By Christine Spolar
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 4, 1998; Page A01

TROPOJE, Albania, June 3—The hillsides around this north Albanian village crackled with gunfire this morning. Target practice, residents explained. Older men, veterans of the Yugoslav army, were teaching their sons and nephews how to pull the trigger, preparing to send them off to Kosovo to do battle against the Serbs.

As the fighting intensifies in the Serbian province, forcing thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees to flee to Albania, the towns of this border region are taking on the appearances of armed camps. Cafes and streets are filled with sullen men, speaking Albanian, German, even English, armed with automatic weapons and dressed in camouflage uniforms. Some lead mules loaded with boxes of ammunition toward the mountains -- and on to Kosovo.

The conflict in Kosovo reached Albania for the first time this week, prompting fears -- expressed for nearly a decade but never realized -- that it could ignite a broader Balkan war. It appeared today that the villages in this region were already being drawn into the conflict, at least as bases of supply for separatist guerrillas fighting Serbian security forces.

A week-long Serbian offensive against ethnic Albanian villages just north of here in Kosovo also is prompting belligerent statements from the Albanian government. Prime Minister Fatos Nano accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic Tuesday of practicing ethnic cleansing against Kosovo's Albanian majority, and he suggested that Albania may be rethinking its moderate position on the province's independence demands.

"As Milosevic is giving no sign he wants to refrain from force, the Albanian government thinks it should reconsider its policies toward the players in this crisis," Nano said, according to the Reuters news service.

Rather than supporting independence for Kosovo -- a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of the two that make up Yugoslavia -- Nano's government has taken the Western position of advocating autonomy for the region within the Yugoslav state. Moreover, the Albanian government has avoided contact with Kosovo's separatist guerrilla movement, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

But Nano indicated that position could change. "In Kosovo, people have taken up arms in self-defense, and their organization structure is a reality that should not be ignored," Nano said.

Western governments today expressed alarm at the reports of Serbian assaults on Kosovo border villages, which began last Thursday. NATO ambassadors met in Brussels to consider whether to deploy combat troops to Albania and Macedonia -- which has its own sizable ethnic Albanian minority -- although they indicated a decision is not imminent. "We are keeping all options open," NATO Secretary General Javier Solana said, according to the Associated Press.

In Washington, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin raised the possibility of additional economic sanctions against Yugoslavia. "One does feel like the movie called 'Ethnic Cleansing' is replaying itself," Rubin said.

At least 5,000 refugees from Kosovo, fleeing the Serbian assault, have poured into Albania in the past few days, according to international relief agencies and Albanian officials. Tropoje, three miles from the border, has become the nerve center for all refugee aid. The lone school in town has been turned into a homeless shelter; the only mosque is a registration center for food distribution.

Since the conflict in Kosovo erupted in late February when Serbian forces attacked villages in western Kosovo, killing at least 80 people, refugees from Kosovo have been meeting here with their ethnic brethren from Albania and elsewhere to plan their response. Today, the town is seething with anger and vows of revenge. At least 200 people have been killed in fighting across the border in the past three months. Dozens reportedly died in the last week.

"All the men 20 years and older will fight. . . . I'm going back as soon as I get my family settled," said one 50-year-old man from the Kosovo village of Batusha, which he said was shelled three days ago.

Men in this town and others in the region deny any link to the Kosovo Liberation Army. Some criticized its supporters. But nearly everyone here expressed support for the right of the guerrilla group to fight for an independent Kosovo. In the past weeks, they've been buoyed by words from Albanian politicians, including former president Sali Berisha, who acknowledged the existence of the guerrilla group and urged people to support Kosovo's Albanians.

One 52-year-old man said that his village, Vorksha, which was attacked in recent days, had no organized guerrilla resistance but that many men there had served in the Yugoslav army. "I've come to lead the young men out," he said. "Twenty men are left in the village in a position to fight. I'm going back to help them."

The man said the Kosovo Liberation Army "can't be considered an equal to the Serbian army. They don't have the weapons or the organization. The more they fight, though, the more people join." Military analysts have said the guerrilla group is made up of perhaps 500 hard-core members who benefit from the support of about 3,000 people.

The guerrillas also have the support in ethnic Albanian communities in western Europe and the United States. The ferry that plys Albania's Adriatic coast linking the north with Tirana, the capital, has been filled this week from young men, some from Kosovo.

Niki Krasmiqi, who left Kosovo nearly 10 years ago and owns a pizza shop in New York, said he flew to Albania this week to check on his family. His business success has allowed him to support Kosovo's guerrilla movement, he said, adding that he donates money regularly and has made five trips to Albania to see how else he can help.

"What's the KLA? The KLA is people like me," Krasmiqi said. "They are people who want Kosovo to be free. A country with rights. It's people who support the idea that no matter how many people are killed, we know the Albanians are going to come out on top."