Sitting around the coffee table – a bottle of Croatian mineral water in prize position – four Croatian immigrants and one Bosnian-Herzegovinan immigrant to Austin passionately hammered out the issues of NATO’s air strikes on the area formerly known as Yugoslavia.

Monday, July 12, 1999

Sitting around the coffee table – a bottle of Croatian mineral water in prize position – four Croatian immigrants and one Bosnian-Herzegovinan immigrant to Austin passionately hammered out the issues of NATO’s air strikes on the area formerly known as Yugoslavia.

The verdict was unanimous: NATO, especially the United States, should not be bombing.

"War is a very dirty thing," Milka Prodanovic said.

"It must be possible to solve with political discussion," Predrag Prodanovic said emphatically. "I think that NATO and the U.S. did not try out all the diplomatic ways for a peaceful solution of the Kosovo conflict. That means no war. They decided to drop bombs. They took that lightly and too early. That is one form of aggression toward the Yugoslavian people. I am against any violence." "NATO should only be involved with political instruments, not military," Peter Blazevc said. "After each war the people came to think diplomatic talking is the best resolution. It was possible in Bosnia to find compromise through political discussion without civil war."

The five also agreed that Kosovo should remain a part of Serbia, and not be granted any additional independence, explaining that the province already had a certain amount of autonomy. Although they condemned the killing of innocents, all five said the region had a history of turmoil and the ethnic Albanians were at the root of much of the problem.

Kosovo, legally a province of Serbia roughly the size of Delaware, has belonged to the Serbian people since 1389 A.D. According to Milka, the territory that is now 90 percent ethnic Albanian was largely Serbian 70 years ago. Kosovo is a rich mining territory. When ethnic Albanians started settling in the area, some Serbs left and the others were simply out-populated because of the tremendous difference in birth rates between the two cultures. Many Albanians never applied for citizenship, and in Kosovo, according to Pejic, they made little attempt to get along with their Serb neighbors.

"Nowhere else in ex-Yugoslavia did you have to carry a gun," Velimir Pejic said.

Of the five, Pejic has the most history with Kosovo. He was in the former Yugoslavian army, and posted in the capital city of Kosovo.

"Everybody who went into the army saw Kosovo sometime," Pejic said. "There were always problems in Kosovo for ex-Yugoslavia. Every place there where the ethnic Albanians live there are problems. If you look at a man’s wife he will come to your house and beat you."

"Before Tito, I don’t think as many Albanians lived there, but Yugoslavia welcomed them after World War II because their regime was so bad. We gave them rights when their country was executing people without a judge, just because of their political mind."

Blazevc compared his resettlement in America to the Albanians in Kosovo.

"Each person has to accept the rules of the country in which he lives," Blazevc said. "I can’t take the Bosnian flag and say it’s Bosnia here. I don’t have the right to try to have school just in the Bosnian language here."

When asked if it was a religious or a nationalistic war, Predrag said the two were virtually one and the same in the former Yugoslavia. Bosnians are largely Muslim, Croatians Christians, Herzegovinans Christian, and so on.

"Is it a religious war – yes and no, but there is more behind it," Marinko Huncek said. "They (ethnic Albanian Muslims) don’t have good contact with Muslims from Bosnia. They bought guns; there is always provocation. They have waited for their time. They aren’t for any compromise; they are just for adding Kosovo to Albania."

A late arrival to the discussion and the only Muslim at the table, Tiro Rasin of Kansas City, Mo., didn’t want to comment because he wasn’t from Kosovo. He did say the time for America/NATO to come in and destroy the country’s arms was when the first war that led to the disintegration of ex-Yugoslavia began.

"America needed to get involved when war began – then I wouldn’t be here now as a refugee," Rasin said.

He also suggested – only half joking – that it might have been more productive to assassinate the Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Albanian presidents, rather than killing innocent civilians. "The people don’t want to kill each other," he said.

At the end of the day, although Kosovo doesn’t seem so far away or foreign as it does to most Americans, the group agreed that they weren’t going to be the ones to find a solution.

"The United Nations needs to force both sides to come again to the table and find a compromise – not like last time either, when the terms were written out before the ‘negotiations’ even started," Predrag said.