NATO bombs answer ceasefire offer

NATO responded with new bombing attacks last night to the unilateral ceasefire announced yesterday by the governments of Serbia and Yugoslavia. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation struck at targets in Montenegro, Serbia's smaller partner in the Yugoslav federation, for the first time in a week.

A Yugoslav army firing range was hit near the village of Fundina, starting a fire visible from the capital Podgorica, 10 km away. State radio said another missile fell near an aluminium plant in the city's southern suburb of Zabjela, while three powerful explosions were heard in southern districts of Pristina.

The ceasefire was announced to coincide with the Orthodox Christian Holy Week, but the proposals were immediately dismissed by London and Washington, and by the NATO Secretary-General, Mr Javier Solana.

The French President, Mr Jacques Chirac, said Belgrade's move was "indispensable but insufficient". This was the third peace initiative since the Yugoslav war started on March 24th, but contained nothing new.

The Vatican welcomed the offer as possibly a step towards peace, and called for NATO to keep an open mind.

In yesterday's statement, the Yugoslavs also proposed a programme for the repatriation of ethnic Albanian refugees, now estimated by NATO to number more than 400,000. "They must come back," the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr Nebojsa Vujovic, told The Irish Times. "Kosovo without Serbs or without Albanians is no solution. The only solution is for Kosovo to remain a multi-ethnic place with equality for all communities."

But on closer examination, even the concurrence between NATO and the Serbs on the return of refugees falls apart. Belgrade will accept only those Kosovans who renounce opposition to its rule and accept Mr Ibrahim Rugova, the pacifist head of the Democratic League of Kosovo, as their leader. Furthermore, those returning would have to prove Yugoslav citizenship, a privilege that many of them reject.

The ceasefire announcement followed one of the heaviest nights of bombardment in the two-week war. At least five civilians were killed in the southern Serbian town of Aleksinac, interpreted here as a turning point in a war that initially targeted only the military.

The victims were identified as a retired schoolteacher and his wife, a father and his daughter and the night watchman of a supermarket warehouse. Eyewitnesses who visited the site saw a woman's body amid the burning buildings.

Police had left her there while they searched for her head.

Two other civilians are believed to have been buried in the rubble of a dozen homes destroyed in the bombing, and 30 more were wounded, five of them critically.

Reuters adds: The US will temporarily house 20,000 Kosovo refugees away from the US mainland at its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the White House said yesterday. Cuba had no comment.