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NATO May Return Some Buffer Zone to Yugoslavia
NATO chief George Robertson said on Tuesday that the western military alliance was discussing possible changes to the safety zone around Kosovo.
Robertson said at the beginning of an extraordinary NATO foreign ministers council that he would announce the result right after the short meeting between United States Secretary of State Colin Powell and his foreign minister counterparts from other NATO countries.
NATO is preparing to return control of some part of the five- kilometer-wide buffer zone between the Yugoslav province of Kosovo proper and the Serbian Republic. The safety zone was established after the 1999 NATO air strikes against the Balkan nation.
Diplomatic sources said that NATO foreign ministers were expected to endorse on Tuesday a decision to eliminate around 300 kilometers of the 400-kilometer buffer zone, where there are only police with light arms patroled.
The move should be seen as a blunt warning against the ethnic Albanian guerrillas who have been harassing the ethnic Serbs in Kosovo and proliferating with armed attacks to southern Serbia and neighboring Macedonia.
Tuesday's brief meeting will be Powell's first along with other NATO foreign ministers.
The extraordinary council meeting is also expected to touch upon such hot issues as the U.S. national missile defense system and the European defense identity, apart from charting a broad road map for the trans-Atlantic relationship after George W. Bush moved into the White House.
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