Diary

Lynne Mastnak

An elderly Serb in the Kosovo village of Mlecan told me that, for him, trouble had begun only a few days before, when Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers had searched a man in the woods nearby for weapons. ‘We have lived here for years and years and we have never had problems,’ he said, ‘but things are spoiled now.’ ‘There have always been good relations in this village,’ the woman with him added. ‘We are not interested in outside problems. I talk to them and they talk to us, I bought food in their Albanian shop and never paid for a year.’