Yugoslavia Seeks to ‘Cleanse’ Border Area of ‘Terrorists’

Using loaded words reminiscent of the Slobodan Milosevic era, Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica threatened Tuesday to “cleanse” the border zone between Serbia proper and Kosovo of “terrorists.”

Ethnic Albanian fighters from separatist Kosovo, still technically a province of Serbia, have stepped up attacks on Serbian police during the past several weeks. They also targeted U.S. troops in a brief shootout Sunday as the peacekeepers tried to close an infiltration route into Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic.

Kostunica criticized the NATO-led peacekeeping force, known as KFOR, for failing to stop the guerrillas from invading a buffer zone after Serbian forces withdrew from the southern province in June 1999. The Serbian pullout came after 11 weeks of North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrikes.

Recent talks with unnamed foreign officials have made clear that “in the quest for a solution, we have to cleanse this zone of terrorists,” Kostunica said in the first of what he promised will be monthly news conferences in Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital.

“I deliberately use that term ‘cleanse,’ because the prevalent opinion was that it cannot be achieved by the one-sided presence, or intervention, by international forces and KFOR.”

Although Kostunica promised more negotiations, and insisted that civilians don’t need to fear Serbian forces, his rhetoric harked back to that used by Milosevic, whose regime was marked by campaigns of “ethnic cleansing” of non-Serbs, including Kosovo Albanians.

Kostunica’s words left no doubt that Milosevic’s sudden fall from power in October wasn’t enough to resolve the region’s complex, and potentially explosive, antagonisms.

Saying he expects to face many problems as president, Kostunica acknowledged that some have proved more complex than he anticipated, such as the campaigns for independence in Kosovo and Montenegro, Serbia’s junior partner in the Yugoslav federation.

Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic appears more determined than ever to hold a referendum on independence, despite the deep divisions over the matter among his republic’s more than 600,000 people, and the threat of a new civil war if Djukanovic presses the issue.

Djukanovic, once a Milosevic protege, claims that Serbian repression is forcing Montenegro toward independence, an argument that now rings hollow, Kostunica insisted.

“In Montenegro, they cannot prove that there is any kind of repression from Belgrade,” he said, “so politically it would be very difficult to justify unilateral steps such as a referendum.”

Recent polls give Kostunica an approval rating of about 90% as his 19-party alliance heads into elections Saturday in Serbia.

Milosevic, who has been indicted on war crimes charges, still heads the Socialist Party, which blames Kostunica and his allies for deteriorating border security, as well as runaway inflation, increasing crime and other problems. Kostunica insists that they are legacies of Milosevic’s misrule, a decade of foreign sanctions and NATO’s airstrikes.

The ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the buffer zone are estimated to number from several hundred to a few thousand fighters. They call themselves the Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac Liberation Army, after the three main towns in a region of southern Serbia that they say belongs to Kosovo.

The rebels include veterans from the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, which fought a vicious, yearlong civil war with Serbian forces before NATO’s intervention. Serbian authorities say the current border conflict began in November 1999, five months after peacekeepers took control of Kosovo.

U.S. troops are on the front line of the most dangerous flash point in the eastern part of the buffer zone, which extends three miles into southern Serbia proper along the provincial border.

Under terms of the Military Technical Agreement that ended NATO’s air war against Milosevic, only Serbian police with side arms are allowed in the buffer zone, Kostunica said.

Ethnic Albanian guerrillas have attacked with machine guns and mortar bombs, and authorities in Belgrade say the rebels killed four Serbian police officers in a single assault last month.

The peacekeepers negotiated a rebel cease-fire and sent more troops to the border area, but Serbian police say they still come under attack.

Instead of plugging the many holes in the hilly and forested area of Kosovo that borders the rest of Serbia, the peacekeepers have “made it very porous,” Kostunica charged.

“We have, in a way, too many international forces in Kosovo,” he added. “And yet, we still have terrorist activities, murders and other acts of violence. So we have to try to find a different solution.”

That could include amendments to the Military Technical Agreement to clarify “its interpretation,” because rewriting the whole deal could bring more instability, Kostunica said.

He suggested shrinking the depth of the buffer zone by more than half so that Serbian police could patrol closer to Kosovo’s boundary.

On Tuesday, the U.N. Security Council condemned the violence by ethnic Albanian extremists in southern Serbia and called for such groups to be dissolved and their members to leave the area. The session had been called at Kostunica’s request.

Kostunica said earlier this week that he has evidence that ethnic Albanian fighters continue to receive money and weapons from private backers in the United States. At Tuesday’s news conference, the Yugoslav leader said that nongovernmental groups, which he didn’t name, are indirectly supporting the campaign for Kosovo’s independence.

Foreign analyses normally refer to the ethnic Albanian guerrillas as “rebels,” Kostunica said, arguing that such a neutral term only encourages what he and most other Serbs consider terrorists.

“I think we need to call a spade a spade,” Kostunica told reporters.