Airport Rift Eases; Serbs Continue to Flee Kosovo

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia — International peacekeepers in Kosovo resolved one diplomatic dilemma and struggled to deal with another Saturday as NATO and Russian military planes landed at the main airport at the same time that an elite group of Serbs fled this provincial capital.

A Russian Ilyushin transport and then a French air force Hercules C-13 became the first military aircraft to touch down at the airport since the end of NATO’s 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. Their arrival marked the final chapter in a standoff between Russian troops and NATO peacekeepers that began June 12, when the Russians took control of the airport in a surprise move just hours before the Western allies entered the province.

The dispute ended after the two parties struck an agreement over the role of Russian troops in the peacekeeping mission, paving the way for Saturday’s landings. In a short greeting and remarks at the airport, British Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson joined Russian Col. Gen. Viktor Zavarzin in pledging to continue to work together.

“Through our lengthy negotiations, we’ve developed a good relationship with the Russians that we hope will be a model for the future,” Jackson said during a news conference. Plans call for the facility to open for military traffic in a week and to begin hosting commercial planes at a later date.

As that diplomatic wrinkle was ironed out, however, another materialized in the form of a 70-car caravan of Serbian intellectuals who fled Pristina on Saturday, ignoring pleas by top NATO officials and members of the Yugoslav government for them to stay.

Their departure triggered deep concerns among NATO peacekeepers who are struggling to create a multiethnic Kosovo in which Serbs and ethnic Albanians can live and work together. The peacekeepers view the intellectuals as the underpinnings of the Kosovo Serb community and fear that their departure will step up the flow of Serbs out of Kosovo.

Already, more than 70,000 Serbs, many fearing retribution by returning refugees for atrocities committed against ethnic Albanians, are believed to have fled since NATO troops rolled in two weeks ago. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia.

Many of the Serbian physicians in Saturday’s caravan, some of whom also have taught at the local university, contended that they were being forced from their jobs and that their patients were being taken from them by their ethnic Albanian counterparts--charges the Kosovo Albanians have denied.

“Before the Serbs forced me out, I worked here for 18 years, and so it’s only natural that my patients are asking for me,” said Dr. Muje Shala, an ethnic Albanian who returned to his job at the hospital’s pediatric clinic Friday for the first time in 10 years. “Now the Serbs don’t have a job because they don’t have any patients, because the majority of the people in Kosovo are Albanians.”

Like other key Kosovo institutions, Pristina’s hospital and university have been the scenes of ongoing shake-ups as ethnic Albanians reclaim jobs taken from them either at the start of the NATO air campaign or during the early 1990s, when Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic steered the province away from a multiethnic system.

Ethnic Albanians Back at Hospital Jobs

Since the NATO peacekeeping mission began, 450 ethnic Albanian doctors and nurses have returned to their jobs at the hospital.

Members of the Serbian caravan that left Saturday gathered at the capital’s only entirely Serbian housing development, which a platoon of British soldiers has been guarding around the clock since Wednesday afternoon.

The soldiers, who have moved in with several of the Serbian families, began their patrols after residents reported groups of young ethnic Albanian men knocking on doors to order them to leave their homes.

The residents--almost all doctors, professors or both--said the men also marked their doors, and peacekeepers familiar with the area have said the dangers in the vicinity are real for both Serbs and ethnic Albanians.

“Every place we move in this area, within an hour people are shot,” a British soldier said. Earlier last week, two ethnic Albanian teenagers were fatally shot and a third was wounded only hours after peacekeeping troops pulled out of a nearby neighborhood.

Exacerbating the situation in the Serbian neighborhood is its location within walking distance of two buildings believed to be held by the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army. Also disconcerting to the Serbs were the execution-style slayings of three Serbs, including an economics professor, at Pristina University last week.

Tensions hit new levels Friday after reports began circulating that a prominent Serbian professor and surgeon, Dr. Andrija Tomanovic, had been killed. NATO’s Jackson met with Serbian faculty members that afternoon to assure them that his forces were doing everything possible to ensure their security, but by 4:30 p.m., most of the Serbian doctors had left the hospital.

Last-Ditch Efforts to Persuade Serbs to Stay

A convoy of cars began materializing at University Village, the all-Serb housing development, Saturday morning, and a beefed-up military presence soon followed. British Brig. Jonathan Bailey and Nebojsa Vujovic, the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry spokesman, each made last-ditch efforts to persuade the Serbian intellectuals to stay.

“If you leave now, I suspect the character of this country will change substantially,” said Bailey, who is Jackson’s chief liaison with commanders of both the Yugoslav forces and the KLA rebels. “The reason for that is because you’ll be gone.”

But the men’s pleas fell on deaf ears, and some departing Serbs shouted angry words before piling into their packed cars and heading out of the city.

“Serbs will be back when we remove Milosevic from power!” Dr. Rada Trajkovic shouted moments before pulling away from her University Village home. “This is our land!”

“We’ll be back in tanks!” another man shouted.

Vujovic said the caravan appeared to have been led by members of the Serbian Radical Party, a political party known for its hard-line views. British peacekeepers accepted house keys from more than 20 families from University Village who joined the caravan.

“What we saw here today was really quite significant,” another British soldier said after the convoy pulled out. “It’s the beginning of the end of Kosovo as we know it.”

Also Saturday, British peacekeepers announced the arrest of a Serbian police officer suspected of playing a role in 56 murders in Kosovo. The suspect was arrested at his home in Lipijlan, about 10 miles south of Pristina. It was the second time a suspected war criminal has been taken into custody by British troops, who earlier last week arrested a man who, witnesses say, is responsible for 43 deaths.

A spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said that nearly 350,000 ethnic Albanian refugees had returned to Kosovo by Saturday evening.