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March 31
- NATO's leadership should not count
on resuming cooperation with Russia if it continues to follow the course
of extending the military bloc eastwards. This was stated by general Leonid
Ivashov, head of the department for international contacts of Russia's
Defence Ministry, on Thursday after NATO's secretary general George Robertson
in the course of his visit to Latvia supported the wish of the country's
authorities to join the bloc. Russia categorically opposes its extension,
specially at the expense of the former Soviet republics. Russia broke off
relations with NATO last year because of the bloc's military aggression
against Yugoslavia.
- An international public tribunal
ended its deliberations in Belgrade on Thursday handing down "guilty"
verdicts against the top leaders of the United States, Britain, Germany
and France and also the former NATO Secretary General Xavier Solana for
ordering last year's military aggression against Yugoslavia. War crime
charges were also brought against US, British, German and French Foreign
and Defense Ministers and the tribunal, made up of representatives of 9
countries, including, those how Russia, Ukraine, the US and Germany, also
demanded full compensation for the damage inflicted during the campaign.
March 30
- United Nations human rights emissary
Jrzy Dienstbir feels the NATO bombing raids on Yugoslavia failed to settle
one single problem, in Kosovo. Last year's bombing raids made innocent
people suffer and did damage to the economy of the Balkan Peninsula. Dienstbir
sees the results of the bombing raids as catastrophic.
- United Nations emissary in Kosovo
Bernard Coushner feels municipal elections must be held in Kosovo this
autumn even if many non-Albanian residents of that province fail to cast
ballots. More than 200,000 people have fled Kosovo. If they fail to go
to the polls, the elections will benefit the Albanian separatists and those
who stood behind the ethnic cleansing operations.
- The deputy chairman of, the Duma
defense committee Aleksei Arbatov sees the Russian military doctrine as
a clear-cut attempt to counter the NATO efforts to build a unipolar world.
The Russian military doctrine provides, for example, Arbatov has told media
people in Moscow, for a counterweight to the threat of new developments
on the order of the Balkan, which is especially important in the wake of
the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia.
March 29
- The Security Council is sending
its mission to Kosovo to examine the implementation of the United Nations
resolution on Kosovo. Russia insisted on sending the mission because of
the continuing failure of the province's international administration to
carry out the resolution that provides for the disarmament of the separatist
Kosovo Liberation Army, demands security to all ethnic groups living in
the province and denounce any attempts to tear Kosovo away from Serbia.
- Russia is against separating Kosovo
from Yugoslavia. This has been stated by a representative of Russia's foreign
ministry in the Balkans Vladimir Chizhov. He attended the meeting of the
contact group in Paris on Tuesday. The group met for the first time after
NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia last spring. At the meeting the Russian
representative mentioned facts when men and women of non-Albanian nationality
were forcibly driven out of Kosovo and also the provocation staged by the
Albanian extremists in three communities in Southern Serbia. An attempt
is clearly made there to repeat the Kosovo scenario with whipping up tension
and provoking the Serbian authorities to take reciprocal action, said the
Russian delegate. Member of the contact group are Russia, the United States,
Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy.
March 28
- In the Greek seaport of Salonika
in the night from Monday, March 27, to Tuesday, March 26 the manifestants
threw stones at NATO's column that was on its way to Kosovo in order to
take part in the military exercises there. According to the Greek authorities,
nearly one hundred manifestants have taken part in the night action in
Salonika. They delayed the departure of the column, including 65 trucks,
for nearly 3 hours. Last year during NATO's bombardment of Yugoslavia anti-NATO
demonstrations were organized in Greece every day. And now many people
in Greece believe that NATO's military exercises in Kosovo may destabilize
the situation in the Balkan Region, which is difficult enough at the moment.
- The colonel of the French police
Jean-Michel Mechen has been taken under investigation on charges of giving
newsmen secret documents of the KFOR - multinational forces in Kosovo.
In the period between last July and this February he served as a legal
advisor in the French military office in Kosovo. The investigators say
that Mr. Mechen has given to the French journalists some of the KFOR documents,
confirming that the French officers were dissatisfied with the work of
the head of the U. N. administration in Kosovo Bernard Coushner. The military
blamed Mr. Coushner for his siding with the Albanian community, regardless
of the interests of the Kosovo Serbs.
- In Paris the participants in a
session of the Contact Group on former Yugoslavia today discuss the problems
of the peace process in the Serbian region of Kosovo. High on the agenda
the municipal elections in Kosovo scheduled for this autumn. Russia, the
United States, Great Britain, France and Italy are presented at the session
by political directors of their foreign ministries. The high-ranking diplomats
will also have to decide on whether conditions have been created for the
meeting of the six countries' foreign ministers since there still exist
differences of opinion on the would-be status of Kosovo. The work of the
Contact Group was broken off last year because of the NATO aggression against
Yugoslavia and has been resumed at Russia's initiative with the aim to
step up peace process in Kosovo.
March 27
- Earlier today the French soldiers,
making part of the international contingent of the KEOR force blocked one
part of the city of Mitrovitza and started searching for illegal arms,
as a source in the peace-keeping circles said. The blocked district is
the Serb-populated area. The day before a bomb was exploded there. The
most numerous Kosovo Serb community is living in Mitrovitza now. Because
of many acts of terror on the part of the Albanian separatists hundreds
of thousands of Serbs had to leave Kosovo.
March 26
- The Serb leader in the ethnically
divided town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo has asked the NATO-led Kosovo
Force to deploy more troops to protect members of his beleaguered community
from ethnic Albanian hoodlums, who continue to attack Serbs. Mr Oliver
Ivanovic says about a dozen people have died and dozens more have received
injuries in the latest wave of unrest. The clashes started of the 2nd of
February when ethnic Albanian extremists fired rocket-propelled grenades
at a bus carrying Serbs. Two of the passengers died in the attack.
March 25
- Russia sees it as "inexpedient"
to withdraw its peacekeeping contingent from the Serbian province Kosovo.
This came in a statement on Friday by one of the top officials of the Russian
Defence Ministry General Leonid Ivashov. The General described as an outright
failure the NATO peacekeeping operation in the region because of no action
on the United Nations Security Council resolution providing for unconditional
preserving Kosovo as part of Yugoslavia and disarming the terrorist "Kosovo
Liberation Army". According to the Russian General, ethnic cleansing
are still continuing is Kosovo, and large-scale provocations against Serbia
are a possibility. Allowing for this, he added, Russia is not going to
hand over to NATO the strategically important air field in Pristina, Kosovo's
administrative centre, where the United States is building Europe's largest
military base.
- The Yugoslav ambassador to Moscow
Borislav Milosevic has called for strict compliance with the UN Security
Council's resolution on Kosovo. In an interview on Friday in connection
with the anniversary of NATO's barbaric air bombing campaign against Yugoslavia,
Mr Milosevic told the Voice of Russia that the aggression had dealt a severe
blow on the whole system of international relations created after World
War II. He said all the principles fixed in the UN Charter and other international
agreements, including the Helsinki Final Act had been grossly violated.
NATO's aggression, he added, opened another stage in the alliance's expansion
eastward. It created a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo when 360 thousand
non-Albanians, most of them Serbs, fled the province fearing massacres
by Albanian militants perpetrated with the connivance of the KFOR and the
UN mission in Kosovo.
March 24
- A senior officer of the Russian
Ministry of Defense Leonid Ivashow is calling for the immediate involvement
of Belgrade in what he describes as all the processes of the political
settlement of the Kosovo problem. In Ivashov's view, Belgrade should be
playing a role in municipal government and the spread of the Yugoslav legislation,
including the Yugoslav fundamental law, to Kosovo. Ivashov said Friday
that representatives of the Yugoslav government should sit on the KFOR
structures and that part of the Serbian security forces and Serbian army
contingent in Kosovo should be returned to that province.
- Today, March 24th, is one year
since NATO launched its aggressive war against Yugoslavia. Hundreds died
and thousands were injured in the war, and both military and civilian facilities
were continuously bombed during the 78 days of NATO attacks. NATO aircraft
destroyed bridges across the Danube, bombed out industrial and chemical
production facilities. Damage done to the environment can not be repaired.
NATO planes used both conventional bombs and more powerful depleted uranium
ones. Belgrade estimates the damage at 100 billion dollars. As a result
of the aggression Albanian separatists actually came to power in Kosovo,
and 350,000 non-Albanians, basically Serbs, fled the province. ... In an
interview for the Moscow-based newspaper Segodnya, the ambassador of Yugoslavia
to Russia Borislav Milosevic, stressed that NATO's campaign carried out
under the pretext of "humanitarian interference" in Kosovo, was
in reality prompted by the bloc's desire to change the world order which
developed after world war two. A statement made by the parliamentary assembly
of Russia and Belorussia on the occasion of the anniversary of NATO's aggression
against Yugoslavia stressed that the "peace-keeping mission"
imposed on Kosovo had in reality led to growing tension in the province.
- NATO's socalled peacekeeping efforts
in Kosovo are unsuccessful. This was actually admitted by the American
State Department. A representative of the department James Rubin said expectations
of a speedy pacification in Kosovo proved to be an illusion.
- In Belgrade, on Thursday, the President
of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic placed a wreath at the grave of the Unknown
Soldier in memory of the victims of NATO's aggression. The same day there
were the first protest demonstrations against last year's aggression and
new threats on the part of NATO. In the capital of Montenegro - Podgoritsa
- one of the placards carried by the demonstrators read "Yankees,
you conquered the Indians, but you won't conquer the Serbs". In Athens,
the participants of a many thousand strong demonstration in front of the
US embassy chanted slogans condemning NATO and burnt an American flag.
Some 500 people held an anti-NATO meeting in Prague. In Moscow today there
will be protest actions and also various cultural and religious events
in connection with the anniversary of NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia.
March 23
- The high-ranking official of the
Russian Defence Ministry General Leonid Ivashov has said that the situation
in Kosovo tends to grow ever more acute and may erupt in a large-scale
armed conflict. According to him, the KFOR international force may become
involved in the conflict given the continuing increase in tension in Kosovo.
Yet, General Ivashov believes it is still real to prevent the situation
from sliding to a large-scale conflict around Kosovo. To prevent a conflict,
he says, the Kosovo Albanian leaders that have clearly gone too far should
be brought to reason.
- The NATO war against Yugoslavia,
- one year old on Friday the 24th, was planned and provoked by Albanian
extremists from the so-called "Kosovo Liberation Army". This
has come in a statement by the Director of the Luebeck-based German Institute
for Security in Peace and Politics Dieter Lutz. He's certain that the West
in its anti-Belgrade struggle should not have conspired with murderers,
kidnappers and drug traffickers.
- The NATO leaders have admitted
to using depleted uranium shells in the course of last year's war against
Yugoslavia. The NATO Secretary-General George Robertson has finally bowed
to continual pressure by international ecological organisations and has
told to the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan that during air
raids on Yugoslavia NATO aircraft fired 31000 similar shells, with the
overall mass of depleted uranium in them making up 10000 tonnes. Ecologists
feel that this kind of weapon is a threat to both the environment and people.
- The Russian Foreign Minister Igor
Ivanov believes that NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia drove the Kosovo
crisis into a deadlock. The assessment came in an article to be published
by the Moscow-based Nezavisimaya Gazeta on Thursday. Analyzing the consequences
of last year's campaign Mr. lvanov comes to the conclusion that the operation
dealt a serious blow against the UN Charter, the fundamental principles
of law and order and international stability. The Russian Foreign Minister
expressed deep concern over the situation in Kosovo and described the earliest
resumption of talks to determine the status of Kosovo with the participation
of Belgrade as one of the main priorities.
- United Nations experts are predicting
a possible spread of leukemia in those parts of Yugoslavia that came under
NATO bombing raids, last year. Pace Rinni of the United Nations Balkan
team says more than 30,000 shells charged with depleted uranium hit the
Serbian province of Kosovo last March through June.
March 22
- KFOR forces in Kosovska-Mitrovica
have begun to create so-called ethnically mixed areas. The Ibar River divides
the city into the Serb and Albanian parts. Serbs have voiced opposition
to the plans for fear of more provocations on the part of Albanian extremists.
According to leaders of the Serb community, that will result in Serbs fleeing
Mitrovica, now home to about 15 thousand Serbs and 100 thousand Albanians.
- NATO has admitted that 31 thousand
pieces of ammunition with low enriched uranium were used in the last year's
compaign against Yugoslavia. This was announced in Geneva by Pakka Haavisto,
head of the UN special group for the environment in the Balkans. He said
NATO continues to keep secret exact information about the use of radioactive
shells and bombs in raids on Yugoslavia. He accused NATO of hampering his
group when looking for sections here such bombs were dropped and demanded
full information on the use of uranium bombs in Yugoslavia. Pakka Haavisto
said there is a danger of radioactive contamination to the population in
all the Balkan countries and also to KFOR and missions helping Yugoslavia.
March 21
- An ethnic cleansing has been going
on in Kosovo and the international community is blamed for this. The United
Nations envoy for former Yugoslavia lrzhi Dinstbir said this in Belgrade
on Monday. He added that after the Yugoslav forces and Serbian police were
withdrawn, the Kosovo Liberation army had carried out an ethnic cleansing
against the non-Albanian population. He noted that Kosovo has become a
paradise for criminals and Mafia organizations since the international
forces have failed to restore law and order in the province.
March 20
- Russia's foreign minister Igor
Ivanov has called for the start of talks on Kosovo's status, with Yugoslavia's
territorial integrity and sovereignty remaining intact. In a TV interview
on Monday the minister also said that it is necessary, on the one hand,
to create conditions, enabling the refugees, numbering from 250000 to 300000,
return home and on the other, to block Kosovo's borders with Albania and
Macedonia, from where both the criminals and also arms and drugs arrive
in Kosovo. In another interview Igor Ivanov confirmed that Russia was ready
to start working in close cooperation with NATO for the maintenance of
European security, at the same time, he criticized NATO's expansion Eastward.
- When the Russian and Greek Foreign
Ministers Igor Ivanov and Georgios Papandreu meet in Moscow later today
they will take up the situation in the Balkans, and first of all, in Kosovo.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the two are also expected to
exchange views on topical bilateral and world politics issues. Papandreu
arrived in Moscow on Sunday on a two-day working visit. During an informal
meeting in the Greek embassy on Sunday Igor Ivanov described the situation
in Kosovo as "extremely involved" and urged the international
community to jointly search for ways to bring it back to normal.
- The United Nations special representatives
is charge of human rights in former Yugoslavia Irji Dienstbier has described
the United Nations and KFOR missions in Kosovo as a failure. Speaking in
an interview with the France Presse news agency he said the basic problem
was the reluctance to admit that the international mission to Kosovo should
seek to carry out the UN resolution, which provides for preserving Kosovo
as part of Yugoslavia. Mr. Dienstbier feels that the former fighters of
the "Kosovo Liberation Army" and members of Albanian mafia structures
have a negative influence on the situation in Kosovo.
March 18
- The Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe has said the illegal exercise of police functions
in Kosovo has led to serious violations of human rights. The functions,
the OSCE said in its report, had mainly been assumed by Albanian extremists,
which increased the number of cases of murder, extortion, torture and illicit
detention. The responsibility for that rests with former militants of the
Kosovo Liberation Army which comprises 18 thousand people and which was
officially dissolved in September last year under pressure from the international
community. Part of the militants who are ethnic Albanians joined the Kosovo
police force which is operating in the province along with the UN police
force and the KFOR. Others joined the Kosovo protection corps, a sort of
national guard, the report says. The OSCE called for order in carrying
out police functions in Kosovo to put an end to the arbitrariness mainly
against the province's non-Albanian population.
March 17
- What happened in Kosovo is called
ethnic genocide, the deputy chairman of the Duma foreign affairs committee
Alexander Shabanov has told mass media, and the United Nations did nothing
to stop it. Only 200 ethnic Serbs stayed to live in Pristina whose Serb
population was put, before the war, at 40,000. A total of 1 million people
have either fled their home places or were, according to the Russian lawmakers,
shipped out of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
- Yugoslavia has stressed as a crude
violation of the Deyton agreements the proclamation of the Serbian city
of Bricsko in the Serbian part of the republic of Bosnia, as a special
region under central government rule. This step taken at the initiative
of Western representative in Bosnia placed the city under the rule of the
Moslem community which actually represents this "central governments
rule" in the former Yugoslav republic.
March 16
- German police officers serving
with the NATO-led international peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo have
accused the region's chief UN administrator Bernard Coushner of hindering
an ongoing probe into war crimes allegedly committed by members of the
formally disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army. Investigators have proof of
KLA fighters forcibly evicting non-Albanian Kosovans from their homes and
extorting money from local businessmen. When the international police officers
were just about to crack down on the criminals' Mr. Coushner prevented
them from going ahead and had the criminal case effectively closed.
- The Russia-NATO Council discussed
Wednesday evening the Yugoslav developments. It considered moves by the
international peacekeeping contingent, and confirmed its determination
to protect the minority right in Kosovo. The Russia-NATO Council also considered
the NATO strategies, Russia's new concept of national security, arms control
and moves to event the spread of mass destruction weapons.
- The Washington Post has quoted
the United Nations mission in Kosovo as saying the Kosovo Protection Corps
harasses, tortures and kills ethnic Serbs. The UN mission in Kosovo drew
up a report that accuses the Kosovo Protection Corps of harassing and killing
ethnic Serbs in a bid to drive the Serbs out of their home province. Ethnic
Albanians are even threatening member of the international police force
who want to restore order in Kosovo. The Kosovo Protection Corps has come
to replace the illegally-formed all-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army.
March 15
- 9 Serbs were wounded on Wednesday
when French soldiers of the KFOR international contingent used tear gas
against a group of Serbs who wanted to return to their homes in the city
of Kosovska-Mitrovitsa. On Tuesday the soldiers put up a cordon on the
bridge connecting the Serb and Albanian areas of the divided city and did
not let anyone through. Inter-ethnic clashes in the city have been going
on since February 2nd after Albanians fired rocket-propelled grenades at
a bus carrying Serbs killing two. About ten people have been killed and
many others wounded in the city since then.
March 14
- Russia has asked its partners in
the Group of Eight to help it prevent a new war around Kosovo. In a letter
to his colleagues from the G8 countries Russia's foreign minister Igor
lvanov warned that a critical situation had arisen in Serbia's south. The
point is that on the administrative border of Kosovo and Serbia-Albanian
extremists continue their provocation against the local Serbs and security
forces. The Albanians make up the majority in the Preshevo, Buyanovats
and Medvedja communities in Serbia's south. Now the extremist Albanian
organizations are pursuing an object to cut these communities from Serbia.
- Today the UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan is holding talks in London with the British Prime Minister Tony
Blair and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. They will focus on the problem
dealing with the restoration of order in Kosovo. The UN Secretary-General
and the British top officials are concerned over clashes between Albanians
and Serbs and also by the inability of the KFOR force to stabilize the
situation in Kosovo. Besides Mr. Annan is going to raise in London the
issue concerning the easing of sanctions against Iraq.
March 13
- The destabilization of the situation
in Serbia's south may provoke another war in the Balkans. This is what
the U. N. commissioner for human rights in former Yugoslavia Jiri Dinstbir,
who continues his many-day tour of Yugoslavia, said some time ago. Meeting
with the mayor of the city of Nis Zoran Zivkovic, he said that the world
community had failed to ensure peaceful life in many-ethnic Kosovo. In
his opinion, a different approach is necessary for the settlement of the
Kosovo problem. He was hopeful that the world community would change its
policy towards the Serb Kosovo Province and prevent the spread of the Kosovo
crisis outside the province to Serbia.
- Washington is deeply disappointed
with the action by the Kosovo Albanian leaders who have failed to kerb
the extremists. This came in a statement in Pristina on Sunday by the US
State Department press secretary James Rubin as he addressed America's
main allies in the province. In the course of his working visit to Kosovo
Mr. Rubin met Ibrahim Rugova, Hashim Thaqi and other Albanian leaders to
discuss the provocations in Southern Serbia, fraught with more armed clashes
and another exodus of people. Later this Monday the American official is
to meet Kosovo's Serb religious leader Artemiy and other Serbian leaders
of the province.
March 10
- Speaking live in Voice of Russia's
program "Vis-a-vis with the world" about the situation in the
Serbian province of Kosovo Leonid Ivashov, chief of the Defence ministry's
department for international military cooperation, said it is aggravating
and KFOR fails to carry out the tasks assigned to it. The head of the UN
mission Bernard Coushner takes decision that lead Kosovo out of the economic,
legal, constitutional and political sphere of Yugoslavia, said Leonid Ivashov.
March 9
- Belgrade was in the know of the
secret details of NATO's military operation against Yugoslavia which enabled
it to minimize its losses from nearly four months of allied bombings. According
to The Guardian newspaper citing sources in the Pentagon, the Yugoslav
military were getting daily information from their source within NATO where
exactly the allied bombs and rockets were going to land next. The British
media says that about 600 people had access to top-secret flight assignments
used by NATO pilots. The NATO leadership denies any security leaks during
their last year's aggression against Yugoslavia.
- The Serb community of Kosovo insists
on the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. Serb leader Momchilo Traikovic
and Father Artemie of the Serbian Orthodox Church on Wednesday paid a short
visit to Sofia. They were invited there by the Bulgarian government. Traikovic
said only the Albanian community of Kosovo had been set free by the West.
The other ethnic communities of Kosovo were still suffering. The Serbs
were deprived, he said, of the basic human rights - the rights to life,
the right to work and to travel. Father Artemie demanded guarantees for
the repatriation to Kosovo of the 250,000 Serb refugees.
March 8
- Russia's foreign minister Igor
Ivanov has called for adopting emergency measures against Albanian extremists
and separatists in Kosovo and also for a halt to ethnic clashes there.
Meeting in Moscow with the U. N. envoy in the Balkans Karl Bildt, the minister
said that after the deployment in Kosovo of the international forces, whose
backbone is made up of the NATO contingents, murders, kidnappings, intimidation
of the Kosovo Serbs and new acts of arson continued there. On Tuesday,
March 7th, the local Albanians again attacked the Serbs in Kosovska-Mitrovica.
At least 40 people were wounded, including 20 Serbs and 14 French soldiers,
who found themselves involved in the clashes.
March 7
- Russia has demanded urgent action
to thwart ongoing attempts to break Kosovo away from the rest of Federal
Yugoslavia. In an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency on Monday,
Russia's UN Ambassador Sergei Lavrov said the international community was
ignoring the provisions of a pertinent Security Council resolution guaranteeing
the territorial inviolability of Federal Yugoslavia and deplored their
failure to insure the return to Kosovo of limited Yugoslav army and police
contingents. Mr.Ivanov said Russia was seriously alarmed by the ethnic
Albanians' claims to parts of southern Serbia and urged the heads of UN
and KFOR missions to better coordinate their work with Belgrade.
March 6
- Later this Monday Russia will demand
that the United Nations Security Council should act with greater resolve
to guarantee Kosovo ethnic minorities' security and prevent Albanian extremists
from making attacks on them. The Russian diplomatic mission at the United
Nations has told this to the RIA-Novosti news agency. At the Council meeting
Russia is going to sternly deal with the UN mission head Bernard Couchner,
who is going to report to the Council members about the situation in Kosovo,
since he is the person who's largely responsible for the developments in
the Serbian province. A Russian serviceman of the KFOR international force
was killed in Kosovo several days ago, which once again proves the fact
that little, if anything, has-been done to demilitarize the Albanian "Kosovo
Liberation Army". Russia also has apprehensions that instability in
Kosovo may spread beyond the province, - to the neighboring areas of Southern
Serbia, which extremist Albanian leaders seek to wrest from under Belgrade's
control.
March 5
- Armed clashes have taken place
between Albanian extremists and Serbian police in the village of Dobrocin
in the buffer zone near the administrative border of Serbia and Kosovo.
This has been confirmed by an official of the press-service of international
peacekeepers in Pristina. He emphasized that Serbian police had the right
to protect the population from extremists in the demilitarized zone of
5 kilometers inside Serbia.
March 4
- The situation in Kosovo is anything
but that of accord and reconciliation. The conclusion is made in a report
by the UN Secretary-General about the situation, in the Serbian province,
a report that was circulated at the United Nations headquarters on Friday.
The report stresses that the level of violence in Kosovo, above all with
regard to ethnic minorities, remains unacceptably high. On Thursday a Russian
serviceman of the KFOR international force died of wounds in hospital after
he had been attacked in the centre of the town Srbica. The area was believed
to be the heart of the operations by the terrorist "Kosovo Liberation
Army", which has been defying the UN resolutions and has to this day
failed to lay down arms.
March 3
- Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov
and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright have met in Lisbon to discuss
a variety of international problems, including the Balkan. Ivanov voiced
concern over the mounting tension in Kosovo and said the unswerving realization
of United Nations Security Council resolution 1244 provided the only way
to settle the Kosovo problem. Moscow puts the blame for the tension in
Kosovo on the separatist oriented Albanians.
- The commander of the Russian airborne
troops General Georgi Shpak has told the national news agency Novosti that
a platoon of Russian paratroopers has been detailed to reinforce the French
peacekeepers in the northern section of Kosovo. The situation in that section
has been lately described as very complicated.
- Russia insists on full and strict
compliance with the resolution of the UN Security Council on keeping Kosovo
as part of Yugoslavia and respecting its territorial integrity. That was
stated by Russians foreign minister Igor Ivanov in Lisbon on Thursday after
holding talks with the leadership of the European Union where much attention
was given to the Kosovo problem. Russians foreign minister also said that
at the meeting of the UN Security Council next Monday Moscow will raise
the question of the resolution being constantly neglected.
March 2
- The Russian soldier serving with
KFOR peacekeeping troops in Kosovo died in hospital on Thursday of the
wounds in the chest he suffered on Tuesday in the northern town of Srbica
long viewed as a hotbed of KLA-sponsored terrorism in the region. The NATO-led
international peacekeepers have ignored repeated UN calls to disarm the
Kosovo Liberation Army whose members have been allowed to retain their
extensive arsenals. Russia too have consistently been demanding from the
UN Security Council to get tougher on the terrorists. On Wednesday Federal
Yugoslavia protested to the United Nations over the recent killings of
a Serb doctor in Kosovo and a Serb police officer along the region's border
with Serbia.
- The United Nations and Serbian
authorities for the affairs of the refugees have launched a joint effort
to register all the people who have fled Kosovo and are now living in other
parts of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav news agency TANYUG said Wednesday evening
more than 300,000 ethnic Serbs and representatives of other ethnic communities
have been forced to leave Kosovo since the end of the NATO bombings of
that province and the deployment there of the KFOR contingent.
March 1
- A Russian soldier of the KFOR international
force in Kosovo received a bullet wound in the chest as he was attacked
by unidentified gunmen in the town of Srbitsa, from where members of the
separatist Kosovo Liberation Army carried out their terrorist acts. In
defiance to the UN Security Council resolution NATO's contingents in the
province have not disarmed the army. Earlier Albanian militants wounded
another Russian soldier as he was accompanying Serb children to school.
Moscow has repeatedly called on the Security Council to take measures to
guarantee compliance with its resolution on Kosovo and establish order
and security in the province.
- The UN Security Council's resolution
on Kosovo isn't being carried out to the full extent, Russia's foreign
minister Igor Ivanov said that on Tuesday at the meeting in Moscow with
the head of the OSCE mission in Kosovo Daan Everton. Igor Ivanov expressed
concern over continuing violence against the Serbian population and with
the actions of the Albanian separatists remaining unpunished.
- After international forces were
deployed in Kosovo - thousands of Albanians from the southern regions of
Serbia settled down there. This was stated of the UN High commissioner
for refugees in charge of Kosovo Paula Gedini. As a result of threats and
terrorist acts against the Serbs the regions themselves are becoming "purely
Albanian". And in the so called buffer zone around Kosovo, Albanian
bandit groups are being formed. They stage provocation against the Serbian
population and attack police posts.
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