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Kosovo peace talks to continue
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Ethnic Albanian rebels have rejected proposals to let Yugoslav soldiers return to a buffer zone along the boundary with Kosovo. NATO special envoy Pieter Feith held talks with a Serbian delegation on Sunday and was expected to meet ethnic Albanian representatives on Monday to discuss the increasing tension on Kosovo's borders. The Western alliance wants to send Yugoslav troops into the southern end of the five-kilometre (three-mile)-wide buffer zone in southern Serbia. However, the alliance first needs to negotiate a ceasefire between Yugoslav forces and ethnic Albanian rebels to end the violence which has spread out of Kosovo and into Macedonia and the rest of Serbia. NATO was optimistic on Sunday that its efforts to broker the ceasefire would succeed, but said its negotiators needed another 24 hours. "It is very sensitive, there are lots of developments that run more or less parallel. We have to get it right but I would like to ask you to be a little patient for another 24 hours and see if we can get results," Feith said. Feith has held talks with both sides but he emerged without an agreement from the ethnic Albanians after three hours of talks on Saturday. The main stumbling block for the rebels was NATO's decision to send Yugoslav forces into the buffer zone near the Macedonian border to curb weapons smuggling to ethnic Albanian guerrillas operating there. Ethnic Albanians, operating in Macedonia, spelled out their demands, calling for constitutional changes that would define the country as "a state of two constituent peoples" -- Macedonian and Albanian -- and grant broad rights and privileges to its ethnic Albanian minority. Macedonian officials have promised to carry out social reform programmes to help improve the lives of its ethnic Albanian minority. Foreign Minister Srgan Kerim said carrying out social and economic reforms for the minorities is the answer to extremism. A Macedonian policeman killed when his car was blown up near the Kosovo border was buried on Saturday. Goran Stojanovski was the fourth Macedonian serviceman to be killed in a week. A Serb police officer was also killed on Friday. Macedonia has sealed its borders with Kosovo - key routes for supplies into the province -- after a series of attacks on border villages. The Macedonian Government has called for extra protection from NATO and a buffer zone similar to the one enforced in southern Serbia to be introduced along the Macedonian-Kosovo border. But NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said: "I don't think another ground safety zone, frankly, is the answer." "Robust patrolling" of the Macedonian border by KFOR was NATO's preferred solution to preventing infiltrations, he said. In another apparent effort to ease tensions, Yugoslavia released 94 ethnic Albanian prisoners who were rounded up during former President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown in Kosovo. The release brought the number of ethnic Albanians freed last week to 150, but Yugoslavia still holds about 500 such prisoners. Meanwhile, in Macedonia's capital Skopje, hundreds of armed riot police backed by armoured vehicles stood guard on Sunday for a soccer match between a team supported mostly by ethnic Albanians and another whose fans are mostly from the Slavic majority. The match was supposed to have been played on Wednesday but was postponed because of ethnic clashes in the north. The ethnic Albanian team, Sloga Jugomagnat, beat its rivals, Vardar, 2-0. The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report. RELATED STORIES:
Rivals search for Kosovo solution RELATED SITES:
Macedonian Government |
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