[ALBSA-Info] NATO says encouraged by talks near Kosovo border

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

NATO says encouraged by talks near Kosovo border

By Fredrik Dahl

BUJANOVAC, Yugoslavia, Feb 21 (Reuters) - NATO officials said they were 
encouraged by talks on Wednesday with Serb and ethnic Albanian 
representatives in tense southern Serbia, despite a recent upsurge in 
violence in the volatile Balkans. 

A NATO delegation held separate meetings with the two sides as part of a 
fact-finding mission to Serbia's Presevo Valley, an area bordering Kosovo 
where ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serbian police have clashed repeatedly 
over the past year. 

Major General Robert Dierker, a member of the team visiting the town of 
Bujanovac, a few km (miles) east of U.N.-run Kosovo, told Reuters both sides 
seemed to want to end the conflict. 

"They want to not have any more fighting, any more people dying, and they 
want to solve it peacefully," he said after meeting senior Yugoslav figures 
including Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic and army chief-of-staff 
Nebojsa Pavkovic. 

NATO was also "very encouraged" by a plan presented by Covic this month to 
resolve the crisis peacefully, he said. It foresees demilitarisation of the 
area and integration of ethnic Albanians into local institutions. 

Covic urged ethnic Albanian leaders on Tuesday to agree to talks about ending 
the violence, and an official from the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force in 
Kosovo said he believed the two sides could get together soon. 

"It will happen," Shawn Sullivan, political adviser to KFOR commander General 
Carlo Cabigiosu, said in Bujanovac. 

The NATO-led delegation, which also included U.N. and European Union 
officials, visited the area a few days after three Serbian policemen were 
killed by anti-tank landmines on a small road not far from the centre of 
Bujanovac. 

The Yugoslav government has linked that incident with Friday's bombing of a 
bus carrying Serbs in northern Kosovo, which killed at least 10 people, 
saying they were part of a broader campaign of "terror" by ethnic Albanians. 

The Presevo Valley guerrillas, who say they are fighting Serbian police 
repression, have denied responsibility for the policemen's deaths, saying 
they were blown up by their own mines. They have also condemned the bus 
attack. 

The NATO officials also met Riza Halimi, mayor of the town of Presevo, as 
well as other ethnic Albanian representatives. 

Pieter Feith, director of NATO's Balkans Task Force, said both sides had 
indicated a willingness to work for a broad plan for the Presevo Valley, home 
to about 70,000 ethnic Albanians. 

He said it would include the restoration of local Albanians' political rights 
and economic assistance for the area. 

NATO would also look carefully at a Serbian government proposal to narrow a 
five km (three mile) wide buffer zone by the Kosovo boundary, where the 
ethnic Albanian guerrillas mainly operate. 

Under a 1999 deal between Belgrade and NATO, only lightly armed Serbian 
police are officially allowed in the zone. The guerrillas have exploited this 
and taken de facto control of the strip of land. 

But Feith cautioned that a narrowing of the zone "could easily be seen as a 
signal to resort to further violence here and in Kosovo, which we want to 
avoid."