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Albanians set up

council in Kosovo

GNJILANE, (Yugoslavia): Albanians living in southwest Serbia on Thursday launched their own council to deal with regional unrest after extensive talks with US officials in Kosovo and former Kosovo militant leader Hashim Thaci, local representatives said.

The area around Serbia's Presevo Valley is home to around 70,000 Albanians and recent clashes between police and local guerrillas have sparked fears that fighting might spill in neighboring areas.

"The political council for Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja are opposed to all armed conflict" said the head of the new council, Jonuz Musliq.

He was talking after more than eight hours of talks in this southeast Kosovo town with the head of the US office in Kosovo, Christopher Dell, and the former political head of the officially disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

"The council favours a political solution in collaboration with the international community to resolve the region's problems," he said.

Musliq read a declaration by the council calling on the international community to "step up pressure on the Belgrade regime to withdraw its military, police and paramilitary forces and to cease all violence, murder, repression and expulsions and to allow families to return to their land."

Thaci said the "negotiations were not easy but we had to find a solution to the tense situation" in the region.

Dell said the talks were a "positive first step" by the people of the Presevo Valley to "resolve the problems facing them in their homeland." "We are especially grateful that the group has stated its opposition to violence and its commitment to pursue political dialogue," he added.

According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), some 6,000 Albanians have fled the region for Kosovo since the end of Nato's air war against Yugoslavia last June and the establishment of a UN administration in Kosovo.

The area has seen several clashes between Albanian insurgents and Serbian police, while local Albanian representatives have reported increasingly repressive measures against their constituencies in recent months.

Last month one Serbian policeman died and two others were injured in a clash which also left one Albanian fighter dead.

A group of Albanian militants calling itself the Liberation Army for Presevo, Bujanovac and Madvedja Ñ or UCPMB in Albanian ÑÊappeared for the first time in January at the funeral of two brothers allegedly murdered by Serb police near the boundary with Kosovo.

The commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping force, General Klaus Reinhardt, warned on Thursday against any bid by local fighters to stir up trouble in the region and denied any significant build-up of Serbian forces in the restricted zone along the frontier.ÑAFP