[ALBSA-Info] The Guardian

[Agron Alibali]

    The Guardian (London)

       February 24, 2000

Guardian Foreign Pages; Pg. 15


Mitrovice violence prompts troops call;
Radio intercepts suggest Serbs are orchestrating
trouble in city

Owen Bowcott and Richard Norton-Taylor

 Owen Bowcott and Richard Norton-Taylor

    Nato commanders in Kosovo yesterday urgently
demanded that reinforcements be
sent to the province after claiming to have
intercepted radio contacts between
local Serbs and police units in Serbia.

    The latest evidence suggesting that Belgrade may
be orchestrating the
violence in the northern city of Mitrovice emerged as
neighbouring Macedonia put
some troops on high alert because of the deteriorating
security situation.

    'Nato does not have the troops it needs in
Kosovo,' a senior Nato official
confirmed last night. 'We have asked for
reinforcements and the request has
support.'

    The K-For peacekeeping mission in Kosovo was
originally supposed to have
49,000 troops, but the force now numbers 30,000. There
are also 7,000 soldiers
from non-Nato countries. Others contingents are
stationed in Macedonia.

    Serious overstretch has forced Britain to cut the
number of its troops in
the province to under 4,000, from a peak of more than
10,000 last summer.

    Nato commanders have requested that an additional
battalion be deployed and 
that the Nato strategic reserve be placed on reduced
notice. The request for
more troops had 'received support' from Nato's North
Atlantic council, and an
emergency meeting on the crisis is planned for
tomorrow.

    As well as monitoring radio conversations between
Serbs, Nato intelligence
has observed Yugoslav army movements in the Kosovo
border area. They are thought
to be training manoeuvres but could be transformed
into something more
aggressive at short notice.

    Unrest has also been growing in Serbia proper.
Ethnic  Albanian  guerrillas 
have conducted small-scale infiltrations of an ethnic 
Albanian  enclave across 
the border.

    But it was the mounting pressure in Mitrovice
which triggered the request
for extra peacekeepers. US, British and Canadian
troops have already moved in to
help the French in the flashpoint city, where Nato
units struggled on Monday to 
hold back up to 70,000 ethnic  Albanians  protesting
against Serb violence.

    Hundreds of peacekeeping troops yesterday fanned
out through what the
military called 'hot zones" of the city to conduct
house-to-house weapons
searches.

    'There are still a lot of arms to recover, but
this is a sign - we are here 
and we will continue to be here as long as it takes,"
said Captain Alain Racine 
of the French 8th Para troop brigade. By early
afternoon, his squad had
recovered three Kalashnikov assault rifles, several
other rifles, camouflage
uniforms and a variety of other weaponry.

    Capt Racine said most of the weapons were
recovered from caches in ruined
buildings, adding that there was no way of telling if
they had been hid den by
Serbs or  Albanians. 

    The UN also announced a plan to return  Albanians 
to their homes in the
northern, Serb-dominated side of the city and to
create a secure zone from north
to south. Special report on Kosovo on the Guardian
network at
www.newsunlimited.co.uk/kosovo
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