PRESEVO, Serbia-Montenegro: Local council members from three majority ethnic Albanian towns in southern Serbia yesterday adopted a platform calling for political and territorial autonomy.

Sixty-one of the total 66 council members from the towns of Bujanovac, Presevo and Medvedja met and adopted a statement "respecting the will of the citizens to define the Presevo valley as a constitutional and territorial region", the document said.

The local representatives said they would seek to join the breakaway Albanian-majority province of Kosovo if their demands were not met.

Their demands for decentralisation in the region include establishing special ties with Kosovo, the withdrawal of Serbian police and soldiers and the creation of a border patrol composed of local residents.

The Albanians in southern Serbia also want to be released from any obligation to serve in the army of Serbia-Montenegro, the federation that remains of the former Yugoslavia.

The calls for autonomy in southern Serbia come as negotiations are under way on the future status of Kosovo, which has been run by the United Nations and NATO since mid-1999 but legally remains a province of Serbia.

The representatives of the three towns referred to the Kosovo talks and added that "the Albanians of the Presevo valley are calling for concrete measures to find a solution to the Albanian question in the entire region," the document said.

The Presevo valley, about 400km south of Belgrade, was the scene of clashes between Serbian forces and Albanian separatist rebels in 2000-2001.