Balkan Students Distrust Milosevic

As Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's agreement Monday night to end attacks on ethnic Albanians made headlines, Harvard students from the region said they doubt he will keep his word.

Milosevic agreed to remove his troops from the Albanian region and to end the Serbian attacks in the province of Kosovo. If the promise is fulfilled by Friday, NATO said it will call off airstrikes that it promised if the president did not comply with United Nations (U.N.) demands.

The U.N. gave Milosevic four days to keep his promise, but in the United States the agreement was met with skepticism.

"Balkan graveyards are filled with President Milosevic's promises," President Clinton said yesterday.

Harvard students said they agreed.

"Anyone still willing to believe [Milosevic] has clearly been unable to learn from his past lies," said Emir Kamenica '00, who is from Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "Anyone with any sense should assume that the things he says are lies unless shown otherwise in his actions."

He said he strongly approves of the actions the international community is taking and especially of the United States ultimatum on the Yugoslav president.

"The only problem with them is that they should have come earlier." Kamenica said.

He said he supports the Albanians in Kosovo who are battling the Serbs for autonomy.

"They are actually fighting for basic freedoms," Kamenica said.

Ante Skrabalo '98-'99, who is from Croatia, also said he is critical of Milosevic. Skrabalo said he is quite skeptical about Milosevic's recent promise, calling it just another "trick."

"[Milosevic] always does this... waits until there is a military threat involved," said Skrabalo, who first came to the U.S. in 1994 for his senior year of high school. He compared Milosevic's promises to those of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Skrabalo said he doubts the Yugoslav president will keep his promise. "He cannot give up if he wants to stay in power," Skrabalo said.

Skrabalo also said he approves of the Albanians' fight for independence and is strongly critical of Serb policy in the Kosovo region.

"[Milosevic] closed down schools," Skrabalo said. "It was the same thing as Apartheid [in South Africa,] just that the origin counted, not the race."

He compared the conflict in Kosovo with the former conflict between Serbs and Croats. "People in Croatia faced the same problem, they only had more weapons," he added.

--This report was compiled using wire dispatches.