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Yugoslavs Decry Kosovo Situation

By Misha Savic Associated Press Writer
Sunday, Dec. 26, 1999; 4:56 p.m. EST

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia �� Yugoslavia's chief government prosecutor said
Sunday that Kosovo was sliding into anarchy, and denounced NATO and the
United Nations for letting it happen.

Vukasin Jokanovic said Kosovo, officially part of Serbia but as of this
summer an international protectorate, has become a haven for drug
trafficking and lawlessness.

"I am saying that Kosovo is now ruled by terrorists, criminals, narco
cartels ... under the nose of (NATO-led) Kosovo Force and United
Nations" officials, Jokanovic was quoted as saying by the private Beta
news agency.

Ethnic fighting between Kosovo's independence-minded ethnic Albanians
and Serbs ended this summer with NATO intervention. Serb government
troops were forced to pull out and hand over authority of the province
to a joint NATO-U.N. peace mission.

Serbia's authorities have described the ethnic Albanian insurgents as
"terrorists," and said their independence movement was being financed by
Kosovo Albanian expatriates involved in the drug trade and other crime
in Western Europe and the United States.

Jokanovic also dismissed recent statements by international peace
officials that ethnic violence was decreasing in the province.

"Technically, that is true, but (only) because the ethnic cleansing of
Serbs in parts of Kosovo is nearly finished," Jokanovic said. He added
that "Serbia will not lose Kosovo."

More than 100,000 Kosovo Serbs have left the province, fleeing revenge
attacks by Kosovo Albanians.

Jokanovic, 60, himself born and raised in Kosovo, said his original home
there was burned recently to the ground, as was a Serb Orthodox church.

He also said more than 250,000 cars, stolen in western Europe, have
ended up in Kosovo.

Meanwhile, Serbia's interior minister, Vlajko Stojiljkovic, speaking
Sunday to a gathering of retired police officers, said Serbian police
were "ready to return to Kosovo."

Without giving specifics, Stojiljkovic said this was "necessary to
prevent a spreading of terrorism from Kosovo to other parts of Serbia."

Also Sunday, a group of Serb civilians still living in the
American-controlled town of Gnjilane in southeastern Kosovo, sent a
petition to the peacekeepers, demanding better protection from the
province's ethnic Albanian militants, Tanjug news agency reported.

The group of 50 Serbs protested what they called "continuing harassment,
looting, robbery" and physical attacks against them.

The Serbs also demanded that peacekeepers establish more checkpoints in
areas where ethnic violence and other acts aimed at forcing them out of
the province have occurred.

             � Copyright 1999 The Associated Press

 

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