Belgrade: Organizers of the March pogrom 2004 have not been discovered even today

"The main inspirers and organizers of the pogrom have not been discovered even today, and this is what is devastating and what should worry all of us. Only the individuals who participated in this action have been punished, but not the organizers who had been preparing it for several months," Bogdanovic said. 

He stressed that he had been in Kosovo ahead of the March pogrom and that he had been unsuccessfully warning officials of the international community, among others former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Javier Solana, that "something horrible" was being prepared.

"We are getting assurances that the international forces in Kosovo are better qualified and trained today, that they have better intelligence services and they won't allow March 17, 2004 to repeat itself," Bogdanovic said.

However, relying on his experience, the minister is afraid that something similar could happen, especially after the KFOR mission scale-down, because it is obvious that there are social tensions in Kosovo which could lead to something like March 17.

The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Irinej said yesterday during the ceremony at the Cathedral Church of St. Michael the Archangel that the pogrom six years ago "was a day of terrible suffering, perhaps the greatest suffering of Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija", and pointed out that "Serbia can never give up Kosovo".

"We cannot give away Kosovo, and we pray to God to remember all the innocent victims of that horrible event," the patriarch said.

In the March violence of ethnic Albanian extremists against Serbs in Kosovo, 19 persons were killed and 954 others were wounded or injured.

Close to 4,000 Serbs were expelled from their homes, ethnic cleansing was carried out in six towns and nine villages, and 935 houses belonging to Serbs were torched or destroyed, as well as 10 municipal objects, such as schools, medical centers, post offices.