[ALBSA-Info] Presevo Albanians wary of buffer zone deployment

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Presevo Albanians wary of buffer zone deployment

By Fredrik Dahl and Dragan Stankovic

  
PRESEVO, Yugoslavia, March 14 (Reuters) - While NATO praised the Yugoslav 
army's move into a buffer zone along the Kosovo boundary on Wednesday, local 
ethnic Albanians voiced fear and mistrust at the sight of armed soldiers near 
their homes. 

"They are very nervous," said Riza Halimi, an ethnic Albanian community 
leader. "They have bitter memories." 

Serb forces stand accused by Western governments and international human 
rights organisations of committing widespread atrocities against Albanians in 
Kosovo during the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict. 

Halimi, mayor of the town of Presevo and leader of the Presevo Valley 
region's largest ethnic Albanian political party, alleged Serbian troops had 
also harassed Albanians in the border area during that time. His words were 
echoed by local people. 

"We think the worst. What can we expect now when they are back?" asked a man 
in his 30s in the rural village of Miratovac, saying he was too afraid to 
give his name to a reporter. 

But Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Barrons, a British officer with the NATO-led 
KFOR peacekeeping force observing the deployment, said that so far, the 
Yugoslav forces were acting correctly this time around. 

"So far, as far as I'm able to tell, the army has behaved perfectly well," he 
told Reuters outside the local school. 

NATO is giving Serbian forces the chance to show they can adhere to modern 
human rights standards now reformers have ousted Slobodan Milosevic's 
authoritarian regime in Belgrade. 

Under an agreement with NATO, the soldiers are not allowed to base themselves 
inside villages. But that seemed to be of little comfort to local Albanians. 

"NATO made a mistake to let them into the buffer zone," said Bekam Baciri, a 
man in his 40s, in the hillside village of Trnava inside the buffer zone. "We 
can't go out into the woods because the army is there with guns, pointing 
guns at us." 

Some villagers said they believed that soldiers who had been in Kosovo during 
the 1998-99 conflict and carried out massacres there were now among those dep
loying in the buffer zone. 

"It is the same army that was in Kosovo," said one man in Trnava, an 
unemployed bus driver. 

Bislim Bajrami, a local shopkeeper, said villagers were afraid even though 
Serbian officials had vowed they would be left in peace: "They say they are 
not going to bother us but we are not so sure."