Western monitors set out to examine two pockets of fighting in Kosovo yesterday after NATO's supreme commander met Yugoslav leaders to demand full compliance with an ultimatum to end bloodshed in the province.
"There is some concern that the two sides [government security forces and ethnic Albanian separatists] are giving each other pretexts to keep their forces at close quarters and ready to fight," said a senior Western diplomat.
NATO's supreme allied commander, Gen Wesley Clark, met the Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, and the army chief-of-staff, Gen Momcilo Perisic, for talks that ended after eight hours at 2 a.m. (local time) yesterday.
US diplomats said Gen Clark pressed them to explain apparent foot-dragging on withdrawals of security forces from Kosovo as Belgrade promised in an accord a week ago which averted immediate NATO air strikes.
Gen Clark emphasised to both men that NATO's October 27th deadline for a meaningful military withdrawal to stave off punitive bombing by the Atlantic alliance was serious.
Diplomats said restraint on the part of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was also indispensable to the disengagement process.
"Two mixed American and European teams in KDOM [Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission] are going out today to two locations, Pagarusa and Podujevo, where the two sides are particularly close to each other and there have been the most skirmishes and sniping incidents," said one US official.
The US National Security Adviser, Mr Sandy Berger, yesterday said that aside from sporadic skirmishing, an unofficial ceasefire was holding up.