Serb forces `are torturing doctors in Kosovo'

DOCTORS AND medical personnel helping refugees in Kosovo are being hunted and tortured by Serb forces, the co-ordinator in the province for the medical aid agency Medecins sans Frontieres said yesterday.

Keith Ursel, a Canadian nurse who arrived back from the province yesterday, said a young ethnic Albanian doctor from the village of Gradica, 25km from Pristina, was abducted, had his fingers hacked off and his eyes gouged out with a knife before being shot by Serb forces.

Lec Ukaj headed a team dedicated mainly to helping pregnant women and delivering babies. Two weeks ago Serb forces moved in and "Dr Lec", as he was known, was dragged off. Witnesses interviewed by Medecins sans Frontieres said they heard him screaming. "They asked him what hand he used to treat the Albanian patients and then they asked him which eye he used. But it is not the only example. At least nine doctors have gone missing and medical personnel are being hunted because they are the direct link between the people and outside help. The Serb forces also stop us at the checkpoints, looking for surgical equipment," Mr Ursel said.

The medical charity, which says tens of thousands of refugees camping in the hills of Drenica could be wiped out by the winter and hunger and disease, appealed for an international protection force to be sent in to Kosovo. Up to 50,000 ethnic Albanians are on the run, too scared to return to their villages, Mr Ursel said. Women giving birth in the open without proper medical care was a main cause of death.

The exodus of foreigners from Belgrade intensified yesterday and officials prepared bomb shelters as Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy, began "final" meetings with Slobodan Milosevic to avert Nato air strikes that could be a few days away.

The initial stages of what is his fourth round of talks with the Yugoslav President in five days gave no clue of whether Mr Milosevic was ready to fulfil the conditions reiterated on Thursday by the Contact Group of major powers.

Officials said a first session lasted three hours before Mr Holbrooke returned to the US embassy for consultations.

The Contact Group demands an end to fighting with the Kosovo Albanians, full withdrawal of Yugoslav army and police units, unfettered access for humanitarian groups and observers, and a start to negotiations on a long- term political settlement.

As Mr Holbrooke negotiated, the war rhetoric grew fiercer. The Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, said a Nato offensive would not be a mere "rap on the knuckles" and that "successive co-ordinated attacks" were planned, to destroy the heavy weaponry unleashed against Kosovo Albanians.

In Naples, General Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme commander in Europe, said it was making final preparations for possible air strikes. Barring a breakdown or an equally improbable early agreement, Mr Holbrooke is expected to be in the former Yugoslavia for three or four days. But an "activation order", the penultimate stage before air strikes, is likely to be issued by Nato ambassadors as soon as this weekend, with the first strikes coming on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Refugees' plight, page 15