http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4108638,00.html

Nato in talks to curb Serb border clashes

Kosovo peacekeepers find large haul of Albanian arms

Nicholas Wood in Pristina
Guardian

Thursday December 21, 2000

The commander of K-For, the Nato-led peacekeeping force in
Kosovo, held high-level talks in Serbia yesterday aimed at
calming tensions on the boundary with the province.

Lieutenant General Carlo Cabigiosu met the Serbian deputy
prime minister, Nebojsa Covic, in Bujanovac, close to where
ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Yugoslav security forces have
clashed over the last month.

The meeting came hours after British troops arrested 13 ethnic
Albanians found carrying a large number of heavy weapons.
They had been travelling towards Serbia. Around the same time
a UN police station in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo came
under attack from machine-gun fire and a rocket-propelled
grenade. No one was hurt.

The talks in Serbia followed calls from the Yugoslav president,
Vojislav Kostunica, for a renegotiation of a peace agreement
which prevents Yugoslav troops entering a three-mile exclusion
zone along the boundary with Kosovo.

The area has been used by ethnic Albanian rebels to attack
Serbian troops with virtual impunity. Calls for a change to the
agreement have been repeated by Serb politicians in the run-up
to Serbian parliamentary elections due this Saturday.

But a K-For spokesman, Major Steve Shappell, denied that the
accord, signed by Nato and Yugoslavia at the end of war in
Kosovo, was up for discussion. "There will be no change to the
military technical agreement," he said.

He added that the meeting was part of an "ongoing dialogue to
look for a peace solution to the situation".

The arrest of the armed men took place early yesterday near the
village of Draghibac Mahala. A K-For spokesmen said the group
offered no resistance, when stopped by the patrol. The soldiers
had been deployed in the area the day before, specifically to
prevent the flow of weapons and men across to Serbia.

The weapons seized included 30 rocket-propelled grenades, 50
hand grenades, rocket launchers, anti-tank mines and heavy
machineguns.

The group was taken to the main American army base in the
region, Camp Bondsteel, for questioning.

While K-For has been concentrating its attention on the border
with Serbia, the UN administration in Kosovo has been
struggling to cope with a wave of violence in the north of the
province.

A UN spokeswomen, Susan Manuel, condemned the attack on
the police station, which also houses the local council
headquarters, as "another act of mindless violence".

Four police cars were raked with automatic gunfire and another
blown up by a grenade late on Tuesday night. A rocket-propelled
grenade was fired through a window.

Police were out on patrol at the time.

The attack follows a weekend of violence in which one Serb was
shot dead by K-For soldiers and seven Belgian troops were
taken hostage for three hours in the town of Leposavic.

Following the violence, the UN ordered its international and
locally recruited police service and all UN personnel to withdraw
from the town.

"We definitely think there is some kind of pattern going on. We
don't know where it's coming from and where it going, though,"
Ms Manuel said.

The UN has yet to return its police and staff to Leposavic, where
the role of law enforcement appears to have been taken on by
the local community. It is unclear if they will return before the
ballot for the Serbian parliament gets under way at the weekend.