New Macedonia border clashes

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.

The clashes began late on Thursday when rebels ambushed the Macedonian government convoy in the village, killing a driver.

The ambush 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.

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.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, fearing similar attacks on his troops as they move into the 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 stimulated aspirations for a Greater Albania because it was too concerned for its own troops' safety.

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.

Bulgarian military lorrries entered Macedonia on Thursday 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.

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."

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.

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. Defence 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.

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Fighting on Macedonia-Kosovo border
February 26, 2001

KFOR
OSCE
Macedonian Government
United Nations
NATO
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

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