----- Original Message ----- From: Miroslav Antic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Sorabia@Yahoogroups. Com <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; NATO <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; NSP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Balkanpeace.org <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 3:57 PM Subject: Yugoslav leader blasts NATO [STOPNATO.ORG.UK] STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Build a marketing database and send targeted HTML and text e-mail newsletters to your customers with List Builder. http://www.listbuilder.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 03/14/2001 - Updated 12:00 AM ET Yugoslav leader blasts NATO By David J. Lynch, USA TODAY AFP Kostunica. BELGRADE, Yugoslavia Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica accused NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo Tuesday of "direct collaboration" with anti-government ethnic Albanian guerrillas in southern Serbia. "KFOR enabled and in some way supported or was helping the terrorists," Kostunica said, using an acronym for the peacekeeping force, which includes more than 5,000 U.S. troops. "For sure, in the case of some units, there was direct collaboration between KFOR and the (rebels)." Kostunica's statements, in an interview with USA TODAY, came one day after NATO agreed to allow Yugoslav soldiers to return to part of a buffer zone ringing Kosovo. The so-called "ground safety zone" was created at the end of NATO's war in 1999 with Yugoslavia over Kosovo, a Serbian province where the ethnic Albanian majority had waged a separatist rebellion. The three-mile-wide buffer zone was designed to prevent incidents between Yugoslav forces and NATO peacekeepers. But Albanian guerrillas moved into the vacuum, seizing control of ethnic Albanian villages in Serbia's Presevo Valley and in neighboring Macedonia. U.S. soldiers are based in eastern Kosovo, adjacent to the area where fighting has occurred recently. Kostunica has complained that peacekeepers are not doing enough to stop ethnic Albanian fighters from crossing into southern Serbia from U.N.-administered Kosovo. Tuesday, he broadened his indictment, saying KFOR troops, wary of taking casualties, should show "more courage" and confront armed Albanians. KFOR was slow to react to the ethnic Albanian insurgency. In recent weeks, U.S.-led peacekeepers have stepped up their patrols and conducted surveillance overflights of rebel-held territory. But Kostunica said, "Flights of KFOR helicopters have been traced that gave the impression of being used as a sort of logistics support to the terrorists rather than surveilling them." In Brussels, NATO spokesman Mark Laity responded: "Such comments are simply wrong. It's simply pointless getting involved in this kind of exchange when the cooperation between Serbia and KFOR is so important to the future of the area." In the 50-minute interview in his presidential office, Kostunica also said he: Doubts investigators will have sufficient evidence to arrest former president Slobodan Milosevic by March 31, the congressional deadline for cutting off $100 million in U.S. aid unless Belgrade cooperates with international war crimes investigators. Views Milosevic as a war criminal along with the former leaders of Croatia and Bosnia and military commanders from NATO and the Albanian guerrillas. Hopes to make an official visit to the USA later this year. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-13-yugoslavia.htm Miroslav Antic, http://www.antic.org/SNN/ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
