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PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) NATO said Wednesday that it fears more violence could erupt in Kosovo after sightings in several communities of bogus lists of Serb suspected war criminals.
The lists some of which bore the name of the banned Kosovo Liberation Army or local self-declared ethnic Albanian police units appeared to be the latest form of vigilante action against the province's dwindling Serb minority.
''Our concern is that you could have people killed by the fact that someone hates someone else and puts their name on a list,'' Maj. Roland Lavoie said.
He said the lists of ''alleged war criminals'' are illegal and dangerous. He urged Kosovo's people ''not to take justice in their own hands'' either by publishing such lists or by hunting down those on them.
Ethnic Albanians consider many Serbs to be war criminals for the crackdown that left 10,000 people dead before ending in June with the pullout of Serb forces and the entry of NATO.
Such posters are bound to strengthen Serb determination to defend themselves, adding to already high ethnic tensions in the province and blocking international attempts to establish cooperation between the two hostile groups.
The United Nations has rejected Serb plans, announced Monday, to set up self-rule in parts of the province and create Serb cantons and an all-Serb defense force.
''They will not form a Serb protection corps,'' Bernard Kouchner, the U.N. administrator of Kosovo, told reporters Wednesday. ''It is impossible. It is against the regulation of the U.N. mission and it is unnecessary.''
He spoke after attending a session of the Kosovo Transitional Council, the committee working with the United Nations and NATO to administer the province. The council also rejected any formation of a Serb corps. But its statement was weakened because Serbs are boycotting the council to underline their security concerns.
Serb leaders argue that their own secure enclaves and protection force are the only way to prevent the remaining Serbs from fleeing the province. Estimates of remaining Serbs vary from 20,000 to 100,000, down from 200,000 before a mass exodus prompted by revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians following the end of NATO's bombing.
Still, NATO said Wednesday that some Serbs were returning to areas that the NATO-led peacekeepers were protecting. Lavoie spoke of ''thousands'' coming back in the east, west and north of the province.
At the same time, he detailed more attacks on Serbs. Unknown assailants hit Serb houses in the eastern village of Migola on Tuesday with rocket-propelled grenade and automatic weapons fire. Serbs returned fire, he said. In another incident, a Serb man was wounded by a shot to the chest in Urosevac, a U.S.-controlled town south of Pristina.
In New York, Yugoslavia protested to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for his ''unacceptable'' failure to meet the country's official representatives during his first visit to Kosovo last week.
During his visit, Annan met Serb and ethnic Albanian community leaders as well as key NATO and international officials. The secretary-general also dashed ethnic Albanian hopes of quick independence, saying that Kosovo under U.N. administration would remain part of Yugoslavia.