Russian, EU Envoys Head to Belgrade
By CANDICE HUGHES
Associated Press Writer
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) — A Kosovo peace plan was agreed to today by negotiators in Germany that could bring a halt to more than two months of NATO airstrikes. Russian and European envoys flew to Belgrade right away with the plan.
The plan includes the deployment of separate NATO-led and Russian forces in Kosovo, and for an end to allied bombings once the West verifies Slobodan Milosevic has begun pulling his security forces out of Kosovo, Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin said.
''At the moment, there is a realistic chance that the war will end,'' Chernomyrdin told reporters before leaving for Belgrade.
State Department spokesman James Rubin said the ball now is in Yugoslavia's court to end the Kosovo violence and the NATO bombing campaign.
The fact that the Finnish leader and Chernomyrdin are going together to see Milosevic is ''a significant development,'' Rubin added.
The envoys put together a ''very far-reaching measure of agreement,'' Michael Steiner, foreign policy adviser to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, said after all-night talks at a hotel outside Bonn.
The envoys meeting for a second day with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott made ''very considerable progress,'' Steiner said. ''Now we'll have to see how Belgrade reacts.''
While Talbott had no public comment to the plan, Chernomyrdin and Finland's president headed to the Yugoslav capital this afternoon to present the draft to Milosevic.
Historical
Perspective
''We've reached a largely common position,'' said Finland's Martti Ahtisaari, who is backed by the European Union. Ahtisaari will report back to EU leaders at their summit Thursday in Cologne, Germany.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called the development ''very good news'' but said he did not want to overrate its importance.
The news came just hours after the talks on Kosovo had apparently broken down.
Military officials from NATO's 19 nations and a dozen partner countries, meanwhile, today committed 47,900 troops to be part of an international force to bring Kosovar refugees back home once Yugoslavia agrees to a negotiated settlement.
NATO planners originally envisioned a force of about 28,000, including about 7,500 U.S. troops, but nearly doubled the numbers last week to deal with the continued Kosovo crisis.
Another key obstacle to a settlement has been disagreement over the makeup of a peacekeeping force after the fighting ends. NATO wants to lead the force and insists on a complete Yugoslav military withdrawal — a plan Milosevic adamantly opposes.
Chernomyrdin said the problem has been resolved by introducing two forces, he said.
''There will be two separate presences in Kosovo, a NATO presence and a Russian presence,'' he said, stressing that the Russian troops would not be under NATO command.
But Britain immediately rejected the notion of putting part of a peacekeeping force in Kosovo under Russian command.
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, speaking in London, said deploying Russian forces in northern Kosovo, closest to the rest of Serbia, while NATO forces policed southern Kosovo would effectively partition the Serbian province.
''We are not willing to enter into a partition of Kosovo, either by agreement or by the back door,'' Cook said.
Russia and seven industrialized powers endorsed Kosovo peace principles last month that call for a well-armed international ''security presence'' to secure the return of some 850,000 refugees. Western officials have interpreted this to mean a NATO-led force.
Russia, Yugoslavia's most important ally, and NATO have differed sharply over Kosovo, with Moscow repeatedly demanding a pause in the bombings that began March 24 after a 13-month Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians had left at least 2,000 people dead.
The Yugoslav government contends the airstrikes violate international law. But the World Court in The Hague, Netherlands, today rejected its request for an immediate cease-fire.
NATO pursued its bombing campaign for the 11th week, with daytime attacks reported today across Serbia.
NATO struck military targets across Kosovo and hit power lines, fuel depots and TV relay stations in and around Belgrade late Tuesday.
Officials at alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, said the heaviest strikes were in southwestern Kosovo near the Albanian border, where heavy fighting continues between Serb forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army.
An aid official said today that the fighting and an accidental NATO bombing on the Albanian side of the border were crippling efforts to provide safe passage to refugees still trying to flee Kosovo.
''Every day we are being driven further and further down the valley,'' said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. ''Over the past week, we've had sniper fire, mortars, NATO bombardment and Albanian war maneuvers. Our operation up there is pretty much in tatters.''
Clashes between Serb and Kosovo Albanian guerrillas persisted today around the key frontier crossing at Morini.
Alliance jets accidentally fired across the border into Albania on Tuesday, hitting government bunkers, injuring a refugee and narrowly missing a group of foreign journalists.
The aircraft, some of them A-10 ground attack jets, were aiming for Serb positions just inside Kosovo when they unleashed bombs on a line of Albanian military bunkers instead.
Kosovo is a southern province of Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia where 90 percent of its prewar population of 2 million was ethnic Albanian.
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