http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/world/30YUGO.html

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Thursday, November 30, 2000

Serb Police, Albanian Rebels and Cowering Villagers

By CARLOTTA GALL

LUCANE, Serbia, Nov. 29 — Along the deserted road to this village,
Serbian special police forces lie in the undergrowth, warm themselves by
campfire and stand watch under the eaves of a house. Lucane marks the
front line in a growing confrontation with Albanian militants who seized
positions in the nearby hills last week.

The scene was like many in Kosovo last year, of the Serbian police and
Albanian rebels threatening each other's positions, while villagers
cowered in the middle. But this is Serbia proper, several miles inside
the Kosovo boundary and near a demilitarized buffer zone. The
encroachment of armed Albanians over some months — particularly the way
they routed Serbian units last week, killing four police officers — has
alarmed Serbians. It has also presented a challenge to the new
government of President Vojislav Kostunica.

The rebels, who the Serbs say number at least 200, are an offspring of
the Kosovo Liberation Army who have vowed to bring independence for the
Albanians in towns like Lucane, in the Presevo valley of Serbia.

Today the special police forces retook control of the village,
re-establishing a checkpoint in the center that they had to abandon last
week. They met no resistance. The village is now deserted but for a few
old residents, but by nightfall the police were jumpy, on alert against
attack.

"The terrorists are still there in the hills; they are probably
regrouping," said one policeman. Others were in the village, not in
houses but in the undergrowth, he said.

President Kostunica, who has been in power for just a few weeks, has
handled the crisis with calm, reassuring the Serbian and Albanian
communities in the area, and steadying the aggressive talk of the
military and the police. Yet he has sent mixed signals about his
intentions.

He has insisted that the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo take
responsibility for curbing the activities of the Albanian militants, and
has advocated a political solution. Yet at the same time, he sent in
police forces to retake the village, just a mile from the town of
Bujanovac. Its population, 50,000, is nearly half Serbian.

Lucane is at the edge of the demilitarized zone. Under the agreement
that ended NATO's war with Yugoslavia last year, the Yugoslav Army
agreed to withdraw from Kosovo and move troops and armor outside the
three-mile buffer. Only lightly armed police officers are allowed to
patrol the buffer area, which is populated almost entirely by ethnic
Albanians.

It is not clear whether the Serbian police intend to push past Lucane,
into the buffer zone. Yet their position in Lucane is hardly
comfortable, with the Albanian position just above them in the hills.

Novica Zdravkovic, the Serbian chief of police of the region, played
down today's action, saying the police had merely moved their checkpoint
forward a few hundred meters.

"Our forces are not going to make any offensive actions. They are
defensive forces, and they will not react unless attacked," he said. The
solution is one that Yugoslavia's politicians, not the police, should
settle, he said during a brief visit here today. "It's not up to us. We
are staying here."

But backing up his police at Lucane are heavily armed Serbian military
and special police forces, who have moved tanks, artillery and scores of
men into the region. The special police forces were highly visible
today, in their Hummer armored vehicles. The army has ranged tanks along
the length of the hills, their guns turned westward onto Albanian
villages in the buffer zone.

Ranged against them, they say, are the Albanian rebels, who call
themselves the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, or
the three main population centers in the region.

The buffer zone that borders Kosovo is peopled almost entirely by
Albanians — 16 of the 17 villages are Albanian — and is now controlled
by the rebel group. Most of the villages are empty since 3,000 Albanians
left their homes and sought refuge in Kosovo and Macedonia. Two Albanian
children and a woman were killed when their tractor hit a mine as they
fled to Kosovo.

There have been no clashes for several days now, and the valley lay in
silence today. Both sides have agreed to an indefinite cease-fire,
brokered by the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo. But journalists
who followed the Serbian operation into Lucane today said the troops
were armed and ready to fire if they met opposition.

Local Albanians in the Presevo area have been alarmed by the build- up
of the very forces that killed and caused such havoc in Kosovo. Mr.
Kostunica has brought a steadying control over the military and the
police and represents a welcome change from Slobodan Milosevic, said
Shaip Kamberi, who heads an Albanian human rights group in Bujanovac.

"There is a more correct attitude among the police than that we have
seen all year," he said, "even though this is a particularly tense
moment. There is no doubt it is the influence of Kostunica."

But Mr. Kamberi warned that there were conflicting signals issuing from
the Serbian and Yugoslav leadership. The police had issued an ultimatum
to the Albanian militants, while Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic met
with local Albanian leaders and described the ultimatum as
"unfortunate."

Albanians in the village of Trnovac, down the road from Lucane, appeared
nervous today and reluctant to talk. "It is very dangerous right now.
The police and army could come in here at any time," said an 18-year-old
student who supports the rebels.


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