U.S. Envoy Urges Serbian Forces to ‘Get Out’ of Kosovo

Driving past charred homes and devastated villages, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke traveled into the heart of the Kosovo conflict Wednesday to talk with rifle-toting ethnic Albanian militants, bringing the separatist fighters into international efforts to stop an all-out war.

Against a backdrop of explosions and gunfire, Holbrooke declared that it is time for Serbian security forces to “get out of here.”

His tour of heavy fighting areas in the secessionist Yugoslav province highlighted a shuttle diplomacy mission that many see as a last-ditch bid to stop the conflict before NATO intervenes.

More than 300 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, have died since fighting escalated in March between Serbian-led army and police forces and the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization sent jets zooming over the region last week to persuade Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to stop the campaign against the rebels, but fighting continues unabated.

On a nearly 200-mile tour of western Kosovo, Holbrooke rode with three ethnic Albanian officials and had protection for his 14-car convoy from a truckload of Serbian security forces.

He played down his talks with two KLA leaders in the besieged western town of Junik, calling them only unofficial meetings with “armed men, some of whom were in UCK uniforms”--a reference to the Albanian-language initials for the KLA.

But observers saw the meeting as tacit recognition that the fast-growing KLA, which has the support of increasing numbers of Kosovo’s majority Albanians, must be taken into account in any political settlement.

In a scene sure to anger Milosevic, Holbrooke shook hands with the fighters in Junik, near the Albanian border, and posed for photographs with the uniformed men holding machine guns. Along with two other U.S. diplomats, he met with them for 45 minutes, seated on the floor of a house inside the village.

“These people are beleaguered, and they don’t have supplies,” he said afterward. “The situation is explosive. Serb security forces are all over the place.”

After telling Milosevic on Tuesday that time for a peaceful end to the violence is running out, Holbrooke planned to talk again today with the president and a Russian diplomat before returning to Kosovo and meeting with ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova.

In Washington on Wednesday, former presidential candidate Bob Dole urged Congress and the Clinton administration to take forceful action against Milosevic over Kosovo, including being prepared for airstrikes.

“There is no other realistic option left than to threaten Milosevic with force and be prepared to carry out that threat. That is the only message worth delivering to Belgrade,” said Dole, who heads an International Commission on Missing Persons.