By Michael Roddy

PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - The U.S.

head of a Kosovo observer force said he

asked Yugoslav President Slobodan

Milosevic Monday to prevent further

deterioration of security in Kosovo, where a

fragile truce is in force.

William Walker, a senior U.S. envoy who

will head the Kosovo Verification Mission

(KVM), a group of about 2,000 unarmed

international ``verifiers,'' also said a KVM

spokesman had gone beyond the known

facts in describing alleged intimidation of

U.S. monitors by Yugoslav soldiers.

Walker, talking to reporters in Pristina after

meeting Milosevic in Belgrade, said he

wanted to ``correct the record'' about

Sunday's incident.

The incident, in which a KVM spokesman

said a Yugoslav Army (VJ) convoy fired

rounds over a vehicle containing U.S.

monitors, had drawn a sharp rebuke from

NATO Secretary-General Javier Solano,

who said in Rome that intimidation of

Western observers in Kosovo could have

serious consequences.

Walker said he met Milosevic at the request

of the chairman of the Organization for

Security and Cooperation in Europe

(OSCE), which runs the verifier force, to

talk about increasing attacks and

counterattacks by Serbs and ethnic

Albanians.

The OSCE chairman ``asked me to

express our concern with a perception that

the security situation in Kosovo has

deteriorated and that there has been a

certain tit-for-tat violence and I was asking

the president to do everything he could to

curtail that tit-for-tat violence,'' Walker said.

Walker said he and Milosevic discussed

Sunday's incident, but the U.S. envoy said

the facts had not yet been established as

clearly as stated in a press briefing by KVM

spokesman Duncan Bullivant.

``I think a few statements were made that

went a bit beyond our interpretation of what

happened involving a KDOM vehicle and a

convoy of the VJ (Yugoslav Army),'' Walker

said.

KDOM is the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer

Mission, which will be folded into the KVM

once it is fully established.

Walker said reports based on the briefing

had said ``shots were fired and they were

fired over the head of our vehicle.

``That is beyond our knowledge,'' he said.

``Our people heard noises and thought they

saw flashes from muzzles. The implication

of what we released last night was that

those flashes came out of the turret gun.

That is not correct.''

But Walker was quick to add that the

behavior of the Yugoslav troops was not in

the spirit of agreements permitting the

observers and verifiers to move freely

throughout Kosovo.

``All we really know is from our side that the

gun turret turned and I think that in itself is

unacceptable,'' he said.

``We do not want weapons pointed at our

vehicles and our verifiers.''

The Yugoslav army has denied the

allegations of firing over the heads of the

vehicle, saying the noise heard by the

Americans was a vehicle backfiring.

The Yugoslav Tanjug news agency said a

U.S. diplomatic observer mission which

went to the location where the incident

occurred ``saw for themselves they were

wrong.''

Tanjug, reporting on the Milosevic-Walker

meeting, also said it had been noted that

Belgrade was helping the observers carry

out their work and that the West should

focus on bringing the ethnic Albanian

guerrillas into line.

Ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs by nine

to one in Kosovo but Serbia has ruled out

independence for the province, where at

least 1,000 people were killed and 250,000

made homeless by fighting earlier this year.

The international community favors greater

Kosovo autonomy, short of outright

secession.

Serbia Sunday invited ethnic Albanian

leaders to direct talks Wednesday over

Kosovo's future. But the offer was rejected

in a statement Monday by the office of the

de facto ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim

Rugova.

The statement said the invitation looked like

an attempt to sideline U.S. diplomat

Christopher Hill and his European Union

colleague Wolfgang Petritsch, who are

trying to mediate on a political settlement.

``Belgrade issued an invitation for talks to

lessen pressure from the international

community but this time they will not

succeed because the Albanian side is

interested in a substantial negotiating

process and this is well known by the

international community,'' the statement

said.

The United States currently has 175

observers in Kosovo, the biggest contingent

of an international group overseeing a

Yugoslav troop pullout agreed by Milosevic

in October under the threat of NATO air

strikes.

Both Serb and ethnic Albanian sources

reported fresh clashes Monday between

Serb police and ethnic Albanian guerrillas,

who are fighting to split Kosovo from Serbia.

Reut01:02 11-17-98