BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia’s army chief called yesterday for the lifting of restrictions on military movements inside a buffer zone along the Kosovo border created in a 1999 agreement that ended NATO bombing of Serbia.

In June 1999, Serbia signed an agreement with NATO under which it withdrew all its police and army forces from Kosovo. The deal ended 78 days of air strikes.

The agreement ordered Serb forces also to withdraw from a 5-kilometer (3-mile) ground buffer zone and created a no-fly zone 25 km into Serbia proper. “It was not a sustainable solution and the army command has just waited for the right political moment to raise the issue,” General Zdravko Ponos said on B92 Radio. Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac told the Vecernje Novosti daily that ending restrictions would serve civilian purposes as well. “We expect a benefit for our civilian air traffic as well – it would allow us to set up radar control systems,” he said.