Section A · Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday August 25,1999
World
Public employees strike and march in South Africa
The Associated Press
PRETORIA, South Africa—Tens of thousands of striking public workers marched through South Africa's capital yesterday, demanding higher wages in the biggest union protest in the post-apartheid era.
The government's main wage negotiator, Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, responded to the mass labor action by agreeing to return to the bargaining table within days.
The strike comes just two months after the inauguration of President Thabo Mbeki.
The unions demand a pay hike of 7.3 to 8.3 percent. The government had said it could only increase wages by 4.7 to 6.3 percent, depending on job categories.
Some scuffing broke out when dozens of police officers, wearing police union T-shirts and shaking their fists, joined the demonstration and tangled with other policemen deployed for crowd control.
Underscoring the social changes sweeping South Africa, white state workers — who under apartheid were virtually guaranteed the best jobs at higher pay — joined the strike.
The strike threatens to tear apart a decades-old alliance between Mbeki's African National Congress, the predominantly Black Congress of South African Trade Unions and the Communist Party. The three together fought white rule, but because apartheid ended with 1994's first all-race elections, the ANC has differed with its leftist partners on the course South Africa should take.
Legacy of ethnic conflict in Balkans
Kosovars block way of Russian troops Serbs fear for lives
The Associated Press
Yugoslavia-
ORAHOVAC
ORAHOVAC, Yugoslavia— Rejecting NATO demands, ethnic Albanians refused to lift their blockade against Russian peacekeepers yesterday, warning that Moscow's forces will only destabilize the situation.
Using trucks, tractors and trailers to block twisting mountain roads into this divided town, ethnic Albanians blocked Russian peacekeepers from replacing Dutch soldiers who are scheduled to withdraw in a few weeks.
Several thousands of residents manned the barricades under a hot summer sun, waiving signs written in Albanian, German and English. Some read: "Russians killed us," "NATO No Russians" and "We are UCK," using the Albanian abbreviation for the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Russian, Dutch and German officers met with a four-member ethnic-Albanian delegation Tuesday to demand they move the mile-long traffic jam that clogged the main road into Orahovac. The Albanians refused and rejected a proposal for joint Dutch-Russian patrols.
"We will stay here until the Russians grow tired of insisting and give up," said 53-year-old Ismet Bugari.
In the Serb quarter, several hundred
Orahovac Serbs rallied in support of the Russians, shouting "Serbia, Serbia, we want Russians! We won't give up the Russians, KLA out!"
Local Albanians claim Russian mercenaries fought with the Serbs during an 18-month crackdown on Kosovo separatists, which ended when President Slobodan Milosevic accepted an international peace plan after 78 days of NATO bombing.
The Albanians and the peacekeepers agreed to meet again today. Dutch Lt. Col. Ton van Loon said peacekeepers had decided against using force to clear the blockades.
Yesterday afternoon, scores of young men and women walked along the blockades, selling food and drinks. Some protesters set beach umbrellas up against the blazing sun.
NATO and the United Nations are struggling to overcome deep ethnic hatred between Kosovo's Serb and Albanian communities, which speak different languages, practice different religions and have separate cultures.
Kosovo's dwindling Serb population trusts Russians — fellow Slavs — more than NATO to protect them from ethnic Albanians seeking revenge for atrocities committed under Milosevic's crackdown.
In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry denounced the blockade as an open challenge to the international community and Moscow's participation in the Kosovo peacekeeping force. Russia's deputy defense minister, Alexander Avdeyev, said it was up to the NATO-led peacekeeper command to sort out the problem.
Twenty-three bodies have been exhumed from a mass grave in the Sert-held town of Zvornick.
A spokesman for the Serb community, Jovan Duricis, said Serbs were insisting on Russian protection because they are prisoners in their own country and are under attack by ethnic Albanians.
NATO's bombing campaign stopped Serb atrocities against ethnic Albanians, but 40,000 NATO and Russian soldiers have not been able to stop ethnic Albanians from attacking Serbs, Gypsies and other minorities.
In Geneva, the U.N. refugee agency warned Tuesday that a Serb-free Kosovo soon could be the result since only 30,000 Serbs remain from the province's prewar population of 200,000.
"We are pretty much approaching the line of a Serb-free Kosovo, which is an extremely sad phenomenon," said spokesman Kris Janowski. "The terrible scenario that we warned against of one exodus following the other is happening."
Muslim mass grave exhumed in Bosnia, more may be found
The Associated Press
SARAJEVO, Bosn-
Herzegovina— Twenty-three
bodies have been exhumed by the
Muslim Commission for Missing
Persons from a mass grave in
Bosnian Serb-controlled territory,
media reported yesterday.
The Daily Oslobodjenje said the exhumation was completed on Monday near the Serb-held town of Zvornik, 45 miles northeast of the Bosnian capital Sariaievo.
The bodies were believed to be Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica killed by Serb soldiers in July of 1995.
Srebrenica was a Muslim enclave in northeast Bosnia, which the United Nations declared a safe zone, but that did nothing to prevent Bosnian Serb forces from overrunning it in July 1995.
After the enclave fell, some 7,000 Muslims, mostly men, were missing. They were believed to have been massacred by the Serbs and are now being found in numerous mass graves spread throughout the area. So far some 2,000 bodies have been found.
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