En kort melding fra BBC World Service om den spente situasjonen
i Kosovo og Sĝr-Serbia, pluss en artikkel fra Guardian om krigsstemningen
i Beograd.
Se ogsċ:
Fears of new Balkan Flashpoint
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_677000/677175.stm
Serbian border tension growing
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_677000/677184.stm
Don't stir up trouble, US warns Albanians
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,146963,00.html
Ĝistein Holen
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_675000/675745.stm
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
UN envoy: new Balkan war possible
The United Nations special envoy for human rights, Jiri
Dienstbier, is reported to have warned that the
destabilisation of southern Serbia could lead to
another Balkan war.
In recent weeks unrest has been growing among the
large ethnic Albanian population of the region, which
borders Kosovo.
Serbian reports from the town of Nis, about a-hundred
kilometers from the border, quoted Dienstbier as
saying that the violent incidents in the Presevo region
were organised in Kosovo.
He said the international community must do more to
prevent the situation in Kosovo from spilling over.
Earlier this month an international research
organisation, the International Crisis Group, said
former members of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation
Army were operating in the area.
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http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,146700,00.html
'Everyone knows there is going to be a civil war in Serbia now.
We can smell it'
Dead city: Everyone is scared of Milosevic.
They have lost everything - except hope
Maggie O'Kane in Belgrade
Guardian, Tuesday March 14, 2000
His mobile phone plays the Serbian national anthem when it rings;
he presses the receiver with a hand the size of a T-bone steak. A
Serb paramilitary, one of the feared "Tigers" who killed in Kosovo,
he smothers the bay-blue handset with massive fingers.
"I'd like to find a nice girl and get married, but we have to wait until
this is over and [Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic has
gone," he says.
There is a sense in Belgrade that civil war may come to Serbia - Mr
Milosevic and his praetorian guard of police and military against the
people. Everyone is scared.
In this city, where random political assassinations are the norm,
police consolidate their grip on power by breaking up protests,
smashing TV transmitters and silencing the dissenters with fear.
"The crackdown started three weeks ago after he addressed the
party congress. The message was clear: Don't start or else," says
Natasha Kandic, a lawyer and director of the humanitarian law
centre in Belgrade. She one of the few people prepared to speak
out. "They have started arresting people. A young lawyer from my
office was taken for an 'information talk' for two days, now he has
resigned. I don't blame him - he has a young family."
A former police chief who claims to have been the head of internal
security and a confidant of Mr Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic,
confirms that the crackdown has started. "But it's going to get much
worse. The elections may be coming, maybe not. He is cornered
and he will fight to the end - his end or ours."
Even those hardened by years on the frontlines of the war under
the Tigers' assassinated paramilitary leader, Zeljko "Arkan"
Raznatovic, are wary of the country's changing political climate.
"When Arkan was alive, I felt some safety," says the former
paramilitary soldier. "I didn't cry when my mother died, but when
Arkan was shot, I felt it deep in my soul."
He joined Arkan when he was 19 after the army kicked him out for
breaking his commanding officer's chin. In the pizza parlour in
Republica Square, he dips into the waistband of his tracksuit and
pulls out his gun; the handle is engraved with the Serbian crest.
"Arkan didn't think it could happen to him. In Serbia, anybody could
be killed. Some body could come and kill me right now."
Arkan, Mr Milosevic's protege who carried out the president's dirty
work in Croatia and Bosnia, is just one of a number who died when
the regime began to implode.
"Arkan had about 400 people working for him. He was making his
money mostly from stealing cars in Germany and then selling them
to the Middle East," the former police chief said. "Cars and cigarette
smuggling, but he was killed because of the protection business
and because the regime was nervous of him. He couldn't be
controlled by them any more. He wanted too much protection
money from too many. Four, or was it five, of them got together. It
got sanctioned at the top and that was it."
He adds: "You in the west don't understand how it works. After 10
years [of war], crime, business and politics are webbed together in
Serbia. They are intermingled in the grey zone. A hit like that
doesn't happen unless it is approved from the top."
Belgrade is a place where even the Tigers are tired and scared.
Last week, five armed men broke into the opposition's TV station
and beat up a technician and a guard; the gang took the station's
transmitters. It was the fifth station to be closed in Serbia recently,
as the government attempts to stifle any voice of opposition.
The mention of the president's name draws fury everywhere.
"Milosevic stole 10 years of my life with wars and all this shit," a taxi
driver says.
Zoran, who also fought for Arkan in the Croatian and Bosnia wars,
sits in the Stupida bar, near Belgrade's national theatre. "I will not
fight again until I am fighting this regime," he says. "I can't live in my
own country, everything is controlled by 200 people."
Milena Joksimovic, a 21-year-old student and activist echoes
similar sentiments: "Everybody thinks it's going to end soon and we
are all afraid of what is coming. But we are determined to fight. Now
the only thing that is left in Pandora's box is hope."
Ms Joksimovic and her mother marched in protest against Mr
Milosevic for 170 days in the southern town of Nis. "Everyone
knows there is going to be a civil war now," she says. "We can
smell it."
But in Belgrade people seem too worn out by poverty and sanctions
to fight. "Milosevic's secret weapons have been sanctions from the
west," says the police chief. "People are so tired out just trying to
make a living that they can't think about organising against him."
On the third floor of a tiny street behind Republica Square, a weary
gold merchant opens the door of his shop to another day of
business. "Business is terrible," he says. "After nine years of
sanctions, the people have nothing left to sell. I get women taking
off their wedding rings and handing them to me. I tell them to think
about it, but if they insist."
He takes out tiny black scales. "Your wedding ring, let me see - 18
carats, 2.3 grams - I'd give you DM24 [£12] for it. But it was your
grandmother's? He smiles a practised smile. "There's a lot of sad
stories out there, but I'm a businessman," he says.
On a Saturday night in Belgrade, a city of 2m people, having fun
takes energy and money - two commodities that are in short supply.
Sasha Jortjevic spent £1m on his XL nightclub in Sarevejska Street,
where he created a disco the size of a barn. A former captain of the
Yugoslav basketball team, he made the money playing for three
years in Barcelona. Last Saturday it closed down; the area that
surrounds it is now dead.
"We are dead people in a dead city," said Alex Stenovic, 28. He
knows that elections should be held this spring, but he, like almost
everyone, does not expect them to happen. The opposition parties
are so discredited that the mention of their leaders brings a snort.
"The opposition is slow," he says. "They have meetings on
humanitarian aid and elections with representatives of the
European countries, but people expect more."
Serbia's most famous journalist, Aleksander Tijanic, a government
minister sacked by Mr Milosevic, wrote recently: "Serbia is now a
great morgue in which the barely alive bewail the recent dead.
Damned and despairing we stand in line and behind all success,
wealth and power, the henchman is there. His judgment awaits."
"It could take another year," the ex-police chief says. "Milosevic still
has the money he got from China and Panama and can keep things
going for a while and pay off his police force. Then, there will be
blood for 10 or 20 days and it will be over."
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