Primakov Ends Talks With Milosevic
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP)--Six hours of talks between Russia's prime minister and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic today produced no immediate sign of a breakthrough that might halt the round-the-clock NATO airstrikes on Serb forces.
The talks between Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Milosevic, the most high-level mediation effort since the NATO airstrikes began seven days ago, lasted a few hours longer than expected, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Primakov claimed the talks ''have brought results,'' according to the Russian agency.
''Belgrade is ready to settle all the questions by political means'' if the NATO bombing stops, ITAR-Tass quoted Primakov as saying.
NATO, however, has called for a cessation of all attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians and Milosevic's acceptance of a peacekeeping force in Kosovo under NATO leadership as conditions for stopping the airstrikes.
Tass also quoted Primakov as saying ''the political means implies first of all talks,'' then repeated Milosevic's previous position--rejected before by the West--that all Kosovo ethnic groups should take part, not just the ethnic Albanian majority.
Primakov also told reporters after arriving at Bonn's airport that if the airstrikes were stopped, ''peaceful refugees'' who have left Kosovo for other countries would be able to return.
Primakov left the Yugoslav capital Belgrade after the talks and arrived in Germany to meet with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the current president of the European Union.
About 90 minutes after he left, air raid sirens sounded in Belgrade for the first time all day, indicating a resumption of NATO attacks in the capital.
NATO officials said the number of ethnic Albanians who have fled Kosovo in the last six days has grown to 118,000, and Pec, a city of 100,000 residents in western Kosovo, has been ''almost totally destroyed.''
The alliance said it had received reports that Yugoslav military forces had opened fire with tanks and artillery at refugees in the Pagarusa Valley, southwest of the provincial capital of Pristina, but had no confirmation.
Rebel sources said Serbs attacked the area, where at least 50,000 ethnic Albanians have been living since being chased from their homes last summer. Ramush Hajredinaj, a regional commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, said the attack appeared intended to drive the civilians into Albania.
A spokesman for the party of Ibrahim Rugova, the leader of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, said today that Rugova is injured and has gone into hiding. Hafiz Gagica, the Democratic League of Kosovo's representative in Germany, said Rugova's whereabouts were unknown and did not give details on the injuries.
Western officials had little hope that Primakov's visit would bring a breakthrough that could halt violence in Kosovo. The NATO bombing that began last week has so far failed to deter Milosevic's forces from carrying out what appeared to be a systematic offensive against Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.
Reports of mass killings and forced removals, with entire villages being burned and cities cleared of ethnic Albanians, have increased since NATO forces began the bombing and missile campaign last Wednesday.
French Defense Minister Alain Richard said today that the airstrikes have diminished by more than half Yugoslavia's capacity to strike and defend itself by air.
French Army Chief of Staff Jean-Pierre Kelche said NATO enjoyed ''mastery of the airspace'' and there was ''no longer any coordinated and sophisticated capacity of Serb air forces to oppose the alliance air forces.''
NATO has refused to give any precise military information about operations, the results of second phase attacks so far, beyond saying they have been striking at ground forces in Kosovo.
''We will continue to conduct operations around the clock,'' NATO air commander David Wilby said at today's briefing in Brussels, Belgium.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he spoke with President Clinton and with NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana and ''we are absolutely at one on this: The answer to what is happening is to intensify the attacks.''
NATO spokesman Jamie Shea described the Kosovo situation as ''a humanitarian disaster of enormous proportion'' with about 30 percent of the Kosovo population--some 570,000 people--uprooted.
''Serbian ethnic cleansing has reached new heights,'' Wilby said.
''In many cases they have been provided with 'free transport,''' Shea said. ''They are simply busing people to the frontier to get them out as quickly as possible. You don't improvise a whole bus fleet if you haven't planned this operation a long time in advance.''
Shea said if the reports of expulsions were confirmed, it would be something not seen since the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s.
A Yugoslav official for the first time acknowledged that atrocities by Yugoslav troops and Serb police in Kosovo may be occurring.
''Emotions rise up extremely, and it's possible that there are circumstances to crack down, maybe atrocities, but it is not a state strategy,'' Deputy Prime Minister Vuk Draskovic said in an interview broadcast on Israel's Army Radio.
Wilby said today that two burning villages were seen in Kosovo, showing aerial photos of smoke billowing in the air.
With international monitors having left Kosovo and virtually all foreign journalists kicked out, the reports are impossible to verify. But the consistency in details of an apparent systematic Serb campaign to rid some parts of Kosovo of ethnic Albanians gave credence to allegations by Western leaders of ethnic cleansing.
The upheaval that some Western relief officials say threatens to become Europe's worst humanitarian crisis since World War II continued to spread, with waves of refugees further stretching the ability of overburdened neighbors--Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro--to care for them.
Western officials were watching Primakov's initiative closely.
But British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told BBC Radio 4's Today program he saw ''no signs'' Belgrade would accede to NATO demands to cease hostilities, grant Kosovo autonomy and allow NATO troops into Kosovo to keep the peace.
''Certainly, we could not accept simply Milosevic calling a cease-fire leaving him in control of the territory which he's cleansed of the Kosovo Albanians,'' Cook said. ''Any settlement now must involve the ability of those refugees to return in security, free from fear, with an international guarantee, to their homes.''
The Yugoslav government remained defiant, issuing an order Monday night prohibiting men of military age from leaving the country.
The tank-killing A-10 aircraft joined the NATO force, and more U.S. aircraft, including five B-1 bombers, were being deployed, the Pentagon said.
Only one NATO plane--a U.S. F117A stealth fighter--has been confirmed lost in the first six days of attacks.
Kosovo Albanian refugees kept pouring into neighboring territories, with the 60,000 who have arrived in northern Albania since the attacks began overwhelming the meager services available in one of the world's poorest countries.
Dozens of buses transported refugees from the regional center of Kukes in the north to other towns and cities further south, but the transport hardly eased the pressure caused by the influx. Most refugees had little more than the clothes they wore, and at least eight died today at a Kukes hospital.
Yugoslav officials have accused NATO of inflaming the ethnic crisis in Kosovo, where ethnic Albanian rebels have been fighting for independence from Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic.
Ethnic Albanians make up 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people. Serbs, however, see Kosovo as the birthplace of their national culture.
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