POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Serbia Opts For Negotiations Over War

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BUJANOVAC, PRESEVO VALLEY, Feb 28 2001 (IPS) - For the first time in ten years, since the wars of disintegration of former Yugoslavia started, Serbia has not chosen war but has opted for negotiations instead.

“Times have changed, democracy is here and there is no way that the new government will act like (former president Slobodan) Milosevic did,” Nebojsa Covic, head of the government’s committee for troublesome area of Presevo Valley told IPS.

Slobodan Milosevic, who waged four wars in former Yugoslavia during the past decade, was ousted from power last October. Because of his repressive politics against ethnic Albanians in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, Serbs lived through 11 weeks of traumatic North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, air strikes in 1999.

“It takes two sides to wage a war. This time, Serbs do not want it. Instead, we have our negotiations plan backed by the international community and are waiting for the ethnic Albanians’ to start the talks…it may sound strange but Serbia is cooperating with NATO now,” he added.

Presevo Valley is 300 kms southeast of Belgrade, bordering the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. Some 70,000 inhabitants are ethnic Albanians, while 30,000 are Serbs. There are only two small towns in the area – Presevo and Bujanovac – and 24 villages.

The area is dubbed “Serbian Gaza strip” as it is practically a five kms wide and 90 kms long buffer zone.

Earlier in February, Covic visited the NATO headquarters in Brussels, where he presented the 60 page long Serbian plan for the troublesome Presevo Valley. Serbia is waiting for ethnic Albanians to answer the call end enter the negotiations in March.

The plan is called the “Covic Plan”, and was drawn up by a group of Serbian experts in international law, human rights and the economy.

It calls for re-integration of ethnic Albanians into the institutions of Serbia within two years and economic recovery within three.

That would practically mean ethnic Albanians’ participation in the legal and police system according to their proportion in the area.

Right now, all the judiciary and the police are Serbs.

Financing of private farms and small family factories is also previsioned in the economy field. That would mean money for ethnic Albanians, as Serbs live in towns and can be found in only two out of 24 villages in the Valley.

“Serbia does need international help to solve this problem,” Nina Dobrkovic of Belgrade Institute for International Politics and Economy told IPS. “It is the problem that threatens not only to rock Serbia again, but also to endanger neighbouring Macedonia and the whole region of the Balkans.”

The buffer zone was established under the Military-Technical Agreement (MTA) between NATO and Belgrade in June 1999, after the Western military alliance ended 11 weeks of air strikes against Serbia. It was meant to prevent any aggression of Milosevic’s forces into Kosovo in the future.

But, instead of becoming a zone of peace, it became the spot of another ethnic Albanian armed uprising against Belgrade back in December 1999. A self-proclaimed “Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac” (UCPMB) of ethnic Albanians was formed, under the very eyes of NATO troops that were due to control security in the zone.

Only lightly armed Serb policemen are allowed to patrol the zone.

The acronym “UCPMB” includes the names of the largest municipalities in the area. UCPMB proclaimed, as its goal, uniting the area with Kosovo “through the armed struggle against Belgrade”.

According to the statistics of Serb police headquarters in Bujanovac, 30 people were killed in the attacks by UCPMB since December 1999, half of them Serb policemen. Others were civilians and ethnic Albanians dubbed “collaborators of Serb regime” by UCPMB.

“In the meantime, under the very eyes of NATO, UCPMB drew snipers, automatic rifles, machine guns and mortars into the zone” police colonel, Radomir Djeric, told this reporter at the checkpoint of Lucane, some five kms from Bujanovac. “We are at their range of fire as we stand here…Nearby roads and farmland are mined by UCPMB,” he added, pointing to the nearby hills and fields.

“One of the ways to solve the problem would be the disarming of UCPMB,” says Bojan Dimitrijevic of the Belgrade Institute for Modern History. “KFOR (Kosovo Forces made out of NATO troops) could help demilitarise the whole area, so that it would really become a safe zone. So far, they have avoided any skirmishes with ethnic Albanians both in Kosovo and in Presevo Valley, fearing that armed groups could turn against them,” he explains.

KFOR was to oversee the disbanding of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA or UCK in Albanian) by September 1999. KLA fought against Belgrade authorities back in 1998 and 1999. It seems not to have put down its weapons, but only transferred men and weapons into the Presevo Valley. It is widely believed that there are around 8,000 members of UCPMB in the zone.

At the same time, moderate ethnic Albanians in Presevo Valley seems to recognise the necessity of cooperation with Belgrade and negotiations about the “Covic Plan”. They call new government in Belgrade “cooperative”.

“The situation is tense and it can not stay like this for a long time,” Shaip Kamberi, head of the Bujanovac Committee for Human Rights told IPS.

“There is a good chances that the future negotiations will bring success and once that happens, we’ll enter the peaceful process of settling the problems of Presevo Valley,” he added.

Kamberi admits that, being a moderate, he is under the great pressure from his ethnic Albanian next of kin.

“It is not an easy thing – discussing the future of your people for maybe the next 100 years to come. But it can also mean big things for the people here – an end of fear, armed skirmishes, violence. It could bring prospects for a normal life,” he added.