CONTENTS

LDK SENIOR OFFICIAL XHEMAJL MUSTAFA MURDERED IN PRISTINA
KOHA DITORE: MYSTERIOUS KILLINGS IN KOSOVO AND THE ZAGREB SUMMIT
KOUCHNER FORMS KOSOVO COUNCIL OF MINISTERS
KOSOVO AND MONTENEGRO NOT INCLUDED IN FINAL STATEMENT
THE ALBANIANS THEMSELVES MUST TALK ABOUT THEIR INTERESTS

LDK SENIOR OFFICIAL XHEMAJL MUSTAFA MURDERED IN PRISTINA

All today's papers carried reports on yesterday's murder of Xhemajl Mustafa, an information advisor to the chairman of the Democratic League of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova.

"A yellow Mercedes, with license plates unknown to the police, is suspected to be the vehicle with which the murderers of Xhemajl Mustafa fled the crime site," reported Koha Ditore on page in an article titled "The founder of the political alternative against Serbia has been murdered".

Late last night, added the paper, sources within KFOR, who preferred to remain anonymous claimed that UNMIK Police arrested three suspected going in the direction of Lipjan, one of them later released while the other two are being held.

It was reported that Mustafa, one of the founders of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), entered his building in Dardania neighborhood in Pristina at 1500 hours. The shots were reportedly not heard, whereas four bullets riddled Mustafa's body, two in his chest and two in the head. The alarmed neighbors took his body out of the building. His face could not be seen and it was all covered in blood. The shouting of Mustafa's neighbors and people passing by stopped a red BMW and it was sent to the Pristina Emergency Center. Thirty minutes later Xhemajl Mustafa passed away.

"Oh father, please no, oh father," said Xhemajl's daughter, the 19-year old Berjana Mustafa, who had a premonition once she saw the police and KFOR vehicles that were surrounding the site. She was returning from school. Running towards the building, she threw her bag away. While on the ground and begging for her father not to be the victim, members of the Kosovo Police Service (KPS) approached her and took her to a nearby boutique.

International police and KPS members arrived at the site thirty minutes after the murder and started investigations inside the building. Three hours after the murder, UNMIK Police spokesman Charley Johnson did not even give the exact name of the victim and his statement to journalists was reportedly filled with mistakes. While the wife of the deceased was in a boutique nearby the building, Johnson claimed she experienced shock or a heart attack and that therefore it was not known who died.

In a short pronouncement on the incident, Kolė Berisha the deputy chairman of the Democratic League of Kosovo, was quoted as saying, "the murder of Xhemajl Mustafa is a hard strike to our efforts for freedom, independence and democracy. The chairmanship of the LDK expresses the deepest condolences to the Mustafa family".

Fatmir Limaj, senior official of the Kosovo Democratic Party (PDK), condemned the murder and considered it is contemptible. "This is a hard hit to the political process and the idea for stabilizing the situation in Kosovo after successful elections. The murderer must be found as soon as possible in order to help peace and to avoid speculations," added Limaj. 

KOHA DITORE: MYSTERIOUS KILLINGS IN KOSOVO AND ZAGREB SUMMIT
   
No one will have wealthier baggage at the Zagreb Summit rather than that of the person who posed with an AK-47 in Kosovo, the Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica. Three mysterious and bloody incidents, separate but still related to each other, have provided with him with the ammunition to present favorably his and Belgrade's position in front of the leaders of the world. The Dobrosin incident, the murder of the driver of the Serb representative in Kosovo on Wednesday and the murder of the LDK official, Xhemajl Mustafa on Thursday, are definitively very bad news for Kosovo.

Kostunica will most probably try in Zagreb to show the tense situation in Kosovo, where Albanians murder Serbs and each other, thus affecting the destabilization of Serbia through the Presevo Valley. Instead of ackowledging the crimes committed by his people and promise to correct their mistakes - as much as they can be corrected - committed by the previous regime, he will try to play the role of the humbled and the victim.

And all this when it is not known who started the incident in Dobrosin, when it is not known who attacked the seat of the Serb representative in Pristina and why.

However, a part of the international community is blaming the Kosovar Albanians. The blame is put even upon those who were sound asleep when the bomb attack was carried out at the residence of the Serb representative, and upon those who condemned the attack as soon as they found about it in the morning.

The Security Council has already blamed the Albanians for the incident that took place Wednesday in Presevo Valley. Foreign news agencies refer to the murder of Xhemajl Mustafa as to the murder of a senior official of a moderated party by extremist elements. The attack against the Serb office has been assessed as a terrorist attack of extremist groups that do not lead Kosovo towards independence. All this in the threshold of the summit and still none of the perpetrators were found. It is difficult to believe that the time when these acts were carried out is a coincidence.

However, once again the responsibility for the undiscovered murders, and crimes committed by an unknown hand, is falling upon Kosovars. Whoever committed these acts is Kosovo's enemy.

Kosovo is a country surfacing from the war with many wounds and trauma. With lots of unsolved things and with a lot of unfulfilled requests. With a fragile court system that has resolved few court processes and with a police whose members clearly say that they have not come to Kosovo to lose their lives while maintaining law and order.

The Kosovar people do not have any decision-making competencies, neither to protect someone nor to capture criminals. The Kosovar people can only orally condemn these acts and they are doing so out loud. Albanians have very well experienced wild violence and are fed up by it. They were victims and in a way they are still victims, while mass graves are still found and destroyed lives are being rebuilt, and while Kosovar youth are unjustly held in Serbian prisons.

The consequences of a decade-long Serb apartheid in Kosovo have led to Kosovo having problems with electricity today, to have destroyed roads, illegal buildings.

While the murder of three police officers in Dobrosin is mentioned, why do not they also mention tens of thousands of people who live in repression under Serbian rule.

These are issues which should be addressed at the Zagreb Summit, if there are true intentions to solve the problems of the region and to achieve reconciliation and co-existence.

International officials that always blame the Kosovar people for criminal acts, who they should capture and unmercifully put them behind bars, have no problems while pretending that they are not aware of these things. It is difficult to find the real perpetrators. It is difficult to create conditions for genuine co-existence in a place such as Kosovo. However, it is not that difficult to forget the circumstances and to start blaming the innocent.

Vojislav Kostunica has to answer for a lot of things at the Zagreb Summit. He should not be allowed to hide behind crimes and incidents of perpetrators who  have not been found and which are condemned by the Kosovar people.

KOUCHNER FORMS KOSOVO COUNCIL OF MINISTERS

Bernard Kouchner formed Kosovo's Council of Ministers reported Kosova Sot on page three.

UN Chief Administrator for Kosovo Bernard Kouchner formed Kosovo's Council of Ministers, which consists of twenty co-heads that make up Kosovo's administration structures. This council will be a forum to discuss the politics that are taken out of the basis of the documents and regulations. They will meet every two weeks. "I want to meet regularly and to mutually be involved in a constructive dialogue in forwarding the level of Kosovo's readiness", said Bernard Kouchner to the co-heads. This is a natural step in changing Kosovo's Transition Council and the IAC, who have been oriented politically according to previous mutual agreements by the Kosovar political parties. Kouchner pleaded that this Council does not become a battlefield, but a field of reasonable debates.

KOSOVO AND MONTENEGRO NOT INCLUDED IN FINAL STATEMENT

The Zagreb Summit and the certainties concerning the future of the Balkans, was covered on page three by Koha Ditore.

The facts that no one from Kosovo and Montenegro was invited and that the official Summit Statement that will be approved in Zagreb does not mention them in any way proves that EU does not want to face the problems, it only wants to discuss  its achievements in the region.

The Zagreb Summit announced for the last few months as an historic meeting will give importance only to EU relations with Balkan sates, and it will not give any significance to the future of the region as whole.

France had the last word in preparing the summit. They wanted it to be a kind of "Balkan Banquet" because all EU official statements regarding the summit are full of admiration for democratic achievements in Croatia and Yugoslavia during the year 2000.  The organizer's idea for the summit was to give the Balkans a European perspective so this summit has the aim only to round up and symbolize this.

Only one day before the start of the summit it was still unclear if Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica was attending the summit or not.  Even though his cabinet did not confirm this, he is expected to come because as diplomatic sources said, "his absence would be a severe blow for France, which has done so much for Yugoslavia last few days".

"Kostunica in Zagreb will met by more than 10,000 demonstrators" are the main headlines in all of Croatian papers, which also mentioned that more than 5,000 police officers will be there for security. For this occasion 20 armored vehicles were brought from Germany.

It has to be noted that historic importance of this summit is diminished because the Americans are not participating even as observers. However, France's hopes that the presidential crisis will lessen American influence in Europe and especially in the Balkans is almost impossible, because since World War I until now not a single problem could be solved without the participation of the Americans.

Everything was known before the start of the summit, and the most feared thing for France happened, for this summit to be only a courteous meeting. Croats hoped, and maybe Bosnians and Albanians too, that Kostunica would ask for forgiveness for Serb crimes. That hope most likely will not be fulfilled because of what Kostunica said in his interview for Koha Ditore that was repeated by Djindjic and Foreign Minister Svilanovic. "Yugoslavia has no reason to ask for forgiveness from anyone," because as they say, "everyone has committed crimes". This clearly shows that Serbs are very far from creating conditions that would bring reconciliation between the people in the region, something that this summit aimed.

After long discussions, participants in the Zagreb Summit, including 15 EU states and five states of the "Western Balkans", have achieved an agreement for the final statement, which will be officially approved today. Considering the complicated procedure for achieving agreements, it can be hardly expected that during the Summit there will be any significant changes to the final statement. The statement itself repeats what the media has been saying for the past few days.

The beginning of the statement describes the year 2000 as the year of changes in the region, starting from elections in Croatia and continuing with changes in the FRY and it continues, "these crucial changes open the doors to reconciliation and regional development". Much softer than was expected, the statement says that "we are giving a new push to good neighborly politics, with a basis of solving disputes with dialogue, with respect towards international obligations, including The Hague Tribunal". These changes imply mutual relations by the states in question, and reduction of armaments decided at the Dayton Peace Accord.

There is a mention of the Stability Pact and that a second financial conference for the region will be held, where states in question will present their programs for rebuilding the economy.

The most crucial part of the statement is the annex, which calls to the process of integration of the regional states to the EU. The declaration greets the achievements in Croatia and Macedonia, while other states like Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the FRY are encouraged to move towards reforms.         
 
THE ALBANIANS THEMSELVES MUST TALK ABOUT THEIR INTERESTS

Kosovo's participation in today's Zagreb Summit, where the cooperation of the Balkan countries will be discussed, is contradicted because of it's participation and because the Albanian leaders were not invited, reported Zėri on page seven.

UNMIK said that Kouchner's speech in Zagreb, where he represents Kosovo, has similar points with his speech in the Security Council in New York. The second secretary of the French Office in Pristina, Michelle Tarron, stated that Kouchner has the mandate to be Kosovo's representative but that his presence cannot be compared with the state presidents' in the Summit. "The Albanians themselves must talk about their interests", said Albanian political entities, expressing dissatisfaction at their nonparticipation.

AAK Chairman Ramush Haradinaj believes that the Zagreb Summit is an initiation of the efforts that will be taken continuously for the definite solution of the Balkan issue, which concerns all nations of this region. He considers that Albanian interests are represented from many aspects of the international sector, but the legitimate body elected by the people should represent them. However, according to Haradinaj "this body" does not exist. "With the legitimacy that Albanian representatives have, I do not think it would have been a great help for the Albanians to be there", stated Haradinaj. 

On the other hand, LDK vice-president Naim Jerliu said that in additionto Kouchner's participation, the Albanian representatives participation would have strengthened the Kosovar presence at the Summit.

PDK vice-president Arsim Bajrami said that the Albanian representatives requested that Kouchner violently oppose Yugoslavia's admittance, to insist on the release of Albanian prisoners in Serbia and on setting a date for general elections in Kosovo. "Kouchner can talk to Kostunica only about the release of Albanian prisoners from Serb prisons", said Bajrami, adding that the Albanians oppose the eventual talks Kouchner might have with Kostunica concerning Kosovo's final status. "Only the bodies that come from Parliamentary elections can talk about Kosovo's status", concluded Bajrami.