(28 Nov 2000) Serbo-Croat/Nat
XFA
Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, arrived in Bujanovac late on Monday , promising diplomacy would prevail over military force in southern Serbia.

He was welcomed by hundreds of people at the town's main square.

Yugoslav authorities have agreed to give NATO more time before launching counterattacks to drive ethnic Albanian rebels out, backing off from a threat to take matters into their own hands if the alliance failed to stop rebel infiltration before a 7 p.m. (1800 GMT) deadline on Monday.

NATO-led peacekeepers acknowledged on Monday that they had begun negotiations with the militants and the Serb police.

NATO also pressed ahead with military measures aimed at preventing ethnic Albanians in Kosovo from crossing into a buffer zone on the edge of the province to help their ethnic kin.

The majority of those living in the five-kilometer (three mile) wide region are ethnic Albanians.

The crisis erupted last week when ethnic Albanian militants attacked Serb positions in an area between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia.

Serb forces have been setting the stage to fight back.

The flareup near Kosovo presents a major crisis for Kostunica.

He must defend the area without provoking the same international condemnation that accompanied the crackdown of former President Slobodan Milosevic.

The crackdown led to a 78-day NATO bombing campaign.

Kostunica, who cut short his visit to Vienna for a meeting of the Organization of Security and Cooperation because of the crisis, had warned the Kosovo events "could set the whole region ablaze."

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"That is also the obligation of K-FOR. The problem is that K-FOR is not doing its bit. It let the Albanian rebels come into the ground safety zone and now we are of course in a more difficult situation but we are going to solve that because we have the people, the army and the police and we respect our international obligations. Every single paragraph is respected by us."
SUPER CAPTION: Vojislav Kostunica, Yugoslav president

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Now we need to have control of this part of Serbia and slowly to help control over the so called 'safety ground zone' and so on."
SUPER CAPTION: Vojislav Kostunica, Yugoslav president

SOUNDBITE: (Serbian)
"We will not give in to the provocations (of the ethnic Albanians) but if we are attacked we shall know how to fight back"
SUPER CAPTION: Vojislav Kostunica, Yugoslav president

SOUNDBITE: (Serbian)
"We have increased the combat readiness of the other units in the region (of Bujanovac) due to the situation. The army does not have any rights to intervene in the buffer zone, but we are undertaking measures for protection, since the army has to defend the other parts of Serbian territory"
SUPER CAPTION: General Nebojsa Pavkovic, Yugoslav army chief

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