NATO Bomb Kills Two Peacekeepers; Clinton Thanks Macedonians for Help
Associated Press
The British military said Tuesday that a bomb blast killed two peacekeeping soldiers and two civilians as the troops cleared explosives from a schoolhouse.
They said the accident came not from a Serb booby-trap, but from a NATO cluster bomb that accidentally went off.
The deaths Monday of Lt. Gareth Evans and Sgt. Balaram Rai -- Nepalese soldiers attached to the British army -- were the first allied fatalities since NATO peacekeepers entered Kosovo on June 12. Dozens of civilians, however, have died in explosions of land mines and booby-traps since the peacekeeping force began to take control of the southern Serb province.
The explosion occurred in a school in Negrovce, a village 20 miles west of Pristina, Kosovo's capital.
The soldiers, from the 69th Gurkha Field Squadron, had been called in by villagers who found unexploded cluster bombs at the school, according to Lt. Col. Nick Clissitt, a spokesman for the British military in Pristina.
The soldiers were moving the bombs into piles to be detonated and "it was during the wiring of the charges that two piles detonated prematurely with tragic results," Lt. Col. Clissitt said.
Venturing as close to the Kosovo border as security would allow, U.S. President Clinton thanked Macedonians Tuesday for supporting NATO forces and sheltering Kosovo refugees. He pledged millions of dollars to help build a better future in the Balkans.
"NATO could not have achieved its mission without you," he said, addressing Macedonian leaders at their parliament. "The people of Kosovo would not be going home to security and autonomy without you. I came here as much as anything else to say thank you."
Although unexploded bombs, uncleared minefields and booby-traps pose substantial hazards in Kosovo, tens of thousands of refugees are disregarding international agencies' calls for them to stay put in the Albanian and Macedonian tent camps over the Kosovo border until the danger can be reduced.
"We're getting very worried because people understandably are clamoring to come home and we just don't feel the security situation warrants that," Michael Barton of the International Organization for Migration said.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said more than 170,000 of the 860,000 or so refugees expelled from Kosovo have returned in little more than a week, 33,000 on Monday alone. Another 600,000 are in camps or with host families in neighboring countries and 88,000 more have been evacuated to other countries, including some 7,000 to the U.S.
Peace in Kosovo appeared increasingly strong in the wake of Albanian rebels pledging in a pact with NATO to lay down their arms. The deal came Monday, just hours after the last of the 40,000 Serb troops left Kosovo.
The 20,000 or so NATO-led KFOR troops now in Kosovo said they were moving beyond initial attempts to quell the violence and were beginning to look ahead by establishing security and laying the groundwork for democratic elections.
"Very soon, KFOR will be the only military security presence here. That is how it should be," said British peacekeeping chief Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson.
Late Sunday, Lt. Gen. Jackson received both confirmation that the Yugoslav military had withdrawn its forces from Kosovo and a pledge from the Kosovo Liberation Army to disband, put down its weapons and join efforts to establish peace in Kosovo.
With the Serb forces' retreat confirmed, NATO officially ended its 78-day air campaign. And on Monday, the Belgrade government took a reciprocal step, asking parliament to end the state of war declared the day NATO launched its airstrikes, the state Tanjug news agency reported.
Since March 24, the state of war has banned men of military age from leaving the country, let the army take over key institutions and subjected the news media to censorship.
Still, reports of a media crackdown persisted. An umbrella group for Yugoslavia's fledging independent radio and television broadcasters said the government was forcing stations replace their newscasts with those of the state-controlled networks.
For its part, the KLA agreed to a broad demilitarization that will require them to leave their checkpoints and halt any military activity unless the peacekeepers approve it first.
Although they can keep their handguns, they agreed not to use explosives, to put remaining weapons in storage sites verified by NATO and to clear minefields and booby-traps within seven days.
A hard-line Kosovo Albanian rebel, however, said Tuesday that the demilitarization agreement with NATO does not require the guerrillas to surrender their weapons and those who expect the KLA to disappear have "miscalculated."
"The agreement does not demand that we give up our arms," Rrustem Mustafa told the KLA's Kosova Press news service. "The arms will be gathered at certain places and the KLA will take care of them while NATO has a right to observe them."
But already many in the rank and file seemed to be complying with the demilitarization pact.
"We received an order to return home and start a normal life with our families," said KLA fighter Faik Reci, a teacher waiting for a ride home with his brother in Prizren, Kosovo's second-largest city.
The KLA regional commander there, known by his code name "Drini," gave German officers maps of minefields -- most near the Albanian border -- as required.
Mr. Clinton was making a personal plea to the war-scarred refugees he was meeting in the muddy tent encampments less than 10 miles from the Kosovo border: reconciliation and rebuilding -- not revenge.
He announced the disbursement of $12 million in food commodities to assist Macedonia, in addition to $72 million in relief that the U.S. has sent to the nation since last year.
Macedonia, an impoverished state of two million residents, housed up to 140,000 refugees as NATO airstrikes sought to drive the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo.
The Macedonians also provided space for NATO to launch its peacekeeping mission once the 78-day air war ended just two weeks ago.
In a brief meeting with Mr. Clinton, Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov said he accepted "the essential need for the presence of the United States of America in Southeastern Europe. The war in Bosnia and now in Kosovo have confirmed this."
Afterward, Mr. Clinton held another meeting with Mr. Gligorov, Albanian President Rexhep Meidani and the prime ministers of both countries. They discussed the need to diffuse the region's long-held ethnic tensions, and Mr. Meidani pledged to urge ethnic Albanians in Kosovo to "build a spirit of tolerance," according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters afterward.
Mr. Clinton was making his first trip to the front lines of the battle he and his NATO allies won against what he called the "murderous rule" of Mr. Milosevic. The journey wraps up a weeklong trip that won commitment from the European Union to help in the costly reconstruction of Kosovo.
"We must build a Europe with no front-line states, a Europe undivided, democratic and at peace for the first time in history," he declared in Slovenia, before going to Skopje.
Macedonia and Albania are to be included in the longer-term stability package of aid to Southeastern Europe agreed upon by the world's industrial powers at their weekend summit in Germany.
En route back to Washington, Mr. Clinton and his family stop in Aviano, Italy, to greet U.S. forces who took part in the NATO campaign.