BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
A special NATO delegation arrived in Tirana, Albania's capital, April 20 for talks with the country's defense ministry on the Albanian government's request to deploy troops from the Atlantic military alliance at the border between Albania and Kosovo. NATO had rejected such previous requests but had dispatched advisers to Albania to "train" the country's military.

The NATO team arrived in Tirana as state media in Belgrade reported clashes in that border area between Serbian troops and Albanians who were supposedly smuggling arms from Albania into Kosovo - formally a region of the Republic of Serbia. The government in Tirana denies the charges. These reports "have raised fears of a wider Balkan conflict," said an article in the April 21 Financial Times of London.

A few days earlier on April 17, Albania's parliament passed a resolution calling for NATO troops to be deployed in Kosovo and urging U.S. president William Clinton to follow the dictum of his predecessor George Bush. In late 1992, shortly before he was to be replaced by Clinton, Bush issued his so-called Christmas warning, stating that in "the event of conflict in Kosovo caused by Serbian action, the United States will be prepared to employ military force against the Serbians in Kosovo and in Serbia proper."

"The Albanian parliament demands the deployment of NATO troops to avoid the extension of the conflict and serve as a guarantee that military violence would not be exercised against unarmed civilians," the resolution approved in Tirana said, pointing to ongoing violence by Belgrade authorities against Albanians in Kosovo.

As Militant reporters found during a visit to Albania in mid-March, this consistently pro-imperialist stance of the Albanian government, dominated by the Socialist Party, and most opposition parties is not shared by many youth and working people who are strong supporters of the fight for self-determination of Albanians in Kosovo.

Reports of a buildup of Serb army and police units at the Kosovo-Albania border and other areas of Kosovo, and of repression against Albanians there continue to mount. Following are a few examples, according to the Kosovo Information Center:

Heavy Serbian police and military forces were deployed April 22 at the Serb refugee settlement near the Baballoq village of Decan, a region of Kosovo near the Albanian border. Baballoq is a majority Albanian village of about 1,600 people. The Serb settlement has been built 300 meters away, and sporadic shooting originated from there in the direction of the village that day.

Fresh Serbian troops have also been deployed in the Drenica region, where the 50 villages have remained under siege since a bloody assault by Serb forces there left 85 Albanians dead in early March. Two Albanians were reported wounded as a result of renewed armed actions by the occupying troops April 21.

Serbian police continue raids at homes of dozens of Albanians and arrests of people. Over a dozen cops, for example, raided the home of Muhamet Shigjeqi at Plane village in the Prizren region, and arrested Shigjeqi's four sons. Their grandmother, Fatime Shigjeqi, died from the trauma of the raid.

Washington and other imperialist powers are trying to exploit the conflict to deepen their intervention into the Balkans. The so-called Contact Group has scheduled a third meeting for Rome April 29. The U.S. government is pushing for a freeze of Yugoslav and Serbian government funds abroad if the regime of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic doesn't withdraw special police forces from Kosovo. The Contact Group -made up of the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia - is charged with overseeing the implementation of the Dayton accord, which Washington forced the warring regimes in Yugoslavia to sign in 1995, paving the way for Bosnia's occupation by NATO troops.  
 
 
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