By Shaban Buza
DEBELDE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Armed men who have engaged Macedonian security forces around an ethnic Albanian-populated village in Macedonia were seen leaving on Monday, U.S. peacekeepers in Kosovo said.
It was not immediately clear whether the apparent retreat meant an end to a crisis which Macedonia's Slav-led government said was triggered when ethnic Albanian fighters in the isolated mountain village of Tanusevci began attacking its forces a week ago.
Jim Marshal, spokesman for the U.S.-led contingent of the KFOR multinational peacekeeping force, said the men appeared to be dumping their uniforms and weapons before heading toward Kosovo.
``We saw a lot of men in black uniforms crossing into Kosovo, entering buildings, changing out of their uniforms, leaving their weapons and coming here...in civilian clothes,'' Marshal told reporters in the Kosovo village of Debelde, where U.S. troops are monitoring the trouble.
Marshal said there were believed to be between 70 and 150 men in the group. It was not clear how many had withdrawn.
``We have seen machine guns and some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and light weapons,'' he said.
Anyone who crossed into Kosovo would be detained and searched, he said. ``We will disarm them and detain them and investigate each case individually. It is up to KFOR to decide about further investigations,'' Marshal said.
``We are talking with the civilians here in Debelde to convince the armed men to hand over their weapons and finish this thing.''
Exchange Of Fire
The retreat came after Macedonian security forces exchanged fire with the guerrillas occupying a village on the border with Kosovo Monday morning. Army chiefs had consulted overnight with NATO (news - web sites) on how to flush out the gunmen, after three Macedonian soldiers were killed Sunday.
The Macedonian government had no immediate comment. It had said earlier that any action taken against the guerrillas would be coordinated with the NATO-led KFOR peace force in Kosovo and aim only to safeguard Macedonia's territorial integrity.
NATO is worried that the gunmen, emboldened by the success of the armed struggle in Kosovo, might extend it into Macedonia, a fragile ex-Yugoslav republic that escaped recent Balkan wars.
Macedonia, a Slav-dominated country with a large ethnic Albanian minority, appealed for NATO's help over the emergence of the guerrillas about two weeks ago, saying they threatened its fragile demographic balance.
Macedonia's western and southern neighbors, Bulgaria and Greece, as well as fellow-Orthodox Russia have called on the international community to help stop the guerrillas.
KFOR has a back-up mission in Macedonia but says its mandate is only to provide logistical help to the peacekeepers who replaced Serbian security forces in Kosovo after 11 weeks of NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia in 1999, conducted to stop Belgrade's repression of the province's Albanian majority.
But after panic calls from Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski to NATO Secretary-General George Robertson, NATO said it was stepping up patrols on the Kosovo side of the border.
Five U.S. armored combat vehicles, two armored medical vehicles and nine all-terrain Humvee jeeps arrived in Debelde on Monday morning, and two U.S. Apache helicopters were flying overhead observing the area.
A group of KFOR soldiers had earlier set off toward Tanusevci. When they returned, they said they had been talking to villagers, but did not make clear whether they had reached Tanusevci or spoken to the gunmen.
The gunmen have not identified themselves or issued any demands. Ethnic Albanian politicians in Macedonia, where five government ministers are Albanian, say the clashes on the border threaten their hard-won political gains and the improvements achieved in their uneasy relations with the Slav majority.
Sunday, Macedonia asked for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council to approve a three-mile buffer zone inside Kosovo on the border with Macedonia in which KFOR would strictly control any movement of people and supplies.