By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 11, 1998; Page A21

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, March 10—President Clinton's special representative for the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, flew into this tense city today to convey two messages to Serbians and ethnic Albanians that neither group wanted to hear.

On the one hand, Gelbard denounced the Serbian government's use of "brutal, disproportionate and overwhelming force" in its recent killings of Albanian rebels and at least 22 women and children near the town of Srbica, west of Pristina. He criticized the government for trampling on the rule of law by resorting to violence and then blocking efforts by the Red Cross and other independent groups to gain access to victims' bodies and investigate possible war crimes.

Gelbard also told a procession of Albanian political leaders, students and journalists that Washington wants the Albanian ethnic community in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, to exercise restraint in responding to the violence and the government's intransigence. He further reiterated that Washington still opposes creation of an independent Albanian state in Kosovo -- a message that went down poorly among Albanians here.

Gelbard's difficulties in reaching each group in the bitter ethnic conflict exemplifies the challenges that face the Clinton administration in becoming more deeply involved in Kosovo's polarized local politics. In recent months, officials from each group have seized on some of Washington's statements to justify their actions and condemn those of the other group.

Although many countries in Europe and elsewhere have weighed in forcefully in the past week to condemn the slayings by Serbian forces this month of more than 62 ethnic Albanians, Washington's influence here is predominant -- a circumstance that affords both unique opportunities and possible diplomatic pitfalls.

Some Albanians have said, for example, that Gelbard's condemnation last month of Albanian rebels as terrorists and Washington's approval several weeks ago of diplomatic concessions to the Yugoslav government for its policy toward neighboring Bosnia may have led Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to conclude that he could order harsh new repression in Kosovo without suffering serious consequences.

U.S. officials deny the allegation, saying that Gelbard and others clearly warned Yugoslavia not to undertake the action and raised the prospect of new sanctions if it went ahead. But some Serbian officials also have said that a U.S. threat of possible military intervention to prevent the violent repression of Albanians -- first made on Dec. 25, 1992 -- may have led Albanian rebels to conclude they could repeatedly provoke the Serbian authorities without causing a backlash.

"I have tried really hard to lower their expectations about the 'Christmas warning,' " said Richard W. Huckaby, who directs the U.S. Information Service (USIS) office in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, and frequently finds himself besieged by complaints from the two ethnic groups that Washington has unfairly tilted its policy toward the other.

Washington's importance here is enhanced not only because of the leading role the Clinton administration has assumed in diplomatic dealings with Yugoslavia over Bosnia but also because of the presence of the USIS office, which constitutes the only permanent foreign diplomatic presence in Kosovo.

The USIS office was opened over some initial State Department misgivings in 1996, four years after it was first proposed and funded by U.S. lawmakers who support the Albanian cause in Kosovo.

Huckaby, whose previous assignment was in a USIS office in South Korea that fell prey to budget cuts, has found himself struggling to ensure that neither of the two groups interprets the USIS presence here the wrong way. Serbian authorities have criticized the fact that the office is in an Albanian neighborhood. Ethnic Albanian leaders, on the other hand, have been astonished that Washington did not move in the past week toward some form of military intervention to stop the Serbian violence.

"One of our main struggles is to convince them that we really don't support independence," Huckaby said. "They just don't get it. . . . I have tried really hard to lower their expectations of me personally," and of Washington's willingness to support their dream.

The USIS office is nonetheless an important symbol for many ethnic Albanians that their concerns are being heard in a powerful foreign capital. When a group of women held a candlelight vigil on March 1 as a memorial for 16 Albanians who died in Serbian attacks near the village of Likoshani, they left their candles on the sidewalk outside the center, forming a thick cake of colored wax that remains there today.

When a crowd of thousands of women joined in a second, brief demonstration on Monday against last week's violence, they again gathered in front of the USIS center out of a conviction that the police would not dare attack there. "We think they can give us help and support us," said one of the organizers, who asked not to be named.

Washington's influence on events here may be more limited than many in Kosovo believe, however. Several U.S. officials said that when Gelbard met with Milosevic Monday night in Belgrade, hours after a group of Western nations had threatened the Yugoslav government with a series of sanctions, one of Gelbard's chief demands was that local authorities allow forensic teams to see the bodies of victims before they were buried.

But Milosevic defended what had happened, and local authorities apparently did not even wait until Gelbard had left the country to conduct the burial.

As Gelbard was traveling from Pristina to Belgrade this evening for a flight out of the country, Serbian police in Srbica buried the victims before they could be examined by independent pathologists or other experts. Family members watched as the burial proceeded without their permission, according to witnesses quoted by the Reuters news agency and a local Albanian newspaper.