SKOPJE (Reuters) - NATO‘s commander expects to be in Pristina on Saturday after his forces sweep into Kosovo and secure the main road from the Macedonian border to the provincial capital, a military source said on Friday. Lieutenant-General Sir Mike Jackson, commander of the Kosovo peacekeeping force that will follow on the heels of withdrawing Serb forces, is so confident of success that he has already planned a news conference in Pristina at 1600 GMT on Saturday, the source said. In the final countdown to deployment, NATO massed thousands of troops and equipment closer to Macedonia‘s border with Kosovo, ready to move in to secure the way for hundreds of thousands of returning ethnic Albanian refugees. More than 17,500 NATO troops are already gathered as part of what will eventually be a 50,000-strong force to ensure peace in Kosovo, fulfilling a resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council on Thursday. "There isn‘t a delay. In fact, everything is going extremely smoothly," NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said in Brussels when asked to comment on rumours that planned start of the NATO operation might slip. He said there would be no gap between Serb forces pulling out and alliance forces moving in. Some feared the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), fighting for independence for the Yugoslav province, would exploit the vacuum left between the two armies if NATO did not move fast. After NATO generals and Yugoslav officers agreed on plans for a Serb pullout on Wednesday night, lower-ranking officials from both sides continued meeting in Macedonia on Friday to iron out the final mechanics of the pullout and the removal of mines, booby traps and unexploded ordnance. NATO officials have said the battle plan would probably begin with helicopters dropping troops onto hillsides overlooking the road leading from the border crossing at Blace in northern Macedonia to Pristina about 80 km (50 miles) away. Once the heights are secured, mine-clearing vehicles will move in, followed by tanks and the main body of the advance made up of British, U.S., German, French and Italian troops. The authoritative military source said NATO planned to secure the E65 highway from Skopje to Pristina on Saturday. On Thursday, U.S. Apache gunships arrived in Macedonia from Albania, where they were deployed in April to boost NATO‘s firepower in its air strikes against Yugoslavia launched on March 24. They have yet to see battle. Hundreds of U.S. marines have made their way from a northern Greek beach to a makeshift U.S. base in Macedonia known as Camp Able Sentry near the Petrovec airfield. Chinooks helicopters have also ferried in hundreds more U.S. troops from Albania.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Vice President Al Gore said on Friday he was surprised Russian troops had already moved into Yugoslavia, but said Moscow had given assurances they would not move into Kosovo unilaterally. "We didn‘t know they were going to go right there," Gore told ABC television of the Russian movement into Yugoslavia. "But it is not into Kosovo, and we have been absolutely assured that they are not going to do that."