http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=236611&section=default

KFOR Expects Better Ties With Serbia's New Rulers

PRISTINA, Dec 26, 2000 -- (Reuters) The NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping
force in Kosovo said on Tuesday it now hoped for better ties with Belgrade but
warned Serbia's new leadership to tread carefully in the security zone skirting
the
province.

"We expect a more positive and helpful approach," Shawn Sullivan, political
adviser to KFOR commander Lieutenant-General Carlo Cabigiosu, told Reuters.

He was commenting on the victory of the DOS democratic alliance in Serbia's
parliamentary election on Saturday over the Socialists of former authoritarian
leader Slobodan Milosevic, who oppressed Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians
for a decade.

"We need Serbs to participate in administrative structures here and we need the
release of Albanian prisoners," he said.

Municipal elections held in Kosovo two months ago were boycotted by Serbs
while the Serbian poll on Saturday was blasted by the Albanians, who seek
independence from Serbia, as a foreign election held to destabilize Kosovo.

Hundreds of Kosovo Albanians detained during the Kosovo war remain in
Serbian prisons.

Western governments and Kosovo Albanians regard them as political prisoners
and have been pressing for their release.

Another source of friction between Belgrade and international authorities in
Kosovo is a buffer zone on the Serbian side of the boundary next to the
province,
which has become a base for an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group.

The area where the guerrillas operate has a large ethnic Albanian population,
inside Serbia proper.

The Yugoslav government submitted a draft resolution to parliament on Monday
saying Belgrade would take its own measures, unless international authorities
act
soon to to force the guerrillas out of the buffer zone.

The 1999 accords which ended NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia and put
Kosovo under international control also set up the five km (three mile) wide
buffer
zone, where Yugoslavia may not station any security forces except local police
with light arms.

KOSTUNICA DEMANDS REVISION

Tension shot up in the area late last month when four Serbian policemen were
killed in clashes with the guerrillas.

New Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica has called for a revision of the pact,
suggesting the zone should be narrowed to squeeze out the rebels.

The government resolution, according to Tanjug news agency, urged the U.N.
Security Council to set a deadline for the withdrawal of Albanian separatists
from
southern Serbia.

If no such action is taken, Yugoslavia "will solve the problem itself,
respecting all
internationally permitted measures in fighting terrorism, which is its legal and
legitimate right and its obligation", the draft says.

Sullivan said KFOR understood Belgrade's security concerns but the draft
resolution was not well timed.

"There are people in Belgrade who are not up to speed to what has been
happening over the issue," he said.

"KFOR is for a peaceful solution of the problem. Force alone cannot resolve it."

Last week, Cabigiosu for the first time went into Serbia itself, to the town of
Bujanovac near the zone to talk with Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa
Covic.

"They (Belgrade) would be much better off pursuing the current path," Sullivan
said.

The guerrillas, who call themselves the Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac
Liberation Army, say they are trying to protect the large ethnic Albanian
community in the Presevo Valley of southern Serbia from Serbian police
persecution.

Belgrade insists they are separatists intent on joining the Presevo Valley to
Kosovo.

Serbia lost control of Kosovo to a U.N.-led administration last year after NATO
bombed Serbia to force Milosevic to stop repressing ethnic Albanians who seek
independence.