World

U.S. Troops Wound Insurgents

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 7, 2001 / 6:44 AM EST / CBS

U.S. soldiers in Kosovo opened fire Wednesday on gunmen near the Macedonian border, where American troops have been working to contain an ethnic Albanian insurgency,
CBS News Correspondent
Allen Pizzey reports.

Two of the armed militants were wounded, but no U.S. soldiers were injured in the incident, the U.S. military said in a statement.

The incident occurred near the village of Tanusevci, 20 miles north of the Macedonian capital, Skopje. It was the scene of clashes between Macedonian troops and ethnic Albanian gunmen earlier this week.

"We don't want any more violence, but this will be up to those armed men," said Maj. James Marshall, a spokesman for the U.S. peacekeepers.

Just seven miles to the northeast, two Yugoslav soldiers were killed and two others injured when their vehicle hit a land mine in the village of Oreovica, on the edge of a buffer zone between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, Serb Information Minister Biserka Matic said.

The Americans -- who are part of a NATO-led peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo -- were searching for weapons in the border hamlet of Mijak early Wednesday, when four men in black uniforms with red patches pointed weapons at them. When the men began moving toward them, the U.S. peacekeepers opened fire, the military said. The fled back across the border into Macedonia under cover of fog.

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One of the wounded gunmen was evacuated by U.S. troops, and peacekeepers were searching Mijak for the second, who remained at large.

"We're not going to allow violence to spill over into Kosovo," Marshall said.

It was the first armed engagement between NATO peacekeepers and the gunmen since the peacekeepers started reinforcing the border last week.

The incident followed attacks earlier in the week by ethnic Albanian rebels that killed three Macedonian soldiers and prompted Macedonia to close its border with Kosovo.

After those attacks, U.S. peacekeepers, backed by armored vehicles and helicopters, poured into the Kosovo border village of Debelde, just east of Mijak, to block the infiltration.

Fears remain that fighting could spread and engulf much of the country. Macedonia has a restive ethnic Albanian community which comprises up to one-third of its 2 million people.

Macedonian security officials reported an exodus of local population fleeing the possible widening of clashes.

About 300 ethnic Albanians, mostly women and children, have fled their homes since Monday in villages along the border, Macedonian police spokesman Stevo Pendarovski said Wednesday

Bringing Milosevic To Justice

Seeking to bring Slobodan Milosevic to trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a prosecutor from the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia says the court is willing to allow part of the trial to take place in Belgrade, in addition to The Hague. The new Yugoslav president has refused to hand Milosevic over to the court, which he sees as political.

"We have noticed the movement of armed groups in the border area, not only near Tanusevci," said Gjorgji Trendafilov, Macedonian defense ministry spokesman. He warned of "possible new provocations in other places on the border."

NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo have been trying to stop the flow of weapons and fighters into both southern Serbia and Macedonia since rebel activity spilled over from Kosovo last year.

This week NATO is to decide whether to allow Yugoslav forces return to the buffer zone in Southern Serbia, a narrow strip of land along the joint border of Yugoslavia, Macedonia and Kosovo, which remains under NATO and U.N. control.

Under the plan being considered, Yugoslav forces would not be allowed to return to Kosovo. However, Robertson said NATO-led peacekeepers were stepping up controls along the Kosovo-Macedonian border "to restrict the use of Kosovo as a reinforcement area."

Ethnic Albanian militants -- who apparently want to unite parts of Serbia and Macedonia where ethnic Albanians live -- have used the corridor to smuggle weapons and fighters into southern Yugoslavia.

Kosovo Albanian leaders criticized on Wednesday the proposal, saying it could spark fresh violence in the Balkans.

Kole Berisha, vice president of the Democratic League of Kosovo party, said the proposed role could not be entrusted to an army that Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority associates with massacres.

"The army which until recently committed massacres in Kosovo cannot return to Kosovo or to a part of the Kosovo-Macedonian border, especially not to the triangle between Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia," Berisha said.

He said installing the Serbian-led Yugoslav army in that area would be a "provocation, making possible an open conflict that would include the entire region."