World

Shaky Claims Of Compliance

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 21, 1998 / 10:35 AM EDT / CBS

Tensions continued to flare Wednesday between the Kosovo Liberation Army, the guerrilla group committed to independence for the province, and Yugoslav security forces. When they aren't shooting at each other, the security forces and KLA have been keeping a close watch on each other's positions.

Meanwhile, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Philips, international monitors on the ground aided by planes up above have been trying to confirm that the Serbs have been pulling back their forces in order to comply with the peace deal.

So far, they haven't seen enough to satisfy them.

Many of the tens of thousands of refugees -- some put the number as high as 300,000 -- have been returning to their homes.

But as shells continue to fall in some of their villages, other ethnic Albanians are still in the woods as the autumn weather gets worse.

The Serbs continue to say they are complying with the provisions of the deal. NATO keeps providing evidence saying they haven't pulled back from certain areas.

The deadline for compliance is next Tuesday.

But throughout the negotiations with Serbs, Slobodan Milosevic has claimed he was pulling his forces back, and NATO has provided aerial surveys that flew in the face of those claims.

The question is how much control Milosevic really has over field commanders and troops in the field; that is, whether he is being supplied with bad information or is being economical with the truth for his own purposes.