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Widow
of warlord Arkan seeks British buyer for his
footballers
JUST two years after
bombing Yugoslavia, Nato is asking the new government in Belgrade
for permission to use its military bases, as fears of a civil war in
Macedonia grow.
In return, the Yugoslav
army is looking for a deal with the western alliance that would
allow a limited return of its soldiers to the few remaining
Serbian-majority areas of Kosovo - a provision which was written
into the agreement that ended the war, but which Nato generals have
so far resisted.
All-out fighting between
ethnic Albanians and Slavs in Macedonia would cut off Nato's main
supply route into Kosovo, which runs from the Greek port of
Thessalonika up through Macedonia. Nato would need to send up to 80
trucks a day through Yugoslavia, with stop-offs at army bases in
Novi Sad in the north and Nis in the south.
"There are 40,000 guys
in Kosovo - and they need feeding, water, tents, whatever. We've got
to look at the alternatives," said a Nato planner who admitted that
the options of going through the Montenegrin mountains or the
bandit-infested north of Albania had been ruled out.
Planners have calculated
it would take a year to build a suitable road through Kukes in
northern Albania.
A source close to recent
talks in Belgrade between the five leading Nato countries and
Yugoslavia, said America,which is heading the negotiations, wants
relations between the Pentagon and Belgrade to get back to where
they were before Slobodan Milosevic came to power in 1987.
In the new era of
detente between the former enemies, Yugoslav officers will be sent
to Westpoint and Fort Lauderdale in America for training.
Details of a Nato supply
line through Serbia were discussed at a meeting in Germany last week
between American officers, the Yugoslav foreign minister, Goran
Sviljanovic, and the Serbian deputy prime minister, Nebojsa Covic.
The Yugoslav army is thought to be reluctant to give Nato access to
some of its more secret bases.
For its part, Nato is
still wary of allowing any Yugoslav soldiers back into Kosovo, even
in almost wholly Serbian areas such as Kosovo Mitrovica in the
north. "We believe it is still too dangerous," said one officer.
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