YUGOSLAVIA/KOSOVO: UN HUMANITARIAN TEAM VISIT (2)

(20 May 1999) Natural Sound

A United Nations humanitarian team arrived in Pristina on Thursday as part of their tour of Yugoslavia to see first hand the effects of the Kosovo conflict.

On Thursday evening the team met with the President of the Executive Council of Kosovo.

The team is visiting Kosovo and Serbia to assess the destruction caused by NATO airstrikes and Serb raids on ethnic Albanian villages.

On the way to Kosovo, a U-N mission assessing the damage caused by the Kosovo conflict stopped at this destroyed bridge in Serbia.

The bridge is in Yugoslavia's third largest city, Nis, which has taken a pounding since the NATO bombing campaign started eight weeks ago.

City officials say Nis has been hammered so hard that they can't even tally up the damage.

Earlier on Thursday, the team went to the Serb town of Surdulica where at least 20 civilians were killed when a missile hit a housing area on April the 27th.

The head of the mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello described the damage he'd seen both in Serbia and Kosovo as very sad and regrettable.

The U-N team has seen everything from bombed-out suburbs to images of civilians killed in NATO bombing since their arrival in Yugoslavia.

NATO launched its bombing attacks on March 24th after Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic rejected a Western-planned peace initiative for Kosovo.

Since then, both the Serbian and ethnic Albanian populations of Kosovo have suffered greatly.

So far, the mission has been hard pressed not to take sides as to who has suffered more - ethnic Albanians or the Serb population.

Both have had to live with constant NATO airstrikes and many ethnic Albanians have lost their homes after Serb soldiers forced them out.

The mission then went to Pristina on Thursday to evaluate the damage caused by the war.

There they met the President of the Executive Council of Kosovo, Zoran Andjelkovic.

One of the mission's chief objectives is to assess the humanitarian needs caused by the Kosovo conflict for future U-N action.

So far, the U-N's role in the conflict has been minimal, as the airstrikes continue without a Security Council mandate, unlike the Gulf War.

The humanitarian mission is to eventually have to decide what needs to happen before the Kosovar refugees are able to return to their homes, if they're still standing.

Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...