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Yugoslav Forces Storm Last Section Of Rebel-Held Zone
GOLEMO BRDO, Yugoslavia, May 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Yugoslav troops rolled into the last sector of a formerly demilitarized zone on the Kosovo border on Thursday as the army launched an operation to end a Muslim Albanian uprising.
T-55 tanks and armored personnel carriers swept out of a low pine forest on a ridge overlooking the edge of the buffer zone just after 8:00 am (0600 GMT) to back up a force of more than 4,000 troops and special police advancing into the hills.
Using beaten earth trails cut by army engineers, a column of soldiers descended from their dug-in firing positions at Golemo Brdo to advance on Gornja Susaja, a Muslim Albanian village from which fighters have launched a number of sniper and hit-and-run attacks during a 16-month insurgency.
The fighters signed an agreement to disband on Monday, and the Yugoslav forces were confident that they would meet little resistance as they secured the buffer zone.
An officer of the elite 63rd parachute brigade watching the deployment through binoculars from a protective mound of orange earth overlooking the first village said that his troops had arrived in Susaja without meeting resistance.
"The civilians all left the village in January, and the last rebels in the past few days," he said.
The force was to continue through formerly rebel held territory up to the Kosovo border where it was to meet NATO peacekeepers whose leaders gave Belgrade the go-ahead to enter the demilitarized zone in a bid to squeeze out the fighters.
As the Yugoslav army advanced, the sound of shells exploding could be heard from the south, across the border in Macedonia where 14 kilometers (nine miles) away Macedonian government forces are fighting a second Muslim Albanian force.
The deployment is being seen as a victory for President Vojislav Kostunica's reformist administration and its policy of working with local minority leaders and the international community to isolate insurgents.
Muslim Albanian separatists had been using the buffer as a safe haven from which to launch their attacks, but this week agreed to disband their forces rather than face a direct confrontation with the army.
NATO, working in close co-operation with its former enemies in Belgrade, has progressively shrunk the buffer zone since March 14th, forcing the rebels into an ever smaller parcel of territory as troops and police move back in.
The last section, known as "Sector B", was abolished Thursday, giving the Yugoslav forces a free hand to mop up any resistance in the 35-kilometer (22-mile) long strip of thickly-wooded hills west of the town of Bujanovac.
"With this operation we can finally establish peace and security in this region," Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister Nebosja Covic said at a news conference in the town of Bujanovac on the edge of the buffer zone.
On Monday, the rebel force's leaders signed an agreement to disarm and disband, but even before the accord, dozens of fighters had begun to hand themselves into NATO peacekeepers.
More than 300 had done so by Wednesday, NATO officials said.
The remaining rebels are based in villages in the central section of Sector B, which Yugoslav forces are due to enter next week after securing the northern and southern flanks of rebel held territory.
Belgrade has persuaded non-fighting Muslim Albanian leaders to co-operate with a program to bind their community closer into public life in southern Serbia and held direct talks with the rebels to negotiate conditions for their surrender.
Western diplomats have praised the approach, and contrasted it favorably with the attitude of the Macedonian government, which has refused to hold talks with a similar ethnic Albanian movement fighting on its territory.
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