Word: presevo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Presevo Valley NATO ordered a "phased and conditioned" narrowing of the 5-km-wide buffer zone between Serbia and Kosovo in an attempt to flush out Albanian extremists operating there. In a sharp rebuke to Albanian rebels, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said: "This is not the time to start a new conflict in Europe." Details of the narrowing have yet to be worked out, but Serb troops would have to withdraw first from the frontline. Established after the nato bombing of 1999 as a no-go area for Serbian troops and intended to keep nato and Serbian forces...
...direct intervention by U.S. troops Thursday to drive the guerrillas out of their stronghold in the Macedonian village of Tanusevci. The guerrillas are remnants of the Kosovo Liberation Army who have taken their fight across the borders both into southern Serbia, where their objective is to annex the Presevo Valley, and into Macedonia, where they're attempting to seize control over predominantly ethnic-Albanian areas...
...NATO's new assertiveness, of course, considerably raises the danger facing Western soldiers serving in the KFOR peacekeeping mission. Armed Albanian nationalists have shown increasing assertiveness both inside Kosovo as well as in Macedonia and the Presevo Valley since the beginning of this year, sensing that the demise of Milosevic and their continued ethnic cleansing of the territory's remaining Serbs has cooled Western sympathy with their demand for formal independence for Kosovo - which the KLA saw as the first step to its incorporation into a "Greater Albania...
...NATO may have remained largely passive in the face of attacks on Kosovo's Serbs and even the minor insurgency in Presevo, but by taking their campaign to Macedonia, the nationalist guerrillas may have crossed a NATO red line. Macedonia was the only former Yugoslav republic to break away without bloodshed in the early 1990s, and Western observers have long been concerned that the conflicts in the surrounding republics could spark a disastrous showdown between Macedonia's 30 percent Albanian population and the Slavic majority - even more so since the Kosovo war increased tensions between the two communities. Still, Macedonia...
...formal independence for Kosovo dimmed even further. That, and President George W. Bush's campaign promise to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from the Balkans, may have prompted Albanian nationalists across the region to step up their campaign for a Greater Albania, by launching new insurgencies in Serbia's Presevo Valley (which falls in a demilitarized buffer zone adjacent to Kosovo) and in northern Macedonia. But in the absence of Serb abuse and ethnic cleansing, NATO has shown little tolerance for the new Albanian adventurism...