(2 Dec 2000) English/Nat

Tension remains high in the border region between Serbia and Kosovo.

On Saturday, NATO deployed extra troops in the area to reinforce the U-S soldiers patrolling the area.

About 250 additional British soldiers were sent to patrol outside the three-mile buffer zone separating Yugoslavia's southern province of Kosovo and Serbia.

Their aim is to try to stop arms being taken over the border from Kosovo into Serbia to be used by the ethnic Albanian fighters.

The crisis erupted when militants of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac attacked Serb positions in the Presevo Valley to unite the area with Kosovo.

Although the area has a substantial ethnic Albanian population, the valley was not considered part of Kosovo and therefore was not included in the June, 1999 agreement that sent NATO peacekeepers into the Serb province.

The incidents cast doubt on NATO's ability to control Kosovo and also present a major crisis to the government of President Vojislav Kostunica, which must defend the area without provoking the same international condemnation that erupted after Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on Kosovo rebels in 1998.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"We're here overlooking the Serb boundary in the area of the Presevo valley to try to do our best to stop and search as many vehicles at possible to try and stop the UCPMB to not get as much arms and ammunition as they're getting , we're trying to interrupt their supply lines so that they can't continue the fighting that's been going on in the Presevo."
SUPER CAPTION: Major Andy Carre, 1st Battalion of the Princess of Wales

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