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Subject: IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 121
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WELCOME TO IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 121, March 3, 2000

ALBANIAN FIGHTERS ON THE MARCH AGAIN A new Kosovo-based guerrilla force says 
it is prepared to go to war to unite Albanian populated areas of southern 
Serbia with the province. Llazar Semini reports from Pristina.

MITROVICA SERBS DIG IN Kosovo Serbs in northern Mitrovica fear their enclave 
will be overwhelmed by Albanians bent on revenge. Svetlana Djurdjevic Lukic 
reports from Mitrovica.

SERBS BRACED FOR WAR A siege mentality envelopes Belgrade as Milosevic 
rattles his sabre. Laura Rozen reports from Belgrade.

BOSNIANS URGED TO VOTE FOR CHANGE Bosnia's ruling nationalist parties are 
likely to maintain their grip on power in forthcoming local elections. Janez 
Kovac reports from Sarajevo.


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ALBANIAN FIGHTERS ON THE MARCH AGAIN

A new Kosovo-based guerrilla force says it is prepared to go to war to unite 
Albanian populated areas of southern Serbia with the province.

By Llazar Semini in Pristina

A United Nations worker, shot and wounded near Dobrasin on Tuesday, February 
29, became the latest victim in a fierce conflict which is brewing in a 
predominantly Albanian region of southern Serbia, close to the Kosovo 
border.

Marcel Grogan was driving a UN vehicle when Albanian guerrillas opened fire. 
Grogan, now recovering from  gunshot wounds in a US military hospital in 
Kosovo, said the gunmen appeared embarrassed when they realised he was a UN 
official - they claimed to have mistaken his vehicle for Serbian one.

There's concern that increasing clashes between Albanian guerrillas and  
Serb forces in Presheve, Medvegje and Bujanoc are fuelling the flight of  
Albanian refugees into Kosovo. The International Rescue Committee, one of 
the largest refugee agencies operating in Kosovo, estimates 1,300 refugees 
have trickled into Gjilan - the nearest town inside Kosovo - in the last two 
months. Over 100 have arrived in the last three days alone.

Last Saturday night, a group of armed Albanians - allegedly members of a new 
guerrilla group, the Presheve, Medvegje and Bujanoc Liberation Army (UCPMB) 
- attacked a Serbian police patrol in Kocul, killing one officer and 
injuring three others.

An Albanian killed in the clash was wearing the insignia of the Kosovo 
Protection Force, TMK -- a civilian force formed by the United Nations 
mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, from former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, 
UCK. Both UNMIK's spokeswoman, Susan Manuel, and TMK commander, Agim Ceku, 
denied the Albanian casualty was a member of the protection force.

Rumours have long been circulating that spring will bring renewed violence 
to the region. Some have pointed accusing fingers at Yugoslav President 
Slobodan Milosevic, arguing that by provoking trouble in Kosovo he achieves 
two ends - undermining UN efforts to govern the province and distracting 
attention from his on-going bid to crush any moves by Montenegro towards 
independence.

NATO and the United States have warned Milosevic not to increase the 
Yugoslav military and police presence in and around Presheve, Bujanoc and 
Medvegje, home to some 75,000 ethnic Albanians. US troops from Camp 
Bondsteel near Ferizaj (Urasovac in Serbian) have intensified their 24-hour 
patrols to prevent Albanian extremists and weapons crossing the frontier 
into Serbia.

The UCPRM was allegedly formed in January following the killing of two 
Albanian youths from Dobrasin. The organisation claims to be made up of men 
from eastern Kosovo. It welcomes volunteers from other parts of the 
province. They wear insignia similar to the UCK, replacing the K for Kosovo 
with PMB for Presheve, Medvegje, Bujanoc - the three major towns in the 
Albanian border enclave."Someone had to come out and protect the Albanian 
population of this area from Serb paramilitaries," one UCPMB commander said 
in an interview with the Albanian daily Zeri.

The UCPMB made their first public appearance at the funeral of the two young 
Albanians, just as the UCK did at the beginning of the Kosovo conflict 
following the murder of an Albanian teacher in Llaushe."At the moment our 
soldiers control the area of Dobrasin. If the population is endangered in 
other parts we are ready to defend them," the UCPMB commander said.

The UCPMB want the region to unite with Kosovo. "We do not ask for much, 
just the right of self-determination," they say. The new force aims to 
achieve this by harassing Serb forces and generally stirring up trouble in 
the border region. The new force is "hoping that the Serbs will retaliate 
with excessive force against civilian populations and create a wave of 
outrage and pressure on KFOR to respond," a UN official told the New York 
Times. "It's explosive and dangerous, and we hope KFOR uses restraint."

Kosovo's Albanian political leaders have yet to voice any real condemnation 
of the incidents in the area. They fear Milosevic may exploit the situation 
to cause trouble inside Kosovo itself. A new influx of Albanian refugees 
could only worsen the already unstable situation in the province.

A conflict would serve Milosevic's ends, distracting international and 
domestic attention from the escalating tensions between Belgrade and 
Montenegro.And it would surely have a knock-on effect in neighbouring 
Macedonia, where unrest is brewing. Indeed, Skopje has already tightened 
border security

NATO involvement in the intensifying conflict in southern Serbia seems 
unlikely, at least in the short term. On Monday KFOR spokesman, Henning 
Philipp, said there was concern over  the security situation in Kosovo, but 
insisted there was no evidence of Belgrade breaching the Kumanovo agreement 
by deploying troops within the five-kilometer buffer zone along the border.

US army spokesman, Scott Olsen, said the only thing that would cause KFOR to 
intervene inside Serbia would be atrocities. He said the US military had 
asked KFOR command to make clear what constituted an atrocity. Meanwhile, 
KFOR announced plans on Monday to hold military exercises in Kosovo from 
March 19 to April 10 aimed at reinforcing its commitment to the defence of 
the province.

Llazar Semini is IWPR's Kosovo Project Manager in Pristine.


MITROVICA SERBS DIG IN

Kosovo Serbs in northern Mitrovica fear their enclave will be overwhelmed by 
Albanians bent on revenge.

By Svetlana Djurdjevic Lukic in Mitrovica

Ana takes a stroll with some girlfriends. They walk to the bridge across the 
Ibar that divides Mitrovica. Ana is celebrating her 18th birthday. She 
wishes she could spend it in the southern Albanian-controlled half of the 
town. "My flat and everything I have is there, over the bridge," she says.

After Serb forces withdrew from Mitrovica last June, Ana says Albanians 
turned up in her neighbourhood and told her family they had five minutes to 
move out, " We crossed the bridge and now we live in a flat the Albanians 
deserted."

The majority of Kosovo Serbs fled to Serbia to escape revenge attacks by 
Albanians after the withdrawal of Serbian troops. Those who remain regrouped 
in enclaves across the province, the largest of which is northern Mitrovica. 
Around 16,000 Serbs now live there, including 6,000 or 7,000 recent arrivals 
from the south of the town, Vucitrna, Pristina and Pec.

Around 20,000 Albanians live on the other side of the Ibar. Many of them are 
also recent arrivals, refugees from northern Mitrovica and villages 
destroyed before and during the NATO bombardment.

A petite, old Serbian woman protests that she has tried three times to visit 
her old flat in the south of the town under KFOR escort. But on each 
occasion the new Albanian occupants have refused to open the door. 
Meanwhile, she receives threatening calls from the former owners of her 
flat. " I am not moving from here, not even if they kill me. Either I go 
back to my flat, or I am going nowhere," she says.

Northern Mitrovica is the only town in Kosovo where the Serbian population 
is actually increasing, thanks to the constant influx of refugees from other 
parts of Kosovo. And many of those who originally fled to Serbia are now 
returning, driven back to the province by job shortages and decent 
accommodation.

Officials from the UN mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, insist the two communities 
in Mitrovica must learn to live together.

UNMIK and KFOR say those Albanians expelled from northern Mitrovica must be 
allowed to go back to their homes. But a pontoon bridge constructed by KFOR 
to facilitate the return of Albanians to nearby apartment blocks in the 
north of the town has already proved something of a failure. On Thursday, 
March 2, Serb protestors threw stones at the first group trying to cross the 
bridge, forcing them to retreat. Later in the day, KFOR troops began 
dismantling the bridge blaming "rising water levels".

Serbs fear the pattern of systematic threats, burnings and killings that 
forced Serbs out of their homes in other areas of Kosovo will start in 
northern Mitrovica if the Albanians return.
They have deployed observers on the KFOR controlled Ibar bridge to raise the 
alarm in the event of them trying to come back.

Most Serbs in Mitrovica do not blame Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, 
or even the Albanians, for their current woes. NATO is the main 
whipping-boy.

The common perception is that Serb security has been threatened since the 
arrival of KFOR, and there is an inability or unwillingness to see beyond 
that. Since KFOR proclaimed that it would guaranteed their safety, Serbs 
estimates that 700 of them have been kidnapped and scores killed and abused. 
One woman shouted,"My only son died in Kosovo fighting against the Albanian 
terrorists. But the Albanians are not the chief culprits. NATO is to blame 
for everything."

Anti-NATO feelings have been smouldering ever since the alliance's bombing 
campaign. So much so that even postcards on sale outside a brasserie in the 
centre of the town carry critical slogans. KFOR's recent search for weapons 
in the north of the town has intensified the hostile mood.

KFOR dropped leaflets saying, "Surrender your weapons when you are asked by 
KFOR soldiers. They will treat you with dignity and respect." But Serbs 
claim the soldiers were rough and heavy-handed. They have been accused of 
smashing in doors and pointing guns at children. Indeed US troops were 
withdrawn from the town after being stoned by angry crowds. "We won't allow 
ourselves to be disarmed because this is our last sanctuary," said one man.

Local Serbian leaders, however deny that their community is armed. President 
of the Serbian  National Council in Mitorvica, Oliver Ivanovic, says the 
observers on the bridge only have "Motorola" mobiles, which is why NATO 
tolerates them.

"Some are observing the situation from the roof, while other guard the 
bridge, " Ivanovic said."If they see any movement in the southern part of 
the town, the rest of the community is informed, all work stops and the 
shops are closed."

Slobodan Milosevic has quickly come to the aid of the beleaguered Mitrovica 
Serbs to bolster his standing at home.

Medical staff, teachers and civil servants in the town halls receive 
salaries from Belgrade double those of their colleagues in Serbia. A 
delegation from the Yugoslav United Left (JUL), the coalition party run by 
Milosevic's wife, recently visited the local hospital bearing bed sheets and 
new hygiene equipment. Serb residents do not pay electricity, water or phone 
bills. And even the most profitable of black-market products - cigarettes - 
are widely available.

Ivanovic denies that he has ties with the Belgrade regime, claiming that 
Milosevic and the head of UNMIK, Bernard Koucher, "are playing games with 
the Kosovo Serbs."

Most Serbs believe the town must remain divided for the time being. One 
young man said, " I know there are more Albanians than Serbs and that KFOR 
is on their side, but I also know that if I give up my weapons, they will 
come and kill both me and my family.

"So we have to be prepared to fight if necessary. It would be best if KFOR 
separates us and we don't mix until this tragedy is over."

Svetlana Djurdjevic Lukic is an editor of Nin, and recently visited 
Mitrovica.


SERBS BRACED FOR WAR

A siege mentality envelopes Belgrade as Milosevic rattles his sabre

By Laura Rozen in Belgrade

Young men in the Serbian capital Belgrade are busy planning escape routes. 
One air traffic controller is trying to organise papers to get a job in 
Skopje, Macedonia. A downtown café manager is considering an invitation from 
his sister in Switzerland to come and visit "just for a few weeks or 
months". An anthropologist with a prized Slovenian passport is ready to 
leave at the first hint of war.

Panic has gripped Belgrade. This week rumours of a new round of NATO bombing 
swept through the city like wildfire. Suddenly people fear conflict on 
several fronts - between Albanian guerrillas and Serb forces in southern 
Serbia, between pro-separatist and pro-federal forces in Montenegro and, 
perhaps most ominously, between pro-government forces and people on the 
streets of Belgrade.

Opposition politicians are still debating if and when to call street 
protests demanding early national and presidential elections. A brutal 
crackdown on such demonstrations seems inevitable.

"Certainly, it will be a war," said a burly taxi driver on Tuesday. "Between 
whom? Between the government and the people."

"I am going to postpone my trip to Spain," said one mechanical engineering 
student. "I can't leave my mother, father, and sister here when there's 
going to be a war."

One prominent student activist - recently arrested along with 57 members of 
his student group - said he expected Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's 
government to take full advantage of the escalating panic overtaking Serbia.

He criticised NATO's timing of military exercises in Kosovo for later this 
month. "It comes right on the anniversary of the bombing. And everyone is 
expecting that it is just the prelude to a new bombing campaign. Serbia is 
testing its air raid sirens. All of it means that the opposition can't even 
choose a day to hold a peace rally during those manoeuvres without seeming 
like complete NATO stooges and traitors."

Albanian guerillas operating in southern Serbia, along the border with 
Kosovo, have intensified attacks on Serbian forces in recent weeks, killing 
one police officer last weekend and wounding a UN worker on Tuesday. This 
growing confrontation has prompted concerns that NATO could intervene in 
Serbia proper on behalf of the ethnic Albanian community around Presevo, 
Medvegje and Bujanovac.

Such suspicions are reinforced by the frequent repetition of news footage 
from northern Kosovo showing US troops manhandling Serbs during search 
operations last week.

Recent comments by US State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin that Milosevic 
does not have the right to beef up his military forces along the Montenegrin 
border with Albania, has merely fuelled outrage at a perceived assault on 
Yugoslav sovereignty. Milosevic moved the troops to the region following a 
decision by Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic to open the frontier last 
week.

In recent weeks, the government has issued over 100,000 army call-up papers, 
mostly in southern Serbia, adding to the feeling of a nation mobilising for 
yet another war.

The recent murders of Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic and defence minister Pavle 
Bulatovic have created a sense of impending anarchy, that Belgrade itself is 
on the brink of uncontrolled street violence.

Faced with such an atmosphere of crisis, Serbian opposition parties appear 
to have slumped into a state of confusion. Opposition visibility and resolve 
have dropped considerably in the past month. Security guards for Serbian 
Renewal Movement leader Vuk Draskovic say he has not appeared at his office 
for three weeks.

"Draskovic is terrified," said the student leader. "He has entirely 
disappeared. We are in offices across the street from his party, and you 
always see a bunch of security guys outside when he is in the office. They 
haven't been there for weeks now."

The students themselves could not conceal a sense of doom. They anticipate 
the sharp increase in the number of arrests and beatings, particularly 
outside Belgrade, will be followed by an increase in trials and prison 
terms.

The government's clampdown on students began, they say, after the 
Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia held its annual congress in Belgrade 
in February. At the congress, Milosevic announced a new "development plan", 
which the students argue amounts to a state of emergency.

Suddenly police began arresting students, confiscating posters and forcing 
students to sign papers stamped with "on the orders of the development 
plan".

"We all know he is going to be killed," one law student half-joked about his 
activist friend. "We all know that."

Psychology professor and leader of the Social Democratic Party, Zarko Korac, 
said he refuses to submit to the regime's blatant attempts to intimidate 
Serbian democratic forces. When Korac returned from the inauguration of new 
Croatian President Stipe Mesic last week, an unknown attacker beat him up 
outside his apartment.

"That is what the regime wants, for us to be afraid," Korac said. "And I 
refuse to show it."

Laura Rozen, a frequent IWPR contributor, is a journalist who specialises in 
the Balkans.


BOSNIANS URGED TO VOTE FOR CHANGE

Bosnia's ruling nationalist parties are likely to maintain their grip on 
power in forthcoming local elections.

By Janez Kovac in Sarajevo.

The international agency supervising Bosnia's elections, the Organisation 
for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), is urging Bosnians to vote 
for change in April's municipal polls.

But analysts say the kind of profound political change Bosnia requires could 
only come after the electoral system has been reformed.

"Our message to the citizens of Bosnia today is simple," OSCE Bosnian 
mission head Robert Barry told a press conference to mark the official start 
of the election campaign. " If voters want change, they need to make their 
voices heard by voting. Come out and vote for your future, and for the 
future of your children."

Bosnia's ruling parties protested that the OSCE's intervention clearly 
favoured the opposition. The ruling Bosnian Croat HDZ even said it might 
call for Barry to resign.

The OSCE denied this was its intention, but it cannot hide the fact that it 
would prefer moderate parties, supportive of the Bosnian peace process, to 
triumph at the polls so that the international community can concentrate on 
conflict resolution elsewhere in the region.

International resources have already been diverted away from Bosnia towards 
the southern Balkans and, in particular, Kosovo. Moreover, some Western 
diplomats warn that in the absence of advances in the Bosnian peace process 
this year, the country may find itself marginalised and starved of further 
assistance.

Many analysts feel the elections are unlikely to deliver political change 
because of the peace agreement and the constitution it bequeathed Bosnia. 
Although the Dayton Accord succeeded in bringing an end to the Bosnian war 
in 1995, its rigid and complicated ethnic formula is seen as posing an 
obstacle to progress.

Restrictive constitutional provisions have thwarted attempts to devise a 
more appropriate electoral system which could help speed up reforms and make 
politicians more accountable.

As a result, the electoral law which the OSCE has put to the Bosnian 
parliament, appears
unlikely to break the cycle of ethnically-based voting and contains elements 
which opposition politicians believe contradict European Conventions on 
Human Rights.

Other flaws in the Dayton Accord are becoming increasingly evident as well. 
Five different tiers of government -- at municipal, cantonal, entity and 
state levels -- have created a massive bureaucracy which even a wealthy 
country could not afford. Meanwhile, the ruling nationalist parties continue 
to spend about three quarters of their budgets on three rival ethnic armies.

Ironically, the document which was once celebrated for ending the killing is 
now viewed as the principal mechanism by which the same nationalist parties 
which led the country into war can hang on to power. From being its biggest 
opponents these parties are now its greatest proponents. Meanwhile, 
opposition politicians, civil society activists and western analysts have 
become its most vocal critics.

Those critical of the Dayton Accord fear local elections, as well as the 
general election ballot scheduled for October, will fail to bring about 
change, and will instead cement the status quo for another four years. With 
that in mind, several local politicians and watchdog organisations have
suggested postponing both ballots for at least a year.

The OSCE, however, insists that local elections must take place as scheduled 
in April, in part because most of the preparations have already been 
completed. Delay at this stage would mean that money allocated for the vote 
would have been wasted and make it difficult to raise future
funding.

Some analysts believe that the ruling nationalists are already on their way 
out as a result of internal feuds and corruption, and hope that elections in 
a year's time would generate genuine political change. Others say even a 
one-year delay would not be enough, and are lobbying for the reform of both 
the election law and the Dayton Accord.

In recent weeks, several politicians and an independent association of 
Bosnian Croat intellectuals called for the elimination of the two entities 
and the cantonisation of the whole of Bosnia. A month ago, three leading 
independent journalists -- one Serb, one Croat and one Muslim -- wrote a
joint article urging the international community to abolish Bosnia's local 
authorities and impose a proper protectorate for a year.

However, faced with declining budgets, international organisations have 
little choice but to reject such calls and insist on better implementation 
of the existing peace agreement.

"There is a constant debate about changing Dayton," said James Fergusson, a 
spokesman for Bosnia's High Representative, Wolfgang Petritsch, the 
country's main international mediator. "But first we need to implement 
Dayton. We need more Dayton before we can start talking about revising it 
... You have to perfect something before you can change it."


Some diplomats believe that the international community has effectively 
introduced a protectorate during the past six months, as the new High 
Representative and other international agencies have taken on Bosnia's 
nationalist structures.

In December, the High Representative sacked 22 Bosnian Serb, Croat and 
Muslim leaders in one move for obstructing the peace process. Moreover, just 
last week, the OSCE and Office of the High Representative amended the 
election rules to prevent elected politicians from participating in 
privatisation agencies or serving on boards of state-owned companies.

Many diplomats are now pushing for a yet more interventionist approach, but 
fear that reduced international spending may undermine future efforts.

"We are on the verge of making some serious changes here," said a senior 
western diplomat. "It would be shame if we miss this opportunity because of 
a lack of money and then end up paying more in the longer term."

Janez Kovac is a pseudonym for a regular IWPR contributor from Sarajevo.




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IWPR's network of leading correspondents in the region provides inside 
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from the Ford Foundation.

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Editor-in-chief: Anthony Borden. Managing Editor: Yigal Chazan. Associate 
Editor: Gordana Igric. Assistant Editors: Christopher Bennett, Alan Davis 
and Heather Milner. Kosovo Project Manager: Llazar Semini. Translation: 
Alban Mitrushi and others.

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) is a London-based independent 
non-profit organisation supporting regional media and democratic change.

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The opinions expressed in "Balkan Crisis Report" are those of the authors 
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Copyright (C) 2000 The Institute for War & Peace Reporting

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IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. xxx

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