[ALBSA-Info] EU Urges S.Serbia's Albanians to Put Down Weapons

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

EU Urges S.Serbia's Albanians to Put Down Weapons

TIRANA, Feb 8 (Reuters) - The European Union's security chief Javier Solana 
on Thursday urged ethnic Albanians in Serbia's Presevo Valley to lay down 
their weapons, telling them "the time of violence is over." 

Solana, visiting Tirana for a few hours as part of a Balkan tour whose first 
stop was in Belgrade, was speaking a day after ethnic Albanian guerrillas 
rejected a plan for the demilitarisation of the Serbia's zone bordering on 
Kosovo. 

The guerrilla group, the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, 
named after the three main towns in the area, said it would settle for 
nothing less than the Presevo Valley becoming part of ethnic 
Albanian-dominated Kosovo. 

"We hope that we will find a political solution. No other solution is 
possible. The time for violence is over," Solana told reporters in Tirana 
when asked if he had discussed the Presevo Valley situation with Yugoslavia's 
leaders. 

"Nothing can be resolved through weapons, that is part of the past. We have 
started a new page of our collective history in Europe and the time for 
violence is over. 

"Therefore, it has to be done through negotiations and those who still have 
weapons have to put them down," Solana said. 

Solana was NATO's secretary general during its campaign to drive the Yugoslav 
troops out of Kosovo to stop the ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians. The 
United Nations and NATO took control of the province in mid-1999. 

The Presevo guerrillas say they are battling Serb police persecution of the 
estimated 70,000 to 100,000 local ethnic Albanians. Serb authorities see the 
group as a collection of separatist terrorists. 

Western governments, anxious to bolster Serbia's reformist new leaders after 
the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic, have expressed sympathy and support for 
Belgrade's position and branded the guerrillas extremists. 

Both U.S. and European Union officials have praised the plan, which offered 
ethnic Albanians jobs in the local administration and the police, as a key 
step towards resolving the crisis.