Refugees Celebrate ‘Greatest Day’

The first Kosovo Albanian refugees returning home from the United States received joyful welcomes Tuesday from loved ones they thought they might never again see.

There were embraces and tears, and shouts to friends and neighbors along the bustling streets.

“This is the greatest day of all time,” said Eshref Latifi, who returned home after almost four months. “We had doubts about ever being together again, but hope kept us alive.”

Latifi and his family were among the first 275 Kosovo Albanians to return to the province from the United States. Many more of the nearly 10,000 who were brought to the United States are expected to follow.

They returned to a radically different Kosovo, with Albanian flags fluttering on buildings and no sign of the blue-uniformed Serbian police.

“We can’t believe we’re seeing this,” said Izedin Latifi, 24, Eshref’s son, as he rode through crowds in the Pristina market near his home. “The streets are full, the stores are open. We didn’t expect it to be this good.”

The arrival of the refugees from the United States, part of a contingent of 1,300 Kosovo Albanians returning home Tuesday, comes at a critical moment in the seventh week after NATO’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia made its forces retreat from the southern Serbian province.

The United States took in about 9,700 refugees. About a third have indicated that they want to return home, the International Organization for Migration said.

Michael Barton, an organization spokesman accompanying the refugees, said about half the approximately 90,000 refugees abroad wish to come home quickly.

Refugees have until May 1 to take advantage of the U.S. offer of free transportation home.

On a day when things were looking up for some who fled the war, a Yugoslav human rights activist issued a warning for others.

In Belgrade, Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco, head of the Yugoslav Human Rights Lawyers Committee, said authorities plan to put up to 28,000 people on trial for avoiding military service, the Beta news agency reported.

“It has been assessed that, mostly under the accusation of avoiding the military call-up and fleeing abroad during the state of war, between 23,000 and 28,000 trials have been initiated in Yugoslavia,” Kovacevic-Vuco told Beta.

“These are mainly young people. . . . Many oppose the regime and did not want to take part in the war,” she said.

Meanwhile, defense officials in Washington said Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the general who ran the NATO air campaign over Kosovo, was told Tuesday that he would be stepping down two months early next year to make way for his successor.

Clark was scheduled to step aside next July, but the Clinton administration has decided to install Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston in May to avoid an automatic reduction in Ralston’s rank upon leaving his post as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.