------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 16:54:18 -0700 To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: MILOSEVIC SILENT ON A PULLOUT AS NATO-SERB TALKS GO ON - IHT The International Herald Tribune Paris, Tuesday, June 8, 1999 MILOSEVIC SILENT ON A PULLOUT AS NATO-SERB TALKS GO ON By Joseph Fitchett The United States and Russia faced a potential diplomatic crisis Monday over a pivotal UN Security Council resolution that NATO hopes will provide uncontested international legitimacy for a military presence to replace Serbian armed forces in Kosovo. Daylong talks outside Bonn, led by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Igor Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister, were suspended until Tuesday after Mr. Ivanov said that he needed time to get instructions from President Boris Yeltsin. The talks also included foreign ministers of the other major industrialized countries in the Group of Seven: Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Approval of the resolution by the United Nations would eliminate a problem raised by Serbian military officers in talks with NATO that deadlocked late Sunday and blocked plans for a handover in Kosovo between 40,000 Serbian forces and NATO peacekeepers. Earlier, U.S. officials had voiced concern that Mr. Ivanov was trying to distance Russia from commitments made by Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russia's representative on the Kosovo crisis. Faced with signs that Moscow was reluctant to demand Serbian compliance with the terms set last week by Mr. Chernomyrdin in Belgrade, President Bill Clinton called President Boris Yeltsin early Monday, urging him to give Russian support for a draft resolution requiring complete Serbian military withdrawal from Kosovo and backing an international presence that implicitly would be a NATO- led force. In Washington, Joe Lockhart, the White House spokesman, said that the foreign ministers had made ''substantial progress'' on the text of a UN resolution, but that the United States was ''neither optimistic nor pessimistic'' about the overall movement toward a peaceful solution for Kosovo. Asked whether the slow movement in the military talks for a Serbian withdrawal represented a bump in the road to peace or an unraveling of diplomatic efforts, Mr. Lockhart said, ''It would be foolhardy to try to predict that.'' Asked whether the United States might consider accepting a peacekeeping force without NATO at its core, Mr. Lockhart replied, ''No, that's not negotiable.'' The UN resolution would have the effect of imposing a settlement on Kosovo involving international control of the Serbian province and the return of ethnic Albanian refugees - the core of a peace plan that Western leaders now accuse the Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, of reneging on over the weekend. After apparently accepting the basic plan last week in talks with envoys from the European Union and Russia, Mr. Milosevic seemed to go back on his promise via his military commanders in technical talks that broke down late Sunday. ''The Serbs are up to their old tricks; maybe Milosevic telling the army to hang tough and even pretend to revolt against the deal he and the Serb Parliament signed up to,'' a U.S. official said in Washington. Mr. Milosevic could be trying to salvage some concessions on Kosovo, other diplomats added, saying that he might be hoping that the show of Serbian defiance might aggravate political in Moscow and cause a rift in the diplomatic teamwork between the NATO countries and Russia. NATO officials said that prompt Serbian compliance might depend on a strong Russian signal - via the UN resolution - that Mr. Milosevic could expect no help from Moscow. Without suggesting any explicit linkage between Kosovo and the outlook for Western economic aid to Russia, officials noted that the current exchanges were occurring only 10 days before the summit meeting involving leaders of the Group of Seven and President Yeltsin. NATO governments, reacting in unison, took the position that bombing would resume while the alliance waited for new developments in Belgrade, where opposition to the war has reportedly started surfacing strongly. Germany played down fears of a breakdown in the peace process, but other NATO governments reacted more firmly. A French official was quoted saying that Paris was prepared to back ground action by NATO forces in Kosovo, if necessary, without UN approval. As NATO ranks closed, Western leaders focused on maintaining the teamwork with Moscow that apparently forced Belgrade to yield on Kosovo last week - and was now being tested in the talks outside Bonn. The talks, which had been postponed since Saturday, took on fresh urgency Monday after the standoff in the military talks in Macedonia between NATO commanders and Serbian officers to work out details about putting a cease-fire into effect in Kosovo. Officially, Russia had sought to distance itself from the talks involving NATO after Mr. Chernomyrdin had obtained Belgrade's acceptance of the international peace plan for Kosovo - and a Russian military attaché only arrived as an observer Sunday night. A few hours later NATO said that the talks were pointless because the Serbian military were raising issues that had been settled politically in Belgrade last Thursday. Much of the security policy establishment in Moscow apparently feels that too much has been conceded to NATO already, and Mr. Ivanov set a harsh opening tone on his arrival in Bonn with accusations that NATO had suddenly raised its demands. Western officials countered that the terms of Serbia's withdrawal had been accepted by Mr. Chernomyrdin, with the understanding that they would be spelled out for Mr. Milosevic by the European Union's envoy, President Martti Ahtisaari of Finland. At the outset of Monday's meeting, they said, Russia seemed reluctant to live up to its side of a bargain set late last week in which Washington agreed to drop the word ''NATO'' or even ''Kfor'' - the alliance's term for a Kosovo force - from the draft language on condition that Serbia proceeded promptly to a full evacuation of its forces ''The Serbs pocketed our concession and reneged on theirs and now the Russians don't want to know,'' a NATO official said at alliance headquarters in Brussels. Mr. Rubin seemed to confirm the U.S. concession when he said that Washington was not demanding a specific mention of NATO as long as Moscow acknowledged that NATO would in effect command the force. As the bargaining proceeded outside Bonn, the State Department spokesman, James Rubin, said that ''some progress'' had been made but that the language still fell short of U.S. demands that for airtight authorization of a security force in Kosovo with NATO at its core. Asked about Russia's demand for a bombing halt before the adoption of a UN resolution, Mr. Rubin said that some form of ''simultaneity'' might be feasible. The text under discussion would provide, said the British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, ''for both an international and civil administration to run Kosovo and to make sure Milosevic has no say in what happens within Kosovo.'' Politically, the effect would be to give the United Nations - and not NATO - titular responsibility for future developments in the province as it passes under international administration. If worded in accordance with Western demands, this step would offer diplomatic advantages in the political endgame. For example, Mr. Milosevic has always insisted that he would only deal with the United Nations and never with NATO, and Moscow, too, has sought to end the situation in which NATO - fearful of a Russian veto - has effectively ignored the Security Council about Kosovo. A UN resolution would lift what was described as a ''major sticking point'' in the military talks - the Serbs' report demand that a Security Council resolution precede allied forces' entry into Kosovo. Similar demands have come from Russian officials, who maintain that Moscow will not back a Security Council resolution that might appear to justify NATO air attacks. But NATO wants to see Serbian forces start pulling out before there is a bombing pause, which would be prolonged as long as the Serbian withdrawal continues. This issue, called ''sequencing,'' could be solved by a diplomatic formula that made the bombing halt and the UN authorization simultaneous.
[PEN-L:7811] (Fwd) MILOSEVIC SILENT ON A PULLOUT AS NATO-SERB TALKS GO ON -
ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224] Tue, 8 Jun 1999 01:09:52 -0500