Albania Sends More Troops to Its Border
The Albanian government is sending extra troops to its border with Yugoslavia and increasing the army’s state of alert, President Ramiz Alia said.
Speaking on television Friday night, he said the use of force by the Yugoslav federal government presented great dangers for Albania and for the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia.
There is a large Albanian population in Kosovo, an autonomous province within Serbia, Yugoslavia’s largest republic.
Alia told army officers Saturday that Albanians in Kosovo were being subjected to “savage police and military violence,” the Albanian news agency ATA reported.
He condemned the presence of Serbian “volunteers” in Kosovo.
“The possibility that such mobs may provoke a . . . massacre of the Albanians, which would have very dangerous consequences for Kosovo as well as for Albania, is not excluded,” he said.
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