Nato Troops

BELGRADE, Serbia and Montenegro - The turmoil in Kosovo eased yesterday as NATO, determined to prevent nationalist strife from again destabilizing the Balkans, deployed more troops into villages marred by gunfire and streaked with smoke rising from Serbian homes set ablaze by ethnic Albanian mobs. With its credibility in jeopardy after three days of violence, the alliance became more aggressive in quelling uprisings, especially in the ethnically divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica. Germany and France announced that they were sending 1,000 additional peacekeepers to Kosovo.

DJENERAL JANKOVIC, Yugoslavia -- The 15 members of the Kosovo Liberation Army came down out of the hills, walking at an easy gait, barely noticing the ransacked houses and smashed storefronts that the Serbs had left behind in this little town just across the border from Macedonia.They were met by the Royal Gurkha Rifles, a British army unit made up of volunteers from Nepal, who had crossed into Kosovo at 5: 07 a.m. yesterday, the vanguard of an international army that will in time add up to 48,000 soldiers.

ILIDZA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- NATO commanders ordered reinforcements yesterday to quell mounting lawlessness and arson in the two remaining Serb-held suburbs of Sarajevo, which are to be handed over to the Bosnian-Croatian federation within the next 10 days.Gangs of young Serbian toughs, many brandishing weapons, moved about the suburbs of Ilidza and Grbavica yesterday, lighting fires and threatening Serbs who refused to leave.Bosnian government firefighters, escorted by NATO troops, struggled to put out about a dozen fires, including blazes in clothing and bicycle factories, the police station, a pharmacy and many apartment buildings.

WASHINGTON -- The American admiral who will command the 60,000-strong NATO peace-implementation force in Bosnia will wield some of the most sweeping powers ever given to a military commander outside of war.He will have authority to use force to carry out every major element of the peace agreement, from the transfer of territory to the withdrawal of troops, from military-base inspections to the control of air space.But despite such wide-ranging power, the NATO force, which will include up to 20,000 U.S. troops, faces potential dangers and casualties.

. The Air Force has conducted more than 2,000 airstrikes in Afghanistan over the past six months, a sharp increase in bombing that reflects the growing demand for U.S. air cover since NATO has assumed a larger ground combat role, Air Force officials said. The intensifying air campaign has focused on southern Afghanistan, where NATO units, primarily from Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, as well as U.S. Special Forces have been engaging in the heaviest and most frequent ground combat with Taliban rebels since the invasion five years ago. The NATO forces are mostly operating without heavy armor or artillery support, and as Taliban resistance has continued, more air support has been used to compensate for the lightness of the units, Air Force officials said.

WASHINGTON -- At the end of the air war over Yugoslavia, President Clinton and America's European allies may be forced to accept what none of them now publicly acknowledges: a partition of Kosovo that offers a protected enclave to ethnic Albanians and gives the rest to Serbia.This may offer the only way to avoid three tougher choices, analysts say.One is a ground war requiring tens of thousands of NATO troops to drive President Slobodan Milosevic's forces out of Kosovo.Another is an all-out bombing campaign that hits Yugoslavia's most sensitive targets and Serbia's electrical supply, regardless of the consequences to civilians.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration is making preliminary plans for deploying up to 20,000 U.S. ground troops to help with U.N. peacekeeping efforts in the Bosnia if talks in Geneva produce a peace accord to end the bitter conflict, say U.S. officials.But President Clinton said no final decision will be made on the precise number of troops and how they will be deployed until he is certain that any peace agreement is "fair, fully embraced by the Bosnian government, and is enforceable."

KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S. warplanes accidentally strafed Canadian troops fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan early yesterday, killing one soldier and wounding several, NATO officials said. The friendly fire incident happened near Panjwayi, where NATO troops have been fighting a pitched battle with the Taliban for three days, part of Operation Medusa. Yesterday morning, NATO troops called for close air support. Two U.S. A-10 aircraft responded but hit the Canadian forces with cannons by mistake, NATO officials said.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- As NATO troops replace U.S. forces on southern Afghanistan's battlefields, insurgents are waging a suicide bombing campaign that appears aimed at shaking the alliance's public support in Europe and Canada. The test of wills threatens to set back the U.S.-led war on terrorism in Afghanistan more than four years after the Taliban regime was toppled, American and Afghan analysts warn. Suicide bombings were rare in Afghanistan until fall, when NATO began debating a move into southern Afghanistan.