The UÇK forces fighting Serb forces and criminal Serb regime's scheme PRISHTINA, Jan 17 (KIC) - Serbian forces renewed shelling the village of ReÇak, Shtime municipality, today (Sunday) morning. More than 50 Albanians were massacred in ReÇak on Friday by Serbian army and police troops. ReÇak and the neighboring Petrov& village were pounded with heavy Serb ('Yugoslav') army artillery on Friday. Serb infantry troops then rounded up Albanians, herded them to a hillside up the village and executed them, shooting them from close range. Some of the dead had their eyes gouged out, or faces blown away, and a sixty-year-old man lay decapitated in the courtyard of his compound. Reportedly, the victims included two women, an infant, a 12-year-old boy and many were older men, including a 70- year-old Albanian. All the victims were dressed in civilian clothing, and most of them local farmers. The criminal Serb regime has been insisting they were "terrorists". The LDK chapter in Shtime said heavy Serb forces headed today to the village of ReÇak, where the bodies of over 50 Albanians massacred Friday lay still unburied. Local Albanian resistance forces, the UÇK (Kosova Liberation Army), prevented the advancement of Serb forces into the village. The Serbs then started shelling the village from some distance, local sources said. The Serbian regime despatched troops, accompanied also by a Serb investigating judge, to undo evidence of the horrendous carnage of the Albanian civilian population carried out by the very same Serb troops a couple of days ago. Ambassador William Walker, head of the OSCE Kosova Verification Mission (KVM), who visited Saturday the site of the horrendous atrocity, called it a massacre, "an unspeakable atrocity," and "a crime very much against humanity." "Nor do I hesitate to accuse the [Belgrade] government security forces of responsibility," William Walker said during a press conference in Prishtina. The UN Yugoslav War crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, opened an investigation into the massacre, and chief prosecutor Louise Arbour was preparing to come to Kosova, with or without permission from Yugoslav authorities. This was probably the reason why the Serb regime embarked on a yet another criminal spree in ReÇak, now in a bid to destroy evidence, presumably by taking away the bodies of massacred Albanians. The Serb regime would not then hesitate to even deny there was any killing there at all, just as Serb President Milutinovic accused international observers, including Ambassador Walker, for falsely accusing the Serb forces for the massacre of Albanian civilians, who were but 'terrorists' according to the Milosevic protege. The President of the Republic of Kosova, Dr. Ibrahim Rugova, denounced the massacre in the strongest terms, and called on NATO to intervene, pursuant to its ACTORDs for bombardment of Serbian installations. Rugova declared Sunday, 17 January, a day of national mourning in Kosova. Meanwhile, world leaders voiced shock and anger. U.S. President Clinton condemned the massacre "in the strongest possible terms." "This was a deliberate and indiscriminate act of murder designed to sow fear among the people of Kosovo," he said. In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana warned that the alliance "will not tolerate a return to all-out fighting and a policy of repression in Kosovo." U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for a full investigation, saying he was shocked and "gravely concerned." The Albanian government accused the Serbs of attempting genocide, and it denounced the massacre as a "Fascist act."

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Serb Artillery Continues Pounding Re^ak Village Sunday Afternoon

More than 50 Albanians were massacred by Serb troops in the village on Friday Today's is a 'battle for corpses', a Serbian attempt to destroy evidence PRISHTINA, Jan 17 (KIC) - Heavy Serbian army and paramilitary police troops, backed up by heavy artillery, have continued pounding the village of Re^ak, municipality of Shtime, today (Sunday) afternoon, local LDK sources said. At least 51 Albanians, including women, children and elderly civilians, were massacred by Serbian troops in the village of Re^ak on Friday, according to local Albanian sources in the area. Heavy army and police troops had besieged, shelled the village of Re^ak, then rounded up villagers and executed them two days ago. LDK sources said Serbian forces have been firing today from their positions at "Kodra e G&shtenjave" and "^esta e Re^akut". Serb forces have blocked roads leading to the towns of Prizren and Ferizaj. Reports from Shtime said Serbian forces have continued their campaign of arrest of scores of Albanian civilians today, by and large Re^ak residents. The Albanian detainees have been reported taken to the Serb police station in Ferizaj. (Families were told Albanian men rounded up by Serb forces Friday would be taken for questioning to Ferizaj. They were in fact executed at point-blank range at the village end, in a hillside.) Local armed Serb civilians have joined forces with the Serb regular army and police in their campaign of terror against the local Albanian population, local sources said today. Today, Sunday, is a day of national mourning in Kosova, in observance of the 50-plus victims of the Re^ak massacre carried out by Serbian troops. Today's Serbian attack on the village of Re^ak is apparently aimed at destroying the evidence of the Serbian massacre of Albanians in the area, Albanian politicians in Kosova said, calling this a "battle for corpses" launched by the Serbian regime. Yugoslav authorities breach the cease-fire, OSCE says General John Drewienkewicz of the OSCE Kosova Verification Mission (KVM) slammed as a "very provocative act and another breach of the cease-fire on the part of the Yugoslav authorities" the decision to have a Serb investigative judge move towards Re^ak village, escorted by armed police, "to carry out the investigation required by Yugoslav law." In a press release issued by the KVM Sunday afternoon, the General said he had offered to help Judge Danica Markovic move to Re^ak, "provided the Judge's party did not include any armed police", at a time the U^K (Kosova Liberation Army) had agreed to allow an "unarmed group into the village". The Serb judge refused to consider moving without armed police, although British army Major-General John Drewienkiewicz, deputy head of the international monitoring team in Kosova, explained he "had [OSCE] verifiers in Re^ak and would need time to withdraw them if she decided to proceed with an armed police escort." At 11:05 hrs the Serb judge informed him she would go ahead with armed police and "gave me no time to order my verifiers to withdraw", Drewienkewicz said. The meeting of the OSCE KVM General and the Serb side broke up at 11:10 hrs with "the sound of small arms and mortar fire in the background", the press release said. The KVM verifiers withdrew in the meantime, the General said, slamming the "very provocative act...on the part of the Yugoslav authorities."

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Two Albanians Killed in Gjakova Area, Two near Obiliq

An Albanian tortured to death in Serb police custody in Gjakova PRISHTINA, Jan 17 (KIC) - An Albanian, Halit Aliaj (48), has been reported tortured to death in Serb police custody in Gjakova. He had his house raided and was himself arrested by Serb police in his village of Pacaj, municipality of Gjakova, on Friday. "While in police custody, Halit Aliaj, father of five, was tortured barbarically to death", the LDK chapter in Gjakova said. Ryve Aliaj, the late man's wife, said she herself and their 18-year-old daughter, Lindita, were also physically abused by police on Friday. Meanwhile, on Saturday evening, Serbian forces took the body of Hamdi Mulaj (1964) to the town morgue in Gjakova, LDK sources said, adding that he had been killed by Serbian forces in the Kosova- Albania border area. On Friday evening, unknown assailants shot and fatally wounded Sabedin Rexhepi (1944) and his son, Samed Rexhepi (1982), at Shkabaj ('Orlovic') village, half a dozen km west of Prishtina. Father and son were in their jeep, when they were shot from an ambush. The two died on their way to hospital.

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KLA Communique

With the attack of Serb military and police forces, representing the criminal Serb regime, in some villages of the Nerodima Operational Zone, in which case they brutally murdered, massacred and executed at least 46 Albanians, from the ages of 12 to 80, the office of the General Political Representative of the Kosova Liberation Army, with informational purpose releases this:

ANNOUNCEMENT:

1. The systematic oppression and terrorism inflicted by the Belgrade regime in Kosova is no where near its end. The Serb regime forces' offensives and battles have become our wild everyday lives. The murdering of children, that are the future of every nation and society, shows that the Serb regime wants to eliminate the future of the Albanians in Kosova. On the other hand, the execution of tens of Albanians, including women, children and elderly, clearly shows that the Serb regime and country have engaged on a classical fascism, that surpasses even that of WWII.

2. It appears that the International Community has not learned anything from the lesson in Srebrenica and Zepa during the Bosnia war. This community is still not reacting the way it should. It still continues not taking the adequate measures. And it doesn't end here. It is unfortunate that the International Community takes satisfaction and alibi with the results of the OSCE Verifying Mission in Kosova. In all occasions, they have proven themselves unable to assure not only the security of Kosova population, but also not even theirs. This Mission, not being able to assure their own security, watches the Serb committed crimes from far. The International Community has to realize that Albanians are suffering all of the consequences of OSCE Mission's inability, and this inability to secure and unwillingness to use all of their resources in stopping the Serb fascist regime only encourages the Serb regime.

3. The Serb regime does not want a political solution to the Kosova problem. They not only want Kosova as their colony, not only occupied, but also without any Albanians. They want to achieve this with war, terror, massacres, and genocide. The only guarantee for the Albanians of Kosova in this entire situation is the Kosova Liberation Army. The only way we can annihilate these fascist leftovers is by relying on, joining, helping and gathering around KLA. This will be the only way to achieve the independence of Republic of Kosova and the freedom of the Albanian nation in Kosova.

Office of the General Political Representative of KLA Prishtine, January 16, 1999

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UK Urges Action Against Serbs In Kosovo Massacre

9.56 a.m. ET (1457 GMT) January 17, 1999

LONDON — Britain said on Sunday that Europe and the United States would press Belgrade to suspend the Serb officers responsible for the massacre of 45 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, speaking before an emergency meeting in Brussels of NATO ambassadors, said he was "deeply shocked and distressed'' by the massacre discovered on Saturday in the village of Racak.

He dismissed claims by Serb authorities that its forces had been involved in a battle with the villagers.

"It was clearly not a battle. They were shot in the head at short range. The observers saw no evidence of fighting,'' Cook told BBC radio.

"We know from our observers that some of the victims are women, there is one child and many of them were old men and they were all unarmed. It will not stand up as a defense that they were members of the KLA,'' he said.

Cook said he had been in contact by telephone to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and his opposite numbers in Germany and France. He said he hoped to speak to the foreign ministers of Russia and Italy later.

"Together we will make a complaint and a protest in Belgrade and specifically the point we will be pressing for is that officers in those Serb units that were in that village on Friday must be suspended,'' Cook said.

"The international tribunal carrying out an investigation on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia must be allowed to investigate what is clearly in anybody's definition a war crime.''

Louise Arbour, the United Nations chief war crimes prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia, will begin investigating the massacre on Monday.

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Massacre of Kosovo Albanians prompts shock, calls for response

11.36 a.m. ET (1637 GMT) January 17, 1999

By Melissa Eddy, Associated Press

RACAK, Yugoslavia (AP) — Fighting erupted Sunday near this southern Kosovo village where 45 ethnic Albanians were massacred, sending terrified civilians and international monitors fleeing to safety.

Later Sunday, Serb forces sealed off other villages in the area. Peace verifiers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported houses burning in villages west of Racak, 15 miles south of Pristina.

An OSCE official, Mike Philips, said international monitors reported heavy artillery and machine gun fire in the area. It was unclear, however, whether ethnic Albanians were resisting or whether the fire was coming just from the government side.

In another area of Kosovo, Philips said Yugoslav tanks and armored personnel carriers were moving into the area of Podujevo, 18 miles north of Pristina. There was no report of fighting, but Philips said government forces were "definitely in a position of intimidation.''

International monitors struggling to save a rapidly deteriorating cease-fire denounced the Serb actions that resulted in the earlier massacre. Serb authorities, meanwhile, accused the monitors of issuing biased statements in favor of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, which is fighting for independence from Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic.

In a sign of increased tensions, Serbia's ultra-nationalist deputy premier, Vojislav Seselj, accused the United States and Britain of "training'' the KLA "for fighting and propaganda.''

Seselj's party denounced the American head of the international verification force, William Walker, as "the patron of Albanian terrorist gangs.'' Walker blamed Serb security forces for the massacre, which he called a crime against humanity.

The renewed fighting flared as ambassadors of the 16 NATO members were preparing to meet in Brussels, Belgium, later Sunday to consider a response to the massacre of the ethnic Albanians, whose mutilated bodies were discovered Saturday in a gully.

NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana warned the alliance "will not tolerate a return to all-out fighting and a policy of repression in Kosovo.''

Serb sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said fighting began Sunday when Serb forensic experts tried to enter Racak to investigate the massacre but came under fire from ethnic Albanian rebels.

British Gen. John Drewienkiewicz, deputy chief of the international peace verifiers, said the forensic experts insisted on entering the village under Serb police escort, despite the monitors' objections and assurances they would provide security.

Ethnic Albanian rebels told verifiers they would allow the forensic experts into the village, but not the police. As the verifiers were negotiating with the Serbs, automatic gun and mortar fire broke out, sending civilians, verifiers and journalists scurrying for safety.

"I consider this to be a very provocative action by Yugoslav authorities,'' Drewienkiewicz said. "I believe it has again broken the cease-fire.''

Sunday's clashes added new urgency to international efforts to contain the crisis and prevent a complete collapse of the Oct. 12 peace accord which Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic accepted to end seven months of fighting in Kosovo.

The province's moderate ethnic Albanian leader, Ibrahim Rugova, declared Sunday a day of mourning throughout Kosovo. And the chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal, Louise Arbour, planned to leave Monday for Kosovo to investigate the massacre, regardless of whether Yugoslav authorities grant permission.

Walker told BBC-Television that he hoped the Yugoslavs would allow the team to enter Kosovo but added "we have been told they will not.'' The top Serb official in Kosovo, Zoran Andjelkovic, said the U.N. tribunal had no jurisdiction in the province, a position which the United Nations has long rejected.

In neighboring Albania, former President Sali Berisha called on Albanians to prepare for a "life-or-death war'' for the survival of the Albanian people.

Early Sunday, the bodies of 40 of the victims were brought to the village mosque here, where they were laid out under plastic sheets. Family members sobbed and wailed "my brother,'' "my father'' and "oh, God.''

The fighting broke out before the bodies could be buried.

Walker told BBC-TV that most of the ethnic Albanian guerrillas "who were in the village trying to protect the villagers'' had largely withdrawn.

"The police forces are moving in with vehicles and lots of armed men,'' Walker said. "The village is essentially unoccupied. It is a very serious situation down there.''

In Belgrade, Serb President Milan Milutonovic repeated police claims that the ethnic Albanians were rebels killed in combat, although the dead included three women, a 12-year-old boy and old men — all in civilian clothes. Many were shot at close range and some of the bodies were mutilated, and eyes were gouged out. One man lay decapitated in the courtyard of his compound.

Milutonovic accused the American head of the international monitoring mission, William Walker, of making "false and personal assessments which are totally baseless.'' Walker had blamed government forces for the massacre, which he called a "crime very much against humanity.''

International monitors and journalists came across the carnage Saturday morning in Racak, 15 miles south of the provincial capital, Pristina, after having been barred from the site by Serbian police the previous day.

The KLA said the death toll from the massacre was 51, including nine of its fighters and a 3-month-old baby. The report could not be confirmed. Monitors put the death toll at 45.

Residents of Racak said Serb forces had rounded up the men, driven them up the hill and shot them. Twenty-eight bodies lay heaped together at the bottom of a muddy hillside gully.

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Serb Forces Fire on Kosovo Village

By MELISSA EDDY Associated Press Writer

RACAK, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Fighting erupted Sunday near this southern Kosovo village where 45 ethnic Albanians were massacred, sending terrified civilians and international monitors fleeing to safety.

Later Sunday, Serb forces sealed off other villages in the area. Peace verifiers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported houses burning in villages west of Racak, 15 miles south of Pristina.

An OSCE official, Mike Philips, said international monitors reported heavy artillery and machine gun fire in the area. It was unclear, however, whether ethnic Albanians were resisting or whether the fire was coming just from the government side.

In another area of Kosovo, Philips said Yugoslav tanks and armored personnel carriers were moving into the area of Podujevo, 18 miles north of Pristina. There was no report of fighting, but Philips said government forces were ``definitely in a position of intimidation.''

International monitors struggling to save a rapidly deteriorating cease-fire denounced the Serb actions that resulted in the earlier massacre. Serb authorities, meanwhile, accused the monitors of issuing biased statements in favor of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, which is fighting for independence from Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic.

In a sign of increased tensions, Serbia's ultra-nationalist deputy premier, Vojislav Seselj, accused the United States and Britain of ``training'' the KLA ``for fighting and propaganda.''

Seselj's party denounced the American head of the international verification force, William Walker, as ``the patron of Albanian terrorist gangs.'' Walker blamed Serb security forces for the massacre, which he called a crime against humanity.

The renewed fighting flared as ambassadors of the 16 NATO members were preparing to meet in Brussels, Belgium, later Sunday to consider a response to the massacre of the ethnic Albanians, whose mutilated bodies were discovered Saturday in a gully.

NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana warned the alliance ``will not tolerate a return to all-out fighting and a policy of repression in Kosovo.''

Serb sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said fighting began Sunday when Serb forensic experts tried to enter Racak to investigate the massacre but came under fire from ethnic Albanian rebels.

British Gen. John Drewienkiewicz, deputy chief of the international peace verifiers, said the forensic experts insisted on entering the village under Serb police escort, despite the monitors' objections and assurances they would provide security.

Ethnic Albanian rebels told verifiers they would allow the forensic experts into the village, but not the police. As the verifiers were negotiating with the Serbs, automatic gun and mortar fire broke out, sending civilians, verifiers and journalists scurrying for safety.

``I consider this to be a very provocative action by Yugoslav authorities,'' Drewienkiewicz said. ``I believe it has again broken the cease-fire.''

Sunday's clashes added new urgency to international efforts to contain the crisis and prevent a complete collapse of the Oct. 12 peace accord which Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic accepted to end seven months of fighting in Kosovo.

The province's moderate ethnic Albanian leader, Ibrahim Rugova, declared Sunday a day of mourning throughout Kosovo. And the chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal, Louise Arbour, planned to leave Monday for Kosovo to investigate the massacre, regardless of whether Yugoslav authorities grant permission.

Walker told BBC-Television that he hoped the Yugoslavs would allow the team to enter Kosovo but added ``we have been told they will not.'' The top Serb official in Kosovo, Zoran Andjelkovic, said the U.N. tribunal had no jurisdiction in the province, a position which the United Nations has long rejected.

In neighboring Albania, former President Sali Berisha called on Albanians to prepare for a ``life-or-death war'' for the survival of the Albanian people.

Early Sunday, the bodies of 40 of the victims were brought to the village mosque here, where they were laid out under plastic sheets. Family members sobbed and wailed ``my brother,'' ``my father'' and ``oh, God.''

The fighting broke out before the bodies could be buried.

Walker told BBC-TV that most of the ethnic Albanian guerrillas ``who were in the village trying to protect the villagers'' had largely withdrawn.

``The police forces are moving in with vehicles and lots of armed men,'' Walker said. ``The village is essentially unoccupied. It is a very serious situation down there.''

In Belgrade, Serb President Milan Milutonovic repeated police claims that the ethnic Albanians were rebels killed in combat, although the dead included three women, a 12-year-old boy and old men -- all in civilian clothes. Many were shot at close range and some of the bodies were mutilated, and eyes were gouged out. One man lay decapitated in the courtyard of his compound.

Milutonovic accused the American head of the international monitoring mission, William Walker, of making ``false and personal assessments which are totally baseless.'' Walker had blamed government forces for the massacre, which he called a ``crime very much against humanity.''

International monitors and journalists came across the carnage Saturday morning in Racak, 15 miles south of the provincial capital, Pristina, after having been barred from the site by Serbian police the previous day.

The KLA said the death toll from the massacre was 51, including nine of its fighters and a 3-month-old baby. The report could not be confirmed. Monitors put the death toll at 45.

Residents of Racak said Serb forces had rounded up the men, driven them up the hill and shot them. Twenty-eight bodies lay heaped together at the bottom of a muddy hillside gully.

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Serbs, Albanians Fight Over Massacre Village

By Philippa Fletcher

STIMLJE, Serbia (Reuters) - Serbian police called in army reinforcements on Sunday as fighting broke out with separatist guerrillas at the site of a massacre of ethnic Albanian villagers.

International monitors, villagers and reporters were forced to flee the village of Racak as mortar and machine gun fire erupted from police positions on a nearby hill. Locals said some old men had stayed behind.

The corpses of 45 civilians, most shot at close range, were discovered in Racak on Saturday. President Clinton blamed Serb security forces for the massacre, and NATO ambassadors were due to meet in Brussels (1700 GMT) to discuss a response.

Serb police summoned army reinforcements after ethnic Albanian guerrillas returned fire from woods near Racak. Police, monitors and reporters dived for cover as bullets whizzed over their heads.

There was no word on casualties from the fighting. A Yugoslav military armoured personnel carrier and a truck full of troops later headed toward the village, followed by six more police armoured vehicles.

Two heavy booms later rang out and one of the monitors said this appeared to be covering fire to allow Serb infantry to enter the village.

NATO ambassadors were due to start crisis talks on a response to the Racak atrocity, which left their strategy for containing the Kosovo conflict in tatters.

Last October, NATO authorized its forces to hit Yugoslav military targets if Belgrade violated pledges to seek a peaceful solution. The alliance has kept in place an ``activation order'' enabling it to quickly revert to the use of force if necessary.

Ibrahim Rugova, de facto leader of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, called for NATO air strikes.

Albania, condemning the killings as a ``monstrous crime,'' called for an urgent debate in the United Nations Security Council and direct intervention on the ground.

Britain said Europe and the United States would press Belgrade to suspend the Serb officers responsible and bring them to justice before the war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia.

Earlier, reporters in Racak saw relatives sobbing over the corpses, laid out in a mosque with their heads covered in towels. Among the bodies were a young woman and a boy of 12. Some victims showed signs of mutilation.

A young boy, walking around the mosque with his grandfather, cried: ``I don't know what we can do now. We can do nothing.''

Further up the hill, 16 year-old Vjolca Jakupi trembled as she described how police had lined up five men in the hall of her house, beaten them and threatened to kill them in front of her and other women and children they had herded into one room. They were part of a group who survived.

``We are very afraid,'' she said. ``We hope we will be able to leave before dark as I don't know if we will survive the night,'' she said with tears in her eyes.

Dozens of ethnic Albanian civilians, mainly women and children, later fled the village on foot, carrying babies and small bags of belongings. They said they had left some old men behind to look after their houses.

The deputy head of the international monitoring team in Kosovo, British army Major-General John Drewienkiewicz, said a Yugoslav judge seeking to investigate the killings had ignored his appeals not to take police into Racak.

``I consider this to be a very provocative act by the Yugoslav authorities, which have again broken the cease-fire,'' he told reporters in Stimlje, one km (half a mile) from Racak.

The judge, Danica Marinkovic, said she had been fired on while trying to reach the village, though monitors cast doubt on her account.

Kosovo is a Serbian province where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs by nine to one. Some 2,000 people were killed and 250,000 driven from their homes in a Serb crackdown last year on independence-seeking Albanians.

Serb authorities said those killed in Racak were ''terrorists'' shot in clashes with police, an explanation dismissed by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.

``We know from our observers that some of the victims are women, there is one child and many of them were old men and they were all unarmed. It will not stand up as a defense that they were members of the KLA,'' he said.

President Clinton said: ``This was a deliberate and indiscriminate act of murder designed to sow fear among the people of Kosovo.''

French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said those responsible for ``these barbarous acts'' would be brought to justice. ''There are no words that can describe this horror. We are filled with revulsion and disgust,'' he said.

A spokesman for Louise Arbour, the United Nations chief war crimes prosecutor for former Yugoslavia, said she would begin an investigation on Monday into the massacre, and was heading for Kosovo via Macedonia. The Yugoslav government has blocked previous attempts by U.N. investigators to visit Kosovo.

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U.S. Has Tried Difficult Balance With Milosevic

By Jonathan Wright

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - You're the world's only remaining superpower and the ruler of small and distant Ruritania is proving a thorn in your flesh. What do you do?

In the old days, superpowers could organize a secret coup or an assassination, maybe even lay on a full-scale military invasion, as in Grenada or Panama.

But if you're the United States and it's 1999, judging by policy toward the leaders of pariahs Serbia and Iraq, you box him in with sanctions, tell the world how bad he is and openly finance opposition activities that may one day yield change.

In the case of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the policy is fraught with contradictions, in that the United States depends on the Serb leader for cooperation in the province of Kosovo, the current focus of Balkan conflict.

The dangers of that dependence were on clear display this weekend, as the United States blamed Serb forces for massacring 45 civilians in the troubled province and NATO scrambled to repair its strategy for containing the conflict.

``This was a deliberate and indiscriminate act of murder designed to sow fear among the people of Kosovo. It is a clear violation of the commitments the Serbian authorities have made to NATO. There can be no justification for it,'' President Clinton said.

The U.S. administration, anxious for some time to dispel the notion it was becoming too cozy with Milosevic, blamed him in December for the years of bloodshed in his country and has made it clear it would lose no sleep if he fell from power.

``Milosevic is the original sinner in this whole catastrophe that has befallen Yugoslavia in the last decade. He is not simply part of the problem, Milosevic is the problem,'' State Department spokesman James Rubin said then.

But U.S. mediators have still been meeting the man, hoping to patch up a settlement between ethnic Albanians seeking independence for Kosovo and a Serbian government intent on retaining control over what it sees as the Serbian heartland.

The United States also needs Milosevic to keep the peace in Bosnia, where the guns have fallen silent but attempts to recreate a multiethnic society have made little progress.

``Our policy is stuck in no-man's-land,'' said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

``There's a fundamental contradiction ... in that there has been a decision to focus on Milosevic as one of the architects of the war in Bosnia and the problem in Kosovo, but at the same time arrangements to deal with those problems depend on Milosevic's good will, which is not forthcoming,'' he added.

Edward Luttwak, an authority on preventive diplomacy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said he disapproved of recent U.S. outbursts against Milosevic, on the grounds they might strengthen his domestic position.

``The administration has been frustrated, because Milosevic is both indispensable and intolerable,'' he told Reuters.

``Whenever they are frustrated, they talk of replacing the leader. This administration has a practice of not being able to deal with characters and then wishing they would go away and be replaced with nicer people,'' he said.

``Milosevic apparently is not a very nice man and he tends to lie, but whenever deals have to be made, Milosevic is the man who makes the deals.''

The analysts said they were skeptical about the value of U.S. financial support for groups promoting democracy and pluralism in Yugoslavia -- which totaled $15 million in 1998.

The money played a part in a recent dispute between Belgrade and Washington, when Serbian leaders accused the Central Intelligence Agency of planning to oust them.

They released what they said was a CIA document proposing that Washington raise to $35 million a year the amount it spends on opposition parties, independent media, non-government organizations, student groups and trade unions in Yugoslavia.

The United States said it was a crude forgery based on an paper prepared by academic Dan Serwer and presented to a committee of the U.S. Congress last month.

``It's a very bad idea to side openly with the opposition to a country's ruler,'' said Luttwak. ``I can't think of anything that helps Milosevic more than having U.S. opposition.''

Kupchan said talk of alternatives to Milosevic was more rhetorical than evidence of a shift in U.S. policy, designed to disarm domestic hawks on Balkan policy. ``I haven't seen evidence the rhetoric will be backed up with action.'' he said.

Representative Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican, expressed the views of one hawk faction at the hearing in December. ``Many of us ... are disgusted by the fact that the international community, led by the United States, has worked through Slobodan Milosevic,'' he said.

``Milosevic is a man to be stopped, not coaxed... We need a viable, democratic alternative to Milosevic, for the sake of long-term Balkan stability,'' Smith said.

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Kosovo: Serbs massacre 45 villagers

by Juliet Terzieff Racak

THE SUNDAY TIMES January 17 1999 EUROPE

THE BODIES of 45 ethnic Albanians were discovered outside a village in Kosovo yesterday after the worst atrocity the province has seen since last October's ceasefire.

Many of the victims, who included three women and a child, had been mutilated. Some had had their eyes gouged out. One man had been decapitated.

Witnesses reported that the victims wore civilian clothing, and international monitors said many had been shot in the head or neck at close range. The body of Halim Beqiri, 12, was lying beside those of his father and brother.

William Walker, the American head of the monitoring mission run by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, was visibly shaken after touring the site of the massacre outside Racak in southern Kosovo.

"It is about as horrendous an event as I have seen, and I have been in some nasty situations," he said. "I do not hesitate to accuse the [Yugoslav] government security forces. We want to know who gave the orders, and who carried them out. I will insist that justice will be done. They certainly didn't deserve to die in circumstances like this."

The bodies shown to Walker included the headless corpse of a man of about 65."I don't have words to express my revulsion to what can only be described as an unspeakable atrocity," Walker said.

"Jesus Christ," he said, as a blanket and piece of cardboard were lifted to reveal him. "At least let's give him the dignity of covering him up."

The massacre threatened to plunge the Serbian province back into a bloody conflict that raged for seven months last year. Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, said last night he was "appalled and deeply distressed" by the reports of the murders. "I condemn this savage act in the strongest possible terms," he said.

Cook called for the killers to be tried by the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague.

In Washington, President Bill Clinton said: "This was a deliberate and indiscriminate act of murder designed to sow fear among the people of Kosovo."

Last night Louise Arbour, the United Nations chief war crimes prosecutor, was arranging to travel to Kosovo to investigate the killings.

Javier Solana, secretary-general of Nato, condemned the brutality and warned that the alliance "will not tolerate a return to all-out fighting and a policy of repression".

"I express my outrage and revulsion at this deliberate and senseless killing of civilians which can only further exacerbate tensions in Kosovo and escalate the cycle of conflict and suffering," he said in a statement from Brussels.

Two members of Kosovo's unarmed international monitoring mission were injured on Friday, including Mark Freely, a Briton, when unidentified gunmen shot at their vehicle.

Ethnic Albanians, who favour independence for Kosovo, outnumber Serbs there by nine to one.

Serbian police said in a statement they had sealed off Racak on Friday in a search for a policeman's killers, and ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had then opened fire on them. "In the clashes, several dozen terrorists, most of whom were in uniforms with KLA insignia, were killed," said the statement.

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Horror on the hillside in Kosovo

by Juliet Terzieff Racak

THE SUNDAY TIMES January 17 1999 EUROPE

THE victims lay scattered on a hillside and in ravines near the village of Racak in southern Kosovo, their injuries a testament to the cruelty of their murder.

Some had had their eyes gouged out, or their heads smashed in. One man lay decapitated in the courtyard of his compound. The body of another had a bullet wound in the neck. Another still had lost an ear, which had apparently been sliced off.

As international monitors counted the bodies of 45 ethnic Albanians yesterday following the bloodiest incident since a ceasefire was declared last October, it emerged that those killed ranged in age from 12 to 74 and included three women. All were in civilian clothes.

Villagers said armed Serbs wearing black masks had burst into their houses on Friday, seized the men from their families and led them toward the police station. Then they had turned and herded them up the hill to kill them, the villagers reported.

Some people were found dead in their houses, where there was no sign of any armed resistance. An international observer struggling to take in what he saw whispered simply: "Oh, my God."

Serbian forces had launched a fierce assault on ethnic Albanian villages a day earlier, but reporters and international verifiers had been prevented from reaching the area around Racak. Yesterday what had happened while the eyes of the world were turned away became clear. "It is hard to find words to say about this," said William Walker, the head of the international verification mission to Kosovo, when he visited the site yesterday. Walker was pale and visibly shaken. "I see bodies like this with their faces blown away at close range, in execution fashion. It is obvious people with no value for human life have done this."

The victims appeared to be "farmers, workers, villagers", Walker said, rather than members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighting to win independence from Serbia for the war-torn province.

The Serbian police claimed last night that the victims had been killed in a shootout after the villagers opened fire on Serbian forces.

Raim, an ethnic Albanian, said he was told Serbian police had barged into his family compound and attacked and killed his father and two brothers.

"Yesterday early in the morning, police came with very heavy machineguns together with the army," he said. "They entered the village with infantry. Half of the people they arrested and beat up. The rest you can see here." He pointed to a heap of bodies.

"We don't know what we are going to do," he said, sitting on a tree stump with his head in his hands. On his knees he held a rifle with "UCK" - the Albanian-language acronym for KLA - burnt into the wooden butt.

Sami Syla, 41, said his 65-year-old father and two brothers, 30 and 36, were among those laid out dead in the dry bed of a stream on Bebus Hill, overlooking Racak. "They were taken from their homes, arrested and told they would be taken to Urosevac [a nearby town]," said Syla. "But later they were brought to the hill and executed."

The verifiers counted bodies as the wailing of women reverberated around them. "Body number one, purple jacket, injury to right cheek," an observer dictated into a tape recorder as he knelt over one dead man.

The observers were still reeling from the shooting of one of their own the previous day. A British verifier, Mark Freely, and his local translator were shot and wounded when unidentified gunmen fired on their three-vehicle convoy near the western town of Decani.

The killing spree may be the death knell of the October 12 truce brokered by Richard Holbrooke, the American envoy, which had largely halted more than seven months of combat in the province where a quarter of a million people were driven from their homes in fighting last year. Last month army border guards killed 36 KLA fighters as they tried to smuggle weapons from Albania. In a revenge killing, six Serbian men were massacred the same day in a bar in the town of Pec.

The ceasefire, which international officials have insisted is still largely intact, is in danger of collapse, raising the prospect of a resumption of the province-wide fighting that devastated Kosovo last year.

Yesterday's grisly discovery cast serious doubt on the unarmed verifiers' mission. They have become a vital force for stability in the region, but the latest violence makes a pullout more likely.

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U.S. Weighs Its Reaction to Massacre in Kosovo

By JANE PERLEZ

January 17, 1999

WASHINGTON -- After increased military buildups and violence by the warring sides in Kosovo in the last three weeks, the Clinton Administration struggled Saturday to explain how it would react to the execution-style massacre of 45 ethnic Albanians by Serbian forces under the control of the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic.

President Clinton issued a written statement condemning the killings in the "strongest possible terms" and calling them a "clear violation" of the Serbs' cease-fire agreement with NATO three months ago.

But a senior official, who likened the methods of the killings to those used by Serbs against Muslim civilians during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, said the Administration was stopping short of calling the Serbs in "substantial noncompliance" with the NATO agreement. Such a judgment, he said, would require NATO to reconsider the air strikes that were readied but not carried out last fall.

The State Department said NATO would hold an emergency session in Brussels on Sunday to consider a response, The Associated Press reported. The department also asked Milosevic to remove the extra security forces he has sent into Kosovo in the last month.

The State Department spokesman, James P. Rubin, said Milosevic was being asked to identify and "take action" against those who had ordered the massacre and to allow the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, sitting at The Hague, into Kosovo to investigate.

Milosevic has consistently refused visas to the tribunal and has refused to recognize its jurisdiction. The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Louise Arbour, announced today she was planning to go to Kosovo within 48 hours, but it was not clear how she would reach the site of the killings without permission from the Serbian authorities who control Kosovo.

The massacre was carried out on Friday after Serbian forces entered the village of Racak, 16 miles southwest of the capital Pristina, and according to witnesses, separated men from women, then shot them.

The top international official in Kosovo, William Walker, a seasoned American diplomat who heads the monitoring mission there, said at the massacre site that he had no hesitation in accusing Serbian Government forces of the killings.

In Brussels, a senior NATO diplomat said, "Once again, it takes a massacre to put this back to the top of the international agenda."

With a note of some urgency, the NATO diplomat said the massacre, which followed the hostage-taking and eventual release of eight Serbian soldiers last week and renewed fighting on Friday, had brought the province to the brink of outright war.

"The onus is going to be on NATO," the diplomat said. "Do we tolerate this and hope this is not going to spread like wildfire, or do we go back to the drawing board? Obviously, we need a tougher stance."

If war erupts, the diplomat said, it would be almost impossible to stop without an outside military presence to enforce a settlement. The willingness of any alliance governments to commit thousands of troops to such a mission, however, is unclear.

The situation on the ground in Kosovo -- where the Kosovo Liberation Army, supported by the majority ethnic Albanian population, is pitted against the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian police -- has been degenerating for more than a month. The rebels are fighting for the independence of Kosovo.

Officially, a cease-fire has been in place since the October agreement brokered by the American envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke.

But instead of marking time over the winter, as Western diplomats hoped, both sides have been upping the ante. The Kosovo Liberation Army has been flaunting its new weapons, boasting of its renewed fighting vigor and striking at the Serbian police.

Serbian security forces under the control of Milosevic have defied the pact with NATO by increasing their presence in Kosovo above agreed levels, Western officials said.

When NATO meets in Brussels, its diplomats will face far more difficult questions about how to solve the situation than they did last fall when they threatened NATO air strikes.

About 800 unarmed civilians who are in the Kosovo monitoring mission headed by Walker would have to be removed before any air strikes were staged. Second, a Clinton Administration official acknowledged, there was great uncertainty about what to do after air strikes. "What then?" the official asked.

But the NATO diplomat, apparently reflecting some of the thinking of Secretary General Javier Solana, said that "it's not a realistic policy to leave it up to William Walker and his merry men" -- unarmed monitors working under the auspices of the 54-nation Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe.

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Villagers Slaughtered in Kosovo 'Atrocity'

By Guy Dinmore

Special to The Washington Post

Sunday, January 17, 1999;

Page A1

BELGRADE, Jan. 16  At least 45 ethnic Albanians were found slaughtered today in the village of Racak in the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo in what appeared to be the bloodiest spree in the year-long conflict between the warring sides.

International observers  including U.S. Ambassador William Walker, the head of the multinational force attempting to monitor the tenuous cease-fire  immediately accused Serbian security forces of mass murder. President Clinton issued an angry condemnation of the killings. NATO announced it would hold an emergency meeting on Sunday in Brussels to discuss what action to take, and there were demands for access for investigators of the U.N. war crimes tribunal.

The bodies of the ethnic Albanians, which included a young woman and a 12-year-old boy as well as a number of older men, were discovered scattered on a hillside and heaped together in a gully near Racak, 15 miles south of the provincial capital, Pristina. Villagers said Serbian forces had rounded up the victims, taken them up a hill and killed them. Some had their eyes gouged out or their heads smashed; many were old men shot in the head at point-blank range.

U.S. diplomatic observers counted 45 bodies, but local villagers and the Kosovo Liberation Army said they had counted 51, including a 3-month-old baby. That report, however, could not be confirmed.

It was the highest single death toll in the 11 months since the Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists began. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic. A cease-fire, brokered by U.S. envoy Richard C. Holbrooke with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, has been in effect since Oct. 12. The truce halted more than seven months of fighting between the majority ethnic Albanian population and Serbian authorities.

After touring the grisly scene and seeing the bodies of some 20 ethnic Albanians scattered across a hillside, a visibly shaken Walker called the killings "an unspeakable atrocity," and "a crime very much against humanity."

Walker said he did not "hesitate to accuse the government security forces of responsibility." He urged prosecutors from the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to investigate.

Clinton responded to the news with a strong condemnation that suggested the Serbs had violated commitments made to NATO to forestall Western military action.

"This was a deliberate and indiscriminate act of murder designed to sow fear among the people of Kosovo," Clinton said in statement. "It is a clear violation of the commitments the Serbian authorities have made to NATO. There can be no justification for it."

The State Department announced the emergency NATO meeting, and spokesman James P. Rubin said: "There should be no doubt of NATO's resolve."

Rubin said Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright had been in contact with other NATO foreign ministers and demanded that Milosevic bring those responsible to justice.

Louise Arbour, the chief prosecutor at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, said she would lead an investigation into the massacre in the next few days. Her spokesman, Christian Chartier, said Arbour was demanding "immediate and unimpeded access."

The prosecutor's efforts to lead a team to investigate earlier charges of atrocities in Kosovo have are no longer prepared to discuss jurisdiction."

Christian Chartier, spokesman for chief prosecutor of U.N. tribunal, rejecting Serbian refusal to recognize the panel's jurisdiction been rebuffed by Serbian authorities, who do not recognize the jurisdiction of the tribunal and refused to issue visas.

"For this, we don't care," said Chartier in a telephone interview. "We are no longer prepared to discuss jurisdiction." He said Arbour and her team planned to leave for Kosovo within 48 hours.

Diplomats in Belgrade said the massacre had dashed any remaining hopes of preserving the already shaky cease-fire. But they dismissed the likelihood of NATO intervention in the short-term, saying the alliance was divided and unwilling to commit the ground troops needed to enforce a peace agreement.

NATO Secretary General Javier Solana said in Brussels that NATO "will not tolerate a return to all-out fighting and a policy of regression in Kosovo."

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who said he was shocked and "gravely concerned," called for a full investigation.

"There have been problems and violations of the agreement for many weeks now, and clearly it is shaky," Rubin said.

"It is not as bad as it was last fall, but it's heading rapidly in that direction," he said.

Ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs by nine to one in Kosovo, where more than 1,000 people were killed and tens of thousands driven from their homes in fighting last year.

The massacre occurred two days after the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) freed eight Yugoslav soldiers, ending a five-day standoff.

Serbian police, who were backed by tanks, said in a statement that they had sealed off Racak on Friday while searching for the killers of a policeman, but had been shot at by KLA rebels.

"In the clashes, several dozen terrorists, most of whom were in uniform with KLA insignia, were killed," the statement said.

But residents said the police officers had separated men from their families and told them they would be taken to the nearby town of Urosevac. Instead, a group of more than 20 men were led up a hill and executed, villagers said.

Walker said, "We were hoping for a reciprocal confidence-building measure. Instead we have this. ... the killing of innocent civilians."

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January 16

Serbian Forces Massacre At Least Sixty Albanians in Reçak Village of Shtime Friday

PRISHTINA, Jan 16 (KIC) - Numerous sources said Serbian military and paramilitary police forces carried out Friday a carnage of between 60 and 80 Albanians in the village of Reçak, in Shtime municipality, less than 30 km south of Prishtina, capital of Kosova. The LDK chapter in Shtime, which also put the number of slain Albanians between 60 and 80, told the KIC most of them were local residents of Reçak, but also others who happened to be there Friday. The butchered Albanians were of all ages - women, children, and elderly, included. Most of them were found executed in the village end, while running for their lives amidst the Serb military and police offensive which was raging all day on Friday. There are killed and butchered people inside the houses of the village of Reçak, too. Twenty-four Albanians were reported found killed in a family house guest hall ('odë' in Albanian) alone, sources said. According to reports, only eight of the killed Albanians were members of the UçK (Kosova Liberation Army). All the others were civilians. All the Albanians were killed in Reçak, presumably in the afternoon on Friday. The village had been besieged by the Serbian military and police forces on the night of Thursday, whereas on Friday it was shelled from Serb military positions at 'Kodra e Gështenjave' and 'Te Kryqi i Belincit' location. The village of Reçak, which had 240 homesteads, was largely destroyed during the summer Serb offensives last year. Many of the residents had returned in a bid to rebuild their shattered lives. There has been huge material damage caused by Serb shelling Friday in the villages of Mollopolc and Petrovë. It is not known whether there are additional casualties there. OSCE KVM members and a number of journalists have made into the village of Reçak today, although the roads leading to it are under a severe Serb forces' control. Many Reçak residents who fled yesterday and tried to return today were stopped and arrested by the Serb police, sources said. Other Albanians were reported arrested yesterday in the area. Three Serb jail vans were seen today going to the police station in Shtime and back. Meanwhile, Serbian forces backed up by tanks and heavy artillery launched today morning a fierce attack against a number of Dushkajë villages in western Kosova, sources said. The villages of Ratishë, Dashinoc and Mazniq were the focus of Serb attack, the UçK's news service, Kosovapress said, adding that the assault started at 8:30 hrs.

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President Rugova Condemns Serb Massacre in Kosova, Demands Prompt NATO Intervention

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Bloodbath in south Kosova -- more then 38 civilians executed

Reçak, 16 January (ARTA) --

At least 23 corpses of massacred Albanian civilians were found on a hill, above the village of Reçak, site of the latest outbreak of violence, 25 km south of Kosova capital Prishtina, on Saturday morning.

Four corpses of civilians were covered in blood, while their eyes had been gouged out or their heads bashed in. At least one of these four victims had evident signs of slaughter by axe. The bodies of other 19 civilians were thrown in a bundle, several meters away from the massacred corpses.

Most victims had bullet wounds in the head or neck.

Albanian sources claim that at least 38 civilians were massacred. Locals are still in search for other victims.

According to the local villagers, these civilians were taken hostage by the Yugoslav Army and were then executed.

American sources from the OSCE Kosova Verification Mission (KVM) also confirmed the death of at least 23 massacred Albanian civilians.

However, there were no international monitors of the OSCE mission at the site earlier today. Journalists were the first to enter the site.

Serb-run "Media Centar" reported yesterday that Serb security forces had killed at least 15 KLA soldiers. This was denied by KLA authorities in the Albanian daily "Koha Ditore", which claimed that just one soldier was killed and three were wounded. They claimed that other victims could be civilians.

Independent sources confirm that the latest fighting in southern Kosova was undertaken unilaterally by Serb security forces and that they weren't provoked by Albanian guerrilla fighters. Official Serb sources claim that this operation was undertaken to search for the "terrorists" who killed a policeman two days ago near the region. This policeman died from inflicted wounds.

This Serb security forces operation, which caused the death of up to 38 civilians, was taken two days after eight VJ soldiers, who were kept in KLA captivity, were released through international mediation.

Albanian sources today, issued the names of 38 victims:

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Dozens Found Massacred in Kosovo

By MELISSA EDDY Associated Press Writer

RACAK, Yugoslavia (AP)--Scattered on a Kosovo hillside and heaped together in a muddy gully, the bodies of 45 ethnic Albanians were found shot or mutilated Saturday in what appears to be the worst killing spree of the nearly year-old conflict.

International monitors expressed horror at the grisly discovery, which came a day after Serb forces attacked the area in southern Kosovo. The killings present the gravest threat yet of a return to full-scale combat in the separatist province.

Some of the dead had their eyes gouged out or heads smashed in, and one man lay decapitated in the courtyard of his compound. The victims included one young woman and a 12-year-old boy and many were older men, including one of age 70.

Many had been shot at close range, and residents of Racak village said Serb forces had rounded up the men, driven them up the hill and shot them. Twenty-eight of the bodies lay at the bottom of a narrow ravine.

All the victims were dressed in civilian clothing, despite the insistence of Serb police that most of the ``terrorists'' wore uniforms of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army.

Visibly upset and his voice shaking after visiting the site, the U.S. head of the Kosovo monitoring mission called it a massacre, ``an unspeakable atrocity,'' and ``a crime very much against humanity.''

``Nor do I hesitate to accuse the government security forces of responsibility,'' William Walker said.

The U.N. Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, opened an investigation into the massacre, and chief prosecutor Louise Arbour was preparing to go to Kosovo with or without permission from Yugoslav authorities.

In Washington, the State Department said NATO will hold an emergency session Sunday in Brussels, Belgium, to consider a response to the massacre. ``There should be no doubt of NATO's resolve,'' State Department Spokesman James P. Rubin said.

World leaders voiced shock and anger.

President Clinton condemned the massacre ``in the strongest possible terms.''

``This was a deliberate and indiscriminate act of murder designed to sow fear among the people of Kosovo,'' he said.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana warned that the alliance ``will not tolerate a return to all-out fighting and a policy of repression in Kosovo.''

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for a full investigation, saying he was shocked and ``gravely concerned.''

In Kosovo, ethnic Albanian political leader Ibrahim Rugova renewed his call for NATO intervention after the ``cruel attack.''

KLA representative Adem Demaci called on all Kosovo Albanians to rally behind the rebel force.

``The murder of children shows that Belgrade wants to destroy (ethnic) Albanians' future,'' his office said in a statement. ``The regime does not want any political solution, just Kosovo as a colony, not only occupied but without Albanians.''

The Albanian government accused the Serbs of attempting genocide, and it denounced the massacre as a ``fascist act.''

Verifiers and journalists came across the carnage on Saturday morning in Racak, 15 miles south of the provincial capital, Pristina, after having been barred from the site by Serbian police the previous day.

The wails of women discovering the loss of their men could be heard as residents who had evacuated on Friday returned. One by one the monitors counted the bodies, which they said numbered 45. The KLA later claimed it had counted 51 dead, including a 3-month-old baby, which could not be confirmed.

It was the highest single death toll--and perhaps the bloodiest spree of the nearly yearlong conflict--since an Oct. 12 truce brokered by U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic that largely halted more than seven months of combat in the separatist province of Serbia.

The massacre came just two days after the KLA freed eight Yugoslav army soldiers, ending a tense five-day standoff.

``We were hoping for a reciprocal confidence-building measure,'' said Walker, head of the three-month-old Kosovo Verification Mission. ``Instead we have this ... the killing of innocent civilians.''

Police, who were backed by Yugoslav army tanks in Friday's assault on Racak and neighboring Petrovo, said they had killed ``tens of terrorists'' in the action. They said they fought back after coming under mortar and automatic weapons fire while trying to arrest guerrilla suspects for the murder of a policeman.

But villagers said Serb police had separated men from their families and led them toward the local police station. They later turned and herded them up the hill, where they killed them, the residents said.

Bodies lay where they apparently were slain, along cow paths and in deep, hilly ravines.

An ethnic Albanian man who gave his name only as Raim said he was told Serb police had barged into his family compound while he was away and killed his father and two brothers.

``We don't know what we are going to do,'' he said, sitting on a stump with his head in his hands, holding on his knees a rifle with ``UCK''--the Albanian-language acronym for the KLA--burned into the wooden butt.

As many as 2,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, have been killed since Milosevic launched an offensive last February to try to crush separatist militants and reinforce government control over the Albanian-majority province in Serbia, the larger republic in Yugoslavia.

In a report of another outbreak of fighting Saturday that couldn't immediately be confirmed, the ethnic Albanians' Kosovo Information Center said government forces were using heavy artillery and tanks in an offensive against three rebel-held villages in the west.

The report said rebels were fighting back in an area south of Decani, where a British verifier and his Serb translator were each shot in the arm the previous day in the first confrontation to injure a monitor.

U.S. Condemns Kosovo Killings, Seeks NATO Action

WASHINGTON--The United States condemned "the senseless killing" of civilians in Serbia's rebel province of Kosovo on Saturday and said Washington would be seeking a clear response from the NATO alliance. "The United States is horrified by the reports coming out of Kosovo of the massacre of civilians," said State Department spokesman James Foley. "We join with NATO Secretary General (Javier) Solana...in condemning this senseless killing of innocent civilians." Foley did not say exactly how Washington expected to react to the killings, but said: "We are going to be looking for a very clear response from NATO." Ethnic Albanians in the province said on Saturday that Serb police had massacred at least 42 civilians near the town of Racak. The head of an international observer mission visited the scene and said it looked like an execution. Foley said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was following the situation closely and had been consulting with members of President Clinton's national security team and with other foreign ministers. NATO's Solana has already expressed outrage at the killings, warning that they could only exacerbate tension in Kosovo, where the majority ethnic Albanians are fighting for independence.

U.S. Condemns Kosovo Murders, NATO Convenes

9.04 p.m. ET (205 GMT) January 16, 1999

WASHINGTON — NATO will hold an emergency meeting on Sunday in Brussels to discuss a response to the massacre of dozens of civilians in Serbia's rebel province of Kosovo, U.S. officials said on Saturday.

"There should be no doubt of NATO's resolve,'' a State Department spokesman said, adding that the ambassadors to the 16 North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries would convene on Sunday as proposed by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

NATO in October authorized its forces to hit Yugoslav military targets if Belgrade violated pledges to seek a peaceful solution to a conflict with ethnic Albanian separatists, but U.S. officials declined to discuss what options Washington would pursue at the NATO session.

Earlier, President Clinton strongly condemned the killings, which he blamed on Serbian security forces.

"This was a deliberate and indiscriminate act of murder designed to sow fear among the people of Kosovo. It is a clear violation of the commitments the Serbian authorities have made to NATO. There can be no justification for it,'' Clinton said.

Albright conferred with fellow NATO foreign ministers, including those from Britain, France, Germany and Norway. She demanded that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic bring those responsible to justice, State Department spokesman James Rubin said.

Rubin said Albright was demanding that Milosevic "identify who gave the orders and who took this action, and ensure that those perpetrators are then brought to justice.''

"We want the Serbs to cooperate in the investigation of this atrocity by the International War Crimes Tribunal,'' he added.

At the White House there was intense concern about the situation in Kosovo where ethnic Albanians said the killings were carried out by Serbian police. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger kept the president updated throughout the day.

The head of an international observer mission visited the scene, near the village of Racak, and said it looked like an execution. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said U.S. diplomatic observers had counted 45 corpses.

"I condemn in the strongest possible terms the massacre of civilians by the Serb security forces that took place last night in the village of Racak in Kosovo,'' Clinton said in a written statement.

NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana has already expressed outrage at the killings, warning that they could only exacerbate tension in Kosovo, where the majority ethnic Albanians are fighting for independence.

Clinton said he was in contact with Solana and he urged both sides to work for a peaceful solution.

"It is urgent that these murders not trigger a spiral of reprisals,'' he said. "Both sides have a responsibility to work toward a peaceful resolution of this crisis and for a settlement that allows the people of Kosovo the self-government they so clearly deserve.''

Sen. John Warner, the new chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on Saturday he favored putting a NATO military force in Kosovo as a deterrent.

"I think there should be some U.S. component to that NATO force,'' the Virginia Republican said on the CNN program ''Evans, Novak, Hunt & Shields.'' "We've got to tell Milosevic, 'you've got to stop this killing, otherwise we're going to stop it.'''

"If we leave that situation in Kosovo destabilized it will undo what we have achieved, although modest, in the last three to four years in Bosnia,'' Warner added.

Independence-minded ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs by nine to one in Kosovo, a Serbian province where some 2,000 people were killed and 250,000 driven from their homes in fighting last year.

Last autumn, villagers accused Serb police of massacring two groups of ethnic Albanians. Belgrade said the killings had been staged by the ethnic Albanians to goad NATO into threatening air strikes against it.

The United States brokered a cease-fire in October, but violence has escalated sharply in recent weeks.

BBC Analysis: Swift Nato response 'unlikely'

A Serb policeman inspects arms confiscated from the KLA

By Diplomatic Correspondent Barnaby Mason

It took only a few hours for a diplomatic crisis to blow up over this atrocity, the kind of event the big powers were hoping against hope wouldn't happen.

Expressions of outrage and revulsion came from the United States, the European Union and individual European countries.

There were also appeals against reprisals, but already the Kosovo Liberation Army, the KLA, has called on the ethnic Albanian majority to support and join it as the only means of resisting what it calls the "fascist regime" in Belgrade.

The American Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, telephoned her counterparts in Britain, France and Germany to discuss what immediate response to make.

The military option

The Americans are pushing for a meeting of Nato permanent representatives as soon as possible. But early military action seems unlikely.

The Western powers were relieved last October that Richard Holbrooke's deal with President Milosevic made air strikes unnecessary.

The doubts about whether they would work are still there, as is the extreme reluctance to deploy ground troops in Kosovo.

The massacre has demonstrated how difficult it is to restrain violence with nothing more than unarmed monitors. In any event, the monitoring force is, after three months, at less than half of its original planned strength.

There will be heavy Western pressure on Mr Milosevic to allow investigators from the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal to go to Kosovo.

Up to now, he has refused to recognise its jurisdiction. Only a political agreement on autonomy between the Serbs and the ethnic Albanians would end the crisis.

The massacre has made that even more unlikely.

Kosovo Deaths "Look Like Executions" - OSCE

By Shaban Buza

BEBUS HILL, Serbia (Reuters) - Ethnic Albanians accused Serb police on Saturday of massacring 42 villagers, and the top international observer in Kosovo expressed horror at the execution-style killings.

"It is about as horrendous an event as I have seen, and I have been in some nasty situations," William Walker told reporters after being shown a ditch full of corpses, all male and in civilian clothes.

"To see bodies like this, with their faces blown away by what was obviously arms held close to their heads...It looks like execution," added Walker.

"People with no value for human life murdering these men who to me look like farmers, workers, villagers. They certainly didn't deserve to die in circumstances like this."

Serb police put forward their own version of events, saying several dozen "terrorists" had been killed in clashes after opening fire on police.

A Reuters correspondent at the scene counted 22 bodies. Agim Kanberi, a member of a local administration set up by ethnic Albanians in Racak village, said later they had identified 42 corpses of people aged from 12 to 74.

Britain expressed "revulsion" at the killings and called on all sides to refrain from reprisals.

Walker was also shown the headless corpse of a man of about 65 in a garden in Racak. Locals said a man and his 22-year-old daughter were also killed, apparently while trying to escape.

Walker, head of a verification mission by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), did not say how many had been killed in all or comment on the allegations that Serb police were responsible.

A local ethnic Albanian whose father and two brothers were among the dead said they had been arrested by police with other men from Racak, about 25 km (16 miles) south of the Kosovo regional capital Pristina, on Thursday night.

Sami Syla, 41, said his 65-year-old father and brothers, aged 30 and 36, were among the bodies laid out in the dry bed of a stream on Bebus Hill, overlooking Racak.

"They were taken from their homes, arrested and told they would be taken to Urosevac (a nearby town)," said Syla. "But later they were brought to the hill and executed," he said.

A police statement said police had sealed off the village on Saturday in a search for the killers of a policeman. Ethnic Albanian guerrillas had then opened fire on them, it said.

"In the clashes, several dozen terrorists, most of whom were in uniforms with KLA insignia, were killed," said the statement, which added that arms and ammunition were seized. It did not comment on the discovery of the bodies in civilian clothes.

Police and army units who had been deployed in the area on Friday and had been involved in a sustained exchange of fire with ethnic Albanian guerrillas were nowhere to be seen on Saturday. A police helicopter hovered overhead in the morning.

Another group of men said 25 of them had been arrested by police on Friday morning and taken to a nearby area where there was fighting between security forces and Albanian separatists.

"There we were told to run. We couldn't run because we were caught in the crossfire, so we lay down and stayed there for seven hours until the police withdrew, and after that we returned to Racak," said Hyzer Emin, 65, standing with three other men from the village who offered the same account.

Two women and a young man who had three brothers among the dead were crying over the remains, while guerrillas stood by.

Independence-minded ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs by nine to one in Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia where some 2,000 people were killed and a quarter of a million driven from their homes in fighting last year.

Last autumn, villagers accused Serb police of massacring two groups of ethnic Albanians. Soon afterwards, NATO stepped up its threat of air strikes against Serbia.

Belgrade said then that the killings had been staged by ethnic Albanians to goad NATO into action.

The United States brokered a cease-fire in October, but violence has escalated sharply in recent weeks. On Friday, two members of Kosovo's unarmed international monitoring mission were injured when unidentified gunmen shot at their vehicle.

In London, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said in a statement that he was "appalled and deeply distressed" by the murders of ethnic Albanians.

"We are in touch with the verifiers on the ground for a full report of the precise circumstances. I shall be talking with (Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright and other close allies about how we bring home to those responsible the world community's utter revulsion at this atrocity," he said.

"It is essential that these murders should not trigger off a spiral of reprisals. I therefore urge all sides to resist any such temptation. There can be no military solution to this conflict," he added.

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UP to 40 Bodies Seen after Kosova Fighting, Some Massacred

AP 16-JAN-99

RACAK, Yugoslavia (AP) -- The bodies of up to 40 men, many of them mutilated, were found on a hillside in southern Kosovo today, a day after Serb forces launched a fierce assault on ethnic Albanian villages.

Reporters and international verifiers, who were prevented from reaching the besieged area around the village of Racak on Friday, saw the massacred bodies today, lying scattered on a hillside and in ravines.

Some had their eyes gouged out or their heads smashed in, and one man lay decapitated in a courtyard. The body of another man had a bullet wound in the neck. Many of the victims were older men.

International monitors initially counted at least 28 bodies lying heaped together near the crest of a hill, and ethnic Albanians told of many others lying nearby. The news agency launched by Kosova Liberation Army rebels, Kosova Press, reported 46 dead, eight of them KLA fighters.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which runs the Kosovo Verification Mission, declined to discuss the massacre until the mission chief, U.S. diplomat William Walker, reached the scene himself.

"What we're trying to get now are the precise facts, which is why the ambassador is going down there," said OSCE spokesman Sandy Blyth. "We're in the business of gathering the precise facts of how many people died and how they died."

Women in the village of Racak, which was evacuated under fierce shelling and tank fire on Friday, wailed as they learned of the fate of the men.

It was the worst killing spree since an October truce largely halted more than seven months of combat in the separatist province, and perhaps the most savage of the nearly yearlong conflict.

The informal cease-fire, which international officials have insisted is still largely intact, is now in serious danger of collapsing into a resumption of the province-wide fighting that devastated Kosovo in 1998.

Villagers said Serb police had separated men from their families and led them toward the local police station. They later turned and herded them up the hill, where they killed them, the residents said.

Bodies apparently lay where they were slain, along cow paths and in deep, hilly ravines.

The Serb Media Center had reported Friday that at least 15 KLA fighters were killed in the attack on three villages, including Racak, about 15 miles south of Kosovo's capital, Pristina.

It said the crackdown was in response to KLA attacks on police.

Yugoslav tanks and troops were part of the attack, pounding the area before fighting abated Friday afternoon.

Verifiers and journalists heard villagers tell of a grisly massacre.

An ethnic Albanian man who gave his name only as Raim said he was told Serb police had barged into his family compound and attacked his grandfather, 60-year-old Banush Azemigo, whom he identified as the decapitated man.

"Yesterday early in the morning, police came with very heavy machine guns together with the army," he said. "They entered the village with infantry. Half of the people they arrested and beat up. The rest you can see here," he said pointing to the heap of bodies.

"We don't know what we are going to do," he said, sitting on a stump with his head in his hands, holding on his knees a rifle with "UCK" -- the Albanian-language acronym for the KLA -- burned into the wooden butt.

He said he was in the hills at the time of the attack and only learned of it today.

The death toll is the highest since the Oct. 12 agreement brokered by U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke. Last month, army border guards killed 36 KLA fighters as they tried to smuggle weapons in from neighboring Albania.

More than 1,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, have been killed since Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched an offensive last February to try to crush separatist militants and reinforce government control over the Albanian-majority province in Serbia, the larger republic in Yugoslavia.

Earlier, the United States, Britain and France had strongly condemned the shooting of an international monitor and a translator from the Kosovo Verification Mission. The two were not seriously wounded.

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin called the shootings "unacceptable."

The British monitor was shot in the shoulder and the translator was shot and slightly wounded when unidentified gunmen fired on their three-vehicle convoy Friday near the western town of Decani.

The two were taken to a hospital in Pristina. The translator was later released and the Briton was taken to Macedonia for further treatment.

About 800 monitors are now in Kosovo, including 110 Britons. An 1,800-strong NATO force is stationed just over the border in Macedonia to rescue them if needed.

Copyright 1999& The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Massacre in Kosova (BBC)

The bodies of almost 40 ethnic Albanians have been found at the site of recent fighting in southern Kosovo, in what appears to have been a mass execution.

The victims, men between the ages of 18 and 65, were not in uniform and correspondents say most were too elderly to be Albanian fighters.

John Fantini from the international monitoring body of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said that a woman and a child had also been found among the victims.

Serb authorities have issued no statement or explanation of the killings.

The majority of the victims had been shot at close range with bullet wounds in the head or neck, and there were reports that some had been mutilated.

Hillside massacre

Reporters and international observers who were prevented from reaching the village of Racak on Friday, arrived on Saturday and saw the bodies lying in a ditch on a hillside.

Witnesses say the men were rounded up by Serbian policemen on Friday night.

The BBC's correspondent in Kosovo, Jacky Rowland, has been to Racak, about 25km (16 miles) south of the Kosovo capital Pristina where she saw the bodies of at least 30 men lying in a ditch above the village.

"There are distraught people wandering around, children crying who found relatives, brothers, fathers, uncle in the ditch," she said.

Renewed fighting

Our correspondent says that this latest massacre could trigger renewed fighting between the two groups and endanger the already fragile truce brokered in October 1998.

Serbian military police helicopters have been flying over the area and observers from the European monitoring mission have arrived to inspect the bodies.

In October, Yugoslavia agreed to allow a 2,000-strong monitoring force of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe into Kosovo to ensure it complied with UN demands.

This eleventh-hour compliance by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic averted the immediate prospect of Nato airstrikes.

The OSCE has since scaled down its operation to 1,400 observers.

OSCE 'targeted'

On Friday, an unarmed British OSCE monitor or 'verifier' and his Serb interpreter were shot and wounded in a clash between Serb and ethnic Albanian forces in the west of the Serbian province of Pristina.

Head of the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) William Walker, told the BBC the OSCE personnel had been "targeted."

The two monitors were travelling in a convoy of two armoured cars at Decane, 40 km (25 miles) west of the Kosovo capital Pristina when they were hit by sniper fire.