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NATO Says Albanian Separatists And Serbs Agree To "Indefinite" Ceasefire
by Dave Clark
PRISTINA (AFP) - Yugoslav authorities and ethnic Albanian separatists have agreed on an indefinite ceasefire following a week of clashes provoked by an Albanian separatist offensive over the Kosovo border in Serbia proper, a senior NATO official said Tuesday.
The official said he had helped broker the accord between the Yugoslav authorities - who last week lost three officers and a border town to the separatists - and the Albanians, who have dug in inside a demilitarized buffer zone on the Serbian side of the boundary.
The two parties had "agreed to an indefinite ceasefire and agreed to resolve the situation peacefully," the official, who asked not to be named, told reporters.
There was no initial confirmation form Belgrade of the deal, but General Nebojsa Pavkovic, the Yugoslav army's chief of staff told Belgrade radio B92 that he wanted a peaceful solution to the crisis.
"We have made a proposal to President [Vojislav] Kostunica to solve the problem diplomatically, in direct contact with Kosovo Albanian leaders and representatives of the international organizations in Kosovo," he said.
But he warned: "If the international community does not show good will to solve the problem peacefully, I assume the state will decide to cleanse the buffer zone of Albanian terrorist forces."
Belgrade has blamed the flare-up on NATO-peacekeepers in Kosovo, whom they accused of failing to cut off arms shipments to the ethnic Albanian fighters coming from the U.N.-run province.
Kostunica has said the renewed fighting had risked "setting the entire region ablaze," while Yugoslav forces massed near the tense border zone.
Tuesday's ceasefire announcement came as NATO Secretary General George Robertson said the alliance was in talks with the Yugoslav Army about finding ways to deal with the separatists, whom he dismissed as a "handful of terrorists."
The Yugoslav officials and the separatists did not meet face-to-face, but NATO officials attached to the KFOR Kosovo peacekeeping force acted as go-betweens, the NATO official said in Pristina.
"Belgrade recognizes the need to make a different approach to the situation in the Presevo Valley" which the separatists want to unite with a future independent Kosovo, he said.
"By and large they [Belgrade] have been very co-operative," the official said, but added that they have been "very frustrated" by the loss of the town of Konculj and the death of the three officers.
However in Belgrade, Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic told AFP he knew nothing about the deal, adding: "I only know there has been no direct contact between our authorities and the Albanian separatists."
Belgrade had raised the issue of a renegotiating the Military Technical Agreement signed last year with NATO, which created a demilitarized buffer zone around Kosovo, but were told by the official that this was "out of the question."
The Presevo Valley, like Kosovo, has a predominantly ethnic Albanian population. Its western edge falls in the buffer zone, but it also extends into areas of full Yugoslav control.
In January, the self-proclaimed Liberation Army of Presevo, Medveda and Bujanovac (UCPMB) declared an independence struggle, basing itself in the Ground Safety Zone (GSZ), from which both NATO troops based in Kosovo and the Yugoslav army are forbidden to enter.
Serb interior ministry police are permitted in the zone, but are forbidden from deploying weapons more powerful than a 12-millimeter cannon.
Last week, separatists captured Konculj after killing three members of a lightly armed police detachment, linking up two groups of villages already under their control and cutting the road between Bujanovac, a major town in the Presevo valley, and the U.N.-run province of Kosovo.
Following the offensive, Yugoslav army tanks and police anti-terrorist forces deployed to areas just outside the GSZ, and Belgrade warned that if NATO had not ended separatist activity by 7:00 pm Monday, Belgrade's forces would enter the area, risking clashes with NATO forces.
Some 3,000 ethnic Albanians have fled southern Serbia into Kosovo to escape possible conflict in the area, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said Tuesday.
Kris Janowski, a UNHCR spokesman in Geneva, said the agency received reports that 200 vehicles carrying ethnic Albanians arrived Monday in Kosovo from southern Serbia.
Two ethnic Albanian children and a woman were killed Monday when a tractor carrying them out of the area hit a mine.
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