Daily Grind Of Still Water

On Thursday, US K-For soldiers protecting a Serbian house in the southeastern town of Urosevac also came under fire, and German troops arrested eight ethnic Albanians in the southwestern city of Prizren, after shots were fired above a K-For checkpoint. Some 10,000 Serbs remain in the Gnjilane area, more than elsewhere in Kosovo, which has seen more than three-quarters of its Serb population flee.The United Nations refugee agency reported earlier this week that dozens of formerly ethnically-mixed villages in the area are on the way to becoming villages divided into ethnically pure enclaves – Serbs moving to some areas, Albanians to others.The Russian peacekeepers have not been the only target of the attacks. Similar protests by Albanians against the deployment of Russian troops have occurred in the southwestern Kosovo city of Orahovac.The area of the attacks against the Russian troops, in villages around the southeastern Kosovo city of Gnjilane, has been particularly tense. Russian peacekeepers, who Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority considers sympathetic to fellow Orthodox Christian Serbs, have been the target of many of the attacks.Following the overnight attacks, some 3,000 ethnic Albanians protested over the presence of Russian troops in the town of Kosovska Kamenica, in what they said was the 14th day of their protests.

The Russians shot back at the assailants, but no one was detained.
“K-For is very concerned about the current attacks against the soldiers and people should be reminded that our soldiers have robust rules of engagement and the right to defend themselves,” Joosten said yesterday in the provincial capital Pristina.To date there have been at least 30 incidents in which K-For forces have come under hostile fire. Major Joosten said three Russian checkpoints in the area had come under small-arms fire. Major Jan Joosten said the soldier was resting comfortably in a US army hospital. A RUSSIAN peacekeeper was wounded in southeastern Kosovo last night, in one of several attacks against US, Russian, and German peacekeeping troops in Kosovo. A spokesman for the Nato-led Kosovo peacekeeping force K-For said the Russian peacekeeper was shot in the left thigh by unknown assailants while manning a checkpoint in the US sector in southeastern Kosovo.

“I think the fires will continue at least during the whole dry season.”Last year the smog, or “haze” as it is euphemistically known in South- east Asia, caused muted fury among Indonesia’s neighbours. Brunei recently threatened to sue Indonesia for damages incurred by the smog, particularly if it disrupted the South-east Asian Games, which are being held there at the moment.. Satellite monitoring reveals as many as 450 “hot spots” indicating individual fires. Yesterday, the Indonesian Environment minister, Panangian Siregar, reported seeing 280 fires during a flight over parts of Borneo.Once the fires rage out of control there is little that a country as poor as Indonesia can do to put them out. Regulations restricting burning during dry periods are routinely ignored by companies, and local authorities have little power or incentive to track down violators. “Enforcement is very weak,” said Togu Manurung, of the World Wide Fund for Nature, Indonesia. In Sumatra, measurements on the air pollution index have regularly shown levels of pollution damaging to human health.

An index reading of more than 100 is regarded as unhealthy, and more than 300 is dangerous. Last week, the reading in Riau reached 978.The fires are man-made, caused by local people clearing land for subsistence farming but mostly by plantation companies that convert huge areas of forest for rubber and oil palm production. Shipping collisions, traffic accidents and at least one passenger aircraft crash were blamed on the smog, and billions of dollars were lost because of cancelled flights, closed airports and absent tourists.Schools and offices all over the region were closed, and thousands of people suffered asthma, bronchitis and breathing difficulties. The fires damaged some of the world’s richest and most delicate rainforests, and killed or displaced endangered species such as proboscis monkeys and orang-utans. According to European scientists in Sumatra, the fires are likely to burn until October and their effects could be as bad as, or worse, than in 1997.”The situation is very, very similar and the way the fires are developing is similar to 1997,” said Ivan Anderson, satellite system manager for a European Union fire prevention project in Sumatra. “It has happened before and there is no reason to expect that it will not happen again.”Between the summer of 1997 and the spring of 1998, 10 million hectares of land were burnt in Sumatra and Borneo with catastrophic consequences.

Emergency warnings have been issued to drivers, airlines and to shipping in the Straits of Malacca between Sumatra and Malaysia, one of the world’s busiest and most strategically important waterways.
In Pekanbaru, the province’s capital, measurements on the air pollution index have regularly shown levels of smoke dangerous to health, and lower levels have been recorded in Singapore and Malaysia as the smoke drifts across the straits. In the province of Riau onSumatra island, local authorities have advised people to stay indoors after visibility was reduced to as little as 100 metres, and drivers have been forced to use their headlights in the middle of the day. And on Wednesday, Peter Costello, the Treasurer (or Chancellor), called for a “yes” vote, and for the Queen versus Australian version of the question. The ministers’ interventions could be rival posturings to succeed Mr Howard as leader of the Liberal Party. If so, such cynical manipulation of the referendum campaign does not bode well for its success..