A ceasefire was holding in northern Kosovo yesterday after four days of clashes between Belgrade's forces and the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Podujevo, the main town in northern Kosovo, and the surrounding area, where the clashes occurred, were calm, with no sound of gunfire.
The fighting around Podujevo has left 16 dead on the Albanian side and one dead and six wounded among the Serbs, according to semi-official sources.
The town's Serb mayor, Mr Srbislav Bisercic, told reporters that earlier yesterday he had met Mr Vladimir Aleksandrov, of the OSCE's Kosovo verification mission, urging him to try to evacuate 13 Serbs who remained in three villages controlled by the KLA - Obrandza, Lapastica and Velika Reka.
The mission's head, Mr William Walker, yesterday left Pristina for Vienna for a series of meetings at the headquarters of the OSCE, before leaving for Washington.
In Belgrade yesterday experts said that President Slobodan Milosevic had tightened his grip on Yugoslavia's armed forces with a high-level purge that coincided with a resurgence of the KLA.
Mr Milosevic announced over the weekend a major shake-up of some 20 key military posts, including the senior army command in Kosovo. They followed November's dismissal of the army chief of staff, Gen Momcilo Perisic, and the commander of air defences, Gen Ljubisa Velickovic.
Those who were sacked on Saturday were considered loyal to Gen Perisic, sources close to the military said.