Baton Haxhiu, editor of the Kosovan newspaper Koha Ditore, was speaking at a news conference in London, as Foreign Secretary Robin Cook announced that his department would be funding a new information network.

The network will be run by journalists who were forced to flee Kosovo to allow ethnic Albanians a method of communicating which Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would be unable to block.

Editor of Koha Ditore Baton Haxhiu described how he had witnessed the "unbearable lightness of killing, the unbearable lightness of burning and destruction".

Baton Haxhiu: Feared paramilitary forces

He said: "All this has been carried out by the regime that took away from us what we had been building for years on end.

"All these terrible things began happening three or four days before Nato began its air strikes. Pristina and the other towns and cities of Kosovo were dead because of the presence of the paramilitary police.

"For three days we didn't dare go out of the Koha Ditore compound for fear of the paramilitary forces."

On the day that the Nato campaign started, the buildings of Koha Dotire were destroyed and one of the guards were killed, he said.

'They took everything'

Mr Haxhiu said: "Facing a policeman, I was watching the blood streaming downstairs of the killing of the guard the night earlier

"For 20 minutes I was obliged to go with three policemen around Pristina in their vehicle and they were playing all the time with their weapons, just mocking me.

"I managed to survive but they took everything I had, including my money."

Mr Cook said President Milosevic's first act in the current offensive against the ethnic Albanians had been to throw out the media.

The foreign secretary said: "He did not want war crimes or ethnic cleansing to be witnessed by television or the press. "

A means of communication

Mr Cook said: "Not even his own people in Belgrade are allowed to see the truth from Kosovo on their screens.

Refugees: Journalists fled like thousands of others

"At the very time when the people of Kosovo most needed a voice, the world was prevented from hearing it."

Mr Cook said he had been asked for assistance in giving "back to the Kosovar Albanians a voice".

He said: "I have responded with funding from the Foreign Office to enable them to speak from exile to their community at home and abroad

"These funds will enable them to set up an information network from a neighbouring country around the journalists who have escaped from Kosovo, particularly those working for the Koha Ditore Albanian newspaper.

"That will enable the Kosovar Albanians to have their own means of communication where President Milosevic cannot stop it.