>BELGRADE, 15 August 2000 FROM THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA SERBIAN >PREMIER - ELECTIONS WILL REAFFIRM NATIONAL UNITY YUGOSLAVIA - GABON > >YUGOSLAV PREMIER SENDS MESSAGE TO GABON COLLEAGUE > >KOSOVO AND METOHIJA - INTERNATIONAL REACTIONS RUSSIA REITERATES OPPOSITION TO >U.N.-CALLED KOSOVO-METOHIJA POLLS > >SERBIAN PROVINCE OF KOSOVO AND METOHIJA YUGOSLAV COMMITTEE - KFOR SEIZES >TREPCA AND CARRIES ON AGGRESSION SERB SERIOUSLY INJURED IN KFOR'S STORMING OF >ZVECAN SMELTER KFOR ARRESTS AND ORDERS TREPCA MANAGER OUT OF KOSOVO-METOHIJA >U.N. ENVOY KOUCHNER CARES MORE FOR FACTORY THAN FOR SICK CHILDREN U.N. ENVOYS >KOUCHNER AND ORTUNO JUSTIFY TREPCA SEIZURE ETHNIC ALBANIAN GANG STABS SERB >COUPLE U.N. PEACEKEEPERS TOLERATE ETHNIC ALBANIAN CRIMES > >FROM FOREIGN MEDIA GERMAN MEDIA REPORT ON KFOR'S STORMING OF KOSOVO-METOHIJA'S >ZVECAN BRITISH PAPER - KFOR'S ZVECAN SMELTER SEIZURE IS PART OF WIDER PLAN > >* * * FROM THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA SERBIAN PREMIER - ELECTIONS WILL >REAFFIRM NATIONAL UNITY KRALJEVO, Aug 15 (Tanjug) - Upcoming elections will >reaffirm the unity of the people rallied round freedom and independence, >according to Serbia's premier in Kraljevo, central Serbia (Yugoslavia), on >Tuesday. Marjanovic, vice president of the Serbian Socialist Party (SPS), said >the Yugoslav presidential and parliamentary polls and Serbian local polls >called for Sept. 24 were not just any ordinary elections "to distribute >mandates among the politicians. "This will be a referendum to choose between >the country's survival and progress in peace and freedom, and or being turned >into a colony", he told thousands that thronged a ceremony at which he >inaugurated a new hospital to replace one razed by NATO last year. "People >have never hesitated in the face of such elections, and will therefore choose >as their president (incumbent) Slobodan Milosevic, symbol and guarantor of the >state's survival and development. "They will entrust parliamentary seats to >those who want to preserve Yugoslavia, not to those who want to make their way >into state institutions in order to dismember Yugoslavia", he stressed. He >went on to say that Monday's storming of the Trepca mining complex in >Kosovo-Metohija by the international force KFor was part of a strategy >designed to drive Serbs and other non-Albanians from that U.N.-run province of >the Yugoslav republic of Serbia. "(U.N. mission UNMIK chief) Bernard Kouchner, >acting under the wing and in the name of the United Nations, is pursuing a >policy of genocide towards the Serbs in that southern Serbian province, but >this criminal policy will be defeated", Marjanovic said. Inaugurating the >rebuilt and refurbished hospital which operates as part of the Studenica >medical centre in Kraljevo, Marjanovic said this was one of the biggest >investment projects in Serbia, especially in the area of health protection. >The reconstruction of the hospital was begun while NATO's March 24-June 10, >1999, aggression on Yugoslavia was still raging, he said. "The completion of >the project is a convincing and clear answer to those who wished to subjugate >us and place us under the domination of the powers of the so-called new world >order", he stressed. He added that the 200-million-dinar-plus project (1 U.S. >dollar fetches just over 43 dinars) gave Kraljevo a modern >6,000-square-metre-plus facility with state-of-the-art equipment for internal >medicine. This would significantly promote and improve health protection for >the people in Kraljevo and the surrounding area - Vrnjacka Banja, Raska, Novi >Pazar and Tutin. Marjanovic went on to say that the completion of >post-NATO-war reconstruction had been followed this year with major >development projects designed to raise the living standards, create new jobs >and ensure full employment of the production facilities. "The first >development project which has been launched on the initiative of (Yugoslav) >President Slobodan Milosevic on the entire territory of the republic is one >for building 10,000 homes by the end of the year, and 100,000 by the end of >the decade," he said. The strategic projects would give a new impulse to a >faster economic growth and development, according to Marjanovic. "In the seven >months of this year, industrial production rose by nearly 22 percent over the >same last-year period. "This is in line with the targeted 15-percent rise in >industrial production and 14-percent rise in domestic product in the economic >policy for the year 2000", he said. The hospital inauguration ceremony was >attended also by Serbia's Vice Premier and Minister of Health Milovan Bojic, >Ministers Jovan Babovic, Tomislav Milenkovic, Slobodan Tomovic and Dejan >Kovacevic. Also present were Slavica Djukic-Dejanovic of the SPS Main Board >Executive Board, Serbian Health Fund Director Tomislav Jankovic and other >prominent political and public figures. > >YUGOSLAVIA - GABON YUGOSLAV PREMIER SENDS MESSAGE TO GABON COLLEAGUE BELGRADE, >Aug 15 (Tanjug) - Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic has sent a telegram >of felicitation to his Gabonese colleague Jean-Francois Ntutume-Emane on >Gabon's national holiday, a Yugoslav government statement said. On behalf of >the Yugoslav federal government and in his own name, Bulatovic expressed >sincere felicitations and best wishes for the prosperity of the people of >Gabon, the statement said. > >KOSOVO AND METOHIJA - INTERNATIONAL REACTIONS RUSSIA REITERATES OPPOSITION TO >U.N.-CALLED KOSOVO-METOHIJA POLLS MOSCOW, Aug 15 (Tanjug) - There are no basic >conditions for U.N.-planned local elections in Kosovo-Metohija to be truly >free, fair and democratic and conform to U.N. Security Council Resolution >1244, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday. The Ministry >issued a statement to say the insistence on holding the polls this year at all >costs, even without Serb and ethnic Turk participation, undermines efforts for >making that U.N.-run Serbian (Yugoslav) province truly democratic and >multiethnic. This policy can only result in legalizing institutions of the >disbanded ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which are continuing >their illegal activities, this time in the guise of the Kosovo Protection >Corps, the statement said. Russia has on several occasions said it could >hardly support such elections this year, although it does not oppose their >holding in principle. By calling the elections, U.N. mission (UNMIK) chief >Bernard Kouchner has both flouted Russia's views and assumed the burden of >responsibility for the political consequences they might have for the future >of the region, the statement said. > >SERBIAN PROVINCE OF KOSOVO AND METOHIJA YUGOSLAV COMMITTEE - KFOR SEIZES >TREPCA AND CARRIES ON AGGRESSION BELGRADE, Aug 14 (Tanjug) - Monday's pre-dawn >storming by KFor of the Trepca lead smelter in Zvecan, Kosovo-Metohija, is >nothing but continued aggression by new and dangerous methods, according to >Yugoslav and Kosovo-Metohija government bodies on Monday. The Yugoslav >committee liaising with the U.N. mission (UNMIK) and the Kosovo-Metohija >Provisional Executive Council issued a statement to say the latest outrage >continued a practice of seizing industrial facilities in that U.N.-run Serbian >(Yugoslav) province, begun with the coming of the international force KFor and >UNMIK in June 1999. "Sacking of Serbs from their jobs and scenarios such as >poisonings that attack only one ethnic community have been used several times >before by the forces that have been given the mandate to secure law and order >in Kosovo-Metohija. "It was precisely this kind of behaviour that has created >the present chaos in the electric power industry, postal services, Jugopetrol >oil company and others, and the result has been ethnic cleansing and a >genocide. "Circulating of untrue reports about environmental pollution only >screen an intention to seize this economic giant, in whose vicinity miners, >engineers, smelters and their families have lived for a generation, and they >certainly care more about their own health and environment than KFor and UNMIK >ever could. "But what we have here is pressure and intimidation, designed to >ethnically cleanse the area, as has been done with the rest of >Kosovo-Metohija, which they have been practising for 13 months in plain view >of the international community and the United Nations. "Instead of securing >equality for all, KFor and UNMIK keep tensions permanently alive and sow >uncertainty among the Serbs and other non-Albanians, preventing the people >from living normal lives. "Operation of the international mission from >positions of force has no foundation in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244. >"The Yugoslav Committee and the Kosovo-Metohija Provisional Executive Council >therefore demand that equal conditions be created for all people, that they be >given safety, economic security, the right to work, to education, health >protection, culture and information. "Since they have not created conditions, >in line with their mandate and Resolution 1244, for the workers of Trepca, >Serbian- language Radio S and other institutions to work unhampered, without >fear of violence, the presence of Kfor and UNMIK has lost all meaning and >their departure from Kosovo-Metohija is inevitable", the statement said. > >SERB SERIOUSLY INJURED IN KFOR'S STORMING OF ZVECAN SMELTER KOSOVSKA >MITROVICA, Aug 14 (Tanjug) - A Serb was gravely injured when international >force KFor troops stormed the Trepca smelter in Zvecan in U.N.-run >Kosovo-Metohija before dawn on Monday. Five other civilians and four Kfor >troops were also injured in clashes which broke out between the people in >Zvecan near the Serbian (Yugoslav) province's chief city of Pristina and the >Kfor troops. The seriously injured Serb, Igor Stefanovic, aged 27, a worker at >the plant which worked as part of the Trepca industrial complex, had to be >hospitalized in nearby Kosovska Mitrovica with a rubber bullet wound to the >head. Tanjug learns that some 30 workers, technicians and engineers who had >barricaded themselves in the office building at the time of the >helicopter-supported KFor operation, left the building in the afternoon. > >KFOR ARRESTS AND ORDERS TREPCA MANAGER OUT OF KOSOVO-METOHIJA RASKA, Aug 14 >(Tanjug) - The Trepca general manager vowed on Monday that, despite the >international force KFor's pre- dawn storming of Trepca's Zvecan lead smelter, >Trepca would never give up on its plants in Zvecan or anywhere else in >Kosovo-Metohija. Novak Bijelic, who was late on Sunday arrested by KFor police >without an explanation and then ordered out of Kosovo-Metohija, was speaking >for TANJUG in the Serbian town of Raska, outside that U.N.-run province of the >Yugoslav republic of Serbia. "Fascist occupiers did the same thing in 1941", >said Bijelic, who was arrested at 8 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) and held for >hours before being thrown out of Kosovo-Metohija without an explanation. "The >UNMIK (U.N. mission) police chief told me the notorious criminal Bernard >Kouchner had ordered that I must leave the territory of Kosovo-Metohija at >once and must not even try to come back", Bijelic said. Bijelic was born in >Kosovo-Metohija and has lived most of his adult life there. "Fascists expelled >me and my parents from Metohija in 1941, when I was just a toddler", he added. >According to Bijelic, Trepca's 16 industrial plants in Kosovo-Metohija have >been destroyed on Kouchner's orders. As a case in point, he quoted the >torching of the zinc processing plant in the south, ethnic Albanian-populated >part of ethnically divided Kosovska Mitrovica. The flooding of coal mines >which had operated as part of the Serbian electric power company in >Kosovo-Metohija has deprived of their jobs many ethnic Albanians too. "In >November 1999, Trepca officially requested UNMIK to pay indemnity for the >damage done to the company's facilities in Kosovo-Metohija in the amount of >192 million dollars", Bijelic said. This amount has now been greatly augmented >and is still pending, he added. He stressed the workers are refusing all >invitations to go back to work, because this morning's fascist seizure was >designed to destroy the facility and expel Serbs from their ancestral homes in >Kosovska Mitrovica and Zvecan. "This is indisputably the aim of Bernard >Kouchner", Bijelic said. > >U.N. ENVOY KOUCHNER CARES MORE FOR FACTORY THAN FOR SICK CHILDREN KOSOVSKA >MITROVICA, Aug 14 (Tanjug) - U.N. mission (UNMIK) chief Bernard Kouchner's >justification of Monday's storming of the Trepca lead smelter in >Kosovo-Metohija's Zvecan town with environmental reasons has stunned the >people in near-by Kosovska Mitrovica. The indignant people see the >explanation, offered in writing on Monday, as the height of shamelessness and >hypocrisy on the part of the strutting French doctor who boasts of his >so-called humanism. In the statement, Kouchner alleged that air in Zvecan was >polluted with lead and that as a doctor and Kosovo-Metohija's chief >administrator he would be a criminal if he allowed the threat to the health of >the children and pregnant women to persist. After Monday's pre-dawn Zvecan >storming operation by the international force KFor, in which the smelting >plant was seized, it is clear that the allegation was a handy story circulated >to justify the plunder of property and natural resources of the province. >Kouchner never raised his voice when NATO bombs murdered children throughout >Yugoslavia in last year's aggression - more than 80 children were killed in >the air strikes. He supported the use of bombs with depleted uranium charges >against Kosovo-Metohija, which are now causing grave health problems to KFor >troops. He never stirred when NATO dropped on Kosovo-Metohija cluster bombs >which have killed or maimed 110 children between June 1999 and April 2000. The >good doctor Kouchner was silent also when NATO bombs demolished hospitals and >denied medical assistance to 120,000 pregnant women and at least as many >newborn babies. And now, he feels morally justified to claim that the seizure >of a factory at arms was legitimate! > >U.N. ENVOYS KOUCHNER AND ORTUNO JUSTIFY TREPCA SEIZURE KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Aug >14 (Tanjug) - Top officials of the international force Kfor and the U.N. >mission UNMIK in Serbian (Yugoslav) Kosovo-Metohija on Monday pleaded >environmental reasons for the pre-dawn storming of the lead smelting plant in >Zvecan. KFor Commander Juan Ortuno of Spain and UNMIK chief Bernard Kouchner >were speaking at a news conference in ethnically divided Kosovska Mitrovica, >in its south, ethnic Albanian part. Ortuno said the Zvecan lead smelter, >located not far from that U.N.-run province's chief city of Pristina, and the >adjacent Trepca facilities had been seized by KFor troops, commanded by French >General Jean-Louis Soublet, commander of Kfor Sector North. The operation >involved troops from France, Great Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland and >Pakistan and UNMIK police. According to Ortuno, Kfor only helped UNMIK police >take over the smelter, and the number of troops in Zvecan and at Trepca would >soon be reduced to the lowest possible level. The reasons alleged for the >smelter takeover were high levels of lead and sulphur dioxide in the air, >although Trepca's figures published last week and information from the >Kosovska Mitrovica city hospital denied the claim. Kouchner, for his part, >tried with empty rhetoric about care for the health of the local population >and KFor troops to hide the true aim of the operation, which was to plunder >private property and natural resources of the province. Kouchner's statement >that the smelting plant's management would be placed in the hands of a >30-member team of engineers and administrators already well versed in Trepca's >affairs shows that the operation was a deliberate and premeditated plunder >campaign. Kouchner said an agreement would be signed with an international >consortium which would help administer the Trepca mining complex, appoint >executives and a Board of Directors from all local communities, but did not >elaborate. As for Sunday's arrest and expulsion from the province of Trepca >Director Novak Bijelic, Kouchner claimed he had taken the decision on the >strength of U.N. Resolution 1244, Article 2, explaining that Bijelic would not >be allowed back for three months. > >ETHNIC ALBANIAN GANG STABS SERB COUPLE KOSOVSKA KAMENICA, Aug 14 (Tanjug) - An >ethnic Albanian gang stabbed an elderly Serb couple from a Kosovo-Metohija >village on Sunday, according to a local civil rights protection body on >Monday. Husband and wife Milutin and Taska Bogdanovic of the mountain village >of Kriljevo in the Kosovska Kamenica municipality in the east of the >U.N.-administered Serbian (Yugoslav) province were attacked at around 11 p.m. >local time. The Committee for Protection and Civil Rights in Kosovska Kamenica >said the woman, Taska Bogdanovic, sustained serious injuries to her back, >while her husband received stab wounds to the abdomen. Both had to be >hospitalised. They were set upon by three ethnic Albanian criminals stealing >cattle from the couple's stable. The incident has been brought to the >attention of the Russian international force KFor battalion. > >U.N. PEACEKEEPERS TOLERATE ETHNIC ALBANIAN CRIMES OBILIC, Aug 14 (Tanjug) - >Ethnic Albanian attacks on Serbs in Obilic in U.N.-ruled Kosovo-Metohija have >become every-day occurrences ignored by the so-called international >peacekeepers, amateur radio operators report from Kosovo-Metohija on Monday. >Late on Sunday, a high-power grenade razed the home of a Serb, Miodrag >Vukobratovic, aged 40. Vukobratovic and his neighbour Branka Odalovic, aged >60, were injured in the incident, but their lives are not in danger. At around >9:30 p.m. local time (1730 GMT) on Saturday, ethnic Albanian extremists stoned >the Obilic office of the Reconstruction Directorate, causing substantial >damage. In the Vitina area on Sunday, an ethnic Albanian gang tried to abduct >husband and wife Dragan and Violeta Brankovic, Serbs from the village of >Stubla, near Vitina, in the southeast of the U.N.-ruled Serbian (Yugoslav) >province. The couple was returning by car from a visit to an ethnic Albanian >Roman Catholic friend, when a car with five ethnic Albanians of threatening >disposition blocked their way. The Albanians ordered them out of the car, >breaking the windows, but the Serbs managed to escape and reach the nearest >international force Kfor checkpoint at the village of Grncar, where the >assailants gave up the chase. > >FROM FOREIGN MEDIA GERMAN MEDIA REPORT ON KFOR'S STORMING OF KOSOVO-METOHIJA'S >ZVECAN BERLIN, Aug 14 (Tanjug) - Germany's state news agency DPA and >television reported early on Monday that the international force KFor stormed >and shut down the Zvecan smelter in the Serbian (Yugoslav) Kosovo-Metohija >province. Although the report is bare of any comment, the motives behind the >operation by the U.N. mission UNMIK and Kfor can be clearly discerned. The >German media quote as the reason for the closure lead pollution and >environmental hazards, while saying also that Western companies will take over >the management of the plant. DPA quoted UNMIK as saying that a contract has >been signed with a consortium of international mining companies, comprising a >German and a French company, to administer the complex in future. The report >said nothing, however, about the Zvecan smelter being the last Serb-operated >facility of the Trepca complex, and that plans for the takeover had been in >the making long since. > >BRITISH PAPER - KFOR'S ZVECAN SMELTER SEIZURE IS PART OF WIDER PLAN LONDON, >Aug 14 (Tanjug) - Monday's pre-dawn storming by international force Kfor >troops of the Trepca lead smelter in Zvecan, Kosovo-Metohija, was part of a >wider plan, according to reports in London on Monday. Reports indicate that >the takeover was part of a strategy of the U.N. administration of the Yugoslav >republic of Serbia's Kosovo-Metohija province to seize control of the >province's predominantly Serb-populated north. The takeover was prepared two >weeks ago and was even announced by London's Guardian newspaper in its Monday >edition. The newspaper says ethnic Albanians in Kosovo-Metohija have long been >asking that Kfor and the U.N. administration occupy the north, Serb-populated >part of ethnically divided Kosovska Mitrovica, and the international forces >are now apparently acting on the demands. Radio BBC says that the takeover of >the plant was only an excuse for concentrating Kfor troops in north Kosovska >Mitrovica, preparatory to taking control of north Kosovo-Metohija. The recent >ban of Serbian-language Radio S was part of this plan. British media report >that tensions are running high in north Kosovska Mitrovica, and it is >uncertain how the situation will develop. __________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. 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