http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=225251&section=Kosovo

Yugoslav Army Points Guns at Kosovo Border Zone

BUJANOVAC, Nov 29, 2000 -- (Reuters) Yugoslav army tanks and howitzers
on Tuesday pointed their barrels towards ethnic Albanian guerrillas in hills
along
southern Serbia's tense boundary with Kosovo.

Soldiers stood behind tanks dug deep into the ground, monitoring what they said
were mortar positions of an armed group blamed for an upsurge in fighting last
week which left four Serbian policemen dead.

While both sides observed an apparent ceasefire, the army made clear it would
not hesitate to respond if attacked outside a five km (three-mile) wide buffer
zone
next to Kosovo. The Albanian guerrillas have their base in the zone.

Yugoslav security forces, including police, have strengthened their presence in
the
hilly and remote area in the past few days.

"With its combat readiness the army is cooling down the hot heads of Albanian
bandits and aims to send them back where they belong," General Vladimir
Lazarevic, commander of the Yugoslav Third Army, told Reuters.

The army favors a political solution and supports diplomacy as the way to
resolve
the situation, he told Reuters.

But, Lazarevic warned, "there will not be any bargaining if there are any
attacks
outside the five-km safety zone bordering Kosovo".

ARMY IN CONTROL

He said the army was in control of the area outside the buffer strip while
Serbian
police were present "in full force to control the zone from the inside".

Under a 1999 agreement between NATO and Belgrade, only local police are
allowed into the security belt.

The Presevo Valley, an area inside Serbia proper with a large ethnic Albanian
population, has been generally calm in recent days, but nobody rules out the
risk
of renewed violence.

The rebels say they have been protecting ethnic Albanians in the area from
abuses
and intimidation by Serb police.

Belgrade denounce them as separatists intent on uniting the area with ethnic
Albanian-dominated Kosovo.

The violence is widely seen as a test for Yugoslavia's new democratic leadership
under President Vojislav Kostunica, who visited the town of Bujanovac close to
the boundary on Monday evening to show solidarity with anxious local residents.

Greeted by about 1,000 cheering people, Kostunica pledged diplomacy would
prevail over deadly force.

In another sign of reduced tension, the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo
said on Tuesday that the guerrillas and Serbian authorities have agreed to
suspend
fighting indefinitely.

A local Albanian leader said the sporadic clashes which have plagued the region
were the result of increased tension that began when Yugoslav security forces
withdrawing from Kosovo after last year's NATO bombing campaign deployed in
the region.

"With them a kind of anti-Albanian feeling came as well," Riza Halimi, mayor of
the town of Presevo, told Reuters.

In the beginning there were only small groups of armed ethnic Albanians, but
other people joined them as tension increased between the two ethnic groups, he
said.

Halimi said about 200 ethnic Albanians from the Presevo Valley took part in the
1998-99 fighting against Serbian security forces in Kosovo and that some former
guerrillas from the province now had come to "help out".

But he also said talks with Serbian government representatives on Monday had
increased hopes that peace would prevail. "The problem must be solved
peacefully."

Taking a similar line, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic said he was
pleasantly surprised by his talks with local Serb and Albanian officials in the
region, saying they had no intention of getting into any kind of "war
adventures."

"This is a solid base to resolve the entire problem in a peaceful and democratic
way," Covic told reporters in Belgrade.