history of Kosovo, which marks the opening of
the election campaign, the day when for the first time
Kosovo is preparing for free and democratic
elections," Thaci said.

"You are the liberators of Kosovo and it is you who
will decide Kosovo's future," he declared, "It's you
who will build a free and independent Kosovo ... you
will integrate Kosovo with western Europe."

October 28 will see the first elections to be held in
Kosovo since the United Nations took over the running
of the province in June last year after the end of a
civil war between Thaci's KLA and Yugoslav forces.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe was charged by the UN mission in Kosovo with
organizing the poll, and the head of the mission, Daan
Everts, took the opportunity of the rally to address
its supporters.

"It's very special to here today with a party that is
so proud of its origins," Everts said.

"This party holds the key to the future of Kosovo, but
it does not do so alone. Together with other parties
you will open the door on a new era for Kosovo, an era
of multiparty democracy."

"The entire world is watching you," he warned, before
switching from English into Albanian to urge the crowd
to "show the world that Kosovo is ready to pass the
democratic test."

The trumphant crowd cheered all the speakers at the
packed rally and was so large it spilled out into the
streets outside, with up to 6,000 mainly young
supporters waving Albanian banners and chanting
Thaci's name.

In the hall the climaax of the celebrations was the
appearance on stage of a young woman in a camouflage
KLA uniform, who sang a song in honor of Adem Jashari,
the guerrilla movement's most famous martyr. ((c) 2000
Agence France Presse)

PRISHTINA - A district commander of the Kosovo
Protection Corps has been found murdered with both
hands cut off, KPC sources said on Wednesday.

The body of Skender Gashi, a former commander in the
now disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), was
discovered in Suva Reka, a small town 60 km (40 miles)
southwest of the capital, Prishtina.

“This morning we received information that the body of
the battalion commander of the 2nd zone was found dead
and mutilated,” a KPC source told Reuters.

“We have no idea of the motive or who might have done
this,” he said. [Sure. Hint, his initials are H.T.]

The NATO-led peacekeeping force KFOR was not
immediately available for comment. The KLA handed in
its weapons and uniforms to KFOR and was disbanded
exactly one year ago. Many of its members went on to
join the newly formed Kosovo Protection Force, a
civilian body which numbers 5,000.