The refugees say the campaign against them is being conducted by Yugoslav forces and paramilitary groups which moved there after retreating from Kosovo.

A UNHCR team sent to investigate the situation said it was clear the presence and behaviour of Yugoslav troops in the border area had led to serious problems.

10,000 students attended the re-opening of Kosovo University

Agency spokesman Ron Redmond said the refugees had told the UNHCR that the intimidation included "harassment, beatings, expulsions, looting and threatened murder".

The refugees said Albanian women have also been threatened with abuse and some said one woman was violated in their presence, according to Mr Redmond.

"We can't confirm these allegations, but we give them some credence because we've heard them from enough people," he said.

News of the Albanians' flight from Serbia came one day after the entire Serb population of a Kosovo village left en masse, fearing intimidation from their Kosovo Albanian neighbours.

Serbs from the village of Zitinje joined a convoy of refugees leaving the province on Sunday, and were escorted north to Serbia by K-For peacekeepers.

Divided city

The UN has convened the first meeting of representatives of ethnic Albanians and Serbs in the divided Kosovo city of Mitrovica.

The city, in the north-east of the province, is effectively partitioned between the two ethnic groups and has the largest remaining Serb community in Kosovo.

Orla Guerin in Mitrovica: Albanian children already see Serbs as their enemy

The meeting was disrupted when the British UN administrator in the town, Sir Martin Garrod, had to be taken to hospital with a suspected heart attack.

He has previously served as the EU administrator of another divided city, that of Mostar in Bosnia.

Earlier Sir Martin opened a new multi-ethnic nursery school, but the ceremony was boycotted by Serbs unwilling to cross the bridge which divides the two communities.

Back to school

In the provincial capital Pristina, ethnic Albanian students and professors have returned to Kosovo University for the first time in eight years.

The Albanians left when Serb authorities banned teaching in Albanian at the university in 1991.

Addressing a crowd of several thousand students, University Rector Zenel Kelmendi said the university would not exclude anyone in the future.

But for the moment, the university says, all classes will be held in Albanian.

Monday also saw the re-opening of Pristina's post office, whose first job is to rebuild the province's damaged and outdated telecommunications system.

Anti-Milosevic protest

In Serbia itself, several thousand people attended an opposition demonstration in the western town of Valjevo.

Waiting at a roadblock on the highway between Belgrade and Zrenjanin

It was the latest in a series of anti-government protests calling for the resignation of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, organised by the Alliance for Change.

Earlier Serbian police broke up a roadblock, at Dunavac some 30km north of Belgrade, set up by farmers calling for the resignation of the Agriculture Minister, Nedeljko Sipovac.