Free Republic

BBC reporter to testify at Hague war crimes tribunal Correspondent faces questions about deaths in Kosovo prisonMatt Wells, media correspondent Tuesday August 20, 2002 The BBC's former Belgrade correspondent, Jacky Rowland, has agreed to testify against the Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Ms Rowland will appear next week and will be cross-examined by Mr Milosevic, who is on trial for genocide and war crimes allegedly committed during the Balkans wars in the 1990s. Journalists are divided over the merits of testifying at such tribunals. Some have argued against appearing, believing it calls into...

UN 'ignored' abuse at Kosovo mental homes Oliver Burkeman in New York Thursday August 8, 2002 The Guardian (UK) Patients at United Nations mental institutions in Kosovo have been raped and physically attacked under the eyes of UN staff, held in "filthy and degrading" conditions, and threatened with punishment if they report the abuses, according to a damning investigation published in New York yesterday. In one case, a woman patient was raped after UN employees locked her in a room with a male patient because they wanted to "calm her down", while employees who observed another rape in a hallway...

LONDON: Britain is starting the process of including India and Japan, along with Afghanistan’s six immediate neighbours in the task of conceptualising a post-Taliban administration, even as Tony Blair and German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder speak with one voice on a new momentum in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Anglo-German initiative, designed to swing moderate Muslim opinion towards support for the US-led war on Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, is thought likely to put pressure on Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to sanction a new round of peace negotiations without waiting for the violence to stop. "India and Japan, which would supply ...

Within minutes of the horrific plane crash at the World Trade Centre, information began emerging suggesting it was not a terrible accident but a terrorist attack. The FBI had already been investigating reports of a plane hijacking before the first plane hit the building. Then came the attack on the Pentagon in Washington - removing any remaining doubt. Middle Eastern terrorism is likely to be central to the inquiry. A caller claiming to represent a Palestinian group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, told Abu Dhabi television it had carried out the attack, in the first claim of ...

Having provoked two episodes of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, first of the Albanians and then of the Serbs, without having thereby brought about any lasting settlement of the original problem, Nato feels morally entitled, or perhaps even obliged, to return to the region. But there is no question of forgiving it because it knows not what it does. The good intentions of Wilsonian imperialism are as nothing when weighed in the balance against the foreseeable violent havoc of such imperialism’s practical effects. The deployment of 3,500 Nato troops, including 450 British, for a period of 30 days after the Albanian ...

Macedonia blast hits monastery Nato liaison officers are already talking to rebels An explosion has seriously damaged an Orthodox Christian monastery in Lesok, near the scene of heavy fighting between Macedonian Government forces and ethnic Albanian rebels over the past few months. Macedonian Government officials blamed rebels for the blast which they condemned as "barbaric", but Western monitors say it is not clear who is to blame. The explosion happened as Nato ambassadors were preparing to hear advice from US General Joseph Ralston on whether the alliance should proceed with the full-scale mission to oversee the rebels' disarmament. Despite the ...

MORE than 3,000 extra NATO troops including several hundred British soldiers could be dispatched to Macedonia this week if NATO’s senior commander in Europe gives the go-ahead . General Joseph Ralston, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), paid a lightning visit to Macedonia to assess the viability of dispatching further troops to carry out Operation Essential Harvest, a mission to collect guns from the Albanian rebel National Liberation Army. In a gesture of support for the operation, Macedonia’s government announced that it would pull its troops back from areas where weapons-collection points would be set up . However, some ...

{As agreed re. all WP posts, I have only included partial extracts from the article - the link to the original piece is here.} Macedonian Cease-Fire ViolatedTension Builds as Insurgents Accused of Preventing Refugees From Going Home SKOPJE, Macedonia, July 29 -- Ethnic Albanian rebels are violating the terms of a new cease-fire in Macedonia by remaining in areas from which they promised to withdraw, discouraging Macedonian Slav refugees from returning to their homes and increasing the risk of renewed fighting, international observers said. Several houses and other buildings belonging to Macedonian Slavs were set afire Saturday -- apparently by ...

Massacre that started long haul to justice By Julius Strauss THE undoing of Slobodan Milosevic came on a scrubby hillside in Kosovo on a crisp January morning more than two years ago. In a crime reminiscent of Nazi reprisals in occupied Europe, 45 Kosovan Albanian farmers were rounded up, led up a hill and massacred. By Balkan standards the toll of the Racak massacre was meagre. At Srebrenica four years earlier Serbs had killed more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in three days. The siege of Sarajevo in the mid-1990s killed 10,000 civilians in four years and left thousands more maimed. ...

Friday, 29 June, 2001, 11:52 GMT 12:52 UK Nato 'error' enrages Macedonians By Jonathan Charles in Skopje There was anger in Skopje at the Nato-brokered deal You're a spy for the Albanian terrorists! You're filming Macedonian army positions so that the terrorists can pinpoint them! The accusations came thick and fast. In a village near to where the army was shelling ethnic Albanian rebels we was surrounded by a mob of angry farmers. Many of them were swinging pitchforks and clubs - threatening to beat us. It was a terrifying moment and the only way out was to run to ...

NATO officials say Britain is pushing for a robust mandate for a peacekeeping force of 5,000 planned for Macedonia. Javier Solana, the European Union envoy, has told President Boris Trajkovski of Macedonia that the alliance's intervention should come before July 15. However, any peacekeeping mission requires a political agreement between Macedonians and Albanians, who make up a third of the country's population. That looked unlikely yesterday after talks between rebel leaders and Pieter Feith, Nato's special envoy, broke down in Prizren, Kosovo. Commanders from Nato's five main nations - America, France, Britain, Italy and Germany - have discussed a British-dominated ...

French President Jacques Chirac has told a Nato summit in Brussels that the alliance must "rule nothing out" to restore peace to Macedonia. He said the conflict between ethnic Albanian fighters and the Macedonian army was threatening the stability of the region, and a strong message had to be delivered. "We should signal clearly that we will not accept the opening of a new cycle of violence and intolerance that imperils the stability of the entire region," said President Chirac. "We should rule out nothing in order to put a stop to it." His comments came at a summit attended ...

Attacks on Serbs include February's bus bombing in Kosovo Ethnic Albanian rebels are under investigation by United Nations war crimes prosecutors over alleged abuses of Serbs, it has been revealed. UN chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte said two inquiries were already under way - one into alleged crimes in Kosovo, the other into attacks by a rebel group fighting outside Kosovo's borders in southern Serbia. A separate inquiry into the activities of the Kosovo Liberation Army had already been announced. A list of potential witnesses for the new investigations - complete with their telephone numbers - has been handed ...

Tetevo residents desperate to fleeThe BBC isn't popular in Macedonia. We never are in an ethnic conflict. Just by reporting one side's grievances, you're guaranteed to upset the other side. In Macedonia, which broke away peacefully from the former Yugoslavia 10 years ago, there are fears the country is drifting into a bloody conflict between the majority Macedonians, who are Slavs and Christian, and the large ethnic Albanian minority who are Muslim. Fighting broke out last week around the main Albanian city of Tetovo.Poor Macedonia - it never had an ethnic conflict until a couple of weeks ago. There was ...

US troops in Kosovo border clash US troops have shot and wounded two rebel fighters in Kosovo, in a gun battle near the increasingly-tense border with Macedonia. The incident happened not far from the Macedonian village of Tanusevci - the focus of cross-border unrest involving ethnic Albanian rebels. The BBC's Paul Wood says the shooting incident is a very serious development for K-For, and raises the possibility that Nato troops could be sucked into combating the ethnic Albanian insurgency in Macedonia. The incident came only hours after Nato Secretary-General Lord Robertson revealed that Yugoslav troops might be invited to join ...

Heavy gunfire has broken out on the border between Macedonia and Kosovo, according to reports from the area. The exchanges continued for at least an hour near the village of Tanusevci and appeared to involve anti-aircraft weapons and automatic rifle fire. Journalists from Reuters and AFP news agencies said ethnic Albanian fighters appeared to be locked in a gun battle with Macedonian security forces. Tension has increased in the border area recently, and at least two Macedonian-based groups have been set up to fight for ethnic Albanian independence. Warning soundedThe Macedonian Government warned the international community at a Balkans summit ...

Nato forces face new threat in BalkansBy Christian Jennings in Pristina and Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor NATO soldiers in Kosovo were dumbfounded yesterday by the sight of hundreds of Serb protesters throwing flowers at them in the divided town of Mitrovica. It was an unexpectedly peaceful gesture in a city where the peacekeepers have been attacked by both sides as they seek to control the bitter violence between Serbs and Albanians. Yet few soldiers believe that peace is about to break out in the Balkans. Less than two years after the Nato-led Kfor troops were greeted as saviours from ...

*** 11 killed, more than 40 injured, 10 seriously ***The United Nations administration in Kosovo says 11 people have been killed in two attacks on buses carrying Serb civilians. In the first, at least seven were killed and more than 40 were injured in an attack on a convoy of buses which had just crossed the border from Serbia near the town of Podujevo, the UN said. In the second, four were killed as their bus entered the town of Strpce. Both of the buses were being accompanied by international K-For peacekeepers. UN officials said the first explosion was caused ...

The West's self-satisfaction cannot disguise the reality of the Balkans This is Serb business - and it's still unfinished No, it was not the bombing, the sanctions and the posturing of Nato politicians. It was not the "fall of the last Communist dictator". It was certainly not the British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, endlessly lecturing the Serbs on "what they should do" and "what we want to create in Yugoslavia". Nor is the Yugoslav question answered. It will begin again. Despite Nato's efforts to bomb Slobodan Milosevic from power, indeed to kill him in his house, he was toppled by ...

HE MAY have plunged Kosovo into civil war, caused the deaths of thousands of its inhabitants and triggered Nato's bombing raids, but when President Milosevic runs for re-election in less than two weeks he will be backed by many of this province's population. Serbs and Albanians may not be able to agree about much in this shattered territory, but in an extraordinary twist of fate both sides, for different motives, are hoping that the disgraced Milosevic regime will remain in power. In the shrinking Serb enclaves in Kosovo, where the communities are protected by Kfor troops against Albanian attack, election ...