Serbs, Rebels Die as Kosovo Clashes Grow

Ethnic Albanian separatists killed two police officers Sunday as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was moving more troops to Kosovo in defiance of a Western ultimatum to demilitarize the embattled province.

The rebels, some armed with mortars and rocket launchers, staged five daylight ambushes on military convoys. Seven government soldiers--five from the army and two from the militarized police--were wounded.

Five ethnic Albanians were reported killed in weekend police attacks on two villages, and two police officers died in a rebel ambush Friday. Conflict was growing on the eve of simulated NATO air attacks over neighboring Albania and Macedonia that are aimed at pushing Milosevic toward a cease-fire.

The Yugoslav ruler has insisted that the violence, which erupted in February and has claimed more than 250 lives, is a domestic police matter. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of Milosevic’s Yugoslav federation. Serbs control Kosovo’s security forces, while Albanians, most of whom seek independence, make up 90% of its 2 million people.

But the United States and its NATO allies, alarmed that the fighting may spread through the southern Balkans, began threatening military intervention after Serbian police emptied and burned at least five Albanian villages in a weeklong assault that ended early this month.

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The Contact Group monitoring the Balkans--the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia--is demanding of Milosevic an immediate cease-fire and troop withdrawal; free access for international monitoring and humanitarian aid; repatriation of displaced people; and rapid, serious and conclusive talks with Kosovo’s Albanian leadership.

In a display of the force it could muster to back those demands, NATO today was set to launch its first air exercises over Albania and Macedonia, near the Kosovo border. American F-16s and KC-135 tanker planes were among the 80 aircraft from 13 nations assembled to take part in the operation, code-named Determined Falcon.

The Yugoslav leader, who was scheduled to leave for Moscow today, was expected to announce his response to the four-point demands after talks with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Tuesday.

In the combat zone, however, Milosevic’s initial reaction was clear: Rather than stand down, his forces appeared to be growing and advancing toward strongholds of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army.

Reporters saw dozens of Serbian police and Yugoslav army vehicles, including antiaircraft missile carriers, moving Sunday along the two main roads that join at the town of Prizren, in Kosovo’s southwest corner at the Albanian border. Soldiers in face masks and goggles manned machine guns mounted on the backs of jeeps.

Control of both roads is needed if government forces are to stop the flow of rebel fighters and weapons over the mountainous border from bases inside Albania. Police had reopened the Pec-to-Prizren road just over a week ago after their fiery sweep through Decani and other villages.

But the rebels staged ambushes along both roads Sunday, hitting one police convoy near Decani and one near Dakovica, a city of 120,000 people. They also hit three army convoys, including one bringing food to troops, on the road between Prizren and Pristina, the provincial capital. That thoroughfare had been relatively quiet.

A BBC crew came upon two wounded army soldiers in one convoy and drove them to a hospital.

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Numbering a few hundred fighters when it emerged last year, the Kosovo Liberation Army has mushroomed in response to a harsh police crackdown that killed dozens of unarmed Albanian villagers in March. A pro-rebel newspaper claimed Saturday that the guerrilla group has 30,000 armed members--a figure independent specialists consider high but hard to judge.

The rebels have set up roadblocks that keep scores of “liberated” villages beyond easy reach of the police. They have fought close enough to Pristina to shut down the airport eight miles from the city.

Faced with a growing insurgency, Serbian officials have justified their crackdown by citing Western nations’ opposition to terrorism and to outright independence for Kosovo. At the same time, the officials have rejected Albanian demands for autonomy and voiced frustration with Western condemnation of Serbian police brutality.

Bosko Drobnjak, Serbia’s chief spokesman in Kosovo, called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization flight exercises “a threat” because “they directly encourage the terrorists.” He couldn’t imagine Milosevic agreeing to withdraw military units from Kosovo until the rebels lay down their arms.

“The police are here because of the terrorists,” he said in an interview. “It’s as if you have some valuable property and the thieves are saying, ‘Let’s agree that you will remove the guards, and we will make a gentleman’s agreement not to steal anything.’ ”

Near the village of Polluzha in central Kosovo, a dozen rebel soldiers--many without uniforms and no two dressed alike--milled Sunday around a roadblock made of rocks and tree branches. The road, far from any fighting, was quiet.

“We would like NATO to come help us--not across the border but right here,” said a 27-year-old guerrilla wearing blue jeans, a camouflage jacket and a Chicago Bulls hat. “But we are willing to continue the battle alone. It will only mean more losses of life, more blood, more massacres.”