Face-to-Face Peace Talks Signal Hope for Kosovo

In a day of whirlwind diplomacy, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright brought Serbian and ethnic Albanian negotiators together Sunday for their first face-to-face meeting, but an agreement between the two groups to end the crisis in the strife-torn Kosovo region remained a long way off.

During her one-day visit to the talks, which included separate private meetings with both teams of negotiators and an hourlong session with Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, Albright also said she now believes the Kosovo Albanians are prepared to commit themselves to an agreement that would bring peace to the Serbian province.

“There is every indication they will be ready to sign by the time the conference is over,” Albright told reporters as she emerged from the 14th century chateau here, southwest of Paris, where the talks are taking place. On Sunday, all parties agreed that the talks should continue for another week.

However, despite these encouraging steps, plus what aides described as a more positive, serious atmosphere, genuine optimism was dismissed as premature by those involved in the negotiations.

“It is clear to us all that the most difficult work is only beginning,” Albright told a news conference later in the day in Paris. She departed immediately after her meetings on a 13-hour flight to Mexico, where she is scheduled to join President Clinton, who is on a state visit there.

“I will brief him on the state of the talks and on the road ahead, [but] I will not be able to say that the path to an agreement is clear or that success is in sight,” she said.

The United States and five other major powers--Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy--are sponsoring the Rambouillet negotiations, which are aimed at persuading both sides to compromise. The ethnic Albanians in Kosovo must give up a guerrilla insurgency and dreams of independence and settle for a high degree of self-rule. The Serbs must withdraw large numbers of security forces from Kosovo, grant it significant autonomy and accept a NATO-led peacekeeping force to enforce details of any agreement that might be reached.

After absorbing the lessons of years of long and fruitless negotiations between the warring groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina earlier in the decade, the big powers in effect delivered an ultimatum to the two sides to come here a week ago. They then presented them with a draft agreement and gave them a one-week limit to accept it.

With little achieved during the initial seven days, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, co-host of the talks along with his British counterpart, Robin Cook, announced the one-week extension Sunday.

“Essential ground-clearing work has been carried out,” Vedrine said. “It is now crucial that the parties reach agreement on the hard issues outstanding. On this basis, we have decided . . . to continue the negotiations. They must be concluded by noon on Saturday, Feb. 20.”

Threat of Strikes ‘Remains Real’

North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, including the United States, already have agreed that they will launch airstrikes against Serbian targets if the government in Belgrade, capital of both Serbia and Yugoslavia, refuses to accept the accord. Serbia is the dominant republic in what remains of the Yugoslav federation.

The Kosovo Albanians, meanwhile, have been told that, if they fail to go along with the deal, they will lose both sympathy and crucial support from the international community for their hopes of greater freedom.

While Sunday’s meetings were mainly high-level lobbying sessions aimed at coaxing the parties forward, Albright blamed the Serbs for the slow pace of negotiations and reminded them of the consequences of diplomatic failure.

“The threat of NATO airstrikes remains real,” she said.

Still, Albright’s appearance, coupled with the presence of all six foreign ministers from the major powers at a separate meeting in Paris on Sunday afternoon, noticeably energized the search for a peace settlement.

“I came here with a clear message for both sides: that they face a fork in the road,” Albright told reporters.

One path, she said, “leads to disaster, chaos and more killing,” the other “back to a rational solution that will achieve peace, democracy and human rights for all the people of Kosovo.”

Rival Parties ‘Got’ Albright’s Message

Senior U.S. officials said both sides seemed to respond to her words, although the Kosovo Albanians were more positive.

“The Albanians got her message very well. There was a real warmth in the room,” one official said. “The Serbs got the message [too]. It wasn’t hard because it was clear, but they can’t find a way out.”

In a television interview in Paris on Sunday, Milutinovic said the Yugoslav leadership remains “very resolutely” against the stationing in Kosovo of a NATO force seen as key to implementing any accord.

But Clinton, in his weekly national radio address Saturday, said that in the event of an agreement, just under 4,000 U.S. troops would serve in a multinational force that would be deployed immediately to prevent any renewal of fighting between Serbian security forces and insurgents drawn from Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population, which makes up about 90% of the province’s 2 million people. The fighting has claimed about 2,000 lives during the past year.

U.S. Has Stake in Peace Settlement

In justifying the possible use of American troops, senior Clinton administration officials have stressed that the U.S. has a direct stake in a settlement. They say the conflict could easily spread to other countries in the Balkans and could heighten enmities between two NATO allies in the region, Greece and Turkey.

An inability by NATO to help implement a peace accord also would raise serious doubts about the alliance’s mission in a post-Cold War world on the eve of a major summit conference planned in Washington in late April to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

In Washington, though, several members of Congress expressed concern Sunday about the prospect of a third deployment of U.S. troops to the Balkans. American soldiers currently serve in Bosnia and Macedonia.

A leading Senate critic of the administration’s Bosnia policy said he would support a deployment to Kosovo but with reservations.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” that he would back the U.S. plan because of the threat that the conflict could spread and entangle neighboring countries, but he added that his support would come “with great reluctance” because the administration did not tell the truth when it sent troops to Bosnia in 1995 for what was billed as a one-year stay. Not only do U.S. troops remain in that country, but it is unclear when they will leave.

House Republicans Oppose Deployment

Although Clinton’s plan has won support from some prominent senators, including Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, there is strong Republican opposition in the House.

One prominent Republican House member said bluntly that he believes the mission would be a mistake.

“We went to Bosnia and we really essentially got in the middle of a civil war,” said Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Budget Committee. “And we’re about to do the same thing in Kosovo, to involve ourselves in a civil war that has been going on for centuries.”

Staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.