KOSOVO: SERBS TAKE PRESS ON TOUR OF PRISTINA

(8 Apr 1999) Eng/Serbo-Croat/Nat

The Serbian authorities took the foreign press on a guided tour of Pristina on Wednesday.

The idea was to show the world the devastation caused by NATO air strikes.

But it also revealed the scale of ethnic cleansing in the city, which is now almost empty.

The press were driven around these bombed out streets in an army bus.

It was the first time since the airstrikes began that foreign journalists based in Belgrade had been able to see for themselves the scale of the damage.

A spokesman from the Serb Media Centre used the occasion to launch his own attack on NATO, for what he termed barbarism.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"We came here and we saw the post office on fire and all the shops, and this small - the most famous handicraft street in Pristina is now finished. This was the pride of Pristina. There you had the shops of Serbs, Albanians, Turks - all of the people, the shop owners here , all of them spoke three languages. And none of them was nationalist. This, as you can clearly see, is a barbarian act - nothing else."
SUPER CAPTION: Radovan Urosevic,Head of Serb Media Centre

The press trip also allowed journalists to witness the empty streets, ethnically cleansed of their former population of ethnic Albanians.

Zoran Andelkovic, Head of Interim Government for Kosovo said it was the bombing campaign that had driven them away, not Serb special forces.

SOUNDBITE: (Serbo-Croat)
"'When you experience what you have seen today then you realise why so many people have left."
SUPER CAPTION: Zoran Andelkovic, Head of Interim Government for Kosovo

There was no question that Pristina had been left in tatters.

It is not the only city to suffer widespread damage from the NATO bombardment.

The hills of Kosovo, Belgrade, and several industrial and garrison towns were targeted on Wednesday night.

Pentagon officials said the latest wave of airstrikes focused on police and army units
scattered in rural areas of the southern Serb province.

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