Fighting traps Macedonia minister

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Senior Macedonian Government officials are trapped in a remote village as fighting continues on the border with Kosovo.

The officials, including the country's deputy interior minister, are trapped in Brest, as fighting continues around the village between government forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas.

Fighting began late on Thursday when rebels ambushed the Macedonian Government convoy in the village, killing a driver.

The attack followed moves by NATO to clear a border village of suspected ethnic Albanian rebels and to allow Serb troops to resume patrols in the tense buffer zone between Kosovo and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

AUDIO Lord Robertson of NATO: "We don't want a war situation" 394K/29 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

NATO forces have also stepped up air and ground patrols in the area to try to capture the Albanian extremists they say are responsible for attacks inside Macedonia and the Presevo Valley in southern Serbia.

Macedonian Foreign Minister Srgjan Kerim called for NATO troops to be deployed all along its 220 km (130 miles) border with Kosovo to prevent further infiltration.

Speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels, he said he would put the request to the alliance "because we can't control the border from the other side and there is definitely a spillover effect from the Kosovo side."

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, fearing attacks on his troops as they move into the buffer zone over the next few days, lashed out at NATO, accusing it of having encouraged such extremism.

"KFOR is abandoning protection of the border and is inviting our army to be in the crossfire," he said, adding that KFOR had encouraged aspirations for a Greater Albania because it was too concerned for its own troops' safety.

Interior ministry officials had been speaking with local ethnic Albanian inhabitants in Brest to try to calm tensions before their convoy was ambushed.

KFOR earlier cleared about 50 ethnic Albanian rebels from the village of Tanusevci, which straddles the Kosovo-Macedonian border.

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 on Thursday.

Bulgarian military lorries have entered Macedonia carrying tonnes of munitions and military hardware to aid government troops.

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.

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.

The troubles have escalated 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.

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."

Reuters contributed to this report.

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KFOR
OSCE
Macedonian Government
United Nations
NATO
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

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