RUSSIANS BEAT NATO INTO KOSOVO; PEACEKEEPING OPERATION BEGINS AS PEOPLE CHEER.

Byline: John Kifner with Steven Lee The New York Times

NATO troops entered Kosovo on Saturday as dawn was breaking, hours after NATO was confounded by Russia's surprise entry into Pristina, the capital, which the allied forces plan to make their headquarters for returning a million local Albanians to their homes.

British paratroopers lifted off on schedule to secure strategic hills overlooking the highway to Pristina, only 60 miles away across the border.

And NATO's main advance elements, led by a British armored force, passed the border post here starting at 5:20 a.m. Brig. Adrian Freer met with the Yugoslavs to discuss last-minute details, then led his convoy, numbering about 2,000 troops, in toward Pristina.

One paratrooper, Greg Lovell, passed by a refugee camp and said ``the elation on people's faces was just unbelievable.''

Chinook helicopters took off carrying troops swept across the hilly landscape and up a river, sending off flares to deflect missiles. Other members of the contingent here are from France, Italy and the United States.

But the Russian troops' arrival in Pristina only hours before had thrown the operation into doubt. The Russians, joyously greeted by the remaining Serbs in Pristina, came from Bosnia, where they were part of the U.N. peacekeeping contingent.

Some armored vehicles had the Bosnia peacekeepers' insignia, SFOR, hastily painted over by one letter to read KFOR, the initials of the new Kosovo deployment.

Friday was a jittery day, with allied paratroopers and others at first standing on alert to enter Kosovo to block the Russians, but then backing off as senior Russian officials gave their word that their troops would not move into Kosovo.

Rumbling in the dark

With that initial assurance, NATO tanks began rumbling through Macedonia in the dark, and long columns of armored personnel carriers, ambulances and other military vehicles snaked through the streets to assembly points.

The plan called for an advance party of British paratroopers in helicopters to take the high ground on the hills overlooking the main road to Pristina.

Then an advance element led by British troops of the 4th Armored Corps, including the Irish Guards and a unit of Gurkha infantrymen, were to lead the main convoy for Pristina. They were to be followed by the other European and American units, who are to spread across specific zones in Kosovo as the Yugoslavs withdraw according to an 11-day timetable.

On Friday night the border crossing at Blace, where hundreds of thousands of refugees had been dumped from trains from Kosovo, was quiet, and a refugee transit camp down the hill was all but shut down.

Just a few hundred yards back, the allies' olive-drab military vehicles assembled in the parking lot and cleared spaces around the Europa '93 Cafe.

The French set up a communications post in a truck with towering antennas. A tent was erected for the forward headquarters of the British paratroopers and for an Italian unit with jaunty feather cockades on their helmets.

A little farther back, thousands of refugees from the Stankovic I camp spilled out in long lines on the side of the road, kept more or less in order by self-appointed monitors, to cheer the passing NATO military vehicles and anyone that appeared even vaguely associated with them.

NATO cheered

``NA-TO, NA-TO,'' the crowds chanted, quickly following up with chants for the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army.

But the arrival of the blue and white cars of the Macedonian police, many of whom have abused the refugees, was greeted by high-pitched hoots and jeers.

``We have waited for this day,'' said Bekim Mustapha, 20, a sentiment echoed by others in the crush around him.

Throughout the day Friday, allied forces were on the move in northern Macedonia, heading to forward staging areas near the mountainous border with Kosovo.

A column of British and Italian military vehicles poured from the military base near the airport at Petrovec in the afternoon.

Column after column of tanks rumbled along the main road here in Macedonia's capital, 12 miles from the border crossing at Blace, mixing with buses and cars during the evening's rush hour.

NATO troops planned to enter Kosovo from three directions, two from Macedonia and another from Albania.

British, Italian and German troops were to move north on the main road between Skopje and Pristina, led by the British paratroopers from from the 5th Airborne Brigade.

French forces were to move from the city of Kumanovo, entering Kosovo from the east, a route that would take them through Serbia proper.

A force led by German troops was to enter from Albania, crossing the border on the road between Kukes and Prizren, an area of intense fighting between Serbian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Just Friday, the German Parliament approved the deployment of 8,500 troops, the country's largest deployment since World War II.

The Americans - led by troops from the 82nd Airborne and, later, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, who continued to arrive at bases outside Petrovec - were not expected to play a major role in the initial phases of the deployment.

The intervention of NATO troops in Kosovo comes two days after Yugoslav generals agreed to the alliance's conditions to withdraw their forces from the province.

NATO and Pentagon officials said that the withdrawal had begun, based on evidence from drone planes, some of them operating out of Petrovec.

As the Yugoslavs pull out, NATO forces will follow close behind.

The operation faces myriad uncertainties, now most especially the ultimate role of the Russian troops. There are also the rebels, land mines and the thousands of Albanian refugees who never left Kosovo but have been living for the most part in dire straits.

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Photo

PHOTO (Color) Kosovo Serbs wave a Serbian flag from the top of a Russian armored personnel carrier after Russian troops enter Pristina.

Srdjan Ilic/Associated Press