VRANJE, Yugoslavia — European Union observers said Saturday that the volatile Presevo Valley on the border of Kosovo was a very pressing concern to the 15-nation alliance.
"Presevo Valley is the most important worry of the EU," Franck Placon, the chief of the EU monitoring mission, told reporters after talks with police, army and local activists.
The Presevo Valley is one of the most important crossing points between southern Serbia and Kosovo, the Serbian province put under international control last year after NATO's bombing campaign to end repression of its ethnic Albanian majority.
Four Serbian police officers were killed in an upsurge in fighting between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serbian security forces in the area last week, alarming Yugoslavia's new leaders and Western powers hoping for a new era of peace in the Balkans.
"The situation is calm, but we have to gather additional information. Then I shall be able to assess the situation," Placon said after talks with police, army and civil representatives.
Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic had suggested on Friday that EU monitors could observe the area to offer an impartial view of the situation there.
Placon said his team visited all positions that were accessible to them up to the line controlled by the Serbian police in the village of Lucane.
"We saw what local authorities wished to show us," he said.
The guerrillas operating in the three-mile buffer zone next to the border say they are fighting to protect ethnic Albanians in the boundary area from Serbian police harassment.
Belgrade denounces the rebels as separatists intent on uniting the Preservo Valley with ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo, a view that seems to have gained credibility since Yugoslavia's new reformist President Vojislav Kostunica took power. Western powers in the NATO military allowance last year launched three months of air strikes on Yugoslavia to halt Serbian repression under Kostunica's autocratic predecessor Slobodan Milosevic of Kosovo's Albanians
Serbia's view of the guerrillas has won increasing support from Western powers, and NATO has pledged a crackdown on the rebels.