[ALBSA-Info] Macedonia violence spreads after gunmen squeezed

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Macedonia violence spreads after gunmen squeezed

By Philippa Fletcher

  
SKOPJE, March 9 (Reuters) - Macedonia faced a growing extremist threat within 
its territory on Friday after a second fatal attack on its security forces, 
apparently by ethnic Albanian gunmen pushed from their base on the border 
with Kosovo by U.S.-led peacekeepers. 

Twin moves by NATO on Thursday -- the peacekeepers' push on the ground in 
Kosovo and a decision in Brussels to let Yugoslav troops into part of a 
buffer zone alongside Macedonia -- were designed to squeeze the shadowy group 
from two directions. 

But instead of bringing calm to Macedonia, which fears the gunmen may trigger 
a revolt among its ethnic Albanian minority, the moves were followed by what 
the authorities said was a grenade attack on a convoy that killed one 
policeman. 

Yugoslav President Vojslav Kostunica, fearing similar attacks on his troops 
as they move into the zone at some point in the next few days, lashed out at 
NATO, accused it of having encouraged such extremism. 

"KFOR is abandoning protection of the border and is inviting our army to be 
in the crossfire," he told a news conference, adding KFOR had stimulated 
aspirations for a Greater Albania because it was too concerned for its own 
troops' safety. 

Kostunica accepted NATO's plan to let Serb troops into the buffer zone but 
accused the alliance of sending his forces into the crossfire instead of 
dealing with the problem itself. 

"France and Germany condemn the extremists' violent action on the northern 
border with Macedonia and the Presevo valley, which is aimed at destabilising 
the region," the two countries' foreign ministers said in Paris. 

Russia said it was sending its foreign minister to the region soon and 
neighbouring Bulgaria also stepped in, promising "hundreds of tonnes" of 
military supplies to help Skopje in its fight against the shadowy group that 
has threatened to bring a decade of Balkan ethnic conflict to a hitherto 
peaceful country. 

Macedonia raised the alarm two weeks ago after a clash between its security 
forces and ethnic Albanian gunmen who had occupied Tanusevci on the border 
with majority Albanian Kosovo, under international protection since 1999. 

A week later the crisis escalated when three Macedonian troops were killed, 
two of them by a landmine well inside the country. Thursday night brought a 
fourth victim, a policeman said by a police source to have been blown up in 
his jeep by a shoulder-launched grenade as he led a convoy of officials 
through the border area. 

In Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and NATO 
Secretary-General George Robertson played down the significance of the 
renewed violence. 

"That's one of the risks of a peacekeeper," Rumsfeld said after talks with 
Robertson. 

"Shooting is shooting, and it has been going on throughout the period that 
troops have been there in one level or another. It has been relatively minor 
and it remains relatively modest." 

Robertson told reporters the skirmishes were reason for concern, but that a 
more "robust presence" in peacekeeping patrols in the area was reducing the 
violence. 

"Some of the upsurge in violence has been to do with the fact that these 
insurgents, these ethnic Albanian armed groups and others know that their 
time is coming to an end," he said. 

The United States has 5,600 peacekeeping troops in Kosovo and another 4,400 
in Bosnia. 

Diplomats say the main problem is preventing the guerrillas operating freely 
across the unmarked mountain borders between Kosovo, Macedonia and southern 
Serbia.