Soldier killed in southern Serbia


Ethnic Albanians still live in hope of an independent Kosovo

BUJANOVAC, Yugoslavia -- A Yugoslav soldier has been killed in clashes with ethnic Albanian guerrillas in southern Serbia.

The army said on Saturday that Dragan Dimitrijevic died in an attack on Friday morning, following a gun battle with guerrillas.

He is believed to be the first soldier to have died in clashes with the guerrillas although several Serb police officers have been killed.

The rebels emerged in public about a year ago to fight what they say is Serbian repression in the volatile Albanian-inhabited area of Serbia adjoining U.N.-ruled Kosovo.

Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic said diplomatic activity should be stepped up to solve the conflict in southern Serbia, adding it would be resolved within one month by "diplomatic or other legitimate means."

"The other legitimate means are that we use the strength of the police and army against illegally armed groups," Beta news agency quoted Zivkovic as saying.

Zivkovic added that Yugoslav forces would not violate human rights but would do their job while protecting civilians.

Belgrade has repeatedly complained that the terms of the ceasefire agreement with NATO which ended the 1999 Kosovo conflict, barring well-armed troops from a five km (three-mile) buffer strip along the Kosovo border, have given the guerrillas a free hand in the area.

Riza Halimi, the ethnic Albanian mayor of Presevo in southern Serbia, said the Serb authorities should include the guerrillas in any talks on resolving the situation, as they are a "reality in the field."

"It is all the more necessary now as they (the guerrillas) are increasingly interested in putting an end to all of this through political dialogue," Halimi said.

Zivkovic has rejected talks with "terrorists," as he calls them, but said he was ready to talk with Halimi if he were to represent the guerrillas.

The Yugoslav army said its chief-of-staff General Nebojsa Pavkovic had inspected troops on the fringes of the buffer zone and units "exposed to terrorist attacks in the past days," and viewed weapons, mostly Chinese-made, seized from the guerrillas.

Four Serbian police were killed in November, and the guerrillas say about eight of their fighters have died over the last year.

The tense area of southern Serbia was the scene of another outbreak of fighting earlier this week. Both sides said two ethnic Albanians were wounded in those clashes.

On Friday, an ethnic Albanian guerrilla commander told an anniversary ceremony marking the armed group's first public appearance a year ago that one of its fighters had been killed near Veliki Trnovac village the same day.

The Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, known as the UCPMB, made its first public appearance a year ago in Serbia's predominantly Albanian-populated Presevo Valley.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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