Serbian forces drive rebels back

ORAOVICA - Serbian security forces drove ethnic Albanian guerrillas from a southern village while neighbouring Macedonia gave Albanian rebels 48 hours to quit its northern hills or face Army attack.

The Yugoslav Army commander in the volatile Presevo Valley said guerrillas had left Oraovica, retreating into a Nato-drawn buffer strip around Kosovo, after a swift Serb tank and infantry offensive aimed at stamping out the threat of a new Balkan war.

General Ninoslav Krstic said 14 ethnic Albanian guerrillas died in fighting over the village in the past few days before his forces took control. Eighty rebels who had changed out of their uniforms had been captured.

The guerrillas gave lower casualty figures, of five men.

Further clashes look likely as a Nato-approved May 24 target date looms for the Yugoslav Army to enter the only part of the buffer zone which is now off limits to it - a guerrilla stronghold known as Sector B.

Krstic said there had been no civilian casualties in the recapture of Oraovica, seized by the rebels at the weekend.

But the fighting prompted many ethnic Albanians to flee. About 9000 have left Macedonia for Kosovo in the past two weeks, raising the total since March to 20,000.

Just over the mountainous border, a new Macedonian emergency Government gave ethnic Albanian rebels 48 more hours to leave villages they have refused to quit despite days of shelling.

The new coalition of Slav and Albanian parties admitted it expected to face more attacks after rebels fired a rocket at a patrol. But it vowed to crush the insurgency, even if it needs longer than analysts expect the Army to take in Yugoslavia.

"We should not build illusions that this whole thing will be resolved overnight," Defence Minister Vlado Buckovski said after the Government set its deadline of late tonight (New Zealand time).

The door-to-door stealth used by elite Serbian troops to fight their way back into Oraovica looked designed to prove to an anxious Nato that there will be no repeat of the heavy shelling and village-burning tactics they employed in Kosovo in 1998-99.

But Macedonia has an extra headache restricting it to largely ineffective long-range bombardment - villages seized by National Liberation Army guerrillas just 30km from the capital, Skopje, are still home to thousands of ethnic Albanian peasants.

"This is the last deadline we are giving to the civilians to leave the villages and the terrorists to leave their positions," Government spokesman Antonio Milosovski said. "After this we will take adequate measures to finally eliminate the threat."

To ensure the message gets through to villagers deprived of electricity and unable to receive radio and TV warnings to leave, the Army will drop leaflets into the area.

The National Liberation Army has popped up throughout the northern hills since it surfaced in February. Banished from talks, it vows to fight on.

Serbia and Macedonia have the support of special Nato taskforces on a three-way frontier with Kosovo, determined to stem a flow of weapons sustaining the extremists.

Both countries hope political efforts to isolate gunmen by working to rebalance ethnic rights will make them disappear or clear the decks for a decisive military strike.

- REUTERS

Feature: Yugoslavia

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

Serbian Ministry of Information

Serbian Radio - Free B92

Otpor: Serbian Student Resistance Movement

Macedonian Defence Ministry

Albanians in Macedonia Crisis Centre

Kosovo information page