http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=224182&section=Kosovo

KFOR Finds More Weapons by Kosovo-Serbia Boundary

PRISTINA, Nov 25, 2000 -- (Reuters) NATO-led peacekeepers said on Friday
they had found more weapons in an area of Kosovo close to a security zone in
Serbia proper where an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group operates.

A spokesman said KFOR peacekeepers had made the seizure on Thursday.
Earlier in the day at the same location, they had monitored by radar mortar
rounds which appeared to be fired into the zone from the Kosovo boundary.

The Yugoslav government has said ethnic Albanian guerrillas have launched fierce
attacks against Serb police checkpoints in the zone this week. Serb officials
say
four policemen are believed to have been killed in the attacks.

The NATO-led KFOR force said on Thursday it had stepped up monitoring and
boundary patrols in response to the violence.

The KFOR spokesman said soldiers had gone to the scene of the activity seen on
the radar and found one mortar tube, 16 mortar rounds, one rocket-propelled
grenade launcher, five rockets, six hand grenades and one heavy machinegun."

"This operation comes as a result of our increased security measures and
increased patrols on the boundary," he told Reuters. "KFOR will not tolerate
Kosovo as a staging area for exporting violence."

He also said KFOR had monitored small arms fire exchanges in the early evening
on Thursday, but did not elaborate.

The news came a day after KFOR peacekeepers said they had detained 10
ethnic Albanians suspected of launching attacks on southern Serbia, and seized a
truckload of weapons.

UPSURGE IN FIGHTING

The arrests of the black-clad men on Kosovo's border were made on
Wednesday. Serb officials say one policeman was killed and three others are
missing, presumed killed, in fighting which began on Tuesday and continued
through the night.

KFOR said it had observed an upsurge in fighting, which it blamed squarely on
the guerrilla group.

But the alliance also warned Belgrade not to send soldiers or special police
into
the five km (three mile) wide boundary buffer zone, established under the deal
governing the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo and ending NATO's
bombing campaign.

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.

Several hundred Kosovo Serbs, unable to return to the province because of the
clashes in southern Serbia, have set up a roadblock on the motorway between the
town of Nis and the Macedonian capital Skopje, the agency added.

On the Kosovo side, the NATO-led KFOR force has closed down a border
crossing which leads to Dobrosin, a small village just inside Serbia thought to
be a
base for the rebels.

Their group, the Liberation Army for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac
(UCPMB), is believed to have been involved in several clashes with Serb police
over the last year.

The group is named after three predominantly ethnic Albanian municipalities in
an
area east of Kosovo.

Local Albanians in the region have complained of harassment and intimidation by
Serb police. Both Serb and Western officials have accused the UCPMB of trying
to provoke violence and say it does not even have broad support among local
Albanians.