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Yugoslavia Welcomes NATO Decision to Allow its Army in Buffer Zone
Yugoslavia welcomed NATO's decision to open an area within the buffer zone designated as "D" in southern Serbia to the Yugoslav armed forces, a Yugoslav government official said Tuesday.
Nebojsa Covic, chairman of a Yugoslavia state coordination body in southern Serbia's buffer zone and concurrently Deputy Prime Minister of the Serbia republic, said in a statement that the return of the Yugoslav joint forces of police and army into the D area was significant to the security of local ethnic and realization of Yugoslav's territory integrity and sovereignty.
"We must hold on to the peaceful policies of solving the crisis in southern Serbia and to make a safe living environment for local ethnic people," he said.
The buffer zone, a 400-kilometer-long, 5-kilometer-wide land strip along the Kosovo and the Serbia republic, was established in June 1999 after the NATO-led peacekeeping force (KFOR) entered the Yugoslav province following 78 days of NATO bombing of the Balkan nation.
Neither the Yugoslav army nor KFOR can enter the buffer zone and Serb police can only operate there under restrictive conditions and with light arms.
Since November 2000, however, ethnic Albanian rebels coming from Kosovo made the most of the buffer zone as a safe haven from which to launch attacks on Yugoslav troops, police and civilians.
The ethnic Albanian rebels even began to infiltrate into Macedonia through the buffer zone on February 2001 and trigged fights with Macedonian police and army to gain control of Macedonia's second biggest city of Tetove.
Under the circumstances that there may be another Balkan war and the KFOR's security is also endangered, NATO gave the green light on March 8 for a return of Yugoslav troops to the east part of C area bordering Macedonia.
As the fighting escalated, NATO decided on March 22 to allowed Yugoslav troops to return to west part of C area bordering Albania and the A area between the Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro border.
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