It is over four months the NATO forces headed by the US ceased their devastating war in Kosovo. Stability seems to have come over since UN-NATO forces were stationed in Kosovo. Ethnic Albanian returnees back home are now in multitude and life seems gradually back to normal to people.But peace enforced by an outside force seems to hang on a thread. Racial hostilities generally exist. Terrorist activities are open wide. Thanks to the News Administration of the Republic of Serbia we two as reporters had been helped to enter the erstwhile war-torn land of Kosovo and a number of its cities and villages.

Rolling vehicles and people's voice set up a loud street din at Pristina. Small traders' goods stalls are seen in an increased number showing some sufficiency of consumer supply in the city's streets. According to a cafe owner, electricity and tap water have not yet been in normal supply though people's basic needs have to some extent been met, in one way or another. For no new municipal administrative makeup has been enforced in the city things are obviously in a messy laissez-faire state. Refuse disposal is being badly needed, with a vomiting stench issued nearly from every residential quarters. Motor vehicles, in sixes and sevens, are no lack, lying on side pavements. Picking our way through the whole city of Pristina we did not see a soul of police.

In Pristina, street signs are in no Serbian. Ethnic Albanian flags are fluttering everywhere. No motor vehicles carry any sign in Serbian. The same is also with every road sign. All stores and stalls have to bear names in Albanian. Dinar is no longer in use. German marks and Albanian currency have become ruling currencies in markets throughout Kosovo.

All buildings of the former municipal authorities, except for those having been destroyed by NATO bombs, have been put into the hands of a motley UN and NATO residential organs in Kosovo. In a comparatively unscathed building, we reporters looked up a speaker of the NATO peace force. It is a German officer. He said his NATO quarters garrisoning the city sends every day a force of 190 soldiers to go on petrol of the city, in addition to 65 guards stations that have been set up at sensible points throughout the city. Recently public order has somewhat been improved in Kosovo, according to him. For every now and then he repeated that the ethnic Albanians and Serbian residents should give up their former feuds and live side by side to aspire to a better future.

A bright future may be presented in Kosovo. But a bad situation is still as it is facing people in the area. Prior to the outbreak of the Kosovo war, Serbian residents in Pristina numbered as many as over 40,000 but of these merely a total of 400 remains in the whole city. For all enterprises and government institutions are in the hands of ethnic Albanians these Serbians rarely take a step out of their homes. Things also make no difference for all Serbian children and there are totally no Serbian schools to go at that. We two reporters had managed to find out a few Serbian residents in a residential quarter with a NATO unit on guard. When asked about their future life they just sighed with deep grief no one wants to leave their home and that some months afterward when things should not be improved they will have to flee as refugees into the heartland areas of the Serbians in Yuguslavia.

We should say when most Serbians are taking a wait-and see attitude on developments of things in Pristina the whole Serbian community at Orahovac have already made up their mind to take flight away from their home. In Metohija, with an area of over 2000 square kilometers, there are living only some 2000 ethnic Serbians. Under the threat of the radical Kosovo Liberation Army all Serbian locals describe their life as on nettles and as on high seas not to know whether life or death awaits them. They are being cooped up at home away from the outside world, not to say the rights to work or the right to move about in Orahovac. The right to contact the outside by telephones has already been deprived. For a pity amount of ration supplies from humanitarian organizations from the outside many oldsters and young kids are struggling with illness and in undernourishment. A demand has therefore been raised by the Serbians to move out to other ethnic Serbians' heartland areas to live in Yugoslavia. But their demand has been turned down for they "lack supportable guarantees". A former woman employee, with tears in her eyes, told us that "We Serbians here have all been made prisoners to 'peace'. We see no hope in the 'peace'".

As things are seen in Kosovo, all former power setup of Yugoslavia has been paralyzed. Chairman of Yugoslavian-UN Kosovar Organization Cooperation Committee Vukicevic said in an interview with us that since NATO peace-keeping forces stationed in Kosovo in mid June over 400 innocent people have been killed and over 1,000 people have been kidnapped. With these killings and kidnaps, 76 Orthodox Eastern Churches, cloisters and convents and residential quarters have been destroyed. Statistics point to the fact that to flee for life from this inferno there are already over 320,000 non-Albanian ethnic people that have left Kosovo and of these 250,000 are ethnic Serbians. Vukicevic castigated the UN Kosovar power setups for violating the decision 1244 of the UN Security Council in an attempt to separate Kosovo from Yugoslavia.

It's true the US-led NATO has by all its cruelties of the Kosovo war "created peace" in Kosovo according to the will of the war makers but it is just a sort of peace soaked with the blood and tears of too many innocent people....(Seen in the picture above on November 1 is a NATO force on patrol at Orahovac in south Kosovo).

(By Lu Yansong and Xie Rongbin, People's Daily residential reporters in Yugoslavia)