Yugoslav Army Enters Tense Area of Buffer Zone

With NATO’s blessing, elite Yugoslav army troops moved today into a southern Serbia buffer zone overrun by ethnic Albanian guerrillas, as part of a plan to cap cross-border violence that threatens to expand into a new Balkan war.

In columns of armored personnel carriers, hundreds of members of the 63rd Parachute Brigade fanned out in the southernmost tip of the zone around Kosovo that runs, at one end, into the Macedonian border. Entering at Presevo, they moved southward toward the villages of Norca and Trvana.

Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic.

“We appeal to the citizens to stay calm and not to obstruct the return of the joint security forces in any way,” Nebojsa Covic, deputy prime minister of Serbia, said Tuesday evening.

“The residents have no reason to worry,” he said.

Covic said he expects the “extremists . . . not to undertake any provocative measures.”

A cease-fire in the buffer zone between Belgrade’s forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas appeared to be holding on its first day Tuesday.

But the government in Macedonia reported fierce skirmishes with ethnic Albanian rebels there. A guerrilla leader in southern Serbia cast doubt on the effectiveness of the cease-fire, saying many rebels in the southernmost tip of the buffer zone did not feel bound by the agreement.

Macedonian forces near the border village of Brest are “clashing with the guerrillas, trying to isolate them and to force them to retreat from the area,” said Interior Ministry spokesman Stevo Pendarovski.