YUGOSLAVIA: BELGRADE: KOSOVO PEACE DEAL CELEBRATIONS

(10 Jun 1999) Natural Sound

Celebratory gunfire and honking car-horns replaced the sound of air raid sirens and bombing in the Yugoslav capital Belgrade on Wednesday night.

In the suburbs, people fired weapons in the air in celebration and the crackle of fire crackers echoed through the night.

Orange bursts of anti-aircraft tracer bullets lit up the sky across the city which is largely blacked out to save energy after NATO bombings wrecked much of the power grid.

Thousands of smiling, elated Belgraders took to the streets to celebrate the signing of an agreement that could put an end to 11 weeks of NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

Carrying Yugoslav flags and flares, honking car horns, even opening champaign to celebrate, the citizens of the Yugoslav capital stormed the main Trg Republike square, milling around in cars or on foot on a warm summer evening.

The crowd in downtown Belgrade were mostly young.

Local sources from six other Yugoslav cities, including Nis and Kragujevac, reported a similar celebratory mood among the residents.

Belgrade and its surroundings have been repeatedly targetted in more than two months of NATO air raids aimed at forcing President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his troops
from Kosovo and allow international peacekeepers into the province.

The agreement on the troop withdrawal was signed on Wednesday evening by NATO and Yugoslav generals in neighbouring Macedonia.

The Belgraders, two (M) million of them, were often left without water and electricity during the NATO bombings which damaged the capital's power supply system.

They have been under air raid sirens for 78 nights and witnessed NATO missile hit police and army buildings in the very centre of their city.

Most of the Belgraders gathered for celebrations said the prevailing feeling they had was that of relief at the news that the war is over.

Hundreds drove up and down the Belgrade bridges without fear for the first time in two
months.

But some said apart from imminent relief there was little to be happy about.

As soon as the first wave of relief passes, many Serbs are certain to feel disappointed at the peace agreement which envisages that all their soldiers leave Kosovo and hand
over the province to the international, NATO-led, peacekeepers.

Serbs consider Kosovo the heart of their statehood.

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