Serb police suspended

BUJANOVAC, Yugoslavia (Reuters) -- More than 20 policemen in a volatile area of southern Serbia have been suspended by the country's interior ministry for "serious violations of their duty," a defence lawyer has said.

The 22 officers serve in the Presevo Valley area close to the border with Kosovo which has a substantial ethnic Albanian population and has seen a series of conflicts between armed Albanians and Serb police over the past year.

Ethnic Albanians in the area have long accused Serb police of harassment.

Milan Krstic, a lawyer appointed to defend most of the accused officers, said the suspensions gave no specific details about the alleged violations of duty.

"In my opinion, all the suspension rulings lack a legal basis and have been brought in an illegal way," Krstic said.

A local police chief, Novica Zdravkovic, said the officers had been suspended pending investigations. He said there were some department heads among the officers.

While he did not give details of all the suspensions, Zdravkovic said six officers had taken part in a roadblock protest of the local Presevo-Bujanovac road in December.

Some other officers, Zdravkovic said, had not conducted proper checks of vehicles carrying goods from Kosovo. Others had harmed the police's reputation in other ways.

Over the past year, an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group has emerged in the Presevo Valley, driving Serb police out of several villages.

Four Serb police were killed in clashes with the guerrillas in November.

Western governments and human rights organisations have accused Serbian police of widespread abuses under the rule of Slobodan Milosevic.

Reformers who forced Milosevic out last October have pledged to overhaul the police force.

Zoran Zivkovic, the Yugoslav interior minister, said the suspensions were "only the beginning."

"It's obvious there are some policemen who don't deserve to wear uniforms and be called policemen," he told Reuters.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Serbian Ministry of Information

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