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1.
More than 900 bodies of Kosovo war victims exhumed in Serbia
2.
Serb alert for Kosovo border troops
3. NATO and U.N. say no
evidence of Albanian militants crossing into
Serbia
from Kosova
## 1
##
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/480fa8736b88bbc3c12564f6004c8ad5/910a97cbbcf417d749256ccb001e1579?OpenDocument
Source:
Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Date: 10 Feb 2003
More than 900
bodies of Kosovo war victims exhumed in Serbia
BELGRADE, Feb
10 (AFP) - More than 900 bodies of presumed Kosovo war
victims
have been unearthed from three mass graves in Serbia since June
2001,
Nebojsa Covic, a key Serbian official in charge of Kosovo
affairs
said Monday.
Covic, who is also Serbia's
deputy prime minister, said the bodies
were believed to be ethnic
Albanians killed during the 1999 conflict in
Kosovo and brought to
Serbia, Tanjug news agency reported.
Under the
supervision of international forensic experts, some 807
bodies
were exhumed from a site in Batajnica, near Belgrade, 81 from a
site
near the eastern city of Novo Selo and 48 from the western
area
around Bajina Basta, Covic said.
Former
Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic is currently on trial
before
the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, in connection with the
1999
war in Kosovo. Three of his allies are also to be tried for
alleged
war crimes committed in the province.
The
crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo by the Milosevic regime
was
ended by an 11-week NATO bombing campaign against
Yugoslavia
beginning in June 1999. The province was then placed
under UN
administration.
Covic also said that
Serb officials have collected information on
some 1,944 Serbs and
non-Albanians, believed to have been kidnapped
since the end of
the war in Kosovo by ethnic Albanian guerrillas.
"For 950 of them, we have complete files," Covic said,
insisting
that the UN judicial officials in Kosovo have failed to
launch
proceedings against any former rebel so far.
More than 200,000 Serbs fled Kosovo in 1999 for other parts of
Serbia
or neighbouring Montenegro, fearing revenge attacks by
ethnic
Albanians after Belgrade's troops pulled out.
an/rl
AFP 101743 GMT 02 03
Copyright (c) 2003 Agence France-Presse
##
2 ##
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2751345.stm
Wednesday,
12 February, 2003, 02:18 GMT
Serb alert for Kosovo border
troops
Peacekeeping troops in Kosovo breaking up a
confrontation
Tensions do still occasionally rise in Kosovo
By
Matthew Price
BBC Belgrade correspondent
The Serbian
authorities have announced that they are putting their
police and
army units which patrol the border with Kosovo on a state of
alert.
The announcement follows rising tension in the area over
recent
days.
The United Nations - which is in
charge of the southern Serbian
province of Kosovo - says it has no
information which would suggest that
a forthcoming attack is
likely.
The Serbian authorities say they are
reacting to information they
have received that terrorists, in
their words, are getting ready in
Kosovo to head into southern
Serbia.
Tension 'declined'
The information, they say,
comes from the United Nations mission in
Kosovo, or Unmik.
A spokesman for Unmik told BBC News Online he was not aware
that any
information to that effect had been passed to the Serb
authorities and
he said there is nothing to suggest an attack is
likely to take place.
Overall, it is felt that
tension in Kosovo has dramatically declined
since the conflict
there between Serb forces and the majority ethnic
Albanian
population in the late 1990s.
However from time to
time tension does rise and it appears to be
doing so right
now.
Dangerous game
Recently around one-third of MPs in
Kosovo's parliament supported a
motion on independence, although
that was later put on the back burner.
And just the
other day the Serbian prime minister said that Serb
forces should
be allowed to return to Kosovo.
Some dismiss the
moves on both sides as playing politics.
In the
Balkans that can be a dangerous game.
## 3
##
http://www.radio21.net/english/index.htm
NATO and
U.N. say no evidence of Albanian militants crossing into Serbia
from
Kosova
PRISHTINA, February 12 - There is no evidence that
Albanian militants
are crossing into Serbia or operating in
Kosova, international officials
said Wednesday in a response to
allegations from a Serbian official.
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister
Nebojsa Covic, said Tuesday that his
government had reliable
information that armed Albanian militants were
grouping in two
Kosova towns near the boundary separating Kosova from
Serbia.
Covic also said he had asked the U.N. mission in Kosova and
NATO-led
peacekeepers "for measures to halt the entry of armed
militants
from Kosova."
Wing Cmdr. Tony Adams, a spokesman
for the NATO-led peacekeepers in
Kosova, on Wednesday dismissed
Covic's claim. "We have no intelligence
or information on any
terrorist organization operating within Kosova at
all," he
said, adding that no Kosova militants were entering Serbia.
"There
is no problem with spillover because they do not exist," he
said.
U.N. police also found no evidence of militants operating in
Kosova or
entering Serbia, spokesman Derek Chappel said.
In
Belgrade, Serbian media reported that Zoran Andjelkovic, the
police
chief in the south Serbian town of Medvegja, said 33 strong
detonations
coming from Kosova had been heard late Tuesday. Adams,
however,
dismissed that report as "nonsense," saying
peacekeepers had not
recorded any such detonations in the
area.
"Such reports are unfounded and could only lead to
misrepresentation in
the population," he said. Adams
described the report as "rumors on top
of rumors."
KFOR
commander Mini rules out Serbian troop return
PRISHTINA,
February 12 - KFOR commander Fabio Mini said today that
circumstances
in Kosova precluded the return of Serbian security forces
to
Kosova, adding that Prime Minster Zoran Djindjic's demand was
more
political than practical.
Mini noted that the fact that UN
Security Council Resolution 1244
provided for the return of Serb
police and soldiers to Kosova, Serbia
was not in a position to
decide on that. He told media that the creation
of a multiethnic
society was a greater priority.
"There is no room in the
world any more for only one nation or for
intolerance one the part
of one ethnic community," he added.
The ministers make
their request for the transfer of the competences;
they'll be
given to Steiner
PRISHTINA, February 12 - The requests of the
ministers for the transfer
of the powers and the issue of
permanent secretary in the Health
Ministry were the main topics
discussed today by the Kosova Government
in its regular meeting.
The Prime Minister, Bajram Rexhepi announced
that all the
ministers have given their request for the competences they
want
to be transferred, which will then be sent to UNMIK as the
unique
governmental strategy.
Meanwhile regarding the permanent
secretary of the Health Ministry,
Rexhepi said that the Government
cannot take any stance. But the
minister of Health, Numan Baliq
thinks differently. Baliq said the
procedure regarding this issue
was violated. Baliq said he would write
to UNMIK chief to cancel
the decision of the commission and announce
another
competition.
The Government discussed also the way Kosova is going
to be included in
the Association-Stabilization process of the
European Union. The
ministers asked the institutions to pay the
debts to the Electrical
Corporation of Kosova (KEK).
The
Kosovar companies invest 30 million euros in developing
their
business
PRISHTINA, February 12 - The Kosovar
companies will invest around 30
million euros in the development
of new businesses. That was the result
of survey carried out by
the Swiss organization "Swisscontact" in
cooperation to
the Kosovar enterprise "Ubo Croation" and expressed
the
readiness of the Kosovar companies to develop their
business.
The minister of Trade and Industry, Ali Jakupi said that
such surveys
are especially important. Jakupi praised the help
given by the Swiss
organization in developing the Kosovar
business. The representative of
"Swisscontact", Markus
Ehman said that the survey was carried out
because of the
importance of the business in creating new jobs.
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