15 August 2003 Afternoon Edition

Kosovo News

· Atrocity at Bistrica beach (Guardian)
· Hand grenade explodes in northern Kosovo (AP)
· High security as Serb leaders attend Kosovo burial (Reuters)
· End anti-Serb violence in Kosovo, Serbia PM asks UN head (AFP)
· Attack on swimming youth dominate discussions as new U.N. Kosovo chief…(AP)
· Kosovo Albanians give cautious welcome to new UN chief (AFP)
· Security Council condemns Gorazdevac attack (B92)
· Belgrade "won't issue war threat" (B92)
· Zivkovic seeks security for Gorazdevac visit (B92)

Regional News

· UN war crimes court remands Bosnian Serb camp guard in custody (AFP)
· Bosnian Serb prison guard commander surrenders to Yugoslav war crimes…(AP)

Atrocity at Bistrica beach

A gunman's brutal attack on a group of Serbian children swimming in a Kosovan river has plunged the troubled region into further crisis, writes Ian Traynor

Friday August 15, 2003 - The Guardian

With the mercury touching 40C (104F) in the blistering Balkan heat wave, the children of Gorazdevac merrily pursued their favorite summer pastime - plunging in and out of a popular swimming stretch of the river Bistrica in western Kosovo.
Gorazdevac is a Serbian village among an overwhelming Albanian majority in the United Nations-run province. The splashing children, too, were Serbian, several dozen of them.
On Wednesday afternoon a man with a Kalashnikov machinegun suddenly started spraying the water with bullets. Pantelija Dakic, 11, and Ivan Jovovic, 20, were killed. Another four children were seriously wounded. The rest fled in panic.
"About 50 of us were taking a swim when we heard one, two, three machine gun bursts. I saw children falling around me, and then felt strong pain in my arm and knee," one of the wounded told the Belgrade newspaper, Vecernje Novosti.
The murderous attack is extreme, even by the vicious standards that still prevail in Kosovo four years after a war that ended with Nato forces driving brutal Serbian occupying forces out of the province and left the Albanians under an international protectorate.
The murders also come at an extremely delicate time in the protracted wrangling over what will become of Kosovo, with the Albanians insisting on full independence, the Serbs demanding that Kosovo enjoy a form of home rule within Serbia, and the international community playing for time.
Murders and armed attacks are a weekly occurrence in the streets and villages of Kosovo, with the minority Serbs still clinging to an existence in the province particularly under threat from roaming bands of Albanian thugs.
A few days before the beach killings, an Albanian gunman shot a Serb man in the mouth while he was fishing. An Indian UN policeman was killed by an Albanian sniper in a road ambush 10 days ago, the first UN policeman to be murdered since the war ended in 1999.
And just beyond Kosovo's border in the Presevo area of Serbia proper, where Albanian militants are on the prowl, a series of incidents in recent weeks points to trouble ahead.
The Bistrica beach atrocity is assumed to have been the work of an Albanian gunman although the perpetrator is still at large. The attack on the children was exceptionally brutal. Predictably and understandably, Serbia is in uproar over the crime.
The Serbian government declared today a day of mourning for the victims. An emergency session of the country's supreme defence council was hurriedly convened to debate the crisis.
"We are not here to announce war or military messages," said Svetozar Marovic, the head of state of the new loose union of Serbia-Montenegro.
Angry Serbs blocked roads in Kosovo and in southern Serbia. The Belgrade government demanded that the UN security council meet to discuss the matter.
"Kosovo is descending into a catastrophe," said Nebojsa Covic, the Serbian deputy prime minister responsible for Kosovo, who said the murders constituted "a continuation of ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo".
The Serbian foreign ministry declared the murders were part of a planned and coordinated campaign of terror aimed at Kosovo's destabilization.
UN and Nato officials in Kosovo deplored the murders as an act of barbarism. Kosovo Albanian leaders also condemned the killings, but perhaps a bit more hesitantly than they might have.
"We are shocked that someone in Kosovo could do such evil," Ramush Tahiri, a senior Kosovo Albanian official, told a Belgrade television station. "Dark forces who bear ill intent towards Kosovo are probably behind it."
It remains to be seen what impact the murders will have on the wider effort at conciliation and resolving the curious status of Kosovo, currently a diplomatic and political limbo.
Earlier this week the Serbian prime minister, Zoran Zivkovic, laid out Belgrade's claims with a declaration on Kosovo that is to be adopted by the Serbian parliament after the summer recess. It is a wish list instantly scorned by the Kosovo Albanian leadership, with fat chance of becoming reality.
Serbia's sovereignty and territorial inviolability extends to Kosovo, the declaration asserted, and promised that once human and ethnic minority rights are secured for the Serbs in Kosovo, the province will also be afforded substantial autonomy.
This is essentially a return to the status quo ante of the 1980s before the indicted war criminal, Slobodan Milosevic, abolished Kosovo's autonomy and established a police state there. It is utterly unacceptable to the Albanians who have since been through a war to secure independence along with the other peoples of former Yugoslavia.
Besides, the Zivkovic demand presupposes that the loose union of Serbia and Montenegro, established earlier this year, will survive while most analysts view those chances as remote.
Mr Zivkovic's gambit, following the assassination in March of his predecessor, Zoran Djindjic, is also aimed at building electoral support among Serbian nationalists, a move which will inevitably produce a parallel hardening of nationalist positions on the Albanian side.
On the fringes of the European Union summit in Greece in June, it was announced that the Serbs and Kosovo Albanians were about to embark on their first negotiations since the end of the war. The talks, initially to deal with low-level and administrative matters, were to open last month. They did not. The talks are now expected to begin within a couple of months.
The murders, the thuggery, and the political posturing highlight the problems enveloping these negotiations and the challenges facing the former Finnish prime minister, Harri Holkeri, who has just been appointed the new UN chief in Kosovo after months of backroom sniping and maneuvering between the Americans and the Europeans.
Mr Holkeri has not even taken up his new post yet. Wednesday was the first day of his first reconnaissance visit to Kosovo, the day of the Bistrica beach atrocity.

Hand grenade explodes in northern Kosovo

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) _ Unknown suspects hurled a grenade in a residential area in northern Kosovo, a United Nations spokesman said Friday. No one was injured in the attack.

Gyorgy Kakuk, said that a hand grenade was thrown late Thursday outside a building inhabited by ethnic Albanians in the predominantly Serb side of Kosovska Mitrovica, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the capital Pristina.

The attack came only hours after local Serbs lit candles in remembrance of the two Serb youths killed by unknown gunmen on Wednesday in the western part of the province.

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations and NATO-led peacekeepers since June 1999, after the alliance's 78-day bombing campaign halted a crackdown by Serb forces on independence-minded ethnic Albanians.

High security as Serb leaders attend Kosovo burial
BELGRADE, Aug 15 (Reuters) - Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic went to a highly volatile area of Kosovo on Friday for the funerals of two Serb boys shot dead by suspected ethnic Albanian extremists.
In a sign of Serbia's deep outrage at Wednesday's slaying, Zivkovic and his deputy Nebojsa Covic insisted that no security considerations could keep them from attending the burial of Ivan Jovovic, 19 and Pantelija Dakic, 13.
It was the highest level Serb trip to Kosovo since Belgrade lost control of the province to NATO and the United Nations four years ago and high security was in force.
Troops of the NATO-led peacekeeping mission and police from the U.N. who have patrolled Kosovo since 1999 waited for the visitors in Gorazdevac, a Serb enclave plunged into mourning by the machinegun attack on a river swimming party.
Wednesday's killings were strongly condemned by the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.
Until four years ago, Kosovo's two million Albanians were under the heel of the authoritarian regime of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, whose security forces spared no one in a bid to root out an Albanian separatist uprising.
In 1999, those forces were ultimately driven out of the territory Serbs consider their ancient homeland, by 78 days of NATO bombing. Some 180,000 Kosovo Serb civilians fearing a wave of Albanian revenge followed the military exodus.
Fewer than 100,000 now remain, living in enclaves protected by NATO peacekeepers from attack by Albanian extremists who, Belgrade says, want to cleanse Kosovo of Serbs.
U.N. figures say 273 Serbs have been murdered since 1999 in bombings, shootings, arson and grenade attacks.
Speaking in Belgrade before flying to Kosovo, Zivkovic said ``not a single perpetrator of a single act of terrorism against Serbs and Montenegrins and other non-Albanians has been found, let alone tried and punished.''
No one has claimed responsibility for the assault on the youth of Gorazdevac this week as they cooled off in the river, and U.N. police have not yet identified a suspect.
It coincided with the first visit to Kosovo by Harri Hokeri, a former Finnish prime minister who is taking over as the U.N. fourth administrator of the territory in four years.
The Serbian news agency Tanjug reported fresh incidents in Kosovo overnight, with Albanians shooting at a group of Serb civilians and desecrating a graveyard in a second incident, in an area where a school was gutted by fire this week.
Hokeri was expected to oversee initial talks later this year that would lead up to tackling the crunch issue of Kosovo's future status. But analysts say this week's attack and the violent reverberations it set off are clouding that prospect.

End anti-Serb violence in Kosovo, Serbia PM asks UN head
BELGRADE, Aug 15 (AFP) - As Serbia on Friday observed a national day of mourning for two young Serbs in Kosovo, Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic demanded the United Nations put an end to ethnic violence in the province.
Zivkovic said 1,136 Serbs have been kidnapped and 987 Serbs killed in Kosovo, the UN-administered southern province of Serbia, since the end of a war between Serbian security forces and Albanian separatists in June 1999.
After meeting with the new head of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Harri Holkeri, he said: "These numbers are sad and awful, and I hope the arrival of Mr. Holkeri will represent a new UNMIK approach in Kosovo."
Zivkovic said he hoped Holkeri, a former Finnish prime minister, would "do everything possible to stop" the violence in the ethnic Albanian-majority province.
Holkeri, who will take command of UNMIK in September, arrived in Belgrade Wednesday for talks with Serb authorities. Only an hour after he arrived, two two Serb boys -- aged 11 and 19, were gunned down while swimming in a small river near Zahac -- 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of the capital Pristina.
Angry Serb Kosovars took to the streets in protest Thursday, and Belgrade demanded an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the issue.
Holkeri on Thursday vowed the culprits would be found as international police launched a major search for gunmen.
The Serbian premier, for his part, said he would travel to Kosovo Friday afternoon to take part in funeral services for the slain youth.
He will be the highest Serb official to visit the province since fighting ended in 1999, after a NATO bombing campaign drove out Serbian forces.
Four years after the end of the war, Kosovo remains wracked with ethnic tension, and more than 200,000 Serbs haved fled to escape attacks.
Those who remain -- a number estimated between 80,000 and 120,000 -- live in enclaves protected by a NATO protection force (KFOR).

Attack on swimming youth dominate discussions as new U.N. Kosovo chief visits Belgrade

By JOVANA GEC

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) _ The newly appointed head of the U.N. administration in Kosovo made his first trip to Belgrade on Friday, amid outrage over the killing of two Serb youths in the province earlier this week.

Harri Holkeri met top Serbian officials, including Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic and his deputy in charge of Kosovo, Nebojsa Covic. Holkeri was also set to meet Goran Svilanovic, the foreign minister of Serbia and Montenegro, as the successor state to Yugoslavia is called.

The talks are the first since Holkeri, a former Finnish prime minister, was appointed top U.N. Kosovo official last month. The province remains part of Serbia but has been run by the United Nations and NATO since 1999, following an alliance air war that ended Serb forces' crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians.

The meetings are likely to focus on a wave of violence in Kosovo, which Serbian officials blame on ethnic Albanian extremists pushing for independence.

Serbia has declared Friday a day of mourning for the two boys who were killed in by machine-gun bullets as they were swimming in a river in western Kosovo. Four other youths were wounded in the attack, the worst this year against Kosovo's beleaguered Serb minority.

The killing followed the slaying of a Serb family in the village of Obilic in June, and a series of minor attacks targeting the minority. Two-thirds of the 300,000 Serbs living in Kosovo before the war left the province following the end of the Serb rule there 1999.
U.N. officials in Kosovo are investigating the Wednesday slaying, but have not said whether it was ethnically motivated.

Outraged by the violence, officials in Serbia and Montenegro have demanded an urgent U.N. Security Council session, accusing the international community of failing to protect the Kosovo Serbs.

The Council issued a statement Thursday that condemned the killings and ``expressed deep concern that four years after the conflict such brutal incidents continue to occur.''

The statement called on authorities to ``spare no efforts'' to arrest the killers and bring them to justice and noted that ``such incidents jeopardize Kosovo's image in the international community.''

The United States, France, Britain and Russia also have condemned the attack near the Kosovo village of Gorazdevac.

In a sign of lingering tensions in Kosovo following the Wednesday attack, unknown assailants hurled a grenade outside an ethnic Albanian dominated area in the divided northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica, said U.N. spokesman Gyorgy Kakuk.

He said that the hand grenade was thrown late Thursday outside a block of flats inhabited by ethnic Albanians in the predominantly Serb side of Kosovska Mitrovica, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the capital Pristina. No one was injured in the explosion.

Meanwhile, preparations were underway Friday in Gorazdevac for the funeral of the two killed youth, set to be held in the afternoon. Zivkovic and Covic were set to travel to Kosovo to attend.

Kosovo Albanians give cautious welcome to new UN chief
PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro, Aug 15 (AFP) - Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership has given a cautious welcome to the province's new UN administrator, while reminding him that independence from Serbia remains its ultimate aim, reports said Friday.
Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova told UN mission chief Harri Holkeri, a former prime minister of Finland, that the security situation was improving despite the brutal murder of two Serbs on Wednesday.
"The security situation is better, however we have some incidents like in the region of Peja (Pec), which we harshly condemn," Rugova was quoted as saying in the Koha Ditore paper after his first meeting with Holkeri.
"I insist that Kosovo's independence be recognized as soon as possible because this act will calm Kosovo and the region."
Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi said he was impressed with Holkeri's willingness to discuss real issues and not merely symbolic ones "as previous special representatives sometimes did with local leaders".
"He was the Finnish prime minister so he will understand the problems in Kosovo better," he said.
On the Serb side Holkeri met MP Oliver Ivanovic, who told him that the cold-blooded shooting murder of two Serb youths earlier in the week was part of "synchronized attacks" against the minority group.
The Zëri daily also reported an "unusual" exchange between Holkeri and Ivanovic, who allegedly insisted on meeting the UN representative in front of a Serbian flag.
Kosovo remains deeply divided along ethnic lines four years after the end of the 1998-1999 war between Serbian security forces and the separatist ethnic Albanian majority.
Holkeri is the fourth UN administrator appointed under Security Council Resolution 1244, which made Kosovo a UN protectorate after NATO military intervention drove Serbian security forces out of the province in 1999.
He told reporters Thursday that he had met the Kosovo Albanian leadership, as well as Serb parliamentarians, and described the discussions as "constructive".
But he reminded both sides that he had the full support of the Security Council to wield the exceptional powers granted under Resolution 1244, while also promising to be transparent and consultative.
"The commitment of the international community to Kosovo has not been diminished even though there are a couple of other challenges in the world," he said.
Holkeri said he would continue the policy of his predecessor, German diplomat Michael Steiner, that Kosovo must achieve benchmarks of democracy and multi-ethnicity before its final status can be resolved.
"I have declared open cooperation with all communities and I'm ready to work with them, but... I will not be influenced by other players' agendas or criticism," he said.
He said his priorities were strengthening the rule of law, fighting organized crime and ethnic extremists, developing multi-ethnic institutions and creating a viable economy.
Holkeri also stressed his commitment to securing the return of some 220,000 Serbs who fled the province after the war, fearing Albanian reprisals for years of oppression from Belgrade.
In the most recent attack blamed on ethnic violence, two Serb youth were shot dead Wednesday and four others were injured while swimming in a river some 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of Kosovo's capital Pristina.

Security Council condemns Gorazdevac attack | 12:35 | B92
NEW YORK -- Friday - The UN Security Council has strongly condemned the killing of two Kosovo Serb teenagers on Wednesday.

The condemnation came in a statement issued after the Council held consultations in camera last night.

The Council offers condolences to the families of the victims and demands that their killers be found and brought to justice.

The statement, read to media by Security Council chairman Mikhail Wehbe, expresses deep concern that such incidents have continued four years after the end of armed conflict and reminds the Kosovo Government of its obligation to promote reconciliation and tolerance.

"The latest incidents and all similar incidents are damaging to Kosovo's international image," Wehbe cautioned.

The Security Council has scheduled a meeting on Kosovo for next Monday.

Belgrade "won't issue war threat" | 12:36 | B92
BELGRADE -- Friday - There will be no military threats or war messages issued over the killing of Serb teenagers in Gorazdevac on Wednesday, Serbia-Montenegro President Svetozar Marovic said today.

"We will call on everyone in the world, particularly the European Union and the United Nations for assistance in finding the perpetrators of this crime through effective and determined action by UNMIK and KFOR," said Marovic.

The federal president added that this was now a condition for stability and peace and the beginning of dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina.

Zivkovic seeks security for Gorazdevac visit | 13:00 | B92
BELGRADE -- Friday - The Serbian Government has asked UNMIK to provide security for a visit by Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic and Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic to Gorazdevac.

Zivkovic and Covic are seeking protection in order to visit the families of teenagers killed and wounded in Wednesday's attack at a swimming hole near Pec.

UNMIK has said it will do all in its power to provide an escort for the Belgrade officials to attend the funeral of the two young Serbs who died in the attack.

UN war crimes court remands Bosnian Serb camp guard in custody
THE HAGUE, Aug 15 (AFP) - A former guard of a Serb-run prison camp where Muslims and Croats were tortured during the Bosnian war was remanded in custody at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Friday.
Mitar Rasevic has been charged with 11 counts of war crimes and seven counts of crimes against humanity. They include murder, torture, persecution and slavery.
"Mitar Rasevic was transferred Friday to the detention centre of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) from Belgrade," tribunal spokesman Jim Landale said. He declined to give further details.
Government officials in Belgrade told AFP Rasevic had voluntarily surrendered to the UN court.
The indictment against Rasevic, made public in November 2001, says he was the commander of the 30-odd guards in the KP Dom camp, a prison near Foca, in eastern Bosnia.
Hundreds of Muslims and Croats, some of whom were mentally handicapped or physically disabled, were held in the Foca prison between 1992 and 1994 after the town was taken over by Bosnian Serb nationalists during the war.
According to the indictment, prisoners were held for prolonged periods and subjected to "repeated torture and beatings, countless killings, forced labour and inhumane conditions".
Rasevic, who is now in his early sixties, was allegedly in charge of the solitary confinement cells. According to the indictment, he allowed Serb soldiers to enter the prison at will to assault detainees.
His initial appearance before UN war crimes judges, where he will be asked to enter a plea to the charges, is expected to take place within the next few days.
Another man named in the same indictment as Rasevic, Milorad Krnojelac, was sentenced by the tribunal to seven and a half years in jail in March 2001 for his role in running the camp near Foca. He has appealed against the ruling.

Bosnian Serb prison guard commander surrenders to Yugoslav war crimes tribunal

By TOBY STERLING

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) _ A Bosnian Serb prison guard commander wanted on charges of enslavement, torture and murder at one of the most brutal wartime Bosnia prisons surrendered to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal for trial, the U.N. court and Serbian officials said Friday.

Mitar Rasevic was the chief of 37 guards at the KP-Dom detention facility in Foca during the 1992-1995 war where Muslim and Croat prisoners were held for months in inhumane conditions and many were killed.

According to his indictment, mentally handicapped, physically disabled and elderly people were among the 1,000 inmates at the camp, where beatings and killings were commonplace.

Rasevic was indicted in 1997 and faces 18 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions for his alleged role in atrocities.

At his initial appearance before the U.N. tribunal in coming days, he will be asked to plead to the crimes, each of which could result in a life sentence in prison.

Rasevic surrendered voluntarily to authorities in Belgrade on Aug. 9 and was flown to The Hague on Friday morning, according to Rasim Ljajic, Serbia and Montenegro's top human rights official.

Rasevic is one of three co-defendants in his case, along with the camp's commander Milorad Krnojelac, who was convicted and sentenced to seven and a half years imprisonment in March 2002. The third, Savo Todovic, remains at large.

The Bosnian town of Foca was taken by Serb forces in April 1992 and non-Serb civilians, generally Muslims aged 16-80, were rounded up and deported to a series of prison camps, including KP-Dom or Kazneno-Popravni-Dom.

As commander of the guards, Rasevic participated in selecting prisoners to be beaten on ``numerous evenings from April-July 1992,'' his indictment alleged.

``Guards and soldiers assaulted the detainees with all sorts of weapons, including batons, rifle butts, knives and tools. Some of the detainees were selected for beatings several times. A substantial number of the selected detainees never returned from the beatings and are still missing.''

Camp commander Krnojelac was found guilty of four counts of war crimes, but was acquitted of eight other counts, including torture. Judges said prosecutors had failed to prove his personal involvement in beatings.

In a related landmark ruling, three Bosnian Serbs were convicted for rape and torture in February 2000 and given sentences of 12, 20 and 28 years for crimes at a nearby camp for female detainees. It was the first time an international tribunal classified rape as a war crime.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was founded a decade ago by the U.N. Security Council to prosecute individuals responsible for crimes during the decade-long breakup of Yugoslavia. It is prosecuting dozens of suspects from all sides of the conflict, including former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. His trial is due to resume next week after a month long recess.