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Every day ethnic Albanians storm those assets and demand their right to control them, and every day, more Serbs flee from Kosovo to Serbia, and add to the increasingly raucous calls for Milosevic to resign. They blame the Serbian leader not for the atrocities committed against Albanians, but for the NATO onslaught that caused them to lose their homes.

Opposition to Milosevic unites Yugoslavia's returning army troops, its unemployed (which now make up a majority of its working population), hard-line nationalists who formerly supported him as well as the traditional democratic opposition. President Clinton reiterated last week that no international reconstruction assistance -- "not a red cent" -- would go to Serbia while Milosevic remained in power.

Maybe most persuasive among the chorus of voices calling for Milosevic's removal is that of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

On Monday Serbian Orthodox leaders came to the Gracinaca monastery to mark the anniversary of the defeat of Kosovo Polje, and to call for Milosevic to step down. The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Pavle, told gathered journalists and a small crowd of 200 worshippers Monday morning that he blames Milosevic, Kosovo's Albanian separatists and the NATO-led peacekeeping force for the exodus of Serbs from Kosovo, the Connecticut-sized province that served as the birthplace of the Serbian Orthodox Church in early medieval times.

"The Serbian Orthodox Church has officially demanded the resignation of Mr. Milosevic, not because he lost in Kosovo but because he made war in Kosovo and because we think the problem could have been solved differently," Kosovo Bishop Artemije told Reuters.

Church leaders also begged the world community to prevent "ethnic cleansing" that would remove Serbs from Kosovo.

"It is rather difficult to understand that despite the presence of at least 20,000 KFOR troops in the region, the most dreadful crimes against civilians are being carried on at an unabated rate, especially in the cities," Serbian Orthodox bishops wrote in a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

"The failure of KFOR to take more active and robust measures against the perpetrators of these crimes is understood as an encouragement to various gangs of robbers and murderers, especially in the western part of the province," the bishops wrote.
salon.com | June 28, 1999

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