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Belgrade Warns of Action Against Kosovo Rebels in Demilitarized Zone
Yugoslavia on Saturday demanded the U.N. Security Council set a deadline for the withdrawal of armed ethnic Albanians from a demilitarized zone separating the U.N.-controlled Kosovo province and the rest of Yugoslavia's Serbian republic, the official Tanjug news agency reported.
Otherwise, it warned, the country would invoke its legal and legitimate right to deal with the problem on its own, said Tanjug, citing a statement issued after a joint meeting of the Yugoslav and Serbian governments in Bujanovac, a town in southern Serbian.
At the meeting, Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, Serbian Prime Minister Milomic Minic and some other high-ranking officials discussed the crisis caused by the attacks on Serbian police by ethnic Albanians penetrating into the safe zone.
The leaders promised in the statement to protect the interests of Yugoslavia in the wake of an escalation of ethnic Albanian terrorism in southern Serbia and Kosovo, Tanjug said.
Since November 21, about 1,000 ethnic Albanian armed terrorists attacked time and again Yugoslav army and Serbian police in the buffer zone and Serbia's southern areas of Bujanovac, Presevo and Medvedja.
The document noted that the NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force (KFOR) and the U.N. mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) must be held responsible for the ethnic Albanian terrorist attacks on the buffer zone.
It also reaffirmed the Yugoslav and Serbian governments' stance of resolving by diplomatic way the issue of violating Yugoslavia's territorial integrity and sovereignty in flagrant violation of U.N. Resolution 1244.
It urged the local governments at all levels to fully support the Yugoslav army and the Serbian police in the buffer zone in protecting the interests of local people and Yugoslavia.
The statement will be submitted to the Yugoslav federal parliament for approval.
Kosovo, with a vast majority of ethnic Albanian population, has been under the administration of the UNMIK since June last year when the KFOR entered the province on the heels of withdrawing Yugoslav troops.
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