6/13/99 Itar-Tass "....Russia proceeds from a principle of no direct subordination to NATO in the deployment of its contingent in Kosovo, First Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Avdeyev said in the RTR Zerkalo television program on Sunday. "The most complicated diplomatic work is behind a possible agreement to deploy the Russian contingent," he noted. It is necessary to achieve at the diplomatic level worthy conditions for the Russian contingent in Kosovo. "The worthy conditions are not only the maintenance but also the political significance that must be attached to the introduction of our troops," he said....."

Xinhua News Agency 6/13/99 "....Russia on Sunday accused NATO of not observing the provisions of the UN Security Council resolution on Kosovo or the military technical agreements with the Yugoslav military leadership. A high-ranking Defense Ministry official said NATO does not observe the provision "on the impermissibility of security vacuum and the disarmament of the Kosovo Liberation Army," the Interfax news agency reported. The ministry believes that such a violation of obligations "is creating an explosive situation and threatening the lives of Russian troops that entered Pristina." ..."

6/13/99 AFP "...Three Serb soldiers were killed Sunday in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren by German members of the Kosovo peacekeeping force in an exchange of gunfire, witnesses told AFP...."

Associated Press 6/13/99 "....German troops came under heavy sniper fire Sunday in this southern Kosovo city and killed at least one armed man and wounded another in the firefight. A German soldier suffered an arm wound. Other German peacekeepers had been greeted earlier by cheering ethnic Albanians when they entered Prizren, Kosovo's second-largest city, in Germany's first major military deployment on foreign soil since World War II. In the shooting incident, a German convoy was moving down a road along the Bistrica River near the main square when sniper fire crackled from a hill and houses. German soldiers took cover and began shooting back. The Germans' heavy fire blasted a yellow Lada car with two occupants. One was slumped dead over the steering wheel and the other was badly wounded and screaming for help before he was evacuated by German medics...."

6/13/99 UPI "...At least three people have died in connection with the NATO peacekeeping operation in Kosovo as the alliance continued to bolster its forces. A Serb policeman, a German journalist and a Yugoslav civilian were all shot to death in separate incidents in the province, where ethnic Albanians are welcoming the arrival of the KFOR military operation...."

6/13/99 AFP "...German forces on Sunday entered Kosovo from Albania, at times literally pushing the Yugoslav army before them as Serb civilians in packed cars squeezed in between light and armored vehicles from both sides..."

UPI 6/13/99 "...Two senior British ministers have voiced strong opposition to a partition of Kosovo amid the standoff over Russia's peacekeeping role in the Yugoslav province. "We are having discussions with the Russians on their aspirations but there is not going to be any partition," Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told GMTV today. "We are not going to tolerate an East German solution,"..."

ITAR-TASS 6/12/99 Freeper jimbo123 "....Russian general Viktor Zavarzin and KFOR operation commander general Mike Jackson met late on Saturday to discuss interaction in the peacekeeping opeartion in Kosovo. They discussed variants of joint use of Slatina airport which is under control of Russian troops now, but in prospect can be used for common purposes of stabilisation, he noted...."

stratfor.com 6/12/99 "...2225 GMT, 990612 - A meeting between NATO commander Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson and Russian Col. Gen. Viktor Zavarzin has resulted in the partitioning of the Pristina airport. After emerging from the meeting, officials announced they had reached a compromise. The agreement leaves control of the southern portion of the airport to British troops, while Russian forces will occupy the rest...."

Reuters 612/99 Freeper jimbo123 "...NATO troops massed outside the Kosovo capital Saturday night as their commanders haggled with the Russians over control of Pristina airport where the alliance plans to set up its headquarters. The main NATO column made up of British troops stretched for miles as it trundled through tunnels and over bridges on the main southern highway cutting through the mountainous Kosovo countryside to Pristina. The column drew to a halt for the night just six miles (10 km) outside of Pristina to await further orders...."

Electronic Telegraph (U.K.) 6/13/99 Andrew Gilligan "...THE horrors awaiting Nato troops in the next few days are "far greater than anyone thinks", according to Britain's most senior official in charge of war crimes. David Gowan, who has access to some of the latest surveillance and intelligence information, said: "The scale of the criminality is enormous. The number of people who have been murdered is greater than we think by far. It is going to be chilling." Mr Gowan, Kosovo war crimes co-ordinator at the Foreign Office, will reach Pristina as early as tomorrow to lead Britain's war crimes effort. The Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, has said catching war criminals will have the highest priority....The worst criminality is believed to have taken place in south-west Kosovo, near the Albanian border, with the northern region the least affected. Mr Blewitt said that there was "no evidence" so far of organised concentration camps inside Kosovo, with most murder victims apparently killed in or near their home villages...."

Reuters 6/12/99 via NewsEdge Corporation "...The FBI is sending teams of forensic experts to Kosovo to examine sites of suspected massacres for evidence of war crimes, Federal Bureau of Investigation director Louis J. Freeh said Saturday. ``The FBI will use its entire range of resources to gather any evidence of atrocities in Kosovo and present any such findings to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICT)'' Freeh said in statement. The first contingent of 25 FBI personnel was scheduled to fly to Europe Saturday and will begin to identify possible massacre sites in Kosovo once those sites can be secured by NATO forces, Freeh said....."

AP via Newsday 6/1/2/99 Candice Hughes "...Streaming into Kosovo's capital, almost unopposed by retreating Serbs, NATO peacekeepers came face-to-face Saturday with the Russian troops who beat them to the city. A U.S. official said the meeting heralded ``a coordinated occupation,'' but some reports described tense moments between the NATO and Russian forces...."

Strator.com 6/14/99 "...0045 GMT, 990614 - Yugoslavia's Prime Minister announced that the state of war in Yugoslavia would not be lifted until after the situation in Kosovo has been stabilized. Momir Bulatovic said that "Security structures as provided for by the UN Security Council resolution must be in place and security must be guaranteed for all citizens." He also said that Yugoslavia had accepted a compromise and had not surrendered: "The aggressors, too, accepted compromises and the UN Security Council resolution protects the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and rules out any possible independence of Kosovo." ...."

STRATFOR.COM 6/13/99 "...0410 GMT, 990614 - British Defense Secretary George Robertson has threatened Russia with financial retaliation if it did not back down on Kosovo. Robertson said on the BBC that ``A continued disunity...on display in Moscow...would hardly encourage the financial community next week when they are looking to financially help Russia'' at the G8 meeting...."

Stratfor.com 6/13/99 "...2225 GMT, 990613 - According to a source outside of the NATO air base at Aviano, NATO aircraft sortied on Sunday, June 13, between 6:45 pm and 8:30 pm local time. This included 2 E-6 Prowlers, 6 F-16s, 2 F-18s, loaded with full ordinance packs. Three A-10s also took off. The planes returned without ordinance. One F-15 appeared to have been damaged and was approached by fire and ambulance immediately upon landing. The observer reported extremely heavy security, in excess of any seen during the war itself. We cannot confirm or deny this report but are passing it on as it is sufficiently detailed to be credible and will provide NATO spokesmen an opportunity to confirm or deny the report. It seems to indicate that combat sorties have resumed or that intense training is going on during a period one would expect to be devoted to R&R...."

Drudge 6/2/99 XINHUA "...The supreme commander of NATO, Wesley Clark, said Wednesday in the Macedonian capital of Skopje that NATO troops will enter Kosovo in just a few days. He made the remark after meeting with Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov. Clark said that he discussed with Gligorov the issue of increasing NATO troops in the country and the situation in Kosovo...."

REUTERS FoxNews 6/2/99 "...Kosovo rebels engaged in a major offensive have received their first known NATO air support in an unsuccessful bid to seize Serbian territory along the Albanian border, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Quoting unidentified U.S. intelligence and military officials, the newspaper said Operation Arrow, involving up to 4,000 Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas, was launched last week. ..... A senior U.S. intelligence official told the newspaper the offensive - the rebels' first major assault in a year - also was meant to show NATO and Yugoslavia that the rebels were ''still in the fight.'' The assault was foiled, however, by heavy Yugoslav artillery and agile counterattacks by Yugoslav troops, the officials reported...."

WorldNetDaily 6/2/99 Linda Bowles "...The realization is beginning to seep into the consciousness of a majority of Americans that the United States is engaged in something senseless and tragic. A new USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll finds that 57 percent of those surveyed oppose the use of U.S. ground troops in Kosovo as part of a NATO invasion force. A resounding 82 percent support a bombing pause to help bring about negotiations for peace. However, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking for the president, says we will not negotiate. In effect, Yugoslavia must agree to our demands or be bombed out of existence, period...."

WorldNetDaily 6/2/99 Linda Bowles "...The realization is beginning to seep into the consciousness of a majority of Americans that the United States is engaged in something senseless and tragic. A new USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll finds that 57 percent of those surveyed oppose the use of U.S. ground troops in Kosovo as part of a NATO invasion force. A resounding 82 percent support a bombing pause to help bring about negotiations for peace. However, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking for the president, says we will not negotiate. In effect, Yugoslavia must agree to our demands or be bombed out of existence, period...."

6/2/99 UPI Freeper Thanatos "...Macedonia appears to have thrown a monkey wrench into NATO's contingency plans for imposing a settlement in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. The prime minister of the tiny Balkan nation to the south of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Ljubco Georgievski, informed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright today that NATO could double its presence in Macedonia to 30,000 troops. The alliance agreed Tuesday that 50,000 soldiers would be needed for a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo if Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic accepted NATO demands for a settlement. American military planners say the remainder of the force would be deployed in Albania and possibly Hungary. But NATO officials said the Macedonian prime minister flatly rebuffed efforts to win permission to launch a ground invasion from its territory, telling Albright such action would require a political decision by the government backed by an act of Parliament...."

Itar-Tass 6/12/99 "...U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott "played for time by dodging the concrete question of Russian participation in the KFOR operation," a source said on Saturday, commenting on the overnight talks between the American envoy and generals and their Russian colleagues. The U.S. generals "insistently tried to convince" their Russian partners that NATO was not going to enter Kosovo earlier than Saturday evening. However, Russian military officials said it was nothing but misinformation. The Russian Defence Ministry had received creditable information by 2.00 a.m. Saturday (2200 GMT Friday) that the Alliance had begun the KFOR operation. NATO troops had begun moving towards Kosovo, while special units were already there. "In this situation, we could no longer trust our partners and decided to send a forward unit of Russian paratroopers into Kosovo," the source said...."

Sky News 6/15/99 "...Tension over the Russian presence in Kosovo is growing, with reports that more paratroops are on the way. One news agency reported that as many as 7,000 more Russian soldiers could join the token force of 200 or so Russian special forces already there. The RIA news agency quoted "Serb sources in Pristina" as saying between 5,000 and 7,000 Russian paratroops would be flown to Pristina in the next four days. Officials in Moscow could not confirm the RIA report....."

Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "..... Russia has a priority right to discuss the location of its peacemakers in Kosovo, Chairman of the Duma Committee on Nationalities Vladimir Zorin told Itar-Tass on Tuesday. "Being an active participant in the peacemaking process, Russia has the priority right to negotiations with all parties to the conflict, both NATO and Yugoslavia, on the location of its peacemaking contingent in Kosovo," the Duma deputy said...."

The Washington Times/Drudge Report 6/15/99 Bill Gertz "... "Either this is a covert operation by the Russians, or the civilian leadership can't control the military. Neither one of those is good for the West." Pentagon officials said the pro-Serbian Russians have complicated the peace deal in a major way. For example, they said if the Serbs were to refuse to pull out their troops from Kosovo on schedule, resuming the NATO bombing with even a small Russian presence in the province would not be possible. entagon officials explain privately that, adding to concern about tension within Russia's military and control over the nuclear arsenal, is confusion over who is calling the shots in Kosovo, the military in Russia or Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his advisers. A U.S. intelligence official familiar with the standoff over the Russians in Kosovo said yesterday there are no signs Russian nuclear forces went on a high-alert status -- a move that would have signaled heightened tensions with the West....Reports from Russia indicate military units have been forced to sell off weapons and equipment to earn cash. Even food is in short supply.....Military preparedness is also declining sharply because of a lack of money for operations and maintenance and the failure to replace old equipment. And as a further result of funding shortfalls, the military has combined some elements and discharged several hundred thousand people. A 1996 CIA report that looked at the unauthorized use of nuclear weapons by the Russian strategic forces stated that the military is "demoralized and corrupted." It raised the prospect that civilian leaders could lose control of the nuclear arsenal to the military, which continues to view the United States as its "main enemy." .....Clinton administration officials have sought to play down the dangers with the Russian nuclear arsenal. They insist Moscow retains control over the thousands of strategic nuclear missiles, bombers and submarines. But there have been other signs reported in intelligence channels over the past two months, showing that Russia's military is adopting a new hard line against the West because of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia...... As analysts see it, a worst-case scenario is that Moscow planned all along to upset NATO's peacekeeping operation by sending the troops and intentionally to mislead U.S. leaders and the world as part of the plan...."

Associated Press 6/15/99 Judith Ingram "...A second column of Russian troops arrived in Kosovo on Tuesday, increasing pressure on NATO to resolve the impasse over Moscow's role in peacekeeping. The deployment came as Russia's top military commander and chief diplomat prepared for tough talks with their U.S. counterparts, who are negotiating on behalf of the alliance. Russia wants its own sector of authority and for its troops not to be placed under NATO command. Though the second column was small - just 29 soldiers, according to NATO - it was large enough to dramatize those demands...."

Stratfor 6/15/99 "...1554 GMT, 990615...Russian President Boris Yeltsin has reportedly approved agreements reached at the meeting of the Russian Security Council, which state that the Foreign Ministry will coordinate all of Russia's future Kosovo activities with other government offices. According to Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, "Synchronization of the performance of the Foreign Ministry, the military, and the government is the rigid algorithm whose performance started today." First, this is a very public, clear, and appalling admission on the part of Stepashin and Yeltsin that a massive rift opened inside the Kremlin over Russian foreign policy. Despite the personal assurances of Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov that Russian troops would not enter Kosovo without first coordinating with NATO, Russian troops did just that, sweeping in ahead of NATO forces and seizing Slatina airbase near Pristina...."

Itar-Tass 6/14/99 "...Mass exodus of the Serb population has been reported to begin in the Kosovo city of Prizren. The refugees are leaving their homes in the presence of the German KFOR contingent in the city, British sources said on Monday. The German KFOR troops who entered Prizren were followed by militants of the Liberation Army of Kosovo (OAK). The OAK militants have surrounded the residence of the Orthodox Archbishop of Prizren, but the German troops are not taking any measures, the Sunday Times said. Not attempting to disarm the OAK, NATO paves the way for another round of ethnic cleansing, the newspaper said...."

Itar-Tass 6/14/99 "...The Russian Defence Ministry has expressed concern over "inactivity of the NATO KFOR contingent towards armed units of Kosovo Albanians." A spokesman for the Russian Defence Ministry told Tass on Monday that "both the military and diplomats are concerned over the situation in Kosovo where Kosovo militants of Albanian descent have been entering Kosovo practically on the shoulders of the NATO KFOR contingent." "If the situation does not change in the near future, Russia will be compelled to put forward an initiative to discuss this problem at the UN Security Council," the Russian spokesman said. "Ensuring disarmament of the so-called Liberation Army of Kosovo (OAK) is of the main task of the KFOR determined by the UN Security Council resolution," he stressed...."

CNN 6/14/99 "...NATO troops on Monday were guarding what they believed were mass graves in Kosovo, as more alliance military units poured into the Serb province on the heels of retreating Yugoslav forces. Not all has gone smoothly for the 14,000 NATO peacekeepers, who have been hindered since Saturday by sporadic deadly violence and a tense impasse with Russian troops occupying the airport in Pristina. British Maj. Gen. Richard Dannatt, the commander of British forces in Kosovo, said British soldiers had discovered what they believed were mass graves in the southern Kosovo town of Kacanik. About 100 mounds were counted in the grassy field between Pristina and Skopje, Macedonia...."

Reuters 6/14/99 "...Serbia's ultra-nationalist Radical Party (SRS) voted on Monday to pull out of the Serbian government and all the ministers will resign....."

6/15/99 Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "...British troops deployed in Kosovo have begun to arrest gunmen from the "Kosovo liberation army" (KLA) for provoking armed clashes between Albanians and Serbs. Five KLA extremists, who fired at Serbs in Pristina, were arrested on Monday night, British TV reported on Tuesday. As a result of the KLA operation, a Serb was taken hostage and then killed...."

Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "...Unknown attackers after Tuesday midday shelled Pristina airport, where Russian paratroopers are staying deployed for the peacekeeping operation...Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas earlier had said the KLA would pledge no guarantees of security of Russian peacekeepers in Kosovo...."

Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "...The British troops, integrated in the Kosovo peacekeeping force (KFOR), have been attacked by militants of the "Kosovo liberation army", a spokesman for the British command said in Pristina...."

Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "...Militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) will begin executions of Serb soldiers if they do not leave Kosovo capital Pristina before midnight, Sali Mustafa, the KLA commander in Pristina, told the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday. According to the newspaper, Mustafa was "a self-confessed terrorist hitman who personally murdered the Serb chief of police and whose authority was growing by the hour."...."

Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "...The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry is "actively looking for a possibility for the Ukrainian peacekeeping force to join an international peacekeeping contingent on the territory of Yugoslavia," Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Belashov told Tass on Tuesday. According to his information, "consultations are being held both with the U.N. and with the countries, which have already announced their readiness to take part in peacekeeping operations in Yugoslavia." He said there are about ten such countries....."

Stratfor 6/14/99 "...0019 GMT, 990615 - NATO has adopted an interesting strategy for dealing with the unwelcome presence of Russian troops at Slatina airbase in Kosovo. It is ignoring them. Certainly, high level talks are continuing, but without any apparent urgency on NATO's part. Rather, NATO has successfully closed off the routes for Russian resupply and reinforcement and has declared that it didn't really want the airport, anyway....."

Stratfor 6/14/99 "...2202 GMT, 990614 - The KLA, understanding Russia's presence in Kosovo for what it is, has grown increasingly bellicose about the issue, declaring the Russians unwelcome and refusing to guarantee their safety. Russian forces in Kosovo are there to guarantee ultimate Serbian sovereignty over the province. The KLA has fought, and continues to fight, for nothing less than an independent Kosova...."

Electronic Telegraph (UK) 6/15/99 Boris Johnson "...THE red flag with the black eagle yesterday flew openly from the roof of the school. There were guards at the gate, Albanians with arm bands reading UCK (KLA) and the same initials were spelt out in petals on the playground. Processions of children presented posies of roses and kissed the cheeks of the swarthy goons, and inside was a self-confessed terrorist hitman, who personally murdered the Serb chief of police, and whose authority was growing by the hour. Whatever Nato thinks it has agreed with the KLA, it may shortly have to revise. Sali Mustafa has ideas of his own. For one thing, said the KLA's commander in Pristina, the Serb troops would not only have to be out by midnight tonight, they would face execution if they hung around.....Looking at this young man, it was hard to believe that he had cold-bloodedly killed Pristina's top policemen; but, so he confessed. "I was in charge of a unit and, well, they were our enemy, and I was shooting at them. Me and two other guys, we shot Misha Lahocevic. Zoran Iovanovic found his death. I shot him dead." And having created this job vacancy, he was now thinking of applying because, as he understands the Nato agreement, he and his lads are going to be the police. With every hour that passes, the arbitrary power of the KLA is growing in Kosovo, and Nato seems momentarily clueless how to deal with it....Three more fleeing Serbs were reportedly shot dead, and Albanian gunmen had taken the lives of at least one Albanian who worked for the Yugoslav militia, as well as three other Serb policemen. "Dead right," said Sali Mustafa, smiling seraphically. "Three Serb paramilitaries were killed yesterday because they were going round and stealing from the houses, and we have an agreement with Nato which says we can defend ourselves." Of course, the Nato agreement does not condone the shooting of looters, but then what is the Nato policy towards the KLA? ...."

AFP 6/14/99 "....Outmaneuvered by Russia whose small contingent of troops in Kosovo defiantly kept NATO forces at bay outside the Pristina airport Monday, the United States pressed efforts to break the deadlock without undermining the alliance's command of the operation. US President Bill Clinton spoke to his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, for the second time in less than 24 hours in what the White House described as a "constructive" conversation....."We have made real progress today," Albright told reporters at a White House briefing though neither she nor national security adviser Sandy Berger was able to describe any progress achieved beyond the agreement to meet in Helsinki......"

AP 6/14/99 Edith M. Lederer "....Secretary-General Kofi Annan unveiled the U.N. peace-building plan for Kosovo on Monday, giving European organizations primary responsibility for reconstructing the shattered Yugoslav province..... Each component was assigned to a lead agency: -The European Union was given responsibility for rebuilding Kosovo's "physical, economic and social infrastructure ... and supporting the reactivation of public services and utilities.'' -The 54-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will train judges and local administrators, set up a police academy, develop political parties and local media, organize elections and monitor human rights. -The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees will help the 860,000 ethnic Albanian refugees return and will also be responsible for protecting and assisting "minority groups'' - presumably Serbs remaining in Kosovo. -The U.N. civilian administration will include three offices to oversee police, judicial and civil affairs. The civil affairs branch will take charge of the civil service, economic and budgetary affairs, and restore basic services such as health, education, utilities, transport and telecommunications. An international civilian police unit, probably numbering 1,000 or 2,000, will oversee the civilian police operation and establish a Kosovo police force, Frechette said....."

Itar-Tass 6/15/99 "...Commander of the KFOR international peacekeeping mission in Kosovo General Michael Jackson actually admitted the inability of NATO troops to guarantee at present security of the Serb civil population in Kosovo. The general stated that his troops had been doing all in their power to ensure security of all residents of Kosovo, however under the present conditions there was a limit to everything as the deployment of troops had not been completed yet...... The Serb population does not trust NATO troops which bombarded civil objects and killed civilians...."

Stratfor 6/15/99 "...1546 GMT, 990615 - The United States has announced it will contribute 750 officers to an international police force designed to bring stability to Kosovo after peacekeepers leave. The commitment comes after yesterday's presentation of a United Nations plan allowing for the replacement of the peacekeepers by a force of 3000 police officers...."

Reuters 6/15/99 "...A leading member of the Serbian opposition said on Tuesday there would be trouble in Kosovo unless NATO peacekeepers began disarming ethnic Albanian guerrillas as well as Serb forces. Milan Bozic of the Serbian Renewal Movement said ethnic Serbs were afraid of the peacekeeping force and felt that it was backing the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas. ``(There will be a) problem if NATO doesn't make some visible moves to disarm the KLA,'' he told BBC radio. ``On the one hand, you see the pictures of NATO disarming the Serbian troops or policemen, at the same time, you see the KLA people or soldiers with weapons,'' he said. ``Such pictures, and I do believe in Kosovo they can be seen numerous times, are somehow convincing the people that NATO is part of the support for the KLA.'' ..."

CNN 6/15/99 "...NATO peacekeepers reported Tuesday finding at least 20 burned bodies in the ruins of a house near the Albanian border. Meanwhile Yugoslavian forces seemed on schedule to meet a midnight deadline (2200 GMT/6 p.m. EST) to withdraw from Pristina and the southern third of Kosovo, according to the alliance. German soldiers with the NATO-led KFOR mission cordoned off the gruesome scene in Mala Krusa, called Krushe Emadi by Albanians...."

UPI 6/15/99 "...The clock has struck midnight in Kosovo, marking the deadline for Serb troops to be out of the southernmost part of the province that includes the capital, Pristina. However, NATO has recently softened its initially hard stance on the retreat, citing traffic jams and Yugoslav equipment troubles...."

STRATFOR.COM 6/15/99 "...2200 GMT, 990615 - British paratroopers from the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment were ordered to back down from a confrontation with Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rebels who refused to disarm. No reason was given why the British troops were ordered to allow the KLA rebels to keep their weapons...."

UPI 6/15/99 Paul Basken "...With U.S. and NATO officials still seeking a solution to Russia's surprise military foray into Kosovo, Russian leaders demanded NATO make a greater effort to demilitarize ethnic Albanian rebel forces. Amid scattered reports of armed Kosovo Liberation Army troops taking up positions in the republic, Russian national security adviser Vladimir Putin complained by telephone to his U.S. counterpart, Sandy Berger, that the KLA was posing a threat to Kosovar civilians. Putin, the head of the Federal Security Service and secretary of Russia's Security Council, also argued that NATO's disagreement with Russia over the makeup of the peacekeeping operation could be resolved by "including Russian representatives in the command structures" of the KFOR peacekeeping force...."

Times of London 6/16/99 Stephen Farrell "...THE Kosovo Liberation Army will not hand over its weapons to Nato forces and intends to turn itself into a national army with the eventual goal of an independent Kosovo, a senior KLA commander said yesterday. Directly contradicting the KLA's public support for the agreement reached at Rambouillet, Rustem Mustafa, one of seven regional commanders, said he expected Nato to train its 50,000 soldiers, to provide weapons to replace their old ones and to share security for Kosovo with the KLA...."I believe that we will not give up our weapons. We will collect them all in one place and they will be in our barracks," Mr Mustafa said. He claimed that the decision not to give up guns was official KLA policy. Asked what would happen if Nato demanded their surrender, he replied: "Nato has not done this and I hope they won't ask this thing from us. We are co-operating with them and I believe they will help us in the construction of the army." ..."

Electronic Telegraph 6/16/99 Philip Smucker "...THE Kosovar rebel army that never won an important battle said yesterday that it had taken control of southern Kosovo after a 600-year-old struggle to gain self-rule. The city of Prizren would be a "model of the KLA's role in a new Kosovo", it said. "From today, Prizren is 100 per cent in our hands," said Rexha Ekrem, who is also known as 'Commander Drini", from the porch of a hotel in the city. "We are taking on policing duties and those things related to the internal life of the city," he said. "We handed over six fire trucks to Nato today." Most Albanian residents say that the fighting men of the Kosovo Liberation Army are heroes who deserve their new authority. However, the few hundred Serbian residents remaining after an exodus of more than 10,000 in the last two days disagree...."

Stratfor 6/16/99 "...0300 GMT, 990616 - The United States announced it would allow the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) a few days grace period before it is required to demilitarize. A U.S. spokesman said that not all KLA units would necessarily be disarmed. Army Brigadier-General John Craddock, commander of Task Force Falcon, the U.S. contingent, said that only KLA units that provoke withdrawing Serb units and refuse instructions to back off will be disarmed...."

The Indian Express 6/15/99 "...Beta, quoting eyewitnesses, said six KLA gunmen intercepted a column of Serbs leaving the village of Kojlovica, some five km north of Pristina. It said two brothers from the Krstic family and a man identified as Dragan Jovanovic were extracted by the KLA from the column and shot dead on the spot with automatic weapons. Beta quoted the mother of the Krstic brothers as saying they were slain in the presence of their children and wives. In Pristina, a Serb employee of radio Pristina was shot dead in front of his home and three other Serbs were abducted, Beta said. It had no further details...."

New York Post 6/15/1999 Uri Dan "....THE Serb villagers fleeing Kosovo want it known that the Albanians aren't the only refugees of the troubled province with horror stories to tell. Lubomir Lakic's story goes this way: His father went to the Serbian Orthodox church in their village Sunday morning to pray, and was horrified to find the young priest inside with his throat slit. "He also saw 10 Kosovo Liberation Army people coming out of the church," Lakic said. "The KLA knifed and slaughtered the priest of our village." Like many accounts of atrocities being told now by Serbs, this remains unverified in the chaotic aftermath of the retreat by Slobodan Milosevic's forces from Kosovo. But, true or not, it contributes to the panic sweeping Kosovo. Lakic said after he heard how ethnic Albanians "stabbed to death two farmers in their homes," his family decided to run for their lives. The Lakic family proudly traces its roots in Mousoutiste back to the 14th century - when the sacred Church of Saint Bogoroditza was built. "We wanted to stay in the village, but we were terrified by the assassination of Father Atza," Lakic said yesterday as he drove a tractor on the clogged road that was taking him, his father, wife, son and daughter out of Kosovo....."

New York Post 6/15/1999 Uri Dan "...."All of us, about 350 families, decided to leave" their homes in Mousoutiste, 50 miles from Pristina, he said. Just as they reached the outskirts of their village, they encountered NATO forces - who were clearly on the side of the KLA, Lakic charged. "I don't know if they were British or French. I was too shocked to identify them because they stopped us. "They told all the men to lie on the road and they took our guns and our pistols, while the KLA were standing on the other side of the road armed and stoning us," said Lakic, 33. "For me, it was the worst sign that these NATO forces came here to push the Serbs out of Kosovo because [NATO] sided, on that terrible part of our road, with the KLA." ...."

Times 6/14/99 Richard Boudreaux "...-On Day One of NATO's peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, Dragan Radakovic stood at the edge of Serbia's largest coal mine and watched it pass from one army's control to another's with clockwork precision. Serbian infantrymen who had guarded the Belacevic open pit mine during 16 months of guerrilla war pulled out at 8 a.m. Saturday. Their army's withdrawal from Kosovo was supposed to be tightly synchronized with the arrival of NATO-led troops to pacify the province. Instead, the advancing foot soldiers the mine director saw in his binoculars were from the Kosovo Liberation Army. Much to his alarm, the ethnic Albanian separatists who looked all but defeated several weeks ago had returned in force to seize one of the mine's two giant pits, its administration building and four employees. The swift takeover of a strategic economic target shows the KLA's determination to move into the vacuum between the departing Serbs and a lumbering, 48,000-strong NATO-led force already slowed by scattered Serbian resistance and feuds with Russian peacekeepers. About 350 guerrillas are believed to have participated in the mine takeover six miles northwest of the provincial capital, Pristina...."

Original Sources (www.originalsources.com) 6/16/99 Mary Mostert "…"The KLA has set its check points and controls the town. KLA groups have besieged the Bishop's Court with bishop Artemije, monks and priests inside. In the church yard, monuments of emperor Dushan and Russian consul Yastrebov are destroyed. The German contingent cannot guarantee safety and security neither for the Serbs, nor for the priests and the monks, and officers advised the Bishop, the priest and monks to leave Prizren tomorrow with the remaining Serbs." And thus the destruction begins - a destruction reminiscent of the Barbarian Assault on Rome, in the 5th Century, A.D.: "THE HOLY ARCHANGEL MONASTERY (XIV century - 2 km from Prizren) This morning KLA has kidnapped one monk and some Serbs from Prizren. Their fate is uncertain. "THE HOLY TRINITY MONASTERY- MUSUTISTE ( XV century) Today the monastery church has been burnt down, few days ago the monastery residence was burnt down. The nuns have escaped to the Gracanica monastery. "THE SAINTS KUZMA AND DAMIAN MONASTERY -ZOCISTE (XIV century) The monks have been evacuated to Prizren. The fate of the monastery is unknown. VELIKA HOCA and surrounding villages are deserted. Line of 400 people are on the way to Pristina, although no safe evacuation has been guaranteed. "THE VISOKI DECANI MONASTERY (XIV century) During Yugoslav Army pullout, 150 Albanians from Decani had found safety in the monastery and spent 2 days there, together with a group of 17 Serbs that had escaped earlier. The Italian troops are stationed near the monastery, and their officers are cooperative, and guarantee safety and security Serbs and Albanians alike. "PEC - THE PATRIARCHATE OF PEC (XIII century) The Italian forces are in the town, relations are good. There are no more than 50 Serbs left in the town. The nuns at the Partriarchate are well. "THE DEVIC MONASTERY (XV century) There is no information. The arrival of the French contingent is expected tomorrow. "THE GORIOC MONASTERY (XIV century) No presence of KLA is registd. The arrival of the French contingent is expected." And so we watch as NATO helps IMPLEMENT the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo, just as we watched the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia in 1995 with the help of US bombers, while the media, who MUST know it is lying, talks about "Serbian War Crimes."…"

UPI 6/16/99 "…Although the Yugoslav army has assured NATO it has marked all its minefields, "there is no indication that has been done," said a NATO peacekeeping force official (Wednesday). The borders with Albania and Macedonia, the most heavily traveled routes of returning refugees, are heavily mined, the official said. Four have died from encounters with mines so far…."

AP 6/16/99 "…Killings, beatings, sexual assaults and torture by Serb forces of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo were widespread and far more than just isolated attacks, according to a survey by a physicians' group. Physicians for Human Rights interviewed 1,180 refugees and found that one in every three households endured some kind of physical abuse. ``What our study clearly speaks to was this was part of a wide-scale, methodical, brutal pattern of abuse,'' said Dr. Allen Keller, one of the study's authors and director of the Center for Health and Human Rights at the New York University School of Medicine….Combined, the refugees detailed 598 separate incidents of torture, killing and physical abuse…."

Agence France-Presse 6/16/99 "… Kosovo separatist guerrillas are expected to agree in the next few days to demilitarise, NATO said Wednesday, but warned this does not mean a total disarming of the rebels. British Lieutenant General Michael Jackson, head of the international peace-keeping force in Kosovo, KFOR, said: "The UN Security Council resolution makes it absolutely clear that this organisation (KLA) is to be demilitarised." "I expect that in the next two to three days the leadership of this organisation will sign an agreement which is being worked out between them and the representatives of our (KFOR) force," he added. In Brussels, NATO said the aim of the June 10 Security Council resolution was to demilitarise and not disarm the Kosovo Liberation Army. That would mean confiscating its heavy weapons but leaving fighters with their lighter arms to allow them to eventually carry out police functions…."

Reuters/RUSSIA TODAY 6/16/99 "…Russia's Duma urged President Boris Yeltsin on Thursday to sack his special Balkans envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin, whom it accused of betraying Moscow's national interests in Yugoslavia. In a non-binding resolution, the opposition-dominated Duma said an agreement between Russia and the Western powers paving the way for an end to the Yugoslav war amounted to capitulation by Belgrade and the occupation of Kosovo by NATO troops. "The defeat of a strategic ally of Russia in the Balkans has sharply worsened Russia's geopolitical position and created a serious threat to its national security," the resolution said…."

Itar-Tass 6/16/99 "…Threats issued by the so- called Kosovo Liberation Army to Russian peacekeepers confirm the terrorist nature of this organisation, a high-ranking Russian Defence Ministry official said on Wednesday. Under the U.N. Security Council resolution, KLA should be demilitarised simultaneously with the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army and police units from the province in order not to create a security vacuum, the official said. Having assumed an essential role in the operation, NATO has been flouting its obligations, the official said, adding that there is open NATO connivance for Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo. If KLA is not disarmed, this will inevitably lead to the creation of other armed groupings in Kosovo in order to protect other ethnic groups in the province, the official said…."

6/16/99 AFP "…The designation of Russian peacekeepers by the Kosovo Liberation Army as an "enemy force" was a "declaration of war" on Moscow's Kosovo contingent, a foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday. "It is an unprecedented declaration, it can only be taken as a declaration of war on Russian peacekeeping forces," said the official, who asked not to be named…."

UPI 6/16/99 Beth Potter "…A KFOR officer says ethnic Albanians coming out of hiding from the hills near the town of Stimlje, in Kosovo, are breaking into Serb homes. Cpl. Harry Tyman, a spokesman for the British Fourth Armored Brigade, said today the ethnic Albanians were stealing televisions to sell them for food. KFOR met with Kosovo Liberation Army forces in the town to put a stop to the looting, however, the incident was enough to convince several Serb families to leave town by midday…All stores remained closed today except for one controlled by the Kosovo Liberation Army. Most have been completely looted and destroyed. Heaps of twisted metal fill the broken windows of some stores. Others have empty shelves and are filled with rubble…."

Associated Press 6/16/99 Robert Burns "…Defense Secretary William Cohen ruled out any compromise with Russia that would permit Moscow's troops to patrol in Kosovo under their own command, but he promised on Wednesday to be "as creative as we can'' in resolving the dispute over Russia's role. His Russian counterpart, Marshall Igor Sergeyev, struck an optimistic tone as he and Cohen met to begin an expected two days of negotiations. Sergeyev predicted the problem would be resolved by the weekend, and comments by officials in Moscow seemed to hint at a compromise…."

Macedonian Press Agency 6/16/99 "…The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) yesterday expressed its deep concern over the exodus of thousands of Serbs from Kosovo. The UN agency said it was witnessing the same pattern of displacements of Serbs seen in Western Slavonia in December 1991, in the Krajina and August 1995 and in Sarajevo after the 1995 Dayton peace agreement. According to a UN press report, The High Commissioner's Special Envoy, Dennis McNamara, discussed the outflow of Serb civilians with Lieutenant General Michael Jackson, the commander of the Kosovo Force (KFOR), who confirmed that his troops would do their best to provide security for all of Kosovo's citizens, but stressed that under the circumstances, there was unfortunately a limit to what could be done. …. UNHCR estimates 13,000 Serbs have crossed into Montenegro since Thursday but it is not known how many Serbs are crossing directly into Serbia. The Serb population of Kosovo is estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000 people……. "

Fox News (Reuters) 6/16/99 "…The Kosovo Liberation Army will not disarm in northern Kosovo until Russia agrees to place its troops under a unified command with NATO forces, a KLA representative said Wednesday. The ethnic Albanian guerrillas would "react militarily'' if Russian forces tried to enforce a partition of the Serbian province, the KLA's political representative in London, Pleurat Sejdiu, told Reuters. "They could find themselves in an Afghanistan situation again,'' he added…."

American Spectator Online 6/14/99 Wlady Pleszczynski "…The short of it was that the administration had been caught completely unprepared by the Russian incursion. If not for CNN it still might not know what happened. Meanwhile, the British press was filled with reports that U.K. leaders were furious at the U.S. for not allowing its genuinely prepositioned troops from moving right in, forcing them instead to allow U.S. troops to be first. These troops, of course, weren't ready to move, which is how it came about that the Russians moved in first. Evidently Kosovo, like nature, abhors a vacuum. In foreign policy power squandered is power lost…. The Independent's man in Kosovo, Robert Fisk, in the concluding paragraph of his Sunday story offered this: "As I drove back into Pristina, it occurred to me how much the Russians would like to control the air base, with its massive underground taxiways and nuclear-blast-proof conference rooms. And how easy it would be to open the base to Russian aircraft to bring in thousands more troops, with not just the blessing but the positive encouragement of Belgrade. I remembered what it said on the back of the Russian armoured vehicle leading [the Russian] convoy. The word on the back was: 'Airborne.' …"

Itar-Tass 6/16/99 "…The Russian paratroopers stationed at the Pristina airport have begun to build defensive positions, the British newspapers report. The construction jobs are proceeding chiefly in the southern part of this strategic objective. Judging by everything, the Russian peacekeepers are expecting provocations from men of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, who refuse to disarm and are not duly treated by NATO contingents in the province. …."

Itar-Tass 6/16/99 "…NATO has not begun to disarm the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, whose men are in the meantime perpetrating alarming terroristic acts in Kosovo. The stepped up terroristic actions of the KLA are a "powder keg", which is apt to blow up the entire settlement process in Kosovo, Russian Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev told Russian journalists in Helsinki on Wednesday after his meeting with Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari. A spokesman for the Russian delegation noted that, for his part, Ahtisaari stressed that the NATO nations should honour the reached agreement to disarm the KLA…Obviously encouraged by such veiled connivance, KLA commanders are openly declaring now that they will not disarm. Moreover, they will not do it until the Russian troops in the province remain outside the single command of the international force, which NATO wants to control. This was confirmed to the Japanese newspaper Mainichi on Wednesday by KLA official representative in London Plerat Sezdiu. He unequivocally stated that the Kosovo separatists want to exploit the presence of NATO troops in the province to split it away from Yugoslavia in spite of the intentionally declared need to preserve the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia…."

Itar-Tass 6/16/99 "…Large units of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) have begun to enter Pristina on Wednesday. The Albanian separatists are capturing the administrative centre of Kosovo in violation of the preliminary agreement, under which armed gunmen should not enter the city. According to reports of the London mass media, the command of the British contingent of the Kosovo peacekeeping force (KFOR) prohibited the gunmen from entering the city, but the KLA ignored its orders. The impression is that the KFOR units of the NATO countries are unprepared for the peacekeeping operation, or for the fulfilment of the U.N. Security Council resolution, which demands the disarmament of Albanian separatists. This was confirmed in an indirect way by General Michael Jackson, commander-in-chief of the NATO troops integrated in KFOR, who said that NATO units could not be in all parts of Kosovo at the same time…."

Itar-Tass 6/16/99 "…The so-called Kosovo Liberation Army has already established control over all the towns and villages in the southern part of the province and has set up its own checkpoints there, Albanian refugees told the Japanese Kyodo Tsushin News Agency in Macedonia. After the Nato troops were moved into Kosovo, the refugees tried to go home, but were turned back and are now languishing again in their refugee camps in Macedonia. According to eyewitness accounts, NATO troops are tightly controlling only the main roads to Pristina. The police functions in the minor localities are discharged only by KLA men. They are controlling everybody who enters and leaves the province, are checking their identity papers. The Kosovo Liberation Army, eyewitnesses say, is promising to shortly issue special identity cards to the local Albanian population…."

The Washington Times 6/16/99 Philip Smucker "…Leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, basking in triumph without having ever won a battle, proclaimed themselves in control of all of southern Kosovo yesterday and pledged to make the region a "model of the KLA's role in a new Kosovo." Reports from across the region verified that members of the ragtag guerrilla force had taken control of towns, villages and border crossings as Yugoslav army forces withdrew with their tanks and trucks northward ahead of a midnight deadline imposed by NATO last week. "From today, Prizren is 100 percent in our hands," said Rexha Ekrem, also known as "Commander Drini." The claim appeared to contradict the terms of the agreement under which NATO ended its bombing campaign in Yugoslavia. That agreement called for the "demilitarization" of the rebel army…."

Associated Press 6/16/99 Tom Raum "…U.S. forces in Kosovo detained two suspected war criminals today, a Pentagon spokesman said. Navy Capt. Mike Doubleday had no details about the arrests or the men's alleged crimes, but said the two remain in U.S. custody…."

The Guardian 6/17/99 Richard Norton-Taylor "…Civilians and K-For troops face a serious threat from unmarked mines laid by the Kosovo Liberation Army, whose leaders may have no idea where they are, it emerged yesterday. Major Andy Philips, a bomb disposal expert from 33 Regiment Royal Engineers, said both sides had been cooperative, but there were no reliable records of KLA minefields. "The main KLA elements are cooperating, but we don't know what fringe elements have been out there, and we don't know what they have put out. ..."

Reuters 6/16/99 Brian Williams "...Serb civilians, fearful of ethnic Albanian reprisals, flooded out of Kosovo Wednesday and NATO troops disarmed Kosovo guerrillas and arrested some of their chiefs after they refused to hand over their weapons. As Serb soldiers and paramilitaries pulled back, separatist Kosovo Liberation army (KLA) rebels roamed some vacated areas, set up checkpoints and conducted house-by-house searches like a new occupation power..."

stratfor.com 6/16/99 "...NATO's decision to exploit the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during Operation Allied Force to maintain pressure on Serbian forces on the ground is coming back to haunt it. While Albania helped create the KLA, NATO nurtured it, and now that the KLA is running amok, NATO must tame or destroy it. Much to NATO's chagrin, the KLA did not simply accept NATO control over the province, lay down its arms, and join the UN sponsored political process. Rather, seizing the opportunity and the initiative, the KLA has poured into the province ahead of NATO and on the heels of withdrawing Serbs - filling the power vacuum and establishing de facto control. KLA forces have seized control of two border crossing points into Albania, as well as most of the towns and villages of southern Kosovo including nearly all of Prizren. The KLA has presented its own "interim government," and has as yet refused to disarm. Worse, multiple sources report the KLA are carrying out reprisal attacks against Serbs, burning Serbian homes and setting in motion a mass exodus of Serbs from the province......In the meantime, NATO continues to explain its inability to control the KLA and defend ethnic Serbs by arguing that it does not have sufficient forces in place to control the province. In fact, refugees report that NATO controls little more than the main roads to Pristina. And to be more precise, it is not simply that NATO does not have enough troops to establish a presence throughout Kosovo. NATO does not have enough troops to confront and forcibly disarm the KLA throughout Kosovo...."

Washington Post Foreign Service 6/17/99 Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson "...With ethnic Albanian guerrillas establishing offices, erecting checkpoints and occupying police stations in Kosovo as Yugoslav forces have withdrawn, NATO commanders moved for the first time today to rein in the newly empowered rebels and allay concerns among Serbian civilians here about possible reprisal attacks. In the first major confrontation between Kosovo Liberation Army rebels and allied forces, U.S. Marines today stripped weapons from about 200 guerrillas in the Kosovo village of Zegra. The action followed a tense standoff in which the KLA members refused at first to surrender their weapons, then complied when the Marines used armored personnel carriers and Cobra helicopter gunships to intimidate them. The Marines then led away six rebel leaders in handcuffs...."

Sydney Morning Herald 6/16/99 Geoff Kitney "…Watching Russian preparations to send more troops into Kosovo where 200 paratroopers continue to hold the main airport, Western leaders are still worried about the strength of Moscow's new commitments not to make further deployments without NATO's agreement. President Boris Yeltsin and other senior Kremlin figures told United States President Bill Clinton and other Western leaders that Russia would defer plans to send a larger force to Kosovo…."

USA Today/AP 11/29/98 "…The man accused of orchestrating the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa operates a terrorist network out of Albania that has infiltrated other parts of Europe, The Sunday Times reported. The newspaper quoted Fatos Klosi, the head of the Albanian intelligence service, as saying a network run by Saudi exile Osama Bin Laden sent units to fight in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Bin Laden is believed to have established an Albanian operation in 1994 after telling the government he headed a wealthy Saudi humanitarian agency wanting to help Albania, the newspaper reported. Klosi said he believed terrorists had already infiltrated other parts of Europe from bases in Albania. Interpol believes more than 100,000 blank Albanian passports were stolen in riots last year, providing ample opportunity for terrorists to acquire false papers, the newspaper said…."

Venic 6/17/99 Reuters AFP UN ITAR-TASS "…In 1998 the KLA carried out 2,018 armed attacks against residents of Kosovo, during which 199 civilians and 128 police officers were killed. The KLA was also responsible for 292 kidnappings in the province during the same year. Out of 199 civilians killed by the KLA 46 were Serbs, 77 ethnic Albanians and 76 residents of other nationalities…."

Venic 6/17/99 Reuters AFP UN ITAR-TASS "…During the civil war in Yugoslavia from 1987 to 1991 over 300,000 Serbs became refugees. More than 14,000 Serbs were exterminated by Croatian and Kosovar extremists. In 1995 over 250,000 Serbs were expelled from Krajina by unified military forces of Croatia, NATO, the United States, and Muslim extremists. Thousands of Serbian civilians died during the exodus…"

Venic 6/17/99 Reuters AFP UN ITAR-TASS "…In 1995 NATO conducted a bombing campaign against Serbian villages in Bosnia, killing 500 residents. In 1999 NATO bombed Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which became a home to over 700,000 Serbian refuges, who escaped systematic ethnic cleansing campaign by Croatian military, Muslim terrorists, and NATO only a few years earlier. The exact number of civilian casualties resulting from NATO's latest bombing campaign against Serbian civilians is not yet known, but is believed to exceed 2,000…."

Meanwhile, evidence of Serb atrocities during NATO's bombing campaign continued to mount. The discoveries were all too familiar: a well filled with decomposing bodies; a prison filled with apparent instruments of torture. Villagers in Dragacin, north of Prizren, told German troops that the well was filled with the bodies of 11 elderly men killed in late April. There have also been reports of atrocities against Serbs, with a couple found dead on their home's doorstep and a 16-year-old killed in an ambush on a country road. In a report that could not be independently confirmed, the Serb Media Center said KLA rebels killed three Serbs in central Novo Selo and southern Kosovska Kamenica and kidnapped 18 Serbs in villages near Pristina. NATO peacekeepers arrested 25 Kosovo Liberation Army rebels Friday after German peacekeepers rescued 15 battered Gypsies and ethnic Albanians in what they said might be a KLA torture chamber for alleged collaborators in Prizren. They also found the corpse of an elderly man chained to a chair. He appeared to have died shortly before the Germans arrived, said German army spokesman Lt. Col. Dietmar Jeserich…."

The New York Times 6/19/99 John Kifner "…The tenuous and volatile nature of NATO's balancing act was illustrated here this afternoon when German troops swooped down on a former Serbian police headquarters taken over by the K.L.A., briefly held 25 of the guerrillas and seized a pile of weapons. Inside the station, the German troops found 15 people who had been taken prisoner, including an elderly man who was found dead, handcuffed to a chair and badly beaten, according to a German spokesman, Lieut. Col. Dietmar Jeserich. The prisoners included Serbs, Albanians and Gypsies. It was not clear why they had been arrested, but some onlookers said the prisoners included informers and thieves. One man had red welts across his back, an old man had a bandage on his head and cuts on his face and another man said he had been stabbed in the leg. "Not even your worst enemy could do such a thing," said Jankovic Janko, an elderly Serb with head injuries. He said he had been seized outside his house on Wednesday…."

AP 6/18/99 "….Accounts of brutality in Kosovo emerged Thursday in different tones - the stunned, flat voice of a teen-age girl and the measured sentences of a British official - but they both told of irrational savagery mixed with careful planning. Just six days into the international military presence in Kosovo, officials have discovered so many mass graves and killing sites and heard so many wrenching accounts of atrocities that they now estimate at least 10,000 people were killed in the Serb crackdown against Kosovo Albanians which began shortly before NATO began its 78-day air bombardment March 24. The mounting evidence is likely to add to calls for the arrest of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who has been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. But President Clinton said Thursday that peacekeepers will take a ``wait and see'' approach toward Milosevic's arrest….. One of the most grisly reports of slaughter so far came Thursday from the village of Poklek, 20 miles west of the provincial capital Pristina. The killings were, by residents' accounts, methodical. Elhame Muqolli, 14, told of how she and scores of friends and neighbors were herded into a room by Serb police, who threw in a hand grenade, raked the room with machine guns and then set it on fire to kill anyone who might have survived. Muqolli (pronounced Moo-CHO-lee) and five others had managed to jump out a window, but 62 others died in the April 17 incident. Their blood dripped through the floor to stain the ceiling of the room below….."

The Associated Press 6/19/99 Donna Bryso "…Concerned about reports of revenge attacks by ethnic Albanian rebels, NATO has pledged to put more military police on the streets of Kosovo to make the shattered province safe for Serbs fleeing by the thousands. In a further effort to keep order in Kosovo, NATO intended to sign an agreement today with the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army specifying terms of its demilitarization, alliance spokesman Maj. Jam Yoosten said…..The United States, France, Britain, Germany and Italy have divided Kosovo into five sectors for peacekeeping. Russia had wanted its own sector. Under the agreement, 3,000 Russian troops will serve under Russian command and control, but Russians will work with NATO commanders in the sectors controlled by the United States, France and Germany. The Pristina airport will be opened to all nations…."

Reuters 6/19/99 Deborah Charles "…A senior Serbian official on Saturday urged Serbs who have fled Kosovo to return to their homes within the next 48 hours, saying the government would accompany them, provide fuel and organise their return. Milovan Bojic, deputy prime minister of Serbia, said institutions in Kosovo were still working and the KFOR international peacekeeping force had guaranteed the safety of all citizens in Kosovo, regardless of their nationality. ``We should make the most of this moment to go back to Kosovo in numbers in the next 48 hours,'' Bojic said in an address shown on Serbian state television (RTS) and reported by the official news agency Tanjug…."

The New York Times 6/19/99 John Kifner "…The Kosovo Liberation Army is setting up interim governments in a number of cities, moving rapidly to fill the civic vacuum. In at least one case of exerting their self-appointed authority, the rebels arrested and apparently beat several prisoners, one so severely that he died. The troops are moving into city halls and makeshift municipal buildings, with their own black-uniformed police at the doors, trying to get electricity, water and other basic services working. Their major problem is that there is virtually no food and tens of thousands more refugees are on the way. The United Nations, under the terms of the agreement with the Serbs, is to set up a civil authority but has not done so yet. The rebel forces are acting without any legal mandate, but NATO commanders appear to have found it convenient to allow the rebels to deal with some local matters. The agreement with the Serbs calls for the K.L.A. to be demilitarized by the allied troops but that has yet to be enforced…."

The New York Times 6/19/99 Ian Fisher "…A few days ago, the Serbs here made a brave and unusual decision: They would stay in this Kosovo hillside town, nearly 4,000 of them, and try to live again beside Albanians, even as their fellow Serbs fled the province in the tens of thousands. That all broke down Friday, and with it one small pocket of hope for re-creating a multi-ethnic Kosovo. Friday afternoon, heavily armed young German soldiers were reduced to escorting scared Serbian women to their homes so they could pick up a few things and leave town, probably forever. One woman walked down the street grasping a soldier's hand ….The Serbs' reasons for leaving town are particularly disturbing to NATO, because they seem closely linked to the peacekeeping mission. Serbs here allege that guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army kidnapped seven men Wednesday and Thursday as they went house to house confiscating weapons. And as the guerrilla force only came out of hiding since the arrival of the peacekeepers Sunday, the Serbs here say they believe that the peacekeepers are cooperating with the former rebels….. From the start, the Serbs have eyed the peacekeepers, under NATO command, with distrust for a reason that is hard to overcome: It was NATO, after all, that bombed the Serbs for more than two months, with some degree of cooperation with KLA forces on the ground. But since the peacekeepers arrived, that distrust has only deepened as the KLA has tried to step in to become the new civil and administrative force in Kosovo. NATO insists that it is the only real power in Kosovo and that it is completely even-handed with Serbs and Albanians alike….."

New York Post 6/19/99 Uri Dan "…Three days after NATO troops refused a mother superior's pleas for protection, Kosovar rebels looted her monastery and raped a young nun, officials said yesterday.

French commandos and members of the French Foreign Legion arrived as the Kosovar Liberation Army guerrillas were leaving the isolated mountain religious community in Devic, about 30 miles northwest of the Kosovo capital of Pristina. The Post reported Monday how Mother Macaria drove to Pristina on Sunday to plead with arriving British troops for protection for herself, a priest and nine nuns at Devic. "Please come and save us. You have the guns, all I have is a cross," she told an Irish Guard lieutenant. But she was told that no protection was possible until NATO reinforcements arrived. Three days later the unguarded medieval monastery was raided by KLA members, French officers confirmed yesterday. The French gave few details but a spokesman for Serb Orthodox Patriarch Pavle said the guerrillas showed no mercy. "They desecrated the church, including the altar and icons, and humiliated the nuns," Deacon Luka Novakovic told The Post. He said a 24-year-old nun was taken to a back room and raped. The rebels looted the building of anything valuable and fired guns into the air as they left, just as the French arrived Thursday…"The monastery had been stripped bare," a French officer told CNN. He added that the priest had been beaten. Novakovic said: "They even desecrated the tomb of St. Joanikije…."

Creators Syndicate Toronto Sun Author: Matthew Fisher 6/19/99 "…As a seething mob of several hundred Albanians looked on, nine guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army in battle dress were ordered out of their cars at gunpoint yesterday and spread-eagled against a wall by U.S. Marines in the middle of town. This was one of many "in-your-face" weapons searches carried out this week by the Marines' 26th Expeditionary Force in the American sector in southeastern Kosovo. Many of the confrontations produced results. undreds of assault rifles, belt-fed machineguns and grenades, as well as a few rocket-propelled grenade launchers were confiscated…… The U.S. Marines' uptight behaviour can partly be explained by American paranoia caused by the deaths of U.S. Army troops in Somalia, by terrorist bombings of U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia and, going back a while, in Lebanon….Unlike the other NATO forces here, which have no air cover, the Marines always have Super Cobra and Apache helicopters flying low over their positions. Unlike other NATO commanders, Marine officers have also been very reluctant to send their soldiers out on foot patrols.

Groups of 15 or 20 leathernecks have been moved around together on top of mammoth amphibious armoured vehicles, in the back of dump trucks or have been stationed at checkpoints bristling with concertina wire. Albanians were incredulous that the Marines, whom they hailed as liberators, would so publicly humiliate their home-grown heroes by lining them up against a wall like criminals. But they are slowly awakening to the reality that, while NATO saved them from further atrocities from the Milosevic regime, it is an army of occupation that is as determined to protect Serbians as well as Albanian civilians….That the KLA's ragtag army can be just as vile as the Serbian forces has been known for a long time, but what they have tried to get up to over the past week suggests that NATO's problems are far more likely to come from them than from Serbian malcontents…. Already frustrated by the sudden departure of virtually the entire Serbian minority in their sector because of fears of KLA reprisals, the Germans announced late yesterday that the KLA had until midnight last night to surrender their weapons and until Sunday to get rid of their uniforms…."

European Stars & Stripes 6/18/99 Jon Anderson "…Top Marine Corps leaders in the U.S.-protected sector of Kosovo say tensions are rising in their area after six ethnic Albanians were wounded by gunfire Wednesday night. The shootings occurred after an incident earlier that day in which Marines forcibly detained six Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas after a daylong standoff with more than 100 of the rebel fighters….. In the latest incident, the wounded Kosovars showed up at a Marine base camp asking for help. They said they were shot by Serbs from atop a building. The Albanians were treated and are expected to recover. The actual events are disputed. Serbs told Marines the Albanians picked the fight. "It was just one long string of accusation and counteraccusation," said one Marine major…."

STRATFOR 6/18/99 "…1715 GMT, 990618 - The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that as of June 18, two-thirds of the ethnic Albanian refugees sheltered at the Kukes, Albania camp have left for the return trip home. UNHCR spokesman Rupert Colville said between 11,000 and 12,000 refugees still remain….1640 GMT, 990618 - Several ethnic Albanian doctors and nurses, accompanied by KLA members at Pristina's main hospital, demanded that the all-Serbian medical staff leave so that they might be replaced. One of the ethnic Albanian doctors said, "The Serb doctors don't look after Albanian patients. Now, there are no Albanian doctors. Before the war, we worked here. But now the Albanians don't have a right. We're not considered to be human." KFOR troops blocked the doors to the facility and tried to resolve the confrontation, but there are conflicting reports on whether the KLA members were armed or not….. 1611 GMT, 990618 - AFP reports that the KLA held nine nuns and one priest hostage and inflicted "psychological violence" at a Serbian Orthodox church near Mitrovica. An advance contingent of French troops arrived at the site June 16 at the request of church authorities, and has been guarding the area since then…..

Stratfor.com 6/18/99 "…Sure, Russia holds the strategic Slatina airbase, but the token Russian force can not both hold the base and establish a broader presence in Kosovo. NATO, not Russian, forces are overseeing the return of Kosovar Albanians and the spreading presence of the KLA. NATO, not Russian, forces are securing the sites of alleged atrocities. NATO, not Russian, forces are simultaneously urging Serbs to remain in Kosovo while regretting that they are as yet unable to defend the Serbs from the KLA. Every day that passes means that the Russians, when they finally are given a formal role in Kosovo, will find their role that much more marginal and strategically weak…."

FOX News 6/18/99 Donna Bryson, AP "…NATO pledged to put more military police on the streets to reinforce its authority and make the troubled province safe for Serbs who are fleeing by the thousands. Adding reinforcements to protect Serbs represents an ironic reversal of the role NATO has played up to now: fighting on behalf of ethnic Albanians facing repression by Serbs. Now the Serbs are clamoring for protection, reporting attacks across the province by the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army…..Up to 50,000 Serb civilians have already left Kosovo and the rest are increasingly fearful as Serb troops pull out to comply with last week's peace deal. Already, three-quarters of the 40,000 troops once in the province have left and the remainder are due out by midnight Sunday….In the eastern town of Pasjane, after KLA members pulled two Serbs from their car and beat them savagely, a group of Serbs surrounded a U.S. Marine checkpoint where the men were taken, demanding that the peacekeepers protect them. "You made the security leave -- now you have to replace it!'' one Serb shouted…."

CHICAGO TRIBUNE 6/18/99 Paul Salopek "…Yet another group of miserable civilians may soon be streaming out of the wretched killing fields of Kosovo. This time it is the Roma, or Gypsies, who are being blamed by the province's surviving ethnic Albanians for siding with their Serbian oppressors. The beginnings of a backlash against the Roma have been taking shape here over the past two days, ever since ethnic Albanian guerrillas began pouring into town in the wake of occupying NATO troops. The guerrillas, members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, have been conducting weapons searches in the two tiny Roma neighborhoods of the city. More ominously, ethnic Albanian men - both in and out of uniform - have been taking away individual Roma for ''interrogations,'' presumably about collaboration with the Yugoslav forces who have turned much of Djakovica into a pile of scorched rubble. ''A KLA guy put a gun to my daughter's neck and said, 'Where is your ID?''' said Samile Avduli, 34, who was still trembling from the tense encounter two hours earlier. ''He told us to get the hell out, to go to Serbia.'"…The Roma's biggest worry, though, remains the KLA, whose fighters were swarming through the city armed with automatic rifles. ''We want to live in peace here as we always have,'' said Lulzim Xerxa, 36, a Roma mechanic. ''I don't think the KLA will let us. We are afraid.'' …."

Reuters 6/17/99 "…NATO supreme commander General Wesley Clarke said on Thursday it was unclear if all Serb paramilitaries were pulling out of Kosovo. Clark told the BBC that disarmament in the Balkans of both the Serbs and the Kosovo Albanians would never be complete and was fraught with difficulties.

``It is not clear whether all the paramilitaries have pulled back or not and we will be watching this very closely,'' Clark told the BBC. ``We are never going to disarm everyone in the Balkans, There are weapons buried all over the Balkans,'' he added….."

Yahoo! News 6/18/99 AFP "…Separatist Kosovo guerrillas inflicted "psychological violence" on nine nuns and a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church they held captive in a convent here for two days, the convent's Mother Superior told AFP Friday. Mother Anastasia, the head of the 15th-century Devic convent 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica, said 30 fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) seized the convent on Sunday, before French troops moved into the area. Church authorities alerted the French military controlling the northern zone, who sent advance troops to the site on Wednesday and have been protecting the establishment since then. French troops moved into Mitrovica on Thursday. Anastasia denied an unconfirmed French military report that the youngest of the nine women being held had been raped, but said the guerrillas had inflicted "psychological violence" during their stay.

Pictures and glass protecting icons in the convent's chapel were smashed, and the KLA insignia was scratched on one of them. The tombstone of a Serbian Orthodox saint, St. Yonikos, was broken while graffitti was daubed on ancient murals and chandeliers were smashed, although most of the artwork was left intact. The one priest who was held hostage said nobody had been beaten but "they fired their machine guns behind our heads." The rebels also made off with the convent's four tractors, two cars, electric generators and money, the priest said….Two medieval Serbian Orthodox monasteries were also burnt down this week by KLA rebels and a priest was kidnapped, the archbishop of Kosovo said Thursday…."

AP 6/18/99 "….Accounts of brutality in Kosovo emerged Thursday in different tones - the stunned, flat voice of a teen-age girl and the measured sentences of a British official - but they both told of irrational savagery mixed with careful planning. Just six days into the international military presence in Kosovo, officials have discovered so many mass graves and killing sites and heard so many wrenching accounts of atrocities that they now estimate at least 10,000 people were killed in the Serb crackdown against Kosovo Albanians which began shortly before NATO began its 78-day air bombardment March 24. The mounting evidence is likely to add to calls for the arrest of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who has been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. But President Clinton said Thursday that peacekeepers will take a ``wait and see'' approach toward Milosevic's arrest….. One of the most grisly reports of slaughter so far came Thursday from the village of Poklek, 20 miles west of the provincial capital Pristina. The killings were, by residents' accounts, methodical. Elhame Muqolli, 14, told of how she and scores of friends and neighbors were herded into a room by Serb police, who threw in a hand grenade, raked the room with machine guns and then set it on fire to kill anyone who might have survived. Muqolli (pronounced Moo-CHO-lee) and five others had managed to jump out a window, but 62 others died in the April 17 incident. Their blood dripped through the floor to stain the ceiling of the room below….."

The Associated Press. Tom Walker 6/17/99 "…SENSING growing Nato disquiet about its future role in the province, the Kosovo Liberation Army yesterday scaled down its patrols in the second city of Prizren. Most of its soldiers were carrying only side-arms and truncheons. The main commander in Prizren, Ekrem Rexha, said that discussions on his guerrillas' disarmament could gather pace once it was verified that all Serb forces were out of Kosovo….. 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….."

ORIGINAL SOURCES 6/17/99 Mary Mostert "…The New York Times Reported yesterday that the "Kosovo Liberation Army will not hand over its weapons to Nato forces and intends to turn itself into a national army with the eventual goal of an independent Kosovo, a senior KLA commander said yesterday. "Directly contradicting the KLA's public support for the agreement reached at Rambouillet, Rustem Mustafa, one of seven regional commanders, said he expected Nato to train its 50,000 soldiers, to provide weapons to replace their old ones and to share security for Kosovo with the KLA." In a helpful description of the KLA the Times notes: "The KLA is a shadowy organization whose structure and leadership is unclear. Its headquarters during the war was near Malisevo, southwest of Pristina, and Mr. Mustafa's officials claim the military structure is divided into seven operational zones, each with its own commander and brigade. These in turn are divided into battalions of 500 men, companies of 100 and platoons. Political links are at brigade level."…. The United Nations resolution recognizes and promises to protect the Sovereign rights of Yugoslavia over Kosovo, which has been Serb for more than 1000 years….. He said Serbs with "clean hands" could continue to live in Kosovo, but gave a clear hint that reprisals could follow against those deemed to have helped Serb forces. "We were here all the time so we know who has done what. We have information," he said. Clearly, the report shows, a group tagged as a "terrorist" group, financed via crime and extortion, expects to become the accuser, judge and executioner of any and all Serbs remaining in Kosovo - and they expect that NATO will assist them by giving them new weapons….. "

The New York Times 6/20/99 "…With the last Yugoslav forces streaming out of Kosovo ahead of schedule, NATO commanders here have reached a tentative agreement with leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army to disband the rebel force gradually, NATO officials said Saturday. Under the agreement, which must still be signed by both parties, the rebels will withdraw from fortified positions held during their civil war against Yugoslav forces, turn over their heavy weapons, shed their uniforms and cease any organized military activities within 30 days…."

The Washington Post 6/20/99 Molly Moore "....With the last Yugoslav troops scheduled to depart Kosovo on Sunday, NATO forces are preparing to escalate the disarming of ethnic Albanian guerrillas who are taking over increasing police and governmental roles, often including violence and intimidation of rival Serbian communities. Even though NATO and Kosovo Liberation Army officials still have not signed an agreement setting the timetable for demilitarization of the separatist rebels, allied forces already have confiscated hundreds of weapons from KLA members and intervened in numerous conflicts involving Serbian citizens, whom the guerrillas consider sympathetic to the Yugoslav forces that brutalized ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. U.S. forces, which include the Marines and the 82nd Airborne Division, have been the most aggressive of the NATO troops in stripping KLA members of their weapons, arresting recalcitrant rebels and interceding in incidents of violence and threats against Serbs...."

Washington Post 6/20/99 Daniel Williams "...At bottom, the Kosovo conflict was a civil war. It was originally between forces of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav government and ethnic Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) who wanted independence for Kosovo, a province of Serbia, which is the dominant republic of the Yugoslav federation. As is often the case in civil conflicts, the foundations were well laid for a dirty war full of brutality and atrocities. Serbs are taught that the ethnic Albanians are interlopers, people who infiltrated Kosovo by stealth and have no legal right to be here. Moreover, 50-year-old grudges are alive. During World War II, some Albanians sided with the Italian and German occupation armies in Yugoslavia as a way of freeing themselves from the Serbs. The Germans slaughtered tens of thousands of Serbs, so this war became a kind of revenge...... The sad history of Yugoslavia in the past decade also played a role. Serbs see themselves as a main victim in the breakup of Yugoslavia. They resent that tens or hundreds of thousands of Serbs were expelled from Croatia in 1995 in the Croatians' own "ethnic cleansing" campaign of forced deportations, yet no one indicted the Croatian leadership for war crimes. Serbs are endlessly mystified by attention paid by the West to Albanian refugees. "No one cared anything about the Serbs when we were driven out," said Vesna Markovic, a refugee from the Krajina region of Croatia. "We were suffering and no one cared."...."

Reuters 6/20/99 "....British Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested on Sunday that the people of Serbia should bear some share of responsibility for war crimes committed in their name in Kosovo. ``They cannot walk away from these crimes,'' Blair said in an interview with the BBC recorded at the Group of Eight summit, where Kosovo has been top of the agenda. He accused Serbian paramilitaries of killing thousands of innocent people in Kosovo. Blair said it was a fact that no country would give reconstruction aid to Serbia while President Slobodan Milosevic remained in power. He countered the argument that the Serbs should not be punished for the actions of their leaders. ``The more that we see what has happened in Kosovo, the more we see that the Serbian people have got a responsibility to make Milosevic be culpable for these crimes. They cannot walk away from these crimes.'' ..."

Reuters 6/20/99 "...NATO troops have found 60,000 ethnic Albanian refugees held by Serb forces in five ransacked northern Kosovo villages that were turned into concentration camps, The Sunday Telegraph reported. The refugees told Telegraph journalists they had been taken prisoner by Yugoslav forces, to be used as a human shield in the event of a ground war with NATO...... It said all refugees older than six months were given identity cards bearing their name, a registration number and the name of their prison village...."

http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/171/nation/Serbs_in_Kosovo_suffer_reprisalsP.shtml 6/20/99 Charles Sennott "...Just off the main road that runs through Mitrovica, Yugoslav Nasic, 64, and his wife were shaking in fear as a NATO armored personnel carrier dropped them in front of their home. The Serb couple pleaded with NATO French peacekeeping forces, which are responsible for the area, to protect them from KLA soldiers, who they said had threatened to kill them if they remained. Nasic said KLA soldiers burst into their home yesterday and ''seemed polite at first.'' Then he said one of the soldiers wrenched his wife's left forefinger, apparently breaking it. ''I am too afraid now. I have to go. NATO cannot sit and wait here in front of our house all night. We are going to have to go,'' said Nasic, his hands trembling, his wife wincing in pain. ''They will kill us,'' he said..... The French troops grew impatient and moved on. The Nasics then left their home and walked away toward the Serbian forces on the edge of town that were preparing to pull out. They took nothing with them. Minutes later, two KLA soldiers emerged from the elderly couple's backyard. Sola Zahiti, a commander of KLA special forces in the town, was dressed in full camouflage, armed with a pistol and a grenade. When asked if he had forced the couple to leave their home, Zahiti replied, ''Why not? Look what they did to their neighbors' houses.'' He pointed to the charred remains of ethnic Albanian homes that dotted the neighborhood. Only those homes marked with a Serbian Orthodox cross and symbol of Serb solidarity drawn in chalk were left untouched....."

Reuters 6/20/99 Matt Spetalnick "...Yugoslav forces completed their withdrawal from Kosovo 11 hours ahead of schedule Sunday as Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton agreed to put disagreements over NATO's air war behind them. NATO promptly declared an official end to the air strikes launched on March 24 and suspended since June 10, when Belgrade agreed to withdraw from the southern Serbian province and let NATO troops protect returning ethnic Albanian refugees..."

Associated Press 6/20/99 DUSAN STOJANOVIC "...With Slobodan Milosevic's rule shaken by Serbia's withdrawal from Kosovo, an even more extremist and anti-Western politician is bidding to take his place. After quitting Milosevic's government when NATO-led troops marched into the southern Serbian province, Vojislav Seselj is now poised to mount the greatest political challenge to the Yugoslav president since he came to power 10 years ago. If Seselj succeeds, it will put into place a nationalist leadership even more strident and anti-Western than the regime NATO just tried to bomb into submission...... Seselj once declared his men would ''take out the eyes of Croatians with rusty spoons.'' NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia deemed his outbursts threatening enough to expel him from the country late last year. When Western officials recently accused Serb troops of raping Kosovo women, Seselj denied it by saying they were too ugly for Serb men. On the eve of NATO strikes against Yugoslavia, he threatened that when ''the first allied bomb'' fell on the Serbian soil, ''there will be no Albanians left in Kosovo.'' His prophecy nearly materialized, when hundreds of thousands Kosovo Albanians were forced to flee Kosovo and thousands were killed by Serb troops......"

The Associated Press Donna Bryson 6/20/99 "...The United Nations raised its light blue flag over Kosovo Sunday, and with it hopes for order and democracy in the bitterly divided region. But the red-and-black flag of Albania, which flies over their headquarters on the hilly outskirts of Pristina and elsewhere in Kosovo, represents a serious challenge to U.N. authority. The separatist Kosovo Liberation Army is occupying town halls the United Nations says it should administer and intervening in disputes the world body says it should mediate, raising concerns that plans for a multiethnic Kosovo will be hijacked...."

Stratfor.com 6/20/99 "...While, at least as far as the Russians are concerned, there are no "zones of control in Kosovo, the province is to be divided into five "sectors," which will be controlled and patrolled by NATO members Germany, France, Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom. Under the deal struck between Russia and NATO, 3,000 to 7,000 Russian troops will patrol alongside NATO forces in the German, French, and U.S. sectors. The politics behind teaming Russians with these particular countries is clear. More than others in NATO, France and Germany have attempted to cooperate with Russia throughout the Kosovo conflict, and are attempting to establish the foundation for further post-conflict cooperation. The U.S. has a symbolic obligation to compromise....In short, Russia is absent in what are perhaps the two most significant sectors - those of Italy and the UK. The presence in the German sector and at the airport is significant, but the troops deployed with French and U.S. forces are basically exiles. The U.S. and Russia, so key to Kosovo developments to date, are effectively marginalized in the province. Italy and the UK have been handed the greatest control over developments on the ground in Kosovo. Italy has a vested interest in limiting the influence of Tirana and the KLA in Kosovo, and its troops are geographically placed to do so, but Italy may not have committed the forces necessary to take on the KLA. So the UK is the key player, and its interests are far less clear...."

Stratfor.com 6/20/99 "...0140 GMT, 990621 - Participants at the G-8 summit in Cologne, Germany announced that relations strained by the crisis in Kosovo have been largely restored. The meeting "was a bridge of understanding between Russia and the West," according to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Russian President Boris Yeltsin declared that he was "among friends," and said, "After this quarrel we should all have a reconciliation - that is the main thing."..... 2200 GMT, 990620 - British forensics experts have begun the investigation of Velika Krusa, a town that is the location of an alleged Serbian atrocity and a location mentioned specifically in the war-crimes indictment of Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic...."

The Associated Press 6/21/99 ALEKSANDAR VASOVIC "...Several hundred Serb refugees from Kosovo protested Monday in downtown Belgrade, demanding better protection before they heed the government's appeals to return to Kosovo. The police ordered the protesters to disperse. Angry both with a government they feel has abandoned them and with peacekeepers who they say cannot ensure their safety in Kosovo, the Serbs demanded that the U.N. Security Council address their plight. ``We demand that the U.N. Security Council stop the rampage of the terrorist gangs ... who destroy Serb property and historic monuments in Kosovo,'' a leaflet handed out by the protesters read...."

Reuters 6/21/99 Mark Heinrich "...``Life in Kosovo is an elemental struggle for existence...carried out in relentless obedience to nature's law, which says, 'There is no place for you both. You must kill or be killed,''' wrote Balkans scholar Edith Durham. That was in 1908....."

Stratfor 6/21/99 "...1557 GMT, 990621 - A group of 30 Russian architects and builders flew from Moscow to Belgrade on June 21 to aid in the restoration of buildings and bridges destroyed by NATO airstrikes. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and Belgrade Mayor Voislav Mihailovic talked last week about the restoration of several facilities in and around Belgrade...... 1509 GMT, 990621 - The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said June 21 that around 135,000 ethnic Albanian refugees have returned to Kosovo since NATO's airstrikes were suspended 11 days ago. On June 20 alone, over 34,000 refugees crossed into Kosovo from Albania and Macedonia..... "

The New York Times 6/21/99 Steven Lee Myers "...The agreement reached early Monday to disband the Kosovo Liberation Army included, at the insistence of its commanders, a pledge by the NATO allies to consider letting the rebels form a provisional army for Kosovo modeled on the National Guard in United States. The agreement, signed in the dead of night after a frenetic weekend of military and political wrangling from a mountainous rebel redoubt in central Kosovo to the capitals of Europe, gave no timetable for creating an army and no details of its size or mission. But the inclusion of the pledge insures that even after laying down its arms, the Kosovo Liberation Army can pursue its ambition to remain an organized political and military force in the Yugoslav province. For their part, the rebels agreed to a phased demilitarization, an immediate cease-fire and a cessation of hostilities. ..."

The New York Times 6/22/99 David Rohde "...For the third consecutive day, several dozen Serbs in civilian dress who call themselves "warrior citizens" prevented ethnic Albanians from entering the predominantly Serbian sector of this northern Kosovo industrial town on Monday, jeering and threatening any Albanian who dared to enter. In a direct challenge to NATO authority, the Serbs are declaring their neighborhood, about a third of the city, and the predominantly Serbian towns to the north a "Serbian zone." The area stretches the width of a valley 30 or so miles from here ..."..."

Stratfor.com 6/21/99 "... 2330 GMT, 990621 Russia/U.S./NATO - Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov said the ratification of the START III treaty will depend on the state of relations between Russia and NATO. Seleznyov added that ratification will hinge on what the U.S. does in regard to the ABM treaty. Seleznyov went on to say, "Whether the Americans withdraw from this treaty or not will be clear already this autumn." ...."

AFP 6/20/99 "... British Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested Sunday that Kosovar Albanian desires to see their province move beyond autonomy to actual independence from Yugoslavia might be discussed in the future. It was a rare expression of willingness to consider moving beyond the terms listed in the G8 peace plan agreed to by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and later ratified by a UN Security Council Resolution....Speaking on the ABC television program This Week, Blair, in Cologne for the G8 summit, said the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) knew "all the way through that what we decided at the Rambouillet peace accords was that there would be a substantial measure of autonomy for them." ...."

The Associated Press 6/21/99 Laura King "...An explosion in a school outside Pristina killed four people today, including two Gurkha soldiers in the British peacekeeping force, NATO said. A fifth person was injured, the first casualties since the allied peacekeepers entered Kosovo on June 12. The blast that killed two civilians as well as the two soldiers from the 69th Gurkha Field Squadron was caused by a mine or booby-trapped device on school grounds west of Kosovo's capital, the allies said...."

UK Independent 6/21/99 Robert Fisk "..." NATO killed far more Serb civilians than soldiers during its 11-week bombardment of the country and most of the Yugoslav Third Army emerged unscathed from the massive air attacks on its forces in Kosovo, according to evidence emerging in Yugoslavia. Nato officers have been astonished that thousands of Yugoslav tanks, missile launchers, artillery batteries, personnel carriers and trucks have been withdrawn from the province with barely a scratch on them. At least 60,000 Yugoslav troops - rather than the 40,000 estimated - were waiting to fight the Western armies in Kosovo. Yugoslav military sources said that more than half ..."

Reuters 6/23/99 "...The United States has no credible evidence the Kosovo Liberation Army engaged in drug trafficking to support its armed struggle against Serbia, State Department spokesman James Rubin said Wednesday. "The U.S. government has never identified credible evidence of these drugrunning charges,'' he told reporters. "We've seen reports in newspapers and elsewhere,'' Rubin said. But although American intelligence agencies have looked into the issue, "we have not never developed credible evidence of our own,'' he said...."

AP 6/21/99 "...President Clinton on Monday defined what type of U.S. financial aid should go to rebuild NATO-bombed Yugoslavia while President Slobodan Milosevic is still in power. World leaders have agreed that only humanitarian help should be allowed in order to provide comfort to the Serbian people, but not the government. In Clinton's view, it's okay to rebuild hospitals and power plants, but not roads and bridges, he said in Bonn, Germany, where he attended a U.S.-European Union conference. ``In terms of rebuilding the bridges so people can go to work, I don't buy that,'' the president said. ``That's part of their economic reconstruction, and I don't think we should help, not a bit, not a penny...."

The Associated Press 6/22/99 "...In an apparent change of tone, China said Tuesday that ``a serious investigation'' is needed to prove whether ethnic cleansing occurred in Kosovo. China previously played down evidence of atrocities in the Serb province, instead blaming NATO's bombing campaign for creating a humanitarian crisis. Since entering Kosovo on June 12, international peacekeepers and reporters have found mass graves and other apparent signs of atrocities. Asked about the discoveries and whether they strengthened the case for war crimes charges against Yugoslav leaders, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said more research was needed. She did not rule out putting Yugoslav leaders on trial. ``Whether this ethnic cleansing has happened or what is the concept of ethnic cleansing, a conclusion can only be drawn after a serious investigation,'' Zhang said at a briefing. The United Nations should discuss how the investigation should proceed, she said....."

New York Times 6/22/99 Elisabeth Bumiller "... The 22-year-old woman, married four months ago, said she was taken from this small southern village by Serbian forces, held for a day in the local police station, beaten, then threatened with death. But she was not, she said, raped. Her husband, Behan Thaqi, thinks differently. "I am 100 percent certain that they raped her," said Thaqi, 34, a farmer imprisoned by the Serbs for supplying weapons to the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Albanian guerrillas who fought Serbian forces. "I know that when women get in their hands, there is no chance to escape." ...."

Stratfor.com 6/22/99 "...1531 GMT 990622 - Russian presidential envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin said that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) should be both disarmed and disbanded, and that he was concerned over the vague wording of the UN-brokered peace resolution. Chernomyrdin said that the resolution called for the demilitarization of the KLA, but not its disarmament. According to the resolution signed by NATO Commander General Sir Michael Jackson and KLA leader Hashim Thaci, KLA members must surrender all but their smallest weapons.....1255 GMT, 990622 - Malaysia will send troops to Kosovo at UN expense and command, said Defense Minister Abang Abu Bakar. The country will provide 10 military liaison officers and 50 police for a one-year mission, most likely at the UN command headquarters, Bakar said. Bakar called the invitation to serve "a big honor for Malaysia," as it recognized the professionalism of its troops.

AP breaking 6/23/99 "...NATO troops have pledged to do their best to keep revenge-minded ethnic Albanians from looting and burning Serb homes, but they were too late for this village. Crackling fire ate into wooden beams Wednesday morning. A roof collapsed. Tiles were strewn about. Stucco fell from walls. ``They burn our houses, we burn theirs,'' said Shpetim Shijaku, a skinny ethnic Albanian 10-year-old who came from a nearby village to grab whatever fleeing Serbs had left behind. The looting of this Serb settlement of 50 houses in southwestern Kosovo began Tuesday, locals said, after villagers fled, fearing reprisals from Kosovo Liberation Army rebels...."

Stratfor.com Global Intelligence Center 6/23/99 "... 2031 GMT, 990623 Yugoslavia/United States - In fulfillment of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Support for East European Democracy Act of 1989, a comprehensive security package moving through the U.S. Senate proposes $150 million in aid for Kosovo, "of which $20,000,000 shall be available for training and equipping a Kosova security force." There is no indication whether this is refers to a new security force or aid for the Kosovo Liberation Army...... "

Stratfor.com Kosovo Crisis Center 6/23/99 "...1922 GMT, 990623 - Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon announced the U.S. believes that Russian mercenaries participated in the Kosovo conflict on the Serbian side, and that they may have been involved in committing atrocities. Bacon insisted that any Russians would have been acting on their own accord, although Newsday had reported that dozens of Russian volunteers had participated in a massacre near Prizren. Bacon said that his information was based on reports from the Kosovo Liberation Army and that he was not aware of any groups of the size described by Newsday. He emphasized that the individuals were acting alone and that there was no evidence they were linked to the Russian government. 1647 GMT, 990623 - In a statement released June 23, the UN said it plans to bring the ethnic Albanian signatories to the Rambouillet Agreement and a local Serbian political leader together to negotiate a compromise on political administration for Kosovo. The UN says it plans to form an advisory council to discuss the interim arrangements, headed by UN acting special representative Sergio Viera de Mello. Viera de Mello has met for the past two days with Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci in regards to the political situation in the providence...."

Associated Press - via canoe.com 6/23/99 Donna Bryson "...Ethnic tensions are straining the U.N. peace plan for Kosovo, with Serb houses burning in one Kosovo city and Serbs barring ethnic Albanians from crossing a bridge in another. The foreign ministers of Italy, Britain, Germany and France are visiting Kosovo today to meet with U.N. special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and NATO's Kosovo commander, Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson. Smoke from burning houses in the divided city of Pec rose up into the mountains Tuesday. Ethnic Albanians watched one Serb house burn and claimed the Serbs had set the fire themselves. The residents couldn't be found. Italian peacekeepers sent in soldiers to remove a Serb family that said a KLA fighter had come into their home and robbed them. While soldiers on the street and in the courtyard provided cover, other troops stormed the house and escorted the men and women out. In the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica, French peacekeepers looked on as Serbs menaced those wanting to cross a bridge to the other side of town -- an area containing the main hospital, many ethnic Albanian homes and almost the only open food shops. "I just want to go home," said 69-year-old Hasan Jashari, crying....."

The Associated Press Laura King 6/24/99 "...If there was a defining moment in Hashim Thaci's transformation from a mystery-shrouded rebel chieftain - code named ``The Snake'' - to a politician with all the right moves, this might have been it. As the 30-year-old ethnic Albanian leader emerged Wednesday from a meeting in Pristina with visiting European foreign ministers, the crowd at first chanted, ``NA-TO! NA-TO!'' ...But that was swiftly drowned out by louder, far more impassioned shouts: his name (pronounced THAH-chee) repeated over and over, and rhythmic yells of ``U-C-K!'' (pronounced OOH-CHAY-KAH), the Albanian-language initials for the soon-to-be-disbanded rebel army. Women held babies up for him to kiss. Teen-age boys clustered around him, speaking earnestly. Younger boys pushed close and beamed when they were rewarded with a long arm draped for a moment around their skinny shoulders....."

Reuters 6/24/99 "..." The United States on Thursday offered a reward of up to $5 million to encourage the arrest of alleged Yugoslav war criminals, including President Slobodan Milosevic. State Department spokesman James Rubin said the money would go to ``those who provide information that leads to the transfer of indicted war criminals'' to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague. Washington has provided evidence and support for the Hague court to pursue cases against those responsible for atrocities in Kosovo in recent months, when Serb forces forced hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians to flee ..."

Stratfor 6/24/99 "...Now that NATO forces are on the ground in Kosovo, they finally have an opportunity to observe the effects of the 79 day bombing campaign. Readily apparent is that NATO was successful in targeting buildings, fuel depots, and other fixed infrastructure. This comes as no surprise, since there was ample video footage of the damage available throughout the conflict. What has also become apparent is that NATO's bombing campaign did strikingly little damage to Yugoslav military equipment, troops, and capacity to wage war. Despite NATO claims that it had damaged or destroyed some 40 percent of Yugoslavia's main battle tanks and 60 percent of Yugoslav artillery and mortars, KFOR troops have thus far found only three damaged, and outdated, T-55 tanks left behind in Kosovo. The Yugoslav military admits to an additional 10 damaged tanks, though they were considered sufficiently repairable to be removed from the province on trailers. What NATO did find was a massive amount of decoys - fake tanks, trucks, artillery pieces, missile launchers, roads, and even bridges - on which NATO had expended its weaponry. NATO troops entering Kosovo also described the Yugoslav Army's defensive fortifications as "formidable." NATO's attacks on fixed infrastructure, while successful, were of questionable value. Yugoslav forces quickly abandoned their known headquarters, and both Serbian and KLA sources reported through the campaign that NATO was attacking empty buildings - repeatedly. And while NATO repeatedly struck Yugoslavia's limited number of petroleum infrastructure targets, reports late in the conflict indicated that the Yugoslav Army still retained ample stockpiles of fuel to facilitate armor and aircraft combat maneuver. Strikes against the hardened airbase at Pristina were also evidently less successful than NATO had hoped. On June 11, six MiG-21s flew out of Pristina airport, and on June 12, what NATO initially reported as eleven MiG-29s but later called MiG-21s departed Pristina. And despite NATO assertions that its bombing campaign had crushed the spirit of the Yugoslav Army, the 47,000 troops that withdrew from the province appeared to observers to be in good shape and high spirits...."

stratfor.com 6/24/99 "...1655 GMT, 990624 Yugoslavia - U.S. Marines based around Fort Monteith in southeastern Kosovo were placed on high alert after a column of Serbian tanks and armored vehicles penetrated a three-mile buffer zone around the province June 23. The column was spotted by a British helicopter, and a Cobra attack helicopter was scrambled to intercept. Additionally, combat engineers on the ground prepared tank traps to stop the incoming Serbian armor, but the Serbian column disappeared....."

New York Times 6/25/99 Chris Hedges "...The senior commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which signed a disarmament agreement with NATO, carried out assassinations, arrests and purges within their ranks to thwart potential rivals, say current and former commanders in the rebel army and some Western diplomats. The campaign, in which as many as half a dozen top rebel commanders were shot dead, was directed by Hashim Thaci and two of his lieutenants, Azem Syla and Xhavit Haliti, these officials said. Thaci denied through a spokesman that he had been responsible for any such killings. Although the United States has long been wary of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the rebel group has become the main ethnic Albanian power in Kosovo. Rebel commanders supplied NATO with target information during the bombing campaign. Now, after the war, the United States and other NATO powers have effectively made Thaci and the rebel force partners in rebuilding Kosovo. The agreement NATO signed with Thaci, for example, envisions turning the rebel group into a civilian police force and leaves open the possibility that the Kosovo Liberation Army could become a provisional army modeled on the United States National Guard. While none of the rebel officials interviewed saw Thaci or his aides execute anyone, they recounted -- and in some cases said they had witnessed -- incidents in which Thaci's rivals had been killed shortly after he or one of his aides had threatened them with death...."

UPI 6/22/99 "...Unexploded NATO ordnance was blamed for the deaths of two Gurkha British soldiers of the international peace implementation force KFOR and two civilians in a village near Pristina Monday, Belgrade media reported. The incident occurred at the village of Nekovce, 30 km southwest of Pristina, when the Gurkhas were reported clearing the village school. More than 50 pieces of unexploded ordnance had been placed in a ditch and one device went off, the reports said....."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_375000/375660.stm 6/23/99 Caroline Wyatt "..." Two elderly Serb civilians have been attacked and killed in their homes in the Kosovo town of Prizren, in what appear to have been revenge attacks by Kosovo Albanians. The pair - a man and a woman - were attacked in their homes near the town centre, apparently by ethnic Albanian civilians armed with an axe. Both bodies had been badly mutilated by the time German K-For troops arrived on the scene. One eyewitness said the woman had been virtually decapitated. The motive appears to be revenge for what happened to ethnic Albanians at the hands of the Serbs ..."

Human Rights Watch 6/18/99 "...Accompanied by a local villager, a Human Rights Watch researcher yesterday inspected the site of a mass killing in Meja, northwest of Djakovica, and found the decayed remains of several men. The men were apparently killed by Serb security forces on April 27, 1999, victims of a massacre in which Human Rights Watch believes at least 100 men were killed. The site appears to confirm testimony that Human Rights Watch collected earlier, in interviews with Kosovar refugees in northern Albania.....There were four recently dug graves located in a small Catholic cemetery further up the hill. According to the villager, the remains of four local men who were killed in the massacre are buried there. After nineteen separate interviews with eyewitnesses who had passed through Meja on April 27 (See Flash # 34), Human Rights Watch concluded that at least one hundred, and perhaps many more, men between the ages of sixteen and sixty were taken out of a convoy of refugees by Serbian forces and systematically executed in Meja on that day. The refugees who were interviewed had been systematically "cleansed" from neighboring villages by Serbian special police, paramilitary units, and soldiers of the Yugoslav Army (VJ). The refugees were then forced to follow the road to Meja, which many of them passed through around midday. They reported seeing security forces holding "hundreds" of men at gunpoint. Those who passed through Meja later in the afternoon reported having seen a "large pile of bodies." ..."

Stratfor.com 6/22/99 "...1247 GMT, 990622 - The two British soldiers killed in Kosovo yesterday died while transporting NATO cluster bombs away from a school were they had been collected by locals, said a British military spokesperson. Both men were from the 6th Gurkha Field Squadron of the 36th Engineering Regiment. They had been asked by local residents to move the piles of bomblets away from the school so that they could be detonated without damaging the building. After moving the bomblets away from the building and placing them into three piles for detonation, two of the piles exploded, killing the two soldiers and two civilian bystanders...."

Associated Press 6/23/99 Robert Burns "...U.S. Marines manning a checkpoint in Kosovo were shot at today by unidentified assailants and then returned fire, killing one person and wounding two, U.S. officials said. The commander of U.S. forces in Kosovo, Army Brig. Gen. John Craddock, said no Marines were injured..... Craddock said he had not yet learned whether the assailants were Serbs or ethnic Albanians. After the interview, Pentagon officials said they learned that the assailants had surrendered. They apparently numbered about a half dozen, were dressed in civilian clothes and were armed with AK-47 weapons...."

Reuters 6/24/99 "...Three Kosovo Serbs were found killed in the provincial capital Pristina on Thursday, witnesses and KFOR peacekeepers said. The bodies of a professor, a night guard and a canteen manager were found inside the building of the economics faculty of Pristina University...."

AFP 6/24/99 "...- The murder of three Serbs at Pristina's economics faculty on Wednesday night did little to reassure the thousands of Serbs already packing and leaving their homes in Kosovo's capital, many of them saying they had been expelled from their appartments by armed ethnic Albanian groups. .... "The talk about security for all in Kosovo is just rhetoric," Zoran Pavlovic, 36, a Serb, said. "The reality is that Serbs in Pristina do not have any protection and they are being terrorised by armed or unarmed Albanian groups.". ...Father Sava, a Serb Orthodox priest, told a press conference on Thursday that an estimated 20,000 Serbs had left Pristina since the withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo began on June 10. He also said that at least 50 Serbs had been killed and 140 kidnapped in the same period throughout Kosovo. .....Already, hundreds of Serbs said they have had their appartments confiscated by armed Albanian groups who give them deadlines of up to 48 hours to vacate the premises...."

Los Angeles Times 6/23/99 CHRISTOPHER LAYNE "....Although it was NATO's ostensible ally against Yugoslavia, it is hard to grasp why U.S. and NATO policymakers have concluded that the KLA forces are the "good guys." * First, the KLA is a nasty and thuggish lot. This is a coalition of the despicable: a radical right wing (descendants from the numerous ethnic Albanians who fought for the Nazis in World War II), a radical left wing (communist hard-liners), liberally mixed with Islamic fundamentalists and drug traffickers and other criminals. * Second, the KLA's ideology is inconsistent with America's postwar vision for the province, which, as President Clinton reiterated this week, calls for creation of a multiethnic democracy. The KLA is hostile toward democracy.... * Third, the KLA's long-term political ambitions are antithetical to those of the United States and NATO. Washington and the alliance seek a postwar Kosovo that enjoys substantial self-rule as an autonomous province within Serbia. The KLA, however, is committed to attaining independence for Kosovo and ultimately to uniting Kosovo, by force if necessary, with Albania and with the ethnic Albanian portion of Macedonia, which could trigger a wider Balkan conflict.... * Fourth, the KLA craftily orchestrated events in Kosovo in order to draw the U.S. and NATO into the conflict against Serbia. Early this year, the U.S. intelligence community warned the Clinton administration that the KLA would attempt to force NATO's intervention by staging provocations designed to elicit brutal Serb reprisals and thereby gain the West's sympathy and support. The KLA's strategy worked: The U.S. intervened in Kosovo's civil war, absolving the KLA insurgents and naively concluding that the Serbs alone were responsible...."

Washington Post 6/27/99 Anna Husarska "...The Kosovo Albanian spotted the New Republic logo on my cap and broke into a broad smile. "Hey, we are now from a new republic, too," he announced triumphantly. Everywhere I went in Kosovo this month, the name of my home magazine made me popular. I gradually gave away all the paraphernalia I owned with the logo on it: first the cap, then the polo shirt, then the sweat shirt. Even my business cards were a hit among ethnic Albanians who believe that theirs is the only new republic that matters. The U.S. government and, indeed, the entire international community begs to differ, of course: An independent republic of Kosovo is not being contemplated as a possible outcome of the U.N./NATO operation. But amid the general chaos here as local factions vie for power, this lack of agreement over the final status of the province does not seem to matter, at least not for now. It doesn't matter to Kosovo Albanians, who act as though this were indeed their new republic; their representatives are taking power in municipalities abandoned by the Serb-dominated administration, which has withdrawn with the Yugoslav army....."

Stratfor.Com Kosovo Crisis Center 6/26/99 "...1455 GMT, 990626 Yugoslavia - A Russian Ilyushin 76 and a French C130 landed at the Slatina airport June 26, the first aircraft to arrive there since the Allied air war ended. The Russian jet was carrying paratroopers and technicians for the Russian field force, while the French plane carried parts and personnel to bring the airport back to full operational status. Colonel General Viktor Zavarzin, the Russian commander who led his troops into Kosovo to the airport, commented that this was "the start of the air bridge which will serve in the future as a delivery point for all the things we need." 0142 GMT, 990626 Yugoslavia - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports that the Serbian government has released over 166 ethnic Albanians who have been kept in Serbian prisons. The organization will see to the safe return of the men back into Kosovo in the coming days and made it clear they intend to continue efforts to locate other ethnic Albanians being held in Yugoslavia. Questions remain though, according to the ICRC, over how many are being detained and where they are located...."

BBC 6/27/99 "...The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has warned against the creation of "another humanitarian disaster" in Yugoslavia. In an interview with the BBC, Mr Annan said aid should be offered to Yugoslavia, irrespective of whether President Slobodan Milosevic stays in power. Nato countries like the US and the UK have ruled out any money to rebuild Yugoslavia without a change of government. But Mr Annan said: "We have to make sure that the Serbs, who in some ways are victims of their own leadership, should not be twice punished." ..."

New York Times 6/27/99 John Broder "...President Clinton acknowledged Friday for the first time that he had underestimated Serbia's ability to withstand the NATO bombing campaign. In a lengthy news conference, Clinton said he had believed that President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia would submit to allied demands after "a couple of days" of bombing and halt the Serbian assault on Kosovo. NATO and the administration were initially criticized for that miscalculation of Serbian stamina, and then for failing to have a strategy for a prolonged air war, a campaign that ultimately lasted 78 days...."

Stratfor 6/25/99 "...It is becoming harder by the day to justify NATO's continued collaboration with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). A front page article in the June 25 New York Times cites KLA commanders, former Albanian government officials, and Western diplomats who claim KLA leader Hashim Thaci and two of his lieutenants led purges of the KLA ranks, to root out and kill potential challengers to Thaci's leadership. No one has come forward to say they witnessed Thaci or his associates, Azem Syla and Xhavit Haliti, personally carrying out the killings, though reports to this effect have circulated for years. Moreover, there have been numerous documented accounts of people killed shortly after criticizing or being threatened by Thaci and his associates, whose reputations for ruthlessness and intimidation are legendary....What Thaci and Rubin have not been able to deny is the wave of reprisals against Serbs carried out by Kosovar Albanians, including members of the KLA. Serbs have been kidnapped, beaten, and killed, their houses and businesses looted and burned, and NATO has been unable to stop the campaign....The problem is, NATO simply has no options. It has so elevated the KLA throughout Operation Allied Force, so marginalized Rugova and the moderates, and so demonized the Serbs, that it can not now tear down Thaci's organization..... NATO is now learning that it is impossible not to take sides in a conflict. Unless it is now willing to combat the KLA and take complete and sole military and political control of the province, it has just handed control of Kosovo to a group no more nor less ethical and humane than Arkan's Tigers. NATO attempted to wage an even-handed humanitarian war to impose a peaceful tie between hostile camps engaged in a very messy, centuries-old blood feud. Now, too late, it learns what it stepped into...."

Stratfor 6/24/99 "...Now that NATO forces are on the ground in Kosovo, they finally have an opportunity to observe the effects of the 79 day bombing campaign. Readily apparent is that NATO was successful in targeting buildings, fuel depots, and other fixed infrastructure. This comes as no surprise, since there was ample video footage of the damage available throughout the conflict. What has also become apparent is that NATO's bombing campaign did strikingly little damage to Yugoslav military equipment, troops, and capacity to wage war. Despite NATO claims that it had damaged or destroyed some 40 percent of Yugoslavia's main battle tanks and 60 percent of Yugoslav artillery and mortars, KFOR troops have thus far found only three damaged, and outdated, T-55 tanks left behind in Kosovo. The Yugoslav military admits to an additional 10 damaged tanks, though they were considered sufficiently repairable to be removed from the province on trailers. What NATO did find was a massive amount of decoys - fake tanks, trucks, artillery pieces, missile launchers, roads, and even bridges - on which NATO had expended its weaponry. NATO troops entering Kosovo also described the Yugoslav Army's defensive fortifications as "formidable." ...""

Reuters 6/23/99 "...The United States has no credible evidence the Kosovo Liberation Army engaged in drug trafficking to support its armed struggle against Serbia, State Department spokesman James Rubin said Wednesday. ''The U.S. government has never identified credible evidence of these drug-running charges,'' he told reporters. ``We've seen reports in newspapers and elsewhere,'' Rubin said. But although American intelligence agencies h