The beginning of the return of the Serbs...for a $100 million in aid & Milo's head served in the Hague??????
dailynews.yahoo.com
NATO Pressed to Let Serb Forces Counter
Albanians
By Douglas Hamilton
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO (news - web sites) was expected to face
mounting pressure from Yugoslavia Thursday to let Serbian security forces
begin counter-insurgency operations against armed Albanian separatists in the
Presevo Valley buffer zone on Kosovo's eastern border.
Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic and Serbian Deputy Prime
Minister Nebojsa Covic were due to discuss Belgrade's plan for stabilizing
the region at alliance headquarters in Brussels.
The so-called Covic plan for pacifying the Presevo Valley includes a series of
socio-economic measures to better the lives of its estimated 70,000 to
100,000 ethnic Albanians.
But it also seeks urgent demilitarization, and since NATO is not going to send
its peacekeeping troops over the Kosovo boundary, guarded by U.S. and
Russian units, Serbia will press its case for permission to send in its own
forces.
This would require NATO consent, which could prove politically explosive in
Kosovo if taken as a sign that the West was now siding with Serbia against
independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.
If Serbian operations followed the brutal, indiscriminate pattern that triggered
widespread conflict in 1998, they could unleash a westward flood of tens of
thousands of refugees over the boundary line into Kosovo itself.
But bold action, combined with strict limitations on the area and duration of
Serbian sweeps, may now be seen as the only course, since NATO
increasingly finds its Kosovo peace mission under attack from extremists on
both sides.
Guerrillas Set Up Safe Havens
An estimated 600-700 Presevo guerrillas had set up safe havens in a
120-mile long by three-mile wide border strip, exploiting a no-go zone
imposed by the allies on Serbia at the end of the NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia in 1999.
Neither Yugoslavia's army nor its equally formidable Interior Ministry special
police force is allowed to enter -- unless NATO's Kosovo peacekeeping
force (KFOR) commander agrees.
While some elements of the fragmented guerrilla force may be persuaded to
negotiate demilitarization of the villages they currently control in return for the
promise of better treatment for Albanians, there are hard-liners just as likely
to hold out.
They aim if possible to keep control of the territory by force of arms to join a
future independent Kosovo or against the day when Kosovo is partitioned
and it can be secured in a trade off for northern, Serb-dominated
municipalities.
Sources say NATO may be preparing to ``grasp the nettle.''
The new reformist government in Belgrade, under Yugoslav President
Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites), is believed to be wholly genuine in its
pledge to right old wrongs in the Presevo Valley.
Its security forces have been commended repeatedly for their restraint in the
face of rebel attacks that NATO believes are intended to provoke a crisis.
But past experience of Serb tactics makes NATO hesitate to give a bright
green light.
Kostunica floated ``joint patrols'' by Serb forces and KFOR, but that was
dismissed at NATO as a non-starter. The idea of KFOR going into action on
Serbian territory beyond the confines of its U.N. peacekeeping mandate for
Kosovo is also ruled out. |
