Us envoy warns Serbia

[Zirwaan Khan]

US envoy warns Serbia to prevent violence

BELGRADE (AP): The U.S. ambassador warned Serbia's leaders on Sunday to prevent future violence against diplomatic missions, demanding that the government back its condemnation of the violence with action.

Ambassador Cameron Munter told The Associated Press he was outraged at the mob that set fire to part of the U.S. Embassy last week to protest America's embrace of Kosovo's declaration of independence. Serbia considers Kosovo to be part of its sacred heartland and believes that U.S. support for independence is wrong.

``I'm very angry at what happened,'' Munter said of the riots. ``It had better not happen again.''

The rioters stormed the embassy after a rally of tens of thousand to protest Kosovo's actions.

One of the rioters, Zoran Vujovic, died in the fire, which was set by the mob in an office facing one of the main thoroughfares in Belgrade. No Americans were hurt.

``He had no contact with any security personnel of our embassy,'' Munter said in an interview. ``He tragically died as a result of the fire set by the attackers.''

In response to the attack, the U.S. State Department on Friday ordered the evacuation of nonessential embassy staff and dependents. Munter said they would return once security was assured.

The attackers also targeted the embassies of Germany, Turkey, Croatia, Belgium, Slovenia and other Western countries whose governments have recognized Kosovo's independence.

The rioters, many of them soccer hooligans, also looted nearly 100 shops in the city center. Damage was estimated at about euro20 million (US$30 million), and nearly 200 people were arrested.(yeh kiss tarah ki azzadi hai yaar)

Although Serbia has withdrawn its ambassador from Washington in protest at U.S. support for Kosovo, Munter said he had no plans to pull out.

He took to task some hard-line ministers in the government of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and other nationalist politicians who defended the riots by describing them as a legitimate form of protest over Kosovo's declaration.

``It is never helpful when irresponsible senior leaders of a country use inflammatory language, when (they) choose to call for violence in response to anything that happens in the diplomatic world,'' he said.

``That kind of incendiary language ... is not only wrong but it is an embarrassment and it is leading further to the diplomatic isolation of Serbia, which is in nobody's interest.''

The U.S. Embassy evacuated dependents, nonessential staff and diplomats several times in the 1990s during the rule of Slobodan Milosevic. The last such move was in 1999, just before NATO launched a 78-day campaign of aerial bombing to end a Serb crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo.

In Washington, U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that according to his information ``there are elements within the new government that are genuinely trying to find the bad guys, genuinely trying to find the perpetrators of this.''

``They know, if ... the Serbian government does not gain control of this kind of activity, then their likelihood of becoming part of NATO, of becoming part of the EU ... is going to be very much in jeopardy,'' Biden said during an appearance on ABC TV's ``This Week'' show.