By KATARINA KRATOVAC Associated Press Writer

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Serb police in an armored personnel carrier blocked a team of forensics

experts from Finland today from carrying out the first exhumations of massacre victims in Kosovo.

``We see this as clear obstruction,'' said Finnish team leader Helena Ranta.

The start of digging on the makeshift graves of as many as 22 slaughtered ethnic Albanians was to have

marked a breakthrough in investigative work into atrocities in the war-ravaged Serbian province.

But a Serb police contingent -- consisting of an armored personnel carrier and about two dozen policemen

wearing flak jackets and carrying automatic rifles -- stopped the Finnish convoy on the road in Trstenik,

well short of their destination in the central Drenica region.

The convoy carrying 19 forensics experts turned back toward the capital, Pristina, after spending more than

two hours on the side of the road.

Serb police, who did not comment, reportedly insisted on accompanying the team. But the Kosovo

Liberation Army, which controls the area virtually unchallenged during the current truce, said the police

were unwelcome.

``The Finnish team is free to come on their own but they cannot come with the police,'' said KLA local

commander Gani Koci.

A Serb judge from Pristina, Danica Marinkovic, said the team's safety also was reportedly at issue.

``According to our laws, the exhumations can't take place without us,'' she said.

The Finns had received permission from government authorities to carry out the exhumations on six sites,

including a frozen hillside in Gornje Obrinje that is believed to contain the mutilated bodies of men,

women and children from a single family.

The September killings in a nearby forest 25 miles west of Pristina were among the most savage during the

Serb forces' seven-month offensive against separatists in Kosovo.

The massacre prompted worldwide outrage and stepped up international pressure on Yugoslav President

Slobodan Milosevic, who agreed Oct. 12 to end the crackdown.

Hundreds of people have been killed this year in Kosovo, a southern province in Serbia where ethnic

Albanians outnumber Serbs 9-to-1, and up to 300,000 were forced from their homes. Serbia is the larger of

two republics left in Yugoslavia.

While most of the victims were ethnic Albanians, the Serb military also has alleged massacres by the KLA,

and both sides have been condemned for committing human rights abuses.

Several hundred Serbs began a protest march today to a rebel stronghold in southwestern Kosovo to call

attention to the disappearance of Serbs during the conflict.

Carrying banners reading ``Stop Terrorism'' and ``Bring our relatives back,'' the 300-400 marchers were

escorted by police as they began a 12-mile walk from Orahovac toward the KLA stronghold of Dragobilje.

About 200 Serbs have disappeared in Kosovo. Many are believed to have been abducted by ethnic

Albanian rebels.

The 19-member Finnish team expects to spend up to a week at the site in Gornje Obrinje, which the

Albanians know as Obrija, before moving on to the other sites, some containing Serb bodies: Glodjane,

Golubovac, Klecka, Orohovac and Volujak.

``We're not here to say who's guilty and who's the perpetrators,'' Ranta said before today's dispute. ``We're

here to shed some light on the sequence of events and how these people died.''

The results of exhumations and autopsies by the team, sponsored by the European Union, will be given to

local courts and also could further war crimes investigations in Kosovo.

AP-NY-12-10-98 0918EST