World

Guerrillas Free 5 Serbs

January 16, 1999 / 11:14 AM EST / AP

Ethnic Albanian guerrillas Saturday released five Serb villagers they had abducted after mediation from international observers in Kosovo, according to a spokesman for the observer mission.

Col. Mike Philips, an American with the Kosovo observer mission, said the hostages, who were abducted Friday, were now with members of the mission being run by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He gave no further details.

The kidnapping had further complicated efforts by international officials to pressure government forces and the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army to stop violence in the separatist province in Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic.

"I think that was a very, very uncivilized thing for them to do, to kidnap civilians," said U.S. diplomat William Walker, who heads the international mission monitoring the fragile truce in Kosovo. "I want to condemn it."

Walker, who spoke as he headed out of Pristina for a tour of the province, also referred to "a good bit of military activity" Saturday in Kosovo, despite mounting international pressure to stop the violence.

He did not elaborate and there were no early reports of major clashes. The Serbs, however, have been reinforcing positions in northern Kosovo over the past few days, with at least five tanks dug in just off the main highway from Belgrade.

The kidnapping of the Serbs from their homes occurred before dawn in the village of Nevoljane, about 15 miles northwest of Pristina, the Serb Media Center said.

In a statement carried by Kosovo Press, the KLA news agency, the guerrillas said the five Serbs had two machine guns and three automatic rifles in their homes and "harassed the ethnic Albanian population" in the vicinity.

The Serb-led Yugoslav forces have stepped up their crackdown in Kosovo in recent weeks in response, they say, to KLA operations. The violence has left an October cease-fire in tatters.

The international observers have come under fire from the Yugoslav government for accusing its security forces of the Jan. 15 massacre of 45 ethnic Albanians in the village of Racak.

The massacre was the biggest blow yet to the cease-fire and unleashed a storm of international condemnation and threats of NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia to force it into compliance with the peace agreement.

The monitors were standing by their initial finding that Serb police were to blame. Walker said in Pristina that only the definition of "massacre" was at issue.

A report by the Kosovo Verification Mission on the killings said monitors found "evidence of arbitrary detentions, extra-judicial killings and the mutilation of unarmed civilians" by Yugoslav security forces.

More than 2,000 people have been killed in fighting between separatist guerrillas and Yugoslav and Serbian forces in Kosovo.