Rumors were flying around the Grand Hotel, the place where most of the foreign media stays in Pristina. One was that Arkan, leader of the dreaded Tigers paramilitary unit, which had started the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in Belijna, was in town. Another was that armed Serbian civilians were on their way to the hotel to smash up equipment, beat people up and expel us.

Paranoia had gripped Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, since U.S. negotiator Richard Holbrooke had walked out of a meeting with President Slobodan Milosevic and announced that he had failed to secure a peace deal. Actually, the situation had been deteriorating ever since the OSCE, the international monitoring organization, had pulled its people out of Kosovo, but it was still possible to work. When Holbrooke left, it became impossible.

New York had ordered us to leave as well, of course. But I and my AP colleagues were dithering.

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