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Yugoslav Army Allowed to Deploy Along Boundary With Kosovo
The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo and Yugoslavia signed an agreement Friday, allowing the Yugoslav army to patrol along the boundary between Kosovo and the rest of the country.
Yugoslav army Lt. Gen. Momcilo Momcilovic and NATO-led peacekeepers commander Lt. Gen. Thorstein Skiaker signed the accord at the boundary village of Merdare, 30 kilometers northeast of the Kosovo provincial capital of Pristina.
Under the agreement, there will no longer be any limitations on the range of movement of the Yugoslav army and police in the buffer-zone separating Kosovo and Yugoslavia's Serbian republic, the number of military and police in the zone, and the scale of their weapons.
The signing of the agreement marks Yugoslavia's resumed control over the entire buffer zone in southern Serbia, and helps strengthen the mutual trust and cooperation between the Yugoslav army and NATO-led peacekeepers, so as to check the criminal activities of ethnic Albanian extremists more efficiently, said Nebojsa Covic, president of the Yugoslav-Serbian Coordination Center for Kosovo and Serbia's deputy prime minister.
The buffer zone, five kilometers wide and 400 kilometers long, was created as part of a peace deal signed in June 1999 by Yugoslavia and NATO, excluding the entry of either the Yugoslav army or peacekeepers.
Late last November, a group of ethnic Albanian rebels started to enter the buffer zone, attacking Yugoslav police and civilians constantly, and later went into neighboring Macedonia, where they enkindled large-scale conflicts.
Considering the dangerous situation in the Balkans and the fact that the security of peacekeepers was being threatened, NATO had to allow a phased return of the Yugoslav army into the zone. Though the Yugoslav military had entered the zone before late May, they are restricted in such aspects as the use of weapons and the range of activity.
Kosovo has been under the administration of the United Nations and NATO since the Yugoslav military withdrew from the province following the 78-day air strikes by NATO in 1999.
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