THE GUARDIAN: (LONDON)
Thursday November 30, 2000
K-FOR SPLIT ON POLICING BORDER
Nicholas Wood in Pristina
France broke ranks with its Nato allies yesterday on how the peacekeeping forces in Kosovo should handle the fighting between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serbian troops in the Preshevo valley area of Serbia, on the Kosovan border.
The foreign ministry in Paris said that an agreement which prevents Yugoslav troops from entering the three-mile buffer zone might have to be "adapted". A Nato spokesman said that was not possible.
The suggestion came after further Yugoslav troop movements in the valley. Senior Serbian politicians have warned that they will use "any means necessary" to regain border territory lost to the Albanian separatists in recent fighting.
A Serbian police unit retook the strategic village of Lucane, just inside Serbia, yesterday. Backed by two armoured vehicles, it entered the village unopposed by Albanian militants who watched from afar.
Vojslav Kostunica, the Yugoslav president, said on Monday that K-For had failed to prevent the rebels using the border zone to attack Serbian forces. "It's crystal clear that K-For and Unmik [the UN administration in Kosovo] have failed to do their part of the job properly," he said.
Flight-Lieutenant Mark Whitty, the K-For spokesman, said that renegotiating the accord on the buffer zone agreed by Nato and the Yugoslav government at the end of the war in Kosovo was not a possibility.
"No one is looking at changing the military technical agreement. We have every confidence in it," he said.
An indefinite ceasefire has been agreed by both sides while attempts are made to find a solution to the clashes.
But yesterday Norwegian K-For soldiers stopped a truck in central Kosovo containing landmines, more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, mortars, and uniforms bearing the initials UCMPB, the badge of the rebels who want three mainly Albanian populated towns in Serbia returned to an independent Kosovo.
The Nato secretary general, Lord George Robertson, raised the prospect of K-For and Serbia deploying joint inspection teams on the border in an attempt to contain the rebels.
Speaking in Brussels, he denied reports that Nato intended to patrol the region with Yugoslav army troops. He also appeared to rule out Nato intervening by itself in the border zone.
But the prospect of Serbian police and Nato troops working together in the area is unlikely to be well received by ethnic Albanians. The Serbian interior ministry police are accused of committing widespread human rights abuses in Kosovo during the past 10 years.
Lord Robertson announced a series of measures to quell further outbreaks of violence in the region.
They include a public information campaign to counter what he described as "the politically damaging effect of extremist activity in the Preshevo valley".
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