NATO chief looks to Serbian future

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Greater participation by ethnic Albanians in the administration of southern Serbia would help ease tensions in the region, NATO's Secretary General George Robertson has suggested.

Separatist attacks in the Presevo Valley on Kosovo's eastern border in the past week and renewed ethnic killing in northern Kosovo has raised concerns about violence spreading even further.

The United Nations security Council "strongly condemned" the attacks after a behind-closed-doors session on Tuesday.

Robertson said NATO-led peacekeepers would not let ethnic Albanian gunmen use the Presevo buffer zone as a safe haven to attack Serb forces, but political issues should also be tackled.

"We will continue to take robust action to prevent them from getting the provocation they seek," he said.

"A greater degree of participation of the ethnic Albanian majority population in southern Serbia in their own administration and indeed in their own local police" would help to defuse tensions, he added.

Yugoslavia, in a bid to curb guerrilla attacks, has proposed to NATO that the 5-kilometre (three-mile) "ground safety zone" be narrowed so Serb forces can police it.

"I'll be replying that I hope that the Yugoslav, and the Serbian, authorities will start putting in place some of the confidence-building measures," Robertson said.

According to NATO and European Union diplomats, confidence-building measures for the Presevo Valley include removing potentially provocative Serbian security units.

Robertson said peacekeepers would continue to prevent arms and reinforcements reaching the estimated 700 guerrillas, but that they also had to keep the boundary line open to peaceful civilians.

Diplomats said NATO and the EU preferred to calm fears and improve daily life for Presevo's 70,000 ethnic Albanians rather than look for military solutions.

Bernard Kouchner, the former United Nations administrator in Kosovo, said Monday's grenade attack in Mitrovica which killed two Kosovo Albanians could be a sign of worse to come.

He said that voter registration needed to begin immediately for a Kosovo general election that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe says will take six months to arrange.

In the latest clash, the peacekeepers fired tear gas at stone-throwing Kosovo Albanians in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica, the Reuters news agency reported.

Ethnic Albanian protesters, angry at the death of a 15-year-old youth in clashes with Serbs in the divided town on Monday, set two parked armoured personnel carriers on fire, pouring gasoline on them, the agency reported.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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NATO
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

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