Exit the Serbs but NATO's delayed entry deepens anxiety

The woman from the defence ministry in Belgrade was in a bad mood. Her eyes were still red from weeping along with a local Serb colleague who had announced her intention of packing up and leaving "before foreigners who have never been here come and take decisions for me".

So when the dirty, bare-footed gypsy boy tugged on the official's shirt with his usual speech of "Please, give me one dinar", she snapped back at him: "Wait for the Amerikanski."

The boy is the most persistent of the army of beggars who patrol the cafe and lobby of the Grand Hotel, so we were amazed when he simply said "OK" and walked away.

Everyone here is waiting for the Amerikanski, or rather the Engelski, since Pristina will be in the central, British sector of the Kosovo Force. How strange to hear a Serb soldier sigh: "I hope NATO gets here quickly."

Suddenly, after months of longing for a ground war with NATO troops, Serbs are praying that the US and Britain will sort out their unseemly quarrel over who enters the Serb province first and arrive, finally, today. It is perhaps the only desire that Serbs and Albanians have in common.

Pristina grows more tense by the hour, with frequent outbreaks of gunfire and more house-burnings in the Albanian quarter of Vranjevac. Serb officers accuse the US of delaying the NATO deployment to allow the Kosovo Liberation Army to seize as much territory as possible before their arrival.

Serbs also believe that the Americans, whom they regard as cowards, prefer to wait until more Serb forces have evacuated the province.

The dispatch of 150 Russian troops from Bosnia to Serbia yesterday was little comfort to the Serbs and Albanians living in fear of each other, although some Kosovo Serbs can be expected to resettle in a Russian-controlled area. If NATO persists in refusing to give Russia its own sector, Col Gen Leonid Ivashov announced, then Russia will make its own deal with Belgrade.

Even as the US deputy Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott, said it was far from certain that Russia would be part of the Kosovo force, Russian armour with the letters "Kfor" stencilled on it headed towards the province.

Meanwhile, the Yugoslav army continued its withdrawal, pulling out heavy weapons and missiles. The main road between Pristina and the border with Serbia was clogged with armoured personnel carriers, SAM-6 surface-to-air missile-launchers and FROG surface-to-surface rockets transported in 20ft coffin-like boxes on truck-beds. Fear of the SAM-6s forced NATO bombers to fly at 30,000 feet or higher, and prevented the US using its Apache helicopters.

Now these same missiles were being driven out of Kosovo, their long, thin bodies and tail-fins intact. We saw more than a dozen batteries, but some of their racks were empty, their missiles already having been fired at NATO aircraft.

As they crossed the border at Merdare, the Yugoslav army passed under a now-faded wartime banner declaring "The only road is the road to Kosovo".

At a checkpoint just north of Pristina, a soldier in a flak jacket kept a tally of departing weapons. Was he also counting the cars packed with Serb families, proof of another calamity visited by President Milosevic on his people? The KLA declared a ceasefire in south-western Kosovo, and many of the cars, pathetically loaded down with household appliances, clothing, stuffed animals and school satchels, bore Djakovica and Prizren plates.

There was not a single Serb family left in Djakovica, one family told us. Across the plain of Kosovo, funnels of smoke rose from more burning houses, the sort of destruction that the peace agreement was supposed to have halted. Some were doubtless Albanian houses torched by Serbs, but there are also consistent reports that Serbs are burning their own homes on leaving.

The British Defence Secretary, Mr George Robertson, has predicted that NATO troops will face "hazards and horrors which nobody should have to face" in Kosovo. The slower their arrival, Serbs and Albanians here said, the greater the anarchy they will find.

On Thursday night someone freed more than 100 KLA prisoners from a jail in Pristina, and the men could be seen walking down the Corzo, still wearing their black prison trousers. Albanian sources said Serb police caught some of the escapers and beat them badly, but then let them go because it was too much trouble to imprison them in the midst of the withdrawal.

The same evening, a violent dispute broke out in the bar of the Grand Hotel, which now serves only non-alcoholic beverages. "I'm going to get my gun," a Serb in yellow and black T-shirt yelled as he stormed away. An hour or two later, he returned to the hotel restaurant with a machinegun and threatened to kill everyone in it. The episode ended with a sad rant about how he had sent his wife and children away and did not know what to do.

The British paratroopers due to arrive today are to settle at Pristina airport, but there is a persistent rumour that Gen Sir Michael Jackson, the commander of Kfor, will requisition the Grand Hotel for his own headquarters. It will certainly be a change from the departing Yugoslav officers, who loiter in the restaurant and lobby with their Kalashnikovs.

How the 11-storey tenement ever received five stars, or how it earned the adjective "grand" is a mystery. Guests use the lifts at their peril; they break down several times a day. The furniture in our room is covered with bird-droppings, and cockroaches swarm in the bathrooms.