World

Yugoslavia Wants Smaller Buffer

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 22, 2000 / 3:43 PM EST / CBS

President Vojislav Kostunica called Tuesday for changing the Kosovo peace agreement to narrow a no-man's-land near the province and allow the Yugoslav army to operate closer to ethnic Albanian militants there.

Four days before elections in Yugoslavia's main republic of Serbia, Kostunica charged that NATO peacekeepers could not control the ethnic Albanians in a three-mile-wide buffer zone between Serbia and Kosovo.

The zone was established in June 1999 to prevent Yugoslav forces from threatening the NATO peacekeepers who took over Kosovo after the 78-day NATO bombing of Yugoslavia that halted Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown against Kosovo Albanians.

But last month, ethnic Albanian rebels launched an offensive that left four Serb policemen dead in the zone, where only Serb police patrols with light arms are allowed under the Kosovo peace agreement.

NATO troops in Kosovo — despite their "overwhelming presence" — have "shown themselves incapable of the task" of stopping violence, Kostunica said.

"And if they failed in Kosovo, what can we expect in the Presevo Valley?" he asked, in a reference to the buffer zone.

The Kosovo peace agreement foresees no NATO role in Yugoslavia outside Kosovo, and Kostunica told reporters that ending the violence in the zone "can evidently not be achieved single-handedly with the presence or intervention of (NATO's) Kosovo Force."

Cohen: U.S. Won't
Abandon Balkans

Defense Secretary William Cohen said Monday that he believes the U.S. will not abandon its mission in the Balkans under the incoming Bush administration. During the election campaign, Bush and his advisers suggested they wanted European countries to assume more of the peacekeeping in Kosovo and Bosnia. On a visit to U.S. troops, Cohen addressed those concerns.

"We intend to remain active," he said, "consistent with security needs in Kosovo and in the Balkans."

Cohen, who represents the Clinton administration, said he could not predict what would happen under Bush. But he said Vice President-elect Dick Cheney and Colin Powell, the secretary of state designate, "are internationalists."

Added Cohen: "I believe that they will want to see that we remain engaged in world affairs."
(Associated Press)

"A possible solution," he said, would be to reduce width othe buffer zone to six-tenths of a mile to 1.2 miles wide. "That would help return stability into the zone," the president said.

"Our goal is to cleanse the southern Serbian region of terrorists," Kostunica said, referring to Albanian militants.

The clashes in the zone have sparked fears of renewed Balkan bloodshed despite recent democratic changes in Yugoslavia after the ouster in October of Milosevic.

"It is not realistic to expect the changes in the entirety of the (peace agreement) text. That would only lead to further instability", Kostunica said. "We believe that an amendment, a change, that envisages more modest aims, is needed."

The Security Council called Tuesday for ethnic Albanian "extremists" from Kosovo to withdraw immediately from the boundary zone.

Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham said he appreciated the Belgrade government's "considerable restraint and responsibility," that has been shown so far, particularly with elections upcoming.

He cautioned against calls for military action in the zone, however.

In the statement, the council called for the "dissolution" of ethnic Albanian extremist groups and said it welcomed efforts by ethnic Albanian leaders, as well as U.N. and NATO forces, to achieve stability.

Scores of international peacekeepers were sent Monday to the tense boundary area after a violent weekend that left two Serbs dead and included an attack on a joint U.S.-Russian patrol.

Peacekeepers exchanged fire with suspected ethnic Albanian militants as violence surged in the troubled province on Sunday. On Saturday, in the northwestern Kosovo town of Leposavic, Serbs angered by the arrest of a motorist set fire to a police station, stoned vehicles, and briefly took seven Belgian soldiers hostage. Two Serbs died in the melee and one was wounded. U.N. police were investigating.

With Serbian elections Saturday, there have been calls in Belgrade for military action after the balloting. But Kostunica has resisted, opting for democratic measures and negotiations instead.

Milosevic's supporters have criticized Kostunica's government for not acting against Albanian militants.

But reformer Zoran Djindjic, poised to become Serbia's next prime minister after elections this weekend, said Tuesday he aimed to transform his country into a source of stability after years of turmoil in the Balkans.

Djindjic pledged an early crackdown on corruption, which was rampant under the rule of Milosevic, and said he believed the former president would face justice in the Serbian courts very soon — but for financial crimes, not war crimes.

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