The Frankrurter Allgemeine is the most grey, boring, but most objective and accurate paper I know. Glad to see their articles get equally accurately translated!

RUGOVA SAYS AGREEMENT WITH MILUTINOVIC 'MEANINGLESS.'
Kosovar leader Ibrahim Rugova told the "Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung" of 17 May that he signed a
declaration with Serbian President Milan Milutinovic in
Belgrade on 28 April under duress. The declaration
called for a resumption of talks between Serbian
government and Kosovar representatives aimed at
establishing wide-ranging autonomy for the province and
respecting the territorial integrity of Serbia. Rugova
stressed that "whatever I signed in Belgrade is
meaningless." He added that he put his signature to the
document to protect his family, which was under Serbian
house arrest, along with him. Rugova stressed that NATO
air strikes must continue until the alliance achieves
its objectives. He said that he does not recognize the
provisional Kosovar government of Kosova Liberation Army
(UCK) leader Hashim Thaci. And he said he will invite
Kosovar leaders, including UCK representatives, to Bonn
to negotiate forming a new Kosovar government.

Zoja

Brave Serbian Soldier defending their own territory.... in Albania!

CONTINUING CLASHES ALONG ALBANIAN BORDER. Serbian forces
shelled Albanian army tanks near Letaj in the Has
Mountains on 17 May, prompting those vehicles to
withdraw four kilometers behind the border, AP reported.
In Kukes, Albanian army reinforcements arrived,
including multiple rocket launchers. Elsewhere, NATO
planes attacked Serbian positions in Planeja, between
Kukes and Prizren, Reuters reported. Nearby at the
Morina border crossing, only a few dozen refugees
crossed into Albania. Several of them reported
atrocities and arbitrary killings by Serbian forces.
Officials of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said
refugees continue to oppose efforts to evacuate them
from Kukes to safer places in central and southern
Albania. Most of those refusing to leave say they are
waiting for relatives still inside Kosova.

Zoja

To Maja.

Here IS your proof, child.

U.K.: TIME TO CONSIDER GROUND TROOPS FOR KOSOVA. British
Prime Minister Tony Blair said in Sofia on 17 May that
NATO will continue its campaign against Serbia and will
use "whatever it takes" to achieve its goals, "The
Guardian" reported. In Brussels, Foreign Secretary Robin
Cook argued that the allies will "not hang around
waiting for [Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic to
give us a written invitation" to send in ground forces.
Cook added that NATO forces should go into the province
as soon as Serbian forces can no longer offer "organized
resistance." He suggested that intervention should take
place well before the harsh Balkan winter sets in, the
"New York Times" quoted him as saying. Cook also charged
that Serbian forces used Kosovar civilians as human
shields in the recent incident at Korisa (see "RFE/RL
Newsline," 17 May 1999). The foreign secretary noted
that he knows of at least 80 cases of Serbian forces
using civilians as human shields.

Zoja

Djukanovic is a man to have genuine respect for....

DJUKANOVIC: NO PEACE WITH MILOSEVIC. Most of the EU
foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on 17 May had
little sympathy for Cook's views and stressed instead
the importance of finding a diplomatic solution quickly,
"The Guardian" reported (see also Part I). Montenegrin
President Milo Djukanovic told the ministers that any
final settlement "must be signed by someone other" than
Milosevic in order to be credible, RFE/RL's South Slavic
Service reported. Djukanovic added that Milosevic seeks
to destabilize Montenegro by sending in some 45,000
Yugoslav army troops and trying to censor state-run
television. The Montenegrin president stressed that he
condemns all violence, including that by Milosevic, the
Kosovar guerrillas, and NATO. The EU ministers promised
Djukanovic more than $13 million in refugee relief. They
gave "no details of how the money would be channeled to
Podgorica to prevent it falling into the hands" of
Belgrade, "The Independent" reported.

Zoja

The 'great' Serbian army, full of 'heroes' in action....

LARGE GROUPS OF DISPLACED PERSONS IN KOSOVA. NATO
officials said in Brussels on 17 May that a total of
70,000 displaced persons are gathered in the areas
around Junik and to the west of Ferizaj and that these
people appear to be en route to Albania. Another group
of about 40,000 Kosovars is "trapped" in the region
between Ferizaj and Gjilan, RFE/RL's South Slavic
Service reported. At Blace, on the Macedonian border,
Serbian authorities ordered back into Kosova a train
carrying some 2,000 persons who boarded in Prishtina and
Ferizaj. A UN spokesman at Blace said that he does not
know what happened to the people on the train. He added
that "this is quite a worrisome development." In Skopje,
President Kiro Gligorov said that "it is important" for
the international community to send abroad at least
100,000 of the estimated 230,000 Kosovar refugees in his
country.

Please, pass me a bowl. I have to puke....

Zoja

SOME politicians DO have something useful to contribute....

WESTENDORP: KOSOVA NEEDS INTERNATIONAL PROTECTORATE.
Carlos Westendorp, who is the international community's
chief representative in Bosnia, told the UN Security
Council in New York on 17 May that Kosova needs "a real
protectorate in order to protect the refugees coming
back to their homes." He stressed that any international
mandate in Kosova should be "much shorter and more
robust" than the one in Bosnia (see "RFE/RL Newsline,"
10 May 1999). Westendorp argued that the international
community must control the administration, police, and
army in Kosova, which it did not do in Bosnia. He
concluded that "there will be no long-term solution or
stable solution if Milosevic remains in place for a long
time, because it will mean there is no democracy in the
region. And without democracy, the problems of the
region are not going to be solved."

Zoja

Emina-zoja-shitta

You are a lying cow with no brains.

You do not speak the languages you claim you do.

You lie in every single post you write.

Your spelling stinks.

You write messages to yourself.

You criticise the most valuable info on this board because you got nothing better to do. Get a job, a life, a real name and some culture would be nice too.

Contribute or leave

And whatever multiple personality of yours I am adressing now, you might have meant "RA" as the Republican Army referring to the Irish problem ? I still don't have a friggin' clue to who, what and how anybody won something, it is only clear in your confused mind. You can attempt one more time to explain your statement to everybody, so people have a clue whether you may even be Irish/Albanian Irish/Croatian Irish, who knows ? I am lost but I gotta tell you: don't bother if you cannot express yourself CLEARLY as I do not care much for riddles these days for I fear for a lot of people at the moment.

And once and for all: I AM FRENCH, it is still the case since my first posts in March 1999, and I hate the Brits too so why use it against me ? You are truly an imbecile.

The Independent, 5-17-99


War in the Balkans - Kosovars suffer new ethnic hatred


By Phil Davison in Blace


Azemi Elias thought the insults of Serb border police were the last he would have to endure. A 32-year-old Kosovar Albanian car mechanic, he had crossed into Macedonia with his wife and children, was nibbling on some cheese in the border refugee camp in Blace and was glad to be alive.


He had reckoned without the Macedonian police.


"Your papers!" shouted a police colonel who later refused to give me his name but is known as Miki. Azemi's two sons, Buyar, five, and Behan, three, cowered on the blanket where they were eating their first decent food in days. They had heard that demand so many times on their long trek to the border from their home in the Kosovo village of Laskovari. They had also cowered in beneath the floorboards of their house when Serbian paramilitary troops shot out their windows and robbed their parents of everything they had.


"But I just gave them to you coming in, officer," said Azemi. "Show them again!" insisted the colonel. Azemi did. "And watch what you're saying to that reporter!" barked the colonel, fingering the Serb-made CZ-99 pistol in his holster.


Azemi had just told me that Serb police and paramilitary troops were forcing Kosovar Albanian men to live on sites - including schoolyards and hospital grounds - where they were hiding tanks, field guns and ammunition. A short while later "Miki" and another officer hauled me off to the camp gates to check my identity.


Kosovar Albanians find no welcome in Blace. Their Macedonian neighbours, except for the ethnic Albanian minority, leave them in no doubt that they are unwanted. Historic tension between the majority Slavs and the ethnic Albanian Macedonians and the Kosovar Albanians is running higher than ever.


There is talk of yet another civil war in the former Yugoslavia, regardless of what happens in Kosovo. Slav Macedonians say their country's ethnic Albanians are well-armed. That did not worry them when they knew they could rely on the federal Yugoslav army. Now, with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's men at least pinned down and, according to Nato, badly "degraded", Macedonia's Slavs are worried that the ethnic Albanians would have the upper hand in a civil conflict.


The only thing the Macedonian government and police, supported by the Slav majority, don't like about the Serb's "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovar Albanians is the fact that many of the Serbs' victims have ended up here. Macedonia wants them to move on as fast as international humanitarian flights can pack them in.


"They stink. They don't wash. They don't abide by our laws," said my Macedonian taxi driver, a Slav. "And they breed like rabbits. They're all after a Greater Albania, including western Macedonia, even the west bank of the Vardar river [through the capital, Skopje]." He was not a Serb but, like the majority in Macedonia, left no doubt he supported Mr Milosevic and opposed the Nato bombing. His keyring bore the double eagle symbol of Serbia's hardline Chetnik nationalists and their motto: "Only unity saves the Serbs."


He was proud that he and his fellow Skopje taxi drivers were going to drive to Serbia tomorrow to donate their blood to victims of the bombing. This, after all, is the city where the locals attacked the US embassy after the Nato operation began.


On Saturday night, I had witnessed a street brawl in Skopje. It started as a drunken fight between an ethnic Albanian and a Slav but soon a dozen men were involved. Between kicks and blows, ethnic slurs were exchanged. Locals said such scenes were happening nightly since the refugee crisis began almost two months ago.

Zoja

LONDON, May 18 (AFP) - British MI6 intelligence plotted in 1992
>to kill Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, either by bomb using
>local opposition, or by a faked car accident, or using British
>undercover troops, a renegade British agent claimed Tuesday.
> "There was a plan in 1992 to kill him," former MI6 man Richard
>Tomlinson said in an interview on Channel Four television.
> "It was a three page document, potential scenarios on how it
>could be done ... and the justification for doing it and a brief
>outline of the resources that would be available to do it," he
>explained.
> Tomlinson, fired by MI6 in 1995 and accused by British
>authorities of being behind the exposure of more than 100 alleged
>British secret service officers on the Internet, said: "It wasn't a
>joke, it was a serious document which still exists, and that would
>still be in MI6 files."
> Tomlinson said he had personally read the three-page document
>allegedly containing three scenarios for a hit on the Yugoslav
>leader.
> The options had been either "to use the opposition groups in
>Serbia to kill him using a bomb", or "to use an SAS (special
>services) group", or "to make it appear a car accident."
> Tomlinson, 35, who lives in Geneva, was jailed for six months in
>Britain in late 1997 after he showed the synopsis of a book on his
>MI6 career to an Australian publisher. He claims persecution by the
>British authorities. ......

What a pity they didn't put it into action! Or were they out of sanatizing products, to disinfect everything Slob had his hands on? My option: Fly low altitiude and drop a precision bomb right on his head. This has four advantages.

1 he's dead on the spot
2 He is buried on the spot
3 Disinfectants are not neccesary anymore
4 It saves us tax payers a lot of money

Zoja

Zoja

Who said there were no mass graves???? Budala????

> BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- NATO said Tuesday there is growing
>evidence that the Yugoslav government of President Slobodan
>Milosevic is digging up mass graves and trying to hide the evidence
>of war crimes against Kosovo Albanians.
> ``There are now indications that the Belgrade authorities are
>taking the international war crimes tribunal seriously,'' NATO
>spokesman Jamie Shea told reporters at alliance headquarters,
>referring to the U.N. court in The Hague, Netherlands.
> He said NATO has reports that the Serbs have dug up mass graves
>near the Kosovo towns of Glogovac and Lipljan.
> ``The villagers of the locality were obliged to rebury the
>bodies in individual graves,'' Shea said. ``We also have reports of
>efforts to rebury bodies from mass graves at sites where NATO
>bombing has occurred, and also to rebury bodies in areas formerly
>controlled by the Kosovo Liberation Army.''
> The Serbs, he said, are creating as many new mass graves as they
>are trying to destroy old ones.
> ``If the Serbs really want to destroy the evidence, all of the
>evidence, then they are going to have to accumulate a lot of
>overtime,'' Shea said.
> David Scheffer, a U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes
>issues, also said the evidence was increasing that the Serbs have
>used ethnic Albanians as human shields during the NATO air campaign
>that began March 24.
> ``It complicates our military mission,'' added Maj. Gen. Walter
>Jertz, a NATO military spokesman who briefed reporters.
> Shea said NATO continues to build up his forces in the region.
>He said 18 U.S. A-10 ``tankbusters'' were due to be deployed in
>Italy by Thursday, and that 72 F-15s and F-16s to be operational in
>Turkey by the end of the month.
> Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly ethnic Albanians, have
>fled the country in the face of a military offensive by Serb army
>and special police forces since March. Others have been chased from
>their homes but remain in Kosovo.
> Before the conflict, 90 percent of the 2.1 million Kosovo
>population was ethnic Albanian.

Zoja

well, the third scenario was used on princess Diana ...

Again, I ask, no mass killings??


U.S. Says At Least 5,000 Executed In Kosovo

01:29 p.m May 18, 1999 Eastern


By John O'Callaghan


BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) - A U.S. war crimes official said Tuesday at least 5,000 people, and probably many more, had been killed in mass executions in 75 villages in Kosovo.


``We're simply trying to give the most conservative, confirmed figure that we can from good refugee reporting,'' said David Scheffer, the State Department's ambassador-at-large for war crimes.


``We can only assume the worst and that the figure is actually much higher.''


About 225,000 men in Kosovo between the ages of 14 and 59 were unaccounted for, Scheffer said, but he stressed this did not mean they all had been killed.


At a news conference in Brussels, he reiterated charges that Serb forces were carrying out ethnic cleansing in the southern province and using refugees as human shields.


``Kosovo represents a government-planned campaign to eliminate, either through forced deportation or killing, most of an ethnic population,'' he said.


Scheffer, due to visit the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague Wednesday, said the United Nations body ``unquestionably has jurisdiction in Kosovo.''


Many of the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian civilians who have poured out of Kosovo tell stories of Yugoslav troops and special police systematically burning villages, raping women and executing men.


Scheffer and NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said they had reports of Serb troops trying to cover up atrocities by burning bodies and forcing civilians to dig up mass graves and bury the dead in separate places.


``If the Serbs really want to destroy the evidence -- all the evidence -- then they are going to have to accumulate a lot of overtime in the next few days because as fast as they try to destroy the old evidence, new evidence is being created,'' Shea told reporters.


They said reports also indicated Serb forces had placed the bodies of murdered civilians where NATO planes had attacked.


NATO estimated last Thursday that about 590,000 people were seeking shelter wherever they could in Kosovo after being forced from their homes by Serb scorched-earth operations.


The alliance has stepped up accusations that Yugoslav troops are using Kosovar Albanians as human shields, particularly after up to 87 civilians were killed in the village of Korisa last Thursday when alliance planes bombed a Serb military camp.


``In addition to the murders and rapes, refugees have claimed that Serb forces are using Kosovars to escort Serb military convoys and shield facilities throughout the province,'' Scheffer said.


``The ethnic Albanians reportedly are not being used in an ostentatious manner to deter attacks but rather are kept concealed in NATO target areas, apparently to generate civilian casualties that can be blamed on NATO.''


Serb forces were disguising their vehicles with tarpaulins taken from international relief organizations that have been sending aid convoys into Yugoslavia, he said.


Scheffer said a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation forensics team would accompany an eventual international security force to Kosovo to help assess war crimes evidence.

Zoja

Los Angeles reporter - Mr Watson (to be continued)

"Watson interviewed an Albanian political activist, Fatmir Seholi of the
Kosovo Democratic Initiative, who denied the allegations of genocide
against Albanians which have been the principal pretext for the NATO
bombing.

“As an Albanian, I am convinced that the Serbian government and
security forces are not committing any kind of genocide,” he said.

“In a war, even innocent people die,” he explained. “In every war, there
are those who want to profit. Here there is a minority of people who
wanted to steal, but that's not genocide. These are only crimes.”

Seholi is a political opponent of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army,
which killed his father in 1997 and publicly justified it on the grounds of
cooperation with the Yugoslav authorities. But it is significant that Watson
himself, who has been in Kosovo throughout the war, gives the same
description of the attacks by Serb nationalists on the Albanian
population, and their eventual end.

“After waves of looting, arson, killings and other attacks turned many of
Kosovo's cities into virtual ghost towns, the government took steps to
restore order, and ethnic Albanians began to move back, often under
police protection,” he writes.


part of the story from the wsws.org

Watson's report is thus in stark contrast with the statements of Clinton,
Blair & Co., alleging systematic, ongoing mass murder by the Yugoslav
government. It follows a similar series of reports published earlier this
month in the New York Times.

These reports suggest that the claims of genocide in Kosovo, which have
provided the essential pretext for the NATO bombing, are a deliberate
and enormous hoax. This attempt to delude and stampede public opinion
will be exposed with devastating political consequences for its authors
once it becomes possible for outside observers to make a more
systematic assessment of the conditions in Kosovo.

I don't wanna say I told you so, but I told you so...

Expert Talks About Memories of War


By Randolph E. Schmid
Associated Press Writer Tuesday, May 18, 1999; 2:33 p.m. EDT


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Memories of atrocities in World War II have helped fuel bitter battles in former Yugoslavia, says a psychiatrist working with refugees from current conflicts.


What ethnic Albanians fleeing Kosovo want now is to go home, and if that doesn't happen their host countries need to prepare for a rash of mental problems, said Dr. Stevan M. Weine.


``Memories produce genocide,'' Weine told a briefing Tuesday at the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association. Weine, of the University of Illinois, has been working in Chicago with refugees from Bosnia and in Germany with those from Kosovo.


Old hatreds simmered for years beneath the surface in Yugoslavia, he said in an interview, memories of atrocities committed during World War II.


Slobodan Milosevic and other Serb leaders exploited these memories to promote ethnic divisiveness.


For Yugoslavia, he said, World War II largely constituted a civil war between Croats, who sided with invading Germany, and Serbs.


After the war authoritarian President Josip Broz Tito proclaimed ``unity and brotherhood,'' and people were prohibited from talking about the war.


But, Weine said, families kept alive stories of what had happened to fathers and uncles and brothers, so that old hatreds flared anew when Yugoslavia began splitting into independent republics.


Dr. Landy F. Sparr of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Portland, Ore., who has also studied the war in Yugoslavia, said some of the acts committed ``shock the collective conscience.''


When the Nazis were involved in the region during World War II, he said, ``they were horrified ... by what these ethnic groups were doing to each other.''


John Ferguson, an Episcopal priest, said he is studying the Balkan war ``seeking to learn what leads people to do the kind of things they have done.''


``Being able to dehumanize somebody allows you to do things you wouldn't otherwise do,'' he said.


Weine said Bosnian refugees he has worked with often are reluctant to seek mental health help, which they consider a sign of weakness.


Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, he said, seem to be putting their misery and loss on hold as they wait to go home.


``If the West doesn't fulfill that promise to get them back home, they will have to think about life anew, loved ones lost. ... That changes people,'' he said.


If they don't go home, ``We've got to prepare for a lot of new mental health work,'' he said. Particularly attention must be paid to depression and post-trauma stress disorder, he said.


© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press

Emina