Burn, O Mother of Heaven

On Saturday, April 3, a little before 1 a.m., our reporter who lives in Belgrade's suburb of Senjak, in Colak Antina St., leaned out of his window into the cold night only to hear how the quite whisper of the rain is being disturbed by two hissing sounds.  North from there he saw a big red flash at a distance of about 500 meters, after which two explosions could be heard.  Soon after, a third hiss, followed by a detonation, was heard.  After that something that sounded like shots could be heard gain, isolated but very frequent, followed by hollow explosions every now and then.  The window glass gently shook from all this, a little less than a week ago when the suburb of Topcider was targeted, which is further away and behind a hill.

The buildings of the Federal and Republican Ministries of Internal Affairs (MUP) were aflame.  The building housing the Republican MUP, the work of Architect Antic, made of metal and dark brown glass, a good example of how modern architecture fits in with the old center of the city, used to be happily dug into the slope of the hill on which is nestled the network of Belgrade's hospitals.

Perhaps it is this difference in elevation which helped an enormous tragedy from occurring.  The distance of the Gynecology and Obstetrics clinic from there is less than a hundred feet, with the maternity hospital right behind.  The reaction of the nurses indicate shock, which is less the result of the explosion than the awareness of the fact that such an attack was possible.

Daniela Matijasevic was literally giving birth while the MUP building was being bombed with cruise missiles.  The third cruise missile fell only a hundred feet from the Institute for Gynecology and Obstetrics of the Clinical Center of Serbia.  Than night there were seventy newborns at the Institute.  Ten were born that night, including a set of twins.
After the two initial detonations, the windows on the building shattered, while maternity personnel began to evacuate patients to the closest bomb shelter.  While pregnant women and new mothers who could walk on their own scurried to the bomb shelter, the burning remains of the building fell around them.  The women who could not walk, some of whom had just been operated on, were being carried on stretchers.  They all spent the rest of the night together in the bomb shelter.  "The babies were incredibly calm.  They cried only occasionally," stated Pediatrician, Dr. Olga Antonovic.  Director of the Institute, Prof. Dr. Spasoje Petkovic merely said: "They knew that there are babies here, and they still attacked."

The just born children were quickly evacuated to bomb shelters, lined up one next to another, just like loves of bread on a big hospital table on wheels intended for the evacuation.

When a part of Zvezdara was targeted, close to the City Hospital complex in that part of Belgrade, one of the more serious patients, evidently under aesthetics and tranquilizers, told his impressions to a TV reporter following the explosions: "There was a terrible noise, and the worst part of it is that you cannot even move - you cannot even get scared!"
Zvezdara was bombed, a part of Belgrade that is built on a hill and gets its name from the old sky observatory which was built there some time ago.  On Monday morning, April 5, two enemy projectiles hid a police complex in Zvezdara in Volga St., right next to the elementary school "Marija Bursac."  The part of the school facing the former barracks, which in its time was an important communication center but has long since lost its significance, had all its windows broken.  The former barracks was moved out five to six years ago, and the police which moved in soon after had deserted the building several months ago.  Only watchmen were at the center so that luckily there were no human casualties.  A cafeteria and an empty barrack were hit.  Several cars covered with concrete debris could be seen in the yard.  It should be emphasized that the director of elementary school "Marija Bursac" came immediately to the scene of the crime.  Until early noon, nearly all the broken window glass had been replaced.

With this attack the aggressor did not hit a single military target, but made life more difficult for residents of this area, especially the residents of Cingrijina St. and Mianan Rakica St.  Beside the school windows, many private houses had their windows broken.  One Yugo, which is otherwise always parked in a garage, that faithful night was parked outside, with shrapnel going right through its roof.  The windshields of several cars also broke, as well as some doors and windows in this area, close to the Olimp Sports Center.  The explosion disturbed patients in the City Hospital complex which apparently suffered no damage.

"A bigger piece of shrapnel dislodged a beam on a house I am presently building," stated one of the residents of this part of town, showing the damage.  "It was a fair sized beam, about six inches square.  The first explosion woke me up, then I heard a hissing sound, and several seconds later it hit again.  I smelt a characteristic smell of rocket fuel.  The fire brigade arrived quickly and put out the fire.  Beside the dislodged beam, several shingles were also dislodged and my bedroom window was also broken."
The smell of fire from the police building on Saturday was also felt twenty minutes later in Senjak, in Colak Antina St., where the sky to the north had a dark orange, reddish hue.  Something "incredible" was seen taking place - a bomb fell in the center of Belgrade.  The drama of the moment was owing to the fact that the flames from the targeted Republican MUP building, and the temperature from the fire could easily have extended to the hospital complex right next to the MUP.  Half an hour after the detonation, about a hundred people were observing the fire from the adjoining highway.  They heard subsequent detonations, probably form the burning building, while subsequent explosions sounded more like something heavy was braking and falling within the MUP building.  The fire was very intense, with flames extending as far as 60 feet above the central building which was completely engulfed in the fire.  The frame of the building remained intact, even the hanging platform toward Knez Milosa St., which later fell, was intact.  The fire in the Federal MUP building was less intense, with the wing facing the highway burning most intensely.  In the middle of the bridge across the highway, heading toward the MUP building, several cars were stopped sideways, their door wide open, evidently having been stopped at the moment of the explosion.  Several policemen on that side of the street were not paying attention to those gathered, as they looked at the fire in disbelief.  In the Knez Milosa St. tens of fire trucks could be seen lodged between buildings, while more fire trucks were arriving from the bridge across the adjoining highway.

The day after "the attack on the police station", Knez Milosa street was closed to traffic, while at the beginning of the bridge across the highway and in the park around the MUP building there were more than a thousand people gathered.  One youth was correcting state media rhetoric on the spot, with the media phrase for this and other similar events being "aggression by the Fascist murderers headed by the criminal murderer Clinton" (sometimes the word "saxophone player" gets mixed in with that); in staid, the youth was saying: "Well, this is a classic attack on a police station!"  Several cisterns from the Municipal Cleaning Authority were also present, having diverted their trucks to help out in the cleanup.  The hanging part of the MUP building toward the street appeared to have melted.  The part of the building facing the highway did not show any signs of the fire, with the windows having remained intact.  At the wing of the Federal MUP, which burned most intensely, there was a big, black stain, with the sides looking as before.  One of the balconies was destroyed, but the place where the projectile entered is simply not visible.  There is water trickling down the windows, with steam appearing in places.  The majority of windows on this building were broken, with a few having remained intact.  On the side of the building, the beams broke somewhere above the middle of the building as bent toward the outside.  There are many broken windows on neighboring buildings, although everything which is not facing the damaged building directly, or is protected by another building, a tree or a window blind, or where the window is made of smaller windows, simply remained intact.  There are not too many broken windows in Sarajevska St., although there are several broken large shop windows.  In Durmitorska St., more of the windows on the higher floors are broken, while the kibicfensters on the new building on the corner of Knez Milosa St. on the higher floors look like something forced itself through them.  From other windows, the drapes are swinging in the wind across the broken panes, as if the force of the explosion forced them outside.  In one window, there is a hole in the middle of the glass, with the window intact around it.  The windows of the Yugoslav River Transport Authority suffered the most, while the furthest damage is in a glass showcase of Beobanka, across the German embassy.  The Canadian embassy, a beautiful building from glass and stone, the place where thousands of local youths waited for a visa until recently in their attempts to escape the Balkan hell, also looks pretty broken up, although this does not seem to be from the explosion, but from the "street work" by those who several days earlier sent the same message to Canada, in red letters, as was sent to France: "Republic of Quebec."  The American embassy, which is some three hundred feet away, stands locked and sealed.  There are many insulting graffiti on it, and hanging effigy which must have swung considerably at the moment of the explosion, but managed to hang on.

Belgrade at noon is full of children with bells hanging around their necks and willow wisps in their hair: it is Lazar's Saturday in Belgrade, one of the more uplifting Christian holidays which combines some of the pagan stains related to a good harvest.  At one point, far back in history songs were sung to invite rain.  On the Square of the Republic, the music is louder than usual, with Cane and the Party Breakers, our friends from the anti-war protest from 1991 and 1992, singing at the tops of their voices.  Young people have crowded from the Square of the Republic right up to Terazije, where the smashed McDonald's, which has been repaired with white panels, there is a graffiti about the cevapcici from Leskovac.  In the multitude of picket signs, there is a corrected sign: "Sorry, we're STILL singing!"  On one of them, it reads in English: "Happy Easter!"
At night, the whole city withdraws and turns quiet, expectantly waiting, like some sonar, to see where the latest bomb fell.

At first duck that Saturday, April 3, there are passenger vehicles and bicycles crossing the "Sloboda" bridge in Novi Sad, the bridge which leads to Miseluk and Sremska Kamenica.  One of the passers by who will later end up in hospital tells how he saw a projectile coming and how he fell to the ground "the way we have been told."  The television footage from Miseluk shows how an enormous wave of water raises as the bridge brakes, falling into the Danube.  One boatman told the Beta agency how he saw cars falling from the bridge and heard people crying for help.  Our reporter in Novi Sad writes that Novi Sad television reported that two cars fell into the river, and that one car is still visible, standing at the top of that part of the bridge which is in the river.  He reports that dedicated rescuers managed to save several people who fell from the bridge into the water below.

Antiaircraft defenses were active, but according to unconfirmed reports it hit, but did not down the attacker.

The better part of Novi Sad remained without water in the initial hours of the attack, but water supplies were soon normalized.  The Mayor of Novi Sad, Ph.D. Stevan Vrbaski, stated on one of the remaining radio stations that the city authorities managed to transfer the water supply from the downed Varadin bridge to the "Sloboda" bridge, but that now even it has been downed.  The problem is that Novi Sad is located in such a way that its water purification is all on the Backa side of the Danube, while all its water sources are located on the Srem side.  The purified water is sent up to Fruska Gora mountain so that natural pressure necessary for the system is created with the higher altitude, with the water crossing the Danube twice.  Hence the water supply for Novi Sad is occurring with great difficulty and with considerably reduced water pressure.  A statement was issued by the Yugoslav Minister of External Affairs that the regional water supply has been threatened with as many as 600,000 being affected.  The Sloboda bridge was built about ten years ago and served exclusively for traffic toward Ruma, and the wider region of Frucka Gora.  Trucks were forbidden from crossing the bridge not only because the bridge leads to the center of town, but also because the right side of the Danube is on soft ground, with the columns of the right side of this bridge being constantly monitored by a stationary system of instruments for this reason.  The internationally renowned Cardiovascular Institute on the right side of the river now remains out of reach for emergency cases in Novi Sad.  This hospital, which has many serious, emergency patients, was initially left without water.

In Novi Sad, in the quiet area of Lale, our reporter writes that the sense of bitter rage is slowly growing.  In the first attack, the downed bridge of Varadin is the place from which during the Nazi rations during World War II the Germans threw their victims into the icy Danube.  The bridges in Beska and the May 25th bridge in Backa Palanka were attacked and partly destroyed.  The constant question among the residents of Novi Sad is what the planners of this horror in Bruxelles want to achieve strategically by attacking the four bridges which connect Backa and Srem.  At NATO briefings there is constant repetition of savagely cold analyses of systematic destruction of military targets, but western media are noting that some of those targets are intended for collective punishment and mass torture of a population which is countering attacks by singing in the squares of cities.  The fact that the young people of Belgrade, who grew up through demonstrations, are understanding these sinister intentions is reflected in the graffiti: "Clinton, may you get woken up by Avram Izrael."  (Avram Izrael is the spokesman of Belgrade's Center of Information and Warnings.)  The answer on the street, as a rule, is more witty and quick than that of state war propaganda and of various spokesmen for the aggression.

They know that singing under these conditions could be interpreted the wrong way: people are dying, there are refugees, unrest and despair are all around, but they persist in sending this message wich is maybe louder from the thunder of guns from the ground: "Gentlemen, your force is melting into absurdity - you are welcome to see, we are all targets."  At a time when factories are being destroyed ("Sloboda" Factory of Cacak, judging by footage, is completely destroyed and transformed into rubble, with five thousand workers being left without work) manufacturing in one sector is on the rise - the sector producing small white badges with concentric black circles printed on them.  Target?  The time, place and goal of the bombing speak in their own way about the objective of the bombing being to create mass terror - Catholic Easter, Serbia at dawn, 5 a.m., Heating Plant of New Belgrade which provides heating for Zemun and New Belgrade.  On that Sunday morning, our reporter found herself on the twelfth floor of a high rise in Block 28 of New Belgrade, which is several hundred feet away from the Plant; when the Plant exploded, she was thrown out of her bed, the building shook just like during an earthquake, and she barely made the two necessary steps toward the window in order to see what was happening, something which is not recommended to anyone who is not a journalist; advice in such situations is that one must stay as far as possible from windows, in hallways, under tables or in a bomb shelter.

The apartment of our reporter is slightly tucked into the building in a broken architectural pattern, so that there was no breakage of windows.  The exposed windows, however, were completely shattered.  The fire ball looked so large that everything had a red glow one and a half hour after the explosion in the apartments in this building of Block 28; the fire was pulsating, decreasing and than increasing.  After that an enormous black cloud hovered above the explosion, barring everything to view.  That morning an enormous black mushroom could be seen from afar against a blue sky, which looked even bluer with the contrast of the dirty, thick black smoke, perhaps because the rain cleared the sky the previous morning.  

Half an hour after the explosion the municipal fire brigade arrived to held out the Plant's firefighters in putting out the flames.

In front of the high rise in Block 28, people were standing, mostly older people, silent with astonishment.  A neighbor carrying two suitcases said that he wont go back to his apartment.  Some people say before the explosion they heard seven dull explosions - our boys were trying to shoot him down, but...

On Sunday night, April 3, RTS sharply criticized CNN and SKY news reports about last night's NATO attack on the building of the Republican and Federal Ministries of Internal Affairs in the center of Belgrade.  "CNN once again had a spectacular show for its viewers: war - live, fire and destruction at prime time, at 7 p.m., when American are all glued to their television screens."  Given that time change, it appears that the attacks on Belgrade are scheduled to coincide with American prime time.  The moment for attacking the bridge in Novi Sad, with many civilian pedestrians, was relegated to a slow TV viewing period, since anyway "there's no good TV footage of the spot."  In any case, it is not important where: what is important is for the camera to be close by to record how a bright dot is approaching some building and how a big fire ball is casting light on the entire scene.  In all this confusion, Kraljevo was identified as a city in Ksovo, and in his conversation with the Russian Ambassador, Larry King called the Russian Premier Primakov as Gari Kasparov, at a time when relations between America and Russia are going down hill.

Really, the sad, singing children of Belgrade are right when they say, Yankees, go home, you are powerful, but you know nothing.  You are doing great harm.  The park in New Belgrade, between Blocks 22 and 28 is full of young people who are singing pop songs with guitar accompaniments, while the playground in the kindergarten is full of children...  Close by there are policemen and night watchmen who are standing and smoking.

Problems with tobacco began as soon as the bombing started.  People first bought everything that could be found in kiosks, street dealers and Belgrade's outdoor market which was open in the mud of New Belgrade, between the described buildings and the place of the explosion.  On Monday, news came from Nis that the DIN Tobacco Factory had been hit.  At first there were indications that the warehouse was hit, but our sources indicate that the factory itself is damaged, while workers say that they were told that the factory will be closed until further notice, but that the warehouse has not been damaged.

Our reporter from Valjevo writes that in this city, everyone with any family in the country, immediately evacuated.  Farmers are tilling their soil, those with tractors and gasoline; the rest promise that they will till their soil as soon as the promised gasoline arrives (the morning after Saturday's attack on Belgrade, the President of FRY spoke to government officials about securing gasoline for the harvest).  It is only their nights which are no different than in the city.  As soon as it gets dark, they don't turn their lights on and put up with that inconvenience.  How?  By nervously watching television all night.  In Valjevo there is some competition going on about the directive of no lights at night, so that residents are reporting each other to the media for breaches.  The director of a school was surprised when she found out that the lights were on in her school.  She went immediately to check on the spot, and ascertained that the light was on in the toilet because of a broken switch.  She got up somehow to unscrew the bulb and scurried back to the bomb shelter.  On her way back she asked the people in the shelter whether they knew the phone number of Radio Valjevo to thank them for alerting her and to tell them the reason for the breach.  As no one could help her out, she remembered that perhaps someone is keeping watch in another school close by, and asked if they know that number: "Certainly, Mam, I just reported to them the light in your building."  In Belgrade, our reporter observers with astonishment how the residents of Belgrade, who as a rule ride for free with the City Transportation Authority, are now purchasing and stamping their tickets for each ride.

In this way, a "nation" with 26 nationalities of all ages is somehow adapting to the biggest American foreign policy mistake since Vietnam.  Time Magazine writes about the so-called Powell's doctrine which was designed as a kind of national vaccine against slow burning and bleeding conflicts such as the one in Vietnam.  But last week, America not only embarked on aggression which is more than blind, but it entered into a conflict not knowing how to get out of it.  The first week of this infamous campaign the American President, it is said, spent playing gold at Camp David in Maryland, refusing to acknowledge even the Pope's appeal for the bombing against Yugoslavia to stop during the Catholic Easter.

In this way the "sign-or-be-bombed ultimatum" strategy has exploded with a hundred times greater tragedies than those of a week ago.  UNHCR reports that there are 150,000 refugees.  Western TV networks calculated on Sunday night that there are over 350,000 ethnic Albanians who fled from Kosovo to Albania and Macedonia, appealing for urgent aid.  On the Macedonian side they are literally standing on no man's land, for the Macedonian government cannot accept more refugees in order not te disturb the shaky ethnic balance.  There is footage showing hungry refugees in the background, with Macedonian customs men having lunch in the foreground.  According to western agencies, refugees continue to arrive on foot from the Morian highway.  Endless grief, unseen tragedy.  In Kukus, in Albania, the streets are being doused with chlorine in order to prevent a plague from breaking out.  Toward the end of the last week at a border crossing, Kristian Amanpour theatrically turned and bent in order for the camera to slowly zoom onto the column of refugees.  The voyeurism of tragedy, even worse than when four years ago a reporter with our state television greeted the desperate refugees from Krajina with: "What brings you here!"  However, the tragedy of these people is being used for a new cart blanche - the cause of the war and all this tragedy is blamed on "Serbian military and paramilitary formations."  On Sunday some Albanian source broadcast the image of twenty murdered people; it is claimed that they were executed, that the footage was secretly taken with great danger to its makers, and was taken to the west as testimony for future generations.  NATO is grabbing onto this detail just like a sherif who found a body - if we have a body, than we have murder.  TV anchors are already passing sentence.  In London, as a private media representative Gasic is defending himself with counter questions - how do you know that those people are Albanians and not Serbs; does the fact that they are in civilian clothes guarantee that they are civilians, and how are you so sure that they did not get killed in combat...

Madlein Albright, American Secretary of State, announced that America will "share the burden" and that it will accept several thousand refugees, mentioning after as many as 20,000.  Italy and Turkey are preparing blankets, while illnesses are beginning to break out in camps in Macedonia.  Verbally, Germany is "expressing readiness" or "considering the possibility" of temporarily accepting those refugees.  Reports indicate that the airport in Tirana is abuzz with activity.  Three C130 transport planes arrived to Tirana from Germany; France, Saudi Arabia, Britain and Italy are helping out a bit.  Macedonian Minister of Internal Affairs Pavle Trajanov states that the Macedonian border is technically open, but only for those refugees who will be accepted by a third country.

"NATO and the Clinton Administration were completely unprepared for this crisis," states Fred Abrahams, human rights researcher for Kosovo, admitting that he himself was surprised.  And what is the Machine doing under those circumstances?  It bombs a civilian bridge with pedestrians and cars on it, leaving 600,000 people in Novi Sad without water; it destroys a Heating Plant in New Belgrade, creating conditions for an unbearable winter; it destroys a bridge over the Ibar River, near Raska; discusses in the Pentagon the possibility of sending in ground troupes.  On Sunday it announced that 24 Apache Helicopters will be sent to Albania with 2,000 soldiers as support.  (Ken Bacon, Pentagon Spokesman, calls this "expansion of the air operation, pure and simple," adding that this will "tighten the noose around Milosevic's neck."  That is will!  The spiral of violence is thus progressively expanding.  This extraordinary weapon is described as "a tank exterminator which has great firepower, it can descend low behind bushes, and it can retreat quickly."  Explanation: "We must do something quickly with the people in Kosovo."  Even the mind of a private can see that those machines are hardly suited to dropping food to refugees, nor fore rescuing the wounded.  They are being sent to improve the tarnished American image of leaders with some sort of spectacle.  Our correspondent from Macedonia (with many diplomats having come there, both in secret and publically) tells that even there stifled applause can be felt at the downing of the F-117, which was left in mud.  Privately they claim that they were simply pushed by the Americans into this intervention and that they "simply had to go along."  Parallel with this new showcasing of war machines, television cameras record the mobilization of refugees in Albania for the projected fight.  Some German footage shows a small boy, who can hardly be 14 or 15, dressed in camouflaged uniform.  No one notices this detail which calls to memory the time when the entire western public opinion (and a large part of our public opinion) was aghast at the mobilization of boys from Krajina who just fled to Serbia ahead of the operation "Storm."  One of them later won a case against this state.  Now, there is no reaction.  Evidently, some ragged army is being put together for a ground invasion, although western officials state that "it is not planned", or that "NATO does not want a ground campaign because its troupes could not be 'peace keepers'."  Tony Blair proclaims the Easter attacks as "extremely successful" and announces new attacks.

Some of the world's media, and even some western politicians (Cook, for instance), have not stopped classifying the three American soldiers captured in Serbia, near the Macedonian border as "UN peacekeepers."  The mandate of UN troupes in Macedonia officially expired at the beginning of March, after China vetoed the continuation of their mandate in the Security Council.  The soldiers from this mission got two months for withdrawal from Macedonia, while it is difficult to imagine that Sanchez, Ramirez and the third soldier decided to withdraw across Serbia.  At this moment there are at least several thousand NATO soldiers in Macedonia.  They are the ones who arrived to Macedonia under the title of "extraction forces," whose arrival and disposition was explained exclusively by the need for helping the KLA to leave Kosovo peacefully in the event of danger of war.  The verifiers left Kosovo peacefully before the intervention, and that was one of the ultimate moves in the "sign-or-be-bombed" game.  The Yugoslav government observed that it regrets this and that this will draw consequences.  The KLA also drew its own consequences, and began activities on ground in order to prepare the terrain for Mr. Walker to come back.  While Yugoslav border police was canceling visas, Mr. Walker stated that he will return in eight days (!) and that at that time he wont be needing a visa.  The Third Yugoslav Army took its position and began to prepare the ground for defense, while news of sporadic conflicts between the army and the police and the KLA was heard daily.  Russians withdrew their verifiers, although NATO did not permit them to evacuate their mission across Belgrade.  It is not known whether their further stay in Macedonia has been authorized by the UN or by anyone else in the meantime.  The Yugoslav petition against the threat of aggression has been blocked by a majority in the Security Council, with only China, Russia and Malaysia voting in our favor.  The East River "simply does not know what is happening."  Russian politicians (Selieznov) are asking for the seat of the UN to be moved from New York to Geneva.

Russia warned and keeps warning that the Security Council has been side stepped through a chain of events, and that the UN is in a crisis.  After all the military maneuvers, those from high military positions are sending messages that they do not want to get involved in the conflict because they do not wish to further insult this world organization.
Whether anyone is willing to admit this or not, the sad case of Yugoslavia provides an illustration for the crisis in the United Nations.  The moderate Gorbachov is insisting that the mistake be admitted, and that a further one not be made with a ground intervention.  He says that from opinions reaching him, this aggression "showed Europe who's boss", that it has belittled Russia, that it will change the post-cold war arrangements of security forces, and that it will inevitably lead toward a new arms race.  This latest forecast by Gorbachov can be seen in stock markets - while everything is plummeting, the dollar is on the rise.

On April 5 the Washington Post wrote that Pentagon's "four star" generals expressed reservations regarding the Clinton Administration's approach to Kosovo, that political objectives cannot be achieved through bombing and that they propose further sanctions and other non-military pressures.  Their criticism is that there is no long-range vision for the Balkans, and their question is whether there is sufficient American interest for military confrontation to be initiated.  According to the Washington Post, two weeks after the bombing began, military leaders are remaining suspicious that bombing can achieve the declared political objectives.  They think that public opinion is not ready to accept the prolongation of air strikes, but they are also frustrated and are afraid that the bringing in of troupes will lead to another indefinite engagement.  This dissatisfaction is now resulting in further escalation - they are asking that everything be tried in order "to get the job done!"  Beside all the scepticism, the generals have not proposed the sending in of ground troupes - especially not of American troupes, or at least not yet.

It is interesting that in all this excitement, there is no mention of the fact that after the defeat of the KLA on ground that there is a possibility which is symbolized by the fact that Ibrahim Rugove, for instance, is alive, and not dead, and that he signed a political declaration with FRY President Milosevic.  Doubt is being expressed that Rugova was forced into this, and that he never appeared in Belgrade at all, etc...   NATO Spokesman is now suspecting that the footage from the meeting is of an earlier date.  At the moment that this article is being concluded, we are learning that Russian Ambassador Yuri Kotov went to Pristian in order to visit the stadium and to personally meet Rugova...
Hiding the fact that they lost all ground for any political engagement, British and American politicians, as well as the Pentagon, have suddenly decided to "defend" Milo Djukanovic.  Robin Cook is suddenly beginning "to express concern" in the midst of this whole crisis because of a supposed coup which is being prepared against the Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, which is why they intend - to drop more bombs.  The People's Party announced over the weekend that all rumor of a coup against Djukanovic is mere nonsense.

As "Pobjeda" of Podgorica reports in its weekly edition, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said in his interview for the CNN that the use of force in all phases of the Kosovo crisis, including the last one, can lead to no good, nor can it contribute to solving the problem of Kosovo.

"I appeal against the forces of the international community, believing that force merely reflects a measure of the failure of the political process, and that world diplomacy must not side with the logic of force.  World diplomacy must enter the scene now and must attempt to renew the negotiations and the political process in Kosovo," stated Djukanovic.
Regarding the bombing of Belgrade, Svetozar Marovic, President of the Parliament of Montenegro stated that he is "dumbfounded" and that the NATO aggression "has no respect for anything, because only meters from where the projectiles were directed, new lives were coming to this world."  Marovic stated that the killing must be stopped with reason, togetherness and cooperation, for peace is being defended in the country and in Montenegro by the all citizens, by the people's representatives in parliament, the government and the opposition together.

"When bombs and projectiles fall on our country, our state and our people need to be helped in the service of peace, military and army duty, in the respect of civil and military authorities and their cooperation, for everyone has a duty and is call to aid," stated Marovic for Radio Television Budva.

Filip Vujanovic, Montenegrin Prime Minister, stated that the NATO intervention unfortunately resulted in the loss of many lives, in many invalids, in the destruction of enormous proportions and that it merely augmented the humanitarian catastrophe.

Prime Minister stated that the Montenegrin leadership directed all its political energy toward stopping the aggression against the FRY and the renewed opening of diplomatic path for resolving the crisis in Kosovo, "which is long and hard, but is all the same possible."

Vujanovic assessed the political and security situation in that republic as "relatively stable," that keeping in mind the situation - we can be satisfied: state and local officials are working; just like public companies and the economy, and the health and educational systems are operating.  Last Sunday, in Podgorica a peace concert filled the center of the city.

While this confused game is continuing, the terrible Machine is destroying one bridge at a time, one building at a time, just like when a bully is breaking one finger at a time of a small child...

Team of VREME Reporters