MORBID DISCOVERY; NATO PEACEKEEPERS FAN OUT IN KOSOVO.

Byline: Melissa Eddy Associated Press 

Ducking at the sound of gunfire, patrolling cautiously to avoid the ire of Serbs, thousands of NATO peacekeepers spread out Monday across Kosovo. Some uncovered grim evidence of atrocities as they tightened their control of the province.

Serb forces complying with the pullout ordered by NATO to end the 78-day air war mixed in with civilians fleeing in columns up to 500 vehicles long. Some ethnic Albanian homes were set ablaze by Serb troops leaving Kosovo.

Aiming to bring a measure of stability to the province shattered by war and a long history of ethnic hatred, NATO and U.S. forces sought to downplay the impasse over about 200 Russian soldiers occupying the Pristina airfield where the allies planned to establish headquarters.

NATO lead commander Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson insisted the airfield wasn't crucial to occupying forces though the White House said Defense Secretary William Cohen and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will meet their Russian counterparts in Helsinki, Finland, within days.

Kosovo's Serbs fear that the majority ethnic Albanians will take bloody revenge on them for years of oppression and for reported atrocities. The West, meanwhile, fears that a Russian zone will lead to the partition of Kosovo.

Refugees who began streaming out of Kosovo after the NATO bombing campaign began March 24 told of Serb slaughter and the massacre of innocent victims.

The accounts could not be independently confirmed at the time and one of the peacekeepers' grueling tasks will be to investigate what happened. On Monday, they gingerly probed the town cemetery in Kacanik, where the stench of decayed flesh hung heavy over 81 apparently newly dug graves.

British Capt. Andy Reeds said war crimes investigators would be called in to examine the site, 30 miles south of Pristina.

Peacekeepers continued to pour into the battered Serbian province from neighboring Macedonia and Albania, and officials said about 15,000 allied troops had entered Kosovo by Monday.

``The deployment of (NATO peacekeepers) is on schedule,'' said NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana. ``The withdrawal of the Serbian forces is also on time.''

A convoy of 1,200 U.S. Marines began crossing just south of Kacanik at first light, and U.S. forces took over the area, including the site of the graves, from the British troops.

``We were all a little edgy going in,'' said Cpl. Will Rapier, 20, of Paintsville, Ky., with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines. ``We just hope to get this thing over so we can all go home.''

Despite the tensions, Monday's troop movements went off without a repeat of Sunday's pair of fatal confrontations, when soldiers shot a Serb in Pristina and German forces killed one man and wounded another after the men fired at them from a car in the city of Prizren.

On Monday, Serb citizens poured out of Prizren, Kosovo's second-largest city, taunted by ethnic Albanians who erupted into a wild victory celebration.

German soldiers disarmed several members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group, as they tried to seize wounded Serb soldiers at the main Prizren hospital.

The KLA is supposed to demilitarize under the Kosovo peace agreement, but the group boldly set up an office in Pristina on Monday.

The private news agency Beta reported Monday that three Serbs were killed by men wearing KLA armbands in a suburb of Pristina. The Serb-run Media Center said it had a report of five people killed in the same suburb but did not have details.

The center blamed the KLA for the shooting death of a Serb employee of Pristina's television station in front of his home Monday night in the Taslidze section of the city. The Serb report gave no other details of the attack.

In an interview distributed Monday by the rebels' Kosova Press agency, senior guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci said the Russians were unwelcome in Kosovo and demanded they leave. He warned that the KLA ``will not guarantee their security.''

``Their uninvited entrance may stir more conflict in Kosovo that we do not want to happen,'' he said.

Thaci also claimed that the KLA is not required to demilitarize. However, the peace accord calls from the group to disarm.

Italian troops entered the city of Pec, the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo and the scene of some of the grimmest accounts of slaughter in recent months.

Yugoslav troops withdrew from the city Monday after a spree of home-burnings and alleged rapes, whooping on the way out.

Two German journalists were shot to death by unidentified gunman Sunday 15 miles south of Pristina. The German newsweekly Stern identified them as photographer Volker Kraemer, 56, and reporter Gabriel Gruener, 35. The magazine said the team's interpreter was missing.

In Pristina, an impasse over its strategic airport continued.

Russia's role in the envisaged 50,000-member peacekeeping force, which includes 7,000 Americans, was not clearly defined in the peace plan. A contingent of 200 Russian troops arrived unexpectedly from Bosnia on Saturday, ahead of NATO troops, and took control of the airport.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo: (1 -- color) British army Capt. Andy Phipps looks at a mass grave in Kacanik, Kosovo. The bodies of 99 ethnic Albanians are believed buried there.

Dimitri Messinis/Associated Press

(2 -- color) Dozens of ethnic Albanians stream out of their hiding places in Kosovo near Glogovac on Monday as NATO peacekeepers begin moving in.

Associated Press