for a culture of Peace and Non-violence
Because the year 2000 must be a new beginning, an opportunity to transform - all together - the culture of war and violence into a culture of peace and non-violence.
more ==> Manifesto-000226.htm
The forgotten Albanians in Serbia
The situation of ethnic Albanians in South-Serbia
out of Kosovo
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KFOR Press Update
Pristina, 04 March 2000
by Lt.-Cdr. Philip Anido, KFOR SpokespersonTensions Rise in Presevo Valley
Just after midnight this morning, a KFOR American patrol reported gunfire in the vicinity of the town of Dobrosin located in Southern Serbia close to the boundary with Kosovo.
KFOR has significantly increased its security posture along the boundary with this region known as the Presevo Valley where armed Albanian extremists have been observed in recent weeks. The gunfire is assessed to be between these men and the Serbian local police who are authorized to maintain civil law and order within the five-kilometer wide ground safety zone (GSZ).
During the night, at last report, 18 civilian vehicles and some 175 Albanian children, women and older men crossed the boundary through the KFOR controlled Gate 5, seeking safety in Kosovo.
The Commander of KFOR, General Dr. Klaus Reinhardt, has stated that unrest and instability in the Presevo Valley or any other region surrounding Kosovo is in no one's interest.
KFOR will continue to observe activity in the GSZ and will take all means necessary to ensure that armed gangs do not use Kosovo as a staging ground for violence.
Saturday, March 4, 2000New Conflict Mirrors Prelude to Kosovo War
By PAUL WATSON, Times Staff Writer
DOBROSIN, Yugoslavia--While NATO-led troops struggle to keep the peace in Kosovo, a new guerrilla war between ethnic Albanians and Serbian forces is brewing just across the border.
A rebel band of about 150 ethnic Albanians has a foothold in this nearly deserted village in southeastern Serbia, about 300 yards from a U.S. Army camp guarding a muddy track that leads into Kosovo.
The guerrillas carry AK-47 assault rifles and walkie-talkies, and wear camouflage fatigues or black uniforms and berets. They look a lot like members of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, which was formally disbanded after NATO took control of the province last summer.
At first glance, the red, black and gold patches on the guerrillas' uniforms appear to be KLA insignia, but a closer look reveals the unwieldy name of Yugoslavia's latest fighting force: the Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac Liberation Army.
The rebels take their name from the three main towns in an area that is mostly populated by ethnic Albanians and located in Serbia proper, just east of Kosovo's provincial border. The rebels' commanders acknowledge that many of them are former KLA fighters. The Serbs see them all as "terrorists."
The current conflict sounds uncannily like the early days of one in Kosovo that ended with NATO's 11-week bombing campaign last year: Serbian repression spawns a small, village-based guerrilla army, whose attacks on Serbian forces provoke vicious reprisals. As survivors sign up to fight for the guerrillas, villages are emptied and sometimes burned. Civilian casualties mount, along with cries for foreign troops to intervene.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization insists that it is trying to avert another conflict, but as the number of ambushes, bombings and assassinations increases, isolated skirmishes threaten to escalate into another war.
Knowing that Serbian police might attack at any moment, the rebels here refuse to be photographed, or even have their voices recorded, in case it can be used to convict them on terrorism charges. Their commander, a harried-looking man of middle age in civilian clothes, hasn't chosen a nom de guerre yet, so he suggests that reporters call him "the officer."
"Every day the repression is growing, and every day more volunteer fighters are coming," he said Friday in the second-story bedroom of a farmhouse that serves as the rebels' headquarters.
"A big majority of the youth are now ready to take up arms to defend their families, their honor and their land because this is Albanian land," he added.
Just two years ago, Serbian police ignited a full-scale war in Kosovo with a brutal attack on KLA hero Adem Jashari's home base in the village of Prekaz in the central Drenica region. The assault killed 46 people, including 11 children between the ages of 3 and 10.Guerrillas Seek to Liberate 3 Towns
Despite the presence of the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force, Kosovo technically remains a province of Serbia. The new battleground in Serbia proper is in a 482-square-mile zone that ethnic Albanians claim is historically part of Kosovo.
Before NATO's air war against Yugoslavia began last March 24, more than 100,000 ethnic Albanians lived in southern Serbia, but a steady exodus in recent months has reduced that number to an estimated 75,000.
Western governments had hoped to protect thousands of ethnic Albanians outside Kosovo's borders by creating a 15-mile-deep buffer zone in Serbia proper where Yugoslav police and army units could not patrol. But during talks last summer to end the air war, NATO compromised and agreed to a buffer zone only three miles deep.
Ethnic Albanians consider that one of the most serious mistakes NATO made in the truce negotiations.
Dobrosin, just a few hundred yards from the Kosovo border, is within the three-mile zone, and it is relatively peaceful.
Sentries look down on the area from a watchtower inside the U.S. post, which is surrounded by barbed wire, razor wire and tank traps. At least one tank and several other armored vehicles are parked facing the Serbian countryside.
But Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, the towns the ethnic Albanian guerrillas hope to liberate, are outside the three-mile zone.
KFOR officials pledge to keep the violence in Kosovo from spreading.
"What we are doing is to try hard to prevent this export of violence--this potential export of violence--by controlling the border very, very strictly,' KFOR spokesman Henning Philipp told a news conference Wednesday. "We are aware of some people in groups who are aiming at destabilizing the situation in the Presevo valley."
Ethnic Albanians began fleeing southern Serbia soon after the arrival of police and army units withdrawing from neighboring Kosovo last June, and reported many cases of harassment, the bombing near a school and even killings.
But Serbian officials say the trouble started Nov. 16, when ethnic Albanian Sefket Hasani, who had returned to Dobrosin after working in Switzerland, fired on a police patrol. The village's rebel commander acknowledges that Hasani, 54, once shot at Serbian police, but says that it was because they tried to capture him as a suspected KLA fighter.
Under police pressure, the villagers ordered Hasani and several followers to leave, according to Dr. Stojanca Arsic, Serbian mayor of nearby Bujanovac. But by Jan. 26, they had returned--this time in uniforms.
One Serbian police officer was seriously wounded in a firefight that erupted. Two ethnic Albanian brothers who were out cutting firewood were killed.
Arsic says the dead Albanians were "decent people" caught in the cross-fire. But the rebels holed up in Dobrosin on Friday claim that the men were executed with bullets to the back of the head by Serbian police.Crackdown by Police Amid Wave of Attacks
The region around Medvedja has suffered the worst. Most ethnic Albanians have abandoned their homes and fled to Kosovo or neighboring Macedonia, says Riza Halimi, mayor of Presevo, a mainly ethnic Albanian town.
Although tensions have eased in Presevo, Serbian Interior Ministry police veterans from Kosovo have poured into the region, Halimi says.
"They came in camouflage uniforms, with machine guns and bulletproof vests," Halimi said. "They patrolled villages and inspected taverns in full combat gear--with more men watching their backs with loaded guns."
The police crackdown comes amid a wave of bombings, attacks against police and assassinations of ethnic Albanians considered loyal to the Serbian government.
In Bujanovac, there were four blasts from plastic explosives in February, one near an elementary school, two in a Gypsy neighborhood and the fourth next to a movie theater that was showing the film "The Sixth Sense." On Feb. 26, the day after the fourth blast, the Dobrosin commander says, his guerrillas stumbled upon a civilian van loaded with Serbian police.
They attacked, killing a police major. Three other officers were seriously wounded.
Arsic, the mayor of Bujanovac, lays some of the responsibility with U.S. troops along the border.
"The American KFOR troops can do the most to solve this problem because they are the ones who are controlling the border through which the 'terrorists' cross. If they close that border, everything will be OK," he said.
Arsic expects the fighting to escalate in the area when the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo begins military maneuvers later this month, which the mayor thinks the rebel fighters may use as cover.
"They are probably going to cause a major incident soon," the mayor predicted. "We could easily deal with them by force, but that might have larger implications, which are in nobody's interest."Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times
March 4 2000Killings on Kosovo border threaten new refugee crisis
FROM ANTHONY LOYD IN DOBRASIN,
SOUTHERN SERBIA SERBIA'S southern border with Kosovo is being destabilised by a combination of killings and intimidation by Serb police and a renegade Kosovo Liberation Army unit. Their actions could create a new refugee crisis as well as confusing any potential reaction by Nato's Kfor units.
Already some 6,000 Albanians from the Presevo valley in Serbia have fled into Kosovo since the war ended last summer. They are part of an estimated 60,000 Albanians living in the region.
Dennis McNamara, the UN's special refugees envoy to Kosovo, said: "Coming on the heels of the recent disturbances in Mitrovica, it may be no accident that the Albanian minority in southern Serbia is now feeling under increasing pressure. Harassment and intimidation in one place can bring retaliation and instability in another, feeding into this continuing cycle of violence and revenge."
In response to Serbian police operations, groups of armed and uniformed Albanian guerrillas have in the past month set up bases along the border inside Serbia and hit back. Bearing all the hallmarks of the disbanded KLA, these fighters wear the insignia UCPMB, "Liberation Army for Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja", the zone's three principal population centres.
For Serbia's Presevo Albanians the winter months were marked by police raids, arrests and beatings. Then on January 26 two young Albanian men from the village of Dobrasin, a bare kilometre inside Serbia, were slain by Serb forces almost under the noses of American troops overlooking the border. Sadiq Sadiqi, the boys' father, said: "I had been cutting wood with my two sons at the edge of the village.
"They left for home early but I stayed working. Minutes later I heard gunfire, then saw seven Serb police walking away through the fields." Mr Sadiqi found his two sons, Isa, 35, and Shaip, 31, in the afternoon. They lay face down in the snow and had been shot in their backs and heads.
Next, on February 29, the UCPMB ambushed a Serb police patrol, killing one officer and injuring at least two others. Last Tuesday a Belgrade-based Irish UN officer, Marcel Grogan, was shot twice in the leg outside Dobrasin while in an unmarked vehicle.
Under the terms of the military technical agreement, signed by Nato with the Serbs as part of the Yugoslav army's withdrawal from Kosovo last June, only local Serb police, as opposed to military units or the MUP, are allowed to operate in a five-kilometre-wide buffer zone on the Serbian side of the Kosovo border. Equally though, Kfor is obliged to secure the border against use by Albanian guerrillas intent on infiltrating Serbia.
However, Albanian fighters wishing to use Kosovo as a safe area have at present only to store their weapons and uniforms within Serbia to cross freely back into the Nato-protected province.
It is also unclear exactly what Nato troops could do to respond to any large-scale Serbian assault on a village such as Dobrasin, in which UCPMB fighters are a frequent presence. Villagers insist that twice last December US troops did come to their aid as Serb police patrols closed on the village, in one instance entering Serbia and arresting three Serb policemen.
The claims are flatly denied by the Americans, though Nato officers admit to confusion over their reaction if they witnessed the killings of civilians within the buffer zone.Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd
Saturday, 4 March, 2000, 18:19 GMTKosovo violence spreads to Serbia
Serbs are authorised to maintain the order near the border A new armed ethnic-Albanian group and Serbian police have exchanged gunfire near the border between Serbia and Kosovo.
US soldiers patrolling the Kosovo side of the border reported that the fights in the Serbian village of Dobrosin lasted for two hours.
The village is in the demilitarised Serbian border zone, less than a kilometre from the border with the UN-administered province.
A K-For spokesman said: "The gunfire is assessed to be between armed Albanian extremists and Serbian local police who are authorised to maintain civilian law and order within the 5km-wide ground safety zone."Troops reinforced
As a result of the fight, about 170 Albanians fled from the area, which has a large ethnic-Albanian population, into Kosovo.
The Nato-led peacekeeping force in the north of the province has also been reinforced.
The peacekeepers say extremist ethnic-Albanian groups have become active in the region in recent weeks.
The group, which calls itself the Liberation Army for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB), after the main towns in the area, said its members first appeared in public at the January funeral of two ethnic-Albanian brothers who the family said were killed by Serbian police.
They have been blamed for killing a senior Serb police officer and attacking United Nations staff.Serbian riot
In another development, Swedish peacekeeping troops fired warning shots to calm a Serbian riot that left five ethnic Albanians injured in the central Kosovo village of Gracanica.
About 70 Serbs gathered in protest after a grenade was allegedly thrown at a Serbian house on the edge of the village, just south of the provincial capital Pristina, said Mark Cox, a spokesman for the K-For peacekeeping force.
Nobody was hurt in the grenade attack early on Saturday but Serbs started stoning ethnic Albanian cars passing through the village.
One of the ethnic Albanians was seriously injured and admitted to a British military hospital, while the others were transported to Pristina hospital with minor injuries.
KFOR reports gunfire, refugees from Serb border zoneSaturday, 04-Mar-2000 7:00AM
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, March 4 (AFP) - Ethnic Albanian extremists and Serbian police exchanged gunfire in Serbia overnight, prompting 175 Albanians to flee into Kosovo, NATO-led peacekeers said Saturday.
A US patrol reported gunfire between 12:30 a.m. (2330 GMT Friday) and 2:45 a.m. in the vicinity of Dobrosin, a village in the demilitarised Serbian border zone where a new Albanian rebel group has dug in, said KFOR spokesman Philip Anido.
The village is less than a kilometre (half a mile) from the border with the UN-administered province.
"The gunfire is assessed to be between armed Albanian extremists and Serbian local police who are authorised to maintain civilian law and order within the five-kilometre (three-mile)-wide ground safety zone," Anido said in a statement.
"KFOR has significantly increased its security posture along the boundary with this region known as the Presevo valley," he said.
At least 18 vehicles with some 175 ethnic Albanian children, women and older men crossed the border through a KFOR checkpoint, he added.
KFOR admitted last week to the presence of armed groups in the sensitive border zone, demilitarised since last June under an accord with Belgrade that ended NATO's 78-day air war on Yugoslavia.
The group, which calls itself the "Liberation Army for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB)" after the main towns in the area, told reporters its members first appeared in public at the January funeral of two ethnic Albanian brothers who the family said were killed by Serbian police.Story from AFP Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
Saturday March 4 1:06 PM ETKFOR Reports Clash in Village Near Kosovo
By Michael Roddy
ON THE KOSOVO BOUNDARY, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Fighting erupted Saturday between Serb police and a new ethnic Albanian armed group in a tense area of Serbia just outside eastern Kosovo, NATO-led peacekeepers quoted villagers as saying.
Serb police denied being in the village of Dobrosin when the shooting broke out. It was the latest of a series of clashes that have prompted some diplomats to see similarities with the pattern of violence that spurred NATO to intervene in Kosovo.
Inside the province, four Albanians were injured in fist fights with Serbs who set up a roadblock in the mainly Serb enclave of Gracanica after a Serb house was bombed. The divided town of Kosovo Mitrovica was calm after clashes Friday.
The U.S. commander of KFOR peacekeepers in the border region said the shooting would not mean his troops would have to cross the border to defuse the situation.
U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Snow, commanding officer of the company running a new observation post overlooking Dobrosin from Kosovo, said the shooting broke out just after midnight.
``Sometime around 12.30 we did hear shots fired and shortly after...there were people that were in vehicles who moved back to this area,'' he said.No Reports Of Injuries
He said there were no reports of injuries but that about 100 people, mostly women and children, had fled in cars to Kosovo.
``It died down rather quickly,'' Snow said, adding that while his soldiers had seen members of the new armed Albanian group circulating on the outskirts of the village, he could not confirm villagers' accounts that Yugoslav interior ministry police, known by the acronym MUP, were involved.
A Serbian police official in the area told Reuters that machine-gun fire had been heard around 2 a.m. (0100 GMT).
``There were no police in the area today at all,'' he said.
Inside Kosovo, KFOR took advantage of calm in the divided northern town of Mitrovica to escort Serbs to graves in the Albanian part after a day of clashes over the return of 40 Albanians to their homes in the Serb part of the town.
But in Gracanica, the other main enclave where Serbs have gathered since NATO replaced Yugoslav security forces in Kosovo in June, tensions were high after a firebomb on a Serb house.
No one was hurt in the bombing but four Albanians were injured in fist fighting with Serbs who blockaded a major road and attacked several civilian cars with Albanian markings.
Snow denied that NATO supported the new armed Albanian group acting outside Kosovo, which has taken the name UCPMB from the Albanian for the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medveja and Bujanovaca, predominantly Albanian towns in the Presevo Valley area where Dobrosin is located.
``The UCPMB is telling folk that they have the support of KFOR, the United States, and I want to tell this particular audience that the United States, KFOR and the international community does not support an insurgency along the border,'' Snow told reporters being given a tour of Outpost Sapper.
``In fact we will do everything within our powers to prevent that insurgency from crossing over into this area of responsibility,'' he added.Copyright © 2000 Reuters Limited
NATO: Dozens Flee Yugoslav FightingThe Associated Press
Saturday, March 4, 2000; 4:37 p.m. ESTPRISTINA, Yugoslavia –– Dozens of ethnic Albanian women and children fled into Kosovo on Saturday after an exchange of gunfire in a town just outside the province's border, NATO peacekeepers said.
The exodus of some 175 people was the latest push from Dobrasin, a predominantly ethnic Albanian town in eastern Serbia. Hundreds of people have fled the area in the past two months, streaming into the closest Kosovo town of Gnjilane, about 30 miles southeast of Kosovo's provincial capital, Pristina.
The area near Dobrasin has been the site of sporadic clashes between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serb police. There are fears that the southern Serbian region could be the scene of renewed fighting similar to the conflict in Kosovo last year, which led to NATO attacks against Yugoslavia.
The newly formed rebel group is called the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac – named after three predominantly ethnic Albanian towns just outside Kosovo in southern Serbia. The group's fighters say they are trying to protect villagers in the region from attacks by Serb forces.
The refugees from Dobrasin crossed a checkpoint being manned about 2½ miles inside Kosovo by U.S. Sgt. Kelly Leaverton of Salem, Ore.
"Last night they rushed through here," he said. He said the villagers were traveling in cars, on horseback and on tractors.
Meanwhile, some 70 Serbs demonstrated in the Kosovo town of Gracanica to protest a grenade attack on a Serb home. Five people were injured, one seriously, said Warrant Officer Mark Cox, a NATO press spokesman.
NATO peacekeepers sealed off the city after violence broke out, Cox said.
Infuriated at the attack, Serbs in Gracanica set up roadblocks on the highway to Pristina and hurled stones at passing Albanian cars, the Belgrade-based Beta news agency reported.
Thousands of ethnic Albanians were killed by Serb forces during Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's 18-month crackdown against Kosovo separatists. Since NATO bombing forced the Serb troops to withdraw last spring, ethnic attacks and killings have been regular occurrences in the province.© Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
Hundreds Albanians leave south SerbiaSaturday, 04-Mar-2000 2:20PM
By LULZIM COTATIRANA, ALBANIA, March 4 (UPI) -- About 175 ethnic Albanians fled into Kosovo Saturday amid armed clashes between a newly identified Albanian extremist group and Serb police authorized to patrol an area near the Kosovo-Serbian border, according to a BBC broadcast monitored in Albania.
Peacekeepers reported that the armed exchanges went on for about two hours starting shortly after midnight local time.
The incident occurred in Dobrosin, which is a village in a Serbian demilitarized zone less than a mile from the Kosovo border.
While the peacekeepers referred to the Albanian group as "extremist," ethnic Albanians defend them as a self-defense group. Calling itself the Liberation Army for Preservo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (three local towns), the group first appeared at the funeral for two Albanian brothers killed in an encounter with Serb police in January, the broadcast said.
Since surfacing the group has been blamed for the death of a Serb police officer and an attack on U.N. personnel, the BBC reported.
One unconfirmed press report listed a single casualty in Saturday morning's border clash.
Peacekeepers say they will not allow that Kosovo border territory to be used to attacking south Serbia.
KFOR cannot confirm any political link between the new armed group and any Albanian political force in Kosovo.
Hashim Thaci, a co-chair of Kosovo Provisional Council, appealed to Kosovars to cooperate with KFOR and the U.N. mission in Kosovo as the only way to solve the Kosovo issue.
" We commit to use our influence to prevent Albanians' expulsion from Presheve, Medvegje and Bujanonc," says Thaci in a message addressed Kosovo people.
Thaci should have given information about the situation in south Serbia to Tirana's authorities, a source in Albanian foreign ministry says.
The source could not confirm the political orientation of those armed people who move across Kosovo-south Serbia border.
There is a speculation that an ex Kosovo premier in exile, Bujar Bukoshi could inspire this movement to win political capital in the future.Story from UPI / LULZIM COTA
Copyright 2000 by United Press International (via ClariNet)
March 5, 2000Albanian Village Flees After Serbs and Guerrillas Battle
By CARLOTTA GALL
MALISHEVO, Kosovo, March 4 -- A fierce firefight broke out early this morning between the Serbian police and Albanian guerrilla fighters in an Albanian village in southern Serbia, causing an exodus of villagers who fled by car into Kosovo.
Today the village, Dobrosin, was empty of inhabitants, said its mayor, Rabit Saqipi, who had briefly returned there. "Only soldiers are left," he said sadly.
A pointless bit of shooting had flared up and frightened the last remaining civilians, causing a new flight of Albanians from their homes in southern Serbia, just beyond the Kosovo boundary.
American troops of the peacekeeping force watching the border with Serbia reported hearing gunfire in the space of two hours and then counted more than 70 villagers fleeing in cars in the early morning.
NATO-led peacekeepers and United Nations officials have recently expressed concern about the volatile situation on Kosovo's eastern boundary with Serbia, and the events around Dobrosin showed how unstable the area is. In a sequence of events that Kosovo has seen played out many times, Dobrosin is just the latest to suffer from skirmishes between the Serbian police and self-appointed defenders.
Armed men -- declaring themselves to be fighters of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja, Albanian towns in southern Serbia -- said publicly this week that they would fight to defend Dobrosin. The group, apparently an offspring of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army that fought Serbian forces in Kosovo, vowed to defend the village from Serbian aggression.
But Mayor Saqipi sat in a cafe in Malishevo, several miles into Kosovo from his village, and acknowledged that the fighters had only drawn the ire of the Serbian police. He looked crushed by the fate of his village. "No one will return now," he said. "There is no way to persuade the villagers to go back now."
He said the shooting erupted just after midnight when the Albanian fighters saw unknown figures on ridge outside the village and opened fire. For the next two hours they exchanged gunfire with the Serbs from a distance. The Albanians suffered no casualties, Mr. Saqipi said. The Serbian authorities have so far not reported any casualties either.
A friend of the mayor, Naip Rexhepi, a Malishevo politician, said a wolf or a wild boar could have frightened the men and caused them to open fire.
The fear and haste in which the villagers fled showed just how they have been living on tenterhooks, expecting a catastrophe at any time.
"We have constantly suffered maltreatment at the hands of the Serb police," Mr. Saqipi said, adding that market day, when villagers travel to the nearby town, has always caused problems. "But things got worse, so much so that we cannot think of going there any more."
What started with harassment and bribery has escalated to death threats and killings. Three villagers have been killed in the last two months, and many are now frightened for their lives. "It is just how it happened in Kosovo," Mr. Saqipi said.
One villager, Adem Saqipi, who moved his family to Kosovo two weeks ago, said his children had started asking if the Serbs were going to kill them. "They had seen a lot on television about massacres in Kosovo and they asked me, 'Are the Serbs going to come and kill us?' " he said, his face sweaty with anxiety.
Whatever caused the violence early today, the results were catastrophic for the village. Families bundled belongings into their cars and set off in the middle of the night, as the guns rattled around them, to escape into Kosovo, where American troops have mounted a visible protection force on the boundary.
Some 76 refugees had crossed by early morning, according to the office of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees in the nearby town of Gnjilane. They have been quickly housed by local people, and the agency has some 90 families on standby to take in people in such emergencies. They also have space ready for 1,500 refugees in community centers, if the influx of refugees increases.
Aid officials have been bracing themselves for this sort of crisis as tensions have been rising in the area east of Kosovo. "It is a strange time, when we are winding down the emergency relief operation in Kosovo," said Andrea Recchia, an field officer for the refugee agency. "But here tension has definitely increased."
The villagers are hoping that the peacekeeping force in Kosovo, KFOR, will move into the buffer zone that reaches three miles into Serbia and so provide them with security. They say the force's officers have told them that they cannot operate beyond Kosovo's border, but they persist in hoping.
"The best solution would be for KFOR to move into the five kilometer zone," Mr. Saqipi said. "Many times we have asked for security."
And for lack of any other protection, he said they had to rely on irregular Albanian fighters. "If our soldiers leave, then we will be left to the mercy of the Serbs," he said.
But now that the whole village has fled, he looked defeated. The only chance to return to their homes lay with the international community, he said. "All our hopes are on them," he said.Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
Copyright: The following text is for personal information only. Any professional use or publication in written or electronic form is subject to an agreement with AIM, 17 rue Rebeval, F-75019 Paris, France
SUN, 05 MAR 2000 22:46:03 GMTFear of Another Balkan War Spring
An atmosphere of war is gradually spreading, and in the daily press information have already appeared that the citizens have started to pile up stocks of flour, sugar, salt and canned food. They say this is the best indication that something is happening, but let us hope that the people are wrong and that the signals are not what they are
AIM Skopje, 1 March, 2000
"Will there be another war?" "Eve of a new war in the Balkans", "New tide of refugees in Macedonia", "A new war or continuation of the old one"…, these are just some of the titles published in the past week in Macedonian press. Fear of new instability is spreading quickly like a forest fire among the population of Macedonia, the country which has in the past five years lived through five wars and unrest in its immediate or almost immediate neighbourhood, fortunately without having participated in any of them.
Journalists and military analysts are closely following every piece of news referring to NATO, Yugoslav army, developments in the south of Serbia, political processes in Montenegro and statements of politicians about this region. Here and there, one might even say slightly like paranoids, media have started to find new refugees who had arrived to bordering villages, but verification proved that this is not at all true. For instance, even the highly professional A-1 Television station carried information that about twenty ethnic Albanian refugees had arrived form the south of Serbia. It later turned out that ninety per cent of the population of the village of Mirkovci were the Serbs, so that the arrival of ethnic Albanians into such an environment was hardly possible. Oil is being added to the fire of war atmosphere by rash statements, for example, of the minister of labour and social policy Bedredin Ibraimi, who said that preparations were being made for new refugees. UNHCR, more precisely, head of its mission for Macedonia, Amin Avad, denied rumours that High Commissioner for Refugees was also making urgent preparations for the arrival of new refugees. He said that UNHCR had to be ready at all times, but that no special preparations were being made at the moment. "We do not expect new refugees", declared Avad.
Great fear resulted from the information that the Army of Yugoslavia was accumulating forces in the south of Serbia, in municipalities of Bujanovac, Presevo and Medvedja. As a response to these information, Macedonian army put its Kumanovo corps in the north of Macedonia on the alert, which according to the spokesman of defence ministry, Djordjije Trendafilov, means reinforced patrols and intensified duties in this corps. Although, as news agencies informed, president of Macedonia Boris Trajkovki declared during his visits to Poland and Estonia, that the corps was put on the alert, having returned to the country, he curiously denied his own statement and said that it actually had not been put on the alert but that this was its unchanged status since the latest crisis in Kosovo.
In any case, what causes concerns of ordinary citizens are the intensified visits of foreign diplomats and officers in the Balkans, which is a phenomenon deja vu before the beginning of the war in Kosovo and which is experienced as a premonition of new disturbances. Last week, for instance, the visit of NATO secretary general Robertson to Macedonia, then to Albania and finally to Greece, as well as the visit of NATO commander for Europe, Wesley Clark, who for the first time met Arben Xhaferi, leader of the Democratic Party of the Albanians, were interpreted as a signal that something was happening. The public simply cannot believe that these are just purely protocol visits as it can be concluded on the basis of the official statements for the public.
But this is not all that raises tension among the population. Contrary to these practically uncorroborated fears of visits of diplomats and officers, there are certain true arguments in support of the hypothesis about a new conflict in the Balkans. This is primarily the situation in Kosovska Mitrovica and information about instability in Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja, as well as political uncertainty in Montenegro. Due to the fact that the Army of Yugoslavia is accumulating new troops in the south of Serbia, that Clark has declared that new NATO forces are needed in Kosovo, that American president Bill Clinton is sending two thousand policemen to Kosovo, that the French are ready to send additional forces, that at Bozaj border crossing between Albania and Montenegro there are tensions, that Slobodan Milosevic has appointed general Dragoljub Ojdanic to the post of the minister of defence and in this way consolidated control of the army, that he put the Second Army in Montenegro on the alert, that there are information about joint patrols of KFOR and the army of Macedonia along Macedonia’s border with Albania and Kosovo, that Albanian prime minister Ilir Meta declared that Albania was ready to receive refugees in the north of the country, one does get the impression that something is cooking. Indeed, all this put together does inevitably stir thoughts about new flaring up of the crisis in the Balkans.
The question that arises is whether there is real reason for fear and what would the consequences be for Macedonia in case of a new crisis. Almost everybody hurried to claim that a new crisis means a new tide of refugees. But in UNHCR they say that if one bothered to stop and think it is hardly possible that this will happen. Even if something happens it is expected that ethnic Albanians will flee from a possible centre of the conflict to Kosovo and Albania, and that the Serbs and the Montenegrins will seek shelter in their home country. This opinion is also considered valid by several military analysts we consulted. According to unofficial data, UNHCR has about 20 refugee camps in Kosovo, and they say that camps in Northern Albania used during the war in Kosovo can in case of need quickly be reactivated and rendered usable in a new crisis. In fact, it is expected that an insignificant number of refugees will come to Macedonia and that they will seek refuge with their relatives. President Trajkovski declared at his latest press conference that Macedonia would in any case be better prepared for refugees than during the latest exodus of refugees.
Some of the analysts in Macedonian press gave real reasons for concern. A new crisis, it is believed, will be an insurmountable barrier for realisation of the Stability Pact, especially when speaking about economic projects which are mostly, at least those Macedonia has applied with, of international and regional nature. More precisely, they should be realised in cooperation with Albania and Bulgaria. After all, this is not important. It is important that the Pact cannot be realised in conditions which imply war operations, parties in conflict, political crisis in the Balkans, a new crisis in interstate relations, confrontations on ethnic grounds in Macedonia due to delicate and latent misunderstandings between the Albanians and the Macedonians, economic stagnation, transportation problems and everything that a crisis implies. Indeed, all hopes of economic consolidation of Macedonia are invested in the Stability Pact, as well as of the rise of the standard of living of the population and any step forward after years of recession.
Except for the Pact, in case of a crisis, the agreement on stabilisation and association Macedonia is expecting to sign with the European Union would also be questioned, because the same already mentioned factors would affect the negotiations. The atmosphere of war is gradually spreading and information have already appeared in the daily press that the citizens have started piling up stocks of flour, sugar, salt and canned food. They say that this is the best indication that something is happening, but let us hope that the people are wrong and that the signals do not mean what they really are.
AIM Skopje
VALENTIN NESOVSKI
Tuesday, March 7, 2000Albanian Fighters on the March
A new Kosovo-based guerrilla force says it is prepared to go to war to unite Albanian populated areas of southern Serbia with the province.
By Llazar Semini in Pristina (BCR No. 121, 3-Mar-00)
A United Nations worker, shot and wounded near Dobrasin on Tuesday, February 29, became the latest victim in a fierce conflict which is brewing in a predominantly Albanian region of southern Serbia, close to the Kosovo border.
Marcel Grogan was driving a UN vehicle when Albanian guerrillas opened fire. Grogan, now recovering from gunshot wounds in a US military hospital in Kosovo, said the gunmen appeared embarrassed when they realised he was a UN official - they claimed to have mistaken his vehicle for Serbian one.
There is concern that increasing clashes between Albanian guerrillas and Serb forces around Preshevo, Medvegje and Bujanovac are fuelling the flight of Albanian refugees into Kosovo. The International Rescue Committee, one of the largest refugee agencies operating in Kosovo, estimates 1,300 refugees have trickled into Gjilan - the nearest town inside Kosovo - in the last two months. Over 100 have arrived in the last three days alone.
Last Saturday night, a group of armed Albanians - allegedly members of a new guerrilla group, the Preshevo, Medvegje and Bujanovac Liberation Army (UCPMB) - attacked a Serbian police patrol in Kocul, killing one officer and injuring three others.
An Albanian killed in the clash was wearing the insignia of the Kosovo Protection Force (TMK) -- a civilian force formed by the United Nations mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) - from former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK). Both UNMIK's spokeswoman, Susan Manuel, and TMK commander, Agim Ceku, denied the Albanian casualty was a member of the protection force.
Rumours have long been circulating that spring will bring renewed violence to the region. Some have pointed accusing fingers at Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, arguing that by provoking trouble in Kosovo he achieves two ends - undermining UN efforts to govern the province and distracting attention from his on-going bid to crush any moves by Montenegro towards independence.
NATO and the United States have warned Milosevic not to increase the Yugoslav military and police presence in and around Preshevo, Bujanovac and Medvegje, home to some 75,000 ethnic Albanians. US troops from Camp Bondsteel near Ferizaj (Urasovac in Serbian) have intensified their 24-hour patrols to prevent Albanian extremists and weapons crossing the frontier into Serbia.
The UCPMB was allegedly formed in January following the killing of two Albanian youths from Dobrasin. The organisation claims to be made up of men from eastern Kosovo. It welcomes volunteers from other parts of the province. They wear insignia similar to the UCK, replacing the K for Kosovo with PMB for Preshevo, Medvegje, Bujanovac - the three major towns in the Albanian border enclave."Someone had to come out and protect the Albanian population of this area from Serb paramilitaries," one UCPMB commander said in an interview with the Albanian daily Zeri.
The UCPMB made their first public appearance at the funeral of the two young Albanians, just as the UCK did at the beginning of the Kosovo conflict following the murder of an Albanian teacher in Llaushe."At the moment our soldiers control the area of Dobrasin. If the population is endangered in other parts we are ready to defend them," the UCPMB commander said.
The UCPMB want the region to unite with Kosovo. "We do not ask for much, just the right of self-determination," they say. The new force aims to achieve this by harassing Serb forces and generally stirring up trouble in the border region. The new force is "hoping that the Serbs will retaliate with excessive force against civilian populations and create a wave of outrage and pressure on KFOR to respond," a UN official told the New York Times. "It's explosive and dangerous, and we hope KFOR uses restraint."
Kosovo's Albanian political leaders have yet to voice any real condemnation of the incidents in the area. They fear Milosevic may exploit the situation to cause trouble inside Kosovo itself. A new influx of Albanian refugees could only worsen the already unstable situation in the province.
A conflict would serve Milosevic's ends, distracting international and domestic attention from the escalating tensions between Belgrade and Montenegro.And it would surely have a knock-on effect in neighbouring Macedonia, where unrest is brewing. Indeed, Skopje has already tightened border security.
NATO involvement in the intensifying conflict in southern Serbia seems unlikely, at least in the short term. On Monday KFOR spokesman, Henning Philipp, said there was concern over the security situation in Kosovo, but insisted there was no evidence of Belgrade breaching the Kumanovo agreement by deploying troops within the five-kilometer buffer zone along the border.
US army spokesman, Scott Olsen, said the only thing that would cause KFOR to intervene inside Serbia would be atrocities. He said the US military had asked KFOR command to make clear what constituted an atrocity. Meanwhile, KFOR announced plans on Monday to hold military exercises in Kosovo from March 19 to April 10 aimed at reinforcing its commitment to the defence of the province.Llazar Semini is IWPR's Kosovo Project Manager in Pristina.
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Kosovo-Serbia boundary quiet, KFOR checking all crossingSunday, 05-Mar-2000 6:50AM
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, March 5 (AFP) - Kosovo's boundary with Serbia was quiet overnight, KFOR officials said Sunday, after shooting between Serb police and ethnic Albanians prompted an exodus from a village just inside Serbia.
KFOR spokesman Philip Anido said the gunfire that sparked an exodus of villagers from Dobrosin in the early hours of Saturday had only last 15 minutes and not two hours as had been previously reported by US patrols on the boundary.
But some villagers maintained the shooting around the village, less than a kilometre (half a mile) from the KFOR-patrolled boundary, lasted two hours.
KFOR also revised the numbers of ethnic Albanians who had fled the village overnight from 175 to 70.
Dobrosin has been used as a base by the so-called Liberation Army for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB), a group of uniformed ethnic Albanian gunmen pledged to protect the three main towns of the area.
The Presevo valley in southwest Serbia is home an estimated 75,000 ethnic Albanians, although the UN refugee agency UNHCR has said 6,000 of them have fled to Kosovo since the end of NATO's aior war on Yugoslavia last June.
KFOR troops on the boundary were letting citizens cross the boundary Sunday at official points but were checking identities and searching vehicles, Anido said.
They will also continue with foot, vehicle and helicopter patrols along the border.
KFOR officials last week accused "ethnic Albanian extremists" of destabilising the zone.
But the UCPMB has said it will protect ethnic Albanians from Serbian police, whom they accuse of the killing in January of two Albanian brothers out chopping wood near Dobrosin.
The fighters made their first public appearance at the brothers' funeral, which attracted thousands of mourners.Story from AFP Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
Serb police had already threatened us with death: Albanian refugeeSunday, 05-Mar-2000 7:10AM
MALISEVO, Yugoslavia, March 5 (AFP) - Serbian police had threatened to kill everyone in Dobrosin before an attack late Friday, according to refugees from the village in the demilitarised border zone.
Adem Saqipi, 38, arrived in this eastern Kosovo town early Saturday with his wife and two children -- and five of his brother's children -- after fleeing a gun battle that forced 175 ethnic Albanians from their village in the middle of the night.
Dobrosin lies in a five kilometre (three mile) wide demilitarised zone created on the Serb side of the boundary by Belgrade and NATO after the Atlantic alliance's 78-day air campiagn against Yugoslavia.
Sitting in a hostel for refugees from southwest Serbia's Presevo valley, where some 75,000 Albanians live, he recounted how he had been awoken by shooting in the night.
"At about midnight some of the guys who make up the village self-defence group noticed movement on the mountain behind Dobrosin," a village that international peacekeepers say is a base for Albanian extremists.
"They saw something moving, then the Serbs started shooting and the guards returned fire," he said.
Saqipi, a cousin of two brothers found shot dead near Dobrosin in January -- a murder blamed by the family on Serbian police -- grabbed his sleeping children and leapt in his car.
All around him, his neighbours were doing the same. They fled as the guards held off the Serbs, said by KFOR peacekeepers to be local police units.
The cavalcade of refugees apparently took by surprise US peacekeeping troops on checkpoint duty at the internal boundary between Serbia and the UN-administered province, less than a kilometre (mile) away.
"They wouldn't let us cross at first. They didn't know if we were Serbs or villagers," he said.
"One soldier pointed his rifle at my little girl while her mother shouted 'Don't shoot.' They only let us cross when the soldiers' Albanian interpreter arrived and explained the Serbs were shooting at us," he said.
Saturday night the refugees were staying with relatives in Kosovo or in shelters, too scared to return.
"There's no safety in Dobrosin," said Saqipi, whose brother was seeking accommodation for the family in the neighbouring town of Gjnilane. "There will only be security there if KFOR moves in."
He said that after his cousins were buried on January 26, their father telephoned Serbian police in the nearby town of Bujanovac to ask them why they had killed his sons, aged 35 and 31.
"They told him: 'We're going to kill everyone in the village," he said.
Saqipi said the guards in his village were just a self-defence group formed after his cousins' murder.
But local journalists who visited Dobrosin this week said the group of armed and uniformed men called itself the Liberation Army for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) and had vowed to defend the three principal towns of the region.
Saqipi was doubtful about such grand ambitions.
"In Kosovo, 19 (NATO) countries were fighting against Serb security forces and for three months they couldn't move in. We've just got a few men who can't even defend our homes."
He did not know how many Serb police arrived by foot on Friday night, but said he was sure they would be back.
"They'll attack again and burn the whole village" he said.
Thousands of KFOR troops are stationed across the boundary but insist their mandate is only for Kosovo.
However, one US army spokesman told AFP last week that KFOR would intervene in the area in case of "atrocities" but said he was waiting for an official explanantion of what exactly what that means.
Saqipi said just a few village defenders and villagers remained in Dobrosin after the attack. Journalists returning from the scene said at least four men in uniform were still staioned in the village.Story from AFP / James Hider
Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
Yugoslav officer accuses Kosovo fighters of causing trouble in SerbiaSunday, 05-Mar-2000 1:20PM
BELGRADE, March 5 (AFP) - A Yugoslav army officer has accused the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) of carrying out terrorism to destablise Albanian communities in southern Serbia, the independent agency Beta said on Sunday.
"Terrorist acts are being committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army who are trying to destabilise the regions of Bujanovac and Presevo," said Lieutenant-colonel Zarko Lazarevic, who heads the Bujanovac garrison which controls the region.
Although the UCK has officially been disarmed and turned into a civilian protection force (KPC) by the United Nations, Lazarevic insisted it was the UCK that was behind recent troubles in the area.
The NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force (KFOR) has confirmed that a group of armed Albanians wearing uniforms, which calls itself the Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovc Liberation Army (UCPMB) had set up a base at Dobrosin near Bujanovac.
KFOR reported shooting on Friday night between Serb police officers and armed Albanians at Dobrosin causing 70 residents to flee to Kosovo.
Meanwhile, inside Kosovo, over 1,000 members of the KPC marched military-style through the streets of Prekaz in central Drenica region in a memorial service for an ethnic Albanian warlord slain by Serb troops two years ago.
"By being united, we soldiers of the KLA, who joined the ranks of the KPC, will make of the KPC the force that Kosovo really needs," said the KPC commander General Agim Ceku in a speech given under the Albanian two-headed eagle flag and punctuated by celebratory salvoes of Kalashnikov gunfire from youths in KLA berets.
Lazarevic denied that the Yugoslav army was gathering its forces in southwest Serbia.
"Only units that were here before the war (the NATO bombings in Spring 1998) are still here," he said, adding that for the moment, there was no reason to raise the alert.
The officer said the Yugoslav army had good relations with the 75,000-strong Albanian population in the region.
"The large majority of the Albanian population is loyal to Serbia and has not desire to commit terrorist acts," the lieutenant-colonel said.
"As soon as the first incidents happened, we knew the local population was not involved and that it was elements that had filtered across from Kosovo," the mayor of Bujanovac, Stojance Arsic said.
Arsic said he believed the situation in Kosovo was having repercussions on Bujanovac.
"If the international community succeeds in disarming the last members of the UCK and stopping their incursion on Bujanovac territory, all the problems will be resolved," he added.Story from AFP Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
KFOR Press Update
Pristina, 05 March 2000
by Lt.-Cdr. Philip Anido, KFOR SpokespersonUpdate on Tensions in Presevo Valley
Yesterday, KFOR reported that a shooting incident had occurred in the vicinity of the town of Dobrosin, located in Southern Serbia a kilometer from the boundary with Kosovo. The population of Dobrosin is predominately Albanian.
It is now confirmed that the gunfire lasted for less than 15 minutes shortly after midnight on the outskirts of town. As a result, approximately 70 Albanians, and not 175 as previously reported, crossed the border through the KFOR controlled Gate 5, seeking refuge in Kosovo.
Today, the situation in the area remains quiet and citizens are permitted to move freely across the official boundary crossings. KFOR in Multinational Brigade East have taken appropriate measures to provide boundary security. They will continue to implement vehicle and identification checks and will conduct foot, vehicle and helicopter patrols along the edge of Kosovo.
The Commander of KFOR, General Dr. Klaus Reinhardt, has stated that security and the protection of freedom of movement for all citizens is vital for the KFOR peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. But he has added that KFOR will apply appropriate measures to ensure that arms and extremists do not have freedom to cross the boundary.
Update on tensions in Presheva valleyPrishtinë, March 5 (Kosovapress) - According to the KFOR reports, yesterday there were shooting incidents in the vicinity of village Dobrosin, located on southern Serbia just a kilometer from the boundary with Kosova. The population of Dobrosini is predominately Albanian.It is now confirmed that the gunfire lasted for less than 15 minutes shortly after midnight on the outskirts of village. As a result, approximately 70 Albanians, and not 1175 as previously reported, crossed the border through the KFOR controlled Gate 5, seeking refugee in Kosova.Today the situation in the area remains quiet and citizens are permitted to move freely across the official boundary crossings. KFOR MNB East have taken appropriate measures to provide boundary security. They will continue to implement vehicle and identification checks and will conduct foot, vehicle and helicopter patrols along the edge of Kosova.The commander of KFOR, General Dr. Klaus Reinhardt, has started that security and the protection of freedom of movement for all citizens is vital for the KFOR peacekeeping mission in Kosova. But he has added that KFOR will apply appropriate measures to ensure that arms and extremists do not have freedom to cross the boundary.
FREEB92 DAILY NEWS FROM THE B2-92 NEWSROOM – BELGRADE
Mar 05, 2000 19:03 CETKFOR will not intervene in incidents outside their area of responsibility
KOSOVO, Sunday – KFOR does not support, nor will it attempt to intervene in clashes in the southern Serbian areas of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac near the administrative border between Kosovo and Serbia, American KFOR officer, Geoffrey Snow told the press today. Snow said that an Albanian armed formation, the so-called “Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac” had been telling the local people in that area that they had the full support of KFOR, NATO and the US. Snow said that he would like to send a clear message to those people that KFOR were merely attempting to prevent the spread of clashes outside their area of responsibility and had no intention of involving themselves in any way in incidents outside their area of control.
Commenting on recent incidents in the tampon zone between Serbia and Kosovo today, KFOR Commander General Klaus Reinhardt said that KFOR would implement all measures at their disposal to prevent both extremists and arms from crossing the administrative border between Kosovo and Serbia.
Yugoslav ambassador defends Serb right to repel "terrorists"Monday, 06-Mar-2000 8:20AM
GENEVA, Mar 6 (AFP) - Yugoslavia's ambassador to the United Nations warned Monday that Serbian forces would fight against "terrorist" incursions by separatists from Kosovo province.
Branko Brankovic also called for the removal from Kosovo of the UN's administrator in the province, claiming Bernard Kouchner was "using Albanian terrorists" to further US policy.
His comments followed an increase in tension in the Presovo border zone between Serbia proper and Kosovo, where Serbian police and a UN official came under attack in recent days.
Local press reports in Kosovo reported last week that ethnic Albanian fighters had begun launching attacks on Serbian forces from the the demilitarised zone.
NATO-led peacekeepers for their part expressed concern about unnamed groups trying to "destabilise" the area.
"Whatever the police is going to do, it's going to do its duty to defend and try to fight against the terrorist incursion" into Serbia proper, Brankovic warned.
He accused Kouchner of "using Albanian terrorists" to carry out US policy in the Balkans and said he must leave the province.
In the wake of the killing last week of a Serb doctor in Gjnilnane, southeast Kosovo, Brankovic said Yugoslavia would present the UN with a 41-page list of Serbs and non-Albanians who have been abducted or killed in the province.
Kouchner suggested last week that the killing in Gjnilnane of Josip Vasic might have been killed by Serbian hardliners for supporting UN efforts to bring both Serbs and ethnic Albanians into a joint administration in the province.
According to figures released by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) last month, some 2,987 people are still missing in Kosovo.
ICRC estimates 1,875 were arrested by Serb security forces or kidnapped by Serb civilians, while 346 are believed to have disappeared at the hands of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army or ethnic Albanian civilians.Story from AFP Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
Yugoslav army exercises in tense area near KosovoMonday 6 March 2000
By Zorana Vucicevic NEAR BUJANOVAC, Yugoslavia, March 6 (Reuters) - The Yugoslav army has begun what it says are regular spring exercises in a troubled area near the border with Kosovo, where locals fear a repeat of the ethnic conflict which racked the province.
Dozens of tanks and armoured personnel carriers from the army's Pristina Corps, based in Kosovo until it was replaced by NATO-led forces last June after almost three months of NATO bombing, were lined up in a field near the border buffer zone.
"We are nine kilometres (six miles) from the border," Major Milan Mojsilovic told Reuters television at the weekend.
"Our unit is carrying out regular planned exercises," he said, speaking against the backdrop of hills marking the border with the province, now a de facto international protectorate.
Mojsilovic said the unit had moved to the area in June and joined a local garrison there, putting up the troops in factories and other public buildings.
It is well outside the five kilometre (three mile) buffer zone agreed between NATO and Yugoslav military chiefs in the agreement that ended the air strikes.
A Yugoslav army commander last month denied NATO claims of a build-up of forces in the area, saying they were designed to distract attention from security problems within Kosovo and Mojsilovic said his unit had been in the region since June.
But the exercises, which follow previous ones last year, underline the tensions in the largely Albanian populated region, an area stretching 100 km (60 miles) along Kosovo's eastern border with government-controlled Serbia.CLASHES REMINISCENT OF KOSOVO
Both Serbs and Albanians said recent clashes between a shadowy ethnic Albanian guerrilla group and police reminded them of the start of the conflict in Kosovo two years ago.
"There is some similarity to the situation in Kosovo in 1998," said Riza Halimi, Albanian mayor of Presevo.
"The political situation is quite tense, especially in the Bujanovac district, where there have been a series of serious incidents which have come one after the other and which evoke quite a lot of concern among the population, among everyone."
Halimi said he had heard of the armed group that calls itself the PMBLA, or Liberation Army of Presevo, Mevedja and Bujanovac, but had no contacts with it.
"So far we have not had a chance to get to know the structure of this formation or evaluate the seriousness of this situation," he said, adding that he expected to find out soon.
"In my opinion the situation in the municipality of Presevo is calmer in the past 10-15 days because the police formations which patrolled in full combat gear are no longer visible but the situation is still difficult in Bujanovac," he said.
The Serb refugee families who have lived crammed in a sports hall in the nearby town of Vranje since June were also worried.
"It's all the same as it was at the beginning (in Kosovo)," said Dusanka Brisko, 37, who moved into the hall with her brother, his wife and two children after fleeing Albanian reprisals against Kosovo's Serbs after NATO deployed.
"I'm afraid of what we'll do if it happens here. At the moment we're here in the hall and if it blows up, as it already has, where will we go with all these children?"
Halimi said many Albanians had moved to Kosovo because their houses had been destroyed during a campaign of terror by the security forces against them during the air strikes.
Unlike Kosovo Albanian leaders, who set up parallel power structures in protest at harsh direct rule from Belgrade, Halimi cooperates with Belgrade and said the small residual Albanian population meant the area was not ripe for rebellion.
But he said low-level intimidation was continuing.
"People were simply physically mistreated just for going from one village to the other," he said, adding that tensions rose after police reinforcements moved there in mid-December.© Copyright Reuters Limited
Monday, 6 March, 2000, 20:40 GMTTension grows on Kosovo border
Serbian police patrol a road on the border with Kosovo Nato-led peacekeepers in Kosovo are tightening security along the border with Serbia following recent clashes between Yugoslav police and ethnic Albanian guerrillas.
K-For is considering sealing off mountain passes amid increasing hostility near the town of Dobrosin, a predominantly ethnic Albanian town in eastern Serbia.
A BBC correspondent who visited the area says it is almost deserted with only the sounds of gunfire and the occasional appearance of armed men.
Of the 200 people remaining, many are fighters with a new ethnic Albanian guerrilla group.
The incidents have already prompted US forces in the area to move their checkpoints to the boundary line, up from positions several miles inside Kosovo.
K-For spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Philip Anido said: "Whatever K-For does, in whatever situation, we have to do it appropriately and not over-react to prevent good citizens from getting back and forth and conducting their normal business and family business".
The peacekeepers, and the Yugoslav army and Interior Ministry Police, cannot enter the 5km-wide buffer zone under the agreement that ended the Nato bombing last year.
Lieutenant Colonel Anido said K-For would leave security in the zone to Serbian local police.Alleged harassment
The ethnic Albanian rebel group has vowed to protect villagers in the region from attacks by Serb forces.
It is known as the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac - the three predominantly ethnic Albanian towns in southern Serbia where villagers say they have been subjected to harassment.Hundreds of families have fled into Kosovo.
The refugees say the Serbian police search their homes for weapons, stop Albanians in the street for identity checks, and sometimes order them to leave their homes.
Aid workers in the Kosovo town of Gnjilane have registered more refugees in the past four days than in the previous four months.Attack on transmitter
On Monday, an opposition-controlled television station in Serbia claimed that five uniformed men attacked one of its transmitters, injuring two of its staff.
The station, Studio B, blamed the attack on the police but state-controlled media dismissed the accusations as opposition propaganda.
Analysts in Belgrade said the authorities appeared to be trying to silence the alternative media before local elections later this year.
TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2000Latest Balkan hot spot: 'eastern Kosovo'
The emergence of a KLA offshoot in Serbia sparks concerns of new instability.
Emma Daly
Special to The Christian Science Monitor
DOBROSIN, YUGOSLAVIAA red car, no plates, screeches to a halt and discharges three men, armed, uniformed and angry - which is not unusual in Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia, save for the fact that these fighters are ethnic Albanians, members of the newest "liberation army" in the Balkans.
They are swift and determined as they relieve us of passports, press cards, notebooks, cameras - even a colleague, who offers to make the trip to their headquarters to explain our journalistic quest in this hamlet only 200 yards inside the boundary separating Kosovo from the rest of southern Serbia.
After an anxious couple of hours guarded by a uniformed soldier wearing the unsnappy patch of the "Presevo, Medvedje, and Bujanovc Liberation Army," the men return. "I am very sorry about what we just did," says Trimi, the commander. "But 1,000 [yards] away from us there is a Serbian position."
His anxiety, even paranoia, is understandable. His men have shot and wounded a United Nations aid worker who made the mistake of approaching Dobrosin from the direction of a Serb police checkpoint. The road had not been used since Jan. 26, when Serbian forces shot and killed two ethnic Albanian brothers.SIGNS OF A 'HOT SPRING':
US soldiers in Kosovo question ethnic Albanians fleeing southern Serbia.
Armed ethnic Albanians have clashed with Serb police.
DARKO BANDIC/APThe PMBLA fighters, panicked by the appearance of a white car with no markings, tried to halt the vehicle and then fired - only to find two foreign aid workers. They apologized, applied first aid, and ferried them to a nearby American base on the Kosovo border.
"We feel really bad about what happened," says Rrufeja, another PMBLA commander, two days later, by which time Dobrosin has become a mini-media mecca with dozens of hacks tramping through, seeking interviews with the new guerrilla group. "The car didn't stop, and the soldiers were scared, so they fired."
Such mistakes seem unavoidable when men with Kalashnikovs face one another across a narrow, undefined no-man's-land. Rrufeja, whose nom de guerre means "lightning," describes a recent shootout with Serbian police (one dead on either side) as another unfortunate mistake. "Our soldiers were monitoring the Serb forces, and by accident there was a confrontation," he says. But accidents, especially when fatal, can trigger dangerous reactions.
Although the PMBLA might be easily dismissed as no real threat to the Serb military machine - its very name an indication of the lack of a coherent geographical identity - the simmering tensions present a serious threat to the stability of Kosovo and by extension to the NATO and UN mission here.
Presevo, Medvedje, and Bujanovc, with an ethnic Albanian population of around 80,000, were once part of Kosovo - but swapped in 1950 for the Serbian-dominated town of Leposavic, now in northern Kosovo.
Which in turn is near another flash point: the divided city of Mitrovica, where French and Italian police on Friday fired tear-gas at a Serbian mob trying to block the return home of ethnic Albanian refugees.
Add the threat of possible secession by Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in what remains of Yugoslavia, stir it up with Mr. Milosevic's practice of consolidating power by fomenting conflict, and stand well back. These three fronts offer "the potential for Milosevic to make a fair amount of mischief for the international community," according to an experienced foreign observer in Kosovo.
Several thousand ethnic Albanian refugees from Serbia have already fled what they call "eastern Kosovo" for shelter in the international protectorate next door. More than 1,300 have registered with aid officials in Gnjilane so far this year and the past few days have seen a "dramatic increase," according to one foreign worker in the area, who declined to be identified.
Bekim Dauti of the International Rescue Committee, responsible for refugees in the Gnjilane area, says the agency finds new arrivals waiting outside the office every morning. They say Serbian forces are threatening ethnic Albanians and burning houses. "As some people say, it is going to be a hot spring," says Mr Dauti. "We need to be prepared."
Qefsere Xhemaili fled her home in a village near Bujanovc on Saturday and is now living with her husband and two children in a squalid collective center in Gnjilane, along with 325 other ethnic Albanians from Serbia. "One month ago, lots of soldiers came with tanks and they are still in the village, in the center. They are based there," she explains. "More than half the villagers have left.... Of course we are scared of a war, that's why we are here."
An influx of refugees from this narrow strip of Serbia is not going to spark a humanitarian disaster by Kosovo standards, says the foreign observer. But television pictures of US soldiers standing by and watching as civilians flee a scorched-earth campaign may not sit easily with Americans in an election year.
The PMBLA fighters wear US and German camouflage and new red-and-yellow patches with their logo and the Albanian black eagle. Many are veterans of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the rebel group that opposed federal Yugoslav forces during the killings and mass expulsions of majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, which led to NATO airstrikes last spring. It is clear they have received logistical aid from KLA comrades. The question is, how institutionalized has such support become in the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), which replaced the KLA?
Shaban Shala, a former KLA fighter, is the KPC commander in Gnjilane. Asked if the group is assisting comrades across the border, he replies: "Not legally."
Mr. Shala says he opposes any new conflict. "The Albanians there are not ready for a war," he says. "It is not in our interest. It is not in the interest of the international community, and they have urged us not to fall into the trap of Serbian provocations."
He adds, "We need free people who live freely wherever they are, Serbs in Kosovo and Albanians in Presevo." In Pristina, the Kosovar capital, there is concern that a new round of fighting could jeopardize the international effort in Kosovo. The line here is that locals in the border region do not support PMBLA fighters, since they fear a Serbian backlash.
In Dobrosin, civilians and soldiers argue over who is allowed to talk to visiting journalists, with the military trying (and failing) to exclude villagers. However, the constant refrain is: We will not leave our homes, we will defend our villages, by whatever means available.
In the rolling, wooded hills of the Presevo Valley, where small groups of refugees pick their way across the mountains to safety in Kosovo, there is a horrible sense of déjà vu. Our PMBLA guard is chatting about his family, his three brothers and one sister, all former KLA fighters. His sister, featured on a KLA sticker staring down the sights of a sniper rifle, is away finishing her university studies. But, he says, "I am afraid she will be back here very soon."(c) Copyright 2000 The Christian Science Publishing Society.
UNHCR-Briefing Notes, 7 March 2000
http://www.unhcr.ch/news/media/media.htm#44. Kosovo/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The number of ethnic Albanians leaving their homes in southern Serbia climbed sharply yesterday, when 626 people registered at UNHCR's field office in the eastern Kosovo town of Gnjilane. The new arrivals said they fled because of continuing tensions in southern Serbia, where an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 ethnic Albanians remain in areas around the towns of Presevo, Bujanovac and Mevedja, near the provincial border with Kosovo.
From January 26 through yesterday, a total of 1,658 ethnic Albanians from southern Serbia have registered as internally displaced with UNHCR in Gnjilane. But UNHCR believes the number could be much higher because many of the IDPs do not register. Many are believed to head to other parts of Kosovo, including Pristina, in search of shelter and employment. Since last summer, at least 6,000 ethnic Albanians are believed to have left southern Serbia – and that is a conservative estimate.
The latest arrivals reported they fled following firefights around the village of Dobrocin, where two Albanian woodcutters were killed on Jan. 26. More shooting incidents were reported Friday and over the weekend, they said.
On Sunday, 76 new arrivals registered in Gnjilane and reported that many more people would follow as soon as they felt it safe to do so. Yesterday, 626 registered.
There have been increasing reports of instability along the provincial border in recent weeks, including accounts from displaced Albanians of harassment and intimidation by Serb police and military in southern Serbia. At the same time, there are reports of an armed Albanian splinter group operating in the region.
In another development, UNHCR on Friday resumed operation of its bus route in the Gnjilane area and will resume today in Pristina. Altogether, we operated eight routes around Kosovo aimed at allowing freedom of movement for all ethnic groups. The bus operation was suspended Feb. 2 following a rocket attack on a vehicle near Mitrovica that killed two Serbs and wounded three others.
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UNHCR-Refugees Daily, March 7, 2000
http://www.unhcr.ch/news/media/daily.htm#yugYUGOSLAVIA: More Albanians flee Serbia - UNHCR
UNHCR said today it has seen a surge this week in the number of ethnic Albanians fleeing an increasingly tense area of southern Serbia that borders Kosovo, reports AP. Yesterday, 626 minority Albanians from the Presevo region registered with UNHCR in the nearest Kosovo town, Gnjilane, spokesman Kris Janowski said.
The area has been the site of sporadic clashes involving ethnic Albanian guerrillas, who are battling Serb police. The latest refugees said they had fled fighting around Dobrasin as well as further shooting incidents last Friday and over the weekend, Janowski said. The 76 people who registered in Gnjilane Sunday ''reported that many more people would follow as soon as they felt it was safe to cross the border,'' he added.
The number of Albanians who have registered in Gnjilane since Jan. 26 is now 1,658, UNHCR said. ''We believe the number could be much higher because many of the people who leave southern Serbia do not register,'' Janowski said. Inside Kosovo, UNHCR has now resumed bus services ''aimed at allowing freedom of movement for all ethnic groups'' in the Gnjilane area, Janowski said.
Meanwhile AFP reports the UN renewed an urgent appeal to member states yesterday to provide judges, lawyers and police to fill "a critical gap" in Kosovo. Senior humanitarian official Dennis McNamara said UNMIK was also worried about a spillover of violence into southern Serbia. "We are concerned about further displacements if that conflict is allowed to continue." McNamara said UNMIK supported allowing refugees to return home, but added that the conditions in Kosovo were not appropriate.[AP - UN reports hundreds more ethnic Albanians leaving southern Serbia; AFP - UN appeals to members to "invest in peace" in Kosovo; The New York Times - UN Council Urged to Debate Political Future of Kosovo; Liberation - Kouchner tire la sonnette d'alarme à l'ONU]
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