Tanjug reported the dead were separatist guerrillas trying to smuggle arms and ammunition into Kosovo, which has a 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority. Fleming said the dead were all ethnic Albanians and that the Yugoslav security forces had also taken seven Albanians prisoner. She was unable to identify them further. She said the monitors had seen the bodies at the site of the clash in Kuslin, about 12 km (eight miles) north-west of Prizren near the border with Albania.The ethnic Albanian Kosovo Information Center said there had been shooting in the area and Yugoslav forces had then surrounded three villages.

The report came as the international community tried to step up pressure on both Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and leaders of Kosovo’s Albanian majority to reach a compromise political settlement for the province, where a fragile cease-fire was established in October.

U.S. Balkans envoy Richard Holbrooke, who persuaded Milosevic to withdraw many of his forces from Kosovo using the threat of NATO air strikes, was expected in Belgrade Tuesday for new talks with the veteran Yugoslav leader.Holbrooke, speaking Sunday before the latest fighting, said he was concerned by cease-fire violations on both sides.The head of the Kosovo Verification Mission, William Walker, Monday deplored the latest violence, saying: “Violence is not the solution to the problems in Kosovo, it is an obstacle.” “It could only lead to a spiral of retribution that will stand in the way of a reasonable political solution much needed in the region.”

Fears that full-scale fighting could break out again have grown with repeated criticism from both Belgrade and Pristina of a series of compromise interim autonomy plans for Kosovo drawn up by U.S. mediator Christopher Hill. Monday’s border incident is the second in 11 days and one of the biggest in the eight-month conflict, in which around 1,500 people were killed.

Holbrooke, William Walker, head of the international Kosovo Verification Mission, and mediator Christopher Hill were all expected to have talks with Milosevic Tuesday. A Western diplomat said Walker’s talks with Milosevic would look into the authorities’ cooperation with the monitors and would probably be tough. “I think it’s going to be fairly steely-eyed,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The diplomat said one of the problems was that the Yugoslav authorities had refused to give permission for a medical evacuation helicopter to provide medical support for the monitors in case of accidents.

Another concerns a threat from Milosevic to treat a NATO protection force being deployed in neighboring Macedonia as hostile if it crosses the border into Kosovo. The force is designed to evacuate the unarmed monitors in case they get caught in any future fighting.

Hill, who has conducted months of shuttle diplomacy between the Albanians and the authorities, was in the Kosovo capital Pristina Monday for talks with ethnic Albanian leaders.

08:22 p.m Dec 14, 1998 Eastern

PRISTINA, Serbia, Dec 15 (Reuters) - The head of the international Kosovo Verification Mission late on Monday condemned ``in the strongest possible terms'' the latest violence that left 31 ethnic Albanians dead after fighting with Yugoslav border guards.

``On behalf of the OSCE Kosovo Verification mission, I condemn the violence of the last 24 hours in the strongest possible terms,'' William Walker said in a statement phoned to Reuters from the Kosovo capital, Pristina.

``Violence is not the solution to the problem of Kosovo,'' he said.

``It will only lead to a spiral of retaliation and retribution that will obstruct the search for a workable and just political solution for the region.''

Walker called on all members of the Kosovo community and the Yugoslav federal authorities ``to show restraint, remain calm in this difficult time, and refrain from further conflict.''

He said the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which runs the mission, would not be deterred from verifying all aspects of compliance with the mandates of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1199 and the associated agreements.

``In the light of today's violence, we will intensify our efforts, through our influence and activities on the ground, to create the conditions of confidence and respect for human life that are essential for a secure future for all the peoples of Kosovo,'' Walker said.

OSCE officials earlier confirmed that 31 ethnic Albanians had been killed near Kosovo's border with Albania.

A report carried by the official Yugoslav news agency Tanjug said local officials in the town of Prizren near the border said those killed were separatist guerrillas trying to smuggle arms and ammunition into Kosovo.

Later in the day, four people were killed in the western town of Pec when a masked gunman opened fire in a Serb bar.

By LIANE MARTINDALE in Pristina

Ethnic Albanians are rebuilding their shattered lives among the snow-filled ruins which pockmark a third of the Kosovo landscape. The deplorable conditions have only increased their resolve to rid themselves of Serbia’s yoke.

Less than 25 kilometres west of the provincial capital in Lapushnik, villagers were using cinders from destroyed houses for firewood.

A middle-aged man, Ibrahim Krasniqi, explained that it was too dangerous to go to the nearby forest because of Serbian units positioned there. Seventeen people live in the few remaining rooms of the houses still intact after the summer offensives. In one room about 12 children sat as women prepared white bread, their main staple.

“You are the first foreigners we have seen. No humanitarian aid organisations have come here,” Mr Krasniqi said. He came back with his family more than a month ago despite the harsh conditions and lack of electricity. “We were living in Pristina for a couple months but we cannot stay with someone else indefinitely,” he said.

The summer Serbian offensives, aimed at stamping out the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which is fighting for the province’s independence from Serbia, did little more than attract new recruits and turn many of the estimated 200 KLA victims into heroes.

Although Mr Krasniqi said the KLA had not been in their village when the Serbs attacked during the first week of May, he would welcome their presence.

As with many ethnic Albanians the Serbian crackdown has only deepened their resolve to fight against Belgrade’s rule which they increasingly distrust. Commander “Remi” is the KLA’s regional commander in the strategic north, where the prized Trepca mines are said to be one of the main reasons why Serbia wants to hold onto the 90 per cent ethnic Albanian-dominated province. Commander Remi predicted the conflict would reignite well before the Spring.

Although fighting has been reduced to small skirmishes in isolated pockets, the army and Serbian security forces have been redeploying units back to positions in the countryside.

This week an army convoy of tanks and armoured personnel carriers could be seen heading from their barracks.

Commander Remi said the KLA would have no choice but to fight back. “We started the war to finish it,” he said.

The Serbian Government has come out with its own rhetoric. Serbian deputy Prime Minister, Thomislav Nikolic, warned “Albanian terrorists” that “we will have to conduct the same action as in the summer” if the KLA continues its advances throughout the countryside.

NATO’s General Secretary, Javier Solana, issued a stern warning to the Government that Serbia still faced the threat of air strikes if Serbs relaunched such actions.

Yet as political negotiations are deadlocked with both sides hardening their lines, it seems almost impossible to prevent a reignition of the conflict.

The Serbian Government rejected the latest watered-down United States-authored peace plan. The Serbs argue the proposal gives ethnic Albanians too much provincial autonomy, thus preparing the ground for eventual succession.

The ethnic Albanian negotiating team, headed by the moderate politician Fehmi Agani, said the new peace draft was essentially the same as what the Serbian Government was proposing - Kosovo to remain in Serbia, the Parliament would have no legislative power, no government of its own, and only a symbolic presidency.

“That plan recognised the right for Kosovo to have its own constitution but denies Kosovo the right to have legislative power. Serbia [keeps] the systems which it has abused in great measure like health care for example,” Mr Agani said.

By R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, December 14, 1998; Page A31

Ranta’s convoy was on its way to exhume the bodies of 23 victims of a massacre by government troops at a village known as Gornje Obrinje in an effort to collect evidence to document what had happened.

But she and her colleagues decided the presence of the police made it likely a firefight would occur, and when the police refused to let the forensics team proceed alone, the exhumation was called off.

The incident was not an auspicious start for the international community’s effort to investigate a half dozen episodes of mass killings in Kosovo last summer and fall in which more than 175 people may have died.

The forensic investigations are to help bring to justice those responsible, Ranta said.

“At this stage,” she said, “I’m not sure we are able to work here. . . . We need some guarantee that this will not be repeated.”

The government in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, has not offered such a guarantee. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia, but ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs there 9 to 1.

Yugoslavia allowed the Finnish team-which has performed similar work probing mass grave sites in neighboring Bosnia-to enter the country in November.

The government said it was granting access so the team could “verify” government findings about misdeeds by the rebels known as the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Under their arrangement with the government, the Finnish team is obliged to inform the government of its activities in advance, allow local judicial authorities to accompany them and provide reports of their findings to these authorities as well as to the European Union, which is funding the effort.

While stopped on a road to Gornje Obrinje, under the gaze of rebel fighters, Ranta said she and her colleagues had a discussion with the police so intense that, at one point, a police commander yanked open the door to a vehicle carrying the Finnish ambassador to Belgrade, took his camera and yanked the film from it before returning it.

In addition, Ranta said she and her colleagues later were told by sources they consider to be reliable that the “police” who joined their convoy were members of a Yugoslav army special forces unit who had donned police uniforms to hide their identity and, apparently spoiling for a fight with the rebels, were attempting to use the Finns as a shield.

Ranta said her team has identified five other important sites for exhumations. She said they may try to proceed by tackling several of these instead of Gornje Obrinje:

Glodjane, in western Kosovo, where more than a dozen bodies have been identified and Yugoslav authorities said Kosovo Liberation Army troops killed 39 people during the spring and summer;

Orahovac, in south-central Kosovo, where more than 40 ethnic Albanians were apparently buried by city authorities in a garbage dump, after fighting between Yugoslav troops and the rebels in mid-July;

Klecka, in south-central Kosovo, where the remains of more than four victims have been found and Yugoslav authorities said as many as 22 were killed by rebels;

Golubovac, in central Kosovo, where villagers and a survivor have said that as many as 21 ethnic Albanians were massacred Sept. 26 by Yugoslav army troops;

Volujac, in western Kosovo, where scraps of hair and bone have been found and Yugoslav authorities said rebels killed people and pushed them into a mine.

Paddy Ashdown-leader of the second largest opposition party in the British House of Commons-and Baroness Shirley Williams said the situation in the Balkans was reaching a breaking point.

“This is a moment of crucial importance,” Ashdown told reporters after a day of meetings with ethnic Albanian leaders in Kosovo.

“It seems to me absolutely vital that the Albanian Kosovo community is able to speak with a single voice,” said Ashdown, who is seen as Prime Minister Tony Blair’s unofficial envoy during his fact-finding mission to the region.

“(If not) the capacity to be able to negotiate will be very significantly diminished,” he said.

Peace talks between Serbs and ethnic Albanians are deadlocked due to a huge difference of opinion about the makeup of a future Kosovo.

In addition, infighting among Albanians has made it difficult for U.S. envoy Christopher Hill-who has been conducting shuttle diplomacy for months to try and find a compromise between the parties-to get a united Albanian view.

Ashdown drew a grim picture of the future of the battle-torn province if the two sides could not come together to negotiate.

“The present situation in the next month or so will probably tell us if we are alble to get a solution based on peace rather than conflict,” he said. “It’s extremely precarious.”

Fierce fighting between the two sides killed about 1,500 people and created 250,000 refugees this year before a threat of NATO air strikes forced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end a fierce offensive and pull back his forces in October.

Ashdown and Williams both stressed the fact that international sympathy for the ethnic Albanians-who make up 90 percent of the population of Kosovo-might run out.

“The international community shows a lot of sympathy to the case of the Albanian Kosovars but it isn’t a guarantee you can absolutely count on,” Williams said. “Don’t count on support being there forever.”

Ashdown also warned the Albanians not to be complacent in the face of a NATO “extraction force” being set up in neighbouring Macedonia to protect the 2,000 unarmed observers due to oversee the truce in Kosovo.

“It is very important that people here realise that NATO is not coming over the hill (from Macedonia) to solve the problem-you must reach a political solution here,” he said.

Addressing a news conference, Annan noted that “the best we can say is that in Kosovo, and in Iraq, all-out war has been avoided for the time being.”

“But unless people abide by their commitments, and unless they redouble their efforts to find peaceful solutions, we have every reason to fear the worst in 1999.”

Answering questions, Annan reiterated that “unless there is the will to make the compromises and take the courageous decisions necessary” there could be “serious problems.”

On key issues such as a proposed “comprehensive review” of Iraqi sanctions, and regarding the trigger for the sanctions lifting, Annan distanced himself from U.S. policy, noting that he represented the views of the U.N. “membership at large.”

Annan appeared to suggest that the U.N. Security Council should carry out a “comprehensive review” of Iraqi compliance with all U.N. resolutions regardless of the extent of Iraqi cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors.

“I think the council itself would want to know where it stands, what has been achieved, what needs to be done, and within what reasonable time frame,” Annan said.

The council is offering the “comprehensive review” following certification from the top U.N. weapons inspector that Iraq has resumed full and unconditional cooperation with the U.N. experts in line with a Nov. 14 promise.

12:07 p.m. Dec 13, 1998 Eastern By Julijana Mojsilovic

Peace talks are deadlocked due to a huge gap between ethnic Albanian and Serb visions of the province’s future, and fear is growing that spring could unleash new fighting in the absence of a solid political settlement.

While the 90-percent majority ethnic Albanians demand independence for Kosovo, or even incorporation with neighbouring Albania, Belgrade insists the province is its sovereign territory.

In an interview with The Washington Post published on Sunday, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic reiterated Kosovo would remain a part of Serbia at any cost.

“We had no choice but preserve our country and couldn’t accept anything which would take Kosovo out of Serbia,” Milosevic told the newspaper in answer to a question about a standoff which led NATO to threaten airstrikes on Yugoslavia.

On October 13, Milosevic averted that threat by reaching an agreement with U.S. Balkan envoy Richard Holbrooke, ending what the West viewed as the Serbs’ excessive use of force in the province where around 250,000 people were driven from their homes.

The Milosevic-Holbrooke deal was supposed to create conditions for a political settlement in Kosovo and secure an end to fighting between separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas and Serbian security forces, which had cost the lives of about 1,500 people this year.

Two months on, the U.S. mediator trying to forge that settlement has said the elements are all on the table, contained in the last two draft proposals he has drawn up.

“We think that we’ve got all the elements in place for an agreement but they are still pieces of a jigsaw puzzle on the table, they have to be assembled properly,” Christopher Hill said on Friday.

The jigsaw puzzle is made up of two versions of an interim autonomy plan, one dated December 2, the other November 1.

Both were condemned by both sides but, broadly speaking, the former was more pro ethnic-Albanian and the latter more pro-Serb.

If they cannot have outright independence, the Kosovo Albanians are pressing for at least republican status within Yugoslavia, aware that since all but one other republic have already split from Serbia, they could then try to follow suit.

In a nod to this aspiration, the name of Serbia was almost completely removed from the November 1 draft.

The latest one, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, swings back Belgrade’s way, giving Serbia some powers in Kosovo that were not in previous versions.

It says Kosovo self-rule has to be in accordance not only with the Yugoslav, but also with the Serbian constitution, although it still maintains a good number of ties to the federal bodies of Yugoslavia, now made up of Serbia and Montenegro.

Along with representatives within the federal institutions, Kosovo would have deputies in the Serbian parliament, members in the Serbian government and judges on Serbia’s Supreme Court.

In the new plan, Serbia would remain in charge of health care, education, social protection and social security in Kosovo, as long as it remained unbiased in providing those services to all ethnic communities in the province.

The new draft also bows to Belgrade’s wishes in not mentioning any inclusion of a Kosovo “presidency” on the Yugoslav Supreme Defence Council.

The November draft said the presidency would have equal membership on the body chaired by Milosevic which includes both the republics’ presidents as permanent members.

There is also no mention of the Kosovo Council of Ministers provided for in the November draft. That is seen by the Albanians as another compromise with Belgrade.

The Serbs, however, have rejected the last two plans drafted by Hill because they see them as giving Kosovo equal status to the other two republics in the Yugoslav federation.

“Kosovo was a region of Serbia and will always be a part of Serbia...The plan has to be developed. (Right now) it favours the Albanians,” Milosevic told The Washington Post.

Kosovo Albanians said neither plan included one of their key demands-a referendum on Kosovo’s status at the end of a three-year interim period.

Hill, who describes the peace process as a pendulum swinging back and forth, has always insisted his proposals would not deal with Kosovo’s final status.

Reacting to the latest blow his shuttling suffered with both sides condemning the draft, he said he would do less travelling and more negotiating.

But in an age where information is power, these NATO technical specialists hunched over banks of computer screens in a former army barracks in northern Macedonia think of themselves as front-line soldiers in the thick of the action.

Drawn from all service ranks and 14 NATO countries, their mission is to keep an eagle eye on the volatile Serbian province of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanian separatists have been battling Serbian security forces all year.

Known as the Kosovo Verification Coordination Centre (KVCC), this hastily assembled high-tech operation gathers, collates and disseminates information collected in around-the-clock aerial and ground inspections of Kosovo.

The information could come from remotely-piloted vehicles flying low and slow over Kosovo, or from manned surveillance aircraft like the venerable U-2 spy plane soaring more than 50,000 feet above the troubled province.

Or it might come from the more than 2,000 ground verifiers now deploying in Kosovo for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who make their rounds in four-wheel drive vehicles painted day-glo orange.

The purpose of the mission is to ensure compliance with U.N. resolution 1199, which demands an end to hostilities in Kosovo, where more than 1,500 people have been killed this year.

An offensive by state security forces that drove a quarter of a million ethnic Albanian civilians from their homes in Kosovo earlier this year was halted only after NATO threatened air strikes against Yugoslavia.

The strikes were averted when Belgrade struck a last-minute deal with U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke in October to withdraw army and police units from Kosovo.

Holbrooke’s agreement also provided for the intrusive inspection measures now being coordinated by the KVCC, which enable the international community to ensure state security units comply, and to monitor separatist guerrilla activities.

“Our job is to verify that people are where they are meant to be and are not where they are not meant to be,” explained British Brigadier David Montgomery, who commands the KVCC operation.

“This is a very good demonstration of what NATO can do: bring a variety of assets together from all over and put together a high quality product on very short notice.”

Backed by helicopter gunships, troop transport helicopters and armoured personnel carriers, the extraction force will be deployed into Kosovo only as a last resort.

“We’ve got a monopoly in the region on high quality, high speed communications. Nobody has what we have,” said Montgomery.

Monday, December 14, 1998

“The executive board has extended the period in which the requirements for succession can be fulfilled,” she said, using identical words to those used six months ago when the IMF last delayed its decision whether rump Yugoslavia-Serbia and Montenegro-can take up the IMF seat once held by Belgrade.

The IMF has repeatedly postponed decisions on readmitting Yugoslavia since it expelled the country in 1992 as part of international sanctions. These punished Belgrade for its role in the war in Bosnia with a trade and financial embargo.

Yugoslav officials in Belgrade said last week that they had asked the IMF to postpone any decision on readmission until June.

In 1995, after the Dayton Peace Accords ending the Bosnian conflict, the U.S. set three preconditions for Yugoslavia rejoining the two international lending agencies.

He said mission head William Walker, a U.S. diplomat, had left Pristina, capital of mainly ethnic Albanian Kosovo, for Belgrade on Sunday night with his director of operations.

“He (Walker) is due to meet Milosevic today,” said the diplomat, who had no further details of the schedule.

“They’ll be discussing whether or not the FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) authorities fully support the mission in terms of logistical and diplomatic support, issuing of visas and so forth” he told Reuters.

The talks are expected to be tough. “I think it’s going to be fairly steely-eyed,” the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He said one of the problems was that the authorities had refused to give permission for a medical evacuation helicopter to provide medical support for the verifiers, who are monitoring a fragile truce between separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas and security forces in the volatile Serbian province.

The diplomat said the meeting had been organised before the publication on Sunday of an interview in which Milosevic said troops from a NATO protection force based in neighbouring Macedonia would be treated as hostile if they crossed into Kosovo to rescue the verifiers.

The NATO force, expected to number about 1,800 when it is fully deployed at the end of the month, is designed to be in place to rescue the verifiers, who are unarmed, in case they are threatened by any new flare-up in the conflict.

The mission, set up under the auspices of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), is expected to have 2,000 people in place by mid-January. Thirty-four of 54 OSCE member countries have pledged to take part.

Milosevic agreed to allow the verifiers into Kosovo during talks with U.S. Balkans envoy Richard Holbrooke in October, held while NATO threatened air strikes against Yugoslavia.

To avert the strikes, Milosevic pulled many of his forces out of Kosovo, ending a crackdown on separatism which left some 1,500 peoploe dead and drove least 250,000 from their homes.

NATO sources say Milosevic also agreed to the stationing of the so-called NATO “extraction force” in Macedonia, an ex-Yugoslav republic bordering Kosovo.

But Milosevic said in the interview with the Washington Post that there was no need for the NATO troops.

2.49 p.m. ET (1950 GMT) December 14, 1998

Judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia sided with the prosecution in a dispute over where the three men should stand trial for the massacre of 260 unarmed men near the Croatian town of Vukovar in November 1991.

A Yugoslav military court in Belgrade has begun its own inquiry into the murders and called the three, Mile Mrksic, Veselin Sljivancanin and Miroslav Radic, to testify on December 17, but Western officials have dismissed this move as a farce.

The Belgrade court has asked The Hague tribunal to submit its evidence against the indicted men and invited tribunal representatives to attend the Belgrade court session.

“The trial chamber has made a request to the Belgrade authorities to defer,” tribunal spokesman Jim Landale said. Yugoslavia has 60 days in which to comply, otherwise the matter will be referred to the U.N. Security Council.

But Yugoslavia has repeatedly rejected the writ of the United Nations court over its domestic law and barred prosecutors from investigating more recent alleged atrocities in its ethnic Albanian-majority province of Kosovo.

“The hearing of Mrksic, Sljivancanin and Radic will be held as scheduled and we have no intention of changing it,” the military court’s president, Colonel Radomir Gojovic, said last Thursday.

In an effort to break the deadlock, U.S. Assistant Secretary for Human Rights Harold Koh will travel to Yugoslavia this week with a tough message for President Slobodan Milosevic.

Koh stopped off in The Hague Monday to speak to tribunal staff on his way to Belgrade, Pristina and Montenegro. He said he would meet Milosevic Wednesday and it was “no coincidence” that his visit would fall on the eve of the military hearing.

Koh said at a press briefing he planned to remind Milosevic of his obligations to the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia as contained in the U.S.-brokered Dayton treaty that ended the 1992-95 Bosnia war.

“(I will tell him) if you do not live up to the commitments there will be a price to pay,” Koh said, pointing to the possibility of sanctions and U.N. Security Council involvement.

The United States was losing patience with Milosevic, whom Washington regards as a prime cause of Balkan instability, while still depending on him as the ultimate guarantor of Serb compliance with peace commitments in the region.

“There have been a whole series of obstructions and examples of gross non-compliance with the Tribunal,” Koh said, accusing Yugoslavia of shielding suspected war criminals including the former Bosnian Serb military commander, General Ratko Mladic.

“This again confirms the view that Milosevic is the problem, not just part of the problem, and until steps are taken to address these issues there will be instability in the region.”

Tribunal President Gabrielle Kirk McDonald added her voice to the growing calls for Yugoslavia to back down over the three ex-army officers, who were part of Belgrade’s unsuccessful war to prevent Croatia from leaving federal Yugoslavia in 1991.

In a letter to the international Peace Implementation Council (PIC), set up to oversee efforts to bridge Bosnia’s ethnic divide, she said intense international pressure was needed to bring Yugoslavia into line.

“I appeal to you to ensure that the PIC uses the opportunity of the Madrid summit to compel the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to obey international law and to meet its commitments, both to the Tribunal and to the Council,” she said.

McDonald was writing to the group ahead of its annual meeting to review progress in Bosnia.

Foreign ministers or their deputies from over 50 countries will attend the two-day conference in Madrid.

She argued there could be no lasting peace in Bosnia while one of the parties to the Dayton accord - Yugoslavia, patron of the Bosnian Serbs - openly flouted the terms of the treaty and offered refuge to war criminals.

By Kurt Schork

“They have been hitting us with huge penalties for two weeks if we want to drive across Serbia,” said Aleksandar, a driver speaking at the main truck terminal in the capital, Skopje.

“If you are carrying cigarettes, tobacco or coffee you have to pay 10,000 deutschemarks ($6,064) at the Serbian border. If you’re lucky you get the money back in (Yugoslav) dinars when you return, but you lose a lot on the exchange.”

He said truckers were taking alternative routes to avoid the punishing tariffs.

“Nobody can afford that kind of money so we have to avoid Serbia and drive the long way through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. We’re paying the price for NATO coming to Macedonia. This is retaliation by Belgrade. The burden is on our back.”

NATO is currently deploying an “extraction force” in Macedonia to evacuate unarmed international monitors in neighbouring Kosovo in the event of aggression against them.

Kosovo is a war-torn southern province of Serbia, the larger of the two remaining republics that make up federal Yugoslavia. The main truck route from Macedonia to central and western Europe runs north through Yugoslavia.

Belgrade has warned in recent days that any incursion by NATO troops into Kosovo would violate Yugoslav sovereignty and integrity and would be resisted by Yugoslav federal troops.

Macedonian officials acknowledged the customs problem.

“There is a lot of speculation about the reason behind this problem. One of those speculations is that the new tariff is a punishment from Belgrade because NATO troops have come here,” Assistant Minister of Transport Zekirija Idrizi told Reuters.

“We have had no official response from Belgrade to our enquiries...But I did get a letter from their ministry after I gave a television interview and they mentioned their displeasure over the NATO troops coming, so maybe it is true. Certainly we know their attitude about NATO.”

Officials said they preferred for the moment to assume the tariffs were a temporary incovenience related more directly to a dispute between Yugoslavia and Slovenia, as they seemed to affect only high-tax items bound to and from that country.

But a source close to the foreign ministry in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana said the tariffs appeared to have been imposed due to tensions with Macedonia, rather than Slovenia.

A goverment official in Belgrade said he did not know which government body had imposed the tariffs but expected an official statement on the matter from the Yugoslav government soon.

Maks Zveglic, economic attache at the Slovenian Embassy in Skopje, told Reuters he had received complaints from many truckers but had no clear idea why they were being targeted.

“It seems to be a matter of luck. Some truckers say they are being hit with the tariffs, some say they get through without paying anything. It’s a sort of chaos.”