[ALBSA-Info] Artikull per Kosoven Lindore

[Dardan Labeati]

The Guardian (London)

                               February 28, 2000

SECTION: Guardian Foreign Pages; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 1133 words

HEADLINE:  Albanian  gunmen stir trouble in Serbia;
Their own community denounces KLA fighters seeking to
provoke a Nato
intervention across the border

BYLINE: Jonathan Steele in Gnjilane

 BODY:
    Jonathan Steele in Gnjilane

    Armed clashes between ethnic  Albanian  fighters
and Yugoslav forces in the 
border region between Serbia proper and the province
of Kosovo threatens to turn
into a new flashpoint and raises the possibility of
Nato troops operating inside
Serbia.

    The new trouble spot is the south-western corner
of Serbia which is largely 
populated by  Albanians.  Former members of the Kosovo
Liberation Army have
started to operate in the border villages, carrying
guns, wearing paramilitary
uniforms and attacking Serb police in an apparent bid
to provoke a Serb reaction
and Nato help.

    A Serb policeman died and three others were
wounded on Saturday night when
 Albanian  gunmen ambushed a patrol on the main road
between Gnjilane and
Bujanovac. The attack with automatic rifles and
grenades occurred about six
kilometres inside Serbia near the village of Konsulj.
The police returned fire, 
killing an  Albanian,  according to the state-owned
news agency, Tanjug. The
incident followed explosions in Bujanovac the previous
night.

    Although General Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme
commander in Europe, has
warned  Albanians  that Nato does not want to see
fighting, United States forces
are taking no chances. They have started to build a
mini-base right on the
border line between Kosovo and Serbia proper, close to
the village of
Dobrosin, from where tanks and troops in an
observation tower look down on the
increasingly brazen street forays by guerrillas in
broad daylight.

     Albanian  leaders in the Kosovo's main city,
Pristina, as well as ordinary 
people in the region, say they are against
cross-border violence for fear of
reprisals against the 70,000  Albanians  who live in
southern Serbia and a new
round of ethnic cleansing by Serb security forces. But
evidence on the ground
suggests that embittered and now demobilised
guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation
Army have started armed patrols and military training
for local people.

    In their first interview with journalists at the
weekend, local gunmen
described what they called 'the little army in uniform
which arose among people 
to defend ourselves'.

    There was a strange sense of deja vu as we made
the encounter, just like two
years ago when the world first became aware of the
Kosovo Liberation Army itself
the whispered contacts, the trail on muddy roads
behind a car, the walk on
snow-covered fields and through coppices of dwarf oak,
and finally the meeting
in a village house with a group of half a dozen men
with AK-47 Kalashnikov
assault rifles.

    The difference this time was that instead of the
red-and-gold shoulder badge
with the  Albanian  eagle and the letters UCK (the 
Albanian  initials for the
KLA), they now wear badges saying UCPMB, the initials
of Presevo, Medveda, and
Bujenovac. These are three towns in southern Serbia,
in the area the guerrillas 
call 'eastern Kosovo'.

    Speaking the Swiss dialect of French, their
leader, dressed in civilian
clothes, said: 'Our soldiers have not come from
somewhere else. They are from
this village and region. It was part of Kosovo
originally, but the borders were 
changed after the second world war. People here must
have the right to decide
how and where they want to live.'

    The UCPMB was formed on January 26, he said, after
Serb police entered the
village of Dobrosin and killed Isa Saqipi, 31, and his
brother Shaip, 35. They
were innocently cutting wood, he insisted. 'There have
always been incidents but
after that January event people began to reflect and
organise,' he said.

    He acknowledged that half of Dobrosin's 2,500
inhabitants had fled across
the border to Kosovo. The two broth ers' graves, a
mere 200 yards from the
barrels of the American tanks on the hill, are covered
with wreaths.

    Dobrosin lies just inside the five-kilometre-deep
'Ground Safety Zone',
which the Yugoslav forces accepted when they signed
the agreement which ended
Nato's bombing last June and authorised the
international peacekeeping force in 
Kosovo (K-For). Local Serb police are allowed to
operate in the zone, but
Yugoslav army troops and special police with heavy
weapons are forbidden.

    Although US forces who control Kosovo's eastern
sector send low-flying
helicopters along the border line, they respect
Serbia's sovereignty by not
penetrating the buffer zone. But the ceasefire
agreement has a major loophole.
Negotiated in a rush as part of the package which put
Kosovo under United
Nations administration, it said any violation 'would
be subject to K-For
military action' but did not specify what exactly
might trigger a K-For
response.

    'If atrocities occur in the area, we will go in
and take action. We're
working on what the definition of an atrocity is,'
Major Michael Boehme,
information officer Camp Monteith, the US base in
Gnjilane, told the Guardian
yesterday.

    The K-For commander, General Klaus Reinhardt,
along with Dr Bernard
Kouchner, the top UN administrator and the American
general in command of the
eastern sector, were preparing detailed guidelines, he
said.Gary Carrell, an
American policeman who commands the UN police in the
area, said his staff had
held 'preliminary meetings' with the Serbian police on
the border in the last
few weeks.

     Albanians  cross the border freely and the main
aim was to prevent people
involved in assassinations of Serbs from slipping
away. 'We're pretty sure the
suspects in the killing of three Serbs in Kosovo last
month were from Presevo,' 
he said. But the plan for further meetings with the
Serb police was vetoed by
Jock Covey, the American who is deputy head of the UN
administration. The Serb
police, known as the MUP, won a fearful reputation
among  Albanians  during last
year's expulsions and killings.

    It is hard to gauge what support the UCPMB has.
Hundreds of people from the 
region have fled to Kosovo in recent weeks because of
stepped-up Serb police
action and alleged intimidation.

    An inhabitant of Bujenovac, who has brought his
family to Kosovo, said he
spoke for many when he denounced the UCPMB. But he
insisted on anonymity. 'In
Presevo it is not so bad, since the population is 95% 
Albanian.  In Bujenovac
where the Serbs are 40% it is much tougher for 
Albanians, ' he said.

    Yugoslav officials agree that violence in the
region is growing. General
Vladimir Lazarevic, the commander of the Yugoslav
Third Army, told a Belgrade
newspaper recently that 'the adverse political and
security situation in Kosovo 
is spreading to municipalities bordering Kosovo'.

    But he rejected the notion that  Albanians 
leaving the area for Kosovo were
refugees. 'This is a plan aimed at convincing the
world that Serbia is expelling
 Albanians. ' He added that K-For wanted to provide a
pretext for more drastic
measures, diplomatic, political, and perhaps military.

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