http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/world/17KOSO.html

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, December 17, 2000

Serbs Demand Move on Kosovo Rebels

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BUJANOVAC, Serbia, Dec. 16 - The governments of Yugoslavia and of
Serbia, its main republic, threatened tough action today unless NATO
peacekeepers and United Nations officials running Kosovo clamp down on
ethnic Albanian militants in southern Serbia.

The warning, issued at an emergency meeting of the two governments in
Bujanovac - at the edge of a tense demilitarized zone abutting Kosovo -
came as the Yugoslav Army said it had intelligence reports that rebels
were planning an offensive this month.

Yugoslavia demands that the United Nations Security Council "set a
shortest possible deadline for measures for an urgent pullback of
Albanian terrorists," the governments said in a joint declaration.

The three-mile-wide zone between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia was
established by the 1999 Kosovo peace deal to keep heavily armed Serbian
forces away from the province, which was put under control of NATO
peacekeepers and United Nations officials. Last month, however,
Albanians killed four Serbian policemen and seized several villages in
attacks in the buffer zone.

President Vojislav Kostunica of Yugosalvia, who attended the meeting
today, has come under pressure to crack down on the rebels.

The Security Council is to meet on Tuesday on the issue. If it fails to
act, Yugoslavia will "invoke its legitimate right to solve the problem
itself, with the use of all internationally permitted measures to fight
terrorism," the two governments said.

Under the Kosovo peace agreement that ended the bombing of Yugoslavia,
only lightly armed Serbian police officers are allowed in the zone. And
even if NATO was inclined to move against the Albanians in the zone, it
could not, because its mandate is restricted to Kosovo.

Ahead of the Bujanovac meeting, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic said the
rebels were assembling arms and that his military intelligence was
reporting an offensive planned for Dec. 27 by "several thousand
terrorists."

"They are fixing up bridges, improving their communications, and
bringing in mortars and howitzers," General Lazarevic said.

Mr. Kostunica has sought to avoid the sort of crackdown led by his
predecessor, Slobodan Milosevic, which triggered international
condemnation, NATO intervention and effectively bolstered demands for
independence by Kosovo Albanians.

Kosovo is now a crucial staging area for armed incursions by the
militants into the buffer zone. Mr. Kostunica said NATO peace troops in
Kosovo are responsible because "they have not disarmed the terrorist
organizations" there.

His government also demanded in the declaration that a limited number of
Yugoslav Army troops be allowed to return into Kosovo, where the
dwindling Serbian community suffers continuing attacks by Albanian
extremists.

Violence flared anew ahead of the meeting.

NATO peacekeepers said that two cars carrying Serbs in the southern part
of the zone were raked with gunfire Friday, leaving one of the occupants
wounded in the arm.

And in a report suggesting tension might be spreading, residents in the
northern part of the zone, near Kursumlija, said militants shot at a
Serbian village late Friday. It was the first such incident reported in
the north.

The villagers also said they had seen rebels digging trenches in the
region.


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