Serbs take Albanian men to unknown fate

IN AN echo of the "ethnic cleansing" of Bosnia in 1992, Serb forces in Kosovo have been seen separating groups of men from columns of ethnic Albanian refugees and taking them away to unknown destinations, US observers say.

John Shattuck, the US Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, said: "We have been in direct communication with [the Serb leader Slobodan] Milosevic today about these reports of ethnic Albanian men being separated from their refugee families and taken away by Serbian police.

"These reports are very disturbing. They are reminiscent of similar reports from the [1992-95] Bosnian war."

Mr Shattuck was speaking yesterday during a tour of central Kosovo with Robert Dole, the former US senator, who chairs the International Commission on Missing Persons.

Mr Dole said the empty, burnt Albanian villages he saw recalled Serb ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats in Bosnia in 1992, but Serb actions now evoked no more than international hand-wringing and empty threats. "We said we wouldn't let that happen again, and it's happening," he said.

Mr Shattuck and Mr Dole heard the reports of men being separated from their families during a stop in the ethnic Albanian village of Misrusa.

The reports come from refugees over the past three days. All say thousands of Albanians driven from their homes by Serbian shelling west of the town of Malisevo congregated on the village of Panorac last week. Those groups were surrounded by Serbian police backed by armour. All fighting- age men were taken away, the refugees said.

Tens of thousands of Muslim and Croat Bosnians were "taken away" by Serb forces in the 1992-95 war in the former Yugoslav republic, never to be seen alive again.

In a sign of Europe's lack of resolve on Kosovo, EU diplomats in Salzburg yesterday managed to agree only on a ban on Yugoslav airline flights to EU airports.