During their recent push to take back strategic highways from the Kosovo Liberation Army, Serbian forces have pursued a campaign feared to resemble the atrocities of the Bosnian conflict. After a background report, Elizabeth Farnsworth leads a discussion of the Serb's latest offensive and whether the U.S. and its allies can do anything to prevent ethnic cleansing in the breakaway Serbian province.

CHARLES KRAUSE: The current Serb offensive began 13 days ago. That's when the government in Belgrade ordered Yugoslav army and police units in Kosovo to retake strategic highways throughout the rebellious province.

Since then, the offensive has gone far beyond the limited objectives initially described by the government. According to reports from Kosovo, government troops have now captured -- and in many cases looted and destroyed -- scores of towns and cities populated by ethnic Albanians. One of those cities, Malisevo, which fell last week, was said to have been an important stronghold of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Known as the KLA, the ethnic Albanian rebels are fighting for Kosovo's independence from Serbia and are believed to have significant support among Kosovo's Albanian majority. For the past two weeks, government army and police units have moved relentlessly against both rebel positions and Albanian civilians, many of them non-combatants who've been killed or forced from their homes.

Although opposed to the rebels' demand for an independent Kosovo, the United States and the other western powers have nonetheless condemned the current Serb offensive.

U.S. SEC. OF DEFENSE WILLIAM COHEN: A very strong signal has been sent to Mr. Milosevic that he and his forces are not to engage in the wanton exercise of power against innocent civilians, and that still remains the case.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Faced with growing criticism and international pressure, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic told a group of European diplomats last Thursday that he'd ordered an end to the offensive. Yet, despite that promise in Belgrade, army and police units have continued their attacks in Kosovo.

Meanwhile, UN and other relief agencies estimate the fighting has left more than 200,000 ethnic Albanians homeless. The massive refugee crisis has been further aggravated by the government's reported refusal to allow relief workers access to many of the displaced Albanians.

At the State Department yesterday, Spokesman James Rubin repeated earlier warnings that NATO is in the final stages of contingency planning that would allow the United States and its allies to intervene militarily, if that decision should be made.

JAMES RUBIN, State Department spokesman: The point of all this is to minimize the time between a decision by the political decision makers and the time when NATO would be in a position to act. So these plans are being both finalized and operationalized, so that NATO will be in a position to act quickly if a political decision to do so is made.

CHARLES KRAUSE: There were reports today of a mass grave where Albanian corpses-many of them reportedly children-were found buried near the town of Orahovac. The town was captured by Serb forces last month after heavy fighting. But later day a European Union Observer Mission said it could find no evidence of mass graves in the town, while Serbian police officials claim that those buried in Orahovac had been KLA guerrillas, killed during the fighting.