Putin Proposes Plan for Balkans June 17, 2001 By DUSAN STOJANOVIC BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - The Russian and Yugoslav presidents blamed ethnic Albanian ``terrorists'' for the instability in Macedonia and Kosovo and called Sunday for a regional agreement on borders and minority rights to end the violence in the Balkans. Fresh from his summit with President Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he told Yugoslav officials that he and Bush had discussed the crises and pledged to do ``everything possible to achieve a fair solution'' for the region. ``The stability of the region is seriously endangered by national and religious intolerance and extremism, and the source of the problem is in Kosovo,'' Putin said, referring to ethnic Albanian extremists who have been fighting government forces in Macedonia and harassing minority Kosovo Serbs in the province. ``We must do all to disarm the terrorists,'' Putin said. Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica said Putin presented a plan calling for a regional conference to reaffirm the inviolability of borders and the territorial integrity of the countries in the area as well as minority rights. ``This conference would once and for all put an end to the practice of attempts at redrawing state borders and the wars in the Balkans,'' Kostunica said. The guarantor of the agreement would be the U.N. Security Council, which is currently touring Kosovo on a fact-finding mission, sources close to the Russian delegation said. Putin and Kostunica criticized NATO and the U.N. administration in Kosovo for not fully implementing U.N. resolutions guaranteeing the integrity of Yugoslavia and the rights of minority Serbs in the province of Kosovo. Russia has been pushing for the NATO-led peacekeepers to do more to disarm Kosovo's ethnic Albanian extremists, who have also contributed to clashes with government troops in neighboring Macedonia. Kostunica criticized the international community for ``wrong moves'' in the southern Serb province that he said ``destabilized the entire region.'' Putin was to fly to Kosovo later Sunday to meet with Russian peacekeepers as well as the commander of the NATO-led force, Danish Lt. Gen. Thorstein Skiaker. The Russian leader is also expected to meet members of the U.N. Security Council, who are on the second day of their visit to the Yugoslav province. Although Russia has cultural, religious and historic ties to Yugoslavia's Serb and Montenegrin population, it also was critical of former President Slobodan Milosevic's ``ethnic cleansing'' campaign against majority Kosovo Albanians. Still, Russia strongly opposed NATO's 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, now consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, over Kosovo and has been eager to play a role in settling that and other conflicts in the Balkans. Moscow has pledged to help Yugoslavia repair destruction from the 1999 NATO air campaign and Putin pledged Sunday ``unconditional'' delivery of natural gas. That would be a boost to Kostunica's efforts to improve Yugoslavs' living conditions, which suffered under international sanctions imposed to punish Belgrade for its role in inciting Balkan wars of the 1990s. Kostunica led a pro-democracy movement that saw Milosevic's ouster in October. Putin is the first Russian president to visit Yugoslavia since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev toured the old Yugoslav federation, then consisting of six republics, in 1988. Miroslav Antic, http://www.antic.org/ Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
