Fears for future in Kosovo

By Dick Durham CNN.com Europe writer

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Fears that increasing violence in Kosovo could escalate into another serious crisis in the region have been expressed by Balkans experts following a fresh outbreak of attacks on Serbs.

Four Serb policemen were killed on the Kosovo border on Wednesday, while a bomb exploded at the Pristina base of Belgrade's representative in the province, killing one.

And on Thursday, troops from the NATO-led KFOR force detained 10 suspected ethnic Albanian militants on the Serb side of the buffer zone between Serbia and Kosovo.

Party co-ordinator for the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, Zoran Djindjic -- a key aide to Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica -- said such killings were part of "widescale clashes which could grow into a real war."

Kostunica has urged NATO to take action to ensure the attacks on Serbs come to an end.

Balkans expert Dr. Mark Almond agrees that there is a risk of the current spate of violence escalating.

Almond, who regularly visits Yugoslavia and who lectures at Oriel College in England's Cambridge University believes the ethnic Albanian rebels could be trying to re-create the conditions that saw them favoured by the west and NATO -- namely war.

He said the repressive "shoot first and ask questions afterwards" tactics employed by former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic via his Serbian police against the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, made the world see them as victims and started the 1999 war in Kosovo.

He believes the ethnic Albanian attacks on Serbian police are an attempt to provoke a reaction as savage as the ethnic cleansing which produced western sympathy for them and saw NATO forces siding with them.

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Such tactics are not helped by the fact that many Serbian policemen are refugees from the Serbian minority in Kosovo, said Almond: "There is no love lost between them."

Almond said: "While Milosevic was in power all ethnic Albanians preferred having the west on their side."

But now many ethnic Albanians feel they are "worse off". They say KFOR forces should be "intervening" on their behalf, he said.

The new ethnic Albanian rebel group, called the Liberation Army of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja is a "surrogate" of the old disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, Almond told CNN.com Europe, and it could easily control vital communications links.

"Presevo is about 90 percent ethnic Albanian -- it is a very tense place, I have been there myself -- it lies in a strategic valley," Almond said.

The ethnic Albanians are aware how easily the road to Macedonia could be cut off, making Yugoslavia dependent on Albania for a road link to Greece.

Add to this the fact that many in Yugoslavia are undergoing privations including power cuts, and feel that the new regime might not be "all it's cracked up to be" with its pro-western stance and the situation is rife for powerful anti-Kostunica propaganda with the December 23 elections coming up.

"Law and order is now a big issue," Almond said.

Dr. Mark Wheeler of Derby University, England, said he believed the KFOR force would not be able to leave Kosovo for some years to come.

He said: "All the International peacekeeping force KFOR can do is keep the lid on things and they may have to do that for 10, 20 maybe 30 years. All one hopes for is that the passage of time will help. There is no alternative."

At the moment there is "hardly any" basis for the mutual acceptance of one community by the other, he said.

Wheeler said there could be a constitutional move to end the violence by having a "confederated" Kosovo and Montenegro within Yugoslavia.

Under such a plan Yugoslavia would only control Kosovo's foreign relations and external defence.

But even such a loosely-linked deal was anathema to the ethnic Albanians.

Wheeler said the Serbs were only just beginning to understand the "enormity" of ethnic cleansing "let alone the systematic persecution" of the ethnic Albanians by the Milosevic regime, which had gone on for many years beforehand.

He said the international community were, as a result, in a "cleft stick" over the situation in Kosovo.

People in Kosovo, he said, were "severely debilitated" by the new Kostunica regime and there was much fear afoot in the province despite "tremendous efforts" on behalf of the U.N. to create a multi-ethnic police force.

Kostunica demands action over Kosovo attacks
November 23, 2000
U.N. chief urges Kosovo elections
November 17, 2000
Kosovo leader 'urges independence'
November 4, 2000
Kosovo activist freed by Kostunica
November 1, 2000
Hope for smooth Kosovo transition
October 30, 2000
Counting starts in landmark Kosovo elections
October 28, 2000

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
NATO
KFOR
United Nations

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