STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Sopranos fanatics, this one is for you. Tony Soprano's autographed Suburban is available for purchase on eBayTM. James Gandolfini has personally signed the vehicle. Find this and over 800 other Sopranos items for sale on eBay. http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/ebay ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NATO rules out return of Yugoslav forces to Kosovo BRUSSELS, July 18 (AFP) - NATO Secretary General George Robertson ruled out Wednesday an immediate return of even a small number of Yugoslav security personnel to UN-administered Kosovo, as allowed by a UN resolution. "Not at the moment," Lord Robertson, who travels Thursday to Macedonia with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, told reporters after meeting Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic at NATO headquarters. "The commander of KFOR (the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo) continues to make regular assessment as to when the security situation would make these things possible," he said. Under UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which put Kosovo under interim UN administration after a 78-day NATO air war against Belgrade, Yugoslavia can deploy limited security forces in the mainly Albanian province. The possibility that it might be able to do so has increased since the downfall of the nationalist Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic last October, and Serbia's decision to hand over Milosevic to an international war crimes court on June 28 -- events which have improved Yugoslavia's relations with A buffer zone that ran all along Kosovo's border with Serbia proper was lifted in stages earlier this year, but distrust and contempt for Serbs still runs high among Kosovo Albanians. Covic, who is also Serbia's top official for Kosovo affairs, said Belgrade "obviously" looks forward to sending its own soldiers and police officers back into Kosovo, "but desire is one thing and reality is another." "We want to participate constructively in the solution of problems in Kosovo," not only in the divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica, "but also in Prizren, Pec, Pristina and all other areas," he said. Legislative elections in Kosovo are set for November 17, but Serb community leaders are linking their participating in the internationally organized polls to the creation of safe conditions for the return of Serb refugees. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates there are 80,000 to 100,000 Serbs in Kosovo, after the flight of perhaps 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians when UN administrators and KFOR deployed in June 1999. Covic said: "We are certainly going to talk with representatives of the Serb community and tell them what would be the consequences of ... whether they want to participate or not." "We are for a single Kosovo, and we are against the partition of Kosovo" into ethnic Albanian and Serb zones, he added. Robertson said: "We are working very hard at the moment on the issue of the return of displaced people. We are committed to doing that... The return of displaced people will start quite soon." Email this story ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
