Albright Seeks Action on Violence in Kosovo

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright pushed European allies Sunday to act decisively to end the explosion of violence in the Serbian province of Kosovo, but on the eve of a crucial six-nation meeting on the issue here, it was far from clear that she will win agreement on the kind of tough measures she seeks.

After stops in Rome, Paris and Bonn, the only specific actions proposed for consideration at today’s meeting came from German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, and they were aimed more at preventing the violence in Kosovo from spreading elsewhere in the Balkans than at ending the unrest itself.

Those proposals include expanding an Italian-led European peacekeeping mission presently in neighboring Albania and extending the life of a small but effective United Nations peacekeeping force in another of Kosovo’s immediate neighbors, Macedonia, that observers believe has been a key to preventing violence in the ethnically mixed country once part of Yugoslavia.

About a third of the members of the 1,000-strong multinational force in Macedonia are American. Albright praised the Macedonia force, whose current mandate expires Aug. 31, saying it has helped create a “more stable environment” in the region.

In addition, Kinkel suggested a U.N. Security Council debate on Kosovo; an urgent meeting of foreign ministers from countries in the region, including Albania, Macedonia, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania; and the immediate return to the region of a special European envoy, former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez.

“A dialogue and a compromise are the only avenues open to us,” Kinkel told reporters.

In Paris, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine called Kinkel’s ideas “very helpful” but gave no indication that France might be willing to go further and back the kind of tough punitive measures against Serbia’s de facto ruler, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, that Albright believes are needed to bring an end to the violence in Kosovo.

Britain, France, Germany and Italy, plus Russia and the United States, make up the six-nation Contact Group that collectively is overseeing the fragile peace in the Balkans. Its meeting today in London is the first since the latest crisis over Kosovo erupted. The group’s decisions are made by consensus.

Although ethnic minorities are scattered throughout the Balkans, Kosovo is especially feared as the possible first scene of a nightmare scenario in which ethnic violence would spread from one country to another in the Balkans, eventually pulling North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies Turkey and Greece into a conflagration that would consume much of southeastern Europe.

Although Albright has declined to talk publicly about the proposals she plans to present at the London meeting, senior U.S. officials indicated that she will try to win support for a reversal of any movement toward lifting international economic sanctions against Serbia.

Those sanctions, which effectively deny international financial assistance to Serbia’s struggling economy, were applied because of the regime’s support for separatist Serb forces during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

At every stop of her European trip, Albright has stressed that Milosevic must “pay a price” for his recent decision to unleash Serbian authorities against the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo in a bloody attempt to snuff out separatist political movements there.

“The time to stop the killing is now, before it spreads,” Albright said. “The way to do that is to take immediate action against the regime in Belgrade, to ensure that it pays a price for the damage it has already done and to encourage it to finally resolve the problems in Kosovo through dialogue and reconciliation.”

The official death toll from the violence that began in Kosovo last month is 51, but unofficial--and unconfirmed--reports from the area indicate the number of dead could be far higher.

Milosevic revoked Kosovo’s autonomous status within Yugoslavia in 1989, and Albanians, who constitute 90% of the province’s population, have pressed for greater freedom from Serbia ever since.

Even if Albright manages to persuade France and Italy to back punitive measures, she faces an even tougher battle to win Russian support.

Russia has strong historical and religious ties to the Serbs and is still smarting at the U.S. hard line toward Iraq in the latest international showdown with Saddam Hussein. Moscow has also declared the Kosovo violence an internal Serbian matter--a stance that would seem to preclude Moscow’s support for any harsh action. In an overt snub to the Contact Group, Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov has decided not to attend, leaving the meeting instead to a deputy, Nikolai Afanasievsky.

“There’s no doubt we’re going to have trouble with the Russians,” one U.S. official said.

U.S. officials suggested that if the Contact Group fails to back punitive measures against Milosevic, Albright might seek them outside the group by working with individual nations on a bilateral basis.

“From the words she’s using, you can see the last thing she’d want would be a repeat of the last time the world had a chance to stop something like this from spinning out of control and didn’t because of the lowest common denominator approach,” noted one senior State Department official.

The official was referring to Bosnia, where events left the U.S. and Europe seemingly paralyzed as that country slipped into an orgy of ethnic bloodshed.

* KOSOVO VIOLENCE: Ethnic Albanians become the latest victims of a long line of conflicts in the Balkans. A10