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Serbia ready to send police to Kosovo buffer zone
Last updated: 24 Nov 2000 18:45 GMT (Reuters)

By Julijana Mojsilovic

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia has threatened to send police
reinforcements into a buffer zone bordering Kosovo if
NATO-led peacekeepers fail to halt an upsurge in attacks
by ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the remote area.

Serbia's Joint Interior Minister Bozo Prelevic gave the
KFOR peacekeeping force 72 hours, starting from 6
p.m. on Friday, to crack down on the guerrillas. He
said the deadline had been agreed with the NATO-led
force.

"By the deadline, we expect KFOR to do everything
for the attacks by ethnic Albanian terrorists to stop,"
Prelevic told a news conference. "If they fail, Serb
police will go back there with their available means."

Both Serbian and KFOR officials say that ethnic
Albanian guerrillas have attacked Serb police in the
border area recently in an increase in violence.
Serbian officials say four police officers are believed
to have died in attacks earlier this week.

Under an agreement between NATO and Yugoslav
authorities, no Yugoslav or Serb forces except local
police are allowed inside the five-km (three-mile) wide
security zone next to Kosovo without permission from
the KFOR commander.

Belgrade's statement came as the U.N. refugee
agency said several hundred people had fled from
villages in Serbia proper into Kosovo to escape the
violence.

"Some people were visibly upset by the shooting and
shelling," spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort for
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) told reporters in the Kosovo capital Pristina.

SCRAMBLE FOR SHELTER

She said about 200 people from the village of Lucane
had crossed into Kosovo in tractors and cars over a
two-hour period on Thursday.

UNHCR officials have seen about 600 people entering
the province over the past two days, and are
scrambling to prepare temporary housing for a larger
influx, she said.

In Serbia, angry Kosovo Serb protesters -- unable to
return to the province because of the clashes -- set
up a roadblock on the motorway between the town of
Nis and the Macedonian capital Skopje near the town
of Bujanovac.

There was no immediate comment on the minister's
announcement from KFOR, which has blamed the
increase in fighting squarely on the ethnic Albanian
guerrillas.

The independent Beta news agency said on Friday
that fighting between Serb security forces and the
guerrillas continued on Thursday evening along the
administrative border between Serbia proper and
Kosovo, but reported no casualties.

The guerrilla group says it is defending ethnic
Albanians from abuses by Serb security forces.
Serbian and Western officials say the group is staging
the attacks in the hope of provoking a wider conflict
between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.

Prelevic said the road linking Bujanovac in southern
Serbia and Gnjilane in Kosovo was closed because
guerrillas were in the area. "It's obvious that terrorists
entered the zone from Kosovo. While most of the
attacks came from within the zone, some firing also
came from inside Kosovo," Prelevic said.

He said Serb police had regular contacts with KFOR
generals, who had assured the police they would
prevent further incidents.

"Serb police are not going to provoke an international
incident and that's why we are going to work not on
our own, but with diplomats and media in our effort to
resolve this problem."

KFOR said on Friday it had found weapons including a
mortar tube, 16 mortar rounds and a rocket propelled
grenade launcher near the border on Thursday. On
Wednesday peacekeepers seized a truckload of
weapons near the boundary and detained 10
suspected guerrillas in two separate operations.

Serb Police General Obrad Stevanovic said it was
obvious that the "terrorism" came from Kosovo. "That
doesn't mean that Russians and Americans support it
within the security zone, but their duty is to prevent
it," he told the news conference.