U.S., Allies Back Effort by Russia to Ease Crisis

The United States and its NATO allies gave their full support Monday to a longshot Russian effort to find a way out of the Kosovo crisis--as long as it meets their demands that Yugoslavia pull its forces out of the province and allow refugees to return under an international peacekeeping force.

Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, the Clinton administration’s top Russia-watcher, is scheduled to meet in Moscow today with Russia’s trouble-shooter for the Balkans, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, to underline NATO’s conditions.

Emerging from a long Kremlin strategy session Monday, Chernomyrdin said: “We worked out a position which can serve as a starting point in talks with alliance countries,” according to the Interfax news agency. The former Russian prime minister said he and Talbott would discuss “a range of proposals” to stop the conflict.

But U.S. officials stressed that Chernomyrdin had very little maneuvering room. If he hopes to end the bombing, these officials said, he must persuade Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to take steps he has so far refused to take: withdraw from Kosovo and allow the ethnic Albanian refugees to return under the protection of an international peacekeeping force.

“When you hear about diplomatic solutions, what you’re hearing about is diplomatic ways and means to implement the requirements that NATO has set forth,” said State Department spokesman James P. Rubin. “And to the extent that we can have Russia agreeing with us on what those objectives are, it will be easier to talk about ways and means to achieve those objectives.”

French President Jacques Chirac also weighed in Monday, talking by telephone for more than an hour with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, Yeltsin’s press service reported. President Clinton talked by telephone with Yeltsin on Sunday.

“We are sure there is a possibility of a solution,” Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov said. “Indeed, our positions are very close on a whole series of proposals that could become the groundwork for finding a political settlement.”

U.S. and NATO officials were encouraged by a television interview given Sunday by Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Vuk Draskovic, a former opposition leader.

Draskovic said that he expected a compromise between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia at the United Nations, and that Yugoslavia should accept it. He said the Yugoslav government was misleading its people into thinking that NATO will lose its resolve, or that Russia will intervene on Yugoslavia’s side.

“Not only did NATO not crack, but it became stronger,” Draskovic said in the interview on Studio B television. “I do not believe there is any sense in the heads of those who are invoking World War III. . . . The people should be told the truth: We are alone.”

Deputy Premier Says a Deal Is in the Offing

On Monday, Draskovic tried to play down the possibility that the Yugoslav government is cracking. He said he believed that Milosevic is ready to accept a deal calling for an armed U.N. peacekeeping force in Kosovo--a southern province of Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia--something Russian officials said Milosevic rejected last week.

Draskovic told Western reporters Monday night, after speaking to Chernomyrdin by phone: “I am not a solicitor of Mr. Milosevic . . . but last night, I believe, I hope, I expressed the stand of Mr. Milosevic himself.”

He added: “If Milosevic is not for it, I’m going to be against him.”

There was no indication that Draskovic was speaking for anyone but himself and his Serbian Renewal Movement. Despite his high-profile rhetoric, he has little authority in the Yugoslav power structure. He is believed to serve as a surrogate for relatively moderate elements within Milosevic’s inner circle, enabling the president, at any time, to choose between them and hard-liners.

“I think Milosevic will wait a few days,” said Predrag Simic, an aide to Draskovic. “Then we’ll see whether Draskovic is out front on this issue--or out of a job.”

Draskovic may be losing this battle. The army Monday ordered all television stations, including the one that aired his comments, to link up to Serbian state television each evening to carry the 7:30 news. The order did not bar private channels from airing their own news separately, as Studio B did at 7 p.m.

Talbott is the first of a string of high-ranking visitors from NATO countries expected to visit Moscow this week. U.S. officials hope that even if Chernomyrdin fails to persuade Milosevic, Western backing for his efforts could help reduce Russia’s opposition to the NATO bombing campaign and restore better relations between Moscow and the Atlantic alliance.

NATO Won’t Use Force in Oil Embargo

In an apparent concession to Russia, NATO officials also said Monday that the alliance would not use force to police its naval blockade of oil shipments to Yugoslavia. Russia, Yugoslavia’s primary source of fuel, has angrily said it would refuse to abide by the embargo.

German Gen. Klaus Naumann, chairman of NATO’s military committee, forecast that the alliance would choose not to threaten to sink merchant ships carrying oil to Yugoslavia but would simply search vessels suspected of defying the embargo.

U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the top NATO military officer for Europe, is to decide within the next several days on how to enforce the proposed embargo, which allied defense ministers decided in principle to impose Friday during the NATO summit. While U.S. officials continued to suggest Monday that NATO would use force if necessary, Naumann said plans do not “give us the right to force anyone to abandon his course, so we cannot stop a merchant vessel by the use of force.”

The reformist government of Montenegro, Serbia’s junior partner in the two-republic Yugoslav federation, indicated that it considered an oil blockade to be better than a bombing raid on petroleum storage facilities in the port of Bar in Montenegro, where most oil destined for Yugoslavia is delivered.

At the same time, Bulgaria and Romania announced that they will prohibit oil from being shipped across their territory to Yugoslavia. NATO warplanes destroyed both of Yugoslavia’s petroleum refineries earlier in the conflict.

In other developments Monday, the 34th day of the bombing campaign:

* The Pentagon signaled that it was ready to call up reserve forces this week to support aircraft participating in the NATO campaign. Officials have said Clinton was expected to order the call-up of about 33,000 reservists, mainly from the Air National Guard.

* NATO warplanes destroyed a combined railroad and highway bridge over the Danube River at Novi Sad, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea announced. Pentagon officials said the destruction of bridges and highways has reduced by more than half the Yugoslav military’s ability to bring supplies and reinforcements to its troops in Kosovo. For the second time in a week, NATO early today also blasted a 23-story building in Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital, that housed offices of Milosevic’s Socialist Party and four broadcasting stations.

* Yugoslav soldiers and Albanian border guards exchanged fire in the latest clash between the two countries’ forces, international observers said. Albanian police told the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that Serbian forces started the gun battle overnight in the remote Quafe e Prushit district and that shooting continued until early Monday.

* In a new surge of refugees out of Kosovo, thousands of ethnic Albanians backed up at the main Macedonian border crossing of Blace, where as many as 65,000 were stranded for days earlier this month. Macedonian state radio quoted the new arrivals as saying that 30,000 more people were en route. Refugees also said Serbian forces were holding a group of women and children as human shields at an ammunition storehouse inside the province, the U.N. refugee agency said.

* In Berlin, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan alluded to the escalating Balkan crisis when he appealed to Germans and other affluent members of the European Union to offer hope that the economic basket cases of southeastern Europe will eventually find a place in the European mainstream.

“It should not have required the present horrors in the Balkans to bring forth imaginative proposals for the reconstruction of southeastern Europe,” Annan said in a speech to German political and business leaders. “How much might have been avoided if such ideas had been actively pursued earlier?”

* The U.S. House Appropriations Committee said it will consider Clinton’s $6-billion funding request for Kosovo on Thursday. A GOP source said Republicans on the panel will try to more than double that request to almost $13 billion. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) said the additional money would probably be used to provide a military pay increase, pay for additional munitions to supply enough missiles to last through the end of the fiscal year, increase the number of Apache helicopters in Kosovo and improve military base facilities.

Both the Pentagon and NATO said Monday that the long-awaited Apache tank-killer helicopters were in place in Albania and ready to attack as soon as Clark gives the go-ahead.

Even without seeing combat, an Apache crashed and burned late Monday during a training mission in northern Albania, but no one was hurt, the Pentagon said.

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Kempster and Richter reported from Washington and Reynolds from Moscow. Times staff writers David Holley in Montenegro, Carol J. Williams in Berlin, Richard Boudreaux in Belgrade, Janet Cook at the United Nations and James Gerstenzang in Washington contributed to this report.