Subject: Rebels warn Kosovo peacekeepers not to intervene in south Serbia
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 12:40:10 PST
From: C-afp@... (AFP / Dave Clark)
Organization: Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
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DORDJEVAC, Yugoslavia, Dec 21 (AFP) - An ethnic Albanian rebel
leader fighting a guerrilla war in southern Serbia warned NATO
Thursday that his men would fight if the alliance's Kosovo-based
peacekeepers tried to disarm them.
"If they came here without first reaching an agreement, we would
resist them as we resist the Serbs. We know we could not win, but we
would take some of their men with us," rebel commander Muhamet
Xhemaili told AFP.
"We asked them to come in here to protect Albanian people, but
they must reach an agreement first," he warned.
Xhemaili commands one of what NATO observers believe are four
allied but separate ethnic Albanian separatist groups, fighting in
southern Serbia under the joint banner of the Liberation Army of
Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB).
Estimates at the total number of rebels, who control around 200
square kilometres (80 square miles) of territory in a series of
enclaves along the Kosovo border, vary between 1,000 and 2,500
fighters, many of them from Kosovo itself.
The commander of NATO's Kosovo force (KFOR), Lieutenant General
Carlo Cabigiosu, visited southern Serbia Wednesday for high-level
talks, sparking rumours of a deal being prepared between NATO and
Belgrade to find a way to curb rebel activity.
Guerrillas launched an offensive last month, capturing a group
of villages and claiming the lives of at least three Serb police
officers.
The action embarrassed Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica,
who has since been using the issue as a stick with which to beat the
international community in the run up to Serbia's legislative
election, set for Saturday.
Under an agreement signed last year between KFOR and Belgrade,
which brought an end to the alliance's bombing campaign against
Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav army is banned from a demilitarised zone
running along the Kosovo frontier with Serbia.
Only lightly armed local police are allowed to patrol near the
border, and the resulting military vacuum has allowed armed Albanian
groups seeking independence from Yugoslavia to spring up.
Kostunica called Wednesday for the demilitarised zone to be
narrowed, after warning that if NATO could not curb the rebels'
activity, his forces would "cleanse" the zone.
But Xhemaili claimed Belgrade had already breached the terms of
the peace deal, sending more than 7,000 army troops armed with heavy
artillery and armoured vehicles into the five-kilometre (three-mile)
wide buffer area.
Standing next to an abandoned bunker three kilometres inside the
zone, Xhemaili pointed to the valley of Dordjevacka Reka, where he
claimed between 600 and 800 troops were massed, backed by at least
three tanks.
"We think they are planning an attack," he said. "They have
brought up heavy artillery." The area he indicated was more than
halfway across the zone.
"We have asked KFOR to deal with them, and told them if they do
not then we will attack the Serbs," he said, adding that the attack
would be "soon."
Belgrade has claimed the rebels are planning a major offensive
between Serbian legislative elections set for Saturday and December
27.
There was no sign of Yugoslav forces in Dordjevac, which is
little more than a handful of semi-derelict houses dotted across a
snow-covered hilltop, surrounded by slit trenches and lookout
posts.
But the guerrillas alleged to AFP that Serbian forces had been
moving heavy weapons in the valley below the hamlet in the morning,
and pointed out fresh trails cut into Serb-held hills. What appeared
to be the distant sound of a shot rang out while the rebel leader
was speaking.
Xhemaili, the commander of a rebel group based in the villages
of Muhovac and Qar, within yards (metres) of the Kosovo border, said
his forces were ready for any Yugoslav attack, and would respond
with guerrilla actions behind enemy lines.
Many of the fighters in Muhovac and Dordjevac, including
Xhemaili, wear the badge of the Kosovo Liberation Army on their red
berets, the group which launched a separatist rebellion in 1998 that
provoked a brutal Yugoslav backlash.
The Yugoslav reprisal eventually drew NATO into the breakaway
province, which is now a UN protectorate.
Xhemaili's men, who are armed with a variety of assault rifles,
machine guns and rocket launchers and wear mismatched uniforms,
cannot see why their war had to stop at the Kosovo frontier, and
claim an ethnic Albanian area of southern Serbia, which they have
dubbed "Eastern Kosovo."
But their activities have embarrassed NATO, and the alliance has
stepped up attempts to curb their activities.
At Muhovac, an AFP reporter heard the sound of KFOR troops
blowing up roads leading into the rebel-held areas, attempting to
cut off their supply lines across the boundary from Kosovo into
southern Serbia.
On Sunday, a joint patrol of US and Russian peacekeepers
destroying a rebel supply route near the frontier exchanged fire
across the boundary with a group of gunmen that attacked them near
Qar, a KFOR spokesman said.
Xhemaili said his men were not responsible, but that three
ethnic Albanian "hunters" armed with assault rifles had been scared
by the explosions and had fired without knowing at whom they were
firing.
"KFOR will find they have made a mistake in trying to divide two
Albanian areas. There are not two Kosovos, this is all Kosovo,"
Xhemaili said, indicating the wooded hills around with a broad sweep
of his arm.