Michail SERGEEV
ALMATY, March 31
(THE GLOBE)
�The West should not stop the military intervention and negotiate with Primakov on Kosovo, until the Serbs put an end to violation in this region�, a Western diplomat working in Almaty told to THE GLOBE.
According to the diplomat�s opinion, the apartheid policy of the national-communist Serbian heads in Belgrade, against the civil population in Kosovo, should be stopped. It is inadmissible that the biggest ethnic group in Kosovo remained deprived of civil rights in the center of Europe.
�From the beginning of the war in Kosovo in March 1998, 440 thousand people were driven out the country, that is more than 20% of the population in this region,� he remarked.
The conflict background goes back to 1989, when the autonomy of this region was abolished by the Serbian leaders. Moreover, as it was stated by the diplomat, for more than seven years the Albanians living in Kosovo had to defend themselves peacefully against the Serbian police�s. During the seven years the world community tried to persuade Belgrade to change their policy in Kosovo and to work out a real and admissible way to settle this problem. All these efforts were unsuccessful.
Thus, the dimplomat considers the military conflict between the Serbs and the Albanians and intervention to be unavoidable.
�It is difficult to evaluate the role of Russia in this conflict. From the diplomatic point of view, Russia took part in the contact group on settling this conflict, but having either wrong idea or not trying to consider the information about atrocities committed by the Yugoslavian army, Moscow is trying to excuse the Serbs and to �express Slavic solidarity�, he said.
He especially emphasized the fact, that the West is not going to keep Serbia isolated from Europe and the entire world, on the contrary the objective of the West is peace in the Balkans. To make this real, Miloshevich should choose a peaceful way to settle the conflict in Kosovo, that is the way of reforms and democratization.
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