Ethnic violence, fugitive war criminals plague Kosovo
From the "Wolf Blitzer Reports" staff
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Five years after a U.S.-led air war ended Serbia's brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the province remains in a state of turmoil.
The U.S. and its NATO allies did achieve victory by forcing Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to pull his troops from Kosovo.
Milosevic lost re-election by a landslide a year later and now is being tried on war crimes charges in the Hague, Netherlands.
But ethnic violence continues -- the latest outbreak took place in March, when the tables were turned and ethnic Albanians attacked minority Serbs. At least 19 people were killed and hundreds of homes and religious sites burned.
Some 18,000 NATO peacekeepers, including 2500 American troops, apparently, are unable to cool tensions and stem the violence.
A U.N.-backed group is just out with a report criticizing the U.N. mission in Kosovo for failing to make progress on human rights in the province, particularly the Serbian minority.
Complicating matters are two of the world's most wanted war criminals -- former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander General Ratko Mladic.
Both are accused of numerous war crimes, the most horrendous being the 1995 slaughter of up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.
Serbia officials and Western diplomats have told the Associated Press that both move in and out of Serbia, relying on disguises and being helped by a network of supporters who tip them off whenever
NATO patrols get close. NATO forces now in Bosnia number some 7500 troops, including 900 from the United States.
Serbia's new pro-democracy government led by President Boris Tadic is under increasing Western pressure to arrest Mladic and some 15 other war crimes fugitives hiding in the country.
Tadic appeared to make clear his political direction in a campaign speech just before last month's election, saying he was "a pro-European candidate... for new political values."
Despite hailing Tadic's victory, the Bush administration has minced no words in saying that any further political and financial support depends on the arrest and handover of Mladic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
