Kosovo Peace Monitor Enters the Battlefield

The American head of international monitors in Kosovo ventured to the center of a new outbreak of fighting Friday, appealing to rebels and Serbian forces not to return to full-scale war.

William Walker met with an ethnic Albanian rebel commander during a lull in the second day of renewed fighting in northern Kosovo, and Yugoslav army tanks on a nearby hill pointed their turrets at the rebel-held village.

Walker said he also hoped to talk with Serbian commanders as part of his bid to end the latest Serbian offensive, which poses the gravest threat yet to the Oct. 12 agreement that halted months of violence between Serbs and guerrillas trying to gain independence for the predominantly ethnic Albanian province of Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia.

“This is the tensest period since the agreement was signed,” said Walker, head of a team of unarmed peace verifiers put together by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Walker said the monitoring force--now 600-strong and set to be increased to 2,000 in the coming weeks--will not be pulled out in the face of increased danger.

“More verifiers are the answer to violence,” he told reporters.

A day after the Serbs launched their crackdown just west of the northern town of Podujevo, the rattle of gunfire echoed through the area.

OSCE spokesman Jorgen Grunnet said there was a lot less activity than Thursday, when Serbian forces backed by artillery and dozens of tanks swept into the area in what the Serbs said was a response to the killing of a policeman earlier in the week.

The attack by Serbian troops and tanks against six villages north of the province’s capital, Pristina, sent hundreds fleeing into snow-covered hills. The ethnic Albanian-run Kosovo Information Center said at least nine people were killed and many others wounded Thursday.

Two columns of Yugoslav military vehicles, each consisting of several tanks and armored personnel carriers, returned to their base late Friday, Grunnet said, although it was not clear if the clashes were over.

The rebel Kosovo Liberation Army said late Thursday that it will “not sit idly by” and will “attack with all means available.” However, the KLA regional commander whom Walker met with insisted that his forces were not firing unless fired on.

Army tanks could be seen filling in trenches dug by the KLA around Lapastica, the village that houses the rebels’ regional command post.

Bozidar Filic, the spokesman for Serbian police in Kosovo, said the renewed fighting was against rebels in the Lapastica region “who have built up a whole system of fortifications, used for their attacks against police and the civilians.”

Filic reiterated the claim that the Serbian attack was launched to hunt for the killer of a Serbian policeman. “The terrorists attacked us, and we responded in an adequate manner, liquidating a number of them,” he said.

In October, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization prepared airstrikes against the Serbs as punishment for their crackdown, but the attacks were put on hold after the cease-fire was reached and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic pulled out some of his forces.

Also, the OSCE said it had sent a “very strong protest” to Yugoslav authorities after a Serbian policeman told a team of verifiers Thursday that he would shoot if they didn’t immediately leave the area outside a military barracks in Podujevo that they were watching.

The Yugoslav government has pledged to ensure protection of the verifiers. A NATO force of 1,800 soldiers is stationed in neighboring Macedonia to rescue them if needed.

Meanwhile, in Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital, Milosevic carried out an extensive military reshuffle, replacing several top officers in the army and air force, state television said Friday.

The list of new appointments included a new air force commander and new head of the Pristina Corps--the army based in Kosovo.

The reshuffle follows Milosevic’s replacement of his chief of staff, Momcilo Perisic, in November.