Tuesday, October 12, 1999 Published at 10:02 GMT 11:02 UK
UN official shot dead in Kosovo
UN and Red Cross personnel quickly cordoned off the area
A United Nations staff member was shot dead on Monday evening in the Kosovo capital Pristina, ahead of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's visit to the province.
A UN spokesman said the victim had apparently been assaulted before being shot.
It turned he was Bulgarian national, wearing civilian clothes and carrying a US driving licence.
An international police officer said the victim had been asked for the time by a group of teen-agers, and he responded in Serbian.
The victim had arrived earlier in the day at the start of a civilian assignment with the UN mission, which alongside the Nato-led Kosovo Force (Kfor) is responsible for policing the province.
He was briefed on the progress the country has made in building peace and restoring civil society since the 1992-1995 war.
At a ceremony honouring all those who served as UN peacekeepers during the conflict, Mr Annan apologised for the world's failure to end the war in Bosnia sooner.
"No one laments more than we the failure of the international community to take decisive action to halt the suffering and end a war that had produced so many victims," he said. "The tragedy of Srebrenica will haunt our history forever."
For their part, Bosnia's three leaders gave their backing to an initiative to build a memorial to all UN personnel who lost their lives during the peacekeeping mission.
Tensions in Serbia
But it is the humanitarian challenge in Serbia which now commands the attention of international diplomacy.
Nis and Pirot are to receive the fuel in spite of the current oil embargo on Yugoslavia.
But a number of opposition leaders have objected that future aid is being made dependent not only on a restoration of democracy in Serbia, but to the handing over of war crimes suspects.
The BBC Belgrade correspondent says the War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is seen by many as primarily set up to prosecute Serbs.
He made a speech fiercely denouncing his domestic opponents, in what was his first direct reaction to recent street protests calling for his resignation.
He said the opposition wanted to turn Serbia into a pro-Western colony.
"They are cowards and bootlickers, who are threatening to destroy what we have defended from Nato," Mr Milosevic said.
"The only thing they want is to push the country into a civil war."