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Journalism of Courage
PRISTINA, MARCH 20: Fighting flared in Kosovo today and Western embassies in Belgrade evacuated non-essential staff as the threat of NATO bombing loomed after the failure of the Paris peace talks.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said NATO action could begin in days unless Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic agreed to a peace deal with ethnic Albanians in the war-ravaged southern Serbian province.
But he also said the West was ready to reconvene peace talks any time if Belgrade decided to accept the peace package. “If there is no progress, we are looking at a time scale of a matter of days in which action can begin,” Cook said in a BBC Radio interview.
Serbian security forces, backed by armour including tanks, blocked the highway between Kosovo’s capital Pristina and Belgrade after a police station came under rebel attack, Serb sources said. Civilians were seen fleeing shelling in the hills west of Srbica in north-central Kosovo as fighting intensified in a dangerous vacuum caused by thewithdrawal of international truce monitors.
Reporters were halted by police about 10 km north of Pristina. Tanks, armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and army troops were deployed on and near the highway.
