Kosovo Buffer Zone Tension Rises

By Dragan Ilic
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, Dec. 28, 2000; 4:12 p.m. EST

BUJANOVAC, Yugoslavia -- A top Serb official and a NATO emissary
met with ethnic Albanians on Thursday in an attempt to negotiate a
peaceful solution to escalating tensions in a predominantly Albanian region
of Serbia along its boundary with Kosovo.

Serbia's deputy prime minister, Nebojsa Covic, and Shawn Sullivan, a
political adviser to the top NATO official in the southern Serb province of
Kosovo, met with ethnic Albanian representatives from the
three-mile-wide buffer zone between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia.

"We made significant steps forward in our efforts for a peaceful solution ...
but there still is fear of uncontrollable acts by parties or groups who seek
to profit from conflicts and bloodshed," Covic told reporters after his tour.

Covic said Sullivan met separately with ethnic Albanians militants in the
rebel-controlled village of Trnovac, inside the zone.

He said Serbia was open to discussing the situation in the zone, but
insisted "it is and will remain part of Serbia and no paramilitaries, killing or
bloodshed would be tolerated."

"Everything else we can talk about but the law must be applicable to all,
regardless of religion or ethnicity" Covic added.

Tensions in the southern area of Yugoslavia's main republic, Serbia, have
increased since last month, when ethnic Albanian rebels of the "Liberation
Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac" killed four Serb policemen
and took several police positions in the buffer zone.

NATO-led peacekeepers have no authority in the zone, which is located
on territory under Yugoslav government jurisdiction.

Only lightly armed Yugoslav police are permitted in the zone, under an
agreement signed between NATO and the Belgrade government shortly
before Yugoslavia handed Kosovo over to the United Nations and the
Western alliance last year following the 78-day NATO bombing
campaign.

The lack of heavily armed enforcement in the zone has allowed
independence-minded rebels to operate there with impunity. The rebels
want to drive Serbs from the area, which has a heavily ethnic Albanian
population, and unite it with Kosovo.

Earlier Thursday, rebels shot at Serb police and fired six mortar shells
from the buffer zone village of Djurdjevac, about six miles north of
Bujanovac, police Col. Novica Zdravkovic said. No one was injured in
the attacks.

Also Thursday, the Yugoslav parliament repeated demands that the U.N.
Security Council set a deadline for the rebels to withdraw from the zone
or Belgrade's troops would remove them by force.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Zoran Zizic said that Yugoslavia is seeking to
re-establish diplomatic ties with Albania, its old-time adversary, broken
off on the eve of last year's NATO airstrikes. He said after the new ties
are established "conditions will be created for a constructive approach to
the Kosovo problem."

The previous regime of Slobodan Milosevic blamed Albania for instigating
the Kosovo Albanian rebellion against Belgrade.

In Paris on Thursday, the European Union called on Yugoslav authorities
to free ethnic Albanians from Kosovo who have been imprisoned in
Serbia since the end of the conflict last year.

© Copyright 2000 The Associated Press