THE HAGUE, Netherlands September 28, 2001: - U.N. war crimes prosecutors expanded their indictment against former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to include charges in Croatia, a spokeswoman said Friday. Details of the indictment would not be made public until the document is confirmed by a U.N. judge at the tribunal, prosecution spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said. Milosevic had already been charged with crimes against humanity and other war crimes in relation to Serbia's crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999.
The new charges are no surprise as prosecutors had said they would broaden the charges to include the Bosnian and Croatian conflicts by October. Additional counts for Bosnia were expected to be formally brought within a few weeks, according to Hartmann. Chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte had already said Milosevic will face a genocide charge for alleged crimes in Bosnia, but Hartmann said the Swiss prosecutor has given investigators more time to gather evidence against the ouster leader. Milosevic's trial is not expected to begin until late next year.
Croatian President Stipe Mesic welcomed the widened charges. ``The expansion of the indictment was expected because Milosevic interweaved war crimes and genocide into his plans of a Greater Serbian state,'' Mesic said. ``Croatia can certainly be satisfied that war crimes are being individualized.''
SKOPJE, Macedonia August 31 2001: - Macedonia's fragile peace effort moved Friday into the hands of lawmakers stuck between two powerful forces: NATO leaders expecting support and mobs outraged that ethnic Albanian insurgents may be rewarded with greater rights. Protesters - led by those who fled rebel-held areas - drove home their point outside parliament by forcing a six-hour delay in debate on whether to move ahead with the Western-engineered accord. About 500 demonstrators blocked the towering parliament doors and scuffled with some lawmakers, including an ethnic Albanian legislator, Zehir Bekteshi, who raced away from attackers after being punched and kicked. ``Shame!'' screamed some protesters at riot police after they took control of the parliament entrances before the session got under way at 5 p.m. ``You are traitors to the country.'' President Boris Trajkovski was equally blunt in endorsing the plan. ``The alternative is division and war ... a mass ethnic and civil war,'' he said in an opening address. Passions are expected to run high in the 120-seat parliament in the coming days. Only 80 deputies attended the opening of the debate - the minimum number needed for approval and a clear display of the depth of resistance.
But it's doubtful the lawmakers can ultimately ignore the huge international pressure to move along the peace process - the first step by Macedonian leaders after NATO began collecting weapons from ethnic Albanian fighters. ``Every country has a time in its history when it must reach difficult decisions,'' Trajkovski added. ``Today we face such a moment.'' But the session - which could run for days - offers a forum for opponents to echo the bitterness of the street protests: the feeling that NATO and its backers are forcing Macedonia to submit to the aims of the ethnic Albanian rebels. ``We are not opposed to discussing more rights for (ethnic) Albanians. We just don't want to do it at the barrel of a gun,'' said Straso Angelovski, an organizer of the demonstrations outside parliament. ``This is showing the world that violence pays off.''
The NATO view is that Macedonia would be in far worse shape if it didn't agree to the accord - a swap of rebel arms for reforms that give greater rights to ethnic Albanians who comprise about a third of the nation's 2 million people. NATO suspended its arms collection Thursday after culling about a third of the 3,300-piece arsenal offered by the rebels, who began the uprising more than six months ago. Now, it's up to the Macedonian parliament to show its goodwill. A two-thirds majority is needed to move the peace process ahead and restart the weapons collection.
The Macedonian parliament, which includes 24 ethnic Albanians, would then face another session on the reforms and take a final vote once all the weapons are collected by NATO troops, whose mission is scheduled to end Sept. 26. The constitutional changes would make Albanian an official language in areas where ethnic Albanians comprise more than 20 percent of the population and award a degree of self-rule to predominantly ethnic Albanian areas. They also would ensure proportional representation of minorities in the government and police forces, as well as in the Constitutional Court, which has final say in legislative matters. But even if the changes take effect, there is no guarantee of stability. The Macedonian government insists the rebels are giving up only a small fraction of their weapons and some officials have threatened retaliation once NATO leaves. The president warned that ``extremists'' would be ``hunted down and destroyed.'' It appeared, however, that legislators and senior government officials were ready to uphold their end of the bargain for now. Gjorgji Trendafilov, spokesman of Macedonia's leading VMRO party, said his group - 47 legislators in the 120-seat parliament - would vote in favor of moving ahead the peace plan. The VMRO seats and the 24 ethnic Albanian lawmakers would only be a few shy of the two-thirds needed.
At Skopje's airport, bagpipers played and a military honor guard assembled as the body of British solider, Ian Collins, was put aboard a plane for home. Collins died Monday after protesters tossed a block of concrete at his vehicle.
Brodec, Macedonia August 28, 2001 - Submachine guns slung over their shoulders, hundreds of rebels left their hideouts Tuesday and streamed toward a former mountain stronghold to surrender their weapons to NATO, in an operation meant to contribute to permanent peace in Macedonia. On the second day of their arms collecting mission, NATO officers at Brodec, just northeast of the ethnically tense northern city of Tetovo, described the insurgents as complying with terms of their agreement with the alliance that commits them to surrendering thousands of weapons. In exchange, the Macedonian-dominated government has agreed to political concessions meant to benefit the ethnic Albanian minority and permanently defuse a six-month ethnic Albanian guerrilla campaign before it turns into civil war.
Reporters flown to the site by a NATO helicopter saw approximately 100 rebels lined up to turn in weapons in the space of two hours. Dozens more were seen moving toward the highland village, downhill from surrounding mountains or making their way up from Tetovo, the site of several major clashes during the height of the insurgency. Clad in black, or camouflage, some of the rebels smiled and embraced comrades as they arrived to the collection point, a two-story brick house. The asphalt path to the building was lined by NATO troops. More NATO forces were positioned on surrounding ridges and other strategic areas nearby. Reporters were not allowed inside the house. NATO officials said that once the weapons were collected they were to be put into two red containers set up at a nearby meadow and taken away to be destroyed. Lt. Col. Chip Chapman, a British Paratrooper, said that some 100 weapons had been handed in between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. Expectations were that the rebels would hand over about 200 arms by the end of the day, he added.
According to the peace plan, the rebels are handing over weapons to NATO in a British-led mission dubbed ``Essential Harvest,'' in exchange for step-by-step political reforms. Parliament is to begin debating the reforms once a third of the weapons have been surrendered, which could happen by the end of the week. Lawmakers will vote on the legislation only after all weapons have been collected.
The alliance has said it expects to gather 3,300 weapons. But the government insists the true size of the rebel arsenal is much bigger, with Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski setting the figure closer to 60,000. Because the government does not accept NATO's weapons figures, hard-liners could try to stall the process from moving ahead as planned. Still, NATO officers at the scene suggested the rebels were keeping their end of the bargain. Chapman said that ``some surface-to-air missiles'' had also been handed over Tuesday - the first of their kind to be voluntarily surrendered by the ethnic Albanian insurgents. ``They are very compliant,'' Chapman said of the ethnic Albanians.
Insurgent commanders said their men were complying with the first stage of the agreement committing them to surrender a third of their weapons. One of them, who identified himself only as Lluli, expressed relief that the armed fight for more ethnic Albanian rights appeared to be over. ``I hope the operation goes according to plan,'' Lluli told reporters. ``I want to return to normal life.''
Fearful that a withdrawal of government troops could leave them vulnerable to attacks by ethnic Albanians, some 50 Macedonians blockaded a road in Tetovo. The peace agreement mandates withdrawals in areas where rebel and government forces are close to each other. Many Macedonians blame NATO for the situation in their country, saying the alliance failed to stop the smuggling of weapons and fighters into Macedonia from neighboring Kosovo, considered a major supply route for the rebels. The Yugoslav province of Kosovo is policed by alliance-led peacekeepers.
The killing of a British soldier Sunday - the mission's first casualty - indicates the hostility NATO's 30-day mission could face during its 30-day operation. Ian Collins, 20, of Britain's 9 Parachute Squadron Royal Engineers, died after youths threw a block of concrete at his vehicle. British army investigators in London said Tuesday the nationality of the attackers remained unclear.
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