[ALBSA-Info] Macedonia urges NATO to seal Kosovo from strife

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Macedonia urges NATO to seal Kosovo from strife

By Anatoly Verbin

  
SKOPJE, March 9 (Reuters) - Macedonia urged NATO on Friday to seal off Kosovo 
to contain ethnic Albanian gunmen blamed for attacks that claimed more 
casualties on Friday. 

Macedonian Foreign Minister Srgan Kerim called on the alliance's troops in 
Kosovo to clamp down on guerrillas using the province as a staging post for 
assaults like one on a Macedonian convoy on Thursday night that killed a 
serviceman. 

The convoy of police and civilians remained trapped and under fire by 
presumed Albanian gunmen until Friday, when they were finally freed by 
reinforcements without further casualties. 

Angelique Kourounis, a freelance journalist, told reporters she had travelled 
in a part of the convoy which carried humanitarian aid -- a move she 
described as "a big mistake." 

The car in front of hers exploded some 20 minutes after entering the village 
of Brest near the border with Kosovo on Thursday evening and the driver was 
killed. 

A police spokesman said the jeep had first hit a landmine and then received 
two shots from a grenade launcher. 

Kourounis, still shaken from the ordeal, said she had spent an hour hiding by 
the side of a river. 

"When we thought it was finished and headed towards the car to get out of 
there, we were attacked by hand-held rocket grenade launchers," she said. 
Then came fire from machineguns. 

"They were obviously waiting for us. We jumped into mud and then hid inside a 
building. The whole time we could hear shooting outside." 

"In the morning, we saw men in black uniforms on the roofs of the houses in 
Brest shooting at us," she said. 

In nearby southern Serbia, a Serbian policeman was killed and several were 
wounded by ethnic Albanian guerrillas using mortars and rocket-propelled 
grenades, officials said. 

They were the latest casualties in a year of attacks by local Albanians from 
a buffer zone running along the border of the Albanian-dominated Kosovo 
province with the rest of Serbia. 

Violence there blamed on ethnic Albanians has spilled into northern Macedonia 
in the past few weeks, kindling international concern about renewed turmoil 
in the Balkans. 

"I travel tomorrow to Skopje to demonstrate support to Macedonia's stability 
and territorial integrity," French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said in 
Sarajevo. 

"France thinks that the international community needs to take control over 
the situation," he said. 

Ethnic Albanian fighters in the Presevo area of southern Serbia say their aim 
is to protect the local Albanian community from what they call Serbian 
persecution. Belgrade has denounced them as "terrorists" bent on expanding 
Kosovo's territory. 

The gunmen inside Macedonia have not stated their goals. 

MACEDONIA WANTS BEEFED-UP BORDER 

Kerim made clear that he did not expect NATO to deploy in his own country but 
he did want more effective monitoring of the entire 220 km (130 mile) 
frontier to prevent extremists sowing division within ethnically-mixed 
Macedonia. 

The ex-Yugoslav republic has a one-third Albanian minority whose relations 
with the Slav majority have been tense at times over the past decade, 
although the leading ethnic Albanian party is now part of Skopje's coalition 
government. 

NATO peacekeepers based in Kosovo have acted to seal a small segment of land 
near the Macedonian village of Tanusevci, occupied by presumed ethnic 
Albanian gunmen, but tighter control of the entire land border would be a 
mammoth job. 

Kerim suggested a formal buffer zone along Kosovo's border with Macedonia. 
That idea has already been rejected by NATO chiefs, but Kerim said the 
semantics were not important. 

"What matters is that we have effective measures on the border line," Kerim 
told reporters. 

Macedonia itself closed all border crossings with Kosovo on Friday because of 
security concerns. The closure, the second in a week, cut off supplies, 
forced truck traffic into huge queues and stranded dozens of international 
personnel. 

Macedonia has been ringing alarm bells, clearly heard in the West, for two 
weeks after a shadowy group which has not made any statements or identified 
itself on the ground occupied Tanusevci and engaged the Macedonian army in 
firefights. 

Kerim made clear he wanted NATO to take action on the border to demonstrate 
to local ethnic Albanians that Macedonia was coming under external, not 
internal, attack. 

The gunmen have been condemned by Macedonia's Albanian politicians and appear 
not to enjoy much local support. The violence in northern Macedonia has 
killed at least five in the past week, including four security force members 
and one rebel. 

The UNHCR refugee agency said in Pristina that in the last three weeks 890 
mostly women and children came to Kosovo from Macedonia. Another 265 moved 
from the border villages to other placess inside Macedonia.