[ALBSA-Info] Peacekeepers Wound Gunmen, West Seeks Balkan Strategy

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Peacekeepers Wound Gunmen, West Seeks Balkan Strategy 

SKOPJE, Macedonia (Reuters) - U.S. peacekeeping troops wounded two gunmen on 
the Kosovo-Macedonia border Wednesday as Western powers sought an effective 
strategy to contain new turmoil in the Balkan flashpoint.

NATO's 19 permanent ambassadors were meeting without Secretary-General George 
Robertson, who was due to hold talks with the Bush administration in 
Washington later Wednesday.

Both gatherings were expected to seek ways to stop the export of armed 
Albanian separatists to southern Serbia and Macedonia via ``safe havens'' 
inadvertently created by NATO's own Kosovo buffer force.

``This morning Multinational Brigade East soldiers injured two armed males 
after brief exchange of gunfire near the village of Mijak in Kosovo. No KFOR 
soldiers were injured,'' KFOR spokesman Richard Heffer told reporters in the 
Kosovo capital.

KFOR did not give the gunmen's ethnicity.

It was the first engagement between KFOR and gunmen since peacekeepers 
started reinforcing the border following clashes between guerrillas in the 
hamlet of Tanusevci on the Macedonian side and Macedonia's own security 
forces.

``The incident occurred around 9 a.m. when KFOR U.S. soldiers identified a 
group of five armed men leaving a building in outskirts of the village,'' 
Heffer said.

One of the injured was detained while the other, together with the rest of 
the group, escaped to the Macedonian side, in the direction of Tanusevci, he 
said. A U.S. military spokesman later said two gunmen were held by KFOR.

MACEDONIA EXPECTS NEW ATTACKS

In the Macedonian capital, a defense ministry spokesman, speaking shortly 
before the news of the clash, said the government expected further attacks.

He said there had been no skirmishes overnight, but that security forces had 
seen armed groups moving on the Kosovo side of the border, away from 
Tanusevci.

Asked whether Skopje expected an offensive, the spokesman said: ``Offensive 
is a strong word, but we have strong indications that provocations like the 
one in Tanusevci and with the same intensity will happen in other places on 
the northern border.''

Macedonia, where ethnic Albanians are about one third of the two million 
population, has escaped 10 years of Balkan conflict in Croatia and Bosnia 
and, more recently, southern Serbia.

The latest incursion has raised fears that violence in Kosovo and Serbia's 
Presevo valley where Albanian guerrillas have confronted lightly armed 
Serbian police for over a year, could spread across the Balkan peninsula.

The main problem, diplomats say, is how to prevent ethnic Albanian guerrillas 
from moving and operating freely across the unmarked mountain borders between 
Kosovo and Macedonia and Kosovo and southern Serbia.

NATO's Robertson said at the United Nations Tuesday that the alliance was 
considering allowing Yugoslav soldiers into a buffer zone that runs around 
the outside of Kosovo's boundary with the rest of Yugoslavia, and touches the 
Macedonian border.

The zone was set up after the conflict in Kosovo in 1999.

Hashim Thaci, one of the top political leaders in Kosovo, angrily rejected 
the proposal, calling it ``dangerous.''
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 their community. 

Installing the Serb-led Yugoslav army in that area would be a ``provocation, 
making possible an open conflict that would include the entire region.''

Menduh Thaci, deputy leader of the biggest Albanian political party in 
Macedonia, suggested that the predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo Protection 
Corps should be allowed to patrol the Kosovo side of its border with 
Macedonia along KFOR.

U.S. peacekeepers have reinforced the Kosovo side of the border with 
Macedonia and say most of the gunmen seen leaving Tanusevci had not crossed 
into Kosovo.

An ethnic Albanian who belongs to a shadowy group calling itself the National 
Liberation Army which has emerged recently in Macedonia, was buried in the 
presence of thousands of people in the Decani municipality in western Kosovo 
Tuesday, local newspapers said Wednesday.

The papers said he had been wounded near Tanusevci, taken to a Kosovo 
hospital and died there.

Western officials had been urging restraint on Skopje. But Sunday, after 
three Macedonian soldiers were killed in the border area, they said they 
would understand if the Macedonian government took military action.
Skopje has been reluctant to use serious force so as not to raise tensions 
within its own ethnic Albanian population.

Tuesday, President Boris Trajkovski appeared to harden Macedonia's stance.

``I can assure you that not an inch of Macedonian territory will be given to 
extremists,'' he said. ``We have enough force to deal with terrorism but 
every assistance from the international community is welcome.''

Bulgarian Prime Minister Ivan Kostov said Sofia would send military supplies 
to neighboring Macedonia but not troops.

``We clearly state that we do not accept the terrorist activity in the region 
of Tanusevci as it undermines efforts for finding a lasting peaceful solution 
to the whole knot of problems in Kosovo,'' Kostov told parliament.