Nato considers new Serb plan
In a concession to Serbia, Nato is ready to consider a plan that would allow Serb forces to put more of a squeeze on ethnic Albanian guerrillas operating just outside Kosovo.
Pieter Feith, the director of Nato forces for the Balkans, suggested the alliance was leaning toward accepting Serbian demands that a three-mile-wide zone abutting Kosovo and now largely under rebel control be narrowed, allowing heavily armed Serbian police and Yugoslav army troops a better crack at the guerrillas.
‘‘We are willing to consider readjusting parts of the ground safety zone because we share the assessment of the government in Belgrade that the ground safety zone should not become safe haven for people attacking Serb security forces,’’ Feith said, after meeting Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic in Belgrade.
Serbian officials have proposed a gradual narrowing of the zone now that former President Slobodan Milosevic is out of power and the new pro-democracy leaderships of Yugoslavia and of Serbia, its dominant republic, no longer represent a threat to Nato.
The buffer zone was created to prevent what officials feared would be clashes between Serbian forces and the Nato-led peacekeepers patrolling Kosovo under the 1999 peace deal for the province that forced Milosevic’s troops out and allowed Nato peacekeepers in.
Only lightly armed Serbian police are allowed to enter the zone, allowing ethnic Albanian militants to take control of most of the strip in recent months.
Three Serb policemen were killed when their vehicle drove over a land mine in the zone Sunday, exacerbating already high tensions.
Narrowing the zone would mean that heavily armed and equipped Yugoslav and Serbian forces could attack rebel positions directly.
