At least 15 ethnic Albanian guerrillas were reported killed in fighting in southern Kosovo yesterday, and NATO's senior commander warned that a full-scale conflict could break out if there was no political solution soon.
The Serb-run media centre in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, quoting police sources, said the guerrillas of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) died in heavy fighting with Yugoslav security forces.
"Police said they seized arms, including heavy machineguns, and ammunition." The media centre said the fighting, which occurred yesterday morning near Stimlje, had abated, but police were still searching for guerrillas.
In Vienna a spokesman for the OSCE said two members of its verification mission in Kosovo were shot and wounded yesterday. "Their injuries are not life-threatening. They are in hospital in Pristina," said Mr Walter Kemp, adding that the circumstances of the shooting were unclear.
The incident, the first since the OSCE Kosovo mission began deploying, happened at Decane, about 40km west of Pristina, near the village of Rznic.
One of the two was a local, and the other was internationally recruited, he said, declining to give the nationality of the non-Kosovo verifier.
The OSCE was charged, under a deal struck last October by the US envoy, Mr Richard Holbrooke, with deploying a 2,000-strong Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) to monitor compliance with UN resolutions.
The latest bout of fighting was one of the most serious since the two sides signed a ceasefire last October. Reporters who witnessed the fighting said the Yugoslav army used tanks and heavy guns around the villages of Racak and Petrovo, just south of Stimlje, about 26km south of Pristina.
Police on a hill above the village of Petrovo ducked under sniper fire from guerrilla positions. Reporters came under sniper fire running between their jeep and a police trench.
The army, called in by the police, fired back with heavy weapons. The reporters saw a tank firing at least five shells.
Police in Kosovo earlier reported they had sealed off the village of Racak in what it said was a search for KLA guerrillas held responsible for killing a policeman a few days ago.
The ethnic Albanian-run Kosovo Information Centre (KIC) said the villages of Recak, Molopolac and Petrovo had been shelled since early morning yesterday.
The fighting came after a day of relative calm following the release of eight Yugoslav soldiers on Wednesday and signs that the army might withdraw from positions in northern Kosovo taken up after the soldiers were captured a week ago.
Despite these hopeful signs, NATO's supreme commander, Gen Wesley Clark, warned that full-scale fighting could break out in Kosovo with the onset of warmer weather in spring unless a political solution was reached.
"Both sides are preparing for the conflict should negotiations fail," Gen Clark said during a visit to the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, before the latest fighting outbreak in Kosovo. "As we look towards the spring what we see is a continuing risk that conflict will return to unacceptably high levels."
On the diplomatic front, Yugoslavia has issued a strong attack on Albania for allegedly encouraging "terrorism" in Kosovo, but dismissed reports that it was threatening war against its Balkan neighbour. A Yugoslav Foreign Ministry statement said a resolution adopted in late December by the Albanian parliament used "lies and insults against Yugoslavia" to call for foreign military intervention in Kosovo.
The Albanian daily newspaper Koha Jone said yesterday that Albanian army tanks had moved to the north of the country, closer to the Yugoslav border, on Thursday night, adding that this followed reports that Belgrade had threatened to attack Albania.