Posted on 12/05/2001 7:45:31 PM PST by oxi-nato
SKOPJE, Dec 4 (Reuters) - The United States has barred members of two ethnic Albanian extremist groups that reject August's peace deal for Macedonia and has frozen any U.S.-based assets they may have, the State Department said on Tuesday. It said financial and travel curbs had been imposed on the Albanian National Liberation Army (ANA), a fringe group that spurned Macedonia's Western-sponsored accord with the main NLA rebel movement and vows to open a new conflict.
Also banned under a seven-month-old executive order of President George W. Bush was the National Committee for the Liberation and Defence of Albanian Lands (KKCMTSH). "The U.S. reaffirms its condemnation of any groups engaged in extremist violence, inciting ethnic conflict, or other obstructionist acts to promote irredentist or criminal agendas that threaten the peace and stability of Macedonia and the region," Philip Reeker, State Department deputy spokesman, said in a statement released through the American Embassy in Skopje.
The order also allowed the U.S. Treasury to prohibit financial transactions with such groups by U.S. citizens. In June, Bush also banned commanders and U.S.-based assets of the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA), which was then waging an insurgency but later approved the peace accord and officially disbanded.
Tuesday's statement said ANA and KKCMTSH aimed "to undermine democracy and threaten ongoing efforts to secure peace and stability in Macedonia, Kosovo, southern Serbia and the region." Analysts believe ANA is a small cell of ex-NLA militants apparently dedicated to fighting for a "Greater Albania" homeland in the Balkans.
But no one knows whether ANA, which has claimed responsibility for deadly ambushes on Macedonian security forces, represents just a few diehard rebels with a website or the birth of a new guerrilla movement to be reckoned with. Former NLA commanders deny any knowledge of ANA.
But I don't know how it can be undone now, with Kosovo almost completely cleansed of anyone but Albanians.
Since the Kfor/KLA occupation began over 800 Albanians have been murdered.( according to hard line Adem Demaci) This is some 3 times the murder rate before Clinton's bombing began.
Moderate and Loyalist Albanians suffer as much as anyone under the brutal lawless "rule" of the KLA.
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