|
Yugoslavia Admits Rebels Have Taken Serb Village
BELGRADE, May 13 (News Agencies) - Yugoslavia's army chief of staff admitted Sunday that Muslim Albanian rebels have captured the southern Serbian village of Oraovica.
Speaking on private BK television, General Nebojsa Pavkovic said: "Since this morning, barricades have been erected in the village, the roads are blocked and we have spotted mortar positions."
Oraovica is just outside the last remaining section of a five-kilometer- (three-mile-) wide buffer zone separating the province of Kosovo from the rest of Serbia.
Rebels from the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (LAPMB), which is named after key towns in the Presevo valley region, have been using the zone to launch attacks on the Yugoslav security forces.
Fighting intensified in the zone on Saturday after the authorities in Belgrade announced that two villages there, Lucane and Turija near Bujanovac, would soon be demilitarized.
The Albanian mayor of the town of Presevo, Riza Halimi, Sunday appealed to the Albanian population in southern Serbia to remain calm following the clashes.
"It is clear that the situation is more serious since yesterday and that it could deteriorate even more," said Halimi, who met Sunday with Wayne Porter, an official of the NATO-led multinational peacekeeping force in Kosovo, KFOR.
"It is our duty to work to put an end to violence and advance the political process to reach a peaceful settlement of the crisis," said the mayor of Presevo, 100 kilometers (60 mile) southeast of Oraovica.
An international aid worker said a 10-year-old boy was killed and his sister injured near Oraovica.
When asked Sunday why the army was not taking tougher action, Pavkovic said: "It is a delicate question, a military operation would without doubt cause more victims, perhaps civilian victims."
He added that a negotiating team from Belgrade "had undertaken a series of political measures to re-establish confidence and resolve the problem peacefully with the Albanians."
The buffer zone was created after the war in Kosovo in 1999 to keep Yugoslav troops and KFOR peacekeepers apart, and only lightly armed Serbian police were allowed to enter.
On March 14, NATO allowed the Yugoslav army to begin progressively moving into the area.
However one sector, where the LAPMB is based, remains off-limits to the soldiers and a ceasefire signed on March 12th is violated almost daily.
Lucane and Turija are located in this sector, which is known as Sector B.
The LAPMB has been fighting for more than a year for the predominantly ethnic Albanian border area to either win autonomy or be joined to neighboring Kosovo, a breakaway U.N.-run Serbian province which is 95% Muslim Albanian.
"I appeal to all citizens to keep calm and help to ease tensions," Halimi told AFP.
|
