Around the World

Around the World

Special police to be pulled from Kosovo

Premier Mirko Marjanovic, however, said the Serb crackdown would resume if the separatists stage new attacks. And Vice Premier Vojislav Seselj said if NATO carries out threatened strikes, Serbia would take hostage pro-Western Serbs who work for independent media, peace and rights groups.

NATO has recently stepped up plans for airstrikes against Serb forces after repeated warnings that it would attack unless violence ends in the restive province.

The Kosovo Liberation Army, which is fighting for Kosovo's independence, issued a statement pledging to continue what it called "the holy war" against Serbia and demanding NATO action.

Hundreds of people have been killed and about 275,000 have fled their homes since February, when Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's forces began cracking down on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

Kosovo is part of Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Most of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians - who make up 90 percent of the 2 million inhabitants - favor independence.

Marjanovic, who made his remarks during a parliamentary session, also said the government would grant amnesty to Kosovo Albanians who have not committed "war crimes," provided they surrender their weapons within 10 days.

A NATO spokesperson in Brussels, who spoke on condition of anonymity, repeated the alliance's position that Milosevic must fulfill the conditions laid down in a U.N. resolution Wednesday that called for a cease-fire in Kosovo. "Words are nifty, but we want to see action," he said.

Iranians angered by Rushdie peace

Several senior clerics and newspapers took up the issue, saying that the government clear up ambiguities around the accord and hinting that no government can turn its back on a religious duty laid down by the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The backlash was not surprising, one Western diplomatic source here said. The real question is whether the moderate government of President Mohammad Khatami will now stick by the commitments it made or whether in coming days it will start to backslide under domestic political pressure.

So far, Iran's hard-line supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not joined in the criticism, suggesting that he accepts the understanding hammered out between Iran and Britain. The deal opened the way for the countries to announce resumption of diplomatic ties at the level of ambassador.

On Thursday, Iran essentially reiterated, but more loudly and emphatically than before, positions that it had already taken:

First, that the late Khomeini's 1989 edict, or "fatwa," stands, because only he could have revoked it.

However, Iran's government does not intend to act upon the edict, nor will it assist or encourage anyone to kill Rushdie or others associated with "The Satanic Verses."

Finally, the government "disassociates" itself from a $2.5 million bounty on Rushdie's life offered by the 15 Khordad Foundation, a private fund set up after the revolution with confiscated wealth of the late shah and his family.

- Compiled from Daily wire reports.

09-29-98