Serbs Mass Firepower Near Ethnic Albanian Rebel Bastion

Serbian forces massed firepower around a stronghold of ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo on Friday, drawing warnings from the West against any new offensive.

As hundreds of villagers fled the region, President Clinton and NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana warned Yugoslavia that the Atlantic alliance would not stand idly by in the face of any major attack.

International observers in the north of the province said tanks and armored vehicles were poised along snowy ridges near the town of Vucitrn, apparently preparing for an attack to flush out ethnic Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA. Kosovo is in southern Serbia, the dominant republic of the rump Yugoslavia.

West of Vucitrn, Yugoslav troops that had occupied the village of Bukos on Thursday were seen cutting branches and saplings to camouflage tanks and armored personnel carriers dug into frozen fields and parked behind haystacks.

Solana, speaking on Spanish television Friday, warned Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic not to try to change the situation on the ground in Kosovo before the peace talks with the ethnic Albanians resume March 15.

Authorities in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, have denied any plans for an offensive.

Clinton, in a San Francisco speech laying out a broad outline of his foreign policy, said Friday: “President Milosevic should understand that this is a time for restraint, not repression. And if he does not, NATO is prepared to act.”

Two people died and at least eight were wounded in sporadic clashes around Kosovo, where army and police troops deployed in force in several areas.

International monitors said the Yugoslav troops appeared to be responding to guerrilla assaults on Serbs in ethnically mixed villages. The monitors said the rebels appeared to be operating under cover of a cease-fire that was imposed on government forces in October. Air attacks by NATO were threatened at the time.

Skirmishes went on for a fifth day around Vucitrn, 25 miles northwest of Pristina, the provincial capital, and just east of the KLA-dominated valley whose inhabitants were fleeing.

The army has described its activity in the area as a “winter training exercise.”