Milosevic Halts Envoy’s Expulsion Order

The Yugoslav government’s deadline for U.S. diplomat William Walker to leave the country passed Thursday night, and the head of international peace monitors for separatist Kosovo province didn’t budge.

After intense negotiations by U.S. and other foreign diplomats in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic backed down, announcing that it was “freezing”--but not dropping--the expulsion order.

In a statement distributed by the state-run Tanjug news agency, the government said the order would remain frozen until “the consequences of his behavior are fully clarified.”

But the Clinton administration wasn’t satisfied by the move. “We have been advised that President Milosevic has suspended his expulsion of Ambassador Walker,” State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said late Thursday. “We regard this as a necessary but insufficient condition to solve the problems Milosevic has created in Kosovo.”

Under the order, Walker was supposed to have been out of the country by 5 p.m. Belgrade had declared him persona non grata because he had accused Serbian security forces of massacring more than 40 ethnic Albanians in the village of Racak a week ago.

Two hours before the expulsion deadline Thursday, U.S. bodyguards in heavy armor vests stood by as the engine of Walker’s car idled and three Serbian police with automatic weapons kept watch across the street.

An aide emerged from the peace monitors’ headquarters to tell waiting reporters that Walker had decided to delay his departure to Belgrade. By nightfall, Walker had decided to stay in Pristina while the talks continued in Belgrade.

Earlier in the day, a Yugoslav army captain had turned Walker back from a military checkpoint in one of the most heavily armed flash points in Kosovo, a Serbian province that is 90% ethnic Albanian.

Walker, a career U.S. diplomat, heads a team of about 750 unarmed monitors sent by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to watch for cease-fire violations in Kosovo.

He not only accused Serbian security forces of what he called a crime against humanity, he also demanded the names of anyone involved in operations in and around Racak, about 16 miles south of Pristina.

Belgrade continues to deny the massacre allegations, and a team of local pathologists is performing autopsies on 40 bodies with the assistance of forensic experts from Finland.

The Finns say they expect to have a final report on the results of their work in 10 days but have already complained that local pathologists aren’t following proper procedure because they didn’t X-ray the corpses first.

Belgrade also refuses to let a team of international war crimes investigators enter Yugoslavia to carry out an independent probe of the massacre allegations.

Louise Arbour, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, pledged that she will investigate the slayings even if she doesn’t gain access to the site.

The prosecutor, in remarks from The Hague relayed to U.N. headquarters, said that a crime certainly was committed in Kosovo.

“What that crime was legally should be established later,” Arbour added. “The urgency is to access relevant information now. The legal characterization could be debated in another forum later.”

In Dublin, Ireland, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he hopes it is not too late to get the Yugoslav government to change its position. Annan told reporters that he regrets the fact that Yugoslavia has not cooperated “to get an independent investigation going.”

“Obviously, there are forensic aspects, but the investigation would be more credible,” Annan said, “if there was an independent third party.”

On Thursday, Walker was asked again whether he had other evidence besides the bodies he saw to back up his massacre claim.

“There is corroborative evidence,” is all he would say to reporters while checking the buildup of Serbian armor north of Pristina.

Walker’s convoy of four vehicles, trailed by 16 cars and vans carrying journalists, later arrived unannounced at a roadblock near the northern Kosovo city of Podujevo.

While Walker waited in his car, a Yugoslav army captain supervising three police officers radioed to a commander to check if he could let the convoy pass.

The answer was no, and after a brief discussion between the Yugoslav captain and one of Walker’s staff, the convoy turned around and headed back to Pristina.

On the way, it passed several Yugoslav army T-55 tanks and antiaircraft guns that are dug in by the main highway, aimed at guerrilla territory just a few miles away.

Yugoslav security forces had battled rebels with the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, in the same area for four days over Christmas, and the continued buildup on both sides of the front line doesn’t bode well for peace in Kosovo.

Walker stopped short of calling the current Serbian buildup a violation of an eleventh-hour cease-fire reached in October.

“There’s a lot of stuff out there that we think shouldn’t be there,” he said. “But they say it’s keeping the road open--that sort of thing.”

Walker’s team also criticized the guerrillas Thursday after the KLA admitted responsibility for wounding a British peace monitor and his interpreter last week.

Although the rebels had been notified that monitors would be in the area, a guerrilla opened fire on their vehicle, “indicating a lack of control on the part of the KLA command as well as a disregard for the physical well-being” of foreign monitors, the mission said in a press release.

Even if Walker stays in Kosovo, the cease-fire brokered by U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke is falling apart. For weeks, a sense has been taking hold here that a return to all-out war is inevitable.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has renewed its threat of airstrikes if Milosevic continues to break his agreement with Holbrooke.

In Washington, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reiterated Thursday that the West must be ready to use force against Milosevic if he cannot be persuaded by diplomatic means to live up to the bargain he made with Holbrooke.

“It’s essential that we be persuasive in dealing with Milosevic, and that requires that we be prepared, if necessary, to use force, because force is the only language he appears to understand,” Albright said in a speech to a Washington think tank she once headed.

But NATO is caught in a difficult bind. The alliance doesn’t want to be seen as an ally of the KLA and its separatist cause.

By bombing Serbian military and police targets, NATO would indirectly strengthen their enemy, the KLA guerrillas, and make it more difficult for the West to keep Kosovo part of Yugoslavia, with more self-rule for ethnic Albanians.

Times staff writers Norman Kempster in Washington and John J. Goldman at the United Nations contributed to this report.