Serbs hold two British policemen on terrorist allegations

Two British police officers working in Kosovo are among four Westerners the Yugoslav security forces claimed yesterday to have arrested on suspicion of aiding Montenegro to mount "terrorist acts" against Serbia.

Two British police officers working in Kosovo are among four Westerners the Yugoslav security forces claimed yesterday to have arrested on suspicion of aiding Montenegro to mount "terrorist acts" against Serbia.

The four - two British and two Canadian - were said by Belgrade to be armed, and planning to train Montenegrin police units for "terrorist acts".

They were detained on Monday night or early Tuesday near the town of Andrijevica in north-eastern Montenegro, just across the border from Kosovo where they were based, according to a Yugoslav army statement.

The Foreign Office summoned Yugoslavia's representatives in London to demand information on the arrests, about which the British Government was not officially notified. "A senior official formally protested about Belgrade's behaviour in failing to confirm the arrests," a spokesman said.

The two Britons were identified as John Yore and Adrian Prangnell, police officers stationed in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, where they were helping to train local police in a project run by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The Canadians were named as Shaun Going and his nephew, Liam Hall, who worked for the Meridian construction company, helping with the rebuilding of postwar Kosovo.

The Yugoslav army said the four, carrying military equipment and explosives, had been picked up on suspicion of espionage. There were indications, it said, that they were training special units of the Montenegrin police "and are specialists in terrorist actions".

These allegations were rejected by a spokeswoman at OSCE's headquarters in Vienna as "absolutely absurd," while OSCE officials in Kosovo said the four were not armed and were in Montenegro on holiday.

But it was not clear what they were doing in the border area. OSCE workers in Kosovo were instructed several weeks ago not to venture into Montenegro because of the risk of being picked up by the Yugoslav army, under the command of President Slobodan Milosevic.

The arrests are another sign that Mr Milosevic is stepping up the pressure on pro-Western and independence-minded Montenegro, the last surviving sister republic of Serbia in the Yugoslav federation, and will add to fears that Montenegro, after Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and most recently Kosovo, is destined to be the next war in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.