30-Nation Force Poised to Advance on Heels of Serbs

“When we go into Kosovo,” a NATO official said Saturday, “it’s going to be like the saints marching in.”

British paratroopers, daggertoting Gurkhas from the Himalayas, Royal Irish Guards in Challenger tanks, U.S. Marines, members of the French Foreign Legion--all are poised or on the move so they can enter Kosovo on the heels of the retreating Serbs. NATO leaders say the troops will be equipped to make peace--or fight.

“We are going to be going into a situation where Serb forces have been very active, and it is necessary to have every single part of this special force properly equipped for all eventualities,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.

At North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels, a high-ranking officer said advancing Western troops could be as close as “a rifle shot away” as units from the Yugoslav army, Serbian Interior Ministry special police and the thugs of paramilitary groups like Arkan’s Tigers begin leaving.

Commanding NATO’s KFOR, or Kosovo Force, is a lanky, hatchet-faced British paratrooper, Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Jackson, 55, whose rugged mien and fiery temper have won him the nickname “the Prince of Darkness” among his officers.

Jackson’s 30-nation contingent, which is still being fine-tuned by NATO military planners, will face a daunting laundry list of challenges as soon as it reaches Kosovo.

“There will be about a half a million internally displaced persons in dire need of medical help and other assistance,” NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said. “There are over 850,000 refugees in the region that clearly want to return home as quickly as possible. We have to deal with destruction in 500 villages, towns and cities.

“We have to find out what has happened to the 220,000 missing men,” Shea continued. “We will have a collapse of the agricultural system to deal with, the restoration of the infrastructure, assistance to the humanitarian organizations and assistance to the setting-up of the civilian transitional authority under the international community. And there will be expectations of all of that happening quickly.”

So far, NATO’s 19 members and 11 partner countries have pledged a total of 47,868 people for KFOR--from medics from Iceland, which has no armed forces of its own, to soldiers of the French Foreign Legion whose specialty is detecting and clearing land mines.

As of now, a total of 13,000 British forces will take part, the most from any country. From other NATO members, there will be 7,000 Americans, 6,000 French, 6,000 Germans, 2,000 Italians, 1,200 Spaniards, 1,100 Belgians, 1,000 Greeks, 800 to 900 Norwegians, 800 Poles, 800 Canadians, 700 Dutch, 700 Danes and 120 to 150 Hungarians.

The vanguard of U.S. forces will be 2,200 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, now aboard ships steaming from the Adriatic into the Aegean. The Pentagon says they will land at Thessalonica in Greece, take everything off the ships and move into Skopje, Macedonia, positioning themselves to move into Kosovo at the appropriate time.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon said the Marines are an initial force to be “replaced by a much heavier, a larger Army force that will come principally out of Germany.”

At a news briefing in London on Saturday, British Armed Forces Minister Doug Henderson said that “outline proposals” drafted by alliance military planners divide the Kosovo Force into troops for five zones, much the way a similar force in Bosnia-Herzegovina was organized. NATO sources said the zones will be under the control of Britain, Germany, France, Italy and the United States.

As befits its role as the largest contingent, Britain will control the sector around Pristina, Kosovo’s provincial capital. The U.S. sector will be in the southeastern part of the province, around the town of Gnjilane.

However, Henderson said: “We are absolutely determined that there should be no political division of Kosovo as a result of the geographical allocation of peacekeeping forces.”

Nonalliance members, including Finland, Sweden, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Estonia, will supply about 10% of KFOR’s personnel. The Russians once spoke of furnishing as many as 10,000, but that is up in the air as the Kremlin wrestles with what its relationship with NATO should be. At any rate, NATO officials believe that the parlous state of Russia’s finances and armed forces would limit the erstwhile superpower’s contribution to between 2,500 and 3,500 troops.

Provided that the Serbs begin executing a full-scale withdrawal, the only thing that could keep the vanguard of Jackson’s force in Macedonia would be lack of an authorizing resolution from the United Nations. NATO sources said a meeting of foreign ministers of leading Western democracies and Russia, supposed to take place today to help secure that authorization, will be held Monday instead.

The scenario is the following: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the other foreign ministers gathering near Bonn would finalize a draft Security Council document bestowing the status of U.N. peacekeepers on KFOR. The draft for a Kosovo settlement then would be sent to United Nations headquarters in New York for approval later Monday. Jackson’s first units could be in Kosovo as early as Tuesday.

British sources said one plan is for British paratroopers to helicopter in and secure the airport at Pristina, with a battalion of Gurkha riflemen and the U.S. Marines now aboard ships in the Adriatic following close behind.

NATO officials also maintain that the peacekeeping operation, officially baptized Joint Guardian, must get underway quickly to prevent separatist guerrillas from the Kosovo Liberation Army from themselves filling the vacuum left by the departing Serbian forces. The KLA is committed to disarming itself under peace accords it signed earlier this year in France, but some of its fighters now vow to keep up the battle until all Serbs have been pushed out of the province.

“We don’t want to watch the Serbs leave, then come in and find that a Kosovo Albanian People’s Republic has been proclaimed,” a senior NATO diplomat said. Shea said plans are for the alliance-led force to be “in every village and on every street corner.”

To be ready for any challenge, KFOR will pack plenty of weaponry, including such heavy tanks as British Challengers, German Leopard-2s, American Abrams and French Leclercs. Already, NATO has 22,700 soldiers in the vicinity of Kosovo--15,400 in Macedonia, 7,300 in Albania--and thousands more are on the way.

“We’re going to be the baddest guys in the valley,” a European official of NATO said.

U.S. and NATO officials said Russia is welcome to join the force. But one senior U.S. official said the Russians will not be given command of a sector of their own.

An important part of the early deployment will be the two British armored battle groups, led by the King’s Royal Hussars and the Royal Irish Guards, already under Jackson’s orders in Macedonia. A large group of Royal Engineers is also supposed to help clear mines laid by the Serbs, as well as unexploded bombs and missiles from NATO aircraft.

Jackson’s permanent command, the NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, will be in overall charge.

As the possibility of peace in Kosovo rapidly approached, some details of Joint Guardian were still being worked out Saturday. Britain and France said they were loading tanks and other equipment on ships and moving more troops to the Balkans. NATO ambassadors in Brussels also need to formally issue an activation order for Jackson’s force and approve its rules of engagement.

Moreover, KFOR’s command structure “needs a few changes, so at the same time there can be Russians with a command of their own--that is, in any case, what they are asking for--but perfect coordination” with NATO, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.