[ALBSA-Info] Kostunica sees buffer zone problem solved soon

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Kostunica sees buffer zone problem solved soon

By Michael Winfrey


BRATISLAVA, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Yugoslavia's president said on Monday he 
expected NATO to agree soon to cut by 75 percent the size of a buffer zone 
between Kosovo and Serbia proper that Serbs say Albanian guerrillas use as a 
base for violence. 

President Vojislav Kostunica also stood firm on declarations that Yugoslav 
courts would have the final word on the fate of the country's former leader 
Slobodan Milosevic, after Saturday's arrest of his former secret police 
chief, Rade Markovic. 

On a one-day visit to Slovakia, Kostunica said Yugoslav authorities had 
gained NATO support for a detailed plan to shrink the buffer zone -- where 
the Yugoslav army and Serb police are prohibited -- and expect a solution 
soon. NATO set up the zone on Kosovo's internal boundary with the rest of 
Serbia in June 1999 as allied troops took control of the province, where 
ethnic Albanians are the overwhelming majority. 

The proposal aims to cut the five-kilometre (three miles) wide, 
400-kilometre-long swath to just 100 kilometres in length, Kostunica told a 
news conference. 

"We generally have the acceptance of NATO and SFOR to solve this problem 
according to this plan. I believe it will not be necessary for the Yugoslav 
Army and the Serbian police to use force (to stop violence in the region)," 
he said. "The coming days will give a definitive answer to this question." 

NATO foreign ministers due to meet on Tuesday are expected to discuss the 
Yugoslav proposal and perhaps decide how to recent clashes between Albanian 
rebels and Serb security forces. 

Foreign Ministers of the European Union, which has warned Albanian rebels to 
put down their weapons, are holding a similar meeting on the issue on Monday. 

Serbia says the rebels, who have seized villages and roads in the area in the 
past year, are using the NATO-defined zone as a safe haven in a campaign to 
make the region part of Kosovo. 

Kostunica maintained a cautious stance on Milosevic, after Markovic was 
arrested in an investigation of whether he ordered an assassination attempt 
on a political opponent of Milosevic. 

Reformers have said they believe the trail of state-sponsored crime leads all 
the way to Milosevic, who has been indicted by a U.N. court on Kosovo war 
crimes charges. 

Kostunica said the rule of the courts would prevail over any sense of 
"revolutionary justice." 

"Regarding former President Milosevic...this will be the question for the 
courts," Kostunica said. 

"For us it is very important in the coming period for the rule of law to 
become a principle not to be broken. For more than a century we knew what 
revolutionary justice meant and now...we wish this part of history to remain 
a matter of the past."