Kosovo Pact's Future Uncertain

Following ethnic Albanian attacks on Serb police, the Yugoslav government has moved tanks and troops into a frontline in central Kosovo, raising fresh doubts about the future of a U.S.-brokered agreement to end the violence in the province.

NATO's Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe, General Wesley Clark, will visit Belgrade on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the verification of Yugoslav commitments to end the crisis in Kosovo, NATO sources said.

No details of Clark's mission were disclosed.

Hundreds of people have been killed this year in President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on separatists, and hundreds of thousands more have fled their homes to escape the violence. As winter approaches, officials fear a humanitarian disaster if the refugees are not allowed to return home.

Yugoslav army troops were in position Tuesday in a region southwest of Pristina, the Kosovo capital, after a surge of weekend violence that left three Serb policemen dead.

Western officials voiced concern about the latest skirmishes and indicated that both ethnic Albanian rebels and Serb forces were to blame.

"It is not clear to us who is at fault, but it does appear that, in some cases, the KLA fired first. It is unacceptable to us whether KLA or Serbian forces started skirmishes," State Department spokesman James Rubin told reporters.

A deal brokered by U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke last week temporarily headed off NATO airstrikes against Serb forces, but NATO extended the deadline for Serb compliance when it became clear that Milosevic would not withdraw on time.

Rubin warned Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas not to try to provoke Serb forces into taking actions that would heighten the possibility of airstrikes against them.

It would be a mistake, Rubin said, for the KLA "to consider NATO its air force. That will not be tolerated by the U.S."

He described Yugoslav compliance on pulling back in Kosovo as a mixed bag. Over the past month, he said, about half of the Yugoslav Army units which had moved into Kosovo earlier this year have left.

The troops that moved out of Pristina to the southwest on Sunday are normally stationed in the capital, and therefore could remain in the province under the withdrawal plan.

In Paris on Monday, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said the surge in violence should not undermine the accord on Kosovo. "I think there are provocateurs and provocations, but we must continue to hold the line" and carry out the accord, Solana said.

In Kosovo, reports of shelling and shooting along with a Yugoslav army deployment along the road from Komorane to Malisevo caused the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to call of two convoys of relief supplies.

A 2,000-member international verification force is being organized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to ensure that Yugoslavia is keeping its word. About 25 members of an advance team for the monitors are already in Kosovo.