Albanians Yugoslavia

Ethnic Albanians from Yugoslavia's troubled Kosovo province have blocked constitutional changes aimed at reducing their autonomy, a newspaper reported Friday. The newspaper Politika said that in a stormy session Thursday, Albanians in the Kosovo parliamentary assembly refused to debate proposals to reduce the region's autonomy in favor of the republic of Serbia, of which it is a part. They proposed a new Kosovo constitution that would give the region full autonomy from Serbia.

Gunmen killed five members of an ethnic Albanian family traveling in a car in Kosovo, including two girls ages 9 and 14, a U.N. spokesman said Tuesday. The attack late Monday, of which a 16-year-old girl was the only survivor in a family of six, was one of the bloodiest incidents in the Yugoslav province since it came under U.N. control in June 1999.

By day, Sen. Tom Hayden works at his paying job, representing 800,000 citizens of Westside L.A. in the state Senate. Evenings, he dutifully puts in political appearances at receptions and fund-raisers. Then he returns to a downtown B&B and works until midnight on his true passion--protesting the war. Hayden's like an old firehouse dog that hears the bell and springs into action. He hears the bombs and the blather. "Clinton's like bomb-happy," he asserts.

A mass grave believed to contain dozens of bodies of ethnic Albanians is located at a police training camp outside Belgrade, Yugoslav police disclosed Wednesday. Also Wednesday, President Vojislav Kostunica said a law to extradite war crimes suspects such as former President Slobodan Milosevic to a U.N. tribunal in the Netherlands is likely to be approved by the Cabinet and forwarded to parliament.

It is said that history is written by the victors. But the vanquished have their story too. And when written by them, history can be perverted into a justification for relentless revenge. In the Balkans, one day's winner is the next day's loser. Each side has a story that lives forever, and the sheer weight of history propels a struggle over a harsh land that otherwise would seem to have little to offer.

When Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin decided to snub Washington and boycott NATO's 50th birthday party this weekend, it was a clear sign of how low Russia's relations with the United States and the alliance have sunk in the last four weeks. For Russians, there is nothing to celebrate in the longevity of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Like hundreds of thousands of his fellow Kosovo Albanians, Bashkim Millaku was forced at gunpoint to leave his home and his country by Serbian troops last week. On his way, the 36-year-old father of two was caught in a roundup of 400 men, held prisoner for three days and two nights, tormented mentally and physically, robbed and denied food and water. He was used as a human shield. By the time Millaku reached Albania on Saturday night, he was in shock.

Hundreds of ethnic Albanians watched early Monday as a mob dragged a Serbian man and two Serbian women from their car, beat all three and fatally shot the man during a night of festivities celebrating Kosovo's biggest holiday. NATO peacekeepers sped to the scene in downtown Pristina shortly after midnight, finding that the car had been overturned and set on fire. United Nations police found the women lying on the ground, screaming for help.

After hours of swaying trance-like and chanting Islamic prayers, the dervishes who live in Serbia's Kosovo province began the ultimate test of their faith. Crowded before a dervish altar, the little boys went first. Shejh Xhemali Shehu, the holy father of the clan, blessed a metal spear the size of a knitting needle and then guided it through the fleshy cheek of each youngster's beaming face. No blood. A miracle, the holy father proclaimed. The older men went next.

In a significant escalation of tensions between the two Balkan neighbors, Albania on Tuesday charged that Yugoslav troops had violated its territory, shelling and burning homes in a remote border village before withdrawing. Yugoslav officials denied the report, but international peace monitors in the border area said Yugoslav troops had entered the village of Kamenica and set part of it on fire before withdrawing after 1 1/2 hours.

Yugoslav forces peacefully reoccupied the last chunk of a buffer zone around Kosovo on Thursday, retaking control from ethnic Albanian guerrillas who had used the area as a base for a 16-month insurgency. In a NATO-approved operation, 1,200 troops and special police moved back into a 35-square-mile slice of southern Serbia.

The commander of ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the Presevo Valley area of southern Serbia signed an agreement pledging that his group would disband by the end of the month. The NATO-brokered deal was a key step in reducing the risk of bloodshed when Yugoslav forces return Thursday to an area of a buffer zone around Kosovo currently held by the rebels. Kosovo is a U.N.-administered province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic.

An ethnic Albanian man arrested in connection with a bus bombing that killed 11 Serbs escaped from a U.S. Army-run detention facility, the military said. Florim Ejupi was absent when guards at Camp Bondsteel conducted a routine predawn check of the facility. A search was launched.

United Nations police have arrested three ethnic Albanian men suspected of killing an Albanian wartime rebel commander, officials said Wednesday. Ekrem Rexha, known as Cmdr. Drini, was killed a year ago as he left his house in the southern Kosovo city of Prizren. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic. The three men were arrested Monday in Prizren. The U.S. representative's office in Kosovo said all three were ranking members of the Kosovo Protection Corps.

Jolted awake by a dawn barrage of tank and mortar fire, Muazam Zesnuli predicted, correctly, that his barn stood no chance against the Macedonian army. So he raced to free his herd--a horse, two cows and a donkey--before huddling with his wife and two children in their basement. Ten hours later, the ethnic Albanian family emerged unharmed to find the barn burned and the farmhouse pocked with bullets and littered with broken glass. But that was not the end of their ordeal.

With NATO's blessing, elite Yugoslav army troops moved today into a southern Serbia buffer zone overrun by ethnic Albanian guerrillas, as part of a plan to cap cross-border violence that threatens to expand into a new Balkan war. In columns of armored personnel carriers, hundreds of members of the 63rd Parachute Brigade fanned out in the southernmost tip of the zone around Kosovo that runs, at one end, into the Macedonian border.

In cafes and on street corners, anywhere people meet to talk politics in this hardscrabble capital, a consensus is taking shape: Albanians will do anything for their beleaguered "brothers" in the neighboring Yugoslav province of Kosovo--anything, that is, except fight for them. Just over the border, an estimated 250 people have died since February in Kosovo, which is part of Serbia but is 90% ethnic Albanian.

As Yugoslav troops neared the end of their pullout from Kosovo, authorities in Serbia moved Saturday to limit the flight of tens of thousands of Serbian civilians in the army's wake and offered to lead them back to the war-shattered province over the next 48 hours. Serbs from many villages said that the troop withdrawal, which began 11 days ago, enabled armed ethnic Albanian separatists to attack their homes before NATO-led peacekeepers could protect them.

A cease-fire between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and state security forces took effect today in southern Serbia's volatile Presevo Valley. The area was quiet as the truce came into force one minute after midnight. But officials on all sides acknowledged that there are plenty of challenges ahead after more than a year of sporadic violence. "We have to calm down the region.

Three Macedonian soldiers were killed as fighting with ethnic Albanian guerrillas raged near the Kosovo border Sunday, and the violence triggered a shift in U.S. policy to support for tougher Macedonian military action against the insurgents. "We understand the need and obligation of Macedonia to respond to this kind of threat," U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia M. Michael Einik told reporters in Skopje, the capital.