Word: kosovo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Balkans was the work of one man was always a dangerous illusion. Slobodan Milosevic may be nothing but a blowhard Serb opposition leader now, but Albanian refugees are once again leaving their homes and a new round of ethnic Serb-Albanian conflict threatens to break out any moment along Kosovo's northern border. At the weekend, the new reformist government in Belgrade set Monday as a deadline for Albanian separatist guerrillas who infiltrated from Kosovo to withdraw from a string of villages inside Serbia, or face eviction by the Yugoslav army. And though new president Vojislav Kostunica later postponed...
Getting U.S. troops out of Kosovo may start to look like an increasingly attractive idea in Washington, because the NATO forces sent to keep a cold peace may soon find themselves caught in a hot war. Four Serbian policemen were reported killed and several wounded with heavily armed Albanian guerrilla units inside Serbia Wednesday, while a bomb blast at the Pristina residence of Yugoslavia's representative in Kosovo killed one man and wounded another. The renewed attacks coincide with mounting frustration among more nationalist Kosovar Albanians that the political changes in Belgrade, and the rapprochement with the West those have...
...government in Belgrade has denounced the alleged infiltration of some 400 ethnic-Albanian guerrillas into the area from Kosovo, and has warned that unless the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force clamps down on such activity, Yugoslavia would be forced send its own army in to deal with the problem. Although inside Serbia, the ethnic-Albanian villages fall within the demilitarized zone established at the end of the Kosovo conflict, which allows Belgrade to maintain only police units there. The nationalist attacks on Serbian policemen appear to mimic the earlier strategy of the KLA, which used such attacks to goad Belgrade...
...this time around, NATO may behave quite differently. The Western alliance has repeatedly warned nationalist elements against fomenting trouble along the border, and has conducted a number of raids against suspected guerrilla bases inside Kosovo. While the U.S. may look more sympathetically on demands for Kosovo's independence, most NATO members remain strongly opposed - and the U.N. resolution enabling the peacekeeping mission recognizes that the territory will remain an autonomous part of Yugoslavia...
...moderate leader Ibrahim Rugova. That suggests that the majority of the ethnic-Albanian community are willing to pursue their desire for independence via negotiation with the new regime in Belgrade. But for those KLA hard men who remain determined to use any means necessary to win independence for Kosovo and unite it with Albania, NATO troops may become an obstacle in their path. And that could make the peacekeeping mission more than a little distasteful to some key NATO members...