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Saturday, December 16 8:01 PM SGT

Kostunica to discuss tension in disputed area near Kosovo

BELGRADE, Dec 16 (AFP) -

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica left Belgrade on Saturday for talks on
violence between
Serbians and ethnic Albanian separatists in a southern region of Serbia that
borders Kosovo, the
Beta new agency said.

The talks, in the southern Serbian city of Bujanovac near the border with
UN-administered Kosovo,
will involve both the Serbian and Yugoslav governments.

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

They want the region, with its large Albanian population, grafted on to
breakaway Kosovo, which is
currently under UN administration.

The rebels have been clashing frequently with Serbian police and control
sections of the demilitarized
border zone.

A Serbian police officer in the region told AFP on Friday that the separatists
were increasingly
infiltrating southern Serbia's Presevo valley, strengthening their presence in
the region near Kosovo.

The Belgrade authorities say that between 800 and 1,500 separatists had taken
control of about 200
square kilometres (80 square miles) since the clashes November, since when there
had been an
uneasy ceasefire.

About 1,000 Serbian protestors calling for the Albanian separatists to be
expelled from the region on
Friday lifted a three-day blockade of a major southern road linking Yugoslavia
with neighboring
Macedonia and Greece.

Covic announced Saturday's talks in Bujanovac, one of the main towns in the
southern region, in a
symbolic bid to defuse tension in the area.

He called on the demonstrators to be patient and to avoid violence, while the
politicians looked for a
diplomatic solution to the crisis.

The Serbian protestors are calling for a revision to the military-technical
agreement signed by
Belgrade and NATO.

It allows only for Serbian police equipped with light weapons to patrol the
security zone between
southern Serbia and Kosovo.

Also on Saturday, gunmen ambushed two cars belonging to Kosovo Serbs returning
to the province
through the same disputed zone, wounding one of the passengers, US peacekeepers
reported in
Kosovo.

The two cars were fired upon about a mile (two kilometres) inside southern
Serbia.