UN warns of Bosnia-type horrors as 600 held by Serbs

Hundreds of Kosovans have been detained by the Yugoslav authorities on charges of "terrorism", a move described by the UN yesterday…

Hundreds of Kosovans have been detained by the Yugoslav authorities on charges of "terrorism", a move described by the UN yesterday as raising the spectre of the Bosnian war.

The Belgrade pro-government daily, Politika, said yesterday that more than 600 ethnic Albanians had been arrested in the four preceding days in the Serbian province of Kosovo. It said the men, suspected members of the insurgent Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), were arrested in southern, south-western and western Kosovo.

In Geneva, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) accused Yugoslavia of raising the spectre of another Bosnian-style war. The UN agency appealed to the authorities for access to those arrested.

"This is the first acknowledged round-up of people. That carries a huge dramatic emotional load with it because of what happened in the Balkans before," a UNHCR spokesman, Mr Kris Janowski, said. "Things like this raise the spectre of other situations which were quite deadly in the end."

READ MORE

During the war in Bosnia, thousands of men of military age were taken away from their families and massacred by Bosnian Serbs.

Politika said charges of terrorism would be pressed against those detainees believed to have been involved in attacks on the Serb police and civilians, while those who were "forcibly mobilised by the KLA" would be freed.

Albanian sources yesterday accused Belgrade's troops of separating men of fighting age from their families in villages or among groups of displaced persons.

The senior US human rights representative in Kosovo, Mr John Shattuck, said his mission had gathered "eyewitness accounts of security forces separating men and boys from their families".

He said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had not yet been given access to the detainees but the US mission was "given assurances by [the Yugoslav] President [Slobodan] Milosevic that the ICRC will be given access".

Meanwhile, Albanian sources reported fresh fighting in western Kosovo, saying Belgrade troops had attacked a dozen villages yesterday. Western journalists in the village of Glodjane, near the town of Decani, reported seeing heavy Serb artillery fire on KLA positions.

The Kosovo (Albanian) Information Centre (KIC) said a convoy of some 90 tanks, armoured vehicles and transporters was seen moving from the western town of Pec towards Decani, where "seven villages of the municipality were shelled".

The KIC said the shelling left an unspecified number of dead and injured.

Last February, Belgrade sent troops and special police units to Kosovo in an effort to crush the KLA's armed independence campaign.

The Kosovo Albanian Committee for Human rights said yesterday that at least 828 ethnic Albanians, among them 126 women and 86 children, have been killed in the fighting.