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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johannes Pilch who wrote (41790)	4/7/1999 12:40:00 PM
From: JBL	Respond to of 67261

U.S. Asks Russia to Play Mediating Role in the Kosovo Crisis NY Times Apr. 7, 1999 JANE PERLEZ WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration has approached Moscow to serve as a go-between with Slobodan Milosevic in a new attempt to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Kosovo. Vice President Al Gore called Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov by telephone and spoke to him for 40 minutes on Tuesday, asking Russia's help in getting the Yugoslav leader to take steps that would lead to a diplomatic solution, Gore's office said. Gore's contacts with Russia were reported as the administration continued to explore other strategies to resolve the conflict without using allied ground forces to fight the Serbians. Administration officials gave no explanation for the timing of the overture, and there was no indication of what had led up to it. Primakov had traveled to Belgrade on March 30, a week after the NATO bombing began, but that attempt at mediation was rebuffed by NATO. While Gore's office did not disclose Primakov's response on Tuesday, an aide to the vice president said the two talked about "how we might cooperate to urge Milosevic to take steps to end the conflict." The vice president made "the point there is a diplomatic track and we'd prefer diplomacy to bombing," the aide added. Using the Russians as a bridge to the Yugoslav president would help resolve the problem the administration and NATO would have dealing directly with Milosevic after denouncing him so fiercely for the operation to drive ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo. Milosevic has told officials in Europe that he is not willing to deal directly with the United States. Senior administration officials also said that actively involving the Russians would help soothe relations with Moscow, which has vehemently opposed the NATO bombing. Administration officials said the Russians would be asked to urge Milosevic to accept the four points that the NATO allies outlined last weekend as a condition for ending the NATO bombing. These are the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo, the return of the refugees, the introduction of an international security force and self-government for Kosovo. "If the Russians obtained the agreement that would be good for the Russians," said a senior administration official. "And it would be good for us because we don't have to meet with Milosevic." In announcing these four points in the past few days, administration officials have talked of an "international security force," a more palatable phrase for the Russians and for Milosevic, than the earlier references to a "NATO-led" peacekeeping force. But it would in fact be commanded by NATO, administration officials said. Last week, administration officials also said they were considering a plan to make Kosovo an "international protectorate," instead of setting up an autonomous administration as envisioned in the Rambouillet agreements for which NATO failed to win Serbia's agreement. For now, officials are rejecting the idea of partitioning Kosovo, with the Serbs keeping a northern portion of the province and the remaining area being given to the ethnic Albanians. They argued that this would reward Milosevic. After a speech on Tuesday at the Brookings Institution here, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that the administration was insisting that there be a "permissive environment" for the international force. She reiterated that the administration had "no plans or intentions for ground forces in a non-permissive environment." The first round of diplomatic meetings on Kosovo since the NATO strikes began will open in Brussels on Wednesday, with meetings of the six-nation Contact Group, including Russia, the United States and four NATO allies. The Russians dropped their demand that NATO halt the bombing before they would attend such a meeting, American officials said. Albright is expected to attend a meeting of the foreign ministers of the NATO allies in Brussels next Monday. If the Contact Group meeting in Brussels goes well, it is possible that a meeting of the group's foreign ministers will convene as well next week. But for that to happen, a Western diplomat said, the Russians would have to agree to the four principles laid down by NATO. How to deal with Milosevic has become a sore point for the Clinton administration. Some members of Congress have said that Milosevic should be declared a war criminal and be dealt with only as such. At the middle levels of the administration, especially among those who worked on Balkan issues during the war in Bosnia, there is also strong opposition to negotiating with Milosevic. Although officials have painted Milosevic as the perpetrator of the forced expulsions, they have not gone so far as to accuse his forces of committing acts of genocide. The State Department spokesman, James P. Rubin, has stopped just short of using the word "genocide," saying instead that there were "indicators of genocide" by Milosevic's forces in Kosovo. Pressed last weekend on whether Milosevic was a war criminal, Albright said that was a definition that had to be determined after a trial at the War Crimes tribunal. At the State Department, one official said that the administration had not ruled out dealing with Milosevic in person. "We dealt with Stalin for years and years," the official said. "We deal with the North Koreans."