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Crisis talks on Kosovo tension

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- NATO leaders have met to address increasing tension on the Kosovo border after fresh violence in the troubled region.

Three Yugoslav soldiers were killed and one other seriously injured on Wednesday when their vehicle hit a land mine near the Kosovo boundary with Serbia.

The incident came hours after two people were wounded in a gun battle involving KFOR troops near Kosovo's border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

NATO's 19 permanent ambassadors met in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss the situation, while NATO Secretary-General George Robertson was in the U.S. for talks with the Bush administration on ending the unrest.

The U.N. Security Council also tackled the issue, with Macedonia's Foreign Minister Srgam Kerim asked the council to support the deployment of NATO peacekeepers along his country's border with Kosovo.

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ALSO

Powell-Robertson discuss instability along Kosovo border

Meanwhile, Yugoslav Prime Minister Zoran Zizic called on Kosovo's ethnic Albanian community to start immediate talks with his government in an effort to resolve the troubles.

The call came following private talks between Zizic and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Zizic added: "I am ready to talk to the representatives of Kosovo Albanians, under the auspices of the secretary-general of the United Nations."

Serbia's information minister said the Yugoslav soldiers killed on Wednesday had been travelling in the village of Oreovica, on the edge of the Presevo Valley buffer zone between the province of Kosovo and the rest of Serbia.

Their jeep hit a landmine at 1.30 p.m. local time (1230 GMT). Two soldiers died at the scene, while another died later.

The earlier shooting incident on the Macedonia border, meanwhile, was the first armed engagement involving KFOR troops since the peacekeepers started reinforcing the border last week to help contain an ethnic Albanian insurgency.

A patrol of U.S., Polish, Ukrainian and Lithuanian peacekeepers had taken control of Mijak, a Kosovo town adjoining the flashpoint Macedonian village of Tanusevci.

The commander of the U.S.-led contingent, Tom Gross, said peacekeepers had seen men aiming their weapons at KFOR soldiers and that "we engaged them with direct fire."

KFOR spokesman Richard Heffer told CNN that Multinational Brigade East soldiers injured two armed males after a brief exchange of gunfire. No KFOR soldiers were injured.

"The security situation is obviously tense," he said. "We have continued our heightened operations along the Kosovo border to ensure that the violence we have observed does not spread into Kosovo.

"We will not allow Kosovo to be a safe haven for armed groups. I think the incident today shows that where necessary KFOR will take robust action against illegal activity on our side of the border."

One of the injured was detained while the other escaped to the Macedonian side along with the rest of the group.

It is believed they fled in the direction of the village of Tanusevci, focal point for clashes between Macedonian troops and ethnic-Albanian gunmen in the last 10 days.

A senior western military envoy to Macedonia later told CNN that his forces had the situation in a volatile border zone "under control" after intensified efforts to isolate and identify extremists in the area.

Daniel Speckhard, NATO's envoy to Macedonia, told CNN that "strong and aggressive efforts" to stabilise the area meant the incident was quickly brought under control.

But he downplayed suggestions that the conflict would spread or that additional security measures will be needed.

"KFOR will continually monitor the situation and make those assessments as they can, but you can't really do much more than is already being done," he said.

The gun battle came a day after NATO said it may allow Yugoslav forces to help keep ethnic Albanian rebels out of Macedonia.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.