http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=230859&section=default

Ethnic Albanian Separatists Still a Threat in Southern Serbia

LUCANE, Dec 16, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Ethnic Albanian separatists
have increasingly infiltrated southern Serbia's Presevo valley, strengthening
their
presence in the region near Kosovo, a Serbian police officer told AFP here
Friday.

"The longer we wait for a solution, the more (the guerrillas) will strengthen
their
positions and infiltrate" into the demilitarized zone along the borders of the
UN-administrated province, said the policeman, who asked not to be a named.

Thus the rebels would be able to get even to the suburbs of nearby towns of
Vranje and Bujanovac, said the policeman, a member of the Serb special police
units deployed in the north of the Albanian-populated village Lucane.

Ethnic Albanian guerrillas, demanding the region with its large Albanian
population
be grafted on to breakaway Kosovo, have clashed frequently with Serbian police
recently and control sections of the demilitarized border zone.

The self-proclaimed Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac
(UCPMB) has set up bases in the buffer zone on the Serbian side of the
administrative boundary with Kosovo.

"The extremists now control the Sveti Elija mountain," the policeman said, and
have "multiplied their incursions" into the territory.

He also noted that "enemy infiltrations have also been observed in the direction
of
Bujanovac," some six kilometers (four miles) east of Lucane.

North of Lucane, in the Albanian-populated village of Veliki Trnovac, local
officials of the moderate political grouping, the Party for Democratic Action,
also
warned of the guerrillas.

"The guerrillas come here more (and more) often, we do not know what to do,"
one of them told AFP.

The Serbian police presence in numerous ethnic Albanian-owned houses in
Lucane outraged one old man. "This is a shame," he told AFP before turning
away.

Villagers did not welcome AFP to their community.

"If you want to talk with the (Serb) police more, it is better for you to
leave," said
one ethnic Albanian standing in a group in front of a shop filled with Red Cross
food packages.

"The police prevent us from moving around, from bringing in food and other
goods, from going to work, this is unbearable," some men complained, insisting
they had no contacts with the guerrillas.

Another man insisted: "When will both of them go, when will our life return to
normal?"

Nearby, a bearded young man spoke of "our army," recalling the deployment of
the rebels of the UCPMB in the nearby mountains.

Police have confirmed they have regularly observed guerrilla "raids" in Lucane,
entering houses in the village.

"We are taking many risks," one of the policemen said. "The guerrillas are very
well informed of everything we do, of our equipment."

He pointed to a spot where three of his colleagues just escaped sniper fire on
Wednesday morning.

"We did not return fire, it is out of the question to respond to provocations,
we
still give diplomacy chance to resolve this conflict," he added.

But hundreds of Serbs, who on Friday gave up their three-day blockade of the
main road here between southern Serbia and Macedonia, have turned a deaf ear
towards such calls.

They have demanded the use of force to expel the UCPMB guerillas from the
buffer zone and the territory of Serbia proper, and full police control of the
road
linking Bujanovac with Kosovo, through Lucane.