World

Fighting Breaks Out In Kosovo

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 25, 1999 / 8:00 AM EST / CBS

Fighting broke out along Kosovo's southwestern border Thursday even as NATO stepped up its threat to use force to halt the year-old conflict.

Yugoslav troops battled a large group of ethnic Albanian rebels caught trying to smuggle weapons from neighboring Albania, Serb sources in Pristina said.

The fighting began around 8 a.m. local time and continued several hours later, the sources said. International monitors of the cease-fire in the Serb province were looking into the reports.

Hundreds of new refugees were believed camped out in mountains in northern Kosovo Thursday, a day after government troops backed by tanks pounded rebel strongholds there.

Guerrillas said two of their fighters were wounded in Wednesday's fighting and one was missing. No new clashes were reported in that area Thursday.

The latest violence comes as international leaders are beginning a fresh push to bring Serbs and Albanians to the negotiating table because of the rapid deterioration of an October truce.

The rebel Kosovo Liberation Army rejects the idea of a peace conference despite heavy pressure from U.S and European envoys, who held talks with them again on Wednesday.

NATO has responded with preparations to step up its threat of military action in a statement by alliance chief Javier Solana later today. Solana said the aim was "to give an impulse to reach peace in Kosovo."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking to reporters with Solana after a meeting of NATO's decision-making North Atlantic Council, said the military threat was needed in order to back up the diplomatic initiative.

"I am pushing very hard for a political settlement," Annan said.

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has failed to stop Serb attacks and to expand self-rule for the province's mostly ethnic Albanian population. The rebels, meanwhile, reject self-rule as long as that means remaining part of Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. The KLA wants full independence.

There were mixed signals about whether the Albanian side was prepared for talks.

U.S. special envoy Christopher Hill and his European Union counterpart, Wolfgang Petritsch, traveled Wednesday to the KLA stronghold of Dragobilje to urge the KLA to support a peace conference, but the separatists are adamant that the talks must lead to full independence.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and five foreign ministers on Friday will attend a special meeting in London of the six-nation Balkan Contact Group.

Yugoslav government officials and political parties oppose an international conference instead of direct negotiations.

But the Belgrade independent daily Glas, citing an unidentified government source, reported that Milosevic was already choosing candidates for a negotiating team, reflecting an official view that talks may be inevitable.

Diplomats have hinted that the next call for talks will be ccompanied by a threat of NATO force to bring the parties to the table.