Nato peacekeepers called in Mr Thaci when the crowds, chanting "I will die for Kosovo", attempted to barge through a line of French K-For troops in the town of Mitrovica.

The French peacekeepers had to push and shove the marchers to keep them off a bridge which separates the town's Albanian and Serb districts.

The demonstration was led by doctors who said they wanted their old jobs back in the town's hospitals in the Serb-held district. Other marchers said their homes on the other side had been take by Serbs.

Hashim Thaci: looking to the future, not to the past

After climbing on top of a military jeep, Mr Thaci, the leader of the self-declared Kosovo Albanian provisional government, took a loudspeaker and urged the crowd to go home.

"We want to solve our problems by peaceful means," he told them.

Mr Thaci was accompanied by UN special envoy for Kosovo, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who said the march "would be a disaster" if it were to go ahead.

But a BBC correspondent in the town says Nato peacekeepers could not prevent Kosovo Albanians destroying the nearby homes of gypsies, who are considered allies of the Serbs.

The gypsy area, about a mile from the bridge, has been looted and set on fire.

'We can live together'

During his visit to Mitrovica Mr Thaci met Bishop Artemije of the Serbian Orthodox Church. He described their talks as the first positive signs that ethnic Albanians and Serbs could live together.

"I am happy to have been able to meet Serbian Orthodox Bishop Artemiji and opponents of Slobodan Milosevic. We spoke neither of the past nor of history, but of Kosovo's future,'' he said in remarks broadcast on French television.

''These were the first positive signs that we can live together, that we can make a go of it, and that we can build a democratic civil society in Kosovo.''