[ALBSA-Info] UNHCR warns NATO over Kosovo buffer zone

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

UNHCR warns NATO over Kosovo buffer zone

  
GENEVA, March 2 (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR warned 
NATO on Friday against reducing the size of a buffer zone around Kosovo too 
hastily, saying it could cause armed conflict and a new exodus of ethnic 
Albanians. 

In a statement, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers reiterated 
his Geneva-based agency's call for the number of European Union monitors in 
the volatile southern Serbia area to be increased to a "sizeable number" to 
protect civilians. 

Later, Eric Morris, UNHCR's special envoy for the Federal Republic of 
Yugoslavia and the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, said that the 
situation was "critically dangerous." 

"The threat of war is there -- armed conflict between the Albanian fighters 
and Yugoslav and Serbian security forces," Morris told a news briefing in 
Geneva. "That's what we are all trying to prevent now." 

"We are just cautioning that if it is not handled well, the process underway 
between Belgrade and NATO, there could be grave humanitarian consequences," 
added the Pristina-based official, who also serves as U.N. humanitarian 
coordinator in Kosovo. 

A NATO official said on Thursday the alliance would go ahead with plans to 
gradually reduce the five km (three mile) wide buffer zone around Kosovo's 
provincial boundary. 

In June 1999, as NATO troops occupied Kosovo, the strip was declared out of 
bounds to most Serbian armed forces. It is inhabited mainly by ethnic 
Albanians and NATO says it is now being abused as a base for Albanian 
guerrillas who launch attacks on Serb police in the area. 

To shrink the size of the zone would allow Serbia to send more heavily armed 
troops to police some ethnic Albanian areas. 

"Any rapid change of the situation in the Ground Safety Zone could 
destabilise the area and cause further displacement of ethnic Albanians from 
southern Serbia into Kosovo," said Lubbers, a former Dutch prime minister who 
became U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees two months ago. 

"This could have a negative knock-on effect on the already precarious 
situation of Kosovo's vulnerable ethnic minorities," he added. 

Ethnic Albanians account for up to 70 percent of the estimated 100,000 people 
living in the buffer zone and adjacent areas. Last November a rise in tension 
led to the exodus of 5,000 ethnic Albanians from southern Serbia to Kosovo, 
although most have returned to their homes, UNHCR says.