Kosovo: Serb house destroyed in fire

KOSOVSKA VITINA, Oct 1 (Tanjug) - A local Serb’s house burned in a fire that broke out late Sunday in the village of Klokot, near Kosovska Vitina.

The house belonged to Milan Nedeljkovic, who escaped unharmed. Locals suspect that the incident was the work of arsonists.

Villager Trajan Trajkovic told KiM Radio that the fire broke out around 11 p.m, adding that the Nedeljkovic family moved to their old house because it is located in “a better protected part of the village.”

“This is the second attack in just one week and we feel very insecure and request the protection of KFOR, more frequent patrols in the village, and the setting up of checkpoints,” Trajkovic said.

A week ago, in the same village, unidentified gunmen opened fire on a store owned by local Serb Bora Spasic. Although a dozen people were inside the store at the time of the attack, no one was injured.

Croatia: Six Serb-owned reconstructed houses damaged

BENKOVAC, Oct 1 (Hina) - Six reconstructed houses owned by local Serbs in southern Croatian villages were damaged in the night between 29 and 30 September, the Zadar police reported on Monday [1 October].

A police investigation is under way. Electric wiring, bathrooms, windows and doors were damaged at thee six
houses along the Pristeg-Donje Ceranje road.

The houses in the Zadar hinterland were reconstructed within programmes for the renovation of Serb-owned houses which had been destroyed in the 1990s war.

Touché! But sorry, Croatia. Kosovo still has you beat in other arenas of disquiet:

(Note the differences in reporting. First we have an American AP report which says nothing happened - even sacrificing proper language to add the word “false” to describe a bomb scare (bomb scares aren’t false; bombs often are). Then there’s a British Reuters report, which gives us a little more information. Finally, there’s a report from a Bosnian-Serb news agency, which tells a slightly different story. As with all things Kosovo, one can only guess at the truth.)

False bomb scare prompts UN staff to evacuate headquarters in Kosovo

NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo found no explosives in a car that alarmed U.N. staff in Kosovo on Wednesday and prompted them to evacuate the organization’s headquarters, officials said.

Irish peacekeepers searched the vehicle and found no devices that could threaten the security of the building, police spokesman Veton Elshani said.
…
In the past, the U.N. has been targeted by ethnic Albanian extremists demanding that the province become independent from Serbia and charging that the U.N. is an obstacle to independence.

UN Kosovo mission evacuated after bomb scare

The main building of the United Nations mission in Serbia’s breakaway Kosovo province was partially evacuated on Wednesday after a bomb scare.

NATO peacekeepers carried out a controlled explosion on the underside of a U.N. police vehicle at the entrance to the U.N. compound, after security guards spotted a suspect object.

“It was a false alarm,” said Kosovo police spokesman Veton Elshani.

Police had cordoned off streets around the mission that has run Kosovo since 1999, when NATO expelled Serb forces accused of the ethnic cleansing of Albanian civilians while fighting separatist guerrillas. [Please note the official switch to merely “accused of”.]

The 16,000-strong NATO peace force and the U.N. mission are on high alert. [Who are they worried about? The enemy Serbs?] The Albanian majority is growing increasingly frustrated with the West’s stalled bid to grant the territory independence in the face of Serbian and Russian opposition. [No - it can’t be! Our Friends the Albanians?]

Some in the province have turned against U.N. authorities, blaming them for the political limbo that has kept Kosovo in poverty. In 2005, a bomb exploded in the car park of the U.N. building, destroying several cars and shattering windows.

Kosovo police find bomb under UNMIK vehicle

The Kosovo Police Service [KPS] found an explosive device under an international police vehicle in Pristina today.

“The device was noticed by the security staff of an official premises at about 1600 [1400 gmt] while the vehicle was parked in the main street in the centre of Pristina,” Kosovo Police Service spokesman Veton Elshani told SRNA [news agency].

An investigation at the scene confirmed that this was an explosive device and a request was sent to [NATO-led] Kfor [Kosovo Force] to engage special units for the disposal of explosive devices.

It is presumed that the explosive device was planted during today’s protest organized by students in Pristina centre.

In closing, here’s me lying again (and really, everything in this blog post is, like, soooooo 2005!):

Serbs and Roma live in horrible conditions in Kosovo

BRUSSELS, Oct 12 (Tanjug) - Serbs, Roma and other non-Albanian population in Kosovo-Metohija continue to live in horrible conditions in Kosovo and Metohija, eight years after the arrival of international administration in Serbia’s southern province, participants of the session on “Multi-ethnicity, KFOR and UNMIK in Kosovo,” organized by the Independence and Democracy group in the European Parliament, have concluded.

Members of the European Parliament from France Patrick Luis, who is also the organizer and moderator of the meeting, opposed independence of Kosovo, evaluating that it would open Pandora’s Box of secessionism and might have serious consequences for Europe.

Members of the Paris-based Civic Collective for Peace in Kosovo and Metohija also addressed European Parliament representatives.

Representative of the Roma community in France Nedzmedin Meziri said that the status of the Roma in Kosovo is catastrophic, giving a number of shocking examples of discrimination and limited movement of the Roma in Kosovo.

Ivana Bacvanski analyzed the link between politics and organized crime in the province, which seriously endangers the principles of the rule of law.

I guess these folks didn’t get the same tour that those visiting American Legion members got.