Thursday, February 22, 2001

By Terry Boyd
Kosovo bureau

GRACANICA, Kosovo — About 2,000 Kosovar Serbs crowded inside the gates of an Orthodox monastery Wednesday for a memorial service for seven of the 11 Serbs killed in last Friday’s bus convoy bombing.

"These are civilians," intoned a local Orthodox priest. "These aren’t guilty people. They were killed by the hand of terrorists, and now they go to paradise."

It is those who are left behind who are living in hell, said Monk Nektarie just before the service. People living in the Serb enclave just south of Pristina are, more than anything, depressed. They expect to have even less contact with the outside world because of the attack by Kosovar Albanians, he said.

Nektarie, a young English-speaking Orthodox priest, said that after the bombing, which claimed 11 lives, people in Gracanica and the surrounding Serb enclaves "have no hope that the international community has any strength to help us to survive here — nor the will."

Swedish KFOR troops protect between 8,000 and 10,000 Serbs in the area by isolating them from the much larger surrounding Kosovar Albanian population.

"We are protected here, but there is a thin line between protecting someone and keeping them in prison," Nektarie said.

The bus convoys, dubbed the Nis Express, run from Kosovo enclaves into Serbia, and are Kosovar Serbs’ only connection to the outside world. But Nektarie said he doesn’t believe that KFOR can guarantee safe passage for the convoys short of "putting soldiers every three meters" between the enclaves and the Serb border.

Nektarie blamed both Kosovar Albanian extremists and Serb extremists for what he calls "the magic circle" of killing and retaliation. To halt that cycle of violence, KFOR troops — British, Russian, Swedish and Norwegians — patrolled Gracanica during the memorial ceremony, which KFOR commander, Lt. Gen. Carlo Cabigiosu, and Hans Haekkerup, the special representative of the U.N. secretary-general, attended.

KFOR officials had appealed to local leaders for peace, but no one could guarantee the outcome.

Just after the attack, local Serbs "were shocked, then they became angry," said Lt. Magnus Fosberg, a Swedish KFOR spokesman for the local multinational brigade. "Now, they are in mourning. Ultimately, the question for the Serbs is, ‘Do we dare use the Nis Express?’ " Fosberg said.

With KFOR troops standing by, the mood of the city was tense. As the older people mourned inside the walled-in grounds of the monastery, groups of teens and young men clustered outside, looking hard and angry.

"KFOR could have stopped this," said Dragan Stankovic, 21. Stankovic described the situation as "very bad. You see what happened. The Albanian terrorists killed civilians!"

Asked if KFOR could protect his village, Stankovic said, "No. Not even the Americans can help us. We must have troops from Serbia. Only Yugoslavia can help us."

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