Subject: Rebel leader dismisses idea of talks with Serbia
Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 11:20:12 PST
From: C-afp@... (AFP / Dave Clark)
Organization: Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
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MUHOVAC, Yugoslavia, Dec 28 (AFP) - The leader of one of the
guerrilla groups operating in southern Serbia rejected the idea of
talks with Belgrade Thursday, and vowed to drive government forces
from a buffer zone along the Kosovo border.
Dismissing comments from other rebel commanders in favour of
holding internationally-mediated talks with the Serbian government,
the leader of one of the four main armed ethnic Albanian groups said
there was nothing to discuss.
"There's no reason for talks, we know where the borders should
be," Muhamet Xhemaili told AFP in his headquarters in Muhovac, a few
hundred yards (metres) from the Kosovo border inside Serbia.
"Personally I couldn't sit down at the same table with the
Serbs. They are criminals," he added, surrounded by heavily armed
fighters, some of them loading weapons with bullets from a recent
arms shipment.
Xhemaili, the commander of the most northerly group of
guerrillas fighting under the flag of the self-styled Liberation
Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB), claimed his men had
killed "at least four" Serb policemen in fighting over the past
week.
Serb officials have denied their police have suffered recent
losses.
"This time the fighting began because they provoked us, but if
they don't withdraw (from the three-mile wide buffer zone) within
days, it's us who will be doing the attacking. We'll drive them
out," Xhemaili said.
Guerrillas opened fire Thursday on Serb police in the village of
Lucane eight miles (13 kilometres) south of Muhovac, an official who
requested anonymity told AFP. No one was injured in the attack, he
said.
The guerrilla leader, who fights under the nom de guerre
Commander Rebelli and sports the cap-badge of the Kosovo Liberation
Army, was scathing about comrades based further south in the
rebel-held village of Dobrosin who told reporters they would
consider talks with Serb authorities.
"The people who say such things should come up here and see
what's going on, not make offers without consulting us," he said.
The UCPMB sprang-up in January this year with the stated aim of
uniting the Presevo valley area of southern Serbia and its 70,000
strong ethnic Albanian majority with neighbouring Kosovo, currently
under UN rule.
The "army" is made up of four allied groups: Xhemaili's based in
Muhovac, a group based just to the south in Breznica, one in
Dobrosin under "General Commander" Shefket Musliu, and a fourth
"Presevo zone" at the southern limit of rebel control near the
border with Macedonia.
Between 800 to 1,500 fighters have based themselves in a
three-mile wide buffer zone set up under the June 1999 ceasefire
deal between NATO and Yugoslavia at the end of the Kosovo conflict.
Yugoslavia and its main republic, Serbia, have protested that
because only lightly armed Serb police are allowed into the zone,
the guerrillas are able to operate unhindered. The Serb authorities
and armed forces have demanded that the United Nations and NATO
agree to rethink the accord.
The chief of staff of the federal Yugoslav army, Nebojsa
Pavkovic said on Wednesday that the buffer zone had "lost its
meaning, and become an insecurity zone."
Also on Wednesday, General Vladimir Lazarevic, commander of
Yugoslavia's third army, said the separatists had fired five or six
mortar shells at police near Sveti Ilija, a hill position in the
zone which Yugoslav forces reoccupied on Sunday.
Xhemaili denied this, claiming that the mortar shells were fired
from Serb positions shortly before the Serbs abandoned Sveti Ilija,
which he said was once more in a no-man's land between the two
forces.
"They fired at us with mortars, rocket launchers and a 20
millimetre anti-aircraft canon," the commander claimed, "But we
fired back and they left the hill."
The confrontation over Sveti Ilija, a 1,270 metre peak on the
edge of the buffer zone, was the culmination of a string of clashes
since December 23, when four Serb policemen were killed, Xhemaili
claimed.
Serb officials have usually been quick to protest when their
personnel are attacked or killed, and have made no mention of any
recent casualties.
Major Steven Shappell, spokesman for the NATO-led KFOR
peacekeeping force based in nearby Kosovo, told AFP that there had
been firing near Muhovac Wednesday but he had no reports of any
casualties.