As Belgrade Takes Away Treasures From Tense Kosovo, Fears of Blood Bath Grow : Unrest: Majority Albanians grumble over Balkan apartheid. But Serbs seem unlikely to give up the cherished province without a struggle.

A young monk fumbled nervously with his keys, unlocked a massive iron-hinged door of the 14th-Century church and assumed an attitude of humble apology as he ushered in guests.

“This used to be the most richly endowed church in all of Serbia,” the portly youth with a sparse beard explained in an embarrassed tone. “But two months ago they came and took away everything of value.”

The Serbian Orthodox monastery at Decani, so deep in restive Kosovo province that it is only a few hours’ walk to the Albanian border, has been stripped to its ancient stones in expectation of the unthinkable.

Gone is the great bronze chandelier bequeathed by King Stephan Dusan. The bejeweled crosses, gold candle stands and silver filigree incense burners have also been taken, by order of the Yugoslav president. Icons and painted stone parapets have been plucked from the iconostasis and church walls, leaving a scarred shell where the treasures of the Serbian faithful once stood.

“Officially, we were told everything was taken for restoration. But we know this isn’t true,” the worried young monk said of the Belgrade authorities’ action.

“Our treasures were removed because they fear the Shiptars will destroy them, that our icons mean nothing to them,” said the monk, casually employing the Serbs’ derogatory reference to the Albanians who make up more than 90% of the Kosovo population. “But they took them and never told us where. . . . We don’t think this removal was necessary. We think our treasures would have been safer here.”

Throughout Kosovo, valuables have been removed from churches, factories and homes--a warning of an even more vicious outbreak of war than the conflicts that have torn Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina apart. Industries like the Bambi juice works near Djakovica and a poultry-processing firm a few miles farther east have been wholly relocated to “safer” areas of Serbia.

“In some ways it gives us cause for hope,” said Nevrus Manxhuka, an ethnic Albanian film director fired two years ago when Serbs took over Kosovo TV. “We think perhaps they are taking out everything of value because they know they cannot indefinitely continue holding this area by force.”

But that logic is seen as flawed by many in Kosovo, where tensions between the Albanian majority and the heavily armed and hostile Serbian forces have escalated out of control, threatening to explode into a blood bath.

Kosovo was the center of the medieval Serbian kingdom, looked upon by virtually all Serbs as their most glorious moment in history. The 1389 Battle of Kosovo Polje, in which Serbia lost its independence to the Turks but slowed the Ottomans’ advance on Christian Europe, has been cast by historians and propagandists as an unparalleled act of martyrdom never acknowledged by the ungrateful West.

To give up Kosovo, either as an annex to Albania or as an autonomous republic within Yugoslavia, would be tantamount to selling Serbia’s soul, in the view of the vast majority of Serbs.

“It’s unimaginable that such a thing could happen,” Dragan Stanojevic, a fresco restorer at another stripped monastery in nearby Pec, said of proposals to divide Kosovo or allow the province self-rule. “If it comes to a conflict around here, it will be much more severe than has happened elsewhere. But Serbia cannot let this part of itself go.”

Conflict has been brewing in Kosovo for more than a decade. A year after the 1980 death of Yugoslavia’s Communist strongman, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, Albanians rioted against Serbian moves to reassert Belgrade rule over the province that had been granted autonomy under the federation’s 1974 constitution.

With the rise of Serbian chauvinism inspired by President Slobodan Milosevic and his federal counterpart, Dobrica Cosic, deployment of troops and hardware to Kosovo has created a police state in which the 2 million Albanians live as second-class citizens.

The predominantly Albanian provincial Parliament was dissolved more than two years ago and a state of emergency declared by Belgrade. Albanians in positions of authority, from high school teachers to doctors to journalists, were fired and replaced by Serbs. A parallel society has emerged to educate, nurse and inform the majority population, but the separation serves to foster already-deep resentments.

At peaceful demonstrations last week in demand of Albanian-language education, police in riot gear beat protesters and dispersed them with tear gas, making it clear that no further unrest will be tolerated.

Last Thursday, federal Prime Minister Milan Panic visited Kosovo in an attempt at tamping down tensions, appealing to the Albanians to remain patient and committed to passive resistance. But the prime minister, in a bow to Serbian nationalists, warned the Albanians against any moves toward secession. He called instead for their integration into the provincial Parliament and other power structures.

Despite those assurances, Albanian political and social leaders say they can no longer endure what they see as an attempt at Balkan apartheid, with the militant Serbian minority insisting on separate schools, hospitals and government from the Albanians who outnumber them nearly 10 to 1.

“We’ve made clear that by the 19th of this month, we want the schools open for Albanian students,” said Aqif Shehu, a member of the banned Kosovo Parliament. “The schools belong to us, not to the police. They are empty now, but we will take them back. We will send our children into the classrooms armed only with their books. There is no danger to the police, so there should be no reason for them to use force against us.”

But the ultimatum for reopening high schools and Pristina University has become the gauntlet thrown down by the repressed Albanian masses that could provoke a deadly confrontation. It could also draw in neighboring Albania, propelling the Yugoslav crisis into the international arena and provoking intervention by other Balkan countries like Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece.

Sparking a war in Kosovo might seem suicidal in economically devastated Serbia, where years of oiling the war machine and nearly five months of U.N. sanctions have confronted once-affluent Serbs with Third World living standards.

But Milosevic, who holds sway over the secret police and security forces, might shore up his flagging political fortunes with just such an emotional diversion.

Milosevic, like a suicide bomber, has the power to set off the Kosovo time bomb. In light of his family history of suicide and a reputed will to hold on to power at all costs, those who blame him for driving Serbia to economic ruin and international disrepute have been forced to tread slowly on the sensitive Kosovo issue.

Panic, the federal prime minister who left his Southern California pharmaceuticals empire in a bid to rescue his homeland, has sought to ease tensions over Kosovo. But with that quest he has run up against Milosevic and the bedrock of Serbian nationalism.

Exuding his trademark mix of hostility and confidence, Milosevic promised his fellow Serbs in an emotional television appearance last week that he would never agree to any division or relinquishing of control of Kosovo.

Serbian intellectuals and moderates have grown weary of the sacrifices entailed in fighting for Serbian control over vanquished areas of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. But even the most open-minded Serbs consider Kosovo sacred territory over which Albanian rule can never be contemplated.

That has laid the groundwork for a devastating clash between the virtually unarmed Albanian majority and the Serbian forces deployed to every town and village to guard against insurrection.

“The problem is that the Albanians are not satisfied with human rights. They are struggling for territory, for the secession of Kosovo . . . and the creation of a new Albanian state, which the Serbian and Yugoslav authorities cannot allow to happen,” said Kosovo’s Serbian information minister, Bosko Drobnjak.

Even opposition politicians in Kosovo, like provincial Democratic Party President Milan Laketic, take the tack that the Serbs’ huge advantage in armaments is a guarantee of peace.

“We don’t fear war--we fear a massacre,” said Alush Gashi, a leader of the Council for Human Rights and Freedoms and dean of Pristina University Medical School until Albanian professors were fired in 1990. “We are faced with Serbian police, Serbian paramilitary forces, a Serbian army and an armed Serbian civilian population. The reasons for this fear are obvious in view of the genocidal policies of this regime practiced in Croatia and Bosnia. It is possible Milosevic will now start a conflict in Kosovo to stay in power.”

But the present state of repression has become too much to bear, say Kosovans such as fired radio journalist Sali Kelmndi, one of 50,000 Pristina residents who demonstrated for educational freedom last Monday.

“We cannot continue this Gandhi-like restraint forever,” warned Kelmndi, demonstrating in front of the central Pristina elementary school that he said is now off-limits to non-Serbs. “What is being practiced in Kosovo is pure apartheid.”