From International Herald Tribune (pag 10), friday 29 January 1999

By R. Jeffrey Smith

Washington Post Service

Racak, Yugoslavia - A troop and police attack on this Kosovo village two weeks ago, which led to the death of 45 ethnic Albanian civilians, was carried out at the order of senior officials of the Serbian - led Belgrade government, who then orchestrated a cover-up attempt after an international butery, according to Western intercepT of telephone conversations.

Angered by the slaying of three policemen in Kosovo, the officials ordered government forces to "go in HEAVY" on Jan. 15 and search Racak for ethnic Albanian guerrillas believed responsible for the ambush slayings, according to Western sources familiar with the intercepts.

As the civilian death toll from the assault mounted and criticism spread, a high - ranking political figure in Belgrade and a senior commander of security operations in Kosovo sought to cover up what had taken place, according to the monitored conversations.

Details of the conversations shed new light on the attack and its aftermath, wich have again brought NATO to the brink of confrontation with President Slobodan Milosevic over his government's repression of separatist ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

In a series of conversations, the Belgrade official and the general expressed concern about reaction to the Racak killings ad discussed how to make them look as if they had resulted from a battle between troops and insurgents of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

The objective was to challenge claims by survivors - inter supported by international monitors - that the victims had been killed in an execution - style massacre.

Yugoslav Army troops and police units of the Serbian Interior Ministry have waged an 11 - month campaign against ethnic Albanian guerrillas seeking independence for Kosovo.

In an October accord imposed on President Milosevic, under the threat of NATO air strikes, the Yugoslav leader agreed to withdraw some of his forces from Kosovo. The conflict cased as both sides maintained an unofficial truce.

That changed in Racak when army and police units converged on the area. As a result of the attack, the village has been transformed into a ghostly place, empty of people.

Many of its houses, cloaked by a dense fog obscuring surrounding ice- covered thickets and leafless trees, were shattered by direct fire from three T-55 tanks. Now thereare only a few dogs, braying donkeys and other barnyard animals.

One source familiar with the phone calls between military leaders in Kosovo and officials in Belgrade on Jan. 15 and succeeding days said they showed that the intent was to find three guerrillas accused in the ambush of a police convoy on Jan. 8 near Racak.

"It was a search and destroy mission" with explicit approval in Belgrade, the source said.

As tank and artillery fire and the chatter of machine - guns echoed off the hills surrounding Racak, the Belgrade political figure called the general in Kosovo, according to Western sources.

The Belgrade official was aware that the assault was under way, and he wanted to know how many people had been killed. The general replied that as of that moment the tally was 22.

In calls over the following days, the two expressed concern about the outery and discussed how to make the killings look like the result of a battle.

One measure the Belgrade official advocated in his calls was to seal Kosovo's border with Macedonia to prevent Louise Arbour, the UN war crimes tribunal prosecutor, from entering the province.

Another measure was to demand that Interior Ministry troops regain control of Racak and got the bodies Serbs assaulted the village Jan. 17. The following day they seized the bodies at a mosque in Pristina, the capital.

A third mensure was to explore whether the killings could be blamed on an independent group that supposedly came to the region and attacked the residents of Racak after government troops had left.

The official was advised that making such a claim was not feasible.

Shortly after the Jan. 15 attack, a Yugoslav spokesman said that the bodies found on the hillside were armed, uniformed members of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

The account was challenged by international inspectors and journalists who arrived on the scene Jan. 16 and found dozens of corpses on the ground, all in civilian clothes.

Governmet officials later alleged that some of the victims had been accidentally caught in cross- fire between security forces and rebels or were deliberately slain by guerrillas to provoke international outrage.

But survivors, diplomatic observers and rebels who were in the area at the time of the killings say that little shooting occurred inside the town early in the assault Jan. 15 and that no battle was under way at around 1 P.M, when most of the victims were evidently killed.

These sources say that Kosovo Liberation Army forces were not deployed near a gully where at least 23 of the bodies were found, and that none of the trees in the area bore bullet marks as would be expected after a battle.

A team of forensic pathologists that arrived in Kosovo from Finland last Friday, a week after the killings, found nothing to contradict these accounts, according to a Wester official.

" A picture is beginning to emerge from the autopsies, and it is a tragic one", said another source, explaining that the types of wound indicate they were "humiliated" before being fired on from several directions.

The last of the autopsies were expected to be completed on Wednesday, and the Finnish pathologists said their final report would be ready next week.

Their preliminary conclusion is consistent with an account given on Jan. 16 by Imri Jakupi, 32, a resident of Racak who said he escaped into the woods.

He said that he and other men had been rounded up by security forces in house - to- house scarches and ordered to walk along a ravine before troops "started shooting from the hills at us".

Villagers told inspectors and reporters at the scene on Jan. 17 that many of the dead were last seen alive in the hands of Interior Ministry troops wearing black ski masks. Survivors said they managed to recogized some local policemen and Serbian civilians in the masks.

Mr. Jakupi and another Racak resident, Rem Shabani, said they had overheard what some of what the troops were saying on their walkie- talkies as two groups of men were being led away from the village.

"How many of them are there?" one soldier asked. When the reply came back as 29, Mr. Shabani recalled, the order given was: "O.k., bring them up"."

Mr. Jakupi said he then overheard another order: "Now get ready to shoot".

He fled, he said, before the shots rang out.