Albania has become Europe's Colombia

Source: 'L'Espresso', Rome, in Italian 27 Apr 00 pp 94-98

Italian intelligence investigations are reported to have revealed that many Albanian government officials and their immediate relatives are directly involved in drug trafficking. An Italian weekly said that in Albania low salaries and the extremely high risks run by anyone who tries to enforce law and order, encourages corruption at every level. Albania - it said - is a country under the influence of organized crime. The following are excerpts from a report by Angela Derighi and Peter Gomez "And drugs got into the government", published by the Italian newspaper 'L'Espresso' on 27th April:

There is an Italian intelligence services report on the links between Albanian politicians and those who traffic in drugs, in arms, and in human beings; there are maps of Tirana, of Vlore, of Fier and of Durres where the bars frequented by criminal organizations are highlighted; and there are Sisde informers that have infiltrated refugee groups to report almost in real time the illegal traffic operations being devised by the fleeing Albanian and Kosovar bosses.

If the Eagles'[Albania is known as the Land of Eagles] mafia succeeded in getting its hands on most of the aid earmarked for the Operation Rainbow mission (as Bari Public Prosecutor Dibitonto quite openly maintains that it has) and thus "made a quantum leap", it certainly cannot be said that the Italian government was unaware of what was going on.

This, since for the past three years at least, both the Sisde and the Sismi have been tracking developments in the situation on the other side of the Adriatic sea in minute and painstaking detail. And they have been dispatching regular reports to Rome, secret documents which the magistracy would like to get its hands on; and which 'L'Espresso'has succeeded in reading: What emerges from these documents is a Tirana connection [previous word in English in original], in other words the picture of a country still influenced by organized crime in a big way.

In the intelligence services' reports, drafted on the basis either of information from "usually reliable sources" or of investigations conducted on the spot, we find that the names of current Albanian cabinet ministers, of important members both of the [government] majority and of the opposition, and of state and police functionaries are often linked to those of the leaders of the most dangerous criminal gangs...

Taking into account the fact that the documents are exclusively for intelligence use and that for the time being they are totally devoid of any corroborating evidence, 'L'Espresso'has decided not to publish the names of the personalities involved, confining itself to simply illustrating the contents of the various reports. But in any event, this is what our 007s wrote.

It was 15th November 1999, when the intelligence services addressed the sensitive issue of "unwelcome activities on the part of members of the government", the executive that has been holding the reins of power in the country since 29th October of last year. The document paints a detailed picture of the Wild West-style climate prevailing in Tirana.

According to the intelligence gathered by our 007s, the family members of at least two cabinet ministers in the government of Meta - 31 years old, a "pure politician who began his career back in 1990 and who has been chairman of the Albanian Euro-Socialist federation" - are said to be involved in traffic worthy of the criminal code.

The report tells of pressure on the Transport Ministry to rig a railway contract; it summarizes the substance of an inquiry conducted among a non-governmental organization's staff that charged the wife of a minister with "stealing most of the funds handled during the Kosovo crisis"; and finally, it points the finger of accusation at the husband of another government member whom "Albanian circles suspect of being implicated in international drug trafficking".

According to the Italian intelligence services, this is an activity which the minister's spouse conducts in association with the son of an ambassador from a former Iron Curtain country. According to our 007s, this fact is well known also to the Albanian police force: Indeed the drug trafficker's name has "surfaced in the course of numerous inquiries into drug trafficking" linked to those of "former KGB functionaries" who have now joined the Russian mafia.

Besides, Albania at this juncture has become Europe's Colombia. Low salaries (ranging from 100 to 200 dollars a month) and the extremely high risks run by those who seek to ensure respect for law and order, are fostering corruption at every level. Hundreds of police officers, in cahoots with local criminal gangs, were forced to don their civvies again in 1999.

But this clean-up campaign, due to a large extent to the efforts of the Italian Interior Ministry, which has inked a series of accords designed to help reorganize Tirana's forces of order, has not proved capable of preventing policemen and Albanian secret service agents from continuing to be caught red-handed. The latest episode took place on 9th January of this year, when three officers were caught trying to smuggle 400 kg of marijuana into Greece, concealed on board a military truck.

In their reports, the intelligence services speak also of responsibilities at the highest level. On 17th November, in a report headlined "Albania: Organizations devoted to drugs trafficking", our 007s explain that a lieutenant colonel who held several top posts in Tirana until only a few months prior to that date, is currently "thought to be one of the country's most powerful drugs traffickers". "This man," the report continues, "enjoys the protection of... (a member of the Socialist Party) and he maintains close business ties with a functionary from the Albanian Interior Ministry's antidrugs department." According to our secret agents, the trafficker-cum-policeman and his political protector "are in contact with two Italian citizens who work in the Albanian Interior Ministry as 'Italian police experts.'" One of the two "was heard last October addressing the phrase 'the coke is no good' to..."

The picture of total illegality painted by these confidential reports has been clearly confirmed also by those who cross the Adriatic for work purposes. On 19th January this year, in a confidential statement made before the [Italian Chamber of Deputies] Anti-Mafia Committee, Giuseppe De Gennaro, the Italian Justice Ministry's consultant on aide to Albania, provided a crude description of the situation in the country: "Without going into details and without naming specific ministers," he said, "I can confirm that until only a short while ago there was a total lack of awareness of the illegal nature of what we call corruption. I have some very dear friends in Albania," De Gennaro went on, "and I have been embarrassed on more than one occasion to discover that a friend of my friend was a man wielding power in a field of illegality that we could begin to describe as organized crime."

Also reading our intelligence services' reports, it is easy to realize that there are very few Albanian personalities who do not have at least one or two skeletons in their closets. Indeed it is no mere coincidence that on 7th September 1999, in a report headlined "Rainbow Mission", the 007s had no trouble discrediting X.X., an important top-level functionary in the Albanian state apparatus, who, in his homeland, had accused the Italian civil protection organization of being highly inefficient in running the aid programme.

Thanks to "usually reliable sources who are not in contact with one another," the intelligence services gathered information according to which X.X. not only moves "huge sums of money, which are often profits from illegal trafficking, as in the case of fuel or of cigarettes," but he busies himself also with the resale of merchandise impounded by the customs to traffickers close to the higher echelons of the Socialist Party.

The report puts its finger in a wound that was to hit the headlines in February of this year with the resignation of Italy's Natalina Cea from the post of chief of the EU mission for the reform of the Albanian customs service. On resigning, the functionary who had been forced to live with an armed escort for two years on account of the constant threats that she received from the crime underworld, accused Albanian minister [name and post withheld] of being a "friend of the bosses of the fuel smuggling trade and of helping an import-export company owned by a cousin of his".

In the case of X.X., the situation is reported to be the same. According to our secret services, X.X. "entertains links with the organized crime gang that reports to [second name withheld]. The latter, on 14th September last year in the course of the disorders that broke out in Tirana, went to the nearby village of Lunder thanks to a tip-off from X.X. and he proceeded to plunder the warehouses containing reserve supplies there, and to then sell those supplies on the black market." The picture that our 007s paint of [second name withheld], whom they claim is "the godfather of the mafia operating in Tirana", can hardly be called reassuring: "He has a long criminal record, and he is the perpetrator of eight murders; he drives around Tirana in a military Chevrolet with four bodyguards and with two machine guns; he enjoys the political protection of..., and the protection at government level of an aide with the Interior Ministry..."

Despite their total perception of the Albania risk, however, our intelligence services do not appear to have fully grasped the significance of the now famous looting of the refugee camp in Vlore that took place back in July 1999, just before the Italian volunteer workers returned home. On 3rd August a report was filed from Tirana headlined "Considerations on Albanian domestic politics; comment on the article 'Who looted Operation Rainbow?' Published by an Albanian daily paper," in which the raid is described as a case of "presumed looting". Our 007s write: "The Greek minority party PBDNj [Union of Human Rights Party] paper published an article a few days ago in connection with the presumed looting of the refugee camp in Vlore, under the headline: 'Who looted Operation Rainbow, the citizens of Vlore or the Italians?'" The article's author... accused the Italians of looting hundreds of tonnes of (unspecified) material, that was then loaded up onto big trucks. However, the article is devoid either of arguments or of evidence.

Above and beyond any errors of judgment, that are always a possibility, the dozens and dozens of reports drafted by our intelligence services since 1997 in any event provide proof of major intelligence work conducted by our 007s. On the other hand, it is not always clear what use has been made of the intelligence gathered. In some cases the more detailed and specific reports have been filed not only to the CESIS [Italian Executive Committee for the Intelligence and Security Services] and to the [Italian] Interior Ministry, but also to the command structures of the various forces of order, and they even have reached the desks of the civil protection department headed up by [Italian] Under Secretary Franco Barberi. This happened for instance on 27th May 1999 when Sisde Director Vittorio Stelo highlighted "possible infiltration on the part of organized crime" in the refugee camp in Comiso, in Sicily; he signed a detailed report pointing to a number of attempts made by an Albanian citizen residing in Ragusa, to " contact young Kosovo Albanian women sheltering in the camp in order to set them on the road to prostitution".

In other cases, on the other hand, a different procedure may have been followed. That is precisely why the Bari Public Prosecutor's Office, the office in charge of the investigation into the scandals linked to the Operation Rainbow mission, is chasing after the intelligence service documents, in order to find out whether a great deal of waste and of theft could have been avoided if the intelligence available had been circulated more freely.

[The initials of an Albanian official have been substituted by X.X.]

Three Ethnic Albanians Killed in Serbia

PRISTINA, Apr 24, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Serb forces killed three ethnic Albanians in southeastern Serbia Friday, a political council representing ethnic Albanians in the region said in remarks published here Sunday.

"Serb forces attacked and killed Sherif Junuzin and two other citizens, one of them aged 65," the political council for the main local towns of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac said in a statement in Koha Ditore, a Kosovo Albanian-language daily.

"The incident occurred on Friday at 7:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) as the people were passing through the village of Djerdjec," or Djordjevac in Serbian, the statement said.

Sources close to Serbian police in the area said two attacks against Serb police took place overnight Thursday to Friday near the town of Bujanovac, a town in the predominantly ethnic Albanian Presevo Valley.

Two Serbian police were injured in one of the attacks, the same sources said.
The other attack took place at 5:00 a.m. Friday near Djordjevac, which is close to Bujanovac. Bursts of automatic weapons fire targeted police without causing any casualties, the sources said.

Two of the assailants may have been killed and another captured, according to sources close to the Serb police in Vranje, the administrative center for the region.

The political council was set up last month after talks between US officials in Kosovo, political representatives from the area and members of an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group known as the UCPMB, or Liberation Army for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac.

It said that "pressure is increasing on the ground, where Serb forces are being reinforced."
"Even in the demilitarized zone, Serb forces are driving around in more and more armored vehicles," it added, referring to the five-kilometer (three mile) wide neutral zone set up by NATO and Belgrade on the Serb side of the boundary.

Some 70,000 ethnic Albanians live in the Presevo valley on the administrative boundary with Kosovo, whose eastern zone is patrolled by US troops of the multinational peacekeeping force KFOR.

The UCPMB has already clashed with Serb police in southeastern Serbia after setting up base in the village of Dobrosin in the demilitarized zone.

Warcrimes Suspect Seized In Yugoslavia

BANJA LUKA, Apr 24, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Warcrimes suspect Dragan Nikolic was not seized in Bosnia, but in neighboring Yugoslavia, a newspaper said Monday, quoting a lawyer close to the family.

Borisa Ilic told the newspaper Nezavisne Novine that Nikolic was not arrested by the SFOR peacekeeping force in Bosnia, as the force claimed Friday, but had instead been picked up in Yugoslavia by unidentified civilians.

In a phone call to his family following his arrest, Niolic said he was arrested in Smderevo, Yugoslavia, rather than in his Bosnian hometown Vlasenica, 60 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of Sarajevo, Ilic said.

Nikolic said he had been detained by "unknown civilians" and "transferred into Bosnia and Herzegovina through the rivers Dunav, Sava and Drina", Ilic said, adding that then Nikolic was handed over to "another group of civilians".

Nikolic, 43, who was the first Bosnian war crimes suspect to be indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), was arrested Friday by troops from the NATO-led Stabilization Force in Bosnia (SFOR), and transferred the following day to the tribunal in The Hague.

SFOR said Nikolic was arrested in the sector under US command, but did not specify in which town.

Nikolic, the former head of the Susica detention camp in eastern Bosnia, is charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

Seven-member group on trial for plotting Milosevic's assassination

24 April 2000

NIS, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Seven people went on trial today on charges of plotting to assassinate President Slobodan Milosevic and his army chief.

One army lieutenant and six civilians were indicted by military authorities in Belgrade and charged with conspiracy to assassinate Milosevic and Yugoslav army chief Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic.

Lt. Boban Gajic, 26, of Belgrade and six other defendants, all from the central town of Krusevac, were also charged with forming a "terrorist" organization under the name of the Serbian Liberation Army, or OSA, according to the Serbian-language acronym.

Gajic and four others were charged on two counts of "conspiracy against the state" and "terrorism," while the remaining two from the group were only charged on the first count.

OSA _ the acronym in Serbian also means Wasp _ is the second group accused of plotting against Milosevic. Last November, police detained members of a group named Pauk, or Spider, allegedly involved in subversive activities throughout the former Yugoslavia and abroad.

Milosevic's officials linked Spider to the French secret service, allegations France has firmly denied.

As the trial opened today, the seven were brought into the military court and charges were read against them. One of the indicted, Milutin Pavlovic, 46, was the first to testify.

Pavlovic, a Serb volunteer from the wars in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s, said he was drafted by Gajic last June to join OSA to protect the Serb population in Kosovo. Pavlovic said his first mission with the group in Kosovo was "unsuccessful" and he returned to Serbia proper after a few days.

Pavlovic admitted to hiding explosives, a radio station, the group's seal and some photographs but claimed this was the first he heard of any "assassination against Milosevic or Pavkovic."

The seven were arrested in December and remained in custody pending trial at the military court in Nis, Serbia's third-largest city.

Media reports have said that the group first surfaced last October when several Belgrade newspapers received letters from OSA, printed on a sheet of paper with a modified medieval Serb coat-of-arms.

At the time, one independent daily, Glas Javnosti, carried the group's "declaration," and a list of its "holy goals," which included a fight for "Serb glory and pride, for all Serb lands ... against traitors of the Serb seed."

Early this year, a statement attributed to OSA claimed responsibility for a traffic accident that injured Vuk Draskovic, the leader of Serbia's single largest opposition party. The defendants were not charged in that attack, which killed four of Draskovic's associates.

Draskovic blamed Milosevic's regime, however, for the accident and accused the secret service of trying to kill him. A high-ranking member of Draskovic's party was later appointed defense lawyer for the group.

The lawyer, Borivoje Borovic, claimed there was no evidence the defendants engaged in any preparations to assassinate Milosevic, Pavkovic or Draskovic, but that the seven belonged to a secret group drafted for action in "operations against Albanian insurgents in Kosovo" in 1998-99.

Authorities said the group collected arms, equipment and propaganda material for an all-out Serb uprising against Milosevic.

Proc�s de sept hommes accus�s de complot contre Milosevic

24 avril 2000

NIS, Yougoslavie (AP) -- Le proc�s du commando ''Gu�pe'' s'est ouvert lundi devant un tribunal militaire � Nis, dans le sud de la Serbie. Ces sept hommes sont jug�s pour complot en vue d'assassiner le pr�sident yougoslave Slobodan Milosevic.

Ce groupe, membre de l'Arm�e de lib�ration serbe (OSA en Serbe, qui signifie �galement ''gu�pe), est compos� d'un lieutenant et de six civils. Les sept hommes, arr�t�s en d�cembre, a �t� inculp� en f�vrier, �galement pour avoir tent� de s'en prendre au chef de l'arm�e yougoslave, le g�n�ral Nebojsa Pavkovic.

Le commando a ensuite �t� mis en cause dans une tentative d'attentat visant le dirigeant de l'opposition serbe, Vuk Draskovic, chef du Mouvement du renouveau serbe (nationaliste) en novembre. L'accident de la route dans lequel Draskovic avait �t� bless� avait co�t� la vie � quatre de ses hommes.

Reste que Vuk Draskovic avait ensuite accus� le r�gime de Belgrade d'avoir tent� de le tuer. Un haut responsable de son parti est d'ailleurs l'avocat des accus�s.

Le lieutenant Boban Gajic, 26 ans, un Belgradois, et six civils originaires de Krusevac, ont �t� inculp�s de ''constitution d'une organisation terroriste'', l'Arm�e de lib�ration serbe. Gajic et quatre de ses co-inculp�s sont �galement jug�s pour ''conspiration contre l'Etat'' et ''terrorisme''.

Selon la presse, l'�mergence du groupe remonte � octobre dernier, lorsque plusieurs journaux belgradois commenc�rent � recevoir des communiqu�s. A l'�poque, le quotidien ind�pendant Glas Javnosti avait publi� les ''objectifs sacr�s'' de l'OSA, qui incluaient la lutte ''contre l'OTAN et l'agresseur communiste'', le combat ''pour la gloire et la fiert� serbes, pour toutes les terres serbes, contre les tra�tres d'engeance serbe.''

Le r�gime ne dispose d'aucune preuve sur les pr�paratifs pr�sum�s d'assassinat visant Milosevic, Pavkovic ou Draskovic, a fait valoir l'avocat de la d�fense, Borivoje Borovic. En revanche, les sept faisaient bien partie d'un groupe secret, aguerris dans des ''op�rations contre les insurg�s albanais au Kosovo'' en 1998-99.

Premier � t�moigner, Milutin Pavlovic, 46 ans, volontaire serbe pendant les guerres de Croatie et de Bosnie, a dit avoir rejoint l'OSA en juin pour ''prot�ger les populations serbes du Kosovo''. Il a reconnu avoir cach� des explosifs et une radio, mais a assur� n'avoir jamais entendu parler de projets d'assassinat du ma�tre de Belgrade.

L'OSA est le second groupe accus� d'avoir foment� l'assassinat de Milosevic. En novembre dernier, les autorit�s serbes avaient arr�t� le commando ''Araign�e'', qui serait impliqu� dans des actions subversives depuis une dizaine d'ann�es, en Yougoslavie mais aussi � l'�tranger.

Belgrade a accus� les services secrets fran�ais d'�tre le commanditaire de ces hommes. Paris a d�menti vigoureusement toute implication, qualifiant d'''�lucubrations absurdes'' les propos du ministre yougoslave de l'Information.

Selon Belgrade, le chef d'''Araign�e'' est un certain Yugoslav Petrusic, titulaire �galement de la nationalit� fran�aise, connu sous le nom de guerre de ''Dominique''. Ce mercenaire qui s'�tait notoirement illustr� dans le Za�re de la fin de l'�re Mobutu, aurait travaill� pour les ''services'' fran�ais.

BC-Kosovo Families protest over hunger strikers

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia (AP) _About 40 relatives of Serbs jailed by NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovska Mitrovica protested outside the prison Monday, demanding that trials be held immediately for their family members.

The group of 40 Serbs went on a hunger strike on April 12, protesting what they claimed was ``unbalanced prisoner treatment'' at the hands of the Western officials.

The prisoners allegedly began to refuse food after hearing of the release of an ethnic Albanian prisoner earlier in April. The man was implicated in a grenade-hurling incident which triggered a fiery battle between Serbs and Albanians in March, leaving 16 French peacekeepers and 24 civilians wounded.

Two of the 37 Serbs were hospitalized Saturday in connection with their fast, said Ivan Soyois, a spokesman for the U.N police. He had no further information on their condition. Kosovska Mitrovica is one of Kosovo's most tense cities. It is divided by the Ibar River into the predominantly Serb north and the ethnic Albanian south.

Also Monday, NATO peacekeepers destroyed weapons and ammunition that have been confiscated or handed in to peacekeepers since NATO forces arrived here in June, and kept under high security.

The meltdown in a huge furnace took place at a factory just outside of Pristina. Some 13,000 rifles, 2,500 pistols, 500 antitank missiles, 30,000 explosive devices and 7.5 million rounds of ammunition will be turned into scrap metal.

Meanwhile, a man was admitted to a hospital Saturday in the U.S. sector of Kosovo after suffering a gunshot wound in the volatile Presevo Valley, just across Kosovo's boundary with Serbia proper, said Norwegian Maj. Frank Benjaminsen.

Two of his comrades were taken to the U.S. Camp Bondsteel for questioning. No further information was immediately available.

Western officials supervising Kosovo have repeatedly expressed concerns about rising tensions in Presevo, the region along Kosovo's boundary with Serbia proper that has a predominantly ethnic Albanian population.

A newly formed rebel group has emerged there comprised of fighters who say they are trying to protect villagers in the region from attacks by Serb police forces. International officials fear that any violence in the Presevo Valley would prompt ethnic Albanians in Kosovo to race to the defense of their ethnic kin.

The region lies just outside the territory involved in the NATO-led peacekeeping mission, which came to Kosovo in June after the 78-day NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. The campaign was aimed at forcing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end repression against ethnic Albanians in the province.

L'intendance de l'arm�e britannique sur la sellette, selon un rapport

24 avril 2000

LONDRES (AP) -- Les soldats britanniques se sont retrouv�s quasiment � court d'armes et de munitions pendant l'intervention de l'OTAN au Kosovo l'ann�e derni�re, selon un rapport gouvernemental dont rend compte lundi la BBC.

La p�nurie avait atteint le stade ''critique'', et si les frappes a�riennes avaient dur� un tant soit peu, l'aviation de Sa Majest� n'aurait plus eu de munitions.

Le minist�re de la D�fense a refus� de commenter ce projet de rapport du Bureau national d'Audit, qui aurait du �tre publi� en mai.

En 97 pages, le rapport accuse aussi Londres d'avoir fourni des m�dicaments p�rim�s au soldats sur le terrain, ajoute la BBC. Des lots de morphine en particulier leur sont parvenus des mois apr�s leur date de p�remption.

Les auteurs de cet audit ont �galement not� que les r�clamations de mat�riel-radio s�curis� ont �t� �cart�es par l'intendance.

Mais dans l'ensemble, le Bureau d'audit, qui surveille les d�penses gouvernementales et enqu�te sur toutes les campagnes militaires men�es par la Grande-Bretagne, juge que l'intervention au Kosovo s'est bien d�roul�e. Il souligne notamment les progr�s en mati�re d'approvisionnement en nourriture, de logement et d'administration financi�re.

Catholic Albanians Celebrate Easter in Kosovo

Easter Celebrated Worldwide

By Alison Mutler

Associated Press - April 23, 2000

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- Among the world's Christians singing hymns
and praying for peace Sunday were several hundred in the only Catholic
church in Kosovo's capital, a building that was nearly empty amid NATO
air raids last Easter.

"Last year everything was empty and we felt the weight of the cross," said
Greta Krachinari, a 52-year-old principal and one of 15 people who
attended services last year at Pristina's St. Antonio Church. "This year we
can really feel the resurrection."

Elsewhere, the day was marked in a large green army tent in Bosnia,
where U.S. troops had services at sunrise. In Jerusalem's ancient Church
of the Holy Sepulcher, where Latin prayers competed with Orthodox
ones. In England's Canterbury Cathedral, where worshippers were urged
to avoid the values associated with the "dot.com society."

The holiday also passed in some less-then-pious ways - even in the
Pope's Italy, where Premier-designate Giuliano Amato spent much of
Sunday on the phone, trying to line up support for a new center-left
Cabinet.

Violence interrupted the holiday weekend in northern Kosovo, where
mortars slammed into Gorazdevac - one of the last all-Serb villages in the
Serb province. No one was injured in the attack, which the independent
Beta news agency said was fired from the nearby village of Grabovac,
which is populated mainly by ethnic Albanians.

The 75,000 Catholic Albanians who live in Kosovo today are an isolated
community among the 2 million in the province - neither Muslim as most
ethnic Albanians are, nor part of the Eastern Orthodox church to which
Serbs belong.

This year, 300 people came to services at St. Antonio, where a
human-sized cross of thorns surrounded by white lilies and red tulips
decorated the altar. Choir boys in white lace smocks, red robes and
sneakers took the collection from the congregation.

Last year at Easter, most ethnic Albanians were too afraid to venture out
of their homes during the 78-day NATO air campaign, fearing they would
be caught by Serb forces loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic. More than 10,000 ethnic Albanians are believed to have been
killed during the 18-month crackdown by Serb forces loyal to Milosevic
before the air war.

Trying to turn congregants away from past hurts, the Easter sermon
addressed forgiveness, understanding and - like all elements of life here -
politics.

"We as a nation have to forgive and to pray for the people who hurt us,"
said Rev. Nosh Gjolaj. "It's not a state that destroys us, but a man, ... a
man who is destroying his own country," he said referring to Milosevic.

In Jerusalem, the predicted crush of thousands of pilgrims at the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher did not materialize Sunday. Instead, two services
competed - the Latin one, celebrating Easter, and the Orthodox Christian
one, marking Palm Sunday. The Orthodox calendar is a week behind the
Latin calendar.

Father Patrick Hussey, 63, from St. John's Jesuit High School in Toledo,
Ohio, smiled as he talked about the competition between the Latin Mass,
which was celebrated in front of the ornate, carved stone tomb of Jesus,
and the Orthodox prayers, which were chanted behind the tomb.

There was "a little bit of friction," he said, "but it's all joyful."

The massive, block-like church was built in the fourth century to mark the
final stations along the last journey of Jesus in Jerusalem. An open
stepladder stood across from the only entrance, a sign of constant
renovations in the old building.

Britain's Christian leaders, meanwhile, urged their flocks to keep faith alive
in an increasingly secular, world.

"Somehow, in the midst of the world in which all of you live - with all its
temptations and distractions - you have to defend the citadel of your
heart," the new Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor,
said at Westminster Cathedral.

Dr. George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warned of the
seduction of the "dot.com society." He also cautioned against what he
called "Africa fatigue," in a society used to images of suffering.

"If it is not Mozambique and the floods, then it is Sudan and the forgotten
war. If it is not Rwanda and the genocide, then it is Sierra Leone and the
forced amputations of limbs from men, women and children," he said. "All
too easily, in the face of such overwhelming suffering, we can shrug our
shoulders and turn away from the pain."

Serb Leader Detained After Standoff

The Associated Press - April 23, 2000

KOSOVSKA ITROVICA, Yugoslavia -- A top Kosovo Serb leader was detained for more than an hour Sunday by NATO peacekeepers, whom he accused of harassment and provoking an incident.

The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Pristina confirmed Oliver Ivanovic, the head of the Serbian National Council, and a chief representative of the dwindling Kosovo Serb community, was briefly stopped for a routine check.

Ivanovic said he was traveling in a car in northern Kosovo when he was stopped for what "initially looked like a routine identity check," but became an extended confrontation.

"I had all the required documents, but they still wouldn't let me pass," Ivanovic said in a telephone interview, adding that a group of local Serb villagers began to gather in protest. Ivanovic said he then summoned his security that argued and briefly brawled with the troops. One of the soldiers fired a warning shot in the air.

"I believe it was a provocation," said Ivanovic, who has often accused NATO-led peacekeepers of unfair treatment of Serbs. "They had no good reason for such harassment."

The standoff was eventually resolved after he appealed to higher-ranking officers, Ivanovic said. He did not identify them. Ivanovic said he will protest with regional commanders with the peacekeepers.

Mourners Mark Serbian TV Bombing

By Misha Savic

Associated Press - Sunday, April 23, 2000

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Family and friends gathered around a simple stone monument Sunday to mourn 16 Serbian state TV employees killed when NATO targeted the network's building last year. One word etched on the tablet summed up their grief: "Zasto" - Why?

More than 2,000 people attended the memorial service, led by priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Family and friends of the victims read speeches blaming both President Slobodan Milosevic's regime and NATO for the deaths.

"NATO committed a terrible crime and so did the managers of Serbian Radio Television who bear responsibility for the deaths," said Mirjana Stojmenovska, the mother of 25-year-old technician Darko who died in the pre-dawn raid last April 23.

"Why did you gamble with the lives of our loved ones? Why did you use the lives of innocent people to try to show NATO you are invincible?" Stojmenovska asked, in a speech largely condemning Milosevic's government, which tightly controls the dominant state network.

"For cheap political propaganda, you sacrificed 16 innocent lives," she said. Only technicians, cameramen, security guards and a makeup artist were on duty the night when two NATO missiles struck the network's main building in downtown Belgrade.

The 78-day bombing campaign was launched to make Milosevic accept a Western peace plan for Serbia's Kosovo province, where government troops had cracked down on pro-independence ethnic Albanians.

Milosevic's defiance increased in the first weeks of the bombing and the alliance added to target lists to include infrastructure and institutions considered vital to his rule. The state network was - and still is - the government's chief mouthpiece.

Before the attack, NATO urged the state network to either change its editorial policies or face missiles. The television's chief editors openly defied the warning, and said they were prepared to withstand attack.

"But none of the key people from the television were in the building that night," said Zanka Stojanovic, the mother of Nebojsa, a 26-year old technician who was killed. "My son and others were sacrificed,"

The casualties, along with hundreds of others suffered in the bombing, have been presented by the authorities as proof that NATO committed "aggression," rather than intervention toward peace.

However, the TV building deaths have sparked intense debates here and increasing suspicion that the government deliberately did nothing to protect the low-ranking employees.

Recent reports in independent media have said the authorities evacuated key network staff from the building hours before the attack. Top editors and executives of the network have tersely denied the allegations, but avoided any open debate on the issue

None of them attended the service, and instead attended a separate ceremony Sunday with a narrow circle of top managers led by the television's chief executive, Dragoljub Milanovic. He called the victims "heroes," saying they should "rest in peace and no one should speculate with their heroic deaths. The murderers were NATO pilots, Gen. Wesley Clark and Bill Clinton."

But Stojmenovska insisted officials shared responsibility.

"Many pieces of the horrible picture have come together," she said. "The authorities knew when NATO was going to strike. Instead of evacuating the people, the workers' shifts were extended."

At least two documentary films have been made here about the tragedy by independent journalists seeking to shed more light on what happened.

There is "no doubt these people were victimized and the regime is ready to victimize many more just to stay in power," said Veran Matic, head of the Association of Independent Electronic Media and producer of one of the documentaries.

"One year after the bombing, the pain is only bigger." Stojanovic said. "Those who wanted the war and waged the war are all alive and well, and my son is dead."

Kosovo weapons crisis revealed shortage

BBC - 24 April, 2000

An official report into Nato's campaign against Serb troops in Kosovo has revealed that British forces almost ran out of munitions during the conflict.

The National Audit Office report - leaked to BBC Radio Four's Today programme - also criticises some of the equipment and medicines issued to service personnel.

The Ministry of Defence refused to comment on a leaked report but pointed to the success of the campaign, which it says had met all its objectives.

Last month Kosovo debriefing reports seen by Today revealed criticism by the officers on the ground, of an operation hailed by generals and politicians as a great success.

Sell-by date

The National Audit Office reviews every British military action but its report into Kosovo - due to be published next month - gave mixed views of the operation's success.

Financial management, the supply of food and accommodation were highly praised, and overall the operation was hailed a great success.

But the UK troops suffered a "critical munitions shortage". Had the air campaign continued, Britain would quickly have run out of weapons, specifically precision guided munitions for the RAF.

Thousands of essential medicines sent to the army were past their use-by dates by the time they reached troops in Kosovo.

And commanders' desperate pleas for secure radios were dismissed by the MoD as "not relevant", the report found.

The report - a late draft copy - also states that Britain lost 12 unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, the first such admission. A lot of what appears in the report is simply confirmation of what has been suspected for some time.

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell said: "A lot of what appears in the report is simply confirmation of what has been suspected for some time."

He added: "You can say that if you have a moral right of intervention, you also have a moral obligation to make sure you give your forces all that is necessary in order to carry out these difficult and dangerous tasks."

The NAO has lent weight to the leaked debriefing reports which said equipment failures would have made an advance into the province unworkable if the Serbs had put up stiff resistance.

Borrowed guns

The reports, drawn up by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Gibson, commanding officer of 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment and his superior, Brigadier Adrian Freer, Commander of 5 Airborne Brigade, said that at any one time a third of the soldiers' personal radios were out of action.

Commanders resorted to using nicknames to try to fool the enemy, said Colonel Gibson, and requests for better equipment went unanswered by Whitehall.

Troops had to borrow guns from other K-For soldiers because many of their own failed to work properly.

Both men agreed the K-For operation, launched in June 1999, was a success - but they suggested this was because the Serbs barely put up a fight.

Although the leaked NAO document was a late draft copy, senior MoD sources have told the BBC that the facts contained in it are not in question.

Professor Michael Clarke, director of the centre for defence studies at Kings College London, said: "It has been an open secret for some little time now that our stocks of precision guided missiles are very much lower than they would need to be."

He added: "Many in the military say that we have been very lucky so far, from the Falklands onwards.

"To make good these deficiencies will be pretty expensive, but many would argue that if we don't make them good then the British will just walk themselves into an operation that will go seriously wrong."

British troops almost ran out of guns and ammo in Kosovo

London (dpa) - British troops nearly ran out of munitions and medicines during the Kosovo conflict, according to a leaked report, details of which were broadcast Monday.

The National Audit Office highlights the ``critical'' shortages faced by British forces in a report seen by the BBC.

The office suggests that munitions would have started running out if the air war against Yugoslavia had lasted much longer.

BBC Radio 4's ``Today'' programme quoted the report as saying: ``The UK faced the prospect of a critical munitions shortage.

``Had the air campaign continued, it would quickly have exhausted munitions stocks in a number of areas.''

The auditors act as a government watchdog and investigate every British military campaign. It found that Sea Harriers on the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible had particular difficulties in the conflict.

The leaked report said: ``Royal Navy Harrier aircraft flew with fuselage-mounted missiles which suffered from proximity to heat and vibration during take-off and recovery - such that within two months over half the missiles were unserviceable.''

UPDATE 1-NATO holds Kosovo Serb leader, crowd protests

(Adds meeting with new regional U.N. chief, paras 12-14)

By Mark Heinrich

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, April 24 (Reuters) - NATO peacekeepers detained a Kosovo Serb leader for two hours over expired identity papers and fired a warning shot to disperse Serb protesters, a spokesman said on Monday.

Oliver Ivanovic, political chief on the Serb-controlled side of the divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica, was halted at a Belgian checkpoint in a Serb-populated area of north Kosovo on Sunday, the KFOR peace force officer said.

Serbian media had said earlier that two Serbs and two KFOR soldiers were injured in a clash involving a crowd of 200 who gathered around the roadblock to demand Ivanovic's release. KFOR said only that the atmosphere was tense.

``Mr Ivanovic was stopped at 3:45 p.m. (1345 GMT) on his way to Leposavic because his KFOR papers were expired and the soldiers wanted to take a picture to renew his papers,'' KFOR Major Frank Benjaminsen told a news briefing in Pristina.

``Mr Ivanovic refused and a crowd of about 50 people gathered around the checkpoint. The atmosphere got a bit tense and the Belgian squadron leader fired one warning shot. It didn't escalate further from that.''

Benjaminsen said Ivanovic was allowed to go on his way around 5:45 p.m. He did not know whether his photograph was eventually taken.

Mitrovica's north side, protected from hostile ethnic Albanians in the south by KFOR troops, is the last urban concentration of Serbs in Kosovo and a haven of nationalist hardliners believed to be supported from Belgrade.

The city was plagued by Serb-Albanian violence before KFOR beefed up security along the sector boundary and introduced a small ``confidence zone'' as a first step towards restoring safe passage and inter-communal cooperation.

North Mitrovica is full of embittered Serbs from elsewhere in Kosovo who fled ethnic Albanian attacks last year avenging Belgrade's 1998-99 crackdown on the province's separatist majority community.

The anti-guerrilla drive, which put hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians to flight, was halted by NATO air strikes. Belgrade withdrew its troops and police from Kosovo last June and KFOR moved in, prompting most Serbs to flee.

Ivanovic, head of the Serb National Council branch in Mitrovica, cooperates with KFOR on security issues and regularly meets U.N. administrators.

He and south Mitrovica Albanian leader Bajram Rexhepi had their first meeting on Sunday with the new Mitrovica regional U.N. administrator, William Nash, who described the talks as ``straightforward, friendly and comprehensive.''

Nash, in a statement, said the talks included proposals for the safe return of refugees to their homes and that both men pledged to work for peaceful solutions to issues.

But Ivanovic has previously ruled out any large return of ethnic Albanians to north Mitrovica, saying this would endanger Serbs. He has also boycotted U.N.-led policy councils which include ethnic Albanians, although more moderate Serbs from smaller enclaves in Kosovo have joined these bodies.

NATO fires over crowd after Serb leader detained

By Mark Heinrich

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, April 24 (Reuters) - NATO peacekeepers fired a warning shot to disperse a crowd of Serbs demanding the release of one of their leaders detained briefly because his documents had expired, a spokesman said on Monday.

``Mr Ivanovic was stopped at 3:45 p.m. on his way to Leposavic because his KFOR papers were expired and the soldiers wanted to take a picture to renew his papers,'' KFOR Major Frank Benjaminsen told a news briefing in Pristina.

Benjaminsen said Ivanovic was allowed to go on his way after two hours.

North Mitrovica is full of embittered Serbs from elsewhere in Kosovo who fled ethnic Albanian attacks last year avenging Belgrade's brutal 1998-99 crackdown on the province's separatist majority community.

Ivanovic, head of the Serb National Council branch in Mitrovica, cooperates with KFOR on security issues and regularly meets U.N. administrators. But he has ruled out any large return of ethnic Albanians to north Mitrovica, saying this would endanger Serbs.

He has also boycotted U.N.-led policy councils which include ethnic Albanians, although more moderate Serbs from smaller enclaves in Kosovo have joined these bodies.

Trial of Serbs accused of bid to kill Milosevic

By Dragan Stankovic

NIS, Yugoslavia, April 24 (Reuters) - Seven members of a group calling itself the Serb Liberation Army went on trial on Monday accused of planning an armed uprising in Serbia and plotting to kill Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

The group were arrested last December and charged with forming a terrorist organisation in a village near the central Serbian town of Krusevac in July 1999 with the aim of toppling the constitutional order by force.

They have also been accused of plotting to kill Yugoslav Army Chief of Staff Nebojsa Pavkovic and seeking to restore the monarchy in Serbia.

At the opening of the trial in the southern Serbian city of Nis, one of the defendants, 27-year-old Yugoslav army lieutenant Boban Gajic, denied that the group had ever made any such plans.

``The only aim of the OSA is to defend Serb territories in Kosovo and protect the Serbian people,'' he told the court.

``As an officer, I know that any kind of uprising would never see the light of day, it would be quelled by the army and police overnight,'' said Gajic. ``I also know it is impossible to get anywhere near President Milosevic, let alone carry out an assassination attempt, especially not by a small group like ours,'' he said.

MYSTERIOUS CAR CRASH

The Serb Liberation Army, whose initials OSA mean wasp in Serbian, was first heard of in October when it assumed responsibility for the murder of four members of the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) in a mysterious car crash.

SPO leader Vuk Draskovic, who was lightly injured in the crash, said the authorities and ordered a truck driver to swerve into his convoy of cars and charged Milosevic's government with ``state terror,'' a charge it has hotly denied.

Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic hinted late last year that another group, called PAUK, or Spider, made up of Serb paramilitaries might have been responsible for the crash.

Matic said PAUK, which he accused of being sponsored by French intelligence, had also tried to assassinate Milosevic.

At Monday's trial in the town of Nis, Gojic admitted that he had written promotional texts for the Serb Liberation Army, including the one claiming responsibility for the car crash.

But he said they were written for marketing purposes only.

A second defendant, Milutin Pavlovic, admitted organising the infiltration of small groups of armed Serbs into Kosovo after last year's NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia as a member of the group.

But he joined it only because of its aim to protect Serbs in Kosovo, which is now under de facto international rule following the NATO campaign.

After that ended hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians driven from Kosovo by Serb repression returned to the province, many seeking revenge against members of the ethnic Serb minority.

Many hard-line Serb nationalists were dismayed by Belgrade's handling of the war and its eventual loss of control over Kosovo, regarded by Serbs as the cradle of their culture and religion.

If found guilty, the defendants face 15 years imprisonment.

Two Seriously Ill in Kosovo Prison Hunger Strike

PRISTINA, Apr 23, 2000 -- (Reuters) Thirty-one Serbs and five Gypsies jailed in Kosovo have been on a hunger strike since April 10 and two are in a serious condition, UN police in the province said on Saturday.

Six of the inmates at the detention center in the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica have refused to take medicine, according to a statement by Kosovo's post-war UN administration police. It gave no further information.

Mitrovica is split into ethnic Albanian and Serb-dominated sectors. Ethnic violence plagued the city until NATO peacekeepers improved security at riverbank crossing points a few weeks ago to keep militants of the two communities apart.

International security forces in Kosovo have jailed Serbs, Albanians and Gypsies alike mainly for possession of illegal war weapons and armed violence, including occasional assaults on peacekeepers.

No trials have been conducted because UN authorities have not yet set up a court system in the general absence of competent judges.

Four bodies found in Kosovo well

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, April 24 (Reuters) - Four bodies were found in a well in western Kosovo at the weekend, the NATO-led KFOR peace force said on Monday.

A KFOR spokesman said the bodies appeared to have been in the well since last June, a period of anarchy when Serbian security forces who had been fighting ethnic Albanian rebels withdrew from Kosovo while peacekeepers moved in.

The remains, discovered by international military police in a rural area near the western town of Decani, had not been identified but an inquiry was under way, Major Frank Benjaminsen told a news briefing in the provincial capital Pristina.

Kosovo Albanians say during the vicious 1998-99 conflict Serbian police sometimes threw the bodies of their slain compatriots down wells to poison farm water sources.

Unconfirmed estimates of ethnic Albanian dead in the conflict range up into the thousands.

U.N. war crimes investigators plan to resume digs at suspected mass grave sites next month.

Since Belgrade's forces withdrew, scores of minority Serbs have been murdered by vengeful ethnic Albanians. Murders of Albanians by Albanians, usually caused by gang or personal disputes, have been common too.

Kosovo Catholics Mark Easter with Coexistence Call

PRISTINA, Apr 24, 2000 -- (Reuters) Roman Catholic Kosovo Albanians celebrated Easter on Sunday a year after the province's darkest hour and heard their priest urge them to co-exist peacefully with other ethnic communities.

Most Albanians in Kosovo are at least nominal Moslems but there are small, close-knit Catholic communities in the provincial capital Pristina, the western city of Prizren and a few scattered towns. Kosovo Serbs mark Orthodox Easter on April 30.

A year ago Kosovo's majority Albanians were being driven en masse from their homes and civilians were killed in an anti-separatist rampage by Serbian security forces eventually halted by NATO air strikes.

Belgrade withdrew its forces in June and NATO peacekeepers entered in support of a new transitional UN administration. Ethnic Albanians refugees returned home but wreaked violent vengeance on minority Serbs, most of whom have since fled.

Delivering an Easter Sunday service in Pristina's lone Catholic church, Pastor Don Nosh Gjolaj said Kosovo Albanians were grateful for their deliverance from Serbian state oppression but urged them to learn tolerance for other local communities.

"Last year at Easter, there was a (Serbian) tank nearby, further down the road (Serb) paramilitaries were playing insulting music, and the Yugoslav army was in a school nearby," Gjolaj told his flock packing the church.

"It seemed more like Good Friday than Easter Sunday. Thank God we celebrate this day in a full church.

"But let us be the ones now to accept others, whether they belong to a different nation, different religion...They are with us, we travel along together," the pastor said.

"As such, we must have the capability and power from within us to reach our hand out to others, a power of reconciliation."

Gjolaj's words were a rare message of tolerance from ethnic Albanian political and community leaders, most of whom are hard-bitten nationalists with deep enmity towards Serbs.

U.N. authorities have repeatedly urged ethnic Albanian leaders to promote a democratic spirit of tolerance among their people to enable Serbs to live safely outside a few ghettos now guarded by NATO peacekeepers.

Soldiers in the NATO-dominated KFOR peace force also celebrated Easter all over Kosovo.

Britain's 2nd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, conducted Easter service in Pristina's soccer stadium. Afterward, a bagpipe and drum band reeled off a few marching songs and soldiers played a football match.

OSCE to Encourage Kosovo Serb Voters

PRISTINA, Apr 24, 2000 -- (Reuters) The man running Kosovo's first free elections says he is setting up registration centers near the border with the rest of Serbia to encourage displaced Serbs to vote without fear of attack from Albanians.

Jeff Fischer, operational chief of the Joint Registration Task Force which is preparing local elections planned for October, said its biggest political challenge was a looming Serb boycott.

In an interview, Fischer said two registration stations would be erected on the border - one in the Serb-populated Leposavic region of far north Kosovo and one in Mucibaba in the southeast.

Each would allow Serbs who fled ethnic Albanian reprisals after NATO air strikes forced out rampaging Serbian security forces last June to register without danger, he told Reuters.

"We don't have an agreement to conduct (registration) within Serbia. So for now we're locating two sites close to the border. If there are Serbs interested and able to come across the border to register to vote, they can be enfranchised this way."

The Serbian government in Belgrade has denounced the registration as yet another violation of its sovereignty in Kosovo by the UN administration that took over the province last year.

Serbian officials say the registration will inevitably inflate the number of ethnic Albanians - who formed an estimated 90 percent majority before the war - and marginalize Serbs unable to live safely in Kosovo outside a few ghettos.

SPECTRE OF BOYCOTT

Belgrade has raised the specter of a boycott that would dent the credibility of the October vote for municipal councils.

Registration began in four pilot villages in Kosovo last week. Residents in the three ethnic Albanian communities came in droves to sign in. No one showed up in Serb-populated Paralovo.

Fischer, whose task force is part of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) mission in Kosovo, said he held a town meeting with Paralovo Serbs to address their concerns.

"They wanted a return of displaced Serbs and better security before they would register," he said. "I tried to make the case that by registering they can spur the return of displaced people and by increasing their numbers their security would increase as a result. Boycotting the process does not serve those goals."

The task force has sent Russian and Ukrainian teams into Serb zones "to build rapport and confidence" in the registration project. Russians and Ukrainians are generally trusted by Serbs because of their common Slav, Christian Orthodox heritage.

Voter registration offices will also be opened in 32 countries worldwide, wherever native Kosovans may live, Fischer said.

EXTRA INCENTIVE

As another incentive for Serbs, organizers were considering leaving some council seats open for them - the number would reflect their proportion of the local population - should they fail to register by the July 15 deadline, Fischer said.

"Every opportunity is being given so there can be no question that if there is a Serb boycott it can be clearly laid at the doorstep of Belgrade which disenfranchised its own people."

Fischer said both Kosovo Albanians and Serbs tended to misconstrue the registration as a census, a negative concept here because official population analyses have been abused as a tool of ethnic discrimination in the past.

He said there was no intention to discover the ethnicity, religion and livelihoods of Kosovans, just to establish who were legal residents after a year of uncontrolled population movements.

Registration will be expanded to 100 localities this week and eventually encompass about 400.

To fight forgery attempts and serve former refugees with incomplete proof of residence or none at all, Serbian social security, utility and phone company databases have been merged to cross-reference identity claims, Fischer said.

All sites are being assigned red, amber and green ratings based on security risks. Serb enclaves or areas where Serbs and Albanians live in close proximity will be classified "red" and will be guarded by rapid reaction units.

Serbs Boycott Kosovo Registration

PRISTINA, Apr 24, 2000 -- (Reuters) Serbs have boycotted initial efforts to register Kosovo's population as a prelude to elections later this year, international authorities said on Friday.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) selected four villages this week to begin an ambitious project to replace Serbian-issued records removed or destroyed during the 1998-99 conflict with ethnic Albanian separatist guerrillas.

In the three southeast Kosovo villages where ethnic Albanians predominate, 459 adults had registered at OSCE centers so far but no one had done so in the Serb village chosen for the pilot scheme, OSCE spokesman Roland Bless told a news briefing.

Kosovo's minority Serbs resent the international protectorate imposed in the province after Serbian security forces withdrew last June under NATO air attacks carried out to stop Belgrade's brutal crackdown on majority Albanians.

Bless said registration would be widened to 100 localities next week.

International authorities regard registration as an indispensable step towards restoring legal order in Kosovo and preparing for municipal elections they aim to conduct later this year, probably in October.

Technical and political difficulties in an environment of near-lawlessness and ethnic hatred have dogged the project and its launch, originally planned for late 1999, was several months late.

The OSCE has so far failed to persuade local Serbs that registering would have advantages for them, such as qualifying them to vote for minority representation, creating institutional safeguards against ethnic Albanian hostility and promoting co-existence.

SERBS DETERRED BY BELGRADE 'PROPAGANDA'

"The first test phase so far is encouraging, because the Albanians came in droves to register," said Daan Everts, the OSCE's mission chief in Kosovo.

"But in the Serb village, although the people were quite cordial and interested in what we were doing, they were clearly under instructions not to register," he told Reuters.

Everts said Kosovo Serbs were being deterred from registering by hostile propaganda from the Yugoslav Serb government in Belgrade.

"The problem with Serbs here is that they're still under the spell of Belgrade which has opposed this whole exercise and indeed anything that the international authorities do in Kosovo.

"So we haven't found a Serb opinion leader here yet who advocates participation although they surely in their heart know it is good to join but can't say it right now because Belgrade would just finish them off with (bad) publicity."

International authorities estimate there are roughly 1.5 million adults in Kosovo, more than 90 percent of them ethnic Albanians. But population movements in and out of Kosovo have been largely uncontrolled since the fighting ended.

That demographic disorder, often stirred by ethnic violence, combined with a local mindset that has treated census-taking as a political weapon means that verifying identity and residency is likely to be fraught for OSCE experts.

Each of the two main communities in this region has long been inclined to inflate its own demographic ranks and deflate the other's for political gain.

Nine Explosions Hit Kosovo Serb Enclave

PRISTINA, Apr 24, 2000 -- (Reuters) Nine explosions rocked a Kosovo Serb enclave guarded by Italian troops but no casualties were reported, the province's NATO-led peacekeeping force said on Sunday.

A KFOR statement said three craters were found near a peacekeepers' checkpoint on the edge of Gorazdevac, a crumbling Serb village with some 1,000 people in western Kosovo, and six more near a cluster of adjacent Gypsy homes.

It said the incident occurred on Saturday evening but gave no further details pending an inquiry.

Earlier, the independent Serbian news agency Beta said that nine rockets fired from a portable launcher had crashed into Gorazdevac at around 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) on Saturday.

However, a KFOR officer told Reuters the projectiles were probably mortar bombs because they usually caused craters, unlike shoulder-launched rockets or rocket-propelled grenades.

Beta said some houses were damaged in the incident.

Gorazdevac is believed to be the only Serb community left in western Kosovo.

Most of Kosovo's estimated 200,000 Serb minority fled the Yugoslav province last year for fear of ethnic Albanian reprisals after NATO air strikes ousted Serbian security forces who had been waging a brutal anti-guerrilla campaign.

The ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army was formally disbanded and disarmed by KFOR last year but ex-guerrillas and paramilitary gangsters alike have retained portable war weaponry of varying kinds. Armed violence still afflicts Kosovo.

Kosovo Serb Cafe Owner Shot Dead in Political Row

ZUBIN POTOK, Apr 24, 2000 -- (Reuters) A cafe owner in a Kosovo Serb town was shot dead for refusing to pay protection money to suspected Serb hard-line sympathizers, relatives said on Sunday.

The gunman came with several friends to the Hram cafe in Zubin Potok in the far north of Kosovo, a Serb majority pocket, on Saturday night to demand protection money from Mirko Bisevac, according to his brother Bosko.

When Bisevac refused, he was shot with an automatic weapon. Six cafe guests were wounded in a hail of bullets, the brother told Reuters. The gunman and his friends escaped.

The injured were in a stable condition on Sunday at a hospital in the Serb-controlled north side of the city of Kosovska Mitrovica, whose south is Albanian-dominated, duty officer Marko Jaksic said.

The official Yugoslav news agency Tanjug identified the gunman as Dragan Kasalovic and community sources in Zubin Potok described him as a Yugoslav air force pilot who was visiting his parents in the town.

Kosovo's NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force confirmed the cafe shooting in a statement but had no further details.

Community sources said the attack was also politically motivated as the gunman and his friends supported hard-liners in the Kosovo Serb National Council who reject any communication with the province's majority ethnic Albanians.

They said groups demanding protection money in Kosovo Serb towns were targeting people who favored Serb participation in Kosovo's multi-ethnic transitional council, which is headed by United Nations administrator Bernard Kouchner.

Serbs in the southeast Kosovo town of Gracanica who tend to support cooperation with Albanians and international authorities also say they have been assaulted or intimidated by ultra-nationalist compatriots.

Relatives Blame NATO, Officials for Serb TV Deaths

BELGRADE, Apr 24, 2000 -- (Reuters) Relatives of 16 Serbian state television workers killed in a NATO bomb attack on their building a year ago accused the authorities on Sunday of playing Russian roulette with the victims.

Over 2,000 people attended a religious ceremony in a park near the building where the families had built a granite headstone with one word above the names of those killed: Why?

Relatives of some of those killed expressed their anger at NATO but also at the bosses of Serbian State Television (RTS) who had ordered the workers to stay overnight in a building the alliance had warned might be bombed.

"We ask the top people at RTS, why did you play Russian roulette with our dearest ones?" Mirjana Stoimenovski, the mother of 25-year-old Darko, a technician, told the mourners.

In a speech read in the name of all the relatives, Stoimenovski said the television management had known the building was a designated NATO target but had done nothing to protect its workers.

NATO said it hit the building because its broadcasts were part of Milosevic's "war machine". The programs were back on the air within six hours.

"How is it possible that you continued broadcasting your program the same morning? Why didn't you use that alternative solution before the workers were killed?" Stoimenovski said.

State television officials have denied the employees were being used as human shields. Other buildings hit by NATO, including one housing a television station run by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's daughter, were evacuated.

The relatives had earlier lit candles at the monument at 0206 (0006 GMT) to mark the time the bombing happened.

In a demonstration of the disagreement between the families and authorities, RTS management held separate ceremonies.

Director Dragoljub Milanovic and officials from Milosevic's Socialist Party laid wreaths near the building and unveiled a plaque with the names of those killed.

He said NATO's top military commander General Wesley Clark and U.S. President Bill Clinton were the ones to blame.

"We remind those who still do not want to know who the killers were of something the entire world knows - the killers were NATO pilots, General Clark, Bill Clinton," Milanovic said.

The television station was among nine sites where civilians died that were pinpointed in a Human Rights Watch report on the bombing in February. It said they were non-military targets and accused NATO of violations of international humanitarian law.

Borka Bankovic, the mother of 17-year-old victim Ksenija, criticized Milanovic for saying the dead workers were heroes.

"They are not heroes, they were doing their work, they were at their work place and it was the officials' duty to protect them. They had manipulated everyone in that RTS building all the way up to April 23," she said.

Serb opposition parties have urged the authorities to name those who "sacrificed" the television employees and on Friday, a documentary film was shown about the deaths which held the management responsible for not evacuating people.

Three opposition buildings, including a municipal office in the opposition-run central Vracar district where the film was screened on Friday night, were later covered with swastikas and graffiti saying "traitors" and "NATO servants".

NATO melting down stockpile of seized Kosovo arms

April 21, 2000

PRISTINA, Kosovo (Reuters) -- NATO-led peacekeepers have stockpiled tens of thousands of illegal weapons in Kosovo and begun melting them down for scrap metal, a force spokesman said Friday.

He gave an impressive tally of arms turned into or confiscated by KFOR in almost a year of enforcing peace. But criminals and paramilitaries still have little trouble obtaining and hiding guns in poorly policed Kosovo and armed violence remains common.

Maj. Frank Benjaminsen said KFOR had collected more than 1,100 machine guns and mortars, more than 500 anti-tank rockets and 26 anti-aircraft weapons since moving into Kosovo last June as Serbian security forces withdrew under NATO air attack.

A further 13,000 rifles, almost 2,500 pistols, around 30,000 explosive devices and more than 7.5 million rounds of ammunition had been amassed at KFOR depots, he told a news briefing.

"Currently under heavy security, the weapons are being transported to a location for their final destruction. Once there, they are melted down for use as scrap metal."

KFOR announces arms seizures virtually every day in this traditionally militarized society where ownership and smuggling of assault weaponry is legion.

Much of Kosovo's armed violence under post-war U.N. administration has been attributed to officially demobilized former ethnic Albanian guerrillas or associated paramilitary gangsters.

Murder and arson rates have fallen dramatically since KFOR arrived. But Western officials say privately this is mainly because almost all minority Serbs who had lived near majority ethnic Albanians have fled Kosovo in terror of attack.

Many ethnic Albanians avenged the Serbian authorities' fierce anti-guerrilla campaign in 1998-1999 in which hundreds of thousands of civilians were driven from their homes and scores of towns and villages were blown up.