Yugoslavia Warned to Withdraw Troops

Even as they signed a key agreement meant to defuse the immediate crisis over Kosovo, NATO officials Thursday warned Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic that they are “ready and willing to act” if he does not immediately withdraw his troops from the strife-torn province.

NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said he and the alliance’s supreme commander, Gen. Wesley Clark, joined Milosevic in signing the accord, which confirms a plan for surveillance flights over Kosovo. Its purpose is to enable North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries to closely track military forces in the province.

The surveillance agreement is part of a broader deal Milosevic consented to earlier this week under the pressure of threatened NATO airstrikes. That overall agreement aims to open a path to a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Kosovo’s independence-minded ethnic Albanian majority. Serbia is the dominant of two republics in Yugoslavia.

“We expect the full cooperation of the Yugoslav government in carrying out the agreement on the air verification regime over Kosovo,” Solana said. “Any attack or hostile intent against our NATO verification aircraft will have the gravest consequences.”

Solana told Milosevic that NATO intelligence shows he has not complied with a key NATO and U.N. demand: the withdrawal of troops and special-police forces sent to Kosovo earlier this year to battle an ethnic Albanian rebel insurgency.

“I have told President Milosevic about the many army and special-police units that, according to our information--and I can tell you our information is good--remain in Kosovo even though their barracks are outside Kosovo territory,” Solana said. “These units must be withdrawn immediately.”

Early Tuesday, NATO approved an “activation order” authorizing airstrikes on Yugoslavia if Milosevic does not comply with U.N. demands to halt his Kosovo crackdown, but it postponed the implementation of any attacks at least until Saturday. Solana stressed that this threat has not disappeared.

“Let there be no doubt: We will keep the situation in Kosovo under the closest scrutiny. NATO will maintain its pressure until we have evidence that compliance has been fully achieved. We will remain ready and willing to act if these obligations are not met.”

But Solana also suggested that he fully expects the agreement with Milosevic to hold up.

The aerial surveillance agreement and another pact expected to be signed today authorizing a 2,000-member observer mission “are not the end of the story,” Solana said. “They are but the first step in ending the conflict in Kosovo and in relieving the urgent humanitarian situation.

“These agreements represent an opportunity for the leaders of Yugoslavia to solve problems in a peaceful and more constructive way,” he said. “I urge President Milosevic and the Kosovar Albanians not to squander this opportunity.”

In other developments Thursday:

* In Paris, representatives of the United States and the five other countries belonging to the Contact Group that coordinates peace efforts in the Balkans met and approved the overall Kosovo agreement, which was reached early Tuesday between U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke and Milosevic.

French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, who hosted the session, told reporters afterward that the Contact Group nations--the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Russia--remain “united, demanding and vigilant” in bringing a peaceful and humane end to the Kosovo crisis. This week’s break-through, Vedrine said, only came because NATO threatened to use military force against Milosevic.

Although the French official highlighted the consensus at Thursday’s meeting, he acknowledged that the Russians oppose a proposal to pass a new U.N. Security Council resolution that would automatically empower NATO to unleash its airstrikes against Yugoslavia if Milosevic doesn’t keep his commitments.

* At The Hague, U.N. war crimes chief prosecutor Louise Arbour announced that she plans to lead an eleven-member human rights investigative team to Kosovo.

“It is my intention to visit the areas where some of the alleged crimes have been committed, to meet with government and other officials and to meet with other organizations which may assist my investigations,” Arbour said.

* Serbian authorities in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia and Serbia, continued a crackdown on independent media, suspending operations of Nasa Borba, the third daily newspaper shut down this week.

Last week, as tension mounted over threatened NATO airstrikes, the government banned Serbian media from publishing or broadcasting foreign reports on the crisis or carrying items that “spread defeatism and fear.”

Richard Miles, chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, met editors of the three dailies Thursday and told them the United States “would continue to insist that restrictions on the freedom of press in Serbia be lifted,” the embassy said.

* In Washington, the Clinton administration announced that $4.8 million in additional U.S. humanitarian aid to Kosovo already has begun arriving in the province. The assistance, primarily overcoats, blankets and shelter materials, is intended to help refugees survive the fast-approaching winter.

Brian Atwood, administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, said the assistance would be channeled through private relief agencies already operating on the ground in Kosovo. He said a team of 10 AID workers is arriving in the region to oversee the distribution of this and $58 million in U.S.-supplied food and sanitation equipment.

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Times staff writers John-Thor Dahlburg in Paris and Tyler Marshall in Washington contributed to this report.