US peacekeeping troops wounded two gunmen on the Kosovo-Macedonia border today as Western powers sought an effective strategy to contain new turmoil in the Balkan flashpoint.
NATO's 19 permanent ambassadors were meeting without Secretary-General George Robertson, who was due to hold talks with the Bush administration in Washington later today.
Both gatherings were expected to seek ways to stop the export of armed Albanian separatists to southern Serbia and Macedonia via "safe havens" inadvertently created by NATO's own Kosovo buffer force.
"This morning Multinational Brigade East soldiers injured two armed males after brief exchange of gunfire near the village of Mijak in Kosovo. No KFOR soldiers were injured," KFOR spokesman Richard Heffer told reporters in the Kosovo capital.
KFOR did not give the gunmen's ethnicity.
It was the first engagement between KFOR and gunmen since peacekeepers started reinforcing the border following clashes between guerrillas in the hamlet of Tanusevci on the Macedonian side and Macedonia's own security forces.
One of the injured was detained while the other, together with the rest of the group, escaped to the Macedonian side, in the direction of Tanusevci. A US military spokesman later said two gunmen were held by KFOR.