World

The Smell Of Trouble

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

December 20, 2000 / 11:35 AM EST / CBS

Thirteen Kosovo Albanians with machine guns and other advanced weaponry were arrested Wednesday while en route to a zone just outside Kosovo where ethnic Albanian militants are preparing for battle, NATO peacekeepers said.

A NATO statement said the 13 men were heading out of Kosovo, toward the boundary with the rest of Serbia in four cars and two tractors. They did not resist when peacekeepers arrested them in the town of Draghibac Mala.

The confiscated weapons included seven machine guns, five AK-47 assault rifles, 30 rocket-propelled grenade warheads, 50 hand grenades, two anti-tank mines and four rocket launchers and warheads. The arrested men will be sent to the U.S. Camp Bondsteel for questioning, the statement said.

The arrests appeared to be the latest evidence that ethnic Albanian militants are preparing to fight Serbs in the tense buffer zone where Kosovo meets the rest of Serbia.

"Clearly, they are moving across the boundary in order to carry out attacks on Serbs," Press Association of Britain quoted a NATO spokesman, Lt. Col. Stephen Kilpatrick, as saying.

Ethnic Albanians make up the vast majority of the population in Kosovo, which is a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic. Kosovo has been under international control since last year, when the 78-day NATO bombing of Yugoslavia forced then-President Slobodan Milosevic to halt his crackdown against Kosovo Albanians. Many Kosovo residents now want full independence for not only Kosovo but also the heavily ethnic Albanian Presevo Valley region in nearby Serbia proper.

The buffer zone was established in June 1999 to prevent Yugoslav forces from threatening the peacekeepers who took over Kosovo. Yugoslav forces cannot use heavy weapons in the zone, and so the ethnic Albanians have been operating with impunity as they try to drive Yugoslav forces from the area.

Last month, the rebels killed four Yugoslav policemen and seized several positions in the three-mile-wide buffer zone. The growing insurgency is provoking international concern because it threatens to export the kind of tensions that led to Kosovo's bloodshed.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council called Tuesday for ethnic Albanian "extremists" from Kosovo to withdraw immediately from the boundary zone.

At the meeting, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic said he expected the council to take immediate action to remove the rebels from the region. The new Yugoslav government is committed to finding a peaceful solution to the problem, but it is under pressure from extremists to resort to military force to restore security in the zone, he said.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica called earlier Tuesday for changes in the Kosovo peace agreement that would allow Yugoslav forces to operate closer to the boundary. Svilanovic brought Kostunica's message to the council, saying Belgrade was ready to discuss with NATO and the United Nations "possible changes in the regime in the zoe."

Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham said he appreciated the Belgrade government's "considerable restraint and responsibility" so far. He cautioned against calls for military action in the zone, however.

Kosovo itself remains tense. Yugoslavia's Beta news agency reported that a U.N. police station in Serb-dominated Zubin Potok was demolished with grenades and machine-gun bursts. In addition, four police cars were damaged and a van was blown up.

The attack on the U.N. police station Tuesday has prompted a blockade of the village enforced by U.N. police and NATO troops.

Northern Kosovo, populated mostly by ethnic Serbs, is tense since the weekend when one Serb died of a gunshot wound during violent protests against the detention of a local Serb by international police.

U.N. police are continuing patrols in Zubin Potok and have resumed patrols further north in Leposavic, where a police station was set on fire during the protests on Saturday night.

"Police are worried about their security," said U.N. police spokesman Dimitry Kaportsev. "With one police station attacked and another police station attacked, it makes the police need to take measures for security for their own personnel."

Bernard Kouchner, the U.N.'s chief administrator in Kosovo, called on the Serb community to calm down the situation, a spokeswoman said.

"There seems to be some kind of inter-Serb rivalry going on," said U.N. spokeswoman Susan Manuel said. "Suddenly U.N. police are targeted and we don't know what's going on. There's no message with the madness."