Hungry villagers still fear Serb police

THE VILLAGE of Jezerc, high in the hills of central Kosovo, is probably one of the most remote places in Europe - and an ideal place to see the scale of the task facing the international aid agencies in Serbia's southern province.

We made the last part of the journey there on foot, following officials from the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, and leaving trucks laden with humanitarian aid at the bottom of the treacherous dirt road to the village.

The people descended with horses to collect the supplies. Yesterday was the first time that aid convoys had gone out since deliveries were suspended a week ago because of security fears, as the West threatened air strikes against Yugoslavia.

"We will have to come here again because they don't have enough to survive the winter," said the Danish leader of the aid convoy, Carsten Pontoppidan. "Their crops were burnt, so they are really in need of the help we are bringing them today."

The international community hopes that the arrival of 2,000 "verification monitors" for Kosovo will give the thousands of refugees still in the hills the confidence to return to their villages. The scene in Jezerc yesterday showed that this will go only half way to dealing with the humanitarian disaster afflicting the ethnic Albanian population.

Many of the houses in Jezerc were just piles of rubble. One man, Nebih Ukesmajli, said he had been sleeping in the garden with his five children. People in the village insisted the police had burnt their houses deliberately, arriving on foot to set them on fire after 10 days of shelling.

Serbian officials say they want refugees to return to their homes, and claim many are being forced to stay away because they fear being labelled as collaborators by the Kosovo Liberation Army. They deny that Yugoslav forces have used excessive force in dealing with "terrorists".

The international monitoring mission is designed to reassure ethnic Albanians that Yugoslav forces will never again be given free rein in Kosovo. Britain said yesterday that it would send 200 observers for the mission being assembled by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) as well as two Canberra bombers for air surveillance.

The Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, brushed off a suggestion that unarmed OSCE observers could become vulnerable pawns, saying: "We are standing behind these people and we will not tolerate any threat to their security."