Fighting Heats Up In Balkans

Shells slammed into a Kosovo village Thursday just across the border from Macedonia as fighting intensified in an area where government forces and ethnic Albanian militants have been clashing, U.S. peacekeepers said.

Two civilians were killed and 10 others wounded in the assault on the village of Krivenik, just 1,200 yards inside the Kosovo border, said U.S. Maj. James Marshall, spokesman for U.S. forces in Kosovo. No peacekeepers were reported injured.

"Our focus right now is to get the civilians who are wounded treated as quickly as possible," Marshall said.

Helicopters thundered overhead. Ambulances were on the scene and medics were aiding the victims, helped by peacekeepers who hastily set up a field hospital. American soldiers were combing the village for other victims.

The attack came as NATO-led international peacekeepers stepped up their patrols along the border with Kosovo, near the area where Macedonian troops were skirmishing with the rebels in the rugged mountains.

Both the Macedonian army and the rebels denied that they were responsible for the Krivenik attack. Commander Sokoli, a regional rebel commander, said the insurgents lacked the military capability to strike the village from their positions in Macedonia.

The fighting, heavy at times, continued overnight and into the morning as U.S. and British units with the Kosovo peacekeeping operation known as KFOR reinforced their patrols. They said their role continued to be strictly limited to observing the fighting and intercepting any rebels who strayed across the border.

Reuters An ethnic Albanian National Liberation army guerrilla known as "The German" is seen here at a Kosovo hideout after moving his family out of Macedonia. He plans to return there to continue the fight against government forces.

Macedonia characterized the clashes as a mop-up effort to drive the insurgents out of the country ahead of talks with leaders of the former Yugoslav republic's ethnic Albanian minority, who are outnumbered by Slavs three to one among the population of 2 million. But it has refused to negotiate directly with the rebels, whom it considers to be terrorists.

The rebels, who say they are fighting for greater rights for ethnic Albanians, suggested they were merely pulling back and regrouping.

A Macedonian soldier was killed and two others injured late Wednesday when their vehicle drove over a land mine near Ramno in contested territory close to the Kosovo border, military sources reported.

The army launched its mini-offensive Wednesday with the aim of driving the guerrillas out of the northern village of Gracane. Macedoniapolice at their front lines in Kuckovo, just across a ridge, said the village had been emptied of civilians before the bombardment began.

Commander Sokoli said Wednesday that senior commanders decided they would strike back to reverse government advances made during a series of recent assaults that included the use of artillery, tanks and helicopter gunships.

"We are ready to fight a war in the areas we control," he said, giving the government until midnight Wednesday to include the rebels in any talks on Macedonia's future.

The government, however, refused to budge. "The terrorists will always get the same response from us," said Antonio Milososki, a government spokesman. The government has accused the rebels of seeking to split away northern Macedonia to create an independent state with mostly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo.

Western leaders have condemned the ethnic Albanian guerrilla army and urged them to use the political arena to voice their grievances.

Ethnic Albanian leaders have said they want Macedonians to agree to the use of the Albanian language in state institutions and the establishment of an Albanian state-funded university, and a new law that would decentralize local municipalities.

Concessions may be resisted by the majority Slav population, who worry that Macedonia, which gained its independence from socialist Yugoslavia only in 1991, would lose its identity.

Kosovo, a province of the main Yugoslav republic of Serbia, has been under U.N. and NATO control since 1999 when the Western alliance used a 78-day bombing campaign to force Yugoslav troops to withdraw from the province and end a crackdown on ethnic Albanians.

In Brussels, Belgium, officials said Thursday that NATO members have been slow in responding to Secretary-General Lord Robertson's request for more troops for Kosovo to replace those dispatched to the border with Macedonia.

Robertson officially asked for six companies of reinforcements more than a week ago, or roughly 1,000 troops.

So far he has only half what he asked for. Spain, Germany and non-NATO member Sweden have pledged one company each. The United States, Britain and France have offered to increase the number of surveillance drones, which a NATO official said could lessen the need for increased patrols on the ground.

NATO leads an international force of about 37,000 troops in Kosovo.

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