Victory is only exit, says Blair
By Hugo Gurdon in Washington
telegraph.co.uk
Meeting between Albright and Cook, Nato Summit, Washington [22 Apr '99] - Foreign & Commonwealth Office [FCO]
Minister attacks Milosevic TV interview [22 Apr '99] - FCO
Remarks by the President and Secretary General Solana [22 Apr '99] - The White House
President Milosevic talks with Chernomyrdin [22 Apr '99] - Serbian Ministry of Information
Latest news - Nato
Daily news - Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Situation in Kosovo - US Department of State
Kosovo as reality check for Western allies [22 Apr '99] - Christian Science Monitor
Nato hits Milosevic home, Russia talks peace [22 Apr '99] - Central Europe Online
Key facts in press accounts refute official rationale for Balkan war [22 Apr '99] - World Socialist Web Site
Balkans crisis report - Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Emergency: US/Nato bombings - ZMag
Committee Against US Intervention
Milosevic 'ready to agree deal on peacekeepers'
Oil flow to Yugoslavia is cut off by Brussels
NATO ground forces will enter Yugoslavia with or without Slobodan Milosevic's permission, Tony Blair said yesterday, declaring: "Success is the only exit strategy I am prepared to consider."
Backed by President Clinton, the Prime Minister used a major foreign policy speech in America to escalate the threat of a ground war in the Balkans. Signalling to Belgrade that Yugoslavia will be brought to its knees if Milosevic does not agree to Nato's five basic demands for Kosovo, Mr Blair ruled out any fudge or compromise to give either the Western alliance or the Serbian dictator a cheap escape from the Balkan conflict.
He said: "We will not have succeeded until an international force has entered Kosovo and allowed the refugees to return to their homes." Belgrade had to be utterly defeated and be seen by the world to be utterly defeated, the Prime Minister insisted.
Mr Blair secured American support for his intensified sabre-rattling during nearly three hours of White House talks with Mr Clinton, Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State, and Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser, on Wednesday night.
Last night, Milosevic was reported to have accepted a Russian-backed plan to allow a United Nations peacekeeping force into Kosovo. However, the deal, which Russian sources said would bar "aggressor nations" such as the United States, Britain, France and Germany from the force, is likely to be rejected by both Washington and London on the grounds that Milosevic cannot be permitted to dictate terms. But the idea of such a force may well find support from other Nato members such as Italy, Greece and even Germany, raising the prospect of a split in Nato.
Earlier, Mr Blair and Mr Clinton had forged a new strategic partnership in which Mr Blair is the leading hawk and Mr Clinton tacitly goes along with deeper involvement in the Balkans. Speaking on Capitol Hill on the eve of today's Nato summit and after meetings with senior congressional leaders, the Prime Minister said: "We shall remain with this action and intensify it until we see it through." Later in Chicago, Mr Blair shut any easy exit doors from the conflict which might still be ajar, saying: "If we let an evil dictator range unchallenged, we will have to spill infinitely more blood and treasure to stop him."
While Mr Blair tried to stiffen spines among the other 17 Nato leaders arriving for the alliance's 50th birthday, Mr Clinton made it clear that the world's sole superpower was underwriting the British-led escalation. The White House arranged an interview in the Washington Post with Javier Solana, in which the Nato secretary-general disclosed that he had authorised its military command to revise and update plans drawn up last October for invading Kosovo.
Mr Blair, the White House and the Pentagon all expressed continued confidence that the air war alone would succeed in forcing Milosevic to back down. But they are all planning for the possibility of failure.
A senior source at the Pentagon said yesterday that Washington may give Hungary a unilateral guarantee which would commit the United States to its defence if the conflict spilled across Yugoslavia's northern border. As one of the three new Nato members, Hungary already has a guarantee from Nato, but Washington wants to give Budapest extra reassurance that it is not out on a limb.
Mr Blair said: "We have five objectives: a verifiable cessation of all combat activities and killings; the withdrawal of Serb military, police and paramilitary forces from Kosovo; the deployment of an international military force; the return of all refugees and unimpeded access for humanitarian aid; and a political framework for Kosovo, building on the Rambouillet accords. We will not negotiate on these aims. Milosevic must accept them."
"We are all internationalists now," he said, "whether we like it or not. We cannot refuse to participate in global markets if we want to prosper, we cannot ignore new political ideas in other countries if we want to innovate, and we cannot turn our backs on conflicts and the violation of human rights within other countries if we want still to be secure."
In a talk entitled Doctrine of the International Community, Mr Blair hinted at a new role for Nato, turning it into the military arm of a new world order rather than a purely defensive alliance. He said: "If we can establish and spread the values of liberty, the rule of law, human rights and an open society then that is in our national interest too.
"The spread of our values makes us safer. As John Kennedy put it: 'Freedom is indivisible and when one man is enslaved, who is free?'" He said the "principle of non-interference must be qualified" so that democracies could prevent refugee flows and genocide.
The German defence minister, Rudolf Scharping, said yesterday that he could not rule out Nato ground troops entering Kosovo to help stranded refugees. He said the alliance could consider an attempt to create humanitarian corridors to assist up to 400,000 ethnic Albanians believed to be still inside the province.
France appeared to join Britain in pushing the threat of ground troops against Yugoslavia. One French diplomat said: "To put a force on the ground we do not need the agreement of Milosevic."
But when Lamberto Dini, the Italian foreign minister, was asked whether Italy would join a group of countries reported to support sending in troops, he replied: "I don't know of the existence of such a group." He said there was an understanding between the Contact Group countries that such an intervention would only be considered "to implement the peace accord".
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