Natural Sound British forces were close to reaching the Kosovar capital, Pristina on Saturday afternoon after having experienced delays earlier. Paratroopers and Ghurkas had reached the key town of Urosevac, over 40 kilometres outside of Pristina by midday. They had swept into Kosovo unopposed at dawn from Macedonia to secure the hillsides and the main road north to Pristina, building up momentum for "Operation Joint Guardian", one of Europe's biggest military undertakings since World War Two. The NATO-led peacekeeping force, authorized by theUnited Nations, is due to reach 50,000 troops. Operation Joint Guardian began when Chinook and Puma helicopters flew across the border, carrying members of Britain's Gurkha rifle regiment and paratroopers to secure mountain positions along the route. The Gurkha's are elite Nepalese infantrymen. British and French troops were spearheading the initial thrust of the NATO-dominated Kosovo force (K-FOR), with German, U.S. and Italian forces due to move in later. But progress of the vanguard units was slowed as mine clearance experts searched for explosives left behind by Serb forces retreating under the terms of a deal reached between Yugoslavia and NATO. K-FOR launched its operation three days after NATO generals and Yugoslav officers reached an agreement on a Serbian pullout and an end to an 11-week alliance bombing campaign. NATO's air bombardment of Yugoslavia was launched on March 24 to halt what the West termed Serbia's "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, which has seen more than one million people displaced from their homes. You can license this story through AP Archive: www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/feb1f43467205269818bbb9b74cc1968 Find out more about AP Archive: www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork

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