Diplomatic Observers to Patrol in Kosovo

International efforts to broker peace in Yugoslavia’s strife-torn Kosovo region will enter a new stage today with the launch of diplomatic observer patrols, U.S. and Russian diplomats said Sunday.

U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Nikolai Afanasievsky, speaking to reporters after a joint meeting with moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, stressed that Washington and Moscow are working together to defuse the crisis.

“Our goals are the same: a negotiated peaceful settlement to the Kosovo problem,” Holbrooke said.

Today’s initial “symbolic” patrol will include the American charge d’affaires in Belgrade, Richard Miles, and the Russian and British ambassadors, Holbrooke said.

“We look forward to that launch tomorrow, and we spent a lot of time this evening going over the details of that,” Holbrooke said late Sunday after returning to Belgrade, the capital of both Serbia and Yugoslavia, for more than three hours of talks with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic during which the patrols were a key topic.

Holbrooke stressed that in the talks with Rugova and at an earlier news conference in Pristina, he and Afanasievsky “spoke with one voice on the core concepts: that Kosovo is a part of Yugoslavia, that peaceful settlement is essential and that Dr. Rugova is the main Kosovo leader with whom we all deal.”

“It’s not my job here to outline a specific solution,” Holbrooke added. “But some change in the current status of Kosovo within the international boundaries of Yugoslavia is essential in our view.”

The patrols, which are expected to visit scattered trouble spots, are a key feature of an agreement reached by Milosevic and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin in Moscow on June 16.

The joint Yugoslav-Russian declaration was first seen as potentially undercutting U.S.-led efforts to press Milosevic to withdraw his security forces from the troubled region.

But since mid-June, U.S. attention has shifted toward the more immediate goal of a cease-fire between the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav forces and the ragtag but rapidly growing Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, which demands independence for the region. One key purpose of the diplomatic observer patrols will be to deter attacks on civilians by either side.

“Those patrols will become routine, integrated multinational efforts for a long time,” Holbrooke said.

Launch of the observer patrols “is a concrete result and important part of the Yeltsin-Milosevic talks,” Afanasievsky added. “I think that this will be important for peace, stability and security in the region.”

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More than 300 people have died since late February in clashes between Serbian forces and the 90% majority ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo, which is a province of Serbia, the larger of the two republics that remain in the Yugoslav federation since it splintered in the early 1990s. Sentiment among ethnic Albanians leans strongly toward independence, but Milosevic has vowed to allow no further breakup of Yugoslavia.

Concerns are widespread that all-out war in Kosovo--an area about the size of Los Angeles County--could spread to neighboring Albania and Macedonia, which has a large ethnic Albanian minority with similar secessionist sentiments. In worst-case scenarios, even Greece and Turkey could be drawn into a spiraling Balkan conflict.

The broad outlines of an international strategy for peace in Kosovo have become clearer in recent days. Holbrooke’s focus is to push ethnic Albanian leaders toward uniting sufficiently to exert authority over KLA fighters and engage in negotiations with the leadership in Belgrade.

A key problem, however, is that it might not be possible for anyone to control all the independence fighters now in the field.

“It’s clear that some of the people [with guns] are local and some are organized in various ways,” Holbrooke explained. “But we don’t know what the organizations are, and no one has yet stepped forward who says, ‘We have control over these groups.’ ”

The “so-called KLA . . . may or may not be a single organization,” he added. “I think somebody used the phrase ‘many KLAs.’ ”

As part of the effort to strengthen the authority of civilian Albanian leadership, Holbrooke met over the weekend with representatives of all 16 ethnic Albanian political parties, urging them to form a more unified stance in preparation for possible peace talks.

The so-called Contact Group of countries dealing most directly with the crisis--the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy--is pressing both the ethnic Albanian side and the Yugoslav government to accept some kind of settlement that would give genuine autonomy to Kosovo but not outright independence.

One possible solution that would fit U.S. goals would be for Kosovo to be separated from the Serbian republic and become one of three republics in Yugoslavia along with Serbia and Montenegro. Ethnic Albanian leaders--not to mention the KLA--reject such a solution, but some observers believe that they might be persuaded to accept it as part of a peace settlement.

In Berlin on Saturday, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said the Contact Group should draw up an autonomy proposal for Kosovo and present it to the embattled sides.

“We should draw up an outline within the Contact Group for autonomy because it is apparent that neither side is in a position to do this,” Kinkel said. “We then have to consider in the Contact Group how we can guarantee autonomy.”

The Contact Group is scheduled to meet Wednesday in Bonn.

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Meanwhile, the threat of force by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or of other intervention hangs over those unwilling to accept a peace deal. That threat has been mainly directed against Belgrade. But Robert Gelbard, a special U.S. envoy on Kosovo, said Saturday in London that action could also be taken against the guerrillas if they refuse to talk peace.

“If certain conditions were not met, we would oppose them and could oppose them all through their whole chain of supply,” said Gelbard, who recently talked with KLA representatives.

Holbrooke said he will return to Washington today and that his talks here “neither succeeded nor failed.”

The effort to achieve a peaceful settlement in Kosovo “will continue intensively,” he added. “We are not going to give up.”

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Times special correspondent Dejan Pavlovic in Pristina contributed to this report.