Tuesday, October 25, 2005

NATO's top military brass in Kosovo as talks on its future announced

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) - NATO's highest military body was arriving Tuesday in Kosovo, after the United Nations said talks on the disputed province's status could begin as early as next month.

NATO's Military Committee -- made of the permanent representatives of the 26 member nations -- will meet the top military officials in Kosovo for two days, while the alliance also considers its own future role in the province.

Lt. Gen. Giuseppe Valotto, the commander of NATO's peacekeeping force, known as KFOR, will brief the alliance's top brass about the situation in Kosovo and the peacekeeping force's plans, KFOR spokesman Col. Pio Sabetta said.

The delegation's visit to the province "demonstrates NATO's continuing strong commitment to its missions in the Balkans, and its support to the U.N.," the peacekeeping force in Kosovo said in a statement.

NATO moved into Kosovo as part of the United Nations deal following the alliance's war against Serbia in 1999, which halted Serb forces crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians and put the province under the international trusteeship.

The province -- legally part of Serbia-Montenegro, the union that replaced Yugoslavia -- has been run by a U.N. mission since then.

On Monday, the U.N. Security Council decided to launch talks on Kosovo's future, clearing the way for tough negotiations on the status of the ethnically divided province.

Though eagerly awaited, the prospect of the talks where ethnic Albanians and Serbs hold diametrically opposed views, have raised fears that extremists could use violence to protest the outcome. Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders are seeking independence, while its Serb minority and Belgrade officials want it to remain within Serbia-Montenegro.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_war

Criticism of the Case for War

Some critics have accused President Clinton of leading the United States to war in Kosovo under the false pretense of genocide [6]. Others have accused him, and his administration, of inflating the number of Kosovar Albanians killed by Serbians[7]. Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen, giving a speech, said, "The appalling accounts of mass killing in Kosovo and the pictures of refugees fleeing Serb oppression for their lives makes it clear that this is a fight for justice over genocide [8]." On CBS' Face the Nation Cohen claimed, "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing...They may have been murdered[9]." Clinton, citing the same figure, spoke of "at least 100,000 (Kosovar Albanians) missing[10]". Later, talking about Serbian elections, Clinton said, "they're going to have to come to grips with what Mr. Milošević ordered in Kosovo...They're going to have to decide whether they support his leadership or not; whether they think it's OK that all those tens of thousands of people were killed...[11]". Clinton also claimed, in the same press conference, that "NATO stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide[12]." Clinton even compared the events of Kosovo to the Holocaust. CNN reported, "Accusing Serbia of 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo similar to the genocide of Jews in World War II, an impassioned President Clinton sought Tuesday to rally public support for his decision to send U.S. forces into combat against Yugoslavia, a prospect that seemed increasingly likely with the breakdown of a diplomatic peace effort[13]." Clinton's State Department also claimed Serbian troops had committed genocide. The New York Times reported, "the Administration said evidence of 'genocide' by Serbian forces was growing to include 'abhorrent and criminal action' on a vast scale. The language was the State Department's strongest yet in denouncing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević[14]." The State Department also gave the highest estimate of dead Albanians. The New York Times reported, "On April 19, the State Department said that up to 500,000 Kosovar Albanians were missing and feared dead[15]."

However, the numbers given by Clinton and his administration have been proven false. The official NATO body count of the events in Kosovo was 2,788 (not all of them were war crimes victims)[16], with Slobodan Milošević charged with the "murders of about 600 individually identified ethnic Albanians[17]". Critics have noted that these numbers can not be considered genocide. The headline of The Wall Street Journal, which had launched an investigation into whether genocide had occurred in Kosovo, on December 31, 1999 was "War in Kosovo Was Cruel, Bitter, Savage; Genocide It Wasn't"[18]. The Wall Street Journal wrote, "the U.N.'s International War Criminal tribunal has checked the largest reported sites first, and found most to contain no more than five bodies, suggesting intimate acts of barbarity rather than mass murder... Kosovo would be easier to investigate if it had the huge killing fields some investigators were led to expect. Instead, the pattern is of scattered killings[19]."

In addition, a United Nations Court had previously ruled that Serbian troops did not commit genocide against Albanians. The court wrote "the exactions committed by Milošević's regime cannot be qualified as criminal acts of genocide, since their purpose was not the destruction of the Albanian ethnic group[20]". According to BBC, "the decision was based on the 1948 Geneva convention which defines genocide as the intent 'to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such'[21]". Milošević was not charged with genocide in Kosovo by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) but the more broader "crimes against humanity"[22]. Spanish forensic surgeon Emilio Perez Pujol, who led the Spanish forensic team in Kosovo, gave an interview to the British paper The Sunday Times. The paper wrote, "In an outspoken interview, Pujol complained he had been sent to head a large investigation team attached to the ICTY, consisting of pathologists and police specialists, to work in the north of the country. But he found that what was publicised as a search for mass graves was 'a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines, because we did not find one—not one—mass grave.'[23]".

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_war

Criticism of the Case for War

Some critics have accused President Clinton of leading the United States to war in Kosovo under the false pretense of genocide [6]. Others have accused him, and his administration, of inflating the number of Kosovar Albanians killed by Serbians[7]. Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen, giving a speech, said, "The appalling accounts of mass killing in Kosovo and the pictures of refugees fleeing Serb oppression for their lives makes it clear that this is a fight for justice over genocide [8]." On CBS' Face the Nation Cohen claimed, "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing...They may have been murdered[9]." Clinton, citing the same figure, spoke of "at least 100,000 (Kosovar Albanians) missing[10]". Later, talking about Serbian elections, Clinton said, "they're going to have to come to grips with what Mr. Milošević ordered in Kosovo...They're going to have to decide whether they support his leadership or not; whether they think it's OK that all those tens of thousands of people were killed...[11]". Clinton also claimed, in the same press conference, that "NATO stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide[12]." Clinton even compared the events of Kosovo to the Holocaust. CNN reported, "Accusing Serbia of 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo similar to the genocide of Jews in World War II, an impassioned President Clinton sought Tuesday to rally public support for his decision to send U.S. forces into combat against Yugoslavia, a prospect that seemed increasingly likely with the breakdown of a diplomatic peace effort[13]." Clinton's State Department also claimed Serbian troops had committed genocide. The New York Times reported, "the Administration said evidence of 'genocide' by Serbian forces was growing to include 'abhorrent and criminal action' on a vast scale. The language was the State Department's strongest yet in denouncing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević[14]." The State Department also gave the highest estimate of dead Albanians. The New York Times reported, "On April 19, the State Department said that up to 500,000 Kosovar Albanians were missing and feared dead[15]."

However, the numbers given by Clinton and his administration have been proven false. The official NATO body count of the events in Kosovo was 2,788 (not all of them were war crimes victims)[16], with Slobodan Milošević charged with the "murders of about 600 individually identified ethnic Albanians[17]". Critics have noted that these numbers can not be considered genocide. The headline of The Wall Street Journal, which had launched an investigation into whether genocide had occurred in Kosovo, on December 31, 1999 was "War in Kosovo Was Cruel, Bitter, Savage; Genocide It Wasn't"[18]. The Wall Street Journal wrote, "the U.N.'s International War Criminal tribunal has checked the largest reported sites first, and found most to contain no more than five bodies, suggesting intimate acts of barbarity rather than mass murder... Kosovo would be easier to investigate if it had the huge killing fields some investigators were led to expect. Instead, the pattern is of scattered killings[19]."

In addition, a United Nations Court had previously ruled that Serbian troops did not commit genocide against Albanians. The court wrote "the exactions committed by Milošević's regime cannot be qualified as criminal acts of genocide, since their purpose was not the destruction of the Albanian ethnic group[20]". According to BBC, "the decision was based on the 1948 Geneva convention which defines genocide as the intent 'to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such'[21]". Milošević was not charged with genocide in Kosovo by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) but the more broader "crimes against humanity"[22]. Spanish forensic surgeon Emilio Perez Pujol, who led the Spanish forensic team in Kosovo, gave an interview to the British paper The Sunday Times. The paper wrote, "In an outspoken interview, Pujol complained he had been sent to head a large investigation team attached to the ICTY, consisting of pathologists and police specialists, to work in the north of the country. But he found that what was publicised as a search for mass graves was 'a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines, because we did not find one—not one—mass grave.'[23]".

Anonymous said...

blablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablabla
blablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablabla

Anonymous said...

Dobrica Cosic, Serb, former Prsident.

"Lying is a form of our patriotism and is evidence of our innate intelligence. We lie in a creative, imaginative and inventive way."

Anonymous said...

Postulate to Covic:
...then we post our lies on Wikipedia and then quote it in turn to other people, completing this way the whole web of lies.

Anonymous said...

prove any of it wrong for once instead of saying stupid things like "blablabla" show some proof for your claims, you know damn well that the post from wiki is 110% true, u lied about everything, about being illirian decendents (there is not even an Albo source from prior to the 19th century that makes this claim, u stole the concept from croats n serbs who were making the same claim) about ur role in ww2 (nazis) about ur loyalty to the turks (60% of ottoman officers were albaniacs) and u lied about the 500,000 dead! ALL A FACT! KOSOVO WAS NEVER ALBANIAN (exept when ur ally Hitler gave it to u for ur loyalty in ww2)!

Anonymous said...

Martyr,

Can you prove all you speak of?

When you come here with proof that cannot be denied, that does not originate from Wikipedia (where I can go now and write that Martyr is infact from Tajikistan, 110% true?!), that clearly confirms all you say in a clear and scientific way, then we will accept what you claim.

Till then, you can only cite, Wikipedia that you can edit yourself, anti-American sites, pro-Serb sites, and hippy-unrealistic-lovydovy writers (i'm a hippy personaly, love and peace but be rational for heaven's sake).

Your sources till now are flawed and biased, hard to consider them as "proof", and please stop asking us for proof when you yourself fail to produce any.

I wish you a pleasent life.

Anonymous said...

nope...he is going to have a bad live...He will not understand why Kosova became indepedent?...the only good laugh that he will have will be his hahaha-s here...anyway I wish him a pleasant life in ''wikipedia true stories''...

Anonymous said...

are you going to tell me that when Cohen went on "meet the press" and cliamed that 100,000 albo men were "missing" was not a lie? are you going to tell me that they 500,000 dead report from the washinton post was not a lie? are you going to tell me that the UN official report that there "was not genocide" in Kosovo is a lie? I am telling to a fact which is that there is only proof of 2,100 albo dead (mostly KLA dudes who were asking for what they got) thousands of serbs died and 250k were kicked out for good. WHAT AM I NOT BEING HONEST ABUOT HERE???? WHAT???? did some serbs commit crimes and go around and kill someone for no reason? I'm sure that some idiots did do that just like wanna be "tough-guys" from teh KLA did the same, war is hell it brings out the animals on both sides but to claim that 500,000 were killed when ther is evidence of only 2,100 albo dead is beyond a lie, it is PATHETIC. show me what i cliam here that is not the truth, can u show me the evidence of the 500,000 or 100,000 dead albos? show me.

Anonymous said...

The whole world knows who the animals were in wars of former Yugo.

Anonymous said...

Washingon might have made an over estimate but you are saying plain lies.

"I am telling to a fact which is that there is only proof of 2,100 albo dead (mostly KLA dudes who were asking for what they got)"

I guess the rule to enter the KLA was something like: Wanted KLA Fighters, between ages of 0 - 9 and 60 - 90. Female and pregnant females encouraged to apply.

"did some serbs commit crimes and go around and kill someone for no reason?"

Well, here you show it well. You agree with the genocide that was attempted. You support it. The only reasons you have given us all these months are that (according to you) Albanians are: "sheep fuckers", "insects", "muslim scum" and "maniacs".

Reasons that come from racists like you are not reasons. You are shaming your own nation dear Martyr le Serb.

Peace and love to you again (I keep wishing you the best but you seem not to learn).

Anonymous said...

i agree with the genocide committed??? dude come on if you want to speak as a man tahtn speak stop acting like a little scared bitch because u are cornered by ur lies, the fricken UN (huge anti serb lobby) even admitted that there was NO genocide in kosovo, that fact that your brothers got scared and thought there was going to be a ground war and ran like children is ur own issue. what about he serbs that the KLA killed? over 3000 in teh past 8 years? how is that noit a genocide? for your info again the REAL genocide in kosovo has been commited by the albos who kicked out ALL of teh serbs from kosovo in ww1 ww2 and in the 70s 80s and the 250k in 99 who will never go back, that is the REAL GENOCIDE! TEH ALBOS PLANNED THIS FOR YEARS! kosovo had an overwhelming serb majority for 1000 yeras up to the early 20the cent in KOSOVO (WHICH IS A SERBIAN WORD FOR TEH PROVINEC THAT EVEN U USE). now the fact taht 2100 albaniacs were killed in a war sucks (just like it sucks that serbs were killed) but u CANT call it a Genocide becuae that just spits on teh victims of teh REAL GENCIDES IN THIS WORLD LIKE the jews in ww2 teh armeniamns and serbs of ww2 WHERE MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF PEOPLE DIED! OK not 2k KLA assholes who shot at police and what did u expect for the police not to shot back? are u kidding me?

Anonymous said...

here you go read it for yourself but it wont matter cause u are brainwashed into barking like dogs "genocide genocide" BULLSHIT LIES! I mean look at what Milosevic is being tried for "the death of 600 Albanians" not 100k or 500k! LIARS! what is 600 people for you, one family like the incredibly ugly ones on this photo can bang that out in 2 years!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1530781.stm

Kosovo assault 'was not genocide'
Ethnic Albanian refugees
The court ruled there was no attempt to destroy the Albanian ethnic group
A United Nations court has ruled that Serbian troops did not carry out genocide against ethnic Albanians during Slobodan Milosevic's campaign of aggression in Kosovo from 1998 to 1999.

The controversial ruling by the UN-supervised Supreme Court in the Kosovan capital, Pristina, has angered Albanians, and some UN officials are reported to be preparing to challenge it.

The decision comes as authorities in Serbia begin the excavation of another mass grave believed to contain the bodies of around 50 Kosovar Albanians.

Four graves have already been investigated, revealing the remains of 340 victims.

UN 'unhappy'

The court, Kosovo's highest legal body, said there had been a "systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments".

Slobodan Milosevic
Slobodan Milosevic has not yet been charged with genocide in Kosovo
Crimes against humanity and war crimes did take place, it said, but "the exactions committed by Milosevic's regime cannot be qualified as criminal acts of genocide, since their purpose was not the destruction of the Albanian ethnic group... but its forceful departure from Kosovo".

However the BBC's Paul Wood in Belgrade says that some UN legal officials are deeply unhappy and have begun a campaign to have the ruling overturned.

The decision was based on the 1948 Geneva convention which defines genocide as the intent "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such".

Milosevic debate

The court, which is comprised of two international judges and one Albanian, was ruling on the case of a Serb, Miroslav Vuckovic, convicted of genocide by a district court in Mitrovica.

Grave site
Excavations of mass graves have changed public opinion
International officials have raised concerns about the treatment of Serbs by Kosovo's Albanian dominated judiciary.

Mr Vuckovic's conviction has now been overturned and he will face a retrial in Mitrovica.

The decision is likely to reopen the debate on whether Slobodan Milosevic should face genocide charges at The Hague, where he already stands accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The tribunal is currently preparing indictments of genocide against Mr Milosevic in connection with atrocities carried out in Bosnia and Croatia.

Mass grave

Serbian authorities in the western Serbian town of Bajina Basta began on Thursday to excavate a mass grave thought to contain the bodies of Kosovo Albanians.

They are believed to have been transported out of the province in an attempt by Mr Milosevic to cover up atrocities and possible war crimes carried out during his campaign of terror.

Serbian police believe around 800 victims of the conflict in Kosovo have been buried around Serbian territory.

The gruesome revelations of the bodies are credited with changing public opinion in Serbia and increasing acceptance that war crimes were carried out under the Milosevic regime.


Full coverage

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See also:

07 Sep 01 | Europe
Wife hails Milosevic the 'freedom fighter'
05 Sep 01 | Europe
Milosevic to sue tell-all prison guard
21 Jun 01 | Europe
Kosovan mass graves shock Serbs
30 Aug 01 | Europe
Milosevic to face genocide charge
30 Aug 01 | Europe
Milosevic's second hearing
24 Aug 01 | Europe
Milosevic gives TV interview from cell
20 Aug 01 | Europe
Milosevic gets birthday visit
23 Aug 01 | Europe
Milosevic denies tribunal legality
Internet links:

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Anonymous said...

It only takes looking a the words you use to see that you are a stupid racist. We don't have to prove anything. Everybody knows, including you, who killed how many people. So, shut up.
"blablabla" is what you say all the time.

Anonymous said...

''


he cigane read it is your web site that says it all MASSACARE WOMEN AND CHILDREN.. AND A 100 YEAR OLD MEN KILLD BY THE NICEST PEOPLE (SERB) in the whole wide world SINCE YOU ARE SON NICE WHYD ONT WE CALL YOU GUYS ANGELS........MYBE DEATH ANGELS YOU MOTHERPHOCKER Suspects Held In Serbia Over Kosovo Massacre
BELGRADE (AP)--Serbian police detained nine people Wednesday on suspicion of taking part in a 1999 massacre of four dozen ethnic Albanians in southwestern Kosovo, prosecutors said.

The suspects, including six Serbian policemen, appeared before an investigative judge and prosecutors asked for a month's detention pending formal charges, said Snezana Malovic of Serbia's war crimes prosecutors office. Malovic did not identify the suspects.

The detentions marked a watershed since Serbs who fought ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are still revered by many as war heroes.

But pressure from human rights groups prompted Belgrade to launch an investigation, both in Serbia and Kosovo, to determine who is to blame. Over 60 witnesses, including ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, have been questioned in the investigation.

The 48 victims of the Suva Reka massacre were among hundreds of ethnic Albanians killed during the war in Kosovo whose bodies were later transported to Serbia.

They were dumped in mass graves near a high security police facility at Batajnica outside Belgrade, the Serbian capital. Autopsies showed the victims were executed.

The massacre is the first war crimes case in Serbia related to the mass graves discovered after Slobodan Milosevic's ouster. The victims' identities were established through DNA analysis and their remains have since been returned to families in Kosovo.

The U.N. has administered Kosovo since NATO's 1999 air war against Yugoslavia that forced Milosevic to end a crackdown on rebel ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

An estimated 835 ethnic Albanians, many of them women and children, were buried in three mass graves in central Serbia during the war.

Pro-Western Serbian authorities revealed the locations of mass graves, including Batajnica, in 2001 - the year Milosevic was handed over to the U.N. war crimes court at The Hague, Netherlands.

Hundreds of bodies have since been unearthed and returned to families in Kosovo.

Anonymous said...

again and again same rhetoric and proof of how albos fight/debate: they dont they just run scared like rats. u dont have the balls to tackle even one thing i said but say stupid things like "everyone knows blabla" bullshit.
u know u r wrong that y u run, u know u r getting something that was never yours that y u avoid any type of debate with any opposing view.

Anonymous said...

These are the Albanian people the Serb army fought. They were running like rats but got cought from the courageous Serb army.

"The 48 victims of the Suva Reka massacre -- among them 14 children, two babies, a pregnant woman and a 100-year-old woman -- were among hundreds of ethnic Albanians killed during the war in Kosovo whose bodies were later transported to Serbia.

They were dumped in mass graves near a high security police facility at Batajnica outside Belgrade, the Serbian capital. Autopsies showed the victims were executed."

Anonymous said...

Just ignore this bastard. He doesn't seem to have any brain cells left (i must say, RTS did a hack of a job in this regard).

Instead of asking for forgivness for all the pain you and your people endured to albanians for centuries, you keep writing these racist remarks.
But, you know what, it doesn't matter what you, or any other serb, say anymore.
We won the War, and we are winning the Peace - Independence.
So now, all you can do is go to Shumadia, play 'hide and fuck' with your war bodies, and wish that someday, ....someday, we will forgive you.

Anonymous said...

again thousands of serbs were killed women kids etc 250,000 kicked out for good, WHAT IS YOUR POINT?

Anonymous said...

THE SUNDAY TIMES (UK), Sunday, September 3, 2000 EUROPE
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.

Anonymous said...

This is exactly what I'm talking about:
"thousands of serbs were killed women kids etc 250,000 kicked out" (Post 8:25 PM)

When on earth were there 350,000 (presumably 250,000 that run + 100,000 that stayed) serbs in Kosovo!!!

And then: "[...]thousands of serbs killed"
Are you joking me or what?! For once, please, do not manipulate with numbers. It’s just low.

And, if you don’t have anything clever to say, we must ignore you.

Hope you and your people wake up one day, and realize that you lived a lie.

Until then… keep barking my friend, keep barking.

Anonymous said...

SRBI NEMOJTE DA SE SVADJATE OVDE NA OVOM SAJTU NEGO AJDE DA NAPRAVIMO MI SAJT DA NJIH OGOVARAMO MI SE SADA BORIMO NA NJIHOVU TERRITORIJU NJIHOV SAJT ALI ZA POBEDU TREBAMO DA SE BORIMO NA NASOJ TERRITORIJI. sVAKI DAN PUNO LJUDI CITA OVI SAJT I SVAKI DAN ALBANSI NAGOVORE NEKOLIKO LJUDE DA BUD ZA NEZAVISNU DRZAVU KOSOVA
NAZALOST JA NEZNAM KAKO DA NAPRAVIM SAJT A ONI KOJ ZNA NEK NAPRAVI ZATO STO AKO NENAPRAVI NECEMO MORATI DA SE BORIMO PREKO INTERNETA NEGO NA RATISTU!!!!!

Anonymous said...

All the world knows that Serbs lie, one of your presidents even statetd that lying is a Serbs patriotic duty, so no surprise there with all the fabricated numbers the Serbs puul out of their behinds. However they're using the same lies they used in Bosnia, Croatia, and even Slovenia. These lies are becoming anecdodes now. You gotta find new lies, Serbs.

Anonymous said...

LIES???? since you are all killers and liars and drug pushers of course you wont belive anything that ur smelly fathers tell u. look it up yourselves, I know that 20 of u brothers share 1 computer in 1 room but take turns look it up and u will be for a fact that 250k serbs were forced out and that thouands of serbs were killed since 1998 by KLA NAZI albos, look at the articel posted above by your allies even, are you going to tell me that the hundreedds of churches u blew up we never really there in the first place? u are such scum of the earth taht u lie when u open ur mouth. u say something about lieing??? how does that famous ALBO SAYING GO "RELIGION IS WITH THE SWORD"??? If that is not a true example of how u collectivly lie to urselves as a nation then I dont know what is.

Anonymous said...

If the Serbs were forced out how do you explain the fact that when i returned home my car was missing, my tv, my washing machine, my vcr, my pc,my refrigerator, and anything of value. If you are forced out you have no time to steal people's stuff let alone carefully select the most expensive things.
Those who left were nothing but colonialists, imperialists and bloodsuckers who after draining all of Kosova's resources left as soon as Belgrade quit on them. The numbers you post are fabricated.