Serbs Step Up Attacks on Separatists

Reeling from a major military setback, ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo province came under siege Saturday as government forces closed roads into the heart of rebel territory and shelled settlements on three sides of Malisevo, the largest guerrilla-held town.

The aim of the drive by Serbian police and Yugoslav army troops was unclear. The push began amid new U.S.-led peace efforts and four days after rebels abandoned their first attempt to seize a large town.

Police barred journalists and international relief workers Saturday from the besieged area, which embraces scores of towns and villages. But cannon fire and artillery shells were audible, and rising plumes of black smoke were visible for miles around.

Albanian separatist bulletins said 24 settlements were under attack. An Albanian farmer walking from the area through a police checkpoint in Stimlje said he had seen government shelling of at least three nearby villages since before dawn.

Reporters elsewhere saw tanks moving into the area along a highway linking Pristina and Pec, the province’s two biggest cities.

It appeared that one aim of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s forces was to clear that highway, cut since May 12 by rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Serbian reports said the guerrillas were resisting the effort and skirmishing with troops in several other places.

Western officials said they suspect that the government also might be trying to isolate rebel-held Malisevo for a possible assault. Before the conflict erupted last winter, the town and its satellite villages had a population of 40,000. War refugees have swollen the number beyond 100,000, including thousands who fled a five-day battle for Orahovac that ended before dawn Wednesday with a rebel retreat.

“The Serbs may believe that the [rebels] are now in disarray and it’s time to go for it in Malisevo,” said a European diplomat in Kosovo to observe the conflict.

Several civilian ethnic Albanian leaders, doubtful that the rebels could defend Malisevo, said the failed assault on Orahovac has prompted a reevaluation of the rebel army’s strength and an urgent discussion about political approaches to the conflict.

The guerrillas burst to the forefront of the separatist movement late last year, eclipsing the pacifist separatist leader Ibrahim Rugova. Both are struggling for independence of Kosovo, which is a province of Serbia, the larger of Yugoslavia’s two republics. That aim is shared by most of the ethnic Albanians, who make up 90% of Kosovo’s population.

As brutal Serbian assaults this year drove thousands of ethnic Albanian villagers into its ranks, the rebel army expanded its de facto control to roughly a third of Kosovo’s territory, began speaking confidently of military victory and rejected any civilian leadership.

Then the rebels began to overextend, losing control three weeks ago of an open-pit coal mine they had seized in June. Their move to seize Orahovac--the first step in what some rebel fighters called a strategy of taking the war to big Serbian-held towns--prompted a punishing counterattack that led to scores of casualties and detentions and frightened away an estimated 15,000 of the town’s 20,000 ethnic Albanian residents.

“Before Orahovac, there was a kind of euphoria” among the rebels and their civilian backers, said Shkelzen Maliqi, an advisor to Rugova for peace talks that started--and broke down--in May. “Now those who put so much hope in a military solution feel there’s a need to take a break and focus on political ideas.”

To that end, Rugova is trying to form a coalition government that would include representatives of pro-guerrilla opposition parties and the rebel group itself. His leading civilian critic, Adem Demaci, wants an all-party council to replace Rugova. Another opposition faction has offered a compromise.

All three proposals would bring rebel representatives into a unified separatist leadership, which in turn would exert civilian control over the fighters.

Special U.S. envoy Christopher Hill made two visits to Kosovo last week, trying to hammer out a compromise among the bickering ethnic Albanians in the hope that more unity would lead to a resumption of peace talks with Milosevic.

In an interview Friday, Hill voiced some optimism and said he will return Monday to Kosovo from neighboring Macedonia, where he serves as U.S. ambassador. “There are some positive signals, but we’re not there yet. This thing is still in the oven,” he said, cautioning that the effort could be overtaken by new fighting. “We don’t have a lot of time.”