Government, Kosovo Rebels Suffer Casualties; Neither Shifts Policy

Kosovo Albanian rebels wounded three Serbian police officers, including one shot while fetching his child from a day care center, as violence swept through the province Friday. Seven rebels were reported killed.

The rebel Kosovo Liberation Army hinted again that it is prepared to accept a U.S.-backed peace plan before negotiations resume Monday in Paris. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic again rejected a key element of the plan--the 28,000 NATO troops to enforce it.

Rebel leaders were meeting Friday on the peace plan. There was no announcement on whether they had decided to accept it, but Albania’s foreign minister, Paskal Milo, said there were “positive indications” that they will.

Milo said the U.S.-backed deal “would not be the end” of the Kosovo Albanians’ campaign for independence “but is a step toward further developments.” The plan would grant autonomy but not independence to the province for three years and provide for NATO-led troops to enforce it.

Fighting broke out Friday in villages near the town of Vucitrn, 12 miles northwest of Pristina, the provincial capital of Kosovo, after Serbian police and Yugoslav army troops, using mortars and automatic weapons, tried to push KLA fighters away from three Serbian communities.

The Serbian Media Center said two police officers were badly wounded in the fighting. The center said the third officer was ambushed and wounded Friday in Podujevo, 25 miles north of here, when he walked to a day care center to pick up his child.

The Serbian center also said seven bodies of KLA fighters were found in the village of Jaskovo, south of Prizren, after heavy clashes there in the past two days. It was not clear when the deaths occurred.

International monitors reported that government forces had shelled the village of Dubrava near the Macedonian border, scene of clashes this week. No further details were immediately available.

More than 2,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, have been killed and an estimated 300,000 displaced since Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched a crackdown a year ago against ethnic Albanians seeking independence.

Kosovo is a province of Yugoslavia’s main republic, Serbia.