Kosovo Gun Battle Flares, Stoking Fears

Explosions and the crackle of gunfire broke out Thursday between Yugoslav army forces and Kosovo rebels in defiance of Western warnings that both sides hold to a cease-fire during a 2 1/2-week suspension in peace talks.

German Gen. Klaus Naumann, head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s panel of military planners, expressed concern about the fighting and a “significant” buildup of Yugoslav forces in and near Kosovo.

The situation in Kosovo, the Serbian province where ethnic Albanians form the majority, is “more than tense. It’s almost a powder keg,” Naumann said Thursday.

The blasts and small-arms fire Thursday erupted in Bukos, 20 miles northwest of Pristina, the provincial capital, where Serbian tanks and mortars were targeting separatist Kosovo Liberation Army positions near the village.

Clashes in the same area on Tuesday, the day the peace talks ended, left one Serbian civilian dead and five Serbian police officers wounded, and monitors with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported that at least 15 Yugoslav tanks had massed in the region.

Under the circumstances, it is “absolutely necessary that military pressure is kept up” and that NATO maintain the option to stage airstrikes against the Serbs, Naumann said.

The fighting came as ethnic Albanian negotiators returned to Kosovo from peace talks in Rambouillet, France, which ended this week without substantial agreement on how to bring lasting peace to the impoverished, mountainous province in Serbia, the main republic in Yugoslavia.

The Serbs have refused to let NATO troops enforce a peace plan, but ethnic Albanians have agreed to sign a tentative pact--after they consult with KLA commanders back in Kosovo--when talks resume March 15.

The ethnic Albanians’ refusal to sign a peace deal in Rambouillet made it impossible for NATO to follow through on airstrikes designed to make the Serbs cooperate.

In a landmark decision, the German Parliament on Thursday approved what would be its largest deployment of troops--as many as 6,000 in a 28,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force--to serve outside the country since World War II.

The Clinton administration, which has offered to send up to 4,000 U.S. troops as well, expressed concern Thursday that both sides in the Kosovo dispute will use the recess in peace talks to fortify their military positions.