West Backs Last-Ditch Effort for Peaceful End to Kosovo Crisis

As NATO moved unswervingly toward a bombing campaign, the major Western powers Thursday endorsed an eleventh-hour attempt by U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke to persuade Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end his repression in the separatist province of Kosovo.

“We agreed that Dick Holbrooke should return straightaway to Belgrade with the full backing of the Contact Group,” said British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, the chairman of the meeting here of foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

With Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warning here that “time is all but gone” for Milosevic to avoid North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrikes, Holbrooke took off for Belgrade shortly before midnight Thursday, just 24 hours after he appeared to have given up on his effort to find a diplomatic solution.

Diplomats said Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, just back from his own mediation attempt in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia and Serbia, endorsed Holbrooke’s diplomatic effort. Ivanov predicted that Milosevic ultimately will knuckle under to demands that he withdraw most military forces from the province, the diplomats said.

In Kosovo, the increased international involvement already has brought a sharp reduction in the level of violence, with something close to a cease-fire by both sides suddenly in place.

The ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army issued a statement Thursday evening pledging at least a temporary cease-fire starting today, in line with U.N. demands on both sides to stop their attacks.

“Recognizing the engagement of the international community to end the civilian tragedy in Kosovo, and considering the demands of the Security Council . . . the Kosovo Liberation Army decides to exercise self-restraint and make its own contribution to carrying out the resolution,” said the statement, which was issued through the Albanian-language daily Koha Ditore in Pristina, the provincial capital.

A diplomat in Pristina said that while Serbian forces still are not in full compliance with U.N. demands, there have been heavy withdrawals.

“The bad news is there’s still an awful lot of police out there,” the diplomat said. “They have basically the same task the army has. They’re deployed mainly along main traffic arteries. Their mission is primarily to secure those arteries. They’re primarily in areas with a strong KLA presence.”

In Washington, a senior Clinton administration official insisted Thursday that developments on the ground in Kosovo, including the halt in fighting and partial withdrawal of Serbian forces, fall well short of the steps necessary to bring Milosevic into compliance with the demands of the international community as expressed in a resolution handed down by the U.N. Security Council last month.

“At this point, Milosevic is not in compliance,” the official said.

U.S. intelligence puts Yugoslav army forces at 18,000 in Kosovo and special-police units at 11,000. Administration officials say this must be reduced to 12,000 and 6,500, respectively, in order to be in compliance.

The diplomat in Pristina said he fears that if NATO airstrikes took place despite the Serbian pullback, it would lead to massacres on a far greater scale than anything yet seen in Kosovo, where hundreds of people have died since the Serbian crackdown began in February. “I personally think tens of thousands of innocent Albanian civilians are at risk,” he said.

If there are strikes, diplomats, journalists and aid workers will no longer be able to monitor events in Kosovo, and that would give “angry, tired, ill-kept and ill-disciplined” police a free hand to take revenge on the ethnic Albanian civilians, who make up 90% of the population in the province, the diplomat said.

Although Russia continued to caution Thursday against the use of military force, Foreign Minister Ivanov joined the other Contact Group ministers in London in demanding that Milosevic comply with international demands.

“If President Milosevic was looking for rescue from any member of the Contact Group, he did not get any tonight,” Britain’s Cook said.

For the crisis talks, the Contact Group countries--which usually bring dozens of officials to meetings--were limited to just two representatives: the foreign minister and one aide. For the United States, that was Albright and Holbrooke.

The Contact Group sent Milosevic a six-point ultimatum: end offensive military operations; withdraw forces that were sent into the province in March to put down ethnic Albanian separatists; allow international humanitarian organizations to operate freely in the province; cooperate with the international war crimes tribunal; facilitate the return of refugees; and start negotiations with the ethnic Albanian community on autonomy for the province.

Albright, at a news conference in Brussels after meetings with NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana, said it is time for the alliance to make the “difficult but necessary decision to authorize military force if Milosevic fails to comply.”

Under NATO’s complex procedure, the next step--an “activation order” in NATO parlance--places the needed forces on alert, in effect aiming and cocking the gun. But further unanimous action by all 16 member nations is required to pull the trigger. NATO diplomats said the alert order could be issued as early as Saturday, but they declined to predict when bombing might start.

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Kempster reported from London and Holley from Pristina. Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Washington contributed to this report.