Serbian Crackdown Promised After Mayor’s Body Found
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PRISTINA, Yugoslavia — A top government official promised another security sweep targeting ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo after the body of a Serbian mayor who was shot between the eyes was found along a roadside Friday.
Yugoslav Deputy Premier Nikola Sainovic, addressing angry Serbs at a rally hours after the killing of a municipal leader just outside Pristina, called the death “one more attack on Serbia.”
“The Earth is too small for them to hide,” he said, accusing the Kosovo Liberation Army rebels of killing Zvonko Bojanic.
The slaying of the district mayor of Kosovo Polje, three miles west of the provincial capital, Pristina, was the latest jolt to increasingly slim hopes that diplomacy can head off a return to full-scale war in the separatist Serbian province.
Dozens of people have been killed since a U.S.-brokered agreement in October that was intended to buy time for a political settlement on Kosovo’s future status.
KLA representative Adem Demaci denied that rebels were involved in the killing.
Serbia is the larger of two republics constituting Yugoslavia.
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