Serbian security forces took advantage of the withdrawal of all international monitors from Kosovo province on Saturday to launch a series of offensives against ethnic Albanian rebels, driving thousands of civilians from their homes and convincing senior Western envoys here that intervention by NATO is now inevitable.
At the White House, President Clinton met with his senior advisers and was said to be “deeply concerned” about the situation.
U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO’s supreme commander for Europe, said in a telephone interview that he believed Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic intended to try to eradicate or expel separatist rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Clark said it was up to Western governments to decide whether to launch NATO airstrikes but added, “My guess is that after what happened today, they (the Serbs) have lost some breathing time.”
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said NATO action could come within days. Senior diplomats in Belgrade expected airstrikes within a week. Russia’s Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov may make one last attempt with a visit to Belgrade soon to persuade Milosevic to accept a peace accord for Kosovo.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ordered all its 1,380 monitors to pull out of Kosovo following the breakdown of a second round of peace talks in Paris on Friday. The presence of the unarmed monitors in the Serbian province since last October had acted as a restraining influence on both sides and their departure left a lawless vacuum.
As 450 OSCE vehicles crossed into Macedonia, unimpeded by the Serbs, government forces moved into the central town of Srbica, close to the KLA stronghold in the Drenica region.
Witnesses said thousands of civilians of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority were driven from their homes by special police units in white overalls and masks.
The refugees headed in a long column into the snowy hills of central Kosovo, many with just the clothes they were wearing. Children were separated from their parents in the chaos. Gunfire could be heard in the streets of Srbica and there were unconfirmed accounts by refugees of ethnic Albanians executed in the streets.
Fighting also erupted near Luzane, on the road that leads north out of the regional capital of Pristina. Serbian officials blamed the KLA for provoking the fighting by attacking police stations in Luzane and Srbica.
Clark said Milosevic and his generals believed they could quickly wipe out the KLA. “Maybe they can do it in five days, but I would be surprised,” Clark said.
Diplomats recalled that Milosevic told U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke in an abortive round of peace talks earlier this month that Serbia’s forces had the ability to eradicate the KLA within a week. Milosevic is the president of what is left of federal Yugoslavia, now comprising the republics of Serbia and Montenegro.
The Serbian delegation to peace talks in Paris refused to join the Kosovo Albanian delegation in signing a Western-drafted peace accord Thursday, saying the deal gave the province too much self-rule, and also rejected a NATO peacekeeping force.
