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Rebels extend ceasefire as Belgrade calls on NATO
Last updated: 27 Nov 2000 17:42 GMT (Reuters)

By Andrew Gray

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Ethnic Albanian guerrillas
operating on the Kosovo-Serbia boundary said on
Monday they had extended a ceasefire as Yugoslav
President Vojislav Kostunica asked NATO and the
United Nations for help to stop them.

Serbian security forces showed a heavy presence in
the region as a deadline set by Belgrade for NATO
peacekeepers in Kosovo to stamp out cross-border
guerrilla attacks on Serbian police ticked ever closer.

Serbia has said it will send police reinforcements into
a buffer zone on its territory next to the border if the
guerrillas are not brought under control by 1800 GMT
on Monday.

The rebels have been involved in sporadic clashes
with Serbian security forces this year. A fierce
upsurge last week left four Serb police dead. It also
prompted more than 2,000 people to flee their homes,
the U.N. refugee agency said.

The area has been generally calm over the past few
days, but Serbian officials said a tractor carrying a
group of ethnic Albanians overnight into Monday
struck a landmine planted by the rebels, killing at
least one person.

Reformers backing new president Kostunica, hailed by
the West as a democrat, insisted however that they
wanted to find a peaceful solution to the crisis with
international help and would not be provoked into a
new Kosovo-style conflict.

BELGRADE WANTS REBEL WITHDRAWAL

A spokesman for the rebels' political wing said they
had agreed to extend a weekend ceasefire until
Friday after consultations with the KFOR
peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

"KFOR has the full right to discuss in our name with
Yugoslav authorities and any decision achieved would
be fully accepted by the UCPMB," Shaqir Shaqiri told
Reuters by telephone. "We agreed with KFOR to
continue negotiations."

Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic welcomed
the move but said he also wanted the rebels to pull
out of the five km (three mile) wide buffer zone, set
up as part of the deal which ended last year's NATO
bombing and allowed KFOR to enter Kosovo.

Kostunica said he had asked NATO and the U.N. to
look again at that agreement, which prohibits
Yugoslav soldiers or Serbian special forces from
entering the zone, as it was evident international
authorities had failed to deal with the rebels.

"It is crystal clear that KFOR and UNMIK (the U.N.
Mission in Kosovo) have failed to do their part of the
job properly," Kostunica told reporters in Vienna,
where he marked his country's admission to the OSCE
European security body.

KFOR said it was actively working to reduce tension in
the boundary area and urged restraint.

"All responsible leaders are urged to denounce and
deter violence by armed insurgents," KFOR spokesman
Flight Lieutenant Mark Whitty said. "Unprovoked
offensive actions by either side will reduce the
stability in the region."

The guerrilla group, known as the Presevo, Medvedja
and Bujanovac Liberation Army and named after three
border municipalities, says it is protecting the area's
ethnic Albanians from abuses and intimidation by Serb
police.

SYMPATHY FOR SERBIAN POSITION

Serbia, under its new leadership, is winning growing
international sympathy for its stance that the
guerrillas are terrorists determined to separate the
region and join it with ethnic Albanian-dominated
Kosovo.

The Russian army's foreign relations chief,
Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, told Interfax news
agency on Monday: "Illegal armed groups should be
disarmed and driven from the security zone."

Ivashov said Russia backed Yugoslavia's call for the
United Nations to beef up security on the Kosovo
border.

"They want to present themselves as some kind of
rebels, people whose basic rights are being violated,
who are exposed to terror and repression, when really
there's none of that going on," said Vladan Batic, a
leading Serbian reformer.

"Both the Serbs and the Albanians in these areas
must completely come to terms with the fact that
they have to live together, regardless of everything,"
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic told
Belgrade's B-92 radio.

"We will achieve this goal through a wise approach,
not by methods typical of the period now behind us,"
he added. "Although the Albanian extremists expected
us to do something rash, we will take no such action."

The remote and hilly region was tense ahead of the
deadline, after a large build-up of police and army
personnel, armoured vehicles and weaponry over the
past few days and reports that some civilians were
also carrying weapons.

The U.N. refugee agency said more than 2,000 people
had come into Kosovo in the days following the
upsurge in violence, with 1,600 crossing the boundary
on Sunday alone. Many were worried that fierce
fighting could erupt after the Serbian deadline.