Serbians

Thousands of ethnic Albanians, awakened by continuing Serbian pressure for increased control over the autonomous province of Kosovo, took to the streets in protest Monday for the fourth straight day. Undeterred by drizzling rain, the Albanians marched twice on Communist Party headquarters here in the province's capital and rallied in a soccer stadium, demanding the reinstatement of two Albanian leaders forced to resign under Serbian nationalist pressure.

Nazmi Salihu paused for a moment, then stepped forward into what just a few months ago was the belly of the beast. He was tentative at first, but his courage grew as he sifted through the hundreds of thousands of files that had exploded from their cabinets in March, when a NATO bomb ripped through the provincial headquarters of the Serbian police. The building had been secured by armed North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops until sometime last month.

Thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees were driven from a squalid camp in western Kosovo on Saturday after Serbian police in armored vehicles told them to leave the area immediately. The refugees, who had numbered as many as 40,000 near Istinic until Friday, piled on tractors to attempt to return to their villages--many of which have been razed--or to find other refugee pockets nearby.

Now that large parts of Kosovo's capital have been emptied of ethnic Albanians, the guns have gone silent by day and the city is suddenly calm. It's as if the beast, sated by an orgy of "ethnic cleansing" and looting, has lain down to rest. For a moment, at least, Pristina is quiet enough for a poet's voice to be heard. He is a Serb who wonders where his ethnic Albanian friends are, whether they are hungry and camped out in the cold and rain, or even alive.

Serbian gunmen held more than 7,000 Muslim women and children captive near Sarajevo on Wednesday, saying they will release the civilians only if Serbian forces that have attacked Bosnia-Herzegovina are allowed unhindered retreat. As the 11-month-old Yugoslav conflict degenerates into lawlessness, hostage-taking and other acts of terrorism have increasingly become the negotiating tool employed by nationalist fanatics fighting for territory and power.

Dozens of ethnic Albanian women and children fled into Kosovo on Saturday after an exchange of gunfire in a town just outside the province's border, NATO peacekeepers said. The exodus of about 175 people was the latest departure from Dobrosin, a predominantly ethnic Albanian town in southeastern Serbia. Hundreds of people have fled the area in the last two months, streaming into Gnjilane, the closest town in Kosovo, about 30 miles southeast of the provincial capital, Pristina.

The Croatian government ordered a massive mobilization Tuesday to recover territory and pride lost in battles with rival Serbia, while the renegade republic's president met with Yugoslav military officials to seek another reprieve in the escalating civil war.

Croats and Serbs battled for control of a strategic town in eastern Croatia on Wednesday, and Yugoslav leaders appealed for an end to the killing in the breakaway republic. About 30 people died Wednesday around Vukovar, 90 miles northwest of Belgrade, the nation's capital, Belgrade television said. It said federal warplanes and artillery bombarded Croatian positions. Vukovar's population of 80,000 is equally divided between Croats and Serbs.

A week ago, Serbian intellectuals were saying that Slobodan Milosevic was the first Yugoslav politician in the last eight years to recognize that former strongman Josip Broz Tito is really dead. A slight revision was in order Thursday, in the aftermath of a turbulent week in Yugoslav Communist Party politics. And it came down to this: Tito might be dead, but the system he left behind is very much intact.

Twelve people died Saturday in fighting in the Drenica region of central Kosovo, the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Information Center said . Reuters journalists saw at least one village burning in the hills in the Drenica region at dusk Saturday. Police used an armored vehicle to block a road entering the area from a main highway, and three tanks moved along the highway toward Pristina, the Kosovo capital.