One dead in Macedonia attack

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- A Macedonian policeman has been killed in a grenade attack on a convoy in an area near the border with Kosovo.

Police in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia said a jeep was blown up in the Thursday evening attack, which came as NATO increased efforts to restore peace in the area amid increasing incursions by ethnic Albanian rebels.

A senior Macedonian interior ministry official travelling in the convoy was unhurt in the attack, which sparked a gun battle lasting an hour, added a police spokesman.

The incident came hours after the announcement of a NATO plan to allow Serb troops to resume patrols in the tense buffer zone between Kosovo and Macedonia, and after troops from the NATO-led KFOR force had cleared a border village of suspected ethnic Albanian rebels.

The latest attack took place on the outskirts of the village of Brest, where interior ministry officials had been speaking with local ethnic Albanian inhabitants to try to calm tensions.

KFOR earlier cleared ethnic Albanian rebels from a village in the Kosovo-Macedonia border security zone.

Around 50 ethnic Albanian rebels were forced by troops from the NATO-led KFOR force to withdraw from of Tanusevci, which straddles the Kosovo-Macedonian border.

KFOR Major James Marshall said U.S., Polish, and Ukrainian KFOR troops also located a rebel outpost in Kosovo on Thursday and swept it for weapons.

The decision to allow the Yugoslav army into the five kilometre (three mile) buffer zone in a restricted role -- as border guards rather than regular army patrols -- was announced by NATO leaders earlier on Thursday.

Yugoslav troops were expelled from the zone by NATO at the end of the Kosovo war in 1999, but is being allowed back following increasing attacks by ethnic Albanians in the region.

NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said: "NATO is determined that those extremist elements seeking to sow instability or to advance their political agenda by violent means will be stopped, whether in southern Serbia, in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or within Kosovo."

The NATO decision was welcomed by Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, who has been pushing for troops to be allowed to patrol in Kosovo, saying Albanian rebels are using the buffer zone to smuggle in weapons.

But Kostunica said the guards would be effectively clearing up where KFOR had failed through a "lack of courage."

"KFOR is abandoning protection of the border and is inviting our army to be in the crossfire," he said.

"What we are really lacking badly is more understanding, more goodwill on the part of KFOR and NATO and more readiness to risk something, maybe more courage on the part of NATO and KFOR that is so badly lacking at this moment."

The timing for the "controlled return" of the Yugoslav patrols, and where they will go, will be up to KFOR.

Serb forces will not be allowed to fly aircraft into what is called the "air safety zone" across Kosovo except in limited circumstances approved by KFOR.

Until now, only lightly-armed policemen have been allowed in the buffer region.

Spiralling troubles

The troubles have spiralled since ethnic Albanians occupied a stretch of the buffer zone in southern Serbia last year and began launching attacks on police in the Presevo Valley area bordering Kosovo.

The gunmen have recently seized adjacent Macedonian land.

The buffer zone was one of the main topics discussed by Robertson and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Washington on Thursday.

Robertson said the two sides had talked about the continuing "long term concern" and "priority to us for the safety and security" in the area.

"But we must make the key difference between the gunmen causing trouble and the vast majority of ethnic Albanians who simply seek peace and stability," he said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Bulgaria offers troops to Macedonia
March 5, 2001
Macedonia: A Balkan time bomb?
March 1, 2001
Crisis talks on Kosovo tension
March 7, 2001
Gun battle on Kosovo border
March 7, 2001
NATO considers Macedonia fears
March 7, 2001
Mine kills Yugoslav troops
March 7, 2001
Macedonia border tense
March 6, 2001
Fresh violence in Macedonia
March 5, 2001
Fighting on Macedonia-Kosovo border
February 26, 2001

KFOR
OSCE
Macedonian Government
United Nations
NATO
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.