Talks To End Kosovo Conflict Turn Sour
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NATO - Serbia War
By Dina Kyriakidou
KUMANOVO, Macedonia (Reuters) - Talks to end the Kosovo crisis turned sour Sunday when Yugoslav generals said they did not want NATO troops in the Serbian province.
A source attending the talks between NATO and Yugoslavia said they were likely to fail because Yugoslav generals were refusing to sign a plan for them to pull out of Kosovo and were reneging on Belgrade's acceptance of a peace plan.
The source said Belgrade's generals at the talks were still opposed to NATO entering Kosovo despite the ratification by the Serb parliament last week of a plan to end the war.
''They have come here and say they don't want NATO there,'' said the source.
After 11 hours of talks Sunday in a large camouflaged tent in a French NATO compound in northern Macedonia near the Kosovo border, NATO said there had been no real progress.
''There has been a mutual decision to have a delay for a few hours,'' NATO spokesman Simon Worthy told reporters. ''Hopefully they'll come back. They (the Yugoslav delegation) are refusing to sign at this stage.''
NATO air attacks continued Sunday, concentrating their bombing runs against targets in Serbia's Kosovo province.
In Brussels, NATO officials said it would be simple to return to heavier strategic bombing, probably of Belgrade, to show the Yugoslav people the ever-rising price of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's stalling.
In Oslo, The Kosovo Liberation Army's political leader accused Serb forces of using a poison gas against civilians in Kosovo and expressed scepticism that Belgrade would carry through the peace plan.
''Fighting between Serbian forces (and the KLA) continues with the same intensity as before,'' Hashim Thaqi told a news conference. ''The only difference between yesterday and today is that they used a gas that has hurt civilians.''
Thaqi said he had only sketchy reports about the attack, which he said took place in Dugagjin in western Kosovo. ''It was a chemical gas used against the civilian population, we don't have details,'' he said.
Thursday, Yugoslavia accepted an international plan envisaging a withdrawal of its forces from the Serbian province and deployment of an international force to ensure the safe return of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians.
''We know Milosevic has not kept promises in the past,'' Thaqi said. ''Now we have a final test for Milosevic. All the world will see if he can carry out what he commits himself to.''
Reuters television footage filmed from a position inside Albania showed a Yugoslav Army mortar position in southwest Kosovo near the Morina border crossing coming under heavy attack from high-flying B-52 bombers at about 4 p.m.(1400 GMT).
The footage showed repeated explosions and flashes of light as bombs hit, and thick columns of black smoke wafting upward.
A Reuters correspondent in the area said Serbian mortar fire had been coming across the border into Albania throughout the day.
Ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) have been engaged for days in clashes with Serbian forces in the area close to the southwestern towns of Prizren and Djakovica.
The Yugoslav state news agency Tanjug said more than 10 NATO missiles fell along the Kosovo-Albania border near Decani Sunday, and others struck near Urosevac in southeast Kosovo and in the area around the provincial capital Pristina.
NATO said Yugoslav Army troops and interior ministry police were on a looting spree in two Kosovo cities in what may be a sign that they know they are leaving soon.
''We do have knowledge of mass looting in an around Pristina by Serb army (VJ) and MUP (police forces),'' military spokesman General Walter Jertz told a news conference.
The Yugoslav delegation to the talks was led by two deputy army chiefs of staff, General Svetozar Marjanovic and General Blagoje Kovacevic.
They were presented Saturday with a detailed road map of the routes they should use to remove every weapon and member of the Serb security forces from Kosovo.
NATO has said Yugoslavia will be given seven days to withdraw all its forces from Kosovo and that a halt to the bombing campaign will come after the start of withdrawal has been verified over one day.
The Serb pullout is to clear the way for a NATO-dominated peacekeeping force of up to 50,000 to go in and guarantee the safe return of nearly a million ethnic Albanians.
In London, Britain's hardline Prime Minister Tony Blair said Serbia had no future with Milosevic at the helm. ''It must be in the interests of people in Serbia to have him go,'' he told BBC Television's David Frost.
NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana echoed his comments:
''It's not NATO's aim to depose Milosevic, it never has been, but I think all citizens of good faith, not only in Europe but all over the world, would like Milosevic to give up power in Serbia,'' he told the Spanish television station Telecinco.
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