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Yugoslavia, Ethnic Albanian Rebels Sign Ceasefire Deal
The Yugoslav government and the ethnic Albanian rebel forces signed a ceasefire accord on Monday, moving a step closer to ending the conflicts in the troubled southern Serbian region.
The NATO-brokered ceasefire took effect after midnight, 2302 GMT, minutes after it was signed.
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic, who signed the truce, said that orders to stop fighting had been passed on to the commanders of the Yugoslav army and the Serbian police.
He told a press conference here Monday that he would expect to start talks with ethnic Albanian rebels next week.
"We are not for war, and we will do everything necessary to solve the problem peacefully," he said.
NATO envoy Pieter Feith called the accord "a major step forward, " and urged the rebel leaders to "exercise restraint" and "strictly comply" with its terms.
Shefket Musliu, one of the commanders of the rebel forces, said earlier he had signed the 20-day ceasefire for the region, but Feith said the deal was "open ended," suggesting it was not
limited to 20 day.
In NATO headquarters in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson urged both sides to respect the truce.
Under an agreement signed by NATO and Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia is allowed to send better-armed troops into the southern tip of a buffer zone adjoining Kosovo. The separatist-minded ethnic Albanian rebels have used the region to intrude into neighboring Macedonia over the past weeks and lightly armed Serbian police were unable to curb their intrusion.
However, the rebels indicated they remained opposed to allowing Yugoslav army and strong Serb police forces into the buffer zone.
The five-kilometer-wide zone was set up in June 1999, as part of peace terms for Kosovo and was supposedly meant to reduce a
threat to NATO-led peacekeepers.
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