[ALBSA-Info] NATO Continues Presevo Mediation

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

NATO Continues Presevo Mediation

By DRAGAN ILIC
  
BUJANOVAC, Yugoslavia (AP) - NATO resumed efforts Sunday to mediate a 
cease-fire between ethnic Albanian rebels and Yugoslav forces after the 
insurgents rejected plans to allow Yugoslav police to help curb weapons 
smuggling around Kosovo's borders. 

Clashes were reported overnight in the contested Presevo Valley of southern 
Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic. Government spokesman Milan Kerkovic said 
Sunday that Yugoslav army troops ``neutralized two bunkers'' of the ethnic 
Albanian ``terrorists'' but gave no details. 

NATO special envoy Pieter Feith met with ethnic Albanian rebels for nearly 
three hours Saturday trying to persuade them to agree to a cease-fire. 
However, the rebels objected to a Serb proposal to send special police into 
an ethnically mixed village near the tripartite border among Macedonia, 
Kosovo and the rest of southern Serbia. 

Feith returned to this southern Serb town Sunday for talks with Yugoslav 
authorities, but it appeared unlikely he would meet with the rebels until 
Monday. 

NATO wants to use the Serb special police units to help curb weapons 
smuggling between ethnic Albanian rebels in the Presevo Valley and other 
ethnic Albanian insurgents operating to the southwest in Macedonia. 

The Western alliance agreed last week to allow limited numbers of heavily 
armed Yugoslav forces into a three-mile-wide buffer zone separating Kosovo 
from the rest of southern Serbia. 

NATO set up the zone in June 1999 when NATO-led peacekeepers took over Kosovo 
from Yugoslav forces after the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia to force 
President Slobodan Milosevic to stop his crackdown on Kosovo Albanian 
separatists. 

However, NATO troops were unable to disarm all Kosovo militant groups, and 
the conflict between ethnic Albanians and their Slavic neighbors appears to 
be spreading beyond the province's borders. 

In Belgrade, Serbia's new, democratic prime minister warned that sooner or 
later, NATO peacekepers in Kosovo must confront ethnic Albanian extremists or 
risk defeat and humiliation. 

``The international forces need to realize that they will either confront 
ethnic Albanian extremism or be defeated ... and humiliated,'' Zoran Djindjic 
told the newspaper Glas. He said NATO ``is facing the situation in which the 
baby it once nursed is now beginning to bite.'' 

Concern has focused on the stability of Macedonia, an impoverished, 
landlocked former Yugoslav republic which has a sizable ethnic Albanian 
minority. 

On Saturday, ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia outlined their demands for 
the first time, calling for constitutional changes that would define the 
country as ``a state of two constituent peoples - Macedonian and Albanian'' 
and grant broad rights and privileges to its ethnic Albanian minority. 

About 25 percent of Macedonia's 2 million people are ethnic Albanian. 

The rebel National Liberation Army also called for international mediation to 
end the conflict and urged other countries to remain neutral despite broad 
international support for the Macedonian government. 

In a sign of public sympathy for Macedonia's rebels, three ethnic Albanian 
organizations in Macedonia accused the government Saturday of terrorizing 
ethnic Albanians. 

The Alliance of Albanian Women in Macedonia, the Association of Albanian 
Prisoners and the Democratic Forum for Protection of Human Rights issued a 
statement calling the unrest ``a consequence of discrimination.'' 

Albanians in Macedonia ``have no other choice but to take up arms and defend 
their cultural and national existence,'' they said. 

Some of the rebel demands, such as constitutional changes and social reform, 
have long been sought by mainstream ethnic Albanian political parties in 
Macedonia.