Robert Gelbard, US envoy for the Balkans, quoted by the Turin daily La Stampa on 13 March 1998: 'What is appropriate for Kosovo is a new status, some kind of enhanced self-rule within the frontiers not of Serbia, but of the Yugoslav federation.'

Only a token group of men stay in the villages to guard their homes and milk the cattle. At Llaushe, less than two miles from Prekaz, the site of the fiercest Serb attack, Liman Geci said 20 in a population of 5,000 remained. The rest had moved to villages higher in the hills and away from the main road. He said Serb snipers fired five times on Monday from a nearby hillock at villagers crossing the road. Police at Kijevo on the main road between Prishtina and Pec said a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at them on Monday evening. One policeman was wounded in the leg. Albanian journalists speculated that the incident might have been fabricated to justify extending the special police presence.

Serb police vehicles patrol the metalled roads and unidentifiable gunfire can be heard at night, but the unpaved roads still belong to the scouts of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA is confident that it is winning the propaganda war, even if the recent Serb onslaught set them back militarily. 'For 10 years no journalist ever came here to ask me why I am out of work', said a man who stopped our car yesterday on an unpaved hill road. 'For 10 years no one cared what Serbia did, but the KLA have opened people's eyes and made them see.' Neither he nor his companion, both in their late thirties, carried weapons openly but the outline of a rifle was visible under the shorter one's anorak. 'Nobody should think we're aggressive or have the killer instinct. We only fight those who are trying to take our land', the taller said, after asking for a lift. 'If the KLA had weaponry like the Serbs, we would chase them to Belgrade', his companion added. 'We wouldn't need outside help. We will not leave this land, even if it's all burnt up and we burn with it.'

The two demanded our IDs, then apologized for any rudeness once they were satisfied we were not Serbs. Obviously local villagers, these were no Gucci guerrillas or nightclub warriors posing for the cameras. The taller one showed us that his decrepit shoes had been newly stitched together. 'We're tired, very tired, and have hardly slept', said the taller man, whose family had decided not to join those who fled the attacked villages. 'I have to take care of my family, not that I can really fight the enemy. They have all that heavy weaponry and artillery.' Acknowledging that the KLA's tactics are not purely defensive, the shorter said: 'Yes, the KLA has attacked police stations, but we never attacked people's homes, or women and children.'

He seemed willing to accept a compromise short of independence. It might be enough for the province to become Yugoslavia's third republic, alongside Serbia and Montenegro. 'But it has to be decided by people who can see the future more clearly. You can't cheat me more than once.' But his friend was adamant that nothing less than immediate independence was acceptable.

This report appeared in The Guardian (London) on 18 March 1998

An old communist hunter stalks an acceptable Kosovan compromise
by Jonathan Steele

Mahmut Bakalli sits in his study surrounded by the trophies of a lifetime of hunting. A brown bear which he shot in the mountains between Kosovo and Albania stands by the window. A dozen stag's heads crowd the wall above him and on a perch over the door an eagle spreads its wings. But Mr Bakalli, who occasionally hunted with Marshal Tito and the rest of Yugoslavia's communist elite, has no guns left.

'The Serbian police arrived one morning five years ago when I happened to be abroad', he said. 'My wife answered the door and there were five policemen with a list of all my guns: four hunting rifles and a pistol. They demanded she hand them over, which of course she did.' He did not complain, 'because they were do- ing the same to every Albanian, and why should I expect special treatment?'

Ending his favourite recreation was not the worst thing the Serbs did to him. Mr Bakalli was once the head of Kosovo's League of Communists and the most powerful Albanian in Yugoslavia. He was sacked after students demonstrated in Prishtina in March 1981 for greater rights. Serb hard-liners in Belgrade accused him of allowing a huge expansion of higher education without creating job opportunities to match, thereby producing a generation of frustrated young Albanians who became an easy catch for nationalists. Still a local hero, Mr Bakalli is respected by many Albanians as the province's elder statesman. His wealth of government experience marks him out from Ibrahim Rugova and Adem Demaci, the intellectual former dissidents who head Kosovo's two largest parties.

While they demand independence pure and simple, Mr Bakalli has been trying to steer public opinion towards a compromise. He is expected to be on the negotiating team which Mr Rugova has promised, under American pressure, to set up. 'It is our duty and the duty of the Serbs to organize a dialogue about Kosovo's status, but not decide the outcome before we start', he says. Albanians want independence from Serbian administration and justice but not necessarily a totally separate state, he says: in line, he believes, with the international community's position.

'When Robert Gelbard, the United States envoy, says no independence for Kosovo, he means no independence outside the present international borders of Yugoslavia.' Separated from Serbia, Kosovo 'could take steps towards integration with Serbia and Montenegro as an entity within a confederation'. He takes the word 'entity' from the 1995 Dayton agreement on Bosnia. International recognition of the Bosnian Serb republic attracted many Albanians towards the same ambiguous formula of de facto independence without legal sovereignty. It would be a new version of the 'autonomy' which President Slobodan Milosevic abolished in 1989.

Azem Vllasi, another well-respected former Kosovo communist leader, argues that the international community 'cannot accept a second Albanian state in Europe'. Kosovo's Albanians should go for 'self-determination within the borders of Yugoslavia'.

There are several options: a third Yugoslav republic, autonomy with a special status within Yugoslavia, or a protectorate under international control for 10-15 years.

Mr Bakalli and Mr Vllasi agree with the two party leaders that some issues are non-negotiable: talks with the Serb government have to cover Kosovo's constitutional status and cannot be limited by the present Serbian constitution, and there must be an international mediator.

This article was published in The Guardian (London) on 23 March 1998

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