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Sunday, November 26 5:18 AM SGT

Albanian separatists hand over Serb bodies after ceasefire pact

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Nov 25 (AFP) -

Albanian separatists handed the bodies of three slain Serb policemen over to
NATO hours after the
two parties agreed on a ceasefire to end days of fighting in southeast Serbia.

Serbia had threatened to return forces to the demilitarized zone around Kosovo
if the NATO-led
peacekeepers of the Kosovo Force (KFOR) failed to put an end guerrilla attacks
by Monday
evening.

"The Serbian ministry of interior police and the armed group of the Presevo
valley agreed a ceasefire
last night (Friday)," said KFOR spokesman Flight Lieutenant Mark Whitty.

Whitty said the fledgling ceasefire brokered by the peacekeeping force appeared
to be holding
through its first hours.

Colonel Serge Labbe, who oversaw the discussions said that the provisional
ceasefire would last 72
hours from 7:00 pm Friday, a time scale which corresponds exactly to the
deadline given by a Serb
minister for the situation to be resolved.

For their part, the rebel Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac
(UPCMB) told
AFP that they had called a indefinite ceasefire, but would respond if attacked.

"From midnight we have been observing a ceasefire," said Shefket Musliu, the
UPCMB's general
commander, "It will be respected by our side, I can't speak for the other side
but we will stay in our
positions."

The rebel army continues to insist that Serb and Yugoslav forces must leave the
Presevo valley
region, but its leaders said they hoped this could be arranged without further
bloodshed.

"Why should Serb police come here? All we want is to live free like everyone
else in the world,"
Musliu said.

AFP journalists on both sides of the new frontline confirmed that all was calm
Saturday following
four days of sporadic fighting sparked by an UCPMB offensive which led to the
capture of the
border town of Konculj and the death of three Serb policemen.

The rebels are now in control of the road leading between the Serb town of
Bujanovac and Kosovo
where it passes into the buffer zone.

In Merdare, another border town north of the disputed zone, Albanian separatists
handed NATO
the three bodies.

Whitty said the hand-over came as a "result of the ceasefire which has been
agreed between KFOR,
the Serbian authorities and the UCPMB."

"We have been able, through this process, to facilitate the recovery of the
three policemen who died
in the ground safety zone," he said.

KFOR air-lifted the bodies to a safe area further north, before transporting
them by truck to
Yugoslav officials on other side of the border having been given a 15-minute
"special authorisation"
to enter Serb territory.

The violence and the ultimatum overshadowed the EU-Balkans Summit in Zagreb,
where Yugoslav
President Vojislav Kostunica dubbed the Kosovo issue "the biggest problem in
Europe," and called
into question the future of last year's ceasefire agreement between NATO and
Belgrade.

The tense situation also prevented Kostunica from attending a gathering of the
regional cooperation
organisation, the Central European Initiative (CEI), which met to officially
reintegrate Belgrade after
years of isolation.

The buffer zone is a product of the Military Technical Agreement signed in
Kumanovo, Macedonia,
in June last year ahead of the KFOR deployment in Kosovo.

Under its terms, Yugoslav armed forces are not allowed into the zone, which
traces the province's
borders with Serbia and Montenegro and in the Presevo valley region has a
predominantly ethnic
Albanian population.

The Serb police who area allowed to patrol the zone are not allowed to deploy
weapons more
powerful than a 12 millimetre heavy machine gun. Officers told AFP that they
were outgunned by the
rebels and complained that they were hamstrung by the ceasefire deal.

In Konculj and the surrounding villages AFP saw UPCMB fighters armed with heavy
machine guns,
portable rocket launchers, mortars, rifle grenades and assault rifles.

One of three interior ministers in Kostunica's government, Bozo Prelevic,
estimated the number of
rebels in the buffer zone at between 800 and 1,000. Serbian police in the area
put the figure at 400.
Rebel commander Vullnet Ibishi refused to tell AFP how many men were deployed,
describing it as
a "military secret."

The UN refugee agency office in Pristina said Friday that some 600 people had
fled Serbia for
Kosovo since the start of the latest round of fighting.