20 October 2003 Morning Edition


Kosovo News

· Angry Kosovars call on 'colonial' UN occupying force to leave (Guardian/Observer)
· NATO led peacekeepers; Serb authorities deny claims Serb died of hunger (AP)
· Elderly Serb dies of hunger after fear of ethnic attack kept him stuck at home (AP)
· Kosovo Serb dies of starvation (Beta)
· New Serb-Albanian talks "next year" (SRNA)
· Krga meets new KFOR commander (B92)
· Some 50 people slightly injured in a bar stampede in Kosovo (AP)
· Vienna meeting a symbolic first step for Kosovo's future: UN envoy (AFP)
· EU hails launch of Kosovo-Serbia talks (AFP)


Regional News

· Bosnia's wartime president Alija Izetbegovic dies (AFP)
· Alija Izetbegovic dies (B92)
· Djindjic bodyguard says two snipers shot Serbian PM (B92)


Angry Kosovars call on 'colonial' UN occupying force to leave

The international force's fall from grace in Kosovo is a stark warning of what could happen to peacekeepers in Iraq. Helena Smith reports

Sunday October 19, 2003
The Observer

The first chant came from the back of the crowd. 'Go home!' yelled a youngster, as he stood in Pristina's dusty Mother Teresa Square, the site last week of Kosovo's first post-war demonstration.
'Out with the UN!' screamed an elderly woman, producing a placard that conveyed the same message. 'We don't need you here!'
Four years ago, Kosovar Albanians were liberated from their Serbian tormentors by the West. The international bureaucrats who arrived to administer the benighted territory after Nato forces made their triumphant entry were hailed as heroes by a populous as grateful as it was grief-stricken.
But now Kosovo has become angry again. As the eyes of the world have been elsewhere, another battle has erupted in the heart of the world's 'most successful' UN peacekeeping mission. After around 1,500 days of receiving more money, aid and support than any other war-ravaged country, Kosovars are angry. But this time their venom is reserved for the very people who came to protect and reform them.
As locals grapple with price increases and worsening poverty, it is the 'internationals' who have become symbols of the contradictions threatening to tear the UN protectorate apart. Across the province, men and women appear disgusted by their foreign guardians' 'corrupt' beneficence and depraved 'colonial' ways.
'They came to keep the peace and now they're causing tensions,' said Qamile Blakcori. 'We are very grateful that Western forces saved us from the Serbs, but now it's time they go.'
Sophisticated and determined, Blakcori is the embodiment of Kosovo's return to normality. Without the iron hand of Belgrade to silence them, she and her artist husband soon set about realising their 'life dream' of opening a gallery in Pristina.
Because of this, she has only 'good words' for Unmik (UN Mission in Kosovo) and K-for, the 20,000-strong multinational peace force that has restored law and order. But as a mother of four, she says, she is also 'sick to the bone'.
Over half of Kosovo's two million people are living on or below the poverty line. Unemployment is rampant, and after four years of governance by 'white men' the province - a net exporter of electricity under the Yugoslav regime - is still suffering daily from debilitating power cuts. All this as the perception also grows that many internationals are only in Kosovo for 'their fat-cat salaries and CVs'. If they cared so much about locals, why were there so many abandoned babies who had reportedly been sired by Westerners?
'I'm really fearful for my children,' sighed Blakcori. 'What are they going to do? The internationals have done good things, but they have also brought bad habits. Now there is a lot of drugs and prostitution. In the Balkans when people have lots of time and nothing to do they tend to become radicalised.'
'Last week's protest, timed to coincide with the start of historic but widely unpopular reconciliation talks in Vienna with the Serbs, is just the beginning,' says Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi.
'Being ruled 5,000 miles away from New York is simply not working,' he snapped. 'With no road maps, or political deadlines, or sense of resolving their unclear international status as a non-state entity, Kosovars are fast losing hope.'
'We don't like to see those protests or those placards,' said the leader, who will hold talks in London on Tuesday. 'But if Unmik continues to ignore our needs, if it refuses to transfer more power to us, then internationals here will face big demonstrations and everyone will be crying "Unmik go home".'
'What was especially galling to Kosovars was the brazen "corruption" within the mission,' said Rexhepi, who was elected in March 2002. He added that not only was the UN refusing to grant his people more self-rule, it was also abusing power 'at the highest levels,'.
The malpractice - reluctantly confirmed by Western diplomats - had made him 'feel very ashamed'. A lot of the misplaced funds, he suspected, were local taxes. 'Unmik claimed it has zero tolerance for corruption and organised crime, but there is serious corruption involving huge amounts of money right at its core,' he lamented.
As a surgeon who risked his life serving as a field doctor with the Kosovo Liberation Army (the guerrilla group whose uprising against Serb rule set in motion the events that led to Nato's air bombardment in 1999), he had 'other visions for Kosovo'.
'There are many internationals who also use these services of trafficked women. People will think I am revealing these things because I am politically frustrated. But it's not that. I've had enough! Over a year ago I asked that a team of investigators be sent from New York, and I still haven't got an answer.'
Since then, Kosovars have seen the imprisonment of a German bureaucrat, Joe Trutschler, for embezzling 4.5 million euros as chairman of the supervising board of the Kosovo Electric Company. He believes there are similar cases at Kosovo's telecoms company, customs service and airport - utilities that Unmik had control of.
'I don't want to mention names but I suspect it is happening at the highest level [in collusion] with locals,' said Rexhepi. 'I am not saying we are angels, but these people think they are untouchable because they have corrupted others, so they're all in it together.'
If his government had control over the police and security services, it would be able to investigate these things itself. 'This is our greatest problem, the West won't let us be ourselves,' the Prime Minister complained. 'People voted me into office and instead I find myself with my hands tied behind my back. It's a total contradiction.'
What the West fails to appreciate, he said, was that it was impeding Kosovo's development. Without independence, the territory, which still comes under Serbian jurisdiction, could not even receive credit and loans. Lack of financial incentives have been widely blamed for the tiny number of refugee returning to the province.
'Ours was the first village to return to Kosovo after the Nato campaign,' said Sonya Vukovic, a 26-year-old Serbian paediatrician in Osojane, a Serbian enclave. 'There were 60 young people at first, but they have all gone as there is no work in Kosovo and life is so hard. We can't even go to the next village without being escorted by K-for.'
Privately, UN officials concede that it would have been better if Kosovo's status had been settled when the organisation drew up a mandate to run the province. Without it being defined their mission is like 'walking on eggshells'. After all, how can Kosovo be decolonised when no one is sure what its real identity is?
Instead, Unmik has set out eight benchmarks - under the title 'Standards before status' - that it says must be met before the question is settled.
Officials readily admit that any of the alternatives - independence, partition, continued international stewardship - are unlikely to satisfy everyone.
'It's just like Iraq, whatever we do is going to affect the entire region,' said one senior EU diplomat.
'Kosovo is a perfect example of the confusion the West is likely to get into if it doesn't think through the political implications of its military strategy. If we go on like this we're going to have to set up a colonial service.'
If Kosovo has taught the world anything, it is that nation-building is neither cheap nor easy. Prominent women's rights activists in Kosovo sent a two-page missive to Baghdad about the perils of foreign occupation days after US administrators arrived in the Iraqi capital.
Does Harri Holkeri, the former Finnish Prime Minister who recently took over as UN executive, agree? 'Absolutely not. This is not Iraq. It's a civilised place, the people are well educated,' he said. 'Kosovars should have the opportunity to decide their future when they prove they can govern themselves. I would like to make myself disappear. That is the mission of the entire international community in Kosovo.' Kosovars clearly can't wait.


NATO led peacekeepers, Serb authorities deny claims Serb died of hunger in Kosovo

Serb authorities deny claims elderly Serb died of hunger in Kosovo
PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) _ NATO-led peacekeepers and Serbian authorities denied claims Saturday that an elderly Serb died of hunger because he had confined himself to his home for weeks out of fear of being killed by ethnic Albanians.
The Coordination Center for Kosovo, a Serbian government body in charge of the province's Serb minority, said Zivorad Velikinac, 65, died not from starvation, but because he was physically unable to swallow food due to a cardiovascular related illness, a statement carried by the official Serbian news agency, Tanjug, said.
The remarks came a day after Milan Ivanovic, a hard-line Serb leader and the head of a Serb-run hospital where Velikinac died, said the elderly man did not ``put anything in his mouth in the last month because he couldn't leave his house fearing ethnic Albanians would kill him.''
Those claims were denied and brushed off as propaganda by NATO-led peacekeepers in charge of security in Urosevac, the southern Kosovo town where Velikinac lived.
A Greek military official, Lt. Col. Panagiopis Bromise, said peacekeepers took food and medicine to the elderly man, but he refused to eat in the days before he died.
The Serbian center quoted Velikinac's relatives as saying that the man had enough food in his house and he was looked after and guarded by NATO-led peacekeepers, but that his illness had worsened in the past few weeks.
After he died, Velikinac was buried in Urosevac and his ethnic Albanian neighbors stood by their homes in silence while his coffin was carried to the cemetery, following the local tradition, the statement said.
About 200,000 Serbs and other minorities fled Kosovo in fear of revenge attacks and some 80,000 that remain here live in isolated enclaves and have limited freedom of movement.
Authorities have reported a drop in ethnic attacks against minority Serbs since mid-1999, when the United Nations took control of the ethnic Albanian-dominated province, but tensions between the two communities remain high.
Kosovo, a province of 2 million, has been administered by the United Nations since a NATO air war in 1999 halted a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. Some 21,000 NATO-led peacekeepers and 4,000 U.N. police officers are deployed in the province.

Elderly Serb dies of hunger after fear of ethnic attack kept him stuck at home, doctor says
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) _ An elderly Serb died of hunger after he confined himself to his home for weeks out of fear of being killed by ethnic Albanians, a Serb official said Friday.
Zivorad Velikinac, 65, died late Thursday in a Serb-run hospital in the northern Kosovo town of Kosovska Mitrovica after he was transported there for treatment by NATO-led peacekeepers two days earlier, said Milan Ivanovic, a doctor who runs the local hospital.
``Barely being able to speak, Velikinac said he did not put anything in his mouth in the last month because he couldn't leave his house fearing ethnic Albanians would kill him,'' Ivanovic said.
Ivanovic said Velikinac ``looked like a prisoner of Nazi concentration camps during World War II.''
Gyorgy Kakuk, a U.N. spokesman in Kosovska Mitrovica, said the administration could not confirm the exact cause of death.
``Unfortunately, until now we could not have access to official hospital documents to see or verify the case,'' he said. ``Before we can say more, we have to see all the details related to the case.''
The Serb man lived in Urosevac, a town in southern Kosovo dominated by ethnic Albanians.
About 200,000 Serbs and other minorities fled Kosovo in the aftermath of the 1998-1999 war, fearing attacks by ethnic Albanian extremists trying to avenge the Serb crackdown that killed thousands of ethnic Albanians.
Some 80,000 remaining Serbs live in isolated enclaves and have limited freedom of movement. They usually only leave their enclaves if escorted by NATO-led peacekeepers or U.N. police.
Authorities have reported a drop in ethnic attacks against minority Serbs since mid-1999, when the United Nations took control of the province, but tension between the two ethnic communities remains high.
Serb leaders in Kosovo expressed outrage at the death. ``It's a disgrace for the international community and the international peacekeepers who did not secure freedom of movement and basic living conditions for Serbs,'' said Dragisa Krstovic, a senior Serb leader.
Kosovo, a province of 2 million, has been administered by the United Nations since a NATO air war in 1999 halted the Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. Some 21,000 NATO-led peacekeepers and 4,000 U.N. police officers are deployed in the province.

Kosovo Serb dies of starvation (Beta)

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA -- Friday - An elderly Kosovo Serb has died of starvation because he was afraid to go out into the street alone, Beta reports.

Sixty-five year old Zivorad Velikinac was taken to the Mitrovica hospital on Wednesday where one staff member described him as looking like a prisoner from Auschwitz.

"Although he lived in central Urosevac, he had not eaten anything for more than fifteen days because his Albanian neighbours stopped bringing him food and he did not dare go into the street alone," said physician Nebojsa Srbljak.

The president of the Serb National Council, Milan Ivanovic, accused UNMIK of being responsible because Serbs and other non-Albanians still had no freedom of movement in the province.

Ivanovic, who is also a physician in the Mitrovica Hospital, confirmed that Velikinac had died of starvation.

Only about fifteen Serbs live in Urosevac today, down from ten thousand before the 1999 war.


New Serb-Albanian talks "next year" (SRNA)

Helsinki -- Friday - High level talks between Serbs and Albanian may be held in 2004, said UNMIK chief Harri Holkeri, following the anticlimactic Vienna dialogue on Tuesday between Belgrade and half a delegation from Pristina.

Holkeri also ruled out the issue of Kosovo's final status for the agenda, saying this could only be discussed once practical issues have been resolved.

"No new meetings have been scheduled, but I presume that some kind of a meeting may be organized next year," he told media in Helsinki today.

The Kosovo governor emphasized the need for progress in the fields of electrical energy and locating missing persons so that mass repatriations may begin.


Krga meets new KFOR commander (B92)

MERDARE -- Friday - The chief of staff of the Serbian Montenegro Army, Branko Krga, spoke today to KFOR commander Holger Kamerholf about forms of cooperation on the border between Serbia and Kosovo.

Speaking to media after the meeting in the border town of Merdare, Kamerholf said that the peace and stability along the border was KFOR's greatest success and had been achieved thanks to excellent cooperation with the Serbian-Montenegro Army and Serbian police.

Commenting on the infiltration of armed groups from Kosovo into the southern Serbian municipality of Kursumlija, Krga said that the issue was being given special consideration.


Some 50 people slightly injured in a bar stampede in Kosovo


PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) _ About 50 people were slightly injured in a stampede after tear gas was thrown in a crowded bar in southern Kosovo, officials and media said Saturday.
Witnesses told police that a military-type, tear gas canister was ignited inside the bar late Friday in the town of Urosevac, some 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of the province's capital, Pristina, said Dmitry Pryakhin, a spokesman for the U.N. police in Kosovo.
Police have launched an investigation and were conducting a laboratory test. The gas caused panic among people who tried to escape, causing extensive damage to the bar, said Pryakhin.
Many of the young people suffered injuries trying to escape in the panic, breaking windows and doors, the Kosovo daily newspaper ``Zeri'' reported. A doctor told the newspaper that their injuries were not serious and that the majority needed treatment for gas inhalation.
Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since a NATO air war in 1999 halted a crackdown by Serb forces on ethnic Albanian separatists.


Vienna meeting a symbolic first step for Kosovo's future: UN envoy

HELSINKI, Oct 17 (AFP) - Harri Holkeri, the head of the United Nations mission in Kosovo, on Friday hailed as symbolically important this week's negotiations between the Serbian government and Kosovo's ethnic Albanians -- their first since the end of the war in 1999.
Holkeri said that while the talks in Vienna had got off to a shaky start, such face-to-face meetings were the only way to determine the war-torn province's future.
"The result of the dialogue in Vienna could have been worse. The most important thing was that the meeting took place. It was a political necessity and symbolic," Holkeri told reporters in the Finnish capital.
Fighting between the security forces of then Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and ethnic Albanian separatist rebels broke out in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo in 1998.
It ended in June 1999 when a NATO bombing campaign forced Milosevic to withdraw his troops. Since then Kosovo has been under UN administration.
While senior Serbian and ethnic Albanian delegates reportedly refused to shake hands in Vienna and clashed over core issues, it was agreed that talks would continue among experts from the two sides, focusing on how to restore the rule of law, improve economic conditions and ensure the multi-ethnic nature of the province.
But the future talks will not address the highly sensitive issue of Kosovo's possible independence from Serbia -- which is the ethnic Albanians' central demand.
Holkeri stressed that he would only call another meeting of Serbian and ethnic Albanian political leaders when there were some concrete results from the expert-level talks.
"There are no further meetings on the higher level scheduled. But according to the rules of procedure, a meeting where we can review the situation will take place next year," Holkeri said.
"But I would like to make it quite clear -- without development on the practical questions, we can never reach the point where the final status or future of Kosovo can be discussed," he stressed.
Holkeri, a former Finnish prime minister, became UN special envoy to Kosovo in July.

EU hails launch of Kosovo-Serbia talks
BRUSSELS, Oct 17 (AFP) - European Union leaders welcomed Friday the launch of landmark talks between leaders from Serbia and the province of Kosovo four years after the end of a war that killed thousands of people.
The dialogue launched Tuesday in Vienna "represents an essential step towards normalisation in Kosovo and for further advance towards European standards", a statement issued after a two-day EU summit said.
The EU leaders, however, "expressed disappointment that some of the key interlocutors chose not to attend".
Kosovo Prime Minister Bajram Rexepi refused to travel to the Austrian capital after parliament failed to support his attendance at the talks.
The Serbian government had threatened to boycott the talks, but changed its mind at the last minute.
The one-day meeting launched negotiations between Pristina and Belgrade on four outstanding issues from the war: the return of refugees, accounting for the missing, energy and transport.
The EU leaders "urged both parties to make the necessary preparations and to engage constructively and unconditionally in this process on a multi-ethnic basis", the statement said.
Tuesday marked the first face-to-face meeting between ethnic-Albanian leaders from Kosovo and Serbian officials from Belgrade since a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 forced Serb security forces out of the province.
Kosovo then came under UN control and NATO troops were deployed to keep the peace.


Bosnia's wartime president Alija Izetbegovic dies

By Sabina Niksic
SARAJEVO, Oct 19 (AFP) - Alija Izetbegovic, the hero of Bosnian Muslim resistance during the siege of Sarajevo who led his country to independence from communist Yugoslavia, died of heart failure here Sunday at the age of 78.
"President Izetbegovic passed away," Sulejman Tihic, the Muslim member of Bosnia's presidency, told reporters gathered outside the Sarajevo hospital where Izetbegovic had been admitted last month with four broken ribs.
"I just met with his family and we will soon start to arrange details for his funeral," he added.
Izetbegovic won worldwide sympathy by running the government from sandbagged buildings during the three-and-a-half-year-long siege of Sarajevo under constant threat from their artillery and sniper attacks.
Doctors said the cause of death was a "prolonged heart illness caused by a previous heart attack which further deteriorated due to a serial fracture of ribs.
"Izetbegovic's heart stopped at 14:20 pm (1220 GMT)," said Amila Arslanagic, a doctor.
She added that Izetbegovic was conscious until the moment of death.
Bosnian television and radio stations interrupted programmes to announce the death of Izetbegovic, a hero among his fellow Muslim countrymen for organising the defense of Sarajevo from Bosnian Serb forces laying siege to the city.
"He was in a real sense the father of his people. Without him I doubt if Bosnia and Herzegovina would exist today," Paddy Ashdown, top international representative in Bosnia, said in a written statement.
"Many people will feel that an earthquake occurred today but our task now in mourning his death is to continue to build Bosnia-Herzegovina," he added.
The Bosnian presidency extended its condolences to Izetbegovic's family and Sarajevo residents grieved when they heard the news.
"It is a huge loss for Bosnia-Herzegovina, he was the greatest man this country had," Osman Ibric, a pensioner, told AFP.
"I just heard it. I am so sad," added a tearful Hadzira Cavcic.
Reaction was very different, however, among Bosnia's Serb population, which had accused Izetbegovic of war crimes and provided documents to the UN tribunal in The Hague in a bid to have him formally indicted.
"No Serb can feel sorry because he is dead. I am glad that he is gone," Mirko Savic told AFP in Pale, a Bosnian Serb wartime stronghold.
"I am sorry that he escaped an indictment by The Hague tribunal," Ilic Dragoljub added.
The Muslim Party of Democratic Action (SDA), founded by Izetbegovic ahead of Bosnia's war, announced that his funeral would be held on Wednesday.
Tihic, who in addition to being the Muslim member of Bosnia's presidency is also SDA president, said many international dignitaries were expected to attend.
Izetbegovic's health had steadily deteriorated since his September 10 admission to hospital after he fainted in his house and cracked four ribs in a fall.
He had reportedly suffered two heart attacks in recent years and in 2002 was fitted with a pacemaker by Slovenian cardiologists.
Elected chairman of Bosnia's collective presidency in 1990, Izetbegovic was a key figure during the country's 1992-95 war when some 200,000 people died and more than two million were forced out of their homes.
During the siege of Sarajevo the short, blue-eyed Muslim walked to his office through the bombardment, believing, according to those who knew him, that death would come when Allah willed it.
Together with the then Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, Izetbegovic participated in marathon peace negotiations in the US city of Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995 led by the US diplomat Richard Holbrooke.
These resulted in a peace accord for Bosnia which split the country in two parts - the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim Croat Federtion - linked by a weak central government.

Alija Izetbegovic dies (B92)
SARAJEVO -- Sunday - Former Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic has died of heart failure at the age of 78.

"President Izetbegovic passed away," Sulejman Tihic, the Muslim member of Bosnia's presidency, told reporters gathered outside the Sarajevo hospital where Izetbegovic had been admitted last month with four broken ribs.

"I just met with his family and we will soon start to arrange details for his funeral," he added.

Doctors said the cause of death was a "prolonged heart illness caused by a previous heart attack which further deteriorated due to a serial fracture of ribs.

"Izetbegovic's heart stopped at 14:20 pm," said Amila Arslanagic, a doctor.

She added that Izetbegovic was conscious until the moment of death.

Bosnian television and radio stations interrupted programmes to announce the death of Izetbegovic, a hero among his fellow Muslim countrymen for organising the defense of Sarajevo from Bosnian Serb forces laying siege to the city.

"He was in a real sense the father of his people. Without him I doubt if Bosnia and Herzegovina would exist today," Paddy Ashdown, top international representative in Bosnia said in a written statement.

"Many people will feel that an earthquake occurred today but our task now in mourning his death is to continue to build Bosnia-Hercegovina," he added.

The Bosnian presidency extended its condolences to Izetbegovic's family and Sarajevo residents grieved when they heard the news.

The Muslim Party of Democratic Action (SDA), founded by Izetbegovic ahead of Bosnia's war, announced that his funeral would be held on Wednesday.

Tihic, who in addition to being the Muslim member of Bosnia's presidency is also SDA president, said many international dignitaries were expected to attend.

Izetbegovic's health had steadily deteriorated since his September 10 admission to hospital after he fainted in his house and cracked four ribs in a fall.

He had reportedly suffered two heart attacks in recent years and in 2002 was fitted with a pacemaker by Slovenian cardiologists.

Elected chairman of Bosnia's collective presidency in 1990, Izetbegovic was a key figure during the country's 1992-95 war when some 200,000 people died and more than two million were forced out of their homes.

Together with the then Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, Izetbegovic participated in marathon peace negotiations in the US city of Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995 led by the US diplomat Richard Holbrooke.

These resulted in a peace accord for Bosnia which split the country in two parts - the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim Croat Federtion - linked by a weak central government.

Djindjic bodyguard says two snipers shot Serbian PM (B92)
BELGRADE -- Sunday - The former chief of Zoran Djindjic's personal security team believes two snipers took part in the assassination of the Serbian prime minister in March this year.

In an exclusive interview for Radio B92, Milan Veruovic casts doubt over the official investigation which concluded Djindjic was killed by a single sniper in Admiral Geprat street.

"I suspect that there were two rifles. I am sure of this. If his head was turned towards the door, the position he was found in when he fell, he could not have been hit in his left side but on his right side, since I was standing to his left close by, perhaps one metre away", Veruovic told B92.

"I can't claim that the investigation won't establish the facts I'm talking about, but it makes me very suspicious".

Zoran Djindjic's former bodyguard speaks exclusively to Radio's B92 "Kaziprst" (Index Finger) at 10am on Monday.