‘World Is Watching’ as Kosovo Peace Talks Open

Pushed by intense international pressure and the threat of NATO bombs, Serbs and their ethnic Albanian enemies from Kosovo came together Saturday for the first time and were told that they have one week to make peace.

With firm solemnity, French President Jacques Chirac demanded that Serbs and the ethnic Albanians in the disputed Serbian province cooperate to end a conflict in which hundreds of people have been killed and 400,000 have been made refugees in the last 11 months.

“We will not accept this cycle of violence, which is threatening more and more the stability of the entire southeast of Europe,” warned the French leader. Chirac is the official host of the talks that opened in a former royal hunting lodge in this country town 30 miles southwest of Paris. “We want peace on our continent.”

However, even as the negotiations in Rambouillet began, bloodshed in Kosovo erupted anew. A bomb exploded outside a grocery store in Pristina owned by an ethnic Albanian, killing three people, news reports said.

“I urge you to let the forces of life triumph over the forces of death,” Chirac told the 13 Serbs and 16 ethnic Albanian negotiators from Kosovo. “The world is watching. The world is waiting.”

The principle of the Rambouillet meeting, modeled on the 1995 Dayton, Ohio, peace negotiations for Bosnia-Herzegovina, is to keep the parties closeted in Rambouillet’s vast 14th century chateau, which stands amid a former royal forest, until they come to agreement.

Reporters are to be kept outside castle walls and briefed only irregularly.

A 3 1/2-hour delay in getting the process in motion early Saturday evening underscored the scale of the problems that lie ahead. The previous day, the Serbs refused to allow ethnic Albanian guerrillas from the Kosovo Liberation Army, whom they consider terrorists, to depart with the rest of the delegation.

After what French Foreign Ministry sources said were all-night discussions, the Serbs relented Saturday, and the ethnic Albanians flew to Paris aboard two French military transports.

Organizers of the talks here acknowledge that the delegations might not even want to sit in the same room when genuine negotiating begins today, so a trio of mediators--U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill and two diplomats representing the European Union and Russia--are on hand to shuttle messages back and forth and press for a deal.

Whether there is even a realistic chance of success at Rambouillet is underscored by divisions in the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen warned NATO allies gathered Saturday for the annual Wehrkunde security conference in Munich, Germany, that there will be little support for U.S. involvement in a force to implement a peace settlement unless both sides in the conflict are genuinely committed.

“I think there is grave doubt about the wisdom of trying to force our way into making peace in Kosovo,” Cohen said.

U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO’s European forces commander, acknowledged in a German radio interview: “We are very concerned that the . . . parties are prepared for a failure of the peace talks.”

Some European officials, in contrast, argued that even a shaky accord will hold if an outside force, including U.S. troops, is on the ground to enforce it.

“The main thing is to get the implementation force in. Once it’s in, I don’t see these guys [Serbs and Kosovo Albanians] fighting against NATO forces,” one senior European diplomat at the Wehrkunde conference said.

If the Rambouillet talks do produce a breakthrough, NATO is planning to send as many as 34,000 soldiers, the bulk of them European, to police the peace in Kosovo, a territory slightly smaller than Connecticut.

President Clinton has said his administration will consider contributing a U.S. contingent of 2,000 to 4,000, but neither he nor Cohen has offered a firm commitment.

In Rambouillet, the parties have been handed a ready-made plan, scripted by Hill, that calls for increased autonomy during the next three years for Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians make up about 90% of the population.

The federal government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, which claims the province as the historic homeland of Serbs and an integral part of Serbia, would keep control of defense, foreign policy and some other key areas. Serbia is the dominant republic of what remains of Yugoslavia.

“It enables both sides to make progress in building a stable, peaceful Kosovo without surrendering any of their views as to what should be the long-term future for Kosovo after three years,” argued British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who is chairing the talks along with his French counterpart, Hubert Vedrine.

At a news conference that followed Chirac’s speech, Cook said that the Serbs and ethnic Albanians have been given a one-week deadline which, in the event of “sufficient progress,” could be extended for a few days--”less than one additional week”--by the United States and five European countries that make up the Contact Group on the former Yugoslavia.

In the event the Rambouillet negotiations fail, NATO is ready to launch airstrikes, in principle against either side.

At NATO headquarters in Brussels, a high-ranking official said 220 aircraft are on alert, needing only a green light from NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana to start bombing.

For representatives of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, another incentive to be flexible is a transparent hint, delivered by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Thursday, that the West might not come to their assistance if attacks resume on civilians in Kosovo by Milosevic’s army and police.

The great majority of people in Kosovo do not want additional rights inside what remains of Yugoslavia; they favor independence.

Under Saturday’s gray, rainy skies, hundreds of ethnic Albanians from throughout Western Europe demonstrated in the streets of Rambouillet demanding freedom for Kosovo.

“Blood has flowed, flowed in rivers, and continues to flow,” one bearded man said. “We want independence.”

For Washington, halting the dispute, which could kindle additional ethnic hatreds in the Balkans and destabilize NATO allies Greece and Turkey, is a priority. Clinton on Thursday called the problem the “biggest remaining danger to our objective of peace and stability in Europe.”

As the Kosovo negotiations opened, Human Rights Watch, a U.S.-based organization, demanded that any deal not shield Milosevic and his top military planners from being prosecuted for atrocities allegedly committed by Yugoslav government forces.

In a report on violations of humanitarian law in Kosovo, Human Rights Watch blamed Yugoslav special forces for the Jan. 15 massacre of more than 40 ethnic Albanian civilians in Racak, an incident that led to the Rambouillet talks, and many other acts of murder, looting and destruction.

“After a tragic delay, the international community is finally addressing the Kosovo crisis with resolve,” Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “But any political settlement must ensure accountability for these terrible crimes.”

Times staff writer Carol J. Williams in Munich contributed to this report.