Serbs Halt Rebels at Airport Before Kosovo Talks

Serbian police blocked ethnic Albanian guerrilla leaders Friday as they tried to board a plane for peace talks in France today, casting new doubt on chances for a deal to end the conflict in separatist Kosovo.

When four members of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army were not allowed on the flight from Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, the rest of the 16-member ethnic Albanian delegation refused to leave for the talks outside Paris.

Serbian officers said the KLA members could not have exit permits because they did not have proper documents, apparently meaning valid passports, said Sandy Blyth, spokesman for an international monitoring mission in Kosovo.

Western diplomats saw the last-minute snag more as annoying posturing by the Serbs than an attempt to stop the talks themselves, and the full ethnic Albanian delegation was expected to reach France today.

“It is absolutely critical that the entire delegation get to Paris, and we will insist that that be the case,” U.S. envoy Christopher Hill told reporters.

Yet the Serbs, who view the KLA as terrorists with no right to seats at an international peace conference, have stirred up an already foul atmosphere by harassing the delegates on the eve of talks.

They also have sent a blunt message to the United States and the five European powers in the Contact Group sponsoring the peace conference in Rambouillet: Serbia’s government still sets the rules in Kosovo, despite a North Atlantic Treaty Organization threat to bomb.

Diplomats from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which had tried to negotiate safe passage for the guerrilla leaders to attend the talks, were working on a solution Friday night, Blyth said.

Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of what remains of Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians make up about 90% of Kosovo’s population, and the overwhelming majority support complete independence. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has tried to crush the KLA’s separatist struggle in an 11-month war.

Although NATO’s preparations for airstrikes have forced both sides to agree to peace talks, the gap between the warring sides is so wide, and their antagonism so strong, that prospects for a deal before the Feb. 19 deadline set by the Contact Group do not appear good.

The guerrillas are insisting on guarantees that Kosovo’s people will be allowed to choose complete independence in a referendum after the three years of the limited self-rule that Western mediators want them to settle for at Rambouillet.

On Thursday, Serbia’s parliament rejected the deployment of foreign troops to police any peace accord, but NATO commanders are making plans for a force of between 25,000 and 30,000 troops to be deployed in Kosovo.

About 4,000 of those are expected to be Americans, but President Clinton stressed Thursday that they will be sent to Kosovo only if there is a firm peace agreement in place.

And “that’s a big if,” Clinton added, echoing doubts on both sides here that the Rambouillet talks will be enough to avert more bloodshed between the ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serbian security forces in Kosovo.

Milosevic won’t be attending the talks. Yet he is the only person who can make the compromises needed to reach an agreement on Kosovo--especially because NATO would need Belgrade’s permission to station peacekeeping troops in the province.

By leaving the decision on whether to go to Rambouillet to Serbia’s parliament, Milosevic allowed lawmakers to set an uncompromising tone in their often-angry debate Thursday.

The government’s delegation is dominated by Milosevic loyalists with whom ethnic Albanian leaders have repeatedly refused to negotiate, such as Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Ratko Markovic and Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Vladan Kutlesic.

The Serbs’ team includes leaders of pro-government groups in Kosovo and members of ethnic minorities such as Turks, Gypsies and Egyptians who will underscore Belgrade’s argument that ethnic Albanians should not be allowed to decide the territory’s future.