Global Policy Forum

By Dragan Ilic

Thousands of Yugoslav troops moved Thursday into the last, most crucial part of a buffer zone separating Kosovo from the rest of the country, hoping to eliminate the final safe haven for ethnic Albanian rebels in southern Serbia.

There was no rebel resistance in the first hours of deployment, as Yugoslav army de-mining units, infantry, police and light artillery fanned out across the most volatile part of the three-mile-wide buffer zone. Serb-led troops were to meet up with forces on the Kosovo border. ``Everything is going according to the plan,'' said Milisav Markovic, Yugoslavia's deputy police chief. ``We are moving cautiously because we found stocks of ammunition, weapons and terrorist equipment in nearby forests.''

In neighboring Macedonia, government forces resumed heavy shelling Thursday of the northern villages of Vaksince and Slupcane - strongholds of ethnic Albanian rebels fighting for more rights. Macedonian army spokesman Blagoja Markovski said government troops started a major ``offensive to surround the villages in the region in order to isolate and destroy the terrorist groups.''

The buffer zone in southern Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, was set up as part of a peace deal that ended NATO's 78-day air war against Yugoslavia in 1999. The alliance launched the air campaign to force former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end his crackdown on ethnic Albanian militants. NATO and the United Nations took over Kosovo when Milosevic's forces left. The buffer zone was intended to put breathing space between peacekeepers and Yugoslav troops. Lightly armed Serb police were allowed to patrol the zone, but ethnic Albanian militants seized much of area in November, killing several police officers. The rebels, known as the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, wanted the primarily ethnic Albanian villages in the area to throw out Serb rule, as their ethnic kin did in Kosovo.

With Milosevic's fall from power in October and the rise of a new, democratic government in Belgrade, NATO has agreed to the phased return of Yugoslav troops to the buffer zone. Over the last two months, Yugoslav forces have already deployed in less volatile parts of the zone.

Serb Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic, in Bujanovac near Kosovo's eastern border, said between 4,000 and 5,000 army and police troops would take several days to move into the final 20 percent of the zone - the tensest part. Troops expect ``some possible hostility,'' he said, and would respond if attacked. Some residents fled the zone Wednesday, saying Serb security forces wearing masks had swept into their village, Muhovac.

By late evening, at least 200 people - about a third of the population in two other nearby villages - had crossed into Kosovo, as two Apache helicopters hovered overhead. Authorities later said a police de-mining team defused as many as 15 land mines planted in a 100-yard stretch of road in the most contested part of the zone, suggesting the area might be heavily mined. Mine-clearing operations could take days and may slow deployment.

Covic said the villagers had ``no reason to fear,'' but added that unlike previous deployments into the zone, forces were allowed to search houses for weapons and arrest people found holding them.

Rebels agreed earlier this week to demilitarize and surrender their weapons to NATO in Kosovo, a move that recognized the Yugoslav army's superior strength and the lack of international support for the insurgents. Yugoslav Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic - the army chief of staff who fought NATO during its 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia - praised the new cooperation with the alliance, saying his troops Thursday were allowed much heavier weapons than during earlier deployments into the buffer zone.

As part of the agreement with the rebels, both NATO and Belgrade authorities said militants who turned their weapons over by midnight Wednesday would be free to go after having their photographs taken. But starting Thursday, ``all ethnic Albanian combatants will be detained and sent to Camp Bondsteel,'' said U.S. Marine Cpl. Warrick Ready, at the Mucibaba checkpoint, referring to the main U.S. base in Kosovo.