Yugoslav Weekly Survey, 31. December 1993.

Kosovo paper warns of arming of ethnic
Albanian separatists in province

The activities of ethnic Albanian separatists in Podujevo - one of the strongholds of separatism in Kosovo-Metohija (Kosmet), the southern province of the Yugoslav republic of Serbia - are directed at secret arming and forcible collecting of taxes for the self-proclaimed "Kosovo Republic", the serbian-language daily "Jedinstvo", published in Kosmet's center of pristina, writes on saturday.

A few days ago, the local police discovered large quantities of arms, bombs and drugs and seized around 120 rifles, pistols and several bombs in another action, the paper claims.

"If we add to this that automatic weapons have also been discovered in a number of other successful actions and that the arms were stored in haystacks, walls, lofts and other hidden places, then we get a realistic picture of the persistent efforts of ethnic Albanian terrorists to get as much arms as possible", the paper writes.

It claims that groups engaged in arms smuggling have been trained in special centers in Albania and some western countries.

A strong separatist movement of ethnic albanians has been active in Kosmet for a very long time and its political leaders demand from  their fellow-compatriots, who make up the majority population in the province, to boycott all legal institutions of the republic of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. They went so far as to illegally proclaim a "Kosovo Republic" with the aim of seceding it from Yugoslavia and joining to neighboring Albania.

Over the past year and a half, ethnic Albanian separatists carried out some 150 terrorist attacks.

They killed six and wounded 11 policemen in Kosmet in the first six months this year alone. (Tanjug's "Daily Bulletin", Belgrade, December 27, 1993)