Newsbriefs on KLA-NATO Encounters 6/19 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ............................................................... jbm7@tutor.open.ac.uk (Jim Monaghan) New York Times June 17, 1999 THE SEPARATISTS Marines Seize Weapons of Kosovo Insurgents By STEVEN LEE MYERS [P] ATRES, Yugoslavia -- After a tense standoff along a rural road, with helicopter gunships overhead, American marines confiscated the weapons of more than 100 Kosovo Albanian insurgents and detained six of their leaders Wednesday in the most serious of a series of confrontations between NATO troops and the Kosovo Liberation Army. The weapons, including AK-47's, mines and rocket-propelled grenades, were confiscated as NATO commanders scrambled to control the insurgents' increasingly open and brash exercising of power in Kosovo as the Yugoslav Army and police forces withdraw. NATO officials met leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army in Albania today to try to arrange the details of disbanding, or "demilitarizing," the group and turning its fighters into a civilian police force for Kosovo. Under a plan drawn up in Belgium by the staff of the Supreme NATO commander Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the rebels would have to withdraw from fortified positions held during the conflict with President Slobodan Milosevic's forces, turn over their heavy weapons and disband in two phases over 30 days. A NATO official said Wednesday night that the commander of the security operation, Lieut. Gen. Sir Michael Jackson of Britain, expected to announce an agreement soon, but that details needed to be worked out. The rebel force's leaders have pledged to cooperate with NATO forces. But they have not shown much inclination to break up their insurgency -- just as it has become the dominant political and military force among the Kosovo Albanians. In town after town, including the capital, Pristina, the guerrillas' presence has grown each day, with their red-and-black flags adorning "official" buildings and their armed soldiers openly patrolling villages. The company of insurgents had just paraded through the village of Zegra, on their way to Gnjilane, when troops from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit confronted them early this morning a few miles to the north. The commander of Company K, Capt. David W. Eiland, said he first asked them to turn over their weapons voluntarily, beginning two hours of tense negotiations. When they continued to refuse, he ordered them surrounded and, with Apache and Cobra helicopter gunships hovering overhead, arrested six officers. It was not until eight hours after the confrontation began that the insurgents complied. "We pretty much insisted they turn them over," Captain Eiland said of the weapons. Lieut. Col. Bruce A. Gandy, commander of the Marine ground force based at a chicken hatchery and slaughterhouse on a hill outside this village, said Wednesday evening that NATO would release the detained officers but would destroy the confiscated weapons. Until Wednesday, NATO's interaction with the Kosovo Liberation Army had been largely cordial and tolerant. The rebels view NATO as an ally in their struggle to win freedom for the predominantly Albanian population of Kosovo, and they have generally cooperated with the security forces. NATO commanders here have pledged to be evenhanded in securing peace in Kosovo after more than a year of civil war and 78 days of NATO air strikes. That also means protecting the Serbs in the province. With the insurgents' manning checkpoints in cities like Kacanik, Suva Reka and Prizren, and opening an office in the capital, thousands of Serbs have crammed their belongings into cars and fled, saying they feared reprisals from the rebels, whom they view as terrorists. The anxiety among Serbs has grown sharply as the last of Serbian-dominated Army and special police units withdrew from a large swath of Kosovo after NATO demands for a phased withdrawal by Sunday. The first phase of that withdrawal was supposed to have been complete on Tuesday night. But NATO granted a 24-hour extension, saying the Yugoslav Army was making a concerted effort to leave but faced enormous logistical challenges in withdrawing 40,000 soldiers and police officers. A convoy of about 12 military vehicles left Pristina at noon today, escorting nearly as many civilian vehicles. When asked where she was going, a woman in one car said, "We don't know." At the Army headquarters in the center of Pristina, a Serb, Verica Trajkovic, scolded one of the few soldiers who remained. "You are leaving us alone," she said. "What are we going to do without anyone to protect us?" General Jackson has repeatedly tried to assuage such fears, though with little success. Wednesday he met a large group of Serbs in Kosovo Polje, west of the capital, and told them that the terms for ending the NATO campaign against the Serbs required that the Kosovo Liberation Army be disbanded as an organized force. "This will require a strict program of certain actions which must be taken," he said, Reuters reported. In Pristina, Russian forces that arrived on Saturday remained at the airport. In Helsinki, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and his Russian counterpart, Marshal Igor D. Sergeyev, met and reported progress toward a solution. While the thirsty Russian troops awaited news, the British delivered bottled water to them and a Russian resupply convoy arrived. The Kosovo Liberation Army is not only a problem for NATO. One of its spokesmen, Jakup Krasniqi, told Agence France-Presse Wednesday that any Russian peacekeepers "will be unwelcome here and we will treat them as an enemy force," a remark that set off a blistering objection from Russia's Foreign Ministry. The agreement under negotiation would more or less mirror the accord signed in March by leaders of Kosovo Albanians in Paris. It would require the rebels, now thought to number up to 17,000, to disband in a month and start training to become a police force for the province. The first phase of the pact would require the rebels to respect a cease-fire with the retreating Serbs and remain a little more than a mile from them. The insurgents would also have to keep that distance from main roads and security forces, a NATO official in Brussels said. In four days, the rebels would withdraw from the fortified positions that they held during the conflict. In a second phase, which beginning after seven days, the rebels would begin turning over heavy weapons, 12.7-millimeter or larger caliber. By the end of 30 days, the force would have to disband, ceasing organized maneuvers and other operations and shedding uniforms. A problem in negotiating with the Kosovo Liberation Army is its opaque command structure and internal divisions. "The idea is to get something like the military technical agreement we have with the Serb forces," the NATO official in Brussels said. "But a major question is whom do you talk to." The company confronted Wednesday, which had 116 soldiers, appeared to be highly organized, disciplined and armed. "It was an organized unit," Colonel Gandy said. "And they were loaded for bear." Their weapons, when stacked in a pile at the marines' camp near the village of Partes, reached waist high. In all, the marines confiscated 105 rifles, 10,000 rounds of ammunition and 45 grenades. There were two Dragonoff sniper rifles, one with a silencer, as well as land mines and TNT, presumably for ambushing Serbian forces. The New York Times - June 17, 1999 PRISTINA Albanians in Kosovo's Capital Are Wary but Hopeful By STEVEN ERLANGER [P] RISTINA, Yugoslavia -- The arrival of NATO-led peacekeeping forces has brought Kosovo's Albanians to city streets and rural lanes to celebrate, shouting "NATO!" and tossing flowers and giving victory signs. But not in Pristina, the Kosovo capital. Here the mood is tentative, wary and restrained. While NATO forces are patrolling the streets in jeeps and armored personnel carriers and now, sometimes, on foot, some Serbian police and military personnel remain in Pristina. "There are a lot of Serbs still in Pristina," said Gzim Gercari, 33. "And there are many armed and angry Serbs, who have been drinking a lot." Gercari was one of many Albanians who remained in Pristina throughout the war. But the last three days, he said, have been as bad as anything he experienced. He lives near a headquarters for the Serbian militarized police. As they have prepared to leave Pristina, under the terms of the peace agreement signed by President Slobodan Milosevic, some of the Serbs have been looting and smashing houses, and NATO has not intervened. "They ordered people out of houses and smashed windows and demolished doors and stole what they wanted," he said. "They started to burn my apartment in Suncani Breg," a neighborhood of Pristina, but a cousin put out the fire. Wednesday morning, the police were finally gone, Gercari said. But he worries still about anxious and armed Serbian civilians, some of whom have been kidnapped by the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army. On Tuesday, two Albanians were shot after getting into an argument with some armed Serbian civilians. Early Wednesday morning, at the downtown Brooklyn Bar, some very sentimental and very drunk Serbian soldiers, in their fatigues, staggered into the street firing their weapons into the air, as a goodbye to Kosovo. As they swayed and dropped the barrels of their Kalashnikovs, passers-by hit the ground. But after months of a heavy military presence and incessant NATO bombing, when many Albanians were pushed out of Pristina or fled, there is a new lightness nonetheless. The streets are getting jammed again in Pristina, with the Corzo cafe downtown now so crowded it is hard to find a seat, even though there has been no water for the last two days. With espresso not an option, people drink juice or mineral water or iced instant coffee with some ice cream. Albanians are returning home, from the camps in Macedonia and Albania, but also from the mountains. In a poor Albanian section of Pristina, near a new headquarters of the Kosovo Liberation Army and an aid distribution center, Halil Dirbranaj, 41, pulled up Wednesday in his tractor and a trailer stuffed with seven members of his family. "The Yugoslav army threw me out of my house," he said, "so we went to the mountains." That was near a village called Kriljevo, some 35 miles east of Pristina. They spent most of the time in the open, "with no protection from anyone," he said. "We were just hiding behind the rocks, open to the rain." But even with his elderly mother lying pale in the trailer, as one of his daughters held an umbrella to shield her from the sun, Dirbranaj said he was afraid to go into his house, fearing Serbian booby traps. Fatos, an Albanian of 24, arrived from Macedonia two days ago to find the lock on his building had been changed, so he could not get to his apartment. Hydajet came home to find his apartment looted and burned. But others were luckier, finding everything as they had left it, sometimes because of the intervention of Serbian neighbors. People are poor and hurting, but there are the beginnings of what will be a hot economy designed to service the foreigners pouring into Kosovo. "It's going to be like Bosnia or Cambodia," an experienced U.N. official said, a little sadly. "There will be almost as many foreigners trying to help as those who need it. And they will need restaurants and bars and brothels, and this place will never be the same." While there is no running water, making the atmosphere rather ripe in the summer heat, there is electricity. And just a few days ago, the main Yugoslav cell-phone company, Mobtel, turned its transmitters on again in Pristina. There had been no telephone service during the war. With travel restricted to Kosovo, the province was almost entirely isolated. While most people assumed NATO had bombed the transmitters, it is now understood that Belgrade did not want Kosovo reached by telephone. It is also suggested by knowledgeable officials that given the electricity problems, Mobtel also feared that it would be unable to keep its computers going to charge customers for their calls. At the misnamed Grand Hotel, stuffed now with journalists and the first influx of aid workers, Albanians offer their services as translators, drivers, money changers and landlords. There is a desperate need for restaurants for all these foreigners and their money, but many of the restaurants that existed before the war were owned by Albanians, and most have been burned or looted. Many of their owners also remain abroad, as refugees. The owners of the Corzo, Muslims from the Gora region between Albania and Macedonia, are contemplating opening a new restaurant, as are their waiters. But it is still too dangerous, they say, wanting another week or so to see how the peacekeepers function and how the Serbs react to the withdrawal of their military and police forces. Of course, many Serbs are leaving Pristina, too, terrified that the insurgents of the Kosovo Liberation Army will show up at their houses to exact revenge. On many streets, one sees Serbs packing their cars and trucks. Some say they are going for good; others say they hope to be back. But their hope seems to lack conviction. Rumors sweep Serbian families of atrocities against them, of kidnappings and killings. Some of the rumors, unfortunately, turn out to be true. A missing poster has gone up for Ivan Celic, a 40-year-old mechanical engineer, missing since June 14, believed kidnapped as he was driving his Volkswagen Golf in the mostly Albanian area of Suncani Breg. He has four children. "Any information," the poster says, referring to the peacekeeping mission, "pass to the civilian authorities and the KFOR mission." Wednesday in Kosovo Polje, a British officer met several hundred local Serbs to urge them to remain. "If you are threatened, tell us about it, and we will do our best to protect you," he said from the steps of a Serbian Orthodox Church. "You have to consider the future of your country. If you want it to have a future, be brave." But Kosovo Polje is heavily Serbian, and many always intended to stay. Dejan Jovanovic, 24, said many of the men would remain, "but the women and children will go," at least as a temporary precaution. In Pristina, the Kosovo Liberation Army has proudly opened two new offices. One is in a school, where young women in white T-shirts and black overalls guard the gates. The other, the headquarters, was opened a few days ago in a large house offered by an Albanian businessman. Uniformed, armed soldiers stand guard and pose for photographs, while another soldier mans a sniper position looking down the road. A British liaison officer from the Irish Guards entered to discuss security, he said. "It's really about getting them to behave," he said crisply. Asked what it meant to "demilitarize" the Kosovo Liberation Army, as called for under the peace agreement, he shrugged. "Just now, it's important that they behave," he said. "They're a little confused, too, looking for instructions. We'll get around to the rest in time." Inside, Salih Mustafa, a 28-year-old history student who was the commander of the guerrilla operations inside Pristina during the war, talked coolly of having "liquidated" Serbian paramilitaries and secret policemen and sabotaging buildings in what he called Operation Hawk. He refused to say how many men were under his command, but he had a presence that lent credence to his account, even if the actions of his men hardly turned the tide of the war. But such operations were all he could do, given the shortage of weapons, especially heavy weapons, he said. The army is grateful to NATO but remains entirely committed to independence, Mustafa said. "This war is a step forward, but we still have work to do before independence. This NATO plan doesn't solve the Albanian question, and it just restores the status quo in this fake peace." NATO and the West have different interests, he said, adding: "That's why I call it a fake peace. Real peace will be when Kosovo gets its independence." NATO's effort to demilitarize the insurgents is a form of insult to the soldiers "who fought to defend their homes, honor and country, while the criminals of the paramilitary Serb forces burned and looted houses, killed and raped, and they are put in an equal position," he said. "They can just take off their uniform and weapon and go wherever they want in Pristina." The NATO efforts will just be "an interlude in the struggle," Mustafa said. "Until we get the liberation of all Albanian lands, there will be fighting in the Balkans." London Times, 6.17 extended quote But the KLA government of Hashim Thaci yesterday appointed a guerrilla stalwart, Kadri Kryezin, as the city's [Prizren?s] first post-war Mayor, and the only flags to be seen anywhere were those of the KLA and Albania - apart from a lone Welsh dragon brandished by children outside KLA headquarters. Mr Thaci, once dubbed Kosovo's potential Gerry Adams by Madeline Albright, the American Secretary of State, is likely to play a pivotal role in the disarmament question and is likely to push Nato's tolerance to the limits. At the Rambouillet peace conference he was assured by American negotiators that Nato would find a way of allowing the KLA to keep its arms, probably by taking the guerrillas into Kosovo's new police force. German military sources said one of their immediate concerns was a factionalisation of the KLA in Prizren. While Commander Drini's men have patrolled the northern side of the Bistrica river, another commander, Hoxha, has organised the south bank. His units were still carrying their Kalashnikovs yesterday. The Germans have so far been ineffectual in making their presence felt in the inner city at night, and crowds of youths chanting the Albanian acronym for the KLA - "UCK" - toppled a statue of Tsar Dusan, Serbia's greatest ruler, late on Tuesday as the Germans drove past. Eventually they half-heartedly prevented the youths from dragging the head around town attached to the rear bumper of a stolen Mercedes. Commander Drini protested yesterday that the euphoria of liberation - many Albanians are out of their cellars and on the streets for the first time in more than three months - was waning, and that his men would protect Prizren's heritage. He said that, where possible, the KLA would actively chase down Serbs suspected of organising massacres. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nyteeu-06.23.99-13:23:06-27146