Serb troops crossed into Albania and shelled and burned houses in Kamenica, a border village in the Tropoje distict, according to reports. (The Washington Post)

By Thomas W. Lippman and Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 14, 1999; Page A1

Yugoslav forces raided a village in northern Albania and fought an hour-long skirmish with Albanian troops yesterday, stoking fears that the Kosovo conflict could spill into neighboring Balkan countries and drawing stern warnings from the United States.

The incident added to tensions in a volatile region already thrown into turmoil by three weeks of NATO bombing against Yugoslavia that is about to escalate again, a relentless crackdown by Yugoslav security forces in Kosovo and the flight of hundreds of thousands of refugees into Macedonia and Albania.

More refugees streamed out of Kosovo yesterday, indicating Yugoslav troops and police in the rebellious Serbian province have, after a brief hiatus, resumed their efforts to purge the area of many of the ethnic Albanians who form the population base for the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army.

Talks in Oslo between Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, meanwhile, failed to produce agreement on how to work toward a diplomatic settlement to the conflict. With more warfare still the only prospect, NATO continued to build up its air fleet in the region for a further expansion of the bombing campaign.

In a sign the scope of the conflict is growing – and with it the costs – U.S. and European officials said yesterday the United States will send as many as 50 AH-64A Apache attack helicopters to Albania, double the number previously reported. It also is likely that several thousand additional troops, beyond the 2,800 the Pentagon has announced, will accompany the helicopters.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon put the first price tag on the 21-day-old air war, saying it would be in the "$3 billion to $4 billion range," money that will have to be approved by Congress. Since U.S. and NATO officials have persistently refused to predict how long the conflict will go on, it was unclear where Bacon derived his upper-limit projection for the current fiscal year.

Yugoslavia denied that its forces had entered Albania, but the State Department and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has observers in the border area, confirmed the incursion.

"The U.S. is extremely concerned by these actions by Serb forces, which constitute a violation of Albanian territorial integrity," State Department spokesman James Foley said. "Such actions will not be tolerated."

No casualties were reported during the clash. Most residents of the region – which is thick with KLA guerrillas and serves as a supply base and rear staging area for them – fled during previous days of shelling from the Yugoslav side. Albanian military officials, however, reported that the Yugoslav shells included "cluster bomblets, some of which explode immediately, some when people step on them," said Capt. Graham Wiltshire, the British defense attache in Albania.

President Clinton met with nearly 60 members of Congress in Washington to discuss the Kosovo conflict, and some members suggested afterward that he subtly shifted his position on the use of U.S. ground forces.

Clinton for weeks has said he has "no intention" of sending in ground troops except as part of a protective force after a peace agreement is reached. Clinton again used the "no intention" phrase but added that he was not ruling out the eventual possibility of deploying ground troops, several participants said.

Many legislators and other critics have said it was unwise to signal to President Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav and Serb leader, that he need not worry about U.S. ground forces because that might have emboldened Yugoslav forces in their rampage through Kosovo.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) told reporters after the meeting that Clinton "said a couple of times that he does not favor the deployment of ground forces and that it's not under active consideration now, but that no options should be removed from the table – and that it's important for Mr. Milosevic not to have any sense of confidence that he can suffer out or wait out the NATO air bombardment and expect us to walk away."

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), when asked whether the use of ground troops is "off the table," replied: "The president said that it's not on the table, but he did say that nothing is off the table and that we must achieve our goal."

White House press secretary Joe Lockhart told reporters later that Clinton's views on ground troops have not changed, but he did not dispute Kerry's account of the meeting.

One of the most prominent supporters of preparing for ground troops, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), acknowledged that an invasion of Yugoslavia to drive Yugoslav troops out of Kosovo could be a grim business. "I know that should Americans die in a land war with Serbia, I will bear a considerable share of the responsibility for their loss," he said in a speech in Washington.

But McCain repeated his firm belief that the U.S. must win the conflict, ensuring the safe return of ethnic Albanians to Kosovo – where they formed 90 percent of the prewar population of 1.8 million – because the nation's "most important values" have converged with the strategic importance of maintaining American credibility and NATO strength.

Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the NATO supreme commander, said in Brussels that the 300 additional aircraft he requested over the weekend represent only the U.S. component of a major boost in alliance strike power. "It's actually larger than that, because we will be asking NATO [allies] to provide additional resources," he said.

In addition, Clinton is likely to order a limited call-up of U.S. reserves to support the campaign, particularly tanker planes, officials said. "I think Secretary Cohen has indicated there may be the need to call up some reservists. I expect that he will come to some decisions on that soon and when the recommendation comes over to the White House we will respond," Lockhart said.

Clark, addressing reporters at NATO headquarters, said that in 21 days of the air campaign, the weather has been favorable on only seven, and that on 10 days more than half the planned strikes were canceled. He apologized for the airstrikes that hit a passenger train crossing a bridge Monday, reportedly killing 10 people, saying the pilot had already hit the bomb release when the train flashed onto his radar screen, too late to halt the strike.

Nevertheless, he said, the campaign is having its intended effect of grinding down Yugoslavia's air defenses, disrupting fuel supplies and cutting off transport routes and lines of communication. NATO did not announce new airstrikes yesterday, but the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug said six missiles hit an oil depot and plastics factory near Pristina, Kosovo's capital, setting a fuel reservoir ablaze.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook also offered an upbeat assessment. "As the alliance gets stronger in the region, Milosevic's forces continue to get weaker," he said at a briefing in London. He cited reports filtering out of Kosovo of "increasing desertion by Serb soldiers" and declared that "the Serb army now knows it has no real protection against our air attacks and spends most of its time hiding and worrying."

Clark said NATO is operating 30 to 50 flights daily to ferry relief supplies to refugees in Macedonia and Albania, helping international agencies stabilize what had been a desperate situation for hundreds of thousands of civilians who fled Kosovo or were driven out by Yugoslav security forces.

More than 3,000 new refugees crossed into Albania and hundreds more into Macedonia, news agencies reported. According to Cook and other sources, they brought with them tales of abuses being visited on those still trapped in Kosovo and confirmed reports of large-scale rapes of women at a Yugoslav army camp in Djakovica, in southern Kosovo.

At the three-hour meeting in Oslo, Albright and Ivanov made some progress in an effort to forge a common position on terms for a settlement but remained far apart on the key issue of a NATO-led international protection force for refugees returning to Kosovo.

U.S. officials and diplomats in Washington said Albright's meeting with Ivanov reflects a shared conviction in Washington and Moscow that Russia should be involved in the diplomatic effort to end the air war and that Ivanov's acceptance of some NATO terms represents a clear step forward from the angry, even pugnacious stand Russia took earlier.

A Russian official largely confirmed Albright's account, saying that the main point of difference was Russia's refusal to insist that Belgrade accept foreign troops in Pristina. Russia prefers a civilian monitoring group.

A further obstacle to a negotiated settlement could arise from a growing conviction inside the Clinton administration that Milosevic should be indicted as a war criminal, a development that would eliminate him as a U.S. negotiating partner even if Moscow continues to deal with him.

"We have a very serious problem with Mr. Milosevic," Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering said at a breakfast with reporters. He said Milosevic is a "candidate" for indictment by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague and that the United States is gathering evidence that could lead to his indictment.

Pickering said it is "hard to imagine they couldn't bring an indictment, if we do an adequate job of collecting evidence," and that Milosevic would not receive immunity as part of any settlement. According to another State Department official, it is standing U.S. policy not to negotiate with indicted war crimes suspects.

Lippman reported from Washington, Vick from Tirana. Staff writers Charles Babington, Dana Priest and David von Drehle in Washington and correspondent William Drozdiak in Brussels contributed to this report.