Serbian Forces Deploy From Kosovo Capital to Ward Off Rebels

A week after a peace deal was supposed to relieve Kosovo’s refugee crisis, fresh Yugoslav troops armed with tanks and artillery dug in Monday to confront rebel forces 30 miles from the capital of the Serbian province.

The new troop deployment further complicates efforts to coax about 50,000 refugees out of mountain and forest camps where they risk freezing to death.

After hearing reports from the area that soldiers had fired shells near a refugee camp, relief workers postponed for a day delivery of food and blankets to about 11,000 refugees.

The convoy of Yugoslav army soldiers had rolled out of barracks in the provincial capital, Pristina, on Sunday night, raising the possibility that nightly skirmishes might escalate into an all-out assault.

The troops took up positions near the spot southwest of Pristina where three Serbian police officers were killed in a grenade attack late Saturday. Serbia is the dominant of the two remaining republics of Yugoslavia.

A group of foreign diplomatic observers visited the newly deployed soldiers near Lapusnik on Monday. An advance team of civilian monitors was tied up trying to find housing and office space for their expected yearlong mission.

But the diplomatic observers were unable to tell whether the soldiers had fired during the night, as refugee relief agencies had heard from their sources.

“They were digging in in defensive positions, but there was no hint of anything offensive going on--no aggressive behavior whatsoever,” said an American spokesman for the observers.

“There was no evidence that they had done any attacking or anything at all in the night,” added the spokesman, who spoke on condition he not be identified. “That doesn’t mean it happened or it didn’t happen. It just means they can’t tell.”

Since the troops came from a Pristina base and weren’t offensive forces in the eyes of diplomats, they may not be in violation of the agreement brokered by U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke a week ago.

But they show just how difficult it is proving to be to stop Kosovo’s war without a negotiated cease-fire between government forces and the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, which lacks clear leadership.

While Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic appears to be complying slowly with NATO demands for a withdrawal from the province, clashes continue daily between government troops and the guerrillas. Serbian officials have accused the KLA of moving in when security forces pull back.

But Shaun Byrnes, head of the U.S. diplomatic observer mission in Kosovo, still sees an improvement in the security situation.

“The overall situation is better than it was before Oct. 1,” Byrnes said Monday in Pristina. “Serbian forces are not engaged in any aggressive operation that we’re aware of. Unfortunately, skirmishes continue.”

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization extended last Friday’s deadline for a Serbian pullback until next Tuesday, but more guerrilla attacks may give Milosevic the excuse he needs to drag it out longer.

American U-2 spy planes began flying over Yugoslavia on Saturday, to verify the Serbian forces’ withdrawal, and reportedly found evidence that at least two of seven battalions were leaving Kosovo.

Still, as the Yugoslav army soldiers dug in Monday, seven busloads of paramilitary police moved out from their posts just up the road, near the village of Kijevo.

They sped past a gravel road that runs from the highway and up a hill to the village of Negroc, which, like most of the scorched remains of the region’s villages, looked deserted.

But three ethnic Albanian guerrillas emerged from a destroyed farmhouse to stop a journalist’s car at the edge of the village, a post offering a clear shot at the highway below.

They were men in their early 30s, dressed in the baggy pants and frayed shirts and sweaters of farmers. They had worn faces and tired, almost frightened, eyes.

The leader had an old AK-47 assault rifle; the comrade close at his elbow fingered the trigger of a rifle with a sniper’s scope. A few yards away, a guerrilla with a loaded grenade launcher watched the highway through the trees.

Their unit had watched Yugoslav troops set up positions on a nearby hill during the night, said the guerrilla holding the AK-47. But then the troops withdrew, and rebel scouts were still trying to figure out where they went, he said.

About 50,000 ethnic Albanian refugees are still living in makeshift shelters, mostly of plastic and sticks, in Kosovo’s mountains and forests, according to the latest estimate by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

As many as 50,000 more may have returned to their homes, but an accurate count is difficult, Laura Boldrini, the refugee agency’s spokeswoman, said Monday.

A relief convoy was supposed to deliver clothes, sleeping bags, flour and other supplies Monday to 3,000 refugees in Peterac and 8,000 more in Upper Streoc, near the western Kosovo city of Pec.

But Boldrini explained that after hearing reports of fighting Sunday night, the refugee agency decided to be cautious and wait until today to try again to make the delivery.

The brief setback followed a full week of successes when relief convoys got past checkpoints without any trouble and even reached the village of Trdec, which had been cut off by land mines, Boldrini added.

She went with the trucks to Trdec, about 25 miles southwest of Pristina, and spoke with a family of 19 refugees living in a farmer’s three-walled shed.

There was only plastic sheeting between them and the ground, and the roof had holes in it. The family tried to keep the rain out with strips of plastic tarp, Boldrini said.

For four months, they moved from one village to another, and then they stayed in the forest for another month, Boldrini said. A villager finally offered them his rickety shed.

But they are living near Komorane, along the Pristina-to-Pec highway that cuts across Kosovo, and they hear the guerrillas and security forces fighting at night.

They told Boldrini that if only a few of the 2,000 foreign monitors coming to verify the Serbian withdrawal would sleep with them in Trdec, they would finally feel safe.

MASS GRAVE: Relatives of 274 Muslim victims begin identifying bodies. A14.