Ethnic Albanian guerrillas in southern Serbia on Tuesday opened fire on a convoy driving visiting U.S. diplomats and a Kosovo peacekeeping mission top official, Beta news agency reported.
Hours later, in Belgrade, the governments of Serbia and Yugoslavia reported they had approved a plan for a peaceful settlement of the Presevo Valley crisis.
The U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, William Montgomery, Washington's Balkans envoy, James Purdue, and the political adviser to KFOR commander, Sean Sullivan, were in the convoy which came under fire. They were aiming to visit villages in the demilitarized zone bordering Kosovo.
Quoting sources from the police, Beta said automatic fire came from positions held in the village of Lucane by the Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac Liberation Army (UCPMB).
In Washington, a U.S. official confirmed the shooting, but said it was unclear who fired upon them. The official said the motorcade was not hit and no one was injured.
Someone in Montgomery's security detail heard the gunfire, and the procession then followed standard procedure and returned to Belgrade, the official said.
American diplomats earlier met Yugoslav and Serbian officials and local Albanian leaders in Bujanovac, the largest town in the volatile area.
Late Monday ethnic Albanian guerrillas had launched their fiercest attack on police and military positions in southern Serbia since November but inflicted no casualties.
The offensive in the villages of Lucane and Veliki Trnovac, both in the demilitarized zone along Serbia's administrative border with its province Kosovo, ended Monday about midnight
Federal minorities minister Rasim Ljajic, who was in the area, said the attack was "an ugly response" to the Serbian government's proposal for a peaceful solution to the crisis in the ethnically charged, Albanian-majority province.
The current wave of violence, with one casualty on the Serbian side so far, erupted after nearly two months of an uneasy truce, which was brokered by the NATO-led international peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
Meanwhile, the governments of Serbia and Yugoslavia on Tuesday separately approved a plan for a peaceful settlement of the Presevo Valley crisis, Beta reported.
The chief of the state committee in charge of southern Serbia, Nebojsa Covic, told the agency that the implementation would begin immediately, though "some factors" need to be defined more precisely.
The peace plan proposes a three-phased settlement for the Presevo Valley, beginning with reintegration of ethnic Albanians in social and political structures, followed by a gradual demilitarization of the area and its economic reconstruction and development effort.
Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic said earlier that Belgrade would negotiate with ethnic Albanian guerrilla leaders, if the local population accepts them as their representatives.
"We should talk to everybody with positive or negative influence in southern Serbia. If the Albanian community there believes that terrorists are its adequate representatives, then dialogue is possible," he told reporters after the government convened. dpa bb pr vc