[ALBSA-Info] Albanians Attack Macedonian Forces

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Albanians Attack Macedonian Forces

By GEORGE JAHN

  
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - Ethnic Albanian rebels attacked Macedonian forces 
near a northern village Friday, trapping senior government officials for 
hours, despite U.S. moves to cut the flow of supplies to the insurgents from 
Kosovo. 

About seven miles to the northeast, ethnic Albanian gunmen in the Presevo 
Valley of Yugoslavia's main republic Serbia launched a strong attack against 
Serb police, killing one officer and wounding two others, Serb officials 
said. 

Five Serb civilians were missing from the area and feared kidnapped by the 
rebels, Serb police said. Attacks by ethnic Albanian insurgents in Macedonia 
and southern Serbia - just beyond Kosovo's borders - have raised fears of a 
new Balkan conflict. 

Macedonia closed its border with Kosovo on Friday for security reasons, 
allowing only foreign diplomats and international organizations to pass. Most 
supplies for Kosovo's civilians and international peacekeepers enter the 
province from Macedonia. 

The fighting in northern Macedonia started late Thursday when insurgents 
ambushed a government convoy in the village of Brest, killing a driver. 
Shooting continued Friday, trapping up to 100 officials in the convoy - 
including the country's deputy interior minister, police sources said. 

Macedonian police evacuated the people in the convoy later in the day, police 
spokesman Stevo Pendarovski said. 

The rebels were among those who cleared the hamlet of Tanusevci, on the 
Kosovo border, early Thursday, Pendarovski said. The attackers later ``were 
joined by new forces from an unidentified area of Kosovo.'' 

After the rebels left, U.S. peacekeepers took over Tanusevci and promised to 
prevent Kosovo from becoming a safe haven for insurgents. 

If Pendarovski's account is accurate, it would show the difficulty faced by 
U.S. and other NATO-led peacekeepers in trying to seal the mountainous, 
forested border. 

The American move into the border region was the most robust response so far 
by the NATO-led peacekeeping force to ethnic Albanian rebel activity that is 
spreading from Kosovo to other nearby Albanian-speaking areas. 

Additionally, NATO agreed Thursday to allow Yugoslav troops to take up 
positions in the southern part of a buffer zone around Kosovo to curb ethnic 
Albanian smuggling from Macedonia into the Presevo Valley. 

It's an area where the borders of Macedonia, Kosovo and the rest of Serbia 
meet. 

Serb officials said Friday's attack in the Presevo Valley occurred in the 
village of Lucane - half of which is controlled by Serb forces, the other 
half by ethnic Albanian fighters. Fighting was continuing Friday afternoon. 

The unrest around Kosovo's borders has raised concern about the stability of 
Macedonia, an impoverished, landlocked country of 2 million people - 25 
percent of them ethnic Albanians. 

Greece announced Friday it would send military aid - including five trucks, 
radios, medical supplies and bulletproof vests - to its northern neighbor. 
Bulgaria dispatched a 10-truck convoy of military supplies to Macedonia on 
Thursday, and Bulgarian Prime Minister Ivan Kostov arrived for a two-day 
visit to show solidarity with the Macedonians. 

In Washington, NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson expressed confidence 
that Kosovo peacekeepers can put an end to attacks by ethnic Albanian rebels 
along the border with Macedonia. 

``Their robust presence, I believe, is having an effect on those people who 
use that whole border area - ill-defined as it is, heavily mined as it is - 
as a sort of adventure playground for violence,'' Robertson said Thursday at 
a news conference with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. 

Moves to strengthen border security and allow Yugoslav troops into the buffer 
zone represent a major change in the mission of NATO-led peacekeepers, who 
entered Kosovo in June 1999 after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign to force 
then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to halt his crackdown on Kosovo 
Albanian separatists. 

At first, NATO's mission was to protect the province's ethnic Albanian 
population. With rebel activity spreading, the alliance now faces the task of 
curbing ethnic Albanian militants - a move which could put them in conflict 
with the province's overwhelmingly Albanian majority.