Kosovo News

Two cars believed to be carrying the former Prime Minister of Kosovo Ramush Haradinaj enter the U.N. detention unit in Scheveningen, near The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday March 9, 2005. Haradinaj is to face war crime charges for his alleged role in atrocities committed during the 1998-1999 war between ethnic Albanians and Serb forces. (AP Photo/Serge Ligtenberg)

ONE DAY after stepping down as Kosovo's prime minister, Ramush Haradinaj was last night awaiting a court appearance on war crimes charges and sharing the same UN detention centre as Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president.

Mr Haradninaj , the most senior former ethnic Albanian guerrilla to be accused of atrocities in the 1998-99 insurgency, said farewell to his wife and 200 supporters in Kosovo before boarding a noon flight to The Hague yesterday. Lahi Brahimaj, another suspect named in the indictment, travelled on the same flight. On arrival, the former premier was taken into custody in Scheveningen where detainees are held while facing the tribunal. Mr Haradinaj is the first serving head of government since Mr Milosevic to be indicted and the two men will share a prison complex. But the former enemies are unlikely to cross paths because prisoners are carefully segregated. Amid fears of a popular backlash after the indictment, Nato put extra security precautions in place in Kosovo, but the small protests mounted by Mr Haradinaj's supporters caused few problems for the authorities.

A former nightclub bouncer in Switzerland, Mr Haradinaj became a regional commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army during the insurgency against Serb forces. The court will release the indictment against him soon, but the charges are thought to relate to the abduction and murder of Serbs, and of ethnic Albanians thought to have collaborated with Serbian authorities. When he stepped down as Kosovo's premier on Tuesday, Mr Haradinaj proclaimed his innocence.

His remarkable rise culminated in late 2004 when he was named prime minister of the UN-run province, which technically remains part of Serbia. In September, the international community starts talks on the future of Kosovo and Mr Haradinaj had hoped to preside over his country's move to independence.

A third ex-Kosovo rebel turns himself in to ICTY

The Hague (dpa) - Another former Kosovo Albanian guerrilla leader turned himself in to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Wednesday, The Hague-based U.N. war crimes court confirmed.

Idriz Baljaj turned himself in to face still unrevealed charges, the Dutch news agency ANP said, on the same day as Ramush Haradinaj, who was Kosovo's prime minister until Tuesday, turned himself in at the Hague.

The underground guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) fought Serbian security forces in a brutal guerrilla and terror war in 1998 and 1999.

The conflict was eventually ended with NATO intervening against Yugoslavia and the withdrawal of Belgrade's military and police. A U.N. administration and a NATO-led peacekeeping mission have run the province since mid-1999.

Haradinaj, a top UCK commander, resigned his post on Tuesday and turned himself in to face trial on Wednesday along with Lahi Brahimaj, a former fellow fighter.

All three ex-rebels are now in the ICTY detention unit.

Nato ready for any unrest in Kosovo

BRUSSELS, March 9 (ONASA - AFP) - NATO hopes the situation in Kosovo remains calm after Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj surrendered to the UN war crimes court, but is ready to quell any unrest that could occur, an official said Wednesday. The NATO mission in Kosovo (KFOR) can draw on an extra 1,100 troops deployed into the UN-run Serbian province this week, to add to some 18,000 already there, officials said. "The situation until now has been peaceful. NATO does not expect or anticipate violence," said the official at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Brussels headquarters.

"However it has done all the necessary prudent planning and improvement of its capabilities to be able to handle any contingency," he added, speaking on condition of anonymity. Some 500 British soldiers arrived in Kosovo this week, on top of 600 extra German troops. The NATO official in Brussels insisted that the extra troops were not in fact reinforcements timed to deploy when the prime minister's indictment was announced. They were deployed as part of long-planned exercises, he said. "The timing was truly a coincidence, but a fortuitous one," he said. Haradinaj, a former commander of separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas who fought Serbian forces in Kosovo during the 1998-1999 war, has denied the allegations but called on his supporters to remain calm.

Gracanica, 8 Mar (Tanjug) - Serbian National Council executive board in Gracanica condemned in the strongest terms on Wednesday the stepped up campaign and forced dislodging of Serbs from the building of the "Ju programme" in Pristina, where the only remaining Serbs live in that city.

The statement said that on Tuesday evening was attacked that building and the apartment of Zivko Savic, in which he lived with his daughter and five-year-old grandson, and in the strongest terms, demanded from UN representative and Kosovo police to arrest the perpetrators.

Radujko On Haradinaj's Departure For Hague, Prospects For Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue

Belgrade, 9 Mar (Tanjug) - Adviser to the Serbian president for regional issues Branko Radujko told Tanjug on Wednesday that the departure of Kosovo premier Ramush Haradinaj to The Hague was good news, but that Belgrade authorities would not be encouraged for talks with the Kosovo government if some kind of "a new Haradinaj" was to succeed him.

"The Kosovo premier's departure for The Hague is very good news, but I do not believe that Belgrade will be encouraged to talk with the interim Kosovo government if he is to be replaced by some kind of a new Haradinaj," Radujko said.

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montengro (AP) - Talks between officials from Kosovo and Serbia on the fate of those missing from the 1998-99 war have been postponed, officials said Wednesday.

"The talks have been postponed. We are looking for a new date,'' said Neeraj Singh, a spokesman for the U.N. mission in Kosovo, known as UNMIK.

The province's government asked the United Nations to delay the talks - due to resume on Thursday _ for a week following the resignation of the province's Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, Singh said. No date was set for their resumption.

Haradinaj resigned Tuesday after being indicted for war crimes by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. He surrendered to the war crimes court on Wednesday.

The talks were planned to take place in Belgrade on March 10 and were organized by the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross.

The dialogue is seen as a key step in the process to resolve the status of the U.N.-run province. Official contacts between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders and the Belgrade leadership have been rare since the war, which ended after NATO intervened to stop the Serb forces' crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

The two sides held a first meeting last March on the fate of 3,208 people still missing nearly six years after the end of the conflict.

Hundreds of those listed as missing have been found in mass graves in Kosovo and Serbia, but the fate of 2,470 ethnic Albanians and 738 Serbs and other minorities who vanished during and after the war is still to be determined, according to the U.N. office for the missing.

A June-July review of Kosovo's progress on security and minority protection is key to deciding whether talks can begin on Kosovo's becoming independent or remaining within Serbia-Montenegro.

Skopje Hotels reserved For UNMIK

Skopje, 09 Mar (Danas) - "Danas" daily reveals that on Friday night (March 5th) three elite Skopje hotels, "Continental", "Alexander Palace", and "Holiday Inn", were reserved for a period of two weeks for the employed in the international UNMIK mission. This is a precaution measure in case of escalation of the violence in Kosovo, in which case the personnel will have to be evacuated.

Police find arms cache in southern Albania

TIRANA, Albania (AP) - Albanian police said Wednesday that they have found a cache of weapons and ammunition hidden in a cave in a southern village near the border with Greece.

Police acting on a tip found more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition, a machine gun and other small arms components in the village of Kalas, 290 kilometers (174 miles) south of capital Tirana, police said in a statement.

Police were investigating who owned the weapons, it added. An estimated 550,000 weapons, 839 million rounds of ammunition and 16 million explosive devices have been looted from Albanian army depots in 1997, when social order briefly broke down and citizens enraged over losing their life savings in bogus pyramid investment schemes stormed army barracks.

Some 150,000 pieces of looted weaponry are believed to have fallen into the hands of militants in neighboring Kosovo and Macedonia.

Police have already collected about 220,000 weapons, some 117 million rounds of ammunition and 1.5 million explosive devices.

More than 200,000 weapons are still believed to be held illegally in Albania.

Former Kosovo Premier Ramush Haradinaj has arrived in the detention unit of The Hague Tribunal, the ICTY spokesman Jim Landale confirmed. He arrived in a KFOR plane and was immediately transferred in the detention unit in Scheveningen. The indictment against him will be unsealed. Haradinaj was accompanied by one more indictee, his uncle, Lah Brahimaj, a member of the 'Dukagjini Group' of the UCK, which was under Haradinaj's command.

Idriz Balaj, a former KLA member indicted for war crimes, is in the detention unit of the ICTY, announced ICTY spokesman Jim Landale. He did not wish to give further details. The indictment against Balaj, as well as Ramush Haradinaj and Lah Brahimaj has not been opened yet.

The ICTY indictment against Ramush Haradinaj received significant publicity in the European media, which remind that he is charged with crimes against Kosovo Serbs and members of other non-Albanian communities. Certain world dailies suppose that the indictment against Haradinaj is related to the abduction, abuse and murder of Kosovo Roma and Albanians near Djakovica in mid 1999, and the killing of 37 Serbs and Albanians a year before. Some media assess that so far the ICTY has expressed very limited interest in KLA leaders because NATO and the EU do not want too many of their former allies to appear at the ICTY. At the same time, numerous articles express fear of a new surge of Albanian violence in Kosovo, even against the international forces.

Official Washington welcomed the decision of Ramush Haradinaj to resign from the post of premier and surrender voluntarily to the ICTY. US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher repeated that the US and the international community remain committed to supporting the development of Kosovo institutions, in accordance with UNSCR 1244, and the implementation of standards in the province.

The SCG Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic has warned in talks with Morton Abramovich, a member of the Executive Committee of the International Crisis Group, that the future status of Kosovo has to be sustainable, which absolutely, as he emphasized, entails Serbia's consent. Draskovic underlined that the conditions for sustaining any solution are primarily the respect of the human status of that province, preservation of the character of the state border and achieving democratic standards, the SCG Foreign Ministry stated.

Bajatovic: Premeditated move for negotiations on Kosovo's future status (RTS/Tanjug)

SPS main board Deputy President and the SPS provincial committee President Dusan Bajatovic has told Tanjug that the departure of Haradinaj to the ICTY is a "premeditated move so the manoeuvring space for the Albanians would enlarge during the negotiations on Kosovo's future status." "I don't know whether Haradinaj will be indicted, but it is certain he is a war criminal. The Albanians will use the newly created situation as a new step towards Kosovo's independence, which means that they will partially replace methods of violence with stepped up diplomatic activity," said Bajatovic.

OSCE Chair Dimitri Rupel expressed concern over the possible escalation of violence in Kosovo after the departure of former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj to the detention unit of the ICTY. According to Rupel, the final status of Kosovo must be discussed parallel with the assessment of the implementation of international standards, through the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue and with the consent of international community factors. The OSCE Chair underlined that in all these talks, special emphasis must be laid on the protection of human and minority rights in the province.

NATO sent an additional 1100 soldiers to Kosovo as reinforcements to KFOR after the announcement of the ICTY indictment against former provincial Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, announced officials of the international forces. They underlined that the situation in Kosovo was stable and that they were determined to preserve peace and security in the province. University students held a protest in Pristina, and in Decani about 5000 citizens expressed their protest over the ICTY indictment against Haradinaj. Both gatherings were peaceful, and international and local police announced that no incidents were recorded.

The meeting of a work group for over 3,000 missing persons cases in Kosovo from 1998 to 2000 that was scheduled has been cancelled. The delegation from Pristina asked for a postponement because of Haradinaj's extradition to The Hague Tribunal. The meeting will most likely be rescheduled for next week. Along with representatives from Belgrade and Pristina, international observers will be attending the meetings as well. In February of last year, the then UNMIK Head Harri Holkeri reported in front of the UN Security Council that there are 3,566 registered missing persons cases in Kosovo, of which 82 percent are Albanians and 18 percent are Serbian. According to the Kosovo Council for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedom, the number is greater: somewhere closer to the vicinity of 4,200 people missing. This group included 1,874 Albanians that were located in prisons in the central region of Serbia. The work group's purpose in not to find out who committed crimes against these missing persons, rather to find out whether these people are alive or deceased. The Belgrade delegation will be headed by Veljko Odalovic and the Pristina delegation will be lead by Ragip Zekoli. The delegations will be made up of four officials each and will be joined by international representatives from the Red Cross International Commission.

Zivka Savic has told Beta that Habitat had ordered he to soon leave the apartment in the Yu program building, without providing her with alternative housing. Zivka Savic, who is living with her daughter and granddaughter in the apartment whose owner is a Serb, said her house in the village of Velika Reka near Vucitrn was usurped in 1999. According to Savic, Habitat liberated her house but she is afraid to return, because Albanians live in the neighboring houses that were built for Serb refugees from Croatia and Bosnia. She said that the window of her apartment was broken and a hunting knife was left beneath it. "This is a message for me to leave this place as soon as possible," said Savic, adding she doesn't know who could have broken the window.

The banner says:

"WHERE ARE OUR DEAREST ONES?

WHY THERE IS SILENCE?

Family members of Serbs kidnapped by Albanian extremists during and after the Kosovo conflict protest in Gracanica requesting the truth about their dear ones. More than 1000 Serbs were kidnapped by the KLA extremists since 1998. After exhumation of dozens of Serb civilians in mass graves in Kosovo 700 Serbs are still missing. (PHOTO BETA)

remember "the mass grave chase" by World media in 1999? When they have expressed interest, why they suppressed the findings?

Media is complicit in KLA terrorist crimes, first by inciting Albanians to commit crimes, then in hiding the evidence after the fact.

There was one (UN, I think) report about 900 bodies, those of the missing and kidnapped Serb and Roma civilians, found in a huge grave around Dragodan cemetery back in 2001. However, the international community and KFOR made the UN retract that report, and say the number of bodies was a smaller number and that the victims were of unknown ethnicity.

Explosion in Kosovo capital causes "minor damage" two UN vehicles
BBC Monitoring
Text of report in English by independent internet news agency KosovaLive
Prishtina [Pristina], 10 March: The police authorities said that last night an explosive device was thrown near YU Programme Residential Complex in the Ulpiana neighbourhood in Prishtina.
Neraaj Singh, spokesperson for UNMIK [UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo], said that the incident took place at 0945 [0845 gmt]. "There was only some minor damage to two UNMIK vehicles," Singh said.
The motives behind this incident are not known as yet.
Singh said that except for this incident, the overall security situation in Kosovo last night was quiet.

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