Tuesday, December 8, 1998 Published at 04:04 GMT

World: Europe

Nato warns Serbia over

Kosovo

There are fears of renewed fighting in the spring

Nato Secretary-General, Javier Solana, has said

that Serbian threats to re-launch an offensive

against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo will

not be tolerated.

He was speaking after the Serbian Deputy Prime

Minister, Tomoslav Nikolic, warned that the

government in Belgrade might repeat its offensive

earlier this year against the main Kosovo

nationalist group, the Kosovo Liberation Army, but,

as he put it, "this time go to the end".

"We asked for restraint from

everybody and these

(statements) will not be

tolerated," Mr Solana said after

meeting Macedonian Prime

Minister Ljubco Georgievski in

Brussels.

"These statements do not contribute to that (the

peace process)," he added.

Mr Solana's warning comes amid predictions from

all sides serious conflict will re-ignite in Kosovo in

the spring.

Set-back for hopes of political solution

The chief ethnic Albanian negotiator Fehmi Agani

has rejected the latest American peace plan as

giving Kosovo too little autonomy.

Mr Agani said the latest American

draft - their fourth - could not be

"considered a basis for ... future

negotiations".

He complained that the proposal

would emasculate the regional parliament and give

the Serbs a say in education and law matters.

. Serbian officials have made it clear they feel the

American draft gives too much to the ethnic

Albanian side.

BBC Balkans

correspondent Paul Wood

says many diplomats

believe the West will be

unable to affect the

situation on the ground

short of ordering massive

air strikes.

This is characterised as

an all or nothing

response, dictated by the

fact that the international

presence in Kosovo is not

an armed peacekeeping

force, but unarmed monitors.

Mr Solana stressed that the Nato troops now being

deployed to Macedonia are there as purely a rapid

extraction force to rescue the unarmed monitors in

Kosovo and will take on no peackeeeping role.

The first unit arrived in Macedonia on Sunday and

the 1,500-strong force should be fully deployed by

the end of the year.

Nevertheless the Serbian Deputy Premier,

Tomoslav Nikolic, a member of the far right

Serbian radical party, described their deployment

as a hostile act.

Mr Nikolic said that if what he described as

Albanian terrorists were allowed to strut around,

murder and kidnap, there would be another

offensive by the security forces.

Its mission will be to rescue the Kosovo peace

monitors if they get into trouble.

Clashes that began in February following a Serb

crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in

Kosovo have claimed hundreds of lives and forced

more than 300,000 people from their homes.

Since a cease-fire in October, the guerrillas have

been returning to some areas from which they had

been driven by Serb forces.