Negotiations on Kosovo

CHE SARA, SARA

Judging by issued statements, it seems that nobody expected a successful ending of the second round of negotiations on Kosovo, nor has any idea what might happen afterwards

AIM Podgorica, 16 March, 1999 (By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

Among all the possibilities, the least probable seems to be the one that continuation of peace negotiations on Kosovo which began on 15 March in Paris, will end with in an agreement. As one of the co-chairman of the conference, French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine, estimates, the conference "does not have very big a chance to succeed" because none of the parties have moved from the deadlock - although the international community has demanded that from them in unison. What are their positions?

ALBRIGHT GUARANTEES

Kosovo Albanians say that they are ready to sign the agreement offered by the Contact Group for the Balkans. Their representatives in Paris Hashim Tachi (better known as "Snake", member of the illegal Kosovo Liberation Army /OVK/ and head of the delegation), Rexhep Qosja and Ibrahim Rugova all separately confirmed this after they had arrived to the negotiations. The explanation of their present cooperativeness may be twofold.

First, they have probably realised how much the argument is worth that the West cannot bomb the Serbs for uncooperativeness if the Albanians also refuse to sign the agreement, as publicly declared by US state secretary Madelaine Albright and British foreign minister Robin Cook. Second, as a few days ago member of the Kosovo negotiating team Rama Buja declared to a Japanese newspaper, Albright in person gave guarantees to the Albanians that in three-year time they would be entitled to organise a referendum on independence, regardless of the formulation concerning this matter in the final paper.

Serbia, of course, still refuses to even take into consideration any indication of independence of Kosovo, but wants what they call "a good and honest agreement". State delegation says that it does not know what the Albanians want to sign when in the previous round of negotiations three weeks ago in Rambouillet no text of a political agreement has been arrived at. They claim that they will not even talk about the military agreement or international military forces which would guarantee implementation of the agreed political solutions.

NO TROOPS WHATSOEVER

Zoran Lilic, vice prime minister in the government of federal Republic of Yugoslavia, declared before the beginning of the Paris round of negotiations that "our stand and strategic decision is not to accept any foreign troops whatsoever, not even peace forces of the United Nations". "By deployment of NATO forces in Kosmet (Kosovo & Metohija) America wishes to join a very significant strategic three-border area formed by territories of Albania, Kosmet, Macedonia and Bulgaria into a single area, and in this way consolidate the southern wing of this organisation", explains Lilic, adding that he "personally has nothing against the wish of the USA to keep domination in Europe", but he is against "Serbia becoming a site of experiments and the price of these experiments being loss of sovereignty of Serbia, and FRY". This official left an unclarified space for a compromise in the sentence which read as follows: "between such contradictory stands they can demand certain acceptable solutions, but only after acceptance of the political agreement on autonomy". The West, however, and especially the Albanians reject even every hint about the possibility of signing the political without the military agreement, insisting that the troops must be under the umbrella of NATO and nobody else. So what happens now?

CONSEQUENCES

US president Bill Clinton, NATO secretary general Javier Solana and British foreign minister Robin Cook, one of the two co-chairmen of the unsuccessful negotiations on transitional peace agreement for Kosovo, threatened the authorities in Belgrade again with NATO bombs if they hesitated with signing of the agreement. London Independent, however, assesses Cook's threat as "lukewarm", concluding that this is just an "indication of disarray in the ranks of the world powers concerning their next move in case the negotiations end unsuccessfully. Significant differences berween America and its European allies concerning appropriateness of military strikes against Serbia were clearly expressed already in Rambouillet, where a number of European countries wondered why it was necessary to bomb a sovereign country in order to ensure autonomy of one of its provinces, especially in view of the fact that this country had not threatened any of NATO members.

As time goes by, there is less and less accord among the allies, and a few days ago a conflict was revealed in western media which had sprung up because of the head of the Kosovo Verification Mission. The Europeans seem to be inclined to replace the controversial American ambassador William Walker with a man from their own ranks, and the USA say it is out of the question. Walker is the man who without the slightest hesitation accused Serb security forces of having perpetrated the massacre in the village of Racak in January, and the Finnish pathologists who investigated the case, according to results which should officially be state on 17 March, established that there had been no massacre.

WAR IS BETTER

Serbia on the other hand does not expect anything good from Paris either. On 16 March, Politika publishes the estimate of its director and editor-in-chief Hadzi Dragan Antic that an "unprecedented fraud and an abundance of forgery" is going on and that "the whole scenario is aimed at creating in an artificial way 'conditions' for proclamation of 'independence' of a part of the territory of the Republic of Serbia. An attempt is being made to create a pretext for the aggression against a sovereign country"... To cut the long story short, judging by declarations of its officials - Serbia has chosen war.

Like the leader of the Radicals Vojislav Seselj a couple of months ago, Ratko Mitrovic, head of Serb negotiators in Paris, declared after arrival to the conference that "Kosmet is the symbol of national and state existence of Serbia and that is the reason why Serbia can lose Kosmet in one way only: by military victory of those who are at the moment stronger than it is, but never and not by any means in negotiations around a green table. Serbia will not give Kosmet up voluntarily, Kosmet can be taken away from it only by force, and then the greatest national solemn vow of the Serbs would be to win Kosovo back". Belgrade media have quoted unnamed NATO officials who spoke about possible intensification of conflicts which would probably finally lead to division of Kosovo. In that whole story neither Milosevic's "spokesmen" nor NATO mentioned the probable number of human victims in the future conflicts. As Milan Milutinovic, president of Serbia put it in his unique style when he arrived in Paris - Che sara, sara.

ROKSANDA NINCIC

(AIM)