[ALBSA-Info] Mitrovica

[Agron Alibali]

               February 23, 2000; Wednesday 3:29 PM, 


NATO: Serbia Orchestrating Violence

JEFFREY ULBRICH
BRUSSELS, Belgium
Intelligence reports have reinforced NATO's belief
that Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic's government is behind the rising
violence in a divided city 
in northern Kosovo.

   NATO also says it has detected radio contacts
between police units in Serbia 
and Serbs in the city of Kosovska Mitrovica.

   In Southern Serbia, meanwhile, ethnic  Albanian 
guerrillas are believed to
have conducted small-scale infiltration of the Presevo
Valley, an ethnic
 Albanian  enclave where Serbian special police are
said to have begun an
aggressive crackdown.

   The Yugoslav army, for its part, has begun new
training, and NATO
intelligence has observed a great deal of military
movement in the Kosovo border
area. For the moment, the activity appears to be
routine training, NATO
officials say, but they suggest it doesn't take much
to transform training into 
something more aggressive.

   The rising tensions in Mitrovica over the past
three weeks, as well as these 
other reports in and around the province, prompted the
North Atlantic Council,
NATO's governing body, to call a special meeting for
Friday to discuss Kosovo,
the southern province of Serbia from which Yugoslav
forces were pushed by a NATO
bombing campaign last spring.

   NATO and the United States have accused Milosevic's
government of being
behind the nearly three weeks of violence in Kosovska
Mitrovica, which has the
largest remaining Serb enclave in Kosovo.

   On Wednesday, a senior Yugoslav commander, Gen.
Vladimir Lazarevic, called
the allegation ''nonsense'' aimed at diverting
attention from NATO's failure to 
bring peace to the province.

   But the 19-nation defense alliance expects
Milosevic to begin stirring up
trouble in Kosovo, a NATO official said Wednesday,
speaking on condition of
anonymity.

   The official said NATO intelligence is keeping
track of the disposition of
the various forces, cross-border movements and
insuring that new weapons don't
replace the guns being seized by the peacekeepers.

   Intelligence officials believe that Yugoslav Deputy
Prime Minister Nikola
Sainovic, Milosevic's right-hand man for Kosovo
affairs who is under indictment 
by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for alleged
atrocities, is personally running
the stepped-up Yugoslav campaign.

   There are 30,000 NATO troops and 7,000 soldiers
from non-NATO countries now
attempting to keep the peace in Kosovo. Others are
stationed in neighboring
Macedonia.

   Concerned the unrest could expand to areas outside
Kosovo, Macedonia has put 
part of its armed forces stationed near the joint
Kosovo-Serbia border on a
higher alert because of violence and tension in
Kosovo, army spokesman Gjorgji
Trendafilov said Wednesday.

   ''The soldiers and officer of this part of the army
have intensified their
guard and monitoring,'' Trendafilov said.

   Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO's supreme commander in
Europe, and NATO
Secretary-General Lord Robertson have made it clear
they believe the Yugoslav
leader is behind the current tensions in Kosovo. Both
pledge to get tough on any
party, Serb or ethnic  Albanian,  that attempts to
stir unrest.

   The large Serbian population of Mitrovica, located
near the border with
Serbia, makes it a flashpoint for violence and a
likely place to infiltrate
agents from the north, NATO officials say. American,
British and Canadian troops
have been dispatched to the city to help the French,
who have been under
increasing pressure.

   In the Presevo Valley, just east of the Kosovo
border and home to as many as 
80,000 ethnic  Albanians,  Belgrade is believed to
have moved in more than 200
additional paramilitary police. The police allegedly
have begun house-to-house
searches, mine-laying and beatings.

   Though the ethnic  Albanians'  rebel force, the
Kosovo Liberation Army, has
been officially disbanded, NATO says small military
units continue to operate.

   The presidency of the European Union, meanwhile,
issued a statement Wednesday
urging political leaders in Kosovo to exert their
influence to stop the violence
and ''to play a restraining role in order to avoid the
spread of disorder.''


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