[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH «ALBEUROPA»} NEWS: Serbs Offer Peace Plan in Attempt to End Albanian Rebellion (New York Times, February 12, 2001)

[Wolfgang Plarre]

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/world/12YUGO.html?pagewanted=all

February 12, 2001 

Serbs Offer Peace Plan in Attempt to End Albanian Rebellion

By CARLOTTA GALL

BELGRADE, Serbia, Feb. 10 - Hoping to end an ethnic Albanian insurgency
that is gaining momentum along the border with Kosovo, Serbia's new
government has put together a peace plan that rules out annexation or
autonomy but would demilitarize the area and grant Albanians civil
rights stripped away under Slobodan Milosevic.
    The plan has already received support from Western diplomats who
know that the alternative is allowing the Serbs to use force against the
insurgents - the exact reverse of 1999, when NATO went to war for the
Albanians against the Serbs over Kosovo.
    "We have to give it a shot," said one Western diplomat of the
Serbian government's latest plan. "But I don't know if it will really
work. In the end, there is going to have to be some use of force on the
Serbian side." 
    Nebojsa Covic, vice president of Serbia's new democratic government
and author of the plan, is traveling to Brussels this week to seek
support from NATO officials. Mr. Covic is hoping that international
pressure will coax Albanian political leaders, including those with ties
to the armed rebels, into negotiations within days.
    The Serbian government urgently needs to solve the spreading
conflict in the region of southern Serbia known as the Presevo Valley,
Mr. Covic said in an interview today.
    Armed Albanians now control the three-mile wide buffer zone
established along Serbia's boundary with Kosovo after the 1999 war and
hold positions within a mile of the town of Bujanovac and Serbia's main
highway to the south. 
    Under an agreement reached with NATO to end the Kosovo war, only
lightly armed Serbian police are allowed in the buffer zone. The NATO-
led peacekeeping force in Kosovo is not permitted in the zone, and has
found it impossible to seal the porous boundary with Kosovo to prevent
arms and men from crossing.
    Mr. Covic said the conflict threatens to spread further among the
100,000 ethnic Albanians in southern Serbia or even into neighboring
Macedonia, where Albanians dominate the western regions.
    Serbian police and the Yugoslav Army have been impatient to take
action, he said, adding that the situation has lent political ammunition
to Mr. Milosevic and nationalist opponents of the new government. "The
government cannot afford to wrangle with this problem endlessly," Mr.
Covic said. The population wants to see improvements in their living
standards, not more war, he said, adding: "We do not have months for
dialogue. We have days, maybe a few weeks."
    His peace plan, which was approved unanimously last week by the
governments of both Serbia and Yugoslavia, is an attempt to right the
many injustices that the Albanians suffered under Mr. Milosevic. 
    It rules out annexation or autonomy for the majority
Albanian-populated areas, but offers ethnic Albanians full
representation in government and police structures and the judiciary in
their communities and representation in the Serbian government. The
Albanian parties boycotted elections in December for the Serbian
Parliament, and so have no parliamentary representation or
representatives in government at the moment.
    The plan outlines a phased demilitarization of the entire region,
indicating a withdrawal of Yugoslav Army and police forces from the
area, and introduction of joint police patrols consisting of one
Albanian and one Serb. Mr. Covic said he would even consider unilateral
withdrawal of Serbian forces, if "someone could guarantee that the
Albanians will not take advantage of it."
    His plan would also offer an amnesty for members of the rebel army,
and economic development of the region with international aid.
    Members of the rebel force, which is known as the Liberation Army of
Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, have rejected the plan, but not the
idea of talks. 
    Yet the real concern now is that the Albanians, in particular the
rebel movement, will not sign up.
    "There are at least three distinct groups with different views, and
different factions within," an American diplomat said of the insurgents.
"Whether they can come to a negotiated agreement I don't know."
    Since they seized control of the buffer zone last November, the
rebels have grown in numbers and stature. They are starting to receive
substantial funds from Kosovo and from the Albanian diaspora allowing
them to boost their numbers and their weapons supplies, according to one
senior official in the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo.
    Members of the Yugoslav Army complain that the Albanians have grown
more full of themselves in the last months, a member of the European
Union monitoring team in the area said. The longer the militants can
operate freely in the no-man's land of the buffer zone, the more
powerful and confident they will become, he said.
    Mr. Covic said he did not doubt that the Albanians would negotiate,
but his concern was whether they would agree to something now. "They
might not do it now," he said. "We are approaching the moment when the
international community will have to say it is enough."
    Mr. Covic hopes to persuade NATO representatives also to allow the
Serbs to gradually abolish the buffer zone.
    His plan envisages demilitarization of the zone, village by village,
with local police - including Albanian police - returning on patrol.
    One of the real tests will be if Serbs from Kosovo can travel
unhindered through the region. At the moment, they face checkpoints run
by armed Albanians.
    Mr. Covic is relying on the NATO-led peacekeepers, and in particular
on the Americans, who have the greatest influence with the Albanians, to
put pressure on them.
    But those officials say that, in the end, if the Serbian authorities
want to re-establish control, they may have to use force and make
arrests. 
    "The goal is to prevent the use of force," said the Western diplomat
who discussed Mr. Covic's plan. "But if in the end this zone has to be
normalized, normalized so that it is not in the control of people with
weapons; if in a few months Serbs cannot go through, then that needs to
come to an end. Then we have to see that the absolute minimum of force
is used."
    Mr. Covic, who has won respect from diplomats for his determination
to find a peaceful solution, said the situation is coming to a head. "We
have not exhausted every possibility to solve this peacefully," he said,
"but the truth is also that the moment when we'll be forced to take that
decision is approaching."

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company


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