NATO two days late to save baby Kfor

NATO arrived in Pristina too late to save Kfor. Not the international peacekeeping force, which continued to pour into the province yesterday, but a baby girl born on the morning of June 12th, just as the first British troops were crossing the Macedonian border.

Baby Kfor died yesterday morning. In Vranjevac, the place the Albanians call The Hill of Heroes, we came across her father, an uncle and an old man, a distant relative by marriage, climbing up the steep incline, carrying her small body on a board, covered with a striped tea towel.

Her uncle, Nexhmi Lahu (38), spoke first.

"This baby died for lack of medical care. She was born the day NATO came. We named her Kfor, and we wanted Mr [Gen Sir Michael] Jackson to be her godfather, but it was not meant to be. We want Kfor to live longer than this little girl; we want it to bring us our freedom."

The baby's father, Mehdi Lahu (30), told us how he had to take his wife and their new child to hide in the basement just two hours after the birth as Serb policemen were looting. They waited five hours there.

"My wife, Hajrie, was in poor condition during her pregnancy because we were away from home and we were moving all the time, living in the forest. Our daughter died this morning."

And Mehdi started crying.

Just 48 hours had passed since the mechanic from Glamnik, near Podijuevo, had delivered his first child with his mother's help. "She cut the umbilical cord," he said, as tears ran down his cheeks. "We used a Gillette that we disinfected by boiling it in water."

His brother, Nexhmi, also wept, so wracked by sobs that he had to hand the board bearing his niece's body to Lutfi Gerbesi, an old man who had given shelter to eight of the 23 members of the Lahu family - the other 15 are now refugees in Macedonia. They were driven from their home in northern Kosovo in February, weeks before the NATO bombardment.

"We will bury her here and later we will take her bones to our village," said Nexhmi. "We went home several times, but every time we went back we were thrown out again."

Mehdi said his biggest worry now is to find a doctor for Hajrie, who is very weak and lies in bed weeping. To add to their misery, they have learned that their home in Glamnik was burned in the past two days. The Lahu family compound, three houses in which six brothers lived with their wives and children, was the finest in Glamnik, so Serb police and paramilitaries occupied it.

Just as Serb forces have done all over Kosovo, they destroyed it on leaving.

Had there been no war, Mehdi's first child and home might have survived but he does not condemn the NATO offensive. "My only complaint is that it came so late. They should have done it a long time ago. If NATO had not started the air strikes against the Serb army, I think all of us would have been killed, including my wife. I still have my wife, and we will try to have more children."

Just over a year ago, on May 24th, 1998, Nexhmi organised a double wedding for Mehdi and Hajrie and another brother and his wife. "Because of the Serbs, we could not have a traditional marriage."

"It all happened in the same way: under the rule of Serb forces we had our marriage, and under the rule of Serb forces the baby was born and died. NATO came so late."