[ALBSA-Info] Powell Says U.S. Agrees With Return of Yugoslav Army to Buffer Zone

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Powell Says U.S. Agrees With Return of Yugoslav Army to Buffer Zone

By JANE PERLEZ

BRUSSELS, Feb. 27 (NJT) ? On his first visit to NATO headquarters as secretary of state, Colin L. Powell said today that the United States agreed in principle to a "phased and conditioned" return of the Yugoslav Army to an area of southern Serbia that has been a buffer zone.

The five-mile zone, which is adjacent to where American troops are stationed inside Kosovo, has become a major flash point between armed Albanian militants and local Serbs. There are an estimated 1,000 Albanians in the zone, and the United States and NATO are concerned that fighting could occur there between the Albanian insurgents and the Yugoslav Army.

NATO was expected to announce today the details of how it would deal with the insurgency. But last week the Bush administration failed to agree to a precise NATO formula on how far NATO troops, including American soldiers, should be involved in calming the situation.

With General Powell standing beside him, Lord Robertson, the secretary-general of NATO, said that NATO was prepared to implement a "phased and continued reduction of the ground safety zone," returning the area to Serbian authorities. But Lord Robertson said NATO needed "further military advice" on how to carry out the plan.

The United States agreed with the phased re-entry of Yugoslav soldiers into the zone, General Powell said, but he gave no timetable. He said the return of the soldiers would be "conditioned," a reference to a plan by Nebojsa Covic, a senior official in the new government in Belgrade.

Among Mr. Covic's proposals are the integration of some Albanians into the local Serbian police in the region. Among the conditions that NATO wants is the removal of Serbian soldiers and policemen who were involved in "ethnic cleansing" during the Kosovo war from any force that might return into the zone.

The buffer zone was established by NATO at the end of the Kosovo war as a way of separating the forces of Slobodan Milosevic from NATO forces inside Kosovo.

But now that a new government is in power in Belgrade, NATO is prepared to return the strip of land to those authorities. When the buffer zone is eventually returned to the Serbian authorities, the Yugoslav Army and Serbian police would be on a border adjacent to Kosovo.

The killings of local Serbian civilians by Albanian militants in recent weeks has inflamed passions among the Serbian population and Serbian forces in the region, leading to concerns at NATO about renewed fighting less than two years after the end of the war.

"Serb tanks are in a very very aggressive position; they are in a position to run roughshod over this," an American official said. For the moment, he said, the Serbian authorities have pledged to exercise restraint. But it was not clear how long that restraint would last, the official said.

Today General Powell said at a news conference with Lord Robertson that the problem should be resolved without having Serbian forces become "belligerents," making "a more difficult situation than we have now."

Lord Robertson said that NATO forces inside the border of Kosovo along the buffer zone had taken measures to tighten controls and "crack down on extremists."

In his debut appearance at the North Atlantic council here, where the 19 foreign ministers of NATO countries meet, General Powell said he explained the Bush administration's policies on missile defense and a planned European rapid reaction force of 60,000 troops.

General Powell said he told his colleagues that the United States would consult with its allies as the administration's concrete plans for missile defense evolved.

He repeated the statement President Bush made last week indicating that the United States endorsed the development of the rapid reaction force, which is intended to deploy European troops to trouble spots where NATO is not engaged.