[ALBSA-Info] Serbs drive out rebels, Macedonia issues ultimatum

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Serbs drive out rebels, Macedonia issues ultimatum

By Dragan Stankovic
  
ORAOVICA, Yugoslavia, May 15 (Reuters) - Serbian security forces drove ethnic 
Albanian guerrillas from a southern village on Tuesday while neighbouring 
Macedonia gave Albanian insurgents 48 hours to vacate its northern hills or 
face an army onslaught. 

The Yugoslav army commander in the volatile Presevo Valley said guerrillas 
had quit Oraovica, retreating into a NATO-drawn buffer strip around Kosovo 
after a swift Serb tank and infantry offensive aimed at stamping out the 
threat of a new Balkan war. 

General Ninoslav Krstic said 14 ethnic Albanian guerrillas had been killed in 
fighting over the village in the past few days before his forces took 
control. He also said 80 rebels who had changed out of their uniforms had 
been captured. 

The guerrillas gave lower casualty figures, saying they had lost a total of 
five men in the intense fighting. 

"We had two dead today and we had no choice but to withdraw," said one 
commander, known as "Profi." 

Further clashes between the two sides look likely as a NATO-approved May 24 
target date looms for the Yugoslav army to enter the only part of the buffer 
zone which is now off limits to it -- a guerrilla stronghold known as Sector 
B. 

After the rebels left Oraovica, Yugoslav troops manned checkpoints in the 
village. Broken windows bore testimony to fierce house-to-house fighting and 
streets were largely empty. 

During the fighting, mortar bombs landed in nearby Presevo. "I heard the 
mortar whiz over my head," said Enver Memeti, an Albanian who found the bomb 
in his front yard. 

Krstic said there had been no civilian casualties in the recapture of the 
village seized by the rebels on Saturday. But the fightng prompted many 
ethnic Albanians to flee. 

About 1,000 refugees crossed to Albanian-dominated Kosovo on Tuesday. Some 
9,000 have fled Macedonia for Kosovo in the past two weeks, raising the total 
since March to 20,000. 

Just over the mountainous border, a new Macedonian emergency government gave 
ethnic Albanian rebels 48 more hours to leave villages they have refused to 
quit despite days of shelling. 

The new coalition of Slav and Albanian parties admitted it expected to face 
more attacks after rebels fired a rocket at a security patrol. But it vowed 
to crush the insurgency, even if it needs longer than analysts expect the 
army to take in neighbouring Yugoslavia. 

"We should not build illusions that this whole thing will be resolved 
overnight," Defence Minister Vlado Buckovski said after the government set 
its Thursday noon deadline. 

"The new ministers do not have magic wands. But we are making good progress 
towards finding an end to this evil." 

FINAL WARNING 

The door-to-door stealth used by elite Serbian troops to fight their way back 
into Oraovica looked designed to prove to an anxious NATO there will be no 
repeat of the heavy shelling and village burning tactics they employed in 
Kosovo in 1998-99. 

But Macedonia has an extra headache restricting it to largely ineffective 
long-range bombardment -- villages seized by National Liberation Army (NLA) 
guerrillas just 30 km (20 miles) from the capital Skopje are still home to 
thousands of ethnic Albanian peasants who have not heeded calls to leave. 

"This is the last deadline we are giving to the civilians to leave the 
villages and the terrorists to leave their positions," government spokesman 
Antonio Milosovski said. "After this we will take adequate measures to 
finally eliminate the threat." 

To ensure the message gets through to villagers reportedly deprived of 
electricity, and hence unable to receive radio and TV warnings to leave, the 
army will drop leaflets into the area by helicopter. 

Rebels bent on armed struggle, who seem able to occupy Albanian-majority 
villages at will, will be harder to convince. 

RACE AGAINST TIME 

The NLA has popped up throughout the northern hills since it surfaced in 
February. Banished from talks, it vows to fight on. 

Serbia and Macedonia have the support of special NATO task forces on a 
three-way frontier with Kosovo, determined to stem a flow of weapons 
sustaining the extremists. 

Both countries hope political efforts to isolate gunmen by working to 
rebalance ethnic rights will make them disappear or clear the decks for a 
decisive military strike. 

But concrete progress on equality for ethnic Albanians in jobs, education and 
language rights is needed quickly before more shock killings that polarise 
ethnically mixed communities. 

Earlier on Tuesday, guerrillas fired a rocket in an abortive ambush of a 
police and army convoy in the village of Lisec, just outside the mainly 
Albanian northwestern town of Tetovo. 

An attack in the same region last month killed eight Macedonian soldiers, 
triggering anti-Albanian riots and the killing of two more police, which 
prompted the latest army offensive.