Serbs Leave Kosovo as Deadline Closes In

As NATO’s latest deadline closed in, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic withdrew hundreds of police, soldiers and heavy weapons Monday from the battlefields of separatist Kosovo province.

By going to the brink only to step back, the Yugoslav leader--a champion of the diplomatic bob and weave--gave the North Atlantic Treaty Organization a way out of airstrikes that could easily create more problems than they might solve in the Serbian province.

“We’re sure that major progress has been made today,” a Western diplomat said Monday, reflecting the suddenly brighter mood among diplomatic observers.

“It’s definitely much more change than we’ve seen any other single day before this,” added the envoy, who spoke on condition he not be identified.

Monday’s withdrawals included at least one army regiment of 600 soldiers and well over 1,000 paramilitary police from one of central Kosovo’s most dangerous areas, diplomats estimated.

Serbian police also pulled down checkpoints and set fire to at least one as they withdrew, angry at what they saw as a retreat that will only hand territory back to separatist guerrillas.

Last week, NATO estimated that Milosevic had about 12,000 special police officers in Kosovo, or about twice the number he is allowed to have under a mid-October agreement, so the Serbian withdrawal Monday was far from complete.

But Milosevic has probably done enough to escape airstrikes for now, especially as relief agencies and diplomats are telling NATO that attacks would ruin efforts to bring thousands of refugees home out of the cold.

NATO had threatened to launch escalating air attacks on Serbian targets if Milosevic didn’t sharply cut the number of his security forces in Kosovo by today.

In a clear sign that the threat of NATO airstrikes is receding, American diplomats began spending the night in select towns and villages last week to help ease residents’ fears of Serbian attacks, a diplomatic source confirmed.

American diplomatic observers also drive around the countryside each day in a small fleet of bright yellow Humvees, and they would be easy targets for retaliation if NATO attacked.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe plans to send up to 2,000 more civilian observers over the coming weeks to be posted across the province.

An advance team is already in Pristina, the provincial capital, hiring translators, secretaries and other staff, and renting office space and housing.

That would be a waste of time and money if NATO airstrikes were imminent because they would almost certainly provoke so much Serbian anger that the civilian observer mission would be abandoned as too dangerous.

Since NATO threats have reduced Serbian forces significantly and helped draw thousands of refugees back home, the alliance is likely to note the progress and leave its threat open-ended at a meeting in Brussels today.

“I don’t think you’ll find that there will be any lessening of the military pressure from NATO until such time as we really do have full, irreversible compliance,” NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said in the Belgian capital Monday.

Move Follows Talks With NATO Chief

The day’s dramatic pullback came after Western diplomats said Serbian forces and separatist guerrillas were digging in on some fronts in Kosovo, threatening an already shaky cease-fire.

A weekend visit by U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO’s supreme allied commander, helps explain the sudden move, but so does Milosevic’s penchant for testing the limit, the Western diplomat said.

During 16 hours of talks that dragged on until almost dawn Sunday, Clark reportedly spelled out exactly which police and army units NATO wanted out of Kosovo and told Milosevic to move them quickly.

But just as he had during confrontations with the West over Bosnia-Herzegovina, Milosevic waited as long as he could to give in and pull back his forces.

“I suspect that he was waiting until the last minute to do much of anything along these lines,” said the diplomat, who was part of a team observing the withdrawals.

“And I think that the meeting over the weekend made it real clear to him what he’d better do.”

Reducing the number of Serbian troops and police across Kosovo is no guarantee that the crisis will pass.

The guerrillas continue to launch small-scale attacks on security forces, and ethnic Albanians--who make up 90% of Kosovo’s nearly 2 million people--say that Serbian police and soldiers are still harassing, and even shooting at, villagers.

A massacre by either side, or an attempt by the guerrillas to seize more territory as Serbian forces withdraw, could escalate the conflict again and bring soldiers and police back out of their barracks.

If NATO’s strategy succeeds and a cease-fire takes firm hold in Kosovo, the next step will be to get real negotiations going between ethnic Albanian leaders and Milosevic.

Bringing Lasting Peace Will Prove Difficult

Milosevic has already promised to work toward granting more autonomy for Kosovo, and U.S. diplomats have been working for weeks to lay the groundwork for a deal.

U.S. envoy Christopher Hill, who has spent months trying to bring peace to Kosovo, returned Monday to Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, as efforts continued to get ethnic Albanians to agree on a negotiating position. Serbia is the dominant of the two remaining republics of Yugoslavia.

The guerrillas known as the Kosovo Liberation Army and their political allies are insisting on independence for Kosovo, which the West and Milosevic agree is out of the question.

So bringing a lasting peace to the region probably will prove a lot more difficult than ending the current phase of the war.

“There are still a number of issues that they have to work out, compromise, negotiate and come up with some ideas,” said an American diplomat, who also spoke on condition he not be identified.

“I think we’re making good progress, but it’s a negotiation, and a lot of people have a hard time understanding what that is,” the diplomat said.

“There’s always been this picture on the side of a ‘U.S. plan’ or ‘Contact Group plan’ “--the Contact Group comprises the six nations coordinating peace efforts in the Balkans--”and that’s what they’re supposed to sign. That’s not it. We give them a draft with starting points and ideas and help them try to formulate it.

“But it’s got to be something that the two sides negotiate, and they’re proceeding with that.”

An American lawyer is working full time in Pristina, drafting and redrafting proposals on such key issues as how to get ethnic Albanians on a police force now run only by Serbs.

After eight months of brutal war, and many years of repression, ethnic Albanians are in no hurry to talk directly with Milosevic or other Serbian leaders.

Face-to-face negotiations over Kosovo’s future are such a distant prospect that American envoys haven’t given them much thought, the American diplomat said.