[ALBSA-Info] NATO acts on Macedonia violence fears

[Iris Pilika]

NATO acts on Macedonia violence fears

Robertson is considering further assistance
February 28, 2001
Web posted at: 1037 GMT


SKOPJE, Macedonia -- NATO advisers are being sent to Macedonia to help the 
government over fears of an ethnic Albanian insurrection.

NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said NATO was studying further 
assistance to the Macedonian government to protect its frontier with Kosovo 
and southern Serbia.

In Kosovo, U.S. peacekeepers set up observation points near the Macedonian 
village of Tanusevci, near Macedonia's border with Kosovo.

Fighting broke out in the area between insurgents and Macedonian forces on 
Monday.

Macedonia's prime minister, Ljubco Georgievski, warned his government was 
prepared to take "radical measures" against the insurgents.

A police statement said the violence Tanusevci began after armed Albanian 
groups opened fire on a police patrol. No casualties were reported.

A new group of ethnic Albanian guerrillas, calling themselves a "National 
Liberation Army," have been operating in the village.

Such violence already has spilled beyond the borders of Kosovo, a Serbian 
province, with militants active in a southern Serbian buffer zone that is 
home to large numbers of ethnic Albanians just outside Kosovo.

In a major concession to the new leadership in Yugoslavia and Serbia, the 
main Yugoslav republic, NATO on Tuesday announced that it was prepared to 
narrow that zone.

The zone was set up in the wake of the pullout of troops loyal to former 
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo in 1999, and was meant to 
reduce any armed threat to NATO from Yugoslav forces.

Only lightly armed Serbian police are allowed in the zone, according to the 
1999 Kosovo peace agreement that allowed NATO peacekeepers into Kosovo.

In the Kosovo village of Debelde on Tuesday, U.S. peacekeepers set up in the 
village about 35 miles southeast of Pristina.

In Geneva, Kris Janowski, the spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for 
Refugees, said that over the past week 383 ethnic Albanians, primarily women 
and children, had fled to Kosovo from Debelde.

He said those fleeing cited as a heavy presence of Macedonian security 
forces and general tension in the area.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.



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