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Friday, November 24 11:13 PM SGT

Serb police under siege in village near Kosovo border

LUCANE, Yugoslavia, Nov 24 (AFP) -

As the crack of rifle fire rings out from the wooded hills the Serbian policemen
duck for cover, piling
in behind their armoured car one hundred metres (yards) outside Lucane, an
ethnic Albanian village
near Serbia's border with Kosovo.

The hills around the village are in the hands of separatist rebels. The police
hold only the entry to the
village, where 30 camouflaged anti-terrorist officers and an APC fitted with a
12 millimetre cannon
block the guerrillas' route to Bujanovac, one of the three main towns in the
disputed border region.

Three miles (five kilometres) beyond this new front line lies the border village
of Konculj, which the
police abandoned in "chaotic" circumstances late Wednesday under heavy mortar
fire from the
rebels -- the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medveda and Bujanovac (UCPMB).

The guerrillas, who are thought to be backed by former members of the Kosovo
Liberation Army,
want to unite the Presevo valley region and its 70,000 strong ethnic Albanian
majority with a future
independent Kosovo.

The group launched a new offensive on Tuesday, three days ahead of the Balkans
Summit between
European and regional leaders in Zagreb, and succeeded in cutting off the Lucane
to Konculj road,
which normally sees 80 lorries pass every day.

From behind a mound of earth an officer watches the hills around the besieged
village. Men can be
seen moving through the undergrowth, and off on his flank a guerrilla on
horseback reconnoiters the
terrain.

He orders the men around him to get into cover behind a house.

Until Wednesday the hills, just inside the three-mile (five-kilometre)
demilitarised buffer zone
between Serbian forces and Kosovo's NATO-led peacekeeping troops, were still in
Serb hands.
Now the police fear the peace deal Yugoslavia signed last year with the alliance
has deprived them
of the means to retake them.

Under the deal, only Serbian local police are allowed to patrol the border area
rather than Yugoslav
army troops, and the patrols are forbidden from using arms more powerful than
the 12 millimetre gun
deployed at Lucane.

Faced with a guerrilla force which has managed to acquire, often through
smuggling runs from
Kosovo, heavy mortars, rocket propelled grenades and heavy machine guns, the
Serb police "could
hold out no longer," an officer told AFP.

"We're up against 400 hardened fighters," he declared.

If only they could get "the green light" to unleash their own arsenal of
weapons, they would be able
to reopen the road and take back the territory lost to the rebels, he claimed,
and they are hoping that
the leaders meeting in Zagreb might bring pressure to bear on NATO to give them
some leeway.

"Let's hope Europe won't abandon its traditional ally in favour of the most
primitive people on the
continent," the policeman said, crossing himself and praying to God for the big
guns to be rolled out.

In Belgrade, one of Serbia's three interior ministers said KFOR had 72 hours to
put down the
uprising or they would send in more troops with superior weapons.