KOSOVO: CRACKDOWN AGAINST ALBANIAN MILITANTS

Описание: (16 Mar 2000) English/Nat
In a crackdown against ethnic Albanian militants, US troops have raided hideouts along Kosovo's boundary with Serbia, seizing weapons and ammunition and detaining nine people.
The US military's Task Force Falcon said in a statement that search operations would continue until the areas along the boundary were thoroughly.
U-S troops have seized a sizeable quantity of weapons and ammunition along the Kosovo-Serb border.
The cache included more than 200 uniforms, 22 crates of rifle and machine gun ammunition, two mortars, 28 hand grenades, seven rifles, six land mines and other military supplies.
The uniforms seized included black and red insignias of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, a fringe group of ethnic Albanian militants.
Named after three predominantly ethnic Albanian towns in southern Serbia and known by its Albanian acronym U-C-P-M-B, its fighters say they are trying to protect the villages from brutal attacks by Serb forces.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"We had some indications that in certain areas along the boundary with Serbia there were some weapons caches and some sites where people from the so-called U-C-P-M-B were located and were gathering there. And so we searched both sites and found an amount of weapons including grenades mortar tubes and rifles and other military equipment"
SUPER CAPTION: Hennig Phillip, KFOR Spokesman
The United States and other Western governments have become concerned about a number of cross-border raids by ethnic Albanian militants from Kosovo into the Presevo Valley in Serbia.
The valley has a predominately ethnic Albanian population.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"We have been taking this very seriously for a while and we are still taking it seriously because we don't want Kosovo to be a staging base for any export of violence the Presevo valley, where you know 70,000 Albanians are living in Serbia. We would like the situation to remain calm there."
SUPER CAPTION: Hennig Phillip, KFOR Spokesman
The area is not part of the territory included in the mandate of the NATO-led peacekeeping mission.
Serb police have also stepped up their own patrols in the region.
Ethnic Albanian attacks on Serb police in Kosovo more than a year ago prompted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to crack down on ethnic Albanians.
Hundreds of thousands were expelled from their homes before the American and NATO air bombardment forced Milosevic to retreat.
The NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping mission in Kosovo was put in place to try and maintain the peace between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in the province.

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