Serbs Vow Elections Next Year in Kosovo

Serbian authorities, acting in line with an accord expected to head off threatened NATO airstrikes, announced Tuesday that internationally supervised elections will be held next year in strife-torn Kosovo province.

“The citizens of Kosovo will realize democratic self-rule through parliamentary, executive and judicial organs of authority in Kosovo,” the Tanjug News Agency said, reporting statements by Serbian President Milan Milutinovic. The large ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo leans heavily toward outright independence from Serbia, which is the dominant of two republics in Yugoslavia.

“Within nine months, free and fair elections will be held for the organs of authority of Kosovo, including those on a municipal level,” the statement said.

Earlier Tuesday, in what clearly was a reference to the then-pending election announcement, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke told a news conference that a “critically important” Serbian proposal for a path to a political settlement in Kosovo would come later in the day. “We hope it will mark a turning point in the tortured and tragic relationship between the peoples--Albanian, Serb and others--in Kosovo,” he said.

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic went on national television Tuesday afternoon to declare that the agreements he reached with Holbrooke during 50 hours of tense talks over the past week “eliminate the danger of a military intervention against our country.”

Under the deal, the “problems of Kosovo . . . can be settled peacefully and by political means,” Milosevic said. Hundreds of people have died in the province since a Serbian crackdown on separatist guerrillas began early this year.

It remained unclear, however, whether the guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army will accept any deal. A KLA statement released Tuesday called on all ethnic Albanian political parties “to create a government of national salvation to lead the negotiations for the independence of Kosovo.”

In Geneva, KLA spokesman Bardhyl Mahmuti said the guerrillas would continue to demand “full independence” but that it need not come immediately.

“We agree to a three-year transition period that would lead to self-determination,” Mahmuti said. “If Milosevic accepts this, that would be satisfactory to the KLA.”

But Mahmuti added: “We do not believe in the promises of Milosevic. He is just playing for time.”

Before flying back to the United States, Holbrooke stressed that Belgrade still must sign, within the next few days, agreements authorizing a 2,000-member unarmed international “verification” mission in Kosovo and approving surveillance flights over the province. Failure to do so, he implied, could still bring a North Atlantic Treaty Organization attack.

“The emergency phase of the crisis is not over with this press conference and these announcements,” Holbrooke said. “All I said was we can see a path to its end; I’m not here to declare the end of it.”

In Washington, President Clinton demanded that Milosevic show “serious progress” toward honoring the agreement during the four-day period that the threatened NATO strikes are on hold.

“We prefer compliance over conflict, and we hope that will be the case, but whether it is or not is entirely up to him,” Clinton said.

The announcement of a deal prompted a flurry of questions and expressions of doubt Tuesday on Capitol Hill and among political analysts, who wondered if the unarmed observer force will be safe, or whether, in a confrontation, Serbian forces might take observers hostage, thus preventing NATO from striking back with warplanes.

“It’s not clear how safe these people will be,” said Dana Allen, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

U.S. officials insisted that the observers would be safe because of the presence of NATO forces nearby--and because Milosevic is now convinced that NATO would, in fact, act.

Senior White House officials said Tuesday that Americans will probably be among the personnel who will be deployed to monitor compliance.

Speaking to reporters at a White House briefing, National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger said the monitors would be deployed quickly and would stay “certainly months” and possibly far longer.

“I couldn’t estimate it,” Berger said. “I think as long as they’re fulfilling a necessary function, they will stay there.”

Referring to security concerns, David Leavy, a spokesman for the National Security Council, pointed out that Serbian forces have not interfered with the international observer force that has been in Kosovo in recent weeks. He said the Serbs would not want to run afoul of a multinational force that could include observers from Russia, the Serbs’ historic patron.

“That would be a grave miscalculation, and they know that,” he said.

In Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin said Russia would probably participate in the monitoring force. The ministry welcomed the agreement between Holbrooke and Milosevic but criticized NATO’s willingness to bomb Yugoslavia--even though the threat of airstrikes apparently helped bring about the settlement.

Rakhmanin called NATO’s decision to threaten force a mistake and said, “Such steps are only complicating the political process of settling the situation.”

In recent days, Russian officials have repeatedly threatened to end their country’s relatively new cooperative relationship with NATO if the alliance attacked Yugoslavia.

The Serbian announcement Tuesday on elections included a timetable: an accord on an “international presence, including verification”--an apparent reference to the 2,000 international observers--would be signed by Monday; conclusion of an agreement based on a U.S.-influenced draft plan outlining fundamental elements for a political solution in Kosovo should be reached by Nov. 2; and rules for the election would be decided by Nov. 9.

The elections would be supervised by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to ensure “their open and fair character,” it said.

Holbrooke said the OSCE mission of “compliance verifiers” would be stationed in Kosovo “with the Yugoslav government’s full permission and support, anywhere in Kosovo they wish to be.”

Holbrooke said Bronislaw Geremek, Polish foreign minister and current OSCE chairman, “will travel to Belgrade shortly to sign an agreement on behalf of the OSCE with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia confirming every detail and much more of this agreement.”

“Aerial verification by noncombat aircraft flying over Kosovo in conditions that fulfill all standards of safety have been agreed upon,” Holbrooke said. “That arrangement will be codified in a formal agreement between the secretary-general of NATO, Javier Solana; the supreme commander of NATO, Gen. [Wesley] Clark; and the appropriate authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia within the next few days.”

Holbrooke stressed that Milosevic must show “proof” of compliance with U.N. resolutions by his “actions on the ground,” including “the deployment of security forces, the return of refugees to their homes, the end of military violence on all sides . . . and the creation, most importantly, of a political process that gives the people of Kosovo autonomy and self-determination.”

Times staff writers Paul Richter and Tyler Marshall in Washington and Richard C. Paddock in Moscow contributed to this report.

* TESTS FOR NATO: Unlike in Iraq, Kosovo crisis united NATO allies. A8