April 5
- The ethnic Albanian loader in Kosovo
Ibrahim Rugova has called for an end to NATO's air strikes on Yugoslavia
and for a political solution to the conflict. He was speaking on Monday
after meeting the Russian ambassador to Yugoslavia Yuri Kotov in Kosovo's
administrative center Pristina. Last week Mr Rugova held talks in Belgrade
with Sax Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic during which he repeated
his call for a political settlement in Kosovo.
- Russia's prime-minister Yevgeny
Primakov has called the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia a tragic mistake. As
he emphasized in an UTAR-TASS interviews the air- strikes are aimed chiefly
against civil installations and other public facilities. Those actions
have sharply increased the number of refugees from Kosovo, first of all,
among the ethnic Albanians, but also among the Serbs. A continuation of
the aggression, according to Primakov, will only de-stabilize Kosovo, the
Balkan region and Europe as a whole still further. The main thing now is
to stop the NATO military action, Primakov said. Simultaneously, a process
of political settlement of the Kosovo crisis should begin. Russia, the
prime-minister said, has begun sending humanitarian aid to the Yugoslav
refugees.
- The NATO forces continue to bomb
civil targets in Yngoslavia. Last night, missiles were fired at the suburbs
of Belgrade and Pristina. In the city of Novi-Sad another, the second,
bridge across the Danube was destroyed which paralized navigation on the
largest river of Western Europe. In Kosovo, the monastery in Gracanitsa
was hit. The monastery, built in the 14th century is one of the world's
great monuments of culture protected by UNESCO. Since the beginning of
the raids, according to figures of the Russian General staff, more than
one thousand civilians have been killed, and several thousands -wounded.
In the same period, NATO has lost 10 aircraft, three helicopters and several
dozen missiles.
- The Russian defense minister Igor
Sergeev has expressed concern about the escalation of NATO's military actions
against Yugoslavia. As he said during a visit to Tadjikistan, the transfer
of American "Apache" helicopters to Albania and the concentration
of NATO ground forces in Albania and Macedonia may be part of the preparations
for a a ground operation. The United States intends to transfer to Albania
24 "Apache" anti-tank helicopters. Igor Sergeev said that Russia
will determine its further moves by decisions of its political leadership.
- The damage caused to Yugoslavia
by NATO bombings is estimated to have exceeded 100 billion dollars, the
head of Serbia's chamber of industry Raiko Unchanin said on Monday. Under
international law, Yugoslavia can demand compensation for the damage caused
by the aggression unleashed against it.
- The number of refugees fleeing
from Kosovo has Reached most 400 thousand since the beginning of NATO's
bombing campaign. Most of them are in Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and
Turkey. The facts were revealed by the department of the UN High Commissioner
for refugees.
- Russia is starting a campaign of
humanitarian aid to Yugoslav refugees. This was announced in Moscow by
Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov on Monday. Itar-Tass quotes a source in
the Russian government as saying that aid was intended for all refugees
irrespective of their nationality, religion or party membership. The first
half of relief supplies will be dispatched on Wednesday by land, and the
other half will travel by air on Thursday. The aid cargo comprises food,
warm clothes and tents. A mobile hospital with Russian staff and equipment
will also be deployed in Yugoslavia.
- The State Duma Speaker Gennady
Seleznev has discussed his trip to Belgrade beginning on Tuesday with prime-
minister Yevgeny Primakov. Seleznev said after the meeting, it was devoted,
among other things, to the issue of developing the earlier agreements between
Yevgeny Primakov and Slobodan Milosevic. According to the head of the Lower
House of Russian parliament, he intends to consider the situation in Belgrade
since the beginning of NATO bombings. If the bombings ore stopped, it would
be possible to convene a "G-8" meeting at any level, Seleznev
stressed. In Belgrade, the delegation of Russian MPs intends to meet with
president Slobodan Milosevic and with Yugoslav colleagues.
- Germany has welcomed a proposal
by Russia to convene an emergency meeting of foreign ministers of the Big
Eight to discuss the situation in Yugoslavia. The Big Eight comprises seven
most industrially developed countries and Russia. Speaking in Bonn, the
German Foreign Ministry's official spokesman Martin Erdman agreed that
it would be expedient to hold such a meeting. The proposal was made last
week by Russian President Boris Yeltsia.
- The Chairman of China's National
People's Congress Standing Committee Lee Pang has called for a peaceful
settlement in Kosovo. Speaking during an official visit to Turkey he said
a halt to NATO's air raids on Yugoslavia and a return to peace talks was
the only possible solution to the problem.
- In the small hours of Monday Yugoslavia
again came under fierce bombing. According to the TANJUG news agency, bobs
and missiles hit the residential area Rakovitsa, in South-Eastern Belgrade
and also the airport Surchin area, 15 kilometres off the centre of the
city. A powerful explosion, possibly of a cruise missile resounded 800
metres away from the main entrance to the airport building. In the area
Zemun, in the North West of the Yugoslav capital, missiles hit the the
building of the Yugoslav Air Force Command. The air raid warning sounded
on Sunday night still remains in force. Also Kosovo'a main city Pristina
came under bombing attacks. According to the TANJUG news agency, up to
20 powerful explosions went off in the city area. For the second day in
a row NATO has been carrying out barbaric raids on the city Novi Sad, where
two bridges across the Danube have been destroyed. NATO aircraft also aim
at such civilian facilities as industrial plants, bridges, electric power
stations. Being wiped out is the infrastructure that ensures the nation's
vital needs. Yugoslav sources fail to disclose the data about the civilian
loss and about the efficiency of the national antiaircraft defences.
- Since NATO launched its missile
and bomb strikes on Yugoslavia the number of refugees and persons displaced
from the Serbian province Kosovo has reached 360,000. The figure comes
in a report made public in Geneva on Sunday by the Office of the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees. The report specifies that 204.000 of them have
crossed into Albania, 115,000 - into Macedonia and 33,000 - into the Yugoslav
republic of Montenegro.
- The Yugoslav Government has urged
Kosovo Albanians not to leave Kosovo and raise their voice in protest against
NATO bombings. On Sunday the news agency TANJUG circulated an official
statement, which points out that after NATO had launched their bombardment
of of Kosovo the masses of local population began to pour into the neighbouring
Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro. The Yugoslav Government promises protection
and security to the Albania community.
- President Constantinos Stefanopulos
has demanded that NATO should at once step its military operations against
Yugoslavia. According to the ITAR-TASS news agency, ha was speaking in
the Greek town Messolonghi
- on Sunday and stressed that it
was high time the tragedy of people had been ended, hostilities - brought
to a halt and a solution to the problem of the basis of international law
- found. The Greek President noted that one should abide by the principle
of the inviolability of borders. The head of the Greek Orthodox Church,
Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Christodulos has called for an end
to war in Yugoslavia. According to him, no one has the right to kill civilians
and violate territorial integrity. On Sunday Athens and Salonika saw mass
demonstrations of protest against NATO aggression.
- Meanwhile the United States has
taken the decision to transfer 24 "Apache" helicopter gunship
and 18 multiply missile launchers to Albania to use them is their operations
against Yugoslavia. This came in a statement on Sunday by the official
spokesman for the Pentagon Kenneth Bacon. The low-flying “Apache” helicopters
are used to fire "Hellfire" high precision missiles to wipe out
enemy tanks and other hardware. While the multiple missile launchers will
be used to neutralized Yugoslav antiaircraft defences before the "Apaches”
get down to their low altitude "cleansing" operations.
- The Commander-in-Chief of the Russian
Navy Admiral Vladimir Kuroeyedov has said that the naval exercise of Russia's
Northern Fleet, just over has taken place against the background of unprecedented
data gathering activities by the US Navy. The Admiral stressed that patrol
planes operating from air bases in Norway were on permanent reconnaissance
flights over the area of the exercise in the Barents Sea. NATO, and above
all American nuclear-powered submarines, also grew very active in data
gathering. During two days of the exercise in the area of the Kola peninsula
the Northern Fleet's antisubmarine force had detected and driven beyond
the exercise area two US submarines.
- The well-known Russian music group
"DDT" performed in central Belgrade on Sunday. The group soloist
Yury Shevhuk has addressed all people of goodwill with a song-appeal entitled
"Let's Fill the Skies with Kindness". According to the ITAR-TASS
news agency, all group members are eager to stay in Yugoslavia and go on
a concert tour of the whole country.
April 4
- The Yugoslav agency TANYUG says
this morning's air raids on the electric plant in Chachak and the refinery
in Panchevo left several people dead. The Russian military estimates Yugoslavia's
current death toll in the NATO assault at over 1000. It believes most of
the casualties are civilian. The Yugoslav authorities have reported a number
of air raid deaths among the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Yugoslavia's air
defences have brought down ten NATO planes, three helicopters and dozenes
of cruise missiles since the start of the American-led aggression 11 days
ago.
- The Hamburg weekly BILD AM SONTAG
quotes a source at the NATO headquarters in Brussels as saying the Alliance's
top brass are considering plans to hit the Belgrade residence of the Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic.
- According to THE SUNDAY TIMES,
NATO, the Pentagon and the military establishment of Great Britain are
weighing proposals for 60 thousand ground troops to be moved to Kosovo
after Yugoslavia has been bombed into stone age. The force may stay for
as long as 10 years, the paper says. The deployment will be carried out
under the pretext of creating conditions for the return of ethnic Albanian
refugees.
- NATO will fly some of its bombing
missions to Belgrade from German soil, a spokesman for Germany's defence
ministry announced today. The American air field in Spangdalem, for instance,
will be in use by part of the combat fleet of high-tech F-117s. According
to the British army radio in Germany, many planes of the Royal Air Force
will bomb Belgrade after taking off from a British air base near Bruggen
.
- On Easter Sunday NATO hit a number
of rocket and bomb strikes at civilian sites all over Yugoslavia. The ITAR-TASS
news agency says that in Belgrade several rockets hit an army hospital,
a police academy and a fuel heating station. Tanks with fuel are blazing.
The station heated the homes of half a million residents of Belgrade. And
in the city of Panchevo, 20 kilometers from the capital, an oil refinery
is burning. Three cruise missiles set on fire fuel storages in the city
of Kralevo. And according to the Russian news agency Novosti - NATO planes
again attacked the " Svoboda" factory in the city of Chachak
wich produced electrical household goods. Another target of raids across
was the bridge the Danube river in the city of Novi-Sad. . The central
section of the bridge collapsed. On it were pedestrian and a passenger
car. In Novi Sad on Thursday NATO pianos destroyed an old bridge and the
wreckage blocked shipping on the Danube. The number of casualties in the
morning raid is being clarified.
- The Russian Foreign Ministry has
described NATO's air raid on the centre of Belgrade as another barbarous
act in the Balkans. A statement to that effect was circulated on Saturday.
According to the statements those who issued the criminal orders did not
bother to take into account that the rockets targeted facilities situated
in immediate proximity to a hospital complex, a day-care centre and apartment
blocks. In the face of the whole worlds the statement says NATO is encroaching
on international law and moral principles. What makes the operation look
more cynical, the statement says,is that it is carried out under the slogan
of preventing a humanitarian disaster.
- The NATO aggression against Yugoslavia
ostensibly launched to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo, has led
to exactly such a catastrophe. More than 300,000 people, nearly one third
of all those who until recently populated Serbia's troubled southern province
of Kosovo, have already been forced to leave their homes since the NATO
bombings began on this March 24th. The office of the United Nations' High
Commissioner for Refugees released the figure in Geneva on Saturday but,
instead of urging NATO to end the barbarous bombings feeding the stream
of refugees pouring out into the neighboring countries, it held the Yugoslav
authorities accountable for allegedly "organising a humanitarian crisis".
- The self-styled government recently
set up by the leader of the outlawed Kosovo Liberation Army, Hasim Tachi
is mobilising the male refugees pouring into neighboring Albania. Radio
Tirana carried this report on Saturday, Meanwhile, according the Danish
newspaper Politiken, the Kosovo separatists are coordinating their actions
with MATO in their ongoing conflict with Federal Yugoslavia. KLA guerillas
say they are providing NATO with information needed to more accurately
home the alliance's laser-guided bombs.
- On Saturday, on the eve of the
50th anniversary of NATO, an anti-NATO demonstration was dispersed in Brussels
where the alliance has its headquaters. There were protests against NATO`s
aggression in Yugoslavia and demands to end the bombing of the country.
The police used water cannon and tear gas to prevent the protests marching
towards NATO's headquaters which lately are heavily guarded. With the unsuccessful
bliz-krig and the escalation of the conflict in the Balkans, ceremonies
marking the anniversary of NATO have actually been undermined.
- Chinese premier Zhu Rongji has
demanded ending immediately the bombing of Yugoslavia and warned that NATO's
military interference in the affairs of a sovereign country could lead
to a new world war. In an interview for the American magazine " Giobe
and Mail" the premier said the use of military force against Yugoslavia,
in by-passing of the United Nations sets a very dangerous precedent of
arbitrary practices in world affairs and that could have unpredictable
aftermaths.
- The four main points of the common
stand of the foreign ministers of five Western countries Great Britain,
Germany, Italy, the United States and Prance include- the return of all
refugees, the stationing of international forces of containment, the withdrawal
of Serbian army and policy units and settling the political status of Kosovo
on the basis of the agreements prepared in Rambouillet. The stand was worked
out by the five countries on the eve of the Catholic Easter, and of the
talks with the participation of Russia at meeting of the Contact group
for Kosovo and a meeting of the political directors of the Foreign Ministries
of the G-8 countries. It is being convened at the proposal of Russia's
president Boris Yelzin. The provisions which will be discussed with representatives
of Russia and other countries in the middle of next week were made public
by the press service of Italy's foreign ministry on Saturday night.
- The American aircraft carrier "
Theodore Roosevelt" with 50 warplanes on board is heading to the Adriatic
to take part in NATO's military operation against Yugoslavia. Newsmen were
told that on Saturday by an official representative of the Pentagon Kennet
Beacon. He said defence secretary Willian Cohen had approved the decision
to have the group of naval ships led by the aircraft carrier change and
take part in the operation of the allied forces in the European theater
of hostilities. Earlier the ships were sailing to the Persian Golf however,
as was clear from what Beacon said- those plans were urgently changed.
- Also on Saturday the Russian reconnaissance
ship Liman passed through Turkey's strategic Bosphorous and Dardanelles
straits and into the Mediterranean Sea. The craft has been sent out to
keep the Russian leaders informed about the real situation now existing
in Yugoslavia. According to the Russian Defence Ministry, seven more warships
from the Black Sea Fleet are standing by ready to move into the conflict
zone whenever necessary.
- The Pentagon is following with
much concern the advance of the Russian electronic reconnaissance naval
" Liman" in the direction of the Adriatic. American military
fear that among other things, the ship could provide the Serbs with important
information about the stationing of United States armaments. An official
representative of the Pentagon Kennot Beacon said the American side will
naturally be worried if the passing on of information begins actively.
As Russia's defence minister lgor Sergeev said earlier, the task of the
Russian ship is to asses more concretely the situation in the region, to
analyse it and draw corresponding conclusions.
|
