In Kosovo, Rebels Look Askance at Peace Pact

Commander Remi, a powerful voice in the Kosovo guerrillas’ high command, is one of many skeptics who must be convinced before ethnic Albanians in this separatist Serbian province can deliver on a promise to make peace.

Sitting at his desk on the second floor of a farmhouse here, with his two portable satellite phones, a laptop computer, fax machine and satellite color TV, the rebel fighter was in no mood to compromise Wednesday.

The interim peace accord that the U.S. and its five European partners want the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, to approve next month would force the world’s fastest-growing guerrilla force to simply melt away.

Commander Remi, seated beneath five framed portraits of fallen comrades, insisted that his fighters will not give up their weapons, even with Washington’s promise that NATO would protect Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians.

“We believe in the U.S.,” said the 27-year-old former law student. “But we believe more in ourselves. And we cannot believe anyone who says the KLA must disarm.”

In a year of fighting, the KLA has grown from a small group of rebels to a force that seized large swaths of Kosovo, only to be beaten back by a devastating Serbian offensive last summer. Kosovo is in the south of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia.

Since October, the KLA has used a shaky cease-fire to rebuild its ranks and even name its first overall commander: former metallurgy student and veteran fighter Syjleman Selimi, 29, who is also known as Sultan.

Now the KLA is moving to set up a provisional government, which would push the pacifist Ibrahim Rugova, once Kosovo’s strongest leader, further to the sidelines and probably give hard-liners more control over negotiations.

When peace talks between the rebels and Serbia resume March 15 in France, the guerrillas will continue to demand a referendum on Kosovo’s independence after three years, and high-pressure bargaining tactics won’t change that, Commander Remi said.

But Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, testifying Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, indicated that there is little room available for further diplomatic maneuvering around the deal presented at recent talks in the French town of Rambouillet.

“The proposed interim agreement is the best deal either side will get, and it should be agreed to by both,” she said.

She also said, however, that U.S. involvement in any peacekeeping operation to police a Kosovo accord is essential to winning acceptance by the ethnic Albanians.

“There is zero chance that the Kosovar Albanians will sign on to this deal if the U.S. does not participate in its implementation,” she said.

Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, returning from the peace talks in France, called efforts to pressure the Serbs into accepting North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Kosovo with repeated bombing threats “a farce and a circus.”

“Our principal effort to preserve the territorial integrity and sovereignty of our country [was] affirmed,” the Serbian leader told reporters in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital.

The six-nation Contact Group trying to end the conflict in Kosovo gave negotiators from both sides almost three weeks to return home from the talks near Paris and consult with their people. But the ethnic Albanian delegation had to cancel its flight to Kosovo on Wednesday.

Yugoslav authorities reportedly refused to let KLA delegates come back to Kosovo because they don’t have valid passports.

It’s the same argument that almost prevented the delegation from attending the peace talks, and foreign diplomats are once again putting pressure on Belgrade to cooperate.

If they do get back to Kosovo, the ethnic Albanian delegates will exchange the tension of high-stakes negotiating for the dangers of war as sporadic fighting and the approach of spring raise tensions here.

Although neither side in Kosovo’s conflict signed anything at Rambouillet, the parties agreed to return to France next month and conclude a three-year interim deal that would grant Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority limited self-rule within Serbia.

But the biggest obstacles to a final deal are the same ones that forced foreign diplomats to let two deadlines slip at Rambouillet and, at the last minute, give negotiators a long break to think.

The KLA refuses to give up its weapons just when it’s feeling stronger and better organized. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic doesn’t want 28,000 NATO troops on his soil.

Far from the comforts of a 14th century French chateau, and the hectoring of foreign diplomats, ethnic Albanian and Serbian negotiators have new pressures to deal with on their home turf.

Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Washington contributed to this report.