[ALBSA-Info] Kosovo Albanian leaders blast NATO buffer zone plan

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Kosovo Albanian leaders blast NATO buffer zone plan

By Shaban Buza

  
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, March 7 (Reuters) - Kosovo Albanian leaders criticised 
on Wednesday a NATO proposal to let Serbian forces into a buffer zone next to 
the province, saying it could spark fresh violence in the Balkans. 

NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said on Tuesday the alliance was 
considering letting Yugoslav forces into a pocket of land in Serbia close to 
borders with Kosovo and Macedonia. 

Robertson suggested this may help stop ethnic Albanian militants taking 
advantage of the buffer zone around Kosovo to carry out attacks in southern 
Serbia and in Macedonia, the focus of international concern after a recent 
series of armed clashes. 

But Kole Berisha, vice president of the Democratic League of Kosovo party, 
said the proposed role could not be entrusted to an army associated in the 
eyes of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority with massacres of members of their 
community. 

"The army which until recently committed massacres in Kosovo cannot return to 
Kosovo or to a part of the Kosovo-Macedonian border, especially not to the 
triangle between Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia," Berisha said. 

He said installing the Serbian-led Yugoslav army in that area would be a 
"provocation, making possible an open conflict that would include the entire 
region." 

The area is just a small part of the buffer zone set up to keep Yugoslav 
forces a safe distance away from the province when NATO peacekeepers deployed 
there in 1999 and Slobodan Milosevic was in power in Belgrade. 

The zone has been exploited by ethnic Albanian guerrillas, who have launched 
repeated attacks on Serbian security forces in southern Serbia's Presevo 
Valley in the past year. Similar violence has now also erupted on the 
Macedonian border. 

Hashim Thaci, head of a major Kosovo Albanian party and a former commander in 
the Kosovo Liberation Army which fought Serbian rule, said the NATO proposal 
was no way to reduce tensions. 

"It is a rash and dangerous undertaking for the situation in the region, and 
incompatible with the current circumstances in Kosovo," said Thaci, leader of 
the Democratic Party of Kosovo. 

"Kosovo's borders do not need to be protected by those who killed Kosovars." 

NATO, anxious to bolster the reformers in Serbia who replaced Milosevic last 
year, has been talking increasingly about dismantling the zone or allowing in 
army and special police units which are currently banned. 

The flare-up in Macedonia appears to have nudged the alliance another step in 
that direction and Robertson, speaking at the United Nations, said a decision 
could be made this week. 

Another Kosovo party, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, said it feared 
the proposal, if implemented, would "be taken as a signal by Yugoslav forces 
to take repressive action" against the ethnic Albanian population in southern 
Serbia.