Word: pristinae
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Wednesday, 6:15 p.m., Pristina airport. At every stop, Holbrooke holds impromptu press conferences to repeat the U.S. position to Kosovars: "We're trying to prevent this fighting from escalating into a general war," and autonomy, not independence, is the solution. His ability to work the media is legendary, but today false reports have gone back to Washington that his convoy has been shot at, and he has held an official meeting with the K.L.A., which would infuriate Milosevic. Standing on the runway, Holbrooke phones State Department spokesman James Rubin, catching him just before the daily briefing. The meeting with...
...Belgrade. Holbrooke has returned to meet with Milosevic, but yesterday's chaotic events have shaken him. At this point, Kosovo remains a low-intensity struggle, but Holbrooke fears it will explode into real conflict. Provocations are threatening at the roadblocks lining the main highway running west from Pristina, and the mission has contracted to clearing two checkpoints, one belonging to the K.L.A., the other to the Serbs. Holbrooke pleads with Milosevic to hold off from attacking the Kosovar roadblocks, but the Serb is noncommittal. "We managed to stop a war in Bosnia," Holbrooke reminds...
...village lies 32 miles beyond the dusty downtown streets of Pristina, capital of the rebellious Serbian province of Kosovo, due west across the bleak Field of the Blackbirds. The Turks slaughtered Christian forces here in 1389 on their way to 500 years of rule in the Balkans. Even now, flocks of shrieking, cackling blackbirds fuel a local legend that they are reincarnated Serb warriors...
...primary responsibility for the coming conflagration, as he does for the war in Bosnia. He is behind the repression visited on the ethnic Albanians by the ruling Serb minority, which has a fondness for torturing confessions out of the rebels. Sitting in his family's small apartment in downtown Pristina, Alban Neziri, 23, coolly, methodically narrates his harrowing story. He says he was arrested last February as a suspected founding member of the K.L.A. and during his 10 months in prison was repeatedly tortured. "At the beginning, they beat me with plastic batons on the bottom of my feet," Neziri...
Bosko Drobnjak is the regional Serbian information official in Pristina. His ostentatious office is protected by a minor official playing video games on a dirty, out-of-date computer. Those who make it past the flunky to see Drobnjak get a curt summary of the Serbian position: "I don't know why people are so concerned about the treatment terrorists are getting," he says, chuckling...