February 10, 2001
Waving placards and Yugoslav flags, thousands of Serbs protested Friday against a NATO and UN plan to extend a special security zone in the ethnically divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica.
Protesters said extending the so-called ``confidence zone,'' in which people of all ethnic groups should be able to move freely, to the Serb-dominated north of the town would give ethnic Albanians a green light to force them from their homes.
``Some people say we're extreme because we want to protect ourselves. But the people who are in power are legalizing the displacement of Serbs,'' said Milan Ivanovic, a member of Mitrovica's Serb National Council.
The protesters, numbering around 5,000, cheered, whistled, chanted ``Serbia!'' and carried placards with slogans such as ''Serbs have the right to live in Kosovo.''
Ethnic Albanians form the majority of the population in Kosovo province, but a minority in Yugoslavia which is dominated by Serbs. Serbian armed forces left Kosovo after a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 aimed at stopping Serb oppression of ethnic Albanians.
Mitrovica, Kosovo's most volatile flashpoint, is divided by a river between a mostly Serb north and Albanian south. To the anger of ethnic Albanians, unofficial Serb guards known as ''bridgewatchers'' stop Albanians entering the north over the main bridge across the river.
The small ``confidence zone,'' established last year and patrolled by peacekeeping troops and U.N. police, so far covers mostly Albanian areas in the south.
Extending the confidence zone, in which two-way radios and unauthorized people and vehicles are banned, would mean Serb leaders losing control of the north side of the bridge.
The Albanians complain the bridgewatchers are preventing members of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority from returning to their homes in northern Mitrovica which they fled in fear of Serb terror during NATO's air war.
But Serbs say the bridgewatchers are protecting Serbs from ethnic Albanian vengeance which has driven more than 150,000 Serbs from their homes since the end of the bombing.
The killing of a 15-year-old ethnic Albanian by a grenade in the north of the town almost two weeks ago set off several days of clashes between Albanian protesters and French peacekeepers.
The clashes subsided only after a general declaration signed last week between Albanian leaders, Kosovo's U.N. governor Hans Haekkerup and Lt. Gen. Carlo Cabigiosu, commander of the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force.
The document calls for increased police and peacekeeper presence on both sides of the river, an extension of the confidence zone and the return of displaced people to their homes, among other things.
Serbs at the rally demanded a separate Serb municipality in the northern part of Mitrovica, the removal of ``confidence zones,'' and the return of Serbian security forces to Kosovo.
``A confidence zone is a zone of crime,'' said Ivanovic, director of the local hospital.
