Primakov Meets Milosevic For Kosovo Talks
Reuters Photo
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov held talks with Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic Tuesday in an emergency bid to end the Kosovo crisis and NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
Russian media said Primakov's team had arrived at President Milosevic's office and talks started at 3 a.m. EST.
A top level Russian team, with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev accompanying Primakov, arrived in Belgrade after a sixth night of intensive NATO air strikes, focused on Serbian forces operating against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
An increased Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians since the Western bombing campaign began has caused tens of thousands of terrified refugees to flood out of Kosovo into neighboring Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia.
The Yugoslav news agency Tanjug quoted Primakov as saying on arrival in Belgrade that he had come ''to shift the process to political territory'' after six days of NATO air strikes.
He said he had been asked by President Boris Yeltsin to ''try to find an acceptable solution through political consultations.''
Britain said Tuesday any deal to end fighting in Kosovo had to ensure refugees fleeing the region could return with an international guarantee for their safety.
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said NATO would not support the idea of a unilateral Yugoslav cease-fire in Kosovo which left Belgrade's forces in charge of the region.
NATO has accused Belgrade of trying to ''ethnically cleanse'' the predominantly Albanian region. Some 100,000 refugees have fled Kosovo in recent days, many telling stories of atrocities by Serbian forces.
The Western alliance says its attacks are now focusing on mechanized military units in Kosovo preying on ethnic Albanians.
Yugoslav media reported that NATO planes had struck at airports in Serbia and Montenegro, an aircraft factory in a Belgrade suburb and a military barracks in the Kosovo capital of Pristina.
Residents in Pristina said two big explosions shook the city at about 3:45 a.m. (8:45 p.m. EST Monday). The exact location of the blasts was not known.
An air raid siren wailed over the city at 9 a.m. (2 a.m. EST), residents said.
Serbian radio said Yugoslav gunners shot down two planes early Tuesday, one south of the Montenegro capital Podgorica, which it said was believed to be a Harrier jet, and the second over the southern Serbian town of Vranje.
A British Defense Ministry said, however, that six British Harrier ground attack jets were forced to abandon an overnight raid due to bad weather.
''Six went out. They came back because of bad weather without reaching their targets,'' the spokesman in London said.
The Serbian side says it has shot down eight NATO planes and three helicopters since the raids began. NATO has acknowledged the crash of a U.S. F-117 stealth bomber Saturday but denies losing any other planes.
The United States said it would send more bombers to join the NATO air strikes, but insisted it had no plans to deploy ground troops to stop what it called indications of ''genocide'' in Kosovo.
However, a French newspaper said Tuesday NATO commandos were infiltrating Kosovo daily to gather intelligence on Serb forces.
The Catholic daily La Croix said separate American, British and French teams of four or five men each were entering the southern Serbian province with sophisticated communications equipment.
Their main mission was to ascertain if Serb forces were bringing heavy weapons toward the Macedonian border which could threaten NATO troops based there, the daily said.
A French military spokesman told Reuters there would be no official comment on the report.
Unconfirmed but consistent accounts from Kosovo of armed assaults on civilians, arson and murder by Serbian troops and paramilitaries were punctuated Monday by a NATO report, quoting reliable Albanian sources, that five community leaders had been ''executed.''
NATO, which celebrates its 50th anniversary on April 4, faces the question of how much can be achieved with air power alone. It remains opposed to deploying ground forces before a peace is achieved.
In Washington, the State Department gave credence to a report that 20,000 ethnic Albanians were being held by the Serbs in a ''concentration camp,'' to be used as human shields against the NATO air strikes.
NATO said it was checking allegations by an Australian aid agency that at least nine people had been killed when allied jets bombed two of refugee centers in Yugoslavia overnight.
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