Clinton Vows to Hit Serbia if No Deal Is Made on Kosovo

With more than 400 NATO warplanes ready to scramble and today’s Western-imposed deadline for reaching a Kosovo peace deal at hand, President Clinton on Friday refused to give a defiant Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic any extra time to talk.

Standing next to French President Jacques Chirac at a White House news conference, Clinton said the two leaders “stand united in our determination to use force if Serbia fails to meet its previous commitment to withdraw forces from Kosovo.”

The separatist province is a part of Serbia, the dominant republic of what remains of Yugoslavia.

“I have ordered our aircraft to be ready to act as part of a NATO operation,” Clinton said.

He also flatly rejected an extension of today’s noon deadline in Paris for Serbian negotiators to accept an interim peace agreement on Kosovo--an agreement that their ethnic Albanian foes are reportedly prepared to accept, albeit reluctantly.

“I think it would be a mistake to extend the deadline,” Clinton said.

Chirac pronounced himself in total agreement with Clinton before following with an equally tough warning of his own: “We want our continent to be at peace, and we will not accept that the present situation in Kosovo should continue.”

The conspicuously strong statements by the two leaders came only hours after equally uncompromising declarations by Milosevic.

He refused even to meet with special U.S. envoy Christopher Hill--spending part of his day instead with a low-level parliamentary delegation from Cyprus--and made one of his most intransigent pronouncements on Kosovo yet, likening proposed North Atlantic Treaty Organization peacekeepers to foreign occupiers.

“We will not give Kosovo away, even if the price is bombing,” the Yugoslav president stated. “Threats to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that it will be bombed if it doesn’t allow foreign occupation of a part of its territory should present a warning to the whole world, and all the nations and people that care about freedom and peace.”

Together, the comments brought NATO--and with it, the United States--to the brink of launching punitive airstrikes for the second time in 3 1/2 years to halt Balkan warfare provoked largely by Milosevic.

A NATO air campaign over Bosnia-Herzegovina in the summer of 1995 eventually forced Serbs into negotiations that produced the accord ending that war.

Preparing for the worst, some Western countries, including Canada, moved nonessential embassy personnel and their families out of Yugoslavia on Friday.

About 60 U.S. diplomats and their dependents were scheduled to depart for Budapest, Hungary, by road today and leave behind a skeleton staff of 13 diplomats at the embassy in Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital.

About 1,300 foreign peace monitors in Kosovo also made preparations to leave Yugoslavia if the peace talks end in failure.

An additional 51 U.S. warplanes are due to arrive in Europe this weekend or early next week to beef up the aerial armada that could be deployed against Milosevic. Already at bases on the Continent are 220 U.S. aircraft, and the aircraft carrier Enterprise is in the Mediterranean.

“In the end phase of the talks, we’re playing the psychological game, like the other side is,” a senior NATO official in Brussels said. “Otherwise, we lose advantage.”

In a sign of a growing rift within Yugoslavia, the pro-Western government of Montenegro--Serbia’s sister republic in the federation--pledged not to allow the Yugoslav military to engage NATO from its territory.

The move late Friday could create almost insurmountable problems for the Yugoslav air defense system, which would rely heavily on antiaircraft radar and batteries in Montenegro’s coastal areas to intercept cruise missiles and warplanes headed inland toward Serbia.

In an attempt to rescue the Kosovo talks, which are being held at a secluded 14th century chateau outside Paris, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrived in France from Washington early today to pour on last-minute pressure.

By midday Friday, a U.S. official said the two sides had in hand a redraft of the proposed settlement that took into account their criticisms and included new sweeteners, including a pledge of international aid to rebuild Kosovo, where nine in 10 inhabitants are ethnic Albanians.

One incentive was a second chamber for the proposed provincial parliament, specifically to safeguard the rights of Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo. The plan must be accepted by both sides in full.

Although this element was not in the text, Western diplomats said a peace agreement would mean a possible repeal of some of the international sanctions clamped on Milosevic’s government.

During the course of his news conference, Clinton rejected Milosevic’s contention that, by allowing a NATO peacekeeping force into Kosovo, he would in effect be losing control of the embattled province.

“I personally believe it’s the only way he can preserve Kosovo as a part of Serbia,” Clinton said. “Under their laws, Kosovo is supposed to be autonomous but a part of Serbia.”

Last Sunday, the United States and five European powers gave the Serbs and Kosovo Albanians until noon today Paris time to adopt a compromise designed to stop the bloodletting in the disputed province, where about 2,000 people have been killed in the past year. But the negotiations, which began Feb. 6, have faltered, Western diplomats said.

“There is no reason to think we’re going to get an agreement tomorrow. The betting now is that the Serbs haven’t moved,” a U.S. official said Friday afternoon.

Albanian negotiators representing Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas also lambasted the revamped text because it lacked an explicit pledge that a referendum on independence, the dream of most Kosovo Albanians, will be held in three years.

“If the international community is not ready to guarantee it, this ‘interim agreement’ will be the final agreement on Kosovo,” objected Pleurat Sejdiu, the KLA political affairs representative in Europe.

As he strolled down a street near the chateau in Rambouillet where negotiators for the warring sides were meeting, European Union negotiator Wolfgang Petritsch told reporters that the talks seemed in “the middle of nowhere.”

In the past, Milosevic, a master of the Balkan game of brinkmanship, has backed down when faced with Western resolve and muscle. Yet that does not appear to be happening over Kosovo, which many Serbs consider the cradle of their civilization.

U.S. officials say the Yugoslav leader has become the chief stumbling block to an accord because he has refused to accept one of its key provisions--allowing nearly 30,000 NATO-led troops to enforce it.

The senior NATO official said the alliance already has 430 aircraft, including B-52 bombers and F-117 Stealth planes, ready to carry out raids against Yugoslavia.

At the Pentagon, officials said the opening of any air attack could be carried out with Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from Navy ships in the Mediterranean.

“We have got an overwhelming force down there,” the senior NATO official said. “We can basically do what we want.”

Dahlburg reported from Paris, Marshall from Washington and Watson from Belgrade. Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.