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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (17425)	2/27/2001 9:46:03 AM
From: George Papadopoulos	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Albanian "freedom fighters" getting bolder...can't believe NATO still protecting these thugs! dailynews.yahoo.com NATO Scrambles As Guerrillas Overrun Haven BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO (news - web sites) scrambled to smother a fresh crisis in the Balkans Tuesday, ordering advisers to Macedonia to tackle a guerrilla challenge and accelerating plans to help end a revolt in the neighboring Presevo Valley. Ethnic Albanian separatist guerrillas who have been using a NATO-declared buffer zone in the valley as a safe haven for the past year, have recently occupied a village on the Macedonian side of the border. A two-hour firefight erupted Monday. NATO said Albanian extremists were responsible for the renewed threat to peace and warned them to stop the violence. Rising tension on the three-way border of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia dominated the first NATO foreign ministers' meeting of the year and the first with the new Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites). ``There will be a political and military mission immediately to Skopje (Macedonia) to see what the situation is on the ground,'' NATO Secretary-General George Robertson told a news conference with Powell. He said he had talked by phone with Macedonian President Boris Trajkovsk earlier in the day and consulted NATO Supreme Commander Europe General Joseph Ralston. ``NATO is committed to supporting the stability and security of...Macedonia, including the enhanced security of its borders,'' he said in a statement. The alliance was conducting an urgent study of measures to improve border security. Robertson said he had also appointed a special envoy, Dutchman Pieter Feith, who visited the southern Serbia crisis region last week with an international fact-finding team. NATO was ready to start dismantling the buffer zone which it threw around Kosovo in 1999 to keep Serbian forces well away from its peacekeeping troops, Robertson said. The allies were ``prepared to implement a phased and conditioned reduction of the Ground Safety Zone'' but they were ''still working on the details of how this will be done.'' As its part of the bargain, Serbia should move quickly to implement measures to restore confidence among ethnic Albanians in the Presevo Valley region, where separatist guerrillas have exploited the zone to seize territory, Robertson said. The Yugoslav Army would only go back into this area when there are precautions in place and observers to watch what is going on, he stressed.