Heavy fighting broke out last night in central Kosovo with a Serbian armoured battle group clashing with forces of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, with international monitors fearing a major Serbian offensive is imminent in the province.
Heavy tank and machine gun fire was heard from the hills surrounding the central town of Suva Reka. Three civilians were reported dead and three Serbian police wounded in battles that the government media centre said began when rebel forces ambushed a police convoy with machine guns and anti-tank rockets.
Three armoured battle groups with more than 200 tanks, an unprecedented force in Kosovo, have been manoeuvring for the past three days.
International monitors fear the Serbians intend to destroy key rebel positions in advance of a second round of Kosovo peace talks due to begin in France on March 15th. "This is a perfect situation for them [the Serbians] to take out as many KLA strongholds as possible before an agreement is signed," said a senior source with international monitors last night.
Earlier in the day the monitors, from the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, had been humiliated by the Serbians when 21 of their officers were detained for up to eight hours while trying to make routine crossings of the border with Macedonia at the main crossing point.
Serbian customs officers confiscated the passports of the monitors, part of a 1,000-strong force deployed in the province to monitor a ceasefire agreement signed last October. The border was closed for several hours with police refusing to let the officers, detained with eight of their orange-painted jeeps, leave the customs post.
NATO officials fear that new fighting in the province will scupper the chances of a second round of peace talks. "What frightens me and worries me is that these weeks are taken advantage of for the purpose of conflict rather than for consolidation," said the NATO Secretary-General, Mr Javier Solana. He repeated that NATO stood ready for air strikes if the Serbs launched unwarranted military attacks.
President Clinton said NATO was "prepared to act" if President Slobodan Milosevic engaged in repression of ethnic Albanians before talks resumed.
The former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia appealed to the West to try to ensure that a UN force stay in the country beyond March 1st, despite a veto by China on an extension of its mandate. President Kiro Gligorov said that China's UN veto on a six-month extension came at a turbulent moment when the mission was badly needed. China used the veto because of Macedonia's decision to establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan. A Pentagon report said yesterday China was building a major force of ballistic and cruise missiles near its seacoasts and could present an overwhelming military threat to Taiwan in five years.