[ALBSA-Info] NATO Troops Help Macedonians Drive Away Ethnic Albanian Rebels

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

NATO Troops Help Macedonians Drive Away Ethnic Albanian Rebels

By CARLOTTA GALL

SKOPJE, Macedonia, March 8 — United States-led peacekeeping troops in 
southern Kosovo occupied a village on the border with Macedonia today, as 
part of a coordinated move with Macedonian military forces through the night 
and morning to flush out ethnic Albanian rebels from their mountain base.

The operation by some 300 international peacekeepers, most of them Americans, 
to occupy Tanusevci was the first offensive action by peacekeepers since they 
entered Kosovo in June 1999. It followed a move on Tuesday to secure the 
village of Mijak, just short of the border, where peacekeepers traded fire 
with a group of rebels, wounding several.

The operation signaled NATO's determination to act to help Macedonia suppress 
the incipient ethnic Albanian insurgency before it grows. Three Macedonians 
and at least two Albanians have been killed in skirmishes around Tanusevci in 
the last two weeks. The violence has alarmed not only the Macedonian 
government, but also the Atlantic alliance and Western governments who fear it
 could flare into a larger conflict, as has happened on Kosovo's eastern 
boundary with Serbia, where after more than a year it is already entrenched. 

Armed Albanians, thought to be local men from Macedonia who fought with their 
fellow Albanians against Serbian forces in Kosovo, appeared for the first 
time in the village of Tanusevci two weeks ago. Some of them wore uniforms 
and called themselves the National Liberation Army. Soon after, they engaged 
the Macedonian military in firefights.

NATO's first concern has been to seal the border and prevent the movement of 
men and weapons across the border with Kosovo. But today's action was more 
aggressive. A United States military spokesman said the peacekeepers' aim was 
to eliminate any safe havens that could be used by armed groups in southern 
Kosovo. Tanusevci, which they found empty and abandoned today, would now 
appear off bounds for any armed Albanians. 

But the rebels seem to have just moved on to other villages, even if they 
have been pinched by the joint action closing in on them from the north and 
south. Some rebels have been reported present in the nearby village of Malino 
among others, according to local journalists. 

"They move all the time. They like to move," said Snezana Lupevska, a 
reporter from AI television in Skopje, who has followed the story.

It is not clear what prompted the Albanians to abandon Tanusevci during the 
night, but American troops who took part in the operation said they had 
watched the rebels leave in a group through their night-vision sights.

Macedonian military officials said that a group of 50 to 60 armed men headed 
east in the night for a military post called Kudra Fura, just a mile from 
Tanusevci. Just after midnight the gunmen launched an attack on the military 
post, shooting for two hours and then moving around and continuing the attack 
from the east, a Macedonian army spokesman, Gorgi Trendafilov, said at a news 
conference in Skopje. 

He said that the Albanians had opened fire first and the Macedonian troops 
had responded when attacked. American officers who tracked the shooting from 
their positions told reporters they thought the Albanians had run into an 
ambush. 

In a well-coordinated effort, United States officers maintained constant 
communication throughout the night with Macedonian forces, even when they 
were engaged in the firefight with the Albanians, and then again in the 
morning as American troops moved in to take control of the village. 

"We have been receiving logistical support from KFOR and they helped all 
night," Mr Trendafilov said, using the acronym for the NATO peacekeepers. "We 
were in contact all the time."

Neither the peacekeepers nor the Macedonian troops suffered any casualties. 
It is not known whether any rebels were killed or wounded.

The operation marks a new step for NATO in the region since it intervened in 
Kosovo in 1999 against Yugoslav forces. American troops have been often 
criticized for doing nothing to stop Albanian rebel groups in the last year 
from establishing themselves just beyond Kosovo's eastern border. 

NATO today said it decided to allow Yugoslav military and police forces back 
into the three-mile wide exclusion zone that runs along Kosovo's boundary 
with Serbia. The Yugoslav army has complained that it has not been allowed to 
contain the increasingly violent insurgency in southern Serbia because it was 
excluded from the area since the end of NATO's war with Yugoslavia in 1999.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica reiterated those complaints today at a 
news conference in Belgrade, and said that NATO's decision was yet another 
proof that the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo had failed. But in recognition 
of the difficulty they face, Mr. Kostunica said it would be a dangerous job 
for the Yugoslav army to return to the zone. 

Albanian leaders in Kosovo and Macedonia criticized the decision, saying it 
would escalate tension in the region, since the Yugoslav army and police were 
hated and feared by Albanians for their repressive actions in Kosovo in 1998 
and 1999.

"It would a folly," said Arben Xhaferi, who heads the largest ethnic Albanian 
political party in Macedonia.