Subject: Agreement between Serbs and Albanians in southern Serbia
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 20:30:17 PST
From: C-afp@... (AFP)
Organization: Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
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VELIKI TRNOVAC, Yugoslavia, Dec 30 (AFP) - Serbs and ethnic
Albanians in southern Serbia have reached an agreement to reduce the
tension, and hopefully the violence, in the buffer zone bordering
the breakaway Kosovo province, the Tanjug news agency reported
Saturday.
The armed Albanian separatists agreed to dismantle a control
point they have set up at the entrance to the village of Veliki
Trnovac, less than two kilometres (around one mile) from the
southern Serbian town of Bujanovac, according to Shawn Sullivan,
political advisor to Lieutenant General Carlo Cabigiosu, commander
of KFOR, the NATO-led peacekeepers based in Kosovo.
For their part, the Serb police agreed to remove a control point
they operate at the other end of the village, while maintaining
their presence on the road between Veliki Trnovac and Bujanovac,
Tanjug added.
The talks in Veliki Trnovac, were held against the background of
continuing violence in the three-mile (five-kilometre) wide
demilitarised buffer zone along the Kosovo border inside Serbia, in
which the separatist guerrillas hold at least a dozen villages.
The Albanian separatists and the Serb police acted quickly upon
their agreement, apparently pulling back from their respective
positions early Saturday, an AFP correspondent reported.
Sullivan told journalists that just a few traffic police
remained in place.
The Serb government, according to Sullivan, took its decision in
order to assure greater security to members of both ethnic groups,
Albanian and Serb, who live in uneasy proximity in the UN and
NATO-administered Kosovo.
The "verbal" accord was reached after a day of talks Friday
between representatives of Veliki Trnovac and Bujanovac, according
to Tanjug.
In the Kosovo capital Pristina, KFOR had announced Friday that
the representatives of the Albanian community and the Serb
government would be meeting in an attempt to end the violence in the
area.
Some 800 to 1,500 rebels are thought to be based in the
demilitarised zone, which was set up last year to separate Yugoslav
forces from KFOR at the end of the Kosovo conflict but has since
been partly occupied by ethnic Albanian separatists.
The rebels have continued to bring arms and reinforcements over
the frontier from Kosovo, despite efforts by KFOR troops to cut off
their supply lines.
"The KFOR position is not to be a mediator but to facilitate any
contact able to bring a peaceful solution," Major General Georges
Ladveze, the French deputy commander of the NATO-led force, told
reporters.
"We tried to enable the two parties to see their common interest
and to leave their weapons aside and to try to bring a new deal and
a new solution to this problem."
Ladveze could not say whether representatives of the armed
ethnic Albanian groups fighting under the banner of the self-styled
Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) were at
the discussions.
Zoran Djindjic, Serbia's prime minister-designate, has given
KFOR 20 days to stabilise the situation in the border zone, a German
magazine reported Friday.
Djindjic told Der Spiegel in an interview in its Saturday
edition that KFOR must stop the guerrilla violence, which he said
was a dangerous threat to stability in the region.
But KFOR's chief spokesman, Major Steven Shappell, told AFP that
the force had received no notice of Djindjic's ultimatum.
"We have received no communication from Mr Djindjic on this
subject," he said.
On Friday one of Serbia's three acting interior ministers, Bozo
Prelevic, told AFP that Belgrade would not intervene ahead of the
formation of a new Serbian government in January.