[ALBSA-Info] Russian foreign minister to visit Balkan region

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Russian foreign minister to visit Balkan region

  
MOSCOW, March 8 (Reuters) - Russia's envoy to the United Nations said on 
Thursday that Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov would soon visit the Balkan region 
in the wake of clashes on the border between Kosovo and Macedonia. 

Russia has protested over what it says are attacks by Albanian extremists on 
Macedonia, which it says are aimed at destabilising the whole Balkan region. 

"The Russian foreign minister will soon go there, specially to see what can 
be done in the Balkans," Sergei Lavrov told Russian public ORT television as 
he spoke about a United Nations Security Council decision on Wednesday to 
condemn the violence. 

"Russia's leadership is worried about the growing wave of extremism spreading 
from Kosovo into neighbouring regions of Serbia and now into Macedonia," he 
said. He gave no dates for Ivanov's trip to the region, nor where exactly he 
would go. 

U.S.-led peacekeepers earlier on Thursday drove ethnic Albanian gunmen from a 
village they had used to attack Macedonia. NATO is also to let Serbian forces 
into a buffer zone to stop rebels there linking with those harrying 
Macedonia. 

The Foreign Ministry said in a separate statement that the U.N. Security 
Council had to make sure that the Albanian extremists' actions had to be 
stopped. 

"If they continue, the Council must take the necessary measures," the 
statement said.