Posted on 08/09/2002 10:09:21 AM PDT by Destro
NATO Detains 19 in Kosovo Amid Macedonia Warnings
Fri Aug 9,11:28 AM ET
By Ana Petruseva
SKOPJE, Macedonia (Reuters) - NATO ( news - web sites) said Friday it had arrested 19 people in ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo in a crackdown on extremists along the border with Macedonia, the ex-Yugoslav republic that came close to civil war last year.
Macedonian authorities had said a new ethnic Albanian extremist group had been formed in Kosovo, with the aim of disrupting elections in Macedonia scheduled for next month, but NATO did not say whether the arrests were related to the group.
Diplomats have played down the danger from the self-styled Army of the Republic of Ilirida. Political analysts have suggested the Macedonian government may be playing up the threat as part of its electoral campaign.
The group, which takes its name from a proposal by Albanian nationalists to create a state within the current Macedonia, was mentioned in a NATO report meant to reassure Skopje the security situation was generally stable.
"The overall assessment is that there is no realistic prospect of new organized violence," a NATO source told Reuters.
"It is a small group of young people, in their 20s, mainly from Kosovo and they don't pose a serious threat," the Macedonian ambassador to NATO, Nano Ruzin, told Reuters.
But Macedonian politicians have sounded the alarm. Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski said last week the group was proof "Albanians have not yet given up their territorial ambitions."
Guerrillas staged a six-month insurgency in Macedonia last year, saying they were fighting for better rights for the country's ethnic Albanian minority. Macedonians, however, regarded the campaign as an attempt to grab land.
The conflict ended with a Western-sponsored peace accord to grant greater rights to Albanians in exchange for the disarmament and disbanding of the rebel army.
KFOR QUIET ON LINK
The NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo, deployed in the southern Yugoslav province since the end of the 1998-99 war, would not say if the latest arrests, carried out Thursday, were linked to the new group.
"All of the detained individuals posed an immediate threat to a safe and secure environment," KFOR said in a statement.
Macedonian interior ministry officials have said the group has 200 members and is preparing attacks to disrupt the September 15 general election and undermine the peace accord.
"The final aim of the organization is to create Greater Albania," one interior ministry source said.
A NATO source said such reports were a "fabrication, a straightforward lie."
Georgievski and hawkish interior minister Ljube Boskovski have predicted imminent danger from Kosovo before, which analysts see as an attempt to boost their nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party.
"With elections barely a month away, it is no surprise that they would resort to the same rhetoric," said Edward Joseph, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank.
There have been numerous police reports of incidents related to splinter guerrilla groups since last year's conflict. But there has been no evidence of a major organization that might cause new cycle of violence.
NATO Troops Detain 'Armed Extremists' in Kosovo
Fri Aug 9, 6:16 AM ET
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - The NATO ( news - web sites)-led KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo said on Friday it had detained 19 suspects in an operation to hunt down "armed extremists."
The force, deployed in the southern Yugoslav province since the end of the 1998-99 war, said the operation on Thursday morning aimed to disrupt extremist activities along Kosovo's border with Macedonia.
"All of the detained individuals posed an immediate threat to a safe and secure environment," KFOR said in a statement.
Soldiers of five battalion task forces backed by military police and a special KFOR unit carried out the detentions in a coordinated operation in 12 Kosovo communities, it said.
The peacekeepers did not give details or reveal the ethnicity of those detained. Kosovo's population is mostly ethnic Albanian.
Last summer, KFOR held hundreds of ethnic Albanian guerrillas operating in the border area during a seven-month insurgency inside Macedonia against government forces in the name of better rights for the Albanian minority.
The conflict ended with a Western-brokered peace accord in August last year, but the Macedonian government has over the past week alleged that a new extremist ethnic Albanian group has emerged with about 200 members.
The KFOR statement also said its soldiers found some weapons and ammunition, including two grenade launchers, during the "cordon and search operation."
It said most suspects were held at the main U.S. base in Kosovo. The province was placed under U.N.-led administration after NATO's 1999 bombing campaign to end Serbian repression of its ethnic Albanian majority.
What side are we going to be on?
But wait, all the peace loving Albanians handed in their weapons during operation Essential Harvest, didn't they?
Create the problem, create the solution.
All the peace-loving Albanians did turn in their arms.
Of course, that is an even shorter list than honest Democrat senators, but . . .
You do not want to know.
This is just the KLA under yet another name, even if it is a smaller off-shoot. And for Nato to call the aim of a Greater Albania a 'fabrication' is just ludicrous. This is the stated aim of the KLA and has been all along - Kosovo, Presevo Valley and other areas in Southern Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, Macedonia... they all appear on the KLA map of GA.
Albanians have legitimate claim to all that land. It has a majority Albanian population, was taken away from Albanians at World War One because the great powers decided to reward Serbia/Greece for there efforts in WW1 at the expense of Albanians sadly.
Albanians are decendants of Illyrians, who inhabited the entire territory of most of Serbia before Serbs even came to the Balkans. Illyrians are even more ancient then Greeks.
The Croats came to the Balkans after the Serbs. Who was there before them?
There is no historical proof, except for their claims. Even if they were the oldest, wouldn't they have been clever or intelligent enough to at least invent or contribute something to this civilization?
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