interview by Dubravka SAVIC
VECERNJE NOVOSTI: What were the reasons for your visit to Kosovo and Metohija at this exact time?
GRIEBOSKI: Kosovo and Metohija is a forgotten land. No one thinks about Kosovo and Metohija. Now we are concerned with Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan. For me Kosovo and Metohija is the Sudan of Europe. Ethnic cleansing is going on in the heart of Europe. The religious heritage of the Serbian Orthodox Church is being ethnically cleansed. This is going on under the eyes of the international community, the UN, NATO.
What we understood and what is completely incomprehensible is that there is no common policy among KFOR troops, no common system of communications. Every one of the 34 nations in Kosovo and Metohija receives orders from its national capital and not from their common KFOR commander. That's how it was possible for the pogrom in March to occur.
You first visited the monastery of Devic?
We saw what they did to a monastery which at one time meant so much to the Albanians, too, for prayer... Forgive me, but no one can convince me that it was not planned in advance. The tires that were brought into the church and set on fire so that the frescoes could not be restored were not something that happened by chance.˙ I will never forget the sight of what used to be the altar (sanctuary); now there is a map of Kosovo with the letters UCK (KLA). One of the sisters told us that the first night the French troops held back the crowd because they refused to leave. On the second night the French threw them into their trucks like sacks of potatoes. One of the nuns has a weak heart and was sleeping in her cell. When the other sisters told the French troops about her, they replied that there was nothing they could do. And they left her to the mercy or lack thereof of the gangs. When the French said that their task was to protect people and not property, I asked myself: And what is a nun?
Did you talk to the French troops about this?
No, I didn't. I don't blame the soldiers who are carrying out their orders. Those of us from the international community have been in Kosovo for five years. During those five years more than 150 churches have been destroyed, although the U.S. mission in Kosovo says that is not a valid number.
What number is correct according to their evidence?
That's a good question. Michael McClellan from the mission in Kosovo told me that all the churches have not been destroyed, some of them are just damaged. Alright, even if they're "just" damaged they can't be used and they were, nonetheless, attacked. In the meanwhile, three hundred mosques have been built. Serbian churches are not being rebuilt. We came to Kosovo with an open mind. I returned with more anger with respect to the U.S. and the international community than at the Albanians.
How come?
What they tried to sell me in the U.S. mission in Pristina is that everything is that everything is fine; that problems exist where there are Serbs and that it's their fault; and that the most important thing is the final status. People are living in plastic huts, have been living in them˙for the past five years. Elderly nuns are living in tiny cells and using holes dug in the earth as toilets?! Is this why we went to Kosovo? Is this why we bombed? If I remember correctly, NATO went to Kosovo to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population under the Milosevic regime. Now the victims have become the executioners and no one is saying a word. The U.S. mission told us that everything would be perfect in Kosovo if the Serbs would learn Albanian.
Yes, they all expect independence. Even though the purpose of our trip had nothing to do with the final status, that's all anybody˙talked˙about on both sides. The fact that the Serbian houses remaining after March events are protected by KFOR, that U.S. troops are protecting Gracanica, that it is necessary for KFOR troops to protect the other monasteries tell me that we are not ready for independence. UNMIK is doing the best it can. They are trying, they make an effort... I'm not sure they see what is happening around them, that an ethnically cleansed Kosovo is moving toward the final status.
After five years?
The failure is on the part of the U.S. mission and KFOR for not comprehending their duties. No one is defending Milosevic. He was a horrible man who did terrible things. And he will receive an appropriate sentence from the international community. We received copies of books with more than a hundred mosques destroyed in 1998 and 1999. These are horrible things that should be condemned and punished. But telling me that everything that was˙once˙done to those mosques under the regime at that time, which was illegitimate and deposed by its own people, is the same as current actions against churches under the administration of the UN and KFOR troops while there is a new, first non-Communist regime in Serbia, is incomprehensible to me.