|
Friday, March 5, 1999, 12:00 PM.
Serbian Forces Shell Six Villages in Mitrovica and
Vushtrri Area
PRISHTINA, March 4 (KIC) - Last night, the Serbian military shelled UÇK positions in six
villages of the Mitrovica and Vushtrri area -Vaganicë, Pirç, Vërnicë, Oshlan, Pantinë
and Lkej.
Serbian aircraft flew overheard the area during the Serbian bombardment of the Albanian
villages.
In fear of an imminent Serbian offensive, hundreds of Albanians displaced from their home
villages along the Çiçavica massif in the municipality of Vushtrri have been on the
move, in search of relative safety in neighboring Obiliq municipality, local LDK sources
said.
The Albanian residents of a number of neighborhoods in Mitrovica spent the night out,
fearful of a Serbian attack in the town, local sources said.
Serbian police has been physically abusing Albanian citizens in roving check-point in
Mitrovica today.
Meanwhile, the Serbian media said two Serbs, brothers Ljubisa and Radivoje Mitrovic, were
killed in Mihaliq village last night, blaming the UÇK for the killing. A member of the
Serbian army was abducted, they added.
Dole To Meet Kosova Albanians In Macedonia
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Former U.S. Senator Bob Dole will meet ethnic Albanian participants in
Kosova peace negotiations in Macedonia Friday, a U.S. official said.
Dole had planned to meet the delegates in Kosova to discuss an autonomy plan for the
battle-scarred Serbian province negotiated in France last month but he was unable to get a
visa.
The 1996 Republican presidential nominee was asked by President Clinton and Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright to make the trip to the Balkans to try to persuade ethnic
Albanians, who outnumber Serbs nine to one in Kosova, to accept the plan.
Albanian sources said some delegates were travelling from the province by car to meet him.
It was not clear if members of the separatist Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) would attend
the Macedonia talks.
``We're trying to see who's going to make it,'' said the official from the U.S. embassy in
Skopje.
He could not confirm whether delegation head Hasim Thaqi, who leads the KLA's political
directorate, would take part in the meeting.
Thaqi, condemned as a ``terrorist'' by Belgrade, did not return to Kosova after a first
round of negotiations in Paris with Serb delegates.
Independent Belgrade radio B92 Friday quoted a Serbian judge as ordering his immediate
arrest.
The ethnic Albanian delegation said at the end of the internationally-brokered talks in
France last week that it was prepared to sign an autonomy deal after consultations back
home.
``I will ask the Albanian leadership to put their people first -- without thought to their
own position, power or personal gain,'' Dole said before leaving for the Balkans.
Serbian officials have expressed strong reservations over the plan and refused to allow a
NATO-led peace force into Kosova to implement it, something the West says is essential if
any deal is to stick.
NATO is threatening air strikes against Yugoslav military targets if Belgrade is seen to
be blocking a settlement.
Gunfire Reported in Gjakova and Border Area Villages in
Southwestern Kosova
PRISHTINA, March 4 (KIC) - Small arms shooting was reported early in the morning today in
the town of Gjakova, but also Serb helicopters flying over the area, according to local
LDK sources.
Heavy Serbian army and police forces and armor, including tanks, have been deployed in the
Çabrati hill overlooking the town.
Scores of Albanian citizens are reported beaten up by police in Gjakova on a daily basis.
Heavy gunfire was reported overnight in the border villages of Reka e Keqe region, along
the Kosova-Albanian border.
Stepped up Movement of Serbian Military and Police in the Klina
Area
PRISHTINA, March 4 (KIC) - Heavy Serbian military and police movements have been reported
today along the Prishtina-Peja highway, sources told the KIC.
Serbian aircraft flew overhead the Klina area today morning.
Meanwhile, sources said Serbian forces burned two Albanian houses in the village of
Jellofc, Klina municipality, last night.
The intimidating presence of Serbian forces has made Albanian residents of Resnik village
flee their homes.
Serbian police raided a number of Albanian-run eating and drinking establishments in the
town of Klina yesterday, physically abusing the customers.
Command of the UÇK 162nd Brigade “Agim Bajrami”
appeals
Kaçanik, 4th of March 99 (Kosovapress) Command of the UÇK 162nd Brigade “Agim
Bajrami” is appealing to all people of Kaçanik, who are subject of occupation forces
attack in last few days, not to leave their land and go to Maqedoni and further. There is
no need for fear and panic, as UÇK is the one who will not allow any more massacres to be
repeated by Serb forces in these areas. Command is seeking responsibility from displaced
people, to return to their homes and their land in the villages they left. Leaving our
homes will only help Serb barbarians to achieve their goal, so we should not allow this to
happened. Kosova is ours and it will remain ours. Our weapons, our determined struggle and
blood spilled for freedom all over Kosovë, are our guarantee, continues in the appeal of
the command, signed by Commander Bardhi.
Dole Takes Peace Plea To Kosova's Albanians Albright, Holbrooke
May Add to Effort
By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, March 5, 1999; Page A27
JAKARTA, Indonesia, March 4—Signaling an intensifying U.S. effort to win acceptance
of a peace accord in Kosova, the Clinton administration sent former Senate majority leader
Robert J. Dole to the Serbian province today and said that Secretary of State Madeleine K.
Albright also may travel to Europe to confer with NATO allies.
In addition, U.S. officials said, the administration is considering dispatching special
envoy Richard C. Holbrooke to Belgrade to discuss the Kosova situation with Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic, whose Serb-led government has balked at some provisions of
the proposed accord.
The administration hopes to generate agreement on the peace plan before March 15, when
Belgrade government officials and a delegation representing Kosova's separatist ethnic
Albanian majority are scheduled to resume negotiations in France.
Albright said at a news conference here that she had spoken by phone with Dole before his
departure from Washington to Pristina, the Kosova capital, where he will meet with ethnic
Albanian leaders. Albright praised Dole as "someone who has a very good relationship
with the Kosovar Albanians," stemming from a previous trip to the region.
Albright said no final determination had been made on sending Holbrooke to Belgrade and
that it would not be decided until late Friday whether she will travel to Europe for a
meeting with U.S. allies, possibly in Brussels, on how to help push the peace deal
forward.
Albright was originally scheduled to return home via Guam and Hawaii after a week of
diplomacy in Beijing, Bangkok and Jakarta. U.S. sources said the administration is
considering sending Holbrooke to Belgrade next Wednesday, after Albright meets with
European officials.
Holbrooke, who brokered a cease-fire agreement in Kosova with Milosevic last October,
presumably would carry a renewed threat of NATO military action against Yugoslav military
targets if the Belgrade government blocks the Western-drafted peace plan. Belgrade has
vehemently objected to a provision of the accord that would allow a NATO peacekeeping
force into Kosova to police the agreement.
Secessionist ethnic Albanian rebels in the province have been fighting Serb-led Yugoslav
forces since February 1998 to win independence for Kosova, a province of Serbia,
Yugoslavia's dominant republic.
The Clinton administration had been waiting for the ethnic Albanians to accept the peace
agreement -- something their negotiators have said they will do -- before applying further
pressure on Milosevic. The accord would give the ethnic Albanians a large degree of
autonomy and the protection of NATO peacekeepers but would stop short of their goal of
independence.
U.S. Starts Push to Salvage Kosova Talks
By JANE PERLEZ
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The Clinton administration is unleashing what it hopes will be a
speedy diplomatic offensive to salvage the Kosova peace proposal in an effort to avoid a
reprise of the previous inconclusive round of talks.
The goal is to have a deal ready to sign by March 15. But officials say that if this
proves too ambitious, they hope at least to have the ethnic Albanians' agreement pinned
down by the time the talks are scheduled to resume in France and to know exactly where the
main impediment to a settlement, the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, stands.
So far, Milosevic has stood on the sidelines in Belgrade, building his forces in and
around Kosova and watching as the threat of NATO air strikes against him subsided after
the earlier talks in Rambouillet, France. But Thursday night he put up his first obstacle
to the new American offensive.
The administration has enlisted former Sen. Bob Dole, a champion of the ethnic Albanian
cause, to go to Kosova to try to persuade the ethnic Albanians to agree to the settlement
that they balked at signing more than a week ago in Rambouillet. Milosevic, however, has
denied Dole a visa to enter Yugoslavia, so he planned instead to have his meetings with
ethnic Albanian leaders in Skopje, the Macedonian capital.
Waiting in the wings is a special envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, who, officials said, was
asked by the administration this week to take the settlement, after the ethnic Albanians
have signed it, to Milosevic for approval. The Yugoslav leader has continued to object
strenuously to the main element of the plan: deploying 28,000 NATO-led peacekeepers,
including 4,000 American soldiers, in Kosova.
Despite the renewed efforts, the administration appears less than certain that the
strategy would fall into place.
The plan to tackle Milosevic as soon as possible cannot get off the ground until agreement
is won from the ethnic Albanians, who proved at Rambouillet to be unpredictable.
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright indicated the uncertainties Thursday night after
arriving in Indonesia at the end of a three-country trip in Asia.
"We'll have to see whether this process will be successful this time," Albright
said of Dole's mission at a news conference here. Of the ethnic Albanians, she said,
"I don't know when they are going to sign."
On her first visit to Indonesia as secretary of state, Albright has traveled here to
encourage the Indonesians to hold free and fair elections on June 7. The first multiparty
elections since 1955 occur as Indonesia, the country hit hardest by the Asian financial
crisis, is undergoing economic and ethnic turmoil.
Hours before Albright arrived, students who are calling for President B.J. Habibie to
resign clashed with baton-wielding police officers in downtown Jakarta.
As Albright traveled from China to Thailand and now here, Kosova has remained high on her
agenda. It appeared quite likely that if Dole were successful in his mission, Albright
would change her plans and fly to Brussels to meet him and the supreme commander of NATO,
Gen. Wesley K. Clark, over the weekend.
Holbrooke's plans have not been decided, Albright said Thursday night.
A Serbian newspaper that is tightly controlled by Milosevic, Politika, said on Thursday
that Holbrooke would arrive in Belgrade "within days."
The likelihood of a swift success by Dole was cast into doubt by Milosevic's actions. In
the last several weeks his troops have been blocking the borders with Macedonia, which
will make it difficult for the ethnic Albanian leaders to slip out of Kosova.
After the setback at Rambouillet, where the ethnic Albanians rebuffed Albright and Clark,
the administration began its concerted campaign to win them over and to make as much
progress as possible before the talks resume.
Instead of holding the talks at a French air base in Normandy, a situation that could lead
to another set of rambling Rambouillet-like negotiations, the administration is trying to
persuade the French to hold the talks in Paris.
The deputy national security adviser, James Steinberg, met the eight-member board of the
National Albanian American Council on Wednesday. According to the executive director of
the council, Ilir Zherka, this was an effort to ensure that the council used its influence
to have the leaders of the guerrilla movement in Kosova sign the agreement.
A main concern of the ethnic Albanians, Zherka said, was that Milosevic would be given the
opportunity to wring concessions out of the peace plan after the ethnic Albanians had
signed it.
Steinberg reassured the group that if Milosevic demanded concessions, the ethnic Albanians
would have to give their approval or the peace plan would be dead, Zherka said. "If
the Albanians say no to changes, then that's the end of it," Zherka quoted Steinberg
as having said.
Dole sought a commitment from Albright that if he won an agreement from the ethnic
Albanians, the plan would not be subject to the whims of Milosevic, according to Mira
Baratta, a senior adviser to Dole.
In a telephone conversation on Thursday morning, Albright told Dole that there could be no
"material" changes to the peace plan by Milosevic, Ms. Baratta said.
Dole, who has been sympathetic to the ethnic Albanians since visiting Kosova in 1990 and
seeing the Serbian repression there, will be accompanied by a senior State Department
official, Jim O'Brien, and a general from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Ms. Baratta said.
O'Brien, a lawyer who has been involved in the fine print of the peace proposal, will be
taking with him a document ready for signing. The proposal calls for a three-year interim
period of autonomy for Kosova, now a province of Serbia, and for the withdrawal of Serbian
forces and the demilitarization of the rebel Kosova Liberation Army.
Dole plans to meet the leadership of the guerrilla movement, as well as civilian leaders
who represent a broad spectrum in Kosova. Dole would meet Hashim Thaci, the leader of the
ethnic Albanian delegation at Rambouillet who, the Kosova Liberation Army announced this
week, would be the prime minister of an unofficial provisional government.
Thaci was a holdout at Rambouillet, refusing to sign the peace proposal, apparently
because it did not include a referendum on independence after three years. A referendum,
which is anathema to Milosevic, would undoubtedly result in an overwhelming victory for
supporters of independence.
"Dole would like the plan signed as soon as possible, because the delay is taking the
pressure off Milosevic," Ms. Baratta said. "It's his intention to walk away with
the signatures."
As an inducement to sign the plan, the administration invited members of the Kosova
Liberation Army to travel to Washington next week for talks on how the United States could
establish relations with the little-understood group. Among other visits, the guerrillas
would be invited to the Pentagon, one of their advisers said.
But several American advisers to the ethnic Albanians said that Thaci and the other
guerrillas who were at Rambouillet remained as enigmatic as they were nine days ago.
Albright To Head To London Amid Kosova Diplomacy
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright decided to head to London Friday
to meet British officials on attempts to persuade the Kosova Albanians to accept an
international peace plan.
The change in travel plans coincides with former Senator Bob Dole's trip to convince the
Kosova Albanians that it is in their best interests to sign the plan, putting the
diplomatic pressure back on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Albright, who is now in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, had planned to return to
Washington via Hawaii.
A senior State Department official said Albright would refuel in Bahrain and land in
London Saturday morning ``in the expectation that she will have official meetings.''
Dole, a former U.S. presidential candidate who has taken a special interest in the Kosova
conflict, is on his way to the Macedonian capital Skopje because the Serbian authorities
did not give him a visa to go to the Kosova capital Pristina.
But the official said Dole still hoped to meet ethnic Albanian representatives, in
necessary by having the Kosova Verification Mission arrange to them to cross the border.
He said the United States had not yet decided whether to deploy veteran Balkan negotiator
Richard Holbrooke, who arranged a Kosova deal with Milosevic in October.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine were joint
sponsors of the Rambouillet talks outside Paris last month between Serbs and Albanians.
The negotiators failed to reach agreement at Rambouillet but agreed to more talks on March
15.
Albright said again Friday that the ``Contact Group'' plan offered the ethnic Albanians a
high degree of autonomy and it would be to their advantage to accept it.
``The whole purpose (of the latest diplomacy) is to move beyond where we were at
Rambouillet and prepare for March 15. We're trying very hard to move this process,'' she
told a joint news conference with Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas.
Milosevic UPS Ante as Kosova Deadline Nears
BELGRADE, March 5 (Reuters) - With 10 days to go to a new international peace deadline for
Kosova, Slobodan Milosevic is preparing his country for war.
Armoured columns have been trundling towards the rebellious province and troops and police
have deployed there in strength for several weeks now.
On Thursday, the Yugoslav government said it was fortifying parts of the borders of Kosova
against infiltration and called on defence plants to increase output to help defend the
country.
Elsewhere in Serbia, the dominant republic left in the federation, army reservists have
got their call-up papers.
"Patriotic" politicians began doing their bit by starting regular rallies this
week to stir up support for President Milosevic and opposition to the ethnic Albanians in
Kosova, the United States, and the West in general.
"American officials give direct support for terrorism in Kosova," ran a
front-page headline in the pro-government Politika daily this week, a message drummed home
in recent days.
It is still not clear whether Milosevic could be, as Western officials warned last week,
planning an assault on ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosova to try to put them off the
peace settlement the West wants both sides to sign on March 15.
There has so far been no big offensive on the ground, despite what the Yugoslav security
forces say are regular provocations from the guerrillas and an unusually high number of
Serbs in the daily killings reported over the past week.
What seems increasingly clear is that he wants to send a message to NATO that he is not
cowed by its threats to bomb military targets if he is seen to be blocking a settlement to
be policed by a NATO-led force gathering in neighbouring Macedonia.
Taking on the alliance is hardly a viable prospect for a country which, according to the
Belgrade independent newsletter VIP, managed to mobilise only 12 percent of its
anti-aircraft units before peace talks began last month.
But Yugoslav soldiers were left in no doubt this week that they were to fight to the death
whoever the enemy.
"Soldiers cannot decide if they will defend the country depending on the
adversary," Third Army Commander Colonel-General Nebojsa Pavkovic said in Kosova.
"The message of our chief commander, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, to the
world and especially our people, is that the defence of Kosova has no price. This is the
highest order that we shall obey even if we have to give our lives."
Milosevic beat a similar drum in October before averting NATO air strikes at the last
minute by agreeing to pull some forces from Kosova and let in unarmed ceasefire
"verifiers."
But the political changes his government announced for Kosova never materialised and the
ceasefire began unravelling before the end of the year.
This time, with the prospect of an autonomy deal taking Kosova out of Belgrade's control
and putting foreign troops in to make sure it is implemented, he looks as if he will push
even harder.
During a first round of talks Milosevic, who, according to OSCE chairman-in-office Knut
Vollebaek, remains "very, very negative" about the idea of allowing in foreign
troops, avoided any concessions, thanks to a split in ethnic Albanian ranks.
If the ethnic Albanian delegates can overcome their divisions and sign up to a deal,
Milosevic will have less room for manoeuvre.
But far from preparing Serbs for a climbdown by arguing, as some officials in his
government have suggested, that foreign troops could be seen as helping him deal with the
guerrillas and protect Serbs in Kosova, Milosevic is upping the ante.
In this he is counting on divisions within the international community, which have widened
since the inconclusive end of the first round of talks interrupted the momentum for NATO
air strikes.
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Voijslav Seselj, who heads the most nationalist part of
Milosevic's administration told a rally last weekend that ethnic Albanians would be wiped
out of Kosova if NATO bombed Yugoslavia, independent news agency Beta said.
The army's mining of a bridge on the border with Macedonia last week was also clearly
designed to send a message to the unarmed verifiers in Kosova as well as the NATO troops
rallying on the other side of the border.
Lashing out against the "world bullies" who have kept Yugoslavia under
sanctions, in a preface to a book cited on television this week, Milosevic, who rarely
pins himself down public statements, was sticking to the hard line.
"Those sanctions were forced on us by world bullies because of our refusal to submit
to their will and to place our state and our people at their mercy," it said.
NATO, Serbs Came Close To Conflict Forces Placed on Alert Last
Week in Kosova
By R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, March 4, 1999; Page A01
DJENERAL JANKOVIC, Yugoslavia, March 3—Some NATO forces and Serb-led Yugoslav army
units went on high alert during a confrontation between the Yugoslav border patrol and
international observers last Friday, further escalating tensions in Kosova and helping
accelerate a buildup of military forces on both sides, Western sources said today.
The incident, in which NATO and Belgrade government troops came closer to direct conflict
than either side has publicly acknowledged, was spurred by the detention of 21
international observers by Serbian officials near here as they tried to cross the border
from Macedonia.
At the height of the standoff, NATO field commanders ordered two armored companies of
British and Italian troops based in northern Macedonia -- a total of 600 men -- to put
live ammunition in their weapons and prepare to rescue the observers, the sources said. In
response, the Yugoslav army rushed tanks, artillery and armored personnel carriers closer
to the remote border crossing in the Crnagora mountains.
Western officials cite the incident as one of many reasons to fear that continuing
hostilities between government forces and Kosova's ethnic Albanian separatists could wind
up drawing NATO into a confrontation with the Yugoslav military before a peace accord can
be signed.
Top Yugoslav officials and ethnic Albanian rebel leaders failed to reach agreement on a
Western-sponsored accord in 18 days of negotiations last month and are slated to renew
their talks in France on March 15. But since the talks broke off Feb. 23, government
security forces have been strengthened in and near Kosova and have skirmished nearly every
day with the rebels. All told, the year-long conflict has cost more than 1,500 lives, most
of them noncombatants among the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosova, a province of Serbia,
Yugoslavia's dominant republic.
In the past week, the British military has deployed 3,000 troops in northern Macedonia,
supplementing 2,300 French troops already in the country as part of an "extraction
force" that would withdraw the international observers if they are threatened.
Friday's incident began when Yugoslav officials at the border seized the observers' travel
documents and demanded that their vehicles be searched. The observers, who are part of an
international mission attempting to monitor a loosely observed cease-fire, were detained
when they refused to submit to the searches. They eventually relented and were released
after an ordeal that for some of them lasted 72 hours. The NATO troops that had been
placed on standby for "no-notice" military action -- the highest state of alert
-- were then able to revert to their normal routine, the Western sources said.
But the deployment of the Yugoslav forces within 10 miles of the NATO troops during the
incident fed into an action-reaction cycle of the type that Western officials say could
lead to misunderstandings and possibly provoke serious conflict during a tense period in
which the United States and its European allies are trying to broker a peace accord.
Thousands of ethnic Albanians living near the border fled after sighting the Yugoslav
troop movements. That, in turn, caused members of the Kosova Liberation Army, the armed
ethnic Albanian rebel group, to move forces into the area to protect the villages. Five
days of skirmishing between the rebels and government troops ensued, officials said,
although the conflict abated today after some of the army troops returned to their
garrison in the southern Kosova city of Urosevac.
Recent movements by Yugoslav forces have alarmed Western officials, who fear they could
spark additional fighting. Fifteen Yugoslav army companies, averaging about 100 soldiers
each, have deployed in more than a dozen Kosova towns in what Western officials say is a
violation of an agreement reached last October between Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic and U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO's supreme commander, to restrict army
deployments to six major cities.
The 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which manages
the monitoring effort, has charged that the army deployments are provocative to the
rebels. But the army, claiming that the OSCE has reneged on its obligation to prevent
attacks on its forces by the rebels, has refused to shift its forces to the approved
sites.
The Belgrade government has bolstered its special Interior Ministry police units in Kosova
with an undetermined number of additional men, according to Western officials. It also has
moved in additional armored personnel carriers and double-barreled Praga 30mm antiaircraft
guns, a weapon typically used here to fire at civilians' homes. At least seven more tanks
were observed being shipped into Kosova by rail today, although the model -- the M-36 --
is a U.S.-made weapon of World War II vintage and no longer considered highly reliable,
the Western officials said.
According to NATO sources, the government also has been building up its forces on Kosova's
periphery and on the border with Macedonia, not far from where thousands of NATO troops
are gathering to prepare either for a peacekeeping assignment in Kosova under terms of a
peace accord or for an emergency evacuation of the international observers.
An estimated 6,000 army troops assigned to Yugoslavia's 11th Armored Brigade in the
Serbian city of Nis have been moved southward and massed just north of the Kosova village
of Podujevo, according to NATO sources. Sixty tanks and 50 armored personnel carriers are
also deployed there, waiting either to conduct a new assault against the rebels or to
defend the area against any NATO assault, the sources said.
Ten days ago, Yugoslav army engineers also wired several bridges and tunnels with
explosives near the Macedonian border and stationed army units on both sides of the
bridges. Despite the negotiated restrictions on the movement of tanks and artillery in the
area, "they go everywhere they want to go," said Otto Bischof, head of the OSCE
office in the border village of Kacanik.
"We really don't know if they are positioning for an invasion [by NATO] or preparing
for an offensive" against the rebels, a senior Western official said. "I think
Milosevic does believe that NATO is poised to steal Kosova from him. But it could very
well be posturing" to affect the outcome of the next round of peace negotiations.
NATO has threatened to launch punitive airstrikes against Yugoslavia if its forces launch
a major offensive against the Kosova guerrillas or if the Belgrade government blocks a
peace agreement. The agreement calls for the deployment of a NATO-led peacekeeping force
-- which would total 28,000 troops, including 4,000 Americans -- to police the accord.
Several Western officials said they suspect the Yugoslav army is dispersing its troops in
preparation for possible NATO airstrikes. Local military commanders, however, have
described their activities as "winter training."
"Certainly our view of training is not the same as theirs," said an OSCE
official. "We would have it done in a recognized area using well-understood routines.
They view it as something that is done anywhere with live ammunition and have been known
to fire on villages as part of their training."
Correspondent William Drozdiak in Berlin contributed to this report.
Where the Yugoslav Forces Are
Yugoslav troops now massed near the provincial border of Kosova:
North of Pudjevo: the 11th armored brigade (about 6,000 troops), plus 60 tanks and 50
armored personnel carriers.
Inside Kosova
Under an accord last October, the Yugoslav army can have up to 10,000 troops inside Kosova
and 15,000 interior police forces. These forces were to be restricted to six towns --
Pristina, Pec, Prizren, Urosevac, Mitrovica and Gnjilane. Now, some units located outside
the six towns:
* Central region
Lapusnik: one tank company
Komarone: two tank companies
Volujak: one tank platoon (one-third of a company)
Dulje: one infantry company
* Northern region
Bajgora: one tank company
Vuciturn: two infantry comp.
Podujevo: two infantry comp.
* Southern region
Junik/Decane: one tank comp.
Djakovica: two infantry comp.
Zjum: two tank platoons
(equal to 2/3 of a company)
Djeneral Jankovic: one engineering/demolition platoon
Djeneral Somanja: one tank comp.
Peace pressure back on Belgrade
By GEOFF KITNEY in Berlin
The prospects for a showdown between the Western powers and Yugoslavia's President
Slobodan Milosevic have increased following the acceptance by ethnic Albanian leaders of a
political settlement for Kosova.
The ethnic Albanian separatist movement's backing for the peace deal, expected to be
formally given when peace talks resume in France on March 15, would clear the way for
Western powers to again threaten Mr Milosevic with NATO military force if he does not
accept the deal.
However, Mr Milosevic's defiant opposition to NATO involvement in Kosova has been
dramatised by a build-up of Yugoslav Army forces on the border with the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia, where NATO has been building a big force in readiness for possible
action in Kosova. This would be either part of an international peace-keeping force or a
force to get international monitors out if NATO decided to go ahead with air strikes
against Yugoslavia.
Western officials warned yesterday that a showdown with Mr Milosevic loomed when the
Kosova peace talks resumed.
The support of ethnic Albanian leaders has been critical to Western efforts to force Mr
Milosevic to accept a deal which grants Kosova autonomy within Serbia.
Peace talks in Rambouillet, France, ended last week after the ethnic Albanian leaders
rejected an autonomy plan, with hardliners demanding full independence for Kosova.
The talks' failure enabled Mr Milosevic to enhance his standing with his own supporters.
The hardline objections were led by the veteran Kosova separatist Mr Adem Demaci, who has
spent nearly 28 years in Serb jails for his separatist beliefs. He refused to attend the
talks and vetoed moves by the Kosova Liberation Army representatives at the talks to
accept the deal.
However, on Wednesday he announced he was standing down as the KLA's political leader
following what appears to have been a virtual coup within its ranks by moderates who
favour the peace plan.
This followed intense pressure from the international negotiators who have been continuing
talks with ethnic Albanian leaders in Kosova since the Rambouillet talks.
The negotiators are understood to have convinced the major ethnic Albanian factions that
if they continued to reject the peace plan offered by the six-nation Kosova Contact Group
the consequences for the Kosovars would be disastrous.
"Demaci's resignation is a major advance for us," one Western official said.
"He was the major problem on the ethnic Albanian side and his departure allows us to
get our strategy back on track. Now we can target the real villain in all of this [Mr
Milosevic]."
The chief international negotiators in Kosova, the United States envoy Mr Christopher Hill
and the European Union's Mr Wolfgang Petritsch, were due in Brussels yesterday to brief a
meeting of NATO ambassadors on the Kosova peace process.
Mr Knut Vollebaek, head of the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe, which
has provided the peace monitoring force in Kosova, said he remained sceptical about the
ethnic Albanian leaders signing the peace deal.
He also warned that daily skirmishes between Serb security forces and KLA fighters could
erupt at any time into major conflict.
"A further escalation could put the whole peace process at new risk," he said.
NATO's military chief, General Wesley Clark, repeated a warning that the alliance was
ready to intervene before the next round of peace talks if Serb forces launched major
military operations.
NATO was continuing preparations for "all possible contingencies", he said. |
