[ALBSA-Info] Serb leader sees south Serbia ceasefire next week

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Serb leader sees south Serbia ceasefire next week

BELGRADE, March 3 (Reuters) - Yugoslavia said ethnic Albanian guerrillas 
attacked police in the volatile Presevo Valley area bordering Kosovo on 
Saturday, but a Serbian official said months of violence in the area could 
end within days. 

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic said he expected a ceasefire to 
be signed next week, Beta news agency reported. 

Covic told Reuters in Belgrade the report was correct but declined to go into 
such details as who would sign. 

Also on Saturday, a local Albanian political leader in southern Serbia 
presented a plan calling for the area, just east of U.N.-ruled Kosovo, to be 
put under international control. 

The joint programme, agreed by ethnic Albanian political and guerrilla 
representatives, said all military action should end when negotiations with 
Yugoslav authorities got underway, which it said should happen as soon as 
possible. 

But there was little sign on the ground of any imminent ceasefire. A Yugoslav 
official accused the rebels of two separate attacks on Saturday afternoon. 

Defence ministry official Milovan Coguric said Albanian "extremists" attacked 
with mortars and rifles Yugoslav security forces based on a hill near the 
southern town of Vranje. There were no reports of injuries. 

About 30 people have been killed in the Presevo Valley area, which has a 
large ethnic Albanian population, since the violence began early last year. 

The rebels -- who say they are fighting Serbian repression -- have gained 
strength, taking advantage of a five-km (three-mile) buffer zone next to the 
Kosovo boundary from which the Yugoslav army and Serbian special police are 
banned under a 1999 accord with NATO. 

Belgrade wants this strip of land to be narrowed or abolished to allow it to 
take control of the zone. 

NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels earlier this week said they were 
accelerating efforts to help Serbia peacefully regain control by implementing 
a phased and conditioned reduction of the buffer zone. 

Both sides say they want to negotiate a peaceful resolution to a crisis that 
has alarmed Western governments hoping for an era of Balkan stability after 
last year's downfall of nationalist Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. 

Covic, who has held a series of meetings with NATO officials in recent days, 
said on Friday he expected talks to start soon. 

But the two sides have yet to agree on where to meet, whether the guerillas 
should be represented, or whether an armed foreign force should monitor a 
demilitarisation of the region.