[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH «ALBEUROPA»} NEWS: NATO willing to modify buffer zone (UPI, Thu 28 Dec 2000)

[Wolfgang Plarre]

http://www.kosovodaily.com/?action=display&article=5037927&template=kosovo/indexsearch.txt&index=recent

NATO willing to modify buffer zone

UPI, Thu 28 Dec 2000

NATO has signaled willingness to modify the agreement it signed with
Yugoslavia at the end of their conflict last year, governing the
demilitarized security zone surrounding Kosovo, now that Slobodan
Milosevic's regime is removed from power, the Belgrade daily Glas
Javnosti reported Thursday quoting a NATO source in Brussels.
    The source, who asked for anonymity, said changes to the rules NATO
signed with the Yugoslav army and police in the Macedonian town of
Kumanovo in June 1999 had been out of the question while Milosevic was
in power, according to Glas.
"This was the only reason as we believed neither him nor the people who
were the top brass at the time," the source told the paper.
    The military-technical agreement established the three-mile buffer
zone, barring entry to all military forces including the Yugoslav army
and the NATO-led peacekeeping force (KFOR) and allowing in only
lightly-armed Serbian police for patrol duty.
    "However much it may seem strange, things now are different.
Although the Yugoslav army leadership is made up of the same people,
such as Gen. (Nebojsa) Pavkovic who was then and still is army chief of
staff, there have been changes at the helm of the state," the source
said.
    It said that since Vojislav Kostunica replaced Milosevic as Yugoslav
head of state "we are confident that a direct and constructive dialogue
on this issue is quite possible because, unlike Milosevic, we trust him
and regard him as a man who will strictly abide by all that we may agree
upon."
    The NATO Secretary General, Lord George Robertson, has not yet been
in contact with Kostunica in person or by telephone but they have
already exchanged four letters on the current situation in Kosovo, the
source claimed.
    In the letters, the latest one coming from Robertson on Dec. 25,
they expressed concern at current developments in southern Serbia,
according to the source. 
    In the past month, ethnic Albanian guerrillas from Kosovo and the
Presevo Valley, a southern Serbian area, established their positions in
the zone from where they have been attacking with heavier weapons the
outposts of Yugoslav security forces outside the zone. They killed four
Serb policemen.
    Although there has been no explicit references to the Kumanovo
agreement, both sides are aware of the need for its modification and
that this would be the topic of direct talks between them in the very
near future, it said.
    The Yugoslav parliament passed a declaration on Wednesday calling on
the United Nations Security Council to take urgent measures toward the
withdrawal of "Albanian terrorists" from the security zone. Failing
this, the declaration warned that "Yugoslavia would use its legal and
legitimate right to resolve the problem on its own by applying all
internationally recognized measures of struggle against terrorism."
    The NATO source pointed out, Glas reported, that the U.N. had no
jurisdiction to modify the military agreement which is exclusively the
matter for the NATO council of ambassadors from all the 19 member
countries of the Alliance.


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